August Karl Wilhelm Weissenbruch

Wilhelm Weissenbruch

August Karl Wilhelm Weissenbruch (* July 24, 1744 in Saarbrücken , † March 4, 1826 in Brussels ), who later called himself Charles-Auguste-Guillaume de Weissenbruch , was one of the first encyclopedists during the Ancien Régime .

family

Weissenbruch was baptized Evangelical Lutheran two days after his birth in Saarbrücken . In the baptism certificate, “Adv. Henr. Christian W. u. Wife Henriette Dorothee b. Becker "called. The following were noted as godparents: “Durchl. Princess Sophia Augusta, represented by Mademoiselle Ravanelle; Mr. Forester of Malditz; Miss von Bettendorff and Mr. Oberamts-Assessor Happel ". Weissenbruch's sister Louisa Johanna Friderica Christiana, who is eight years older than us, is registered as godparents: “ Countess Luisa von Ottweiler , Baron Henning von Strahlheim, Reg. Rat Schmidt and Jgfr. Sybilla Christiana Weissenbruch ”. This group of people conveys a picture of the social environment into which Weissenbruch was born. The family, with its greater political and intellectual overview, will have had a very liberal family tradition in the time of territorial small states. The roots of the family are likely to be in Hesse , just as the ruling house Nassau-Saarbrücken had close ties to this territory.

The marriage of his sister Christiana to the southern French writer Pierre Rousseau (1716–1785) in 1755 should not have been unusual either. The best man was Claude-Godefroy Pâris . Karl's older brother became a government attorney like his father.

Cover of the Journal Encyclopédique

job

For Weissenbruch, Pierre Rousseau was the driving force behind his professional life. After various stages in his life, which also took him to Saarbrücken to see Weissenbruch's older sister Dorothee, he went to Paris , where he wrote poems and, in 1750, was editor of the Journal des Affiches for a short time . But he soon moved to Mannheim as a correspondent for the Elector Palatinate and reported from the court there on literature and science. At the same time Rousseau was appointed councilor. This gave him the opportunity to come into contact with philosophers of the French Enlightenment, especially Diderot , Voltaire and d'Alembert .

At the suggestion of the bookseller and printer André François le Breton (1708–1779), the knowledge of the time was to be collected in the form of a comprehensive encyclopedia , actually "only" the British cyclopaedia published by Ephraim Chambers to be translated. But the project quickly became independent. Rousseau was an ardent advocate of the Enlightenment, and had the temperament and skill to move the matter forward. Finally, in Liège in 1755 , he was given permission to print, on condition that he should not criticize the church or the authorities or otherwise violate good morals . The first issue of the magazine appeared on January 1, 1756.

Weissenbruch, who had just turned eleven, followed his sister and brother-in-law Rousseau to do an apprenticeship with him. It would be 38 years that Weissenbruch worked for the Journal Encyclopédique . On March 1, 1759, at the age of 15, he became "Directeur du bureau du journal" and was responsible for the printing process, i.e. the printing presses , types , paper and all furnishings. The high level of responsibility paired with a lot of hard work and talent quickly made him one of Rousseau's most important employees.

Because of hostility from the University of Leuven and the lack of support from the Prince-Bishop of Liège, who revoked his printing permission on August 27, 1759, the encyclopedists moved their printing works to the town of Bouillon, then part of Auvergne, that same year .

In addition to the Journal Encyclopédique , new journals continued to appear: Gazette Salutaire (1761) with analyzes and notes, a medical (1762) and a legal journal (1763), the Journal Politique (1764) and the Gazette des Gazettes (1768). The print shop was so busy, but books were still being printed.

Société typographique de Bouillon

On November 24, 1768, Rousseau and Weissenbruch founded the Société typographique de Bouillon to give their work a broader basis. A colleague of Rousseau's, Jean Castilhon , had previously received permission to print old and new books from the Duke, the printing of which would become the task of the new society. The local censors had to be notified with each new work. In addition to Jean, his brother Jean-Louis Castilhon , Jean-Pierre-Louis Trécourt and Jean Babtiste Robinet de Chateau-Giron (1735-1820) became shareholders .

The people associated with the new company also had a lot to do with one another personally: Trécourt had previously been secretary to Count d'Aubigny in Liège and was therefore already acquainted with Pierre Rousseau. In May 1758 Trécourt married Weissenbruch's younger sister, Magdalena Christina Henriette (* 1739 in Saarbrücken; † 1836). At the time of marriage, two members of the Journal Encyclopédique were witnesses , Alexandre Deleyre and Claude Yvon , and the former mayor of Liège, Guillaume de Sluse.

From 1756 to 1764 Voltaire was a regular contributor to the journal, who was enthusiastic about the project and tried to promote it to the best of his ability. For example, in his comedy Le Caffé ou l'Ecossaise, which was brought to the Paris stage, the Journal Enzyclopédique received positive reviews.

The encyclopedia developed splendidly at the new location in Bouillon. As a result, capacity limits were soon reached and Weissenbruch was not always able to meet the growing number of subscribers in a timely manner. Other difficulties also had to be mastered: In order to circumvent the censorship, the expanding publishing program was given "very creative" names, in some cases fake printing locations were given and the distribution channels were concealed.

At the age of 27, Weissenbruch married Jeanne-Marguerite Rey in Amsterdam , daughter of the printer's owner and publisher Marc Michel Rey (1720–1780), who had made some fortune through book printing for Jean-Jacques Rousseau .

In 1776, Weissenbruch was granted power of attorney because Pierre Rousseau relocated to Paris and stayed in Bouillon for only a few weeks a year until his death in 1785. Other comrades-in-arms like the Castilhon brothers also gave up their work and were replaced by new forces.

At the age of 41, Weissenbruch took over Rousseau's inheritance in matters of encyclopedia after Rousseau's death, assuming sole responsibility and management for both the company and its printed works. Rousseau's widow and Weissenbruch's sister Louisa Johanna Friderica Christiana had received confirmation of the existing privilege from the Duke, which now benefited both siblings under the direction of August Karl Wilhelm.

Last years in Brussels

French departments in what is now Belgium and the Netherlands

With the French Revolution , which reached Bouillon in 1790, freedom of the press was also introduced, which was not conducive to the distribution of the encyclopedia because competing papers were now also coming onto the market. On the other hand, the goal of the free distribution of news, and thus the long-pursued entrepreneurial goal, had been achieved. The Journal Encyclopédique appeared for the last time in 32 years in November 1793 and was absorbed in the “Esprit des journaux francais et étrangers” published in Liège, a 400–500 page monthly journal. The printing privilege was granted to Prince-Bishop Velbrück and Archduke Charles de Lorraine (Brussels). The company often changed its seat: after its founding in Liège in 1772, 1773 Brussels, then Paris in 1782, back to Liège in 1793 and later back to Brussels.

In 1795, Weissenbruch relocated his company to Brussels (Hôtel des Brasseurs) at what is now the Place du Musée, because immediately after the revolution he was suspected of complicity in the old regime, but was then declared innocent.

Weissenbruch's son Louis Jules Henry (* 1772) was hired as secretary in 1795 by the newly appointed government commissioner Louis-Ghislain de Bouteville du Metz (1746-1821). The latter was tasked with creating the organizational institutions for nine new departments in the former Austrian Netherlands . After the end of the contract in 1797, he followed in his father's footsteps by both publishing the Almanach du Département de la Dyle . This was published from 1801 to 1806. After the Congress of Vienna, Brussels was the seat of the King of the United Netherlands and the Weissenbruchs printing house was the place where his “Journal Général des Pays Bas” (1815-1819), “Mercure Belge” (1817-1820) and the "Journal de Bruxelles" (1820) and the official government announcements in the "Journal Officiel du Gouvernement de la Belgique" (1815-1830). At the same time, son Louis was given the title of Royal Printing House (Imprimeur du Roi) , which the Weissenbruch Printing House is still allowed to run today. Since 1910 the company has been called M. Weissenbruch, Société Anonyme, Imprimeur du Roi, Bruxelles.

literature

• Carl Helmut Steckner : Karl August Wilhelm Weissenbruch (1744-1826) . In: Peter Neumann (Ed.): Saarländische Lebensbilder . tape 4 , 1989, ISBN 3-925036-20-2 .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Jean-Jacques Rousseau, RA Leigh: Correspondance complète de Jean Jacques Rousseau, ed. 38, 1998
2. ^ ^{A b c} Carl Helmut Steckner: Karl August Wilhelm Weissenbruch (1744–1826), in: Saarländische Lebensbilder, Volume 4, ed. by Peter Neumann, 1989, ISBN 3-925036-20-2

Remarks

1. ↑ Heinrich Christian Weissenbruch is meant
2. ↑ apparently not yet published books
3. ↑ Brussels was the capital of the new Dyle department