Carl August von Alvensleben

Carl August von Alvensleben

Carl August von Alvensleben , in the family counting Karl August I. von Alvensleben , (born April 5, 1661 in Halle , † July 23, 1697 in Helmstedt ) was a Brunswick-Lüneburg court advisor and court master and canon of Magdeburg .

Life

He came from the Low German noble family von Alvensleben and was the third son of the Magdeburg Privy Councilor Gebhard XXV. von Alvensleben (1618–1681) and Agnes von Rautenberg (1616–1686) and younger brother of the later Hanoverian Minister Johann Friedrich II. von Alvensleben . Even as a child he was considered gifted and soon mastered five foreign languages ​​(Greek, Latin, French, Italian and Spanish). Only his knowledge of English was moderate. At the age of 17 he attended the University of Leipzig from July 1677 , where he a. a. Heard lectures with Otto Mencke . But he had to break off his studies because of the plague in 1680. From September 1682 to May 1684 he went on an educational trip through the Spanish Netherlands to Paris. At the end of 1684 he entered the service of Duke Ernst August of Hanover (1628–1698), who appointed him chamberlain two years later. As court master, he accompanied Princes Christian (1671–1703) and Ernst August (1674–1728) from 1686 to 1689 on an educational trip to France and Italy. After his return he was employed as a councilor and for diplomatic missions. a. to Spain, where he stayed until 1691. In the same year he married Ehrengard Maria von der Schulenburg, the sister-in-law of his brother and daughter of Alexander von der Schulenburg in Altenhausen, Beetzendorf and Hohenwarsleben. The marriage remained childless. In 1692 he retired from court service for health reasons and moved to Gut Neugattersleben , which he had inherited from his brother. In 1696 he took over a canon in Magdeburg and moved there. He died a year later at the age of 36.

On September 18, 1598 he was buried in the castle church in Hundisburg .

Scientific interests

Leibniz with Duchess Sophie, Carl August von Alvensleben and two ladies-in-waiting in the Herrenhausen Garden. Illustration from a Leibniz biography by Johann August Eberhard published in 1795

Alvensleben had a wide range of scientific interests and used his father's extensive library. From 1685 until his early death in 1697, he was in exchange with Leibniz , whom he supported in his historical research. A scene that is often cited in Leibniz literature is famous: in 1705 Leibniz reminded the Electress of an incident when he explained his theory of simple substances to her: “ There is never ... a complete similarity on a large or small scale. Your Electoral Highness knew that exactly when she told the late Herr von Alvensleben in the garden of Herrenhausen to see whether he could find two completely identical leaves and he found nothing. “The scene is shown in the illustration opposite. Leibniz characterized him as " not mediocre in education and judgment, especially among the nobility ". In his funeral sermon it says about him: " He loved the Studia bit at its end ."

literature

• Siegmund Wilhelm Wohlbrück: Historical news of the Alvensleben family and their goods . Third part, Berlin 1829, pp. 273-277.
• Sabine Sellschopp: Leibniz and the Brothers von Alvensleben - encounters and correspondence . In: Berthold Heinecke and Hartmut Hecht (eds.): At the midpoint of the messages that occurred between Hanover and Berlin. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in Hundisburg . Contributions to the conference in Hundisburg on September 18, 2004. Hundisburg 2006, pp. 51–69.
• Hartmut Hecht: A walk in the great garden in Herrenhausen . In: Berthold Heinecke and Hartmut Hecht (eds.): At the midpoint of the messages that occurred between Hanover and Berlin. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in Hundisburg . Contributions to the conference in Hundisburg on September 18, 2004. Hundisburg 2006, pp. 70–73.
• Horst Bredekamp: Leibniz and the revolution in garden art. Herrenhausen, Versailles and the philosophy of the leaves. Berlin 2012, pp. 33/34, 40, 73.