Karl Anselm von Thurn and Taxis

Karl Anselm, porcelain portrait by Johann Peter Melchior

Coat of arms of the Princely House of Thurn and Taxis

St. Emmerams-Basilika Regensburg, grave of Karl Anselm von Thurn and Taxis

Karl Anselm von Thurn and Taxis (born June 2, 1733 in Frankfurt am Main , † November 13, 1805 in Winzer near Regensburg ) was a son of Alexander Ferdinand von Thurn and Taxis and the fourth Prince of Thurn and Taxis . After the death of his father on March 17, 1773, he became postmaster general of the Imperial Postal Service , which came to an end with the conquests of Napoleon and ultimately with the deposition of the imperial crown of the Holy Roman Empire by Francis II in 1806. In the period from 1773 to 1797 he was the emperor's deputy principal commissioner of the Perpetual Reichstag in Regensburg. In 1779 he took the initiative to build a tree- lined avenue encompassing the old town of Regensburg at the expense of the House of Thurn und Taxis, which, according to his wishes, was to be called Carl Taxische Allee , from which, when modified, it became Fürst-Anselm-Allee and which today became Fürstenallee in everyday usage .

Marriages

On September 3, 1753, Karl Anselm married his cousin Auguste von Württemberg, daughter of Karl Alexander Herzog von Württemberg and Marie-Auguste von Thurn und Taxis , who bore him eight children by 1772. After several attempts at murder on the part of his wife, he banished her in January 1776 under strict house arrest, first to Trugenhofen Castle near Dischingen (later renamed Castle Taxis ) and then to Hornberg Castle in the Black Forest, where she died on June 4, 1787. He refrained from prosecution.

After the death of his first wife, he married Elisabeth Hildebrand (1757–1841) in the same year in a morganatic marriage . In 1788 Frau von Train , a bourgeois daughter from Berchtesgaden , who had previously been entrusted with economic supervision as a servant , was ennobled in the Thurn und Taxis court was employed. The prince later disowned her. Towards the end of her life she had stood trial for counterfeiting and died in debt.

Acquisition of territories

Karl Anselm acquired the Swabian county of Friedberg- Scheer in 1786 and had to spend almost all of the Post's income on it. As a result, Emperor Joseph II raised the county to a "prince count". When the French troops invaded the Austrian Netherlands in 1794, the Thurn und Taxis properties there were confiscated. With the further advance of the French troops, all the Thurn und Taxis properties on the left bank of the Rhine were lost. To compensate, Karl Anselm von Thurn und Taxis received further Swabian lands in 1803 according to Article 13 of the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss , such as the imperial city of Buchau , the Buchau dynasty , the imperial abbey of Marchtal and Neresheim , the Ostrach office and some villages, so that the prince-prince county Friedberg-Scheer when the Imperial Principality of Buchau formed a relatively closed territory.

Losses within the Reichspost

In 1790 the Imperial Post Office operated by Thurn and Taxis as inheritance had reached its greatest expansion. In addition, there was the post office in the Austrian Netherlands and Tyrol leased from Thurn und Taxis. As a result of the Revolutionary Wars and Napoleon's conquests, Karl Anselm von Thurn und Taxis, as the operator of the Imperial Post Office, gradually lost more and more postal districts and thus important sources of income, starting with the loss of the Austrian Netherlands , described in more detail under Territorial losses after 1790 . With the Treaty of Lunéville on February 9, 1801, the loss of all imperial post lines in the areas on the left bank of the Rhine was established. After Prussia had been compensated in May 1802 for the loss of its areas on the left bank of the Rhine by areas on the right bank of the Rhine, Prussia took over the sovereignty over the postal system there, and so Karl Anselm von Thurn und Taxis lost other postal districts.

It was only under his son and successor Karl Alexander that a private post office operated by Thurn und Taxis was able to re-establish itself.

Freemasonry

In 1765 he founded the Masonic Lodge Charles de la Constance in Regensburg , which received a patent from the National Grand Master of the Netherlands in 1768. From this lodge emerged the mother lodge (a lodge from which other lodges were founded) The Growing to the Three Keys , which later became the Grand Lodge of Regensburg . The prince was the first grand master of this mother box. His son Karl Alexander became the second grandmaster .

Founder of Fürst-Anselm-Allee

Obelisk of the founder of the Fürstenallee Karl Anselm von Thurn und Taxis

In memory of some of the favors shown to him by the city, Prince Carl Anselm decided in 1779 to open a double-rowed tree-lined avenue from the Jacobstor in the west to the Ostentor in the east for the benefit and pleasure of the residents of Regensburg, for the adornment of the city and for the health of the population to have their own costs applied. The avenue should run in front of the then still completely preserved city ​​wall , in front of the Zwinger and the city moat. The plantings were carried out on the site of the already partially dilapidated and overgrown by vegetation twelve outbuildings , the remains of which had to be removed and their ditches and walls leveled by earthworks. On average, 50 men were employed for the work for two years. The total cost was over 12,000 guilders. At the end of the construction work, a narrow, two-row avenue of trees was created in 1781, with different tree species such as rowan, larch, many linden, maple, poplar, willow, hornbeam, oak, acacia and also fruit trees such as nut, apple and cherry trees. The total number of trees planted, which can be traced back to the figures, was 1500, but the true number is estimated to be significantly higher. A contemporary observer found the avenue to be quite narrow at the time, but in the years after 1800 during the reign of Prince Primate Karl Theodor von Dalberg , the avenue was extended, expanded in special places, equipped with monuments and broadly with the establishment of gardens expanded.

music lovers

The fourth Prince of Thurn und Taxis promoted court music in the summer residence of Schloss Taxis (Trugenhofen) and in the main residence in Regensburg. He thus continued the expansion of the ensemble, which his father, Prince Alexander Ferdinand, had already consistently pursued for the purpose of representing him as the Imperial Principal Commissioner in Regensburg. While the famous music theorist Joseph Riepel , the French violinist Joseph Touchemoulin (since 1761) or the Bohemian musician and composer Franz Xaver Pokorny (since around 1766) were already involved in prominent musical personalities, the court orchestra under Carl Anselm experienced such as Giovanni Palestrini (oboe) or Fiorante Agustinelli (flute) a further increase in quality and enlargement to up to 42 people in the 1790s. Her contemporaries counted her among the best orchestras of the time (along with the Mannheim court orchestra and the Joseph Haydn ensemble in Eszterhaza).

From 1773 the central figure for the music business was the court clerk and composer Freiherr Theodor von Schacht , whom the prince appointed court manager in 1773 and initially commissioned him with the dissolution of the French theater business and the development of an Italian opera. One of Schacht's early operas that was performed at Trugenhofen Castle was Il trionfo della virtu . The occasion for this musical event was the wedding of Princess Maria Theresia von Thurn und Taxis with Prince Kraft Ernst von Oettingen-Wallerstein in 1774.

Only in the late 1790s was the occupation of the court orchestra somewhat reduced for financial reasons caused by the Revolutionary Wars. However, it was only dissolved in the autumn of 1806, immediately after the Holy Roman Empire was dissolved, the Perpetual Diet ended and the office of principal commissioner held by the Princely House no longer required a further representative court.

progeny

Children from first marriage

• Maria Theresia (* July 10, 1757; † March 9, 1776) ⚭ August 25, 1774 with the power of Ernst I. Prince of Oettingen-Wallerstein (1748–1802)
• Sophie Friederike (* July 20, 1758 - May 31, 1800)

⚭ on December 31, 1775 with Prince Hieronim Wincenty Radziwiłł (* May 11, 1759; † September 18, 1786);

⚭ around 1795 with NN Kazanowski

⚭ around 1797 with a Count Ostrorog

• Franz Johann Nepomuk (baptized October 2, 1759; † January 22, 1760)
• Henrica Karolina (baptized April 25, 1762; † April 25, 1784) ⚭ April 21, 1783 with Johann Alois II., Prince of Oettingen-Spielberg (1758–1797)
• Alexander Karl (born April 19, 1763 - † April 21, 1763)
• Friederika Dorothea (born September 11, 1764 - † November 10, 1764)
• Karl Alexander (* February 22, 1770; † July 15, 1827) ⚭ May 25, 1789 with Therese zu Mecklenburg (1773–1839)
• Friedrich Johann (born April 11, 1772 - † December 7, 1805), unmarried

Child from a morganatic marriage

• Nikolaus Joseph Karl August Kranz, from Train since 1814 (1787–1854). Joseph von Train became an officer and writer (with the pseudonym Friedrich von Gleichen ). In 1815 he married Maria Anna Josephine Hyacinth Freiin von Schönprunn (1793–1855), with whom he had five sons and two daughters.

Literature (selection)

• Wolfgang Behringer : Thurn and Taxis. The history of your post office and your company. Piper, Munich et al. 1990 ISBN 3-492-03336-9 .
• Wolfgang Behringer: In the sign of Mercury. Imperial Post and Communication Revolution in the Early Modern Age (= publications by the Max Planck Institute for History. 189). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2003, ISBN 3-525-35187-9 (also: Bonn, Universität, habilitation paper, 1997).
• Martin Dallmeier: Sources for the history of the European postal system 1501–1806 (= Thurn-und-Taxis-Studien. 9, ISSN  0563-4970 ). 3 volumes. Lassleben, Kallmünz 1977–1987.
• Martin Dallmeier, Martha Schad : The Princely House of Thurn and Taxis. 300 years of history in pictures. Pustet, Regensburg 1996, ISBN 3-7917-1492-9 .
• Siegfried Grillmeyer: Habsburg's servant in post and politics. The "house" Thurn and Taxis between 1745 and 1867 (= publications by the Institute for European History Mainz. 194 = historical contributions to research on elites. 4). von Zabern, Mainz 2005, ISBN 3-8053-3566-0 (At the same time: Regensburg, University, dissertation, 2000).
• Adolf Layer : Trugenhofen Castle (= Taxis Castle) in the 18th century. In: Yearbook of the historical association Dillingen an der Donau. Vol. 85, 1983, ISSN  0073-2699 , pp. 179-194 .
• Christoph Meixner: The Oettingen-Wallerstein and Thurn and Taxis families and the princely wedding at Trugenhofen Castle in 1774. A contribution to the history of court music in the 18th century. In: Rosetti Forum. 7, 2006, ISSN  1615-5556 , pp. 12-25.
• Christoph Meixner: Thurn and Taxis. In: Music in the past and present. Supplement. 2nd, revised edition. Bärenreiter et al., Kassel et al. 2008, ISBN 978-3-7618-1139-9 , Sp. 942-945.
• Max Piendl : The Princely House of Thurn and Taxis. On the history of the house and the Thurn and Taxis Post. Pustet, Regensburg 1980, ISBN 3-7917-0678-0 .
• Josef Rübsam:  Taxis (Thurn and Taxis), Karl Anselm Fürst von . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 37, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1894, pp. 504-507.
• Detlev Schwennicke (Ed.): European family tables . New episode. Volume 5: Noble Houses. 2. Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main 1988, plate 131.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Martin Dallmeier, Martha Schad: The princely house of Thurn and Taxis. 300 years of history in pictures. 1996, p. 57 ff.
2. ↑ [1]
3. ↑ [2] , [3]
4. ↑ [4]
5. ↑ [5] , [6]
6. ↑ Richard Strobel: The Fürst-Anselm-Allee . In: Imperial City and Perpetual Reichstag (1663–1806), Thurn and Taxis Studies. Vol. 20, Verlag Michael Lassleben, Kallmünz 2001, ISBN 3-7847-1522-2 , pp. 155-163
7. ↑ [7]
8. ↑ [8]
9. ↑ [9]
10. ↑ [10]

predecessor	Office	successor
Alexander Ferdinand	Prince of Thurn and Taxis 1773–1805	Karl Alexander