August Wilhelm Rehberg

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August Wilhelm Rehberg (born January 13, 1757 in Hanover , † August 10, 1836 in Göttingen ) was a Hanoverian statesman, philosopher and political writer.

Life

Rehberg's father was secretary at the estate of the Principality of Calenberg (one of the duchies in the Kingdom of Hanover ) and befriended Johann Adolf Schlegel and his sons.

Rehberg studied from autumn 1774 at the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen . In 1779 he became a member of the most influential student order of the time, the ZN Order , which was led by Professor Johann Friedrich Blumenbach . Even after his studies in Hanover, he was still a member of the local lodge association.

After the departure of the great sponsor of this order, Duke Karl von Mecklenburg in 1784, the government's instruction to the Vice-Rector of the University of Göttingen to discontinue the ZN order there was taken as a request to liquidate the ZN order in Hanover as well.

The Order had considerable funds from 1700 Reichstalern collected that should be used for a chemical laboratory at the University of Göttingen. These funds were further increased by donations from members in order to erect the first memorial for a commoner in Germany in Hanover in honor of Leibniz , but at the same time also a memorial for the ZN Order and its members. The bust of the polymath was made in Italy from white Carrara by the Irish sculptor Christopher Hewetson . It was exhibited for the first time in Rehberg's house in 1789 and was praised by Charlotte Kestner . The Leibniz bust was placed in the Leibniz temple in 1790 .

Rehberg aspired to an academic career at the Knight Academy in Berlin, but this was thwarted by the Prussian King Frederick the Great .

After a humiliating four years of teaching English to German, in 1783 he became secretary to Friedrich August, Duke of York and Albany , who was then (the last) bishop of the Osnabrück Monastery , British field marshal and was so impressed by Rehberg's abilities that he was made him secretary to the Hanoverian Secret Council in 1786. The council was made up of the aristocrats, although its affairs were usually directed by non-voting bourgeois secretaries like Rehberg. It was one of the tragedies of Rehberg's career that his tedious chores gave him little time for philosophy. Hence his writings are at times scattered and sometimes lack precision and finishing touches. For the same reason he never gave a systematic account of his philosophy.

In 1788 he and his sister Caroline stayed in the same guesthouse as Justus Möser during a stay in Pyrmont .

In 1805 he was elected a foreign member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences . After the end of French rule, Rehberg was appointed a secret cabinet councilor in January 1814 with responsibility for corporate and tax matters. A restorative aristocratic faction in the Kingdom of Hanover increasingly understood how to put Rehberg - who had been accused of being a revolutionary in disguise because of his inclination to moderate reforms - in opposition to Ernst Friedrich Herbert zu Munster, cabinet minister for Hanoverian affairs in London . Rehberg is regarded as a representative of the reform conservatism of that time. Rehberg's forced resignation in 1821 as a liberal secret cabinet councilor sealed the victory of the aristocratic circles.

Rehberg's wife Marie was the daughter of Ludwig Höpfner from Gießen .

children

Works

  • All the writings. Hanover: Hahn, 1828–31. (3 published of 4 planned) Cato, Basel: Thurneysen, 1780.
  • Philosophical conversations about pleasure. Nuremberg, 1785.
  • About the relationship between metaphysics and religion. Berlin: Mylius, 1787.
  • Research on the French Revolution. Hanover: Ritscher, 1792, 1793. 2 vols.
  • About the German nobility. Göttingen: Röwer, 1803. ( digitized version )
  • About the state administration of German states and the servants of the regent. Hanover: Hahn, 1807.
  • About the Code Napoleon and its introduction in Germany. Hanover: Hahn, 1814.
  • On the history of the Kingdom of Hanover in the first years after the liberation from Westphalian and French rule, Göttingen 1826.
  • Constitutional fantasies of an old helmsman in the storm of 1832. Perthes, Hamburg 1832. Digitized

literature

  • Article Rehberg, August Wilhelm . In: Joachim Rückert and Jürgen Vortmann (eds.): Lower Saxony lawyers . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2003, pp. 96-102.
  • Klaus Epstein: The Origins of Conservatism in Germany. The starting point: the challenge posed by the French Revolution 1770–1806 . Propylaeen-Verlag, Berlin 1973, ISBN 3-550-07288-0 , chapter 11.
  • Hyacinth Holland :  Rehberg, August Wilhelm . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 27, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1888, pp. 571-583.
  • Hans-Christof Kraus:  Rehberg, August Wilhelm. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 21, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-428-11202-4 , p. 277 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Kurt Lessing: Rehberg and the French Revolution . Bielenfels, Freiburg 1910.
  • Karl Mollenhauer: AW Rehberg, a Hanoverian statesman in the age of restoration . Blankburg am Harz, 1904/05. ( Digitized version )
  • Walter Richter: The Esperance and ZN Order , in: Once and Now. 1974 yearbook of the Association for Corporate Student History Research, pp. 30–54.
  • Gerhard Ritter: Stein: A Political Biography . Berlin: Deutsche Verlags Anstalt, 1931.
  • Gunner Rexius: Studies on the state theory of the historical school . In: Historische Zeitschrift 107, 1911, pp. 513-526.
  • Wilhelm Rothert : General Hannoversche Biography , Volume 2: In the Old Kingdom of Hanover 1814–1866 ; Hanover: Sponholtz, 1914, pp. 398-411
  • Ursula Vogel: Conservative criticism of the bourgeois revolution: August Wilhelm Rehberg . Luchterhand, Darmstadt 1972.
  • Erich Less: Stein and Rehberg . In: Niedersächsisches Jahrbuch 2, 1925, pp. 1–124.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Totok-Haase: Leibniz, His life, his work, his world . Hanover 1966, p. 88.
  2. ↑ Holger Krahnke: The members of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen 1751-2001 (= Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Philological-Historical Class. Volume 3, Vol. 246 = Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Mathematical-Physical Class. Episode 3, vol. 50). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-82516-1 , p. 198.
  3. ↑ Klaus Epstein : The origins of conservatism in Germany. The starting point: the challenge posed by the French Revolution 1770–1806 . Propylaeen-Verlag, Berlin 1973, ISBN 3-550-07288-0 , chapter 11.
  4. ↑ Wilhelm Scherer : Goethe and Mrs. Rehberg, b. Höpfner. Goethe-Jahrbuch , Volume 6 (1885), pp. 345–353http: //vorlage_digitalisat.test/1%3D~GB%3D~IA%3Dgoethejahrbuchv00unkngoog~MDZ%3D%0A~SZ%3Dn369~ double-sided%3D~LT%3DS.%20345%E2%80%93353~PUR%3D
  5. ^ First in English: Klaus Epstein: The Genesis of German Conservatism . Princeton University Press, Princeton 1966, pp. 547-595.
personal data
SURNAME Rehberg, August Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Hanoverian statesman, philosopher and political writer
DATE OF BIRTH January 13, 1757
PLACE OF BIRTH Hanover
DATE OF DEATH August 10, 1836
Place of death Goettingen