Carl Alexander von Duhn

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Carl Alexander von Duhn , also Karl (born July 3, 1815 in Lübeck , † March 24, 1904 in Hamburg ) was a German judge and local politician.

Life

Duhn was the youngest of five children of the Lübeck merchant and councilor Johann Hermann von Duhn and his wife Sophie Margarethe Elisabeth, née. Harms (en) (1781-1859). In 1818 his father had to resign from the council due to the bankruptcy of his trading company. After three difficult years, he was appointed city governor ( Vogt ) in Travemünde ( Lübsche Vogtei ) in 1821 , where Carl Alexander von Duhn grew up.

He visited the Katharineum in Lübeck , where he made friends with Emanuel Geibel , Wilhelm Mantels , Marcus Niebuhr and Ferdinand Röse . The circle of friends later formed the core of the Jung-Lübeck group .

In 1835 he began studying law at the University of Goettingen , where already in 1768 his grandfather Hermann von Duhn (1742-1781) with a dissertation on the Lubeck law Dr. jur. had received a doctorate. Here he mainly heard Jacob Grimm and Friedrich Christoph Dahlmann , who aroused his Germanic ( German legal ) interests. He also attended archaeological lectures from Karl Otfried Müller . For the winter semester 1836/37 he went to the University of Berlin to Friedrich Carl von Savigny heard. His pro-Prussian political stance also solidified in Berlin.

In 1837 he came back to Göttingen. Here he experienced both the celebrations for the centenary of the university and the protest action of the Göttingen Seven against the breach of the constitution by King Ernst August I (Hanover) up close; he was one of the large group of students who accompanied the professors who had been expelled from the country to the state border near Witzenhausen .

However, his father's death in early 1837 had made further studies and an academic career financially impossible. Duhn returned to Lübeck, having grown from a free spirit to a convinced Christian under the influence of his friend Johann Heinrich Gelzer and the theologian Friedrich Lücke . In 1839 he was awarded a doctorate in Göttingen with a dissertation supervised by Gustav von Hugo . jur. doctorate and at the same time passed his legal state examination before the Higher Appeal Court of the four Free Cities . He became a lawyer in Lübeck and soon became a procurator at the Higher Appeal Court of the four Free Cities and from 1848 at the Lower Court. His legal historical expertise was used by the Mecklenburg knighthood in the dispute over the land status of the bourgeois landowners. He considered the Mecklenburg Constitution to be good, and since it had historically and completely gotten out of the situation, it was also always correct . From this point of view, he welcomed the Freienwalder award .

Belonging to the Friends of Jung-Lübeck , he organized the Lübeck Germanist Day in 1847 , to which many of his academic teachers came to the Hanseatic city.

In the revolutionary year of 1848 he was a member of the Lübeck citizenship and belonged to it until 1879. As a citizen, attended that memorable (and entered into world literature through Buddenbrooks ) meeting in the Reformed Church on October 9, 1848, at which the people intruded into the congregation and declared those gathered there prisoners, whereupon Duhn and others spoke about the The backyard and roofs in Breite Strasse escaped. He was a member of the citizens' committee several times ; In 1870/71 he led both bodies as spokesman .

In 1858 Duhn was appointed judge at the higher court. One of his lasting merits in this position is his passionate advocacy of reform of the Lübeck penal system . For many years a member of the Society for the Promotion of Charitable Activities , he was its director from 1871 to 1874.

His political stance remained directed against Denmark and France and for Prussia and the small German solution . He was a great admirer of Bismarck , whose portrait adorned his study. In 1867 he campaigned for the recognition of Prussia in its new provinces in a series of articles for the Berlin Revue and, in a second letter, defended the Lauenburg superintendent Albert Robert Brömel , who strongly criticized the question of the oath of homage for his partisanship for the new Prussian authorities had been.

In 1879 the Lübeck Senate sent von Duhn to serve as a higher regional judge to the Hanseatic Higher Regional Court in Hamburg, which was newly founded by the Reich Justice Laws and which took over the duties of the Higher Appeal Court. He worked here for health reasons until his retirement in 1887.

In 1889 the Law Faculty of the University of Göttingen renewed its doctoral degree to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the doctorate. He spent the last years of his life in Aumühle .

He was married to Anna, geb. Heineken (born July 3, 1821 in Bremen, † March 18, 1902 in Hamburg), a daughter of Friedrich Wilhelm Heineken , Senator and Syndic of the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen . The family lived in the Beckergrube from 1858 to 1879 . Of the three sons of the couple, Friedrich von Duhn became known as an archaeologist in Heidelberg.

Works

  • Lübeck and the gunboat Von der Tann . Lübeck 1850
  • Considerations on the political significance of the various classes, with special consideration of the current situation of the class situation in Mecklenburg. Lübeck: Aschenfeldt 1846
Digitized copy of the copy from the Bavarian State Library
  • The prison question, considered in its connection with the development of time. Lübeck: Dittmer 1862
Digitized copy of the copy from the Bavarian State Library
  • (anonymous) Open letters from a Hanseatic lawyer to a Mecklenburg nobleman about the nature of the means by which one seeks to promote the opposition to Prussia in its new provinces. Berlin: A. Paul 1867
  • Announcements about a revision of the French law of the sea, which is in the works, together with some remarks about matters of law of the sea. 1870
  • German law work: Treatises on real estate law and the history of reception of Roman law. Lübeck: Seelig 1877 ( digitized version )

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Duhn was largely related to Niebuhr; Carsten Niebuhr's mother was born by Duhn
  2. ^ Duhn (Lit.), p. 327
  3. ↑ On Duhn's role see Gustav Radbruch , Hermann A. Stolterfoht: Die Lübecker Germanistenammlung. In: Ehrengabe, presented to the Deutscher Juristentage by the Association for Lübeckische Geschichte und Altertumskunde , Lübeck 1931, pp. 103–121, also (with comments) in: Gustav Radbruch: Kulturphilosophische und Kulturhistorische Schriften. (Complete edition, Volume 4), Heidelberg: CF Müller 2002 ISBN 9783811421561 , pp. 246-260
  4. ^ Duhn (lit.), p. 328
  5. ^ Digitized version of the Berliner Revue , here pp. 33–38 (1st letter); 65-78 (2nd letter); 193-200 (3rd letter); 225–232 (4th letter)
personal data
SURNAME Duhn, Carl Alexander von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Duhn, Karl Alexander von; Duhn, Karl von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German court judge and local politician
DATE OF BIRTH July 3, 1815
PLACE OF BIRTH Lübeck
DATE OF DEATH March 24, 1904
Place of death Hamburg