August Wygand

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

August Wygand , pseudonym: Christoph Rauch , (* 23 or 24 August 1657 in Eisleben ; † 26 February 1709 in Altona ) was a German lawyer , politician and writer .

education

August Wygand was the third of six children from August Wygand sen. (1617–1666) and his wife Clara Elisabeth, whose father Heinrich Richard Hagen (1596–1665) was Brandenburg Vice Chancellor at Halberstadt. The father worked as a Mansfeld “Hof- Berg- und Consistoralrat” in a law firm of the Counts of Mansfeld. Martin Luther's deathbed and armchair were preserved here and August Wygand was born.

When August Wygand was four years old, August von Sachsen appointed his father to be Möllenvogt of Magdeburg , where the family moved. He received private lessons until he was 13 and then attended the Martineum Halberstadt . In 1676/77 he studied philosophy at the University of Leipzig and then moved to the Viadrina to study law , where he followed Samuel Stryk and Johann Christoph Bekmann . From the summer of 1679 he traveled for a long time through Germany, Austria and the Nordic countries and worked in Livonia as a secretary for a Polish embassy. At the end of 1681 he lived in Hamburg and met his friend Polycarp Marci there .

Work in Hamburg

Wygand initially worked in Hamburg as a partner for a profitable notary's office and, in 1685, when he acquired Hamburg citizenship , took a position as a lawyer at the higher court, which was subordinate to the Hamburg council. In the same year he married Anna Margaretha vom Borstel, who already had two children, one of whom was underage, and who had been married to a deceased stable master and senior officer of the Hamburg militia in her first marriage. Her father Peter vom Borstel worked as a bailiff .

In February 1687, Wygand received his doctorate within a few weeks on "De Falsis" ("From falsifications") for licensing both rights at the University of Rostock . After the death of his father-in-law, he acquired his position as bailiff with the approval of the Hamburg council. In this position he also acted as a sequester . In 1684 he ran for the position of secretary to the senior citizen , but narrowly lost the election to a candidate who belonged to an old-established family from Hamburg.

Opera am Gänsemarkt, detail from Paul Heinecken's view of the city in 1726

Wygand took part in the first Hamburg opera dispute and found supporters in Mayor Heinrich Meurer and the councilor and founder of the opera on the Gänsemarkt , Gerhard Schott . Many people interested in opera in and outside Hamburg asked Wygand to answer Anton Reiser's “Theatromania” , which he had written without having seen an opera performance or studied a textbook on it. Reiser saw actors, singers and operas as "works of darkness", which should be denied participation in the Lord's Supper. Thus in 1681 Wygand's replica “Theatrophania” was created, which was dedicated to “musical operas”. Wygand based his reply, written under the pseudonym Christoph Rauch , on Reiser's argumentation, occasionally switching to Saxon and using formulations that are reminiscent of Bertolt Brecht . The publishing house was taken over by the Catholic princely court printer Wolfgang Schwendimann (1632–1685) in Hanover . Reiser, who did not know the true identity of Wygand, responded with a diatribe in which he referred to him as "unscrupulous lawyers", "comedic pimple hairers" and "papists".

Wygand led rehearsals at the Hamburg Opera and occasionally took over the position of director from Gerhard Schott. His friend Johann Philipp Förtsch set the Singspiel Polyeuct to music in 1689 , which Wygand had written anonymously. Wygand campaigned decisively against the priests, who he considered presumptuous, and described Johann Friedrich Mayer as an "apocalyptic cavalry". However, he also helped outsiders and in 1694 received a letter of thanks from an emigrated supporter of Jakob Boehme from Pennsylvania .

Wygand increasingly opposed the Hamburg council, with which he later got into an obvious conflict. The murders of Cord Jastram and Hieronymus Snitger in the course of the siege of Hamburg (1686) displeased him, even though he did not make any public statements at the time. In 1693 he lost money at his bank due to corruption involving the council. Wygands reported this to the council, which, however, opposed judgments of the competent Reich Chamber Court. Instead, he banished Wygand for life in 1695 and deprived him of all possessions, on the false accusation that he had embezzled the court's income while in office.

Escape to Denmark

Wygand then turned to the King of Denmark. In 1696 he received the title of the Royal Danish Council, in 1698 he was appointed resident of Lower Saxony , August the Strong , which Hamburg did not recognize. Around 1705 he officiated as the "Royal Prussian Secret Justice Council". He lived in the Danish Altona in the house of his printer Christian Reymers and wrote extensively to the Hamburg citizenship . He called for people of the Catholic, Reformed and Jewish faith to be able to practice their religion freely like Lutherans. He demanded the use of an "arithmetic chamber" and an examination of the administration to see whether there were any defects or damage. After the end of the corruption, a general amnesty should be pronounced. In addition, Jastram and Snitger and all the fighters for “civil liberty” who had to leave Hamburg need to be rehabilitated. Hamburg should make peace with the Danish king and pay the “hereditary homage” demanded by him, said Wygand.

In other writings, Wygand called for a self-supporting foundation to be set up that he wanted to lead himself. The institution was supposed to provide work for poor men and women and thus prevent them from begging, which is regarded as criminal, or not only lead them to the Christian welfare. By means of scholarships, it should enable sons of craftsmen to study academically or to “learn how to handle honestly”. She was also supposed to finance defense in court for poor defendants and provide lifelong pensions for the widows of Jastram and Snitger.

The Hamburg Recess

In 1699 Wygand wrote his most important work with the "Manifesto of Civil Frey". This recess of August 18, 1699 was the first expressly democratic program publication in Germany. He gave every citizen who had paid the citizen's money the opportunity to participate in conventions and thus abolished the dependence of civil rights on private wealth. Wygand anonymously described the history of the Hamburg constitution, the “most honest entertainer of Frey and equality” and the importance of the Hamburg council, which deserves respect.

Wygand then asked the Hamburg council to publish and explain all recesses. He himself worked anonymously in 1705 the "Nucleus Recessuum et Coventuum", which listed the contents of all citizens' conventions of the previous 300 years as an alphabetical register. He tried to print all the reviews in full, but only completed this unpublished work in fragments.

literature

  • Hans Schröder : Lexicon of Hamburg writers , Volume 8, Hamburg 1883, No. 4531
  • Manfred Asendorf: Wygand, August . In: Franklin Kopitzsch, Dirk Brietzke (Hrsg.): Hamburgische Biographie . tape 6 . Wallstein, Göttingen 2012, ISBN 978-3-8353-1025-4 , p. 387-389 .
  • Joerg Berlin, civil liberty instead of council regiment. The manifesto of civil liberty and the struggle for democracy in Hamburg around 1700, Norderstedt 2012 (with a reprint of A. Wygand's main publication)

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Entry 1687 in the Rostock matriculation portal