Cajetan from fields

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Dr. Cajetan fields (lithograph by Adolf Dauthage , 1861)

Cajetan Felder , since 1878 Freiherr von Felder , (born September 19, 1814 in Vienna ; † November 30, 1894 ibid) was an Austrian lawyer, entomologist , liberal politician and mayor of Vienna from 1868 to 1878 .

Life

Felder was orphaned at an early age: he lost his mother on May 9, 1822, and his father on July 20, 1826. At the instigation of his co-guardian, Laurenz Weitzinger, he left the “Kudlich Institute” in Vienna in 1827 after completing the first class, because his studies had deteriorated rapidly since his parents' death, and went to the grammar school of the Benedictine monastery Seitenstetten for three years . He attended the fifth and sixth grades in the State High School in Brno , where his guardian and maternal uncle, Franz Zrza, worked; Then he graduated from 1832 to 1834, as a preliminary stage for his legal studies at the University of Vienna (1834 to 1838), the Brno "Philosophical School".

Already during his university years, the young Felder developed essential characteristics for his future life: an interest in studying the classics of antiquity, a vital feeling for the natural sciences and a love for foreign languages, which he had a special talent for learning.

From 1835 onwards, although this was very difficult for a student in the Vormärz , he went on extensive hikes through large parts of Europe during the university holidays. In 1838/39 he embarked on an extensive tour that led him all over western and southern Europe: via Switzerland, Holland, England and Scotland he came to Ireland, crossed Belgium, France and Spain and reached, following the Mediterranean coast , Sicily.

After his official practice with the City of Brno (1839/40), Felder became a trainee in the law firm of Anton Wandratsch in Vienna in 1840 , where he stayed for over seven years. In Vienna for the 1841 Doctor juris doctorate, he married on May 15, 1841 Josephine Sowa, daughter of Wischau Stadtphysikus '. A few days before the March Revolution in Vienna , in February 1848, he passed the lawyer examination at the Vienna Court of Appeal , after having previously acquired the qualification to exercise the office of judge by passing the judge’s examination. (Advokat was the name for lawyers back then.)

During his time as a trainee, he had also accepted the position of assistant at the chair of diplomatic sciences with French lectures at the Theresian Knight Academy in 1843 and in 1845 the appointment as sworn court interpreter for the Spanish, 1846 for the French, with the same assignment for the English, Dutch, Danish, Swedish and Portuguese language acquired.

From 1848, Felder was an independent lawyer in Vienna - and politically active: in August 1848, by way of the Alsergrund electoral district, he was elected to the first municipal committee of the city of Vienna, in October of the same year he was elected to the Vienna municipal council , where Felder became secretary. In 1849 Felder left the municipal council for political reasons .

For the next decade, Cajetan Felder devoted himself primarily to the lawyer he had been awarded in 1848 and very soon created an extensive group of clients. He looked after his family and, as a private person, was a passionate portrait collector and naturalist. In 1852 he was traveling in Africa and met the then young Alfred Edmund Brehm in Karthum . Felder owned a world famous collection of beetles and butterflies . In 1860 he was elected a member of the Leopoldina learned society . With his son Rudolf Felder and Alois Rogenhofer, Cajetan Felder also took care of the publication of the volumes on butterflies in the zoological part of the book Journey of the Austrian frigate Novara around the earth in the years 1857, 1858, 1859 under the orders of Commodore B. von Wüllerstorf-Urbair ( Novara Expedition ).

Caricature on the subject of guardianship over Dreher jun. (before 1870)

In 1863, immediately before his death, the brewer Anton Dreher , one of Austria's largest taxpayers, transferred the guardianship of his 14-year-old son to Cajetan Felder. The lawyer, who at that time was already working in public offices again, was given the task of managing the brewery until the heir came of age in 1870. He achieved an exceptional position both with his professional colleagues and in what was then Viennese society.

From 1861, Felder was again active in the Vienna City Council and in the Lower Austrian Landtag (then the Landtag of the Archduchy of Austria under the Enns). Immediately after joining, he was elected the second deputy mayor, after Leopold Mayr left the company in 1863, he moved to the first deputy position and held it until 1868.

During this period he became chairman of the water supply commission on October 21, 1863, chairman of the municipal Danube Regulation Commission on May 20, 1864 , and delegate of the municipality in the ministerial Danube Regulation Commission on January 25, 1865. In the Viennese municipal council and in the Lower Austrian state parliament he gave the decisive presentations on the question of Danube regulation .

On November 21, 1868, Mayor Andreas Zelinka, who had been in office since 1861, died unexpectedly . A month later, on December 20, Cajetan Felder was elected mayor despite the opposition candidacy of the ambitious Julius Newald and was re-elected to his office after a three-year term in 1871, 1874 and 1877. Since 1869 he has also been deputy land marshal in the Lower Austrian state parliament and in the same year, on December 12, 1869, appointed by Emperor Franz Joseph I as a lifelong member of the manor house - he resolutely refused the appointment as minister of education already pronounced by the monarch - years began more strenuously for Felder political activity, which was made even more difficult by an opposition in the local council that was becoming more noticeable from year to year.

One of the leading men who had come together to form the liberal “middle party” could not prevent Felder from getting bogged down in smaller, split-off clubs; his largely autocratic intervention in the machinery of the magistrate and the municipal council, as well as his desire to assign the magistrate more clearly defined powers than before, created new opponents for him .

In July 1878, Felder finally resigned from the mayor's office, resigned from his council seat and returned to his family. During the years of his public activity he had lost his siblings Carl and Amalie (1864) and his son Rudolf (1871); his daughter Marie married the lawyer Frank in 1868. He was only able to enjoy a familiar family life for a few months: his wife Josefine died, suffering seriously for years, in 1879. In the year of his resignation as mayor, Felder was raised to the rank of baron by the emperor and at the same time he was appointed to the Privy Council.

Once again, the 65-year-old accepted a call made to him: Prelate Othmar Helferstorfer was no longer able to fulfill his office for health reasons, and when he died, Felder was given the dignity of Land Marshal of Lower Austria. He had to resign from this office in 1884 when the eyesight of his eyes had deteriorated so much by advancing cataracts that he was hardly able to read a message from the monarch in front of the assembled house. This, as he put it, was his own declaration of death.

He spent the last decade of his life withdrawn and, almost blind, dictated twelve thousand pages of his expressive, ruthless and sarcastic “memories” for several years. An example of Felder's style is his characterization of Karl Lueger as a determined villain, as he is in the book, who strives to destroy everything that does not unconditionally submit to him with poison, fire and sword . However, Felder was still able to experience that his former opponents in the local council, who spoiled his life through their opposition and did not even consider it necessary to at least mention him by name at the ceremonial opening of the new town hall , Felder's very own work, in 1883 , now referred to him as the great role model of an excellent mayor in relation to the growing party of Karl Lueger .

Successful operations gave Felder his eyesight again, but Cajetan Freiherr von Felder died on November 30, 1894 a few weeks after his eightieth birthday. Felder's grave is in the Weidlinger Friedhof north of Vienna.

In his office as mayor, Felder had, among other things, arranged for the construction of the first Viennese spring water pipeline , the laying of the foundation stone for the New Town Hall on the Vienna Ringstrasse laid out by his predecessors Seiller and Zelinka , the regulation of the Danube and the laying of the Vienna Central Cemetery .

The Vienna World Exhibition in 1873 and the associated construction of the rotunda also fell into his tenure.

In 1899, Felderstrasse in the inner city (1st district) was named after him. The street laid out in 1874 runs directly on the northern narrow side of the town hall, was called Magistratsstraße until 1899 and is now the address of one of the two main entrances to the town hall.

The Cajetan Fields Institute , which was founded in 1987 and is closely related to the FPÖ , sees closer research into Felder's life and work as one of its main tasks.

literature

Web links

Commons : Cajetan of fields  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Czeike: Memories , p. 367
  2. ↑ Czeike: Memories , p. 368
  3. ↑ Czeike: Memories , p. 368
  4. ^ Czeike: Memories , p. 369
  5. ^ Czeike: Memories , p. 369
  6. ↑ Czeike: Memories , p. 370
  7. ↑ a b Czeike: Memories , Foreword.
  8. ↑ Czeike: Memories , p. 371
  9. ↑ Permalink Austrian Library Association
personal data
SURNAME Fields, Cajetan of
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Fields, cajetan; Felder, Cajetan Freiherr von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian lawyer, entomologist and politician, member of the state parliament, mayor of Vienna (1868–1878)
DATE OF BIRTH September 19, 1814
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH November 30, 1894
Place of death Vienna