Bernhard Moßdorf

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Bernhard Moßdorf (born January 16, 1802 in Dresden ; † November 14, 1833 at the Königstein Fortress ) wrote the first draft of a representative constitution for Saxony in 1831 under the title: Constitution, as the Saxon people want it .

Life

Bernhard Moßdorf was born in Dresden in 1802 . His father was the court and justice secretary Friedrich Moßdorf (born March 2, 1757 in Eckartsberga , † March 16, 1843 in Dresden), who was a Freemason .

Bernhard Mossdorf studied at the University of Leipzig law . Since the then democratically minded fraternities were dissolved on the initiative of the German Confederation , he joined the Mondeana country team. In the connection the view was taken that no more consensus could be reached with the Princes of the German Confederation on a civic constitution and that a violent overthrow would have to take place. In 1821 Moßdorf participated as one of 324 fighters known by name in the Greek liberation struggle against the Ottoman Empire .

Inspired by the French July Revolution of 1830 , workers, journeymen, day laborers, servants and students driven by hunger and unemployment marched through Leipzig on September 4, 1830 and forced the resignation of a police chief. On September 9, a crowd of several thousand people stormed the town hall in Dresden and destroyed the police office to the ground. In addition to estate subjects and do-it-yourselfers in Lusatia, parts of the property bourgeoisie joined this movement . The bourgeoisie and the nobility demanded a liberal constitution. With this mandate, King Anton and his co-regent Prince Friedrich August appointed Bernhard von Lindenau as cabinet minister.

In anticipation of a city order and an overall constitution, elections to the city councils were granted to the upper class in Leipzig and Dresden. The petty-bourgeois and working classes were not allowed to take part in the elections and organized themselves at the beginning of 1831 in the Dresden Citizens' Association. In September 1830, the Secret Council of the Kingdom of Saxony, a collegial body of internal administration, received the order to prepare a draft for the reorganization of the state constitution. The Real Secret Council Hans Georg von Carlowitz was entrusted with the elaboration of the draft . Carlowitz relied on the state constitution of the Kingdom of Württemberg from September 25, 1819. With a public announcement on October 5, 1830, the new government announced a profound change in the constitution and administration of the state. Another draft came from Bernhard von Lindenau himself, which was based on the Baden constitution of August 22, 1818. The Secret Council followed this up and submitted its draft to the Estates for consultation on March 1, 1831.

The long duration of the non-public consultation gave the impression of inactivity. This prompted the Dresden citizens' association to have the lawyer Bernhard Moßdorf work out a draft, which he prepared based on the Belgian constitution of February 7, 1831 . Two thousand copies were printed without the required prior authorization. On April 6, 1831, the city council banned the citizens' association. Nevertheless, the citizens' association met on April 15 in the Kreutz coffee house. Moßdorf's draft constitution was read out to applause. On the evening of April 17th, Moßdorf and the co-organizer of the citizens' association, Heinrich Ludwig Anton Bertholdy, were arrested. Bertholdy and his siblings ran the pasta mill at the Weißeritzmühlgraben, founded by his father, the court actor Antonio Bertoldi.

Moßdorf's draft constitution provided for many regulations that contradicted the constitutional rules of the German Confederation and would have resulted in federal execution. Bernhard von Lindenau recognized the popularity of Moßdorf's draft and the associated danger for the continued existence of the late feudalist state: “The matter is at an extreme, and it will have to be decided in the course of the next month whether the fixed order will return or a mob rule The Austrian ambassador, Count Colloredo , considered Moßdorf's draft to be a utopia for a political unification of Germany, which was certainly gaining ground. This gives Prussia the opportunity to completely incorporate Saxony, which remained as a rump state after the Congress of Vienna .

Mossdorf and Bertholdy were identified as ringleaders to 15 years imprisonment convicted and on 2 September 1831, the fortress Koenigstein spent. On September 4, 1831, the king handed the Lindenau estates constitution to the estates, thereby putting it into effect. Bernhard Moßdorf died on November 14, 1833 on the Königstein at the age of 31, shortly after his friend Bertholdy. The cause was given as suicide . There is no street or plaque in Saxony that reminds of Moßdorf or Bertholdy. In contrast, a square in front of the state parliament in Dresden was named after Bernhard von Lindenau . In 2007 the former 49th high school "Juri Gagarin" was renamed 49th elementary school "Bernhard von Lindenau".

Moßdorf's work: Constitution as the Saxon people want it

Title page of the printed copy of the Constitution

Moßdorf strove for Saxony to leave the five-power system of the Congress of Vienna and leave the German Confederation . The Kingdom of Saxony should cease to be a special state as soon as Germany unites into one state. The federal act rejected a unitary state, it should remain with a federation of sovereign princes. According to the constitution, as desired by the Saxon people , the Saxon people, on the other hand, rejects all federal decrees and new federal decrees, the king may only join with the consent of the legislative chamber. The Estates constitution fully committed itself to the German Confederation.

Moßdorf envisaged that the nobility, including their names and authorizations , such as fiefdom, manorial rule, local authority, body authority, compulsory labor rights and meal rights should be abolished. The German Confederation, on the other hand, demanded from its individual states that princely and counts' houses remain high nobility, remain first class lords of their respective state and also remain the most privileged class of their state with regard to tax and military obligations. The class constitution assumed the difference between class and birth and made no changes to the rights of the nobility.

Moßdorf envisaged a constitution in which the entire people are represented in a legislative chamber. Any citizen over the age of 25 should be eligible to vote. The restriction that excluded from the right to vote was those who did not pay direct taxes and were in wage employment that significantly reduced the size of the electorate.

The German Confederation only allowed state constitutions in the federal states and the sovereign state power had to remain united in the prince both externally and internally. The form of government in Saxony was therefore monarchical, the constitution was country-class and the privileges of the nobility remained. The federation was allowed to maintain the constitution of the state by intervening in the states themselves. However, as in Moßdorf's draft, citizens were also allowed to participate in the state administration of the federal states under the state constitution.

In Moßdorf's draft constitution, freedom of the press was guaranteed with the sentence: "The press is free". Freedom of the press was also provided for in the Lindenau constitution, albeit with the essential restriction that the laws of the German Confederation must be taken into account, which the federal princes had reserved for the confederation beyond its fundamentally limited competence.

The responsibility of the government was regulated in a similar way in Moßdorf's draft and in the Lindenau constitution: the ministers sign the king's decrees and are thus accountable to the legislative chamber or the estates.

In Moßdorf's draft, the judiciary only comes from the state and patrimonial jurisdiction is repealed. In the state constitution, patrimonial jurisdiction is retained, but is incorporated into a court of instances and judicial independence is guaranteed.

literature

  • German Federal Act of June 8, 1815.
  • Final Act of the Vienna Ministerial Conference of May 15, 1820.
  • Constitutional charter for the Kingdom of Saxony dated September 4, 1831.
  • Bernhard Moßdorf: Constitution as desired by the Saxon people , Dresden 1831. Digitized version of the Saxon State and University Library.
  • Reiner Groß : History of Saxony , Berlin 2001.
  • Günter Jäckel (Ed.): Dresden between Congress of Vienna and May Uprising , Berlin 1990.
  • Hellmut Kretzschmar : The Saxon constitution of September 4, 1831 . In: New Archive for Saxon History and Archeology, Dresden 1931.
  • Joachim Menzhausen : Cultural History of Saxony , Leipzig 2007.
  • Roland Zeise: The bourgeois upheaval. Center of proletarian party formation (1830–1871) . In: Karl Czok , (Ed.) History of Saxony , Weimar 1989.
  • Heinrich August Winkler : History of the West , Munich 2013.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Reiner Groß: Geschichte Sachsens , p. 202.
  2. ^ Heinrich August Winkler: Geschichte des Westens , Munich 2013, p. 480.
  3. ↑ Roland Zeise: The bourgeois upheaval. Center of proletarian party formation (1830–1871) in Karl Czok (ed.): Geschichte Sachsens , Weimar 1989, p. 332 f.
  4. ↑ Roland Zeise: The bourgeois upheaval. Center of Proletarian Party Formation (1830–1871) in Karl Czok , (Ed.) Geschichte Sachsens , Weimar 1989, p. 337.
  5. ↑ Hellmut Kretzschmar: The Saxon Constitution of September 4, 1831 , New Archive for Saxon History and Archeology, Dresden 1931, pp. 207–248, 217 f.
  6. ↑ Hellmut Kretzschmar: The Saxon Constitution of September 4, 1831 , New Archive for Saxon History and Archeology, Dresden 1931, pp. 207–248, 225.
  7. ^ Günter Jäckel (Ed.): Dresden between the Congress of Vienna and the May Uprising , Berlin 1990, introduction: Von Zeit und Strom, p. 31.
  8. ↑ Final Act of the Vienna Ministerial Conferences of May 15, 1820, Art. 32.
  9. ↑ Roland Zeise: The bourgeois upheaval. Center of proletarian party formation (1830–1871) in Karl Czok , (Ed.) Geschichte Sachsens , Weimar 1989, p. 336.
  10. ↑ Hellmut Kretzschmar, The Saxon Constitution of September 4, 1831, New Archive for Saxon History and Archeology, Dresden 1931, pp. 207–248, 229.
  11. ↑ Hellmut Kretzschmar: The Saxon Constitution of September 4, 1831 , New Archive for Saxon History and Archeology, Dresden 1931, pp. 207–248, 219.
  12. ↑ Joachim Menzhausen: Kulturgeschichte Sachsens , Leipzig 2007, p. 237.
  13. ^ Bernhard Moßdorf: Constitution as the Saxon people want it , Dresden 1831, Art. 8.
  14. ↑ German Federal Act of June 8, 1815, Art. 1, 5.
  15. ^ Bernhard Moßdorf: Constitution as the Saxon people want it , Dresden 1831, Art. 31.
  16. ↑ Bernhard Moßdorf: Constitution as the Saxon people want it , Dresden 1831, Art. 70.
  17. ^ Constitutional charter for the Kingdom of Saxony of September 4, 1831, Art. 1.
  18. ↑ Bernhard Moßdorf: Constitution as it is desired by the Saxon people , Dresden 1831, Art. 5.
  19. ↑ Bernhard Moßdorf: Constitution, as the Saxon people wish it , Dresden 1831, Art. 24.
  20. ↑ German Federal Act of June 8, 1815, Art. 14.
  21. ↑ a b c Constitutional document for the Kingdom of Saxony of September 4, 1831, Art. 34.
  22. ^ Bernhard Moßdorf: Constitution as the Saxon people want it , Dresden 1831, Art. 33.
  23. ↑ Bernhard Moßdorf: Constitution, as the Saxon people wish it , Dresden 1831, Art. 38.
  24. ↑ Final Act of the Vienna Ministerial Conferences of May 15, 1820, Art. 54.
  25. ^ Final Act of the Vienna Ministerial Conferences of May 15, 1820, Art. 57.
  26. ↑ Constitutional document for the Kingdom of Saxony of September 4, 1831, Art. 3.
  27. ↑ Final Act of the Vienna Ministerial Conferences of May 15, 1820, Art. 60.
  28. ↑ Bernhard Moßdorf: Constitution, as the Saxon people wish it , Dresden 1831, Art. 6.
  29. ^ Bernhard Moßdorf: Constitution as the Saxon people want it , Dresden 1831, Art. 10.
  30. ↑ Constitutional document for the Kingdom of Saxony of September 4, 1831, Art. 35.
  31. ↑ German Federal Act of June 8, 1815, Art. 18 lit. d.
  32. ↑ Bernhard Moßdorf: Constitution as the Saxon people want it , Dresden 1831, Art. 84.
  33. ^ Constitutional charter for the Kingdom of Saxony of September 4, 1831, Art. 43.
  34. ^ Bernhard Moßdorf: Constitution as the Saxon people want it , Dresden 1831, Art. 74.
  35. ^ Constitutional charter for the Kingdom of Saxony of September 4, 1831, Art. 41.
  36. ↑ Bernhard Moßdorf: Constitution as the Saxon people wish it , Dresden 1831, Art. 95.
  37. ^ Constitutional charter for the Kingdom of Saxony of September 4, 1831, Art. 45.
  38. ↑ Constitutional document for the Kingdom of Saxony of September 4, 1831, Art. 47.
personal data
SURNAME Moßdorf, Bernhard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Author of the first draft of a representative constitution for Saxony
DATE OF BIRTH January 16, 1802
PLACE OF BIRTH Dresden
DATE OF DEATH November 14, 1833
Place of death Koenigstein Fortress