Carl Friedrich von Lowtzow

Carl Friedrich von Lowtzow (baptized November 13, 1741 in Heide ; † April 10, 1789 in Eutin ) was a German administrative officer.

Live and act

Carl Friedrich von Lowtzow was a son of Christoph Hinrich von Lowtzow (baptized 1713 in Belitz ; died 1776 in Rensow ) and his wife Anna Hedwig, née Fischer (baptized September 25, 1723 in Lunden ). His father was a Gottorfischer officer who had earned his merit as a major general in the small town of Gottorf and who owned an estate on Veelböken . His maternal grandfather was the lawyer Hinrich Friedrich Fischer.

From the summer semester of 1758, von Lowtzow studied law at the University of Kiel. In June 1759, his father asked the sovereign to get his son a prospect of the post of governor in Norderdithmarschen. The Secret Government Council considered von Lowtzow to be a qualified candidate it wanted to support. On the other hand, from his point of view, spoke that only his mother came from the country, which does not restrict the indigenous rights of the Norderdithmarschen landscape. In the autumn of 1761, the council issued the prospectus for the office of governor, against which the countryside lodged no formal protests.

After the death of the incumbent bailiff, Christian Hinrich Paulsen, von Lowtzow asked for the vacant position that he received in 1762. Probably due to the assassination of Tsar Peter III. in Saint Petersburg he did not take office until January 1763. A short time later he was appointed budget councilor. Von Lowtzow took over his office under unfavorable circumstances: the landscape saw him as a stranger to the country, and the Secret Council Detlev Freiherr von Pechlin wrote in an expert report for the sovereign government that the Landvogtamt should not be familial with the landscape in order to better control it to be able to.

Due to his personal ambition and possibly also his absolutist upbringing, von Lowtzow felt obliged to the sovereign alone. The landscape immediately showed him that they refused him, and did not pay him the welcome money (“douceurgeld”) usually granted on taking office. In addition, he was young and inexperienced when he took office. The relationship to the landscape never improved. In 1765 he got into a conflict with the sovereign as part of negotiations about privileges of the landscape. He insisted on a preliminary examination of the applications for privileges, which the government council refused, alienating. The reason for this may be less that the rights of the landscape should be protected, but rather the annoyance that he tried to ignore the powers of the council.

The following month the landscape submitted a complaint to the council about von Lowtzow. He disregards the court in Dithmarschen , collects fees that are too high and violates his powers in the administration of justice and finances. Since a new judicial system was supposed to come into force at the end of 1765, the government did not react decisively to the complaint. In August 1767, however, a General State Visitation Commission came to the conclusion that the new judicial system had not resulted in court proceedings being completed more quickly and fees not being reduced. The landscape also blamed von Lowtzow, who had postponed processes too often.

From 1769 to 1773 von Lowtzow negotiated with the landscape. Despite the conflicts and the government, which gave him little support, he was the first bailiff to receive a fixed salary from the landscape, which he received in addition to the significantly increased salary of his employer in 1771. In 1772 he was appointed to the conference council and fought for some hunting rights, probably to improve his reputation. In April 1772 he also achieved that he received presidium and voting rights in the state assembly for the three following years. Here he combined his personal ambition with the government's concern to directly influence finance and accounting in the landscape. These suffered from mismanagement since the 1760s, which was evident in a financial scandal over the Landespfennigmeister Peter Voigt in 1768. From 1768 Voigt had corrupted the accounting of the landscape and seriously damaged its reputation.

Von Lowtzow took action against the personnel structure of the self-administration of the landscape, which was considered corrupt due to consideration for families and anciennities. He achieved that from 1764 office holders were sworn in at parish level. The plenipotentiaries and deputies had to take an oath in front of the governor when taking office. In 1766 he had success with the plan to re-regulate the representation of the parish bailiff.

During the late phase of a term of office, all large parts of the country of Holstein were surveyed. The management of the work carried out by Las Christinsen and the surveyors who worked for him from 1769 to 1777 was from Lowtzow from 1700 onwards. Here, too, there was a dispute with the landscape. This demanded - presumably for tax reasons - only arable land, but not moors and woodlands, to be measured, which the governor refused. From 1774 at the latest, he also had problems with Las Christinsen, who was subordinate to him, but was friends with Caspar von Saldern , who belonged to the General Land and Economy Improvement Board. Von Lowtzow complained about the land surveyors on several counts, but received little support from the general management.

In January 1776, von Lowtzow made a secret agreement with Magnus Friedrich von Holmer to become president of the prince-bishop's government in Eutin after the death of Johann Ludwig von Wedderkop . The reason for this was probably not the transfer of the grand princely parts of Holstein to the Danish king, but the tense situation in Norderdithmarschen. After the end of the surveying work, in August 1777 he asked to be dismissed from the service. What he then did in Eutin is almost unknown.

It is also documented that Johann Heinrich Voss worked for some time as von Lowtzwo's private tutor and Friedrich Leopold zu Stolberg-Stolberg succeeded him in office.

family

In 1766 von Lowtzow's first marriage was Caroline Elisabeth Freiin von Stenglin (born 1746), with whom she had a son. Her father was the chamberlain Philipp Freiherr von Stenglin and married to Elisabeth Antoinette, née Widow. His first wife was buried in Heide on September 7, 1767.

In his second marriage, von Lowtzow married on July 10, 1774 in Heide Catharina Lucia Margaretha von Bredal (1747-1814). Her father was the grand princely Jägermeister and later Trittau bailiff Carl August von Bredal. This second marriage resulted in two daughters and a son.

literature

• Dietrich Korth, Hartwig Molzow: Lowtzow, Carl Friedrich von . in: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck . Wachholtz, Neumünster 1982–2011. Vol. 9 - 1991. ISBN 3-529-02649-2 , pages 216-219.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Dietrich Korth, Hartwig Molzow: Lowtzow, Carl Friedrich von . in: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck . Wachholtz, Neumünster 1982–2011. Vol. 9 - 1991. ISBN 3-529-02649-2 , pp. 216/217.
2. ↑ D. Korth, H. Molzow: Lowtzow, Carl Friedrich von , S. 217th
3. ↑ D. Korth, H. Molzow: Lowtzow, Carl Friedrich von , S. 217th
4. ↑ D. Korth, H. Molzow: Lowtzow, Carl Friedrich von , S. 217th
5. ↑ D. Korth, H. Molzow: Lowtzow, Carl Friedrich von , pp. 217-218.
6. ↑ D. Korth, H. Molzow: Lowtzow, Carl Friedrich von , S. 218th
7. ↑ D. Korth, H. Molzow: Lowtzow, Carl Friedrich von , S. 218th
8. ↑ D. Korth, H. Molzow: Lowtzow, Carl Friedrich von , S. 218th
9. ↑ D. Korth, H. Molzow: Lowtzow, Carl Friedrich von , pp. 218-219.
10. ↑ D. Korth, H. Molzow: Lowtzow, Carl Friedrich von , p. 219.
11. ↑ D. Korth, H. Molzow: Lowtzow, Carl Friedrich von , S. 216/217.
12. ↑ D. Korth, H. Molzow: Lowtzow, Carl Friedrich von , pp. 216-217.