Carl Theodor Gemeiner

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Cover of the first volume of the Regensburg Chronicle

Carl Theodor Gemeiner (born December 10, 1756 in Regensburg ; † November 30, 1823 there ) was the syndic and secret registrar of the imperial city of Regensburg, later state directorate of the Principality of Regensburg and finally an official of the Kingdom of Bavaria . Under all three employers he was responsible for the Regensburg archives and libraries . In addition, he worked as a historian and published a number of historical writings, primarily to Regensburg city's history and Bavarian country's history .

Life

Origin and career of Gemeiners until the end of the imperial city of Regensburg (1756–1803)

Carl Theodor Gemeiner came from an old Regensburg councilor family. His father Georg Theodor Gemeiner was a successful businessman and also a member of the city council, director of the city alms office and first Regensburg member of the Imperial Council of the Perpetual Reichstag , where he also represented several other imperial cities as an authorized representative. His mother Juliane Herrich was a daughter of the Electoral Saxon Reichstag Secretary Nikolaus Herrich and a granddaughter of the Regensburg superintendent Georg Serpilius . Carl Theodor Gemeiner grew up in a wealthy Protestant family. As a result of his family environment, he came into contact with the problems of imperial city politics at an early age and soon developed a great interest in the fortunes of his hometown, which would determine his later thinking and work.

After attending the Poeticum grammar school in Regensburg, Gemeiner initially embarked on a spiritual career and matriculated on May 10, 1775 to study theology in Leipzig . After completing his studies, he returned to Regensburg in 1778 in the hope of finding a job as a pastor. But since there was no vacant pastor at that time, he gave himself up to his historical interests. He did research in the city archives and wrote a treatise on the history of Regensburg's Jews. He dedicated this pamphlet to the city treasurer and councilor Sigmund Georg Ulrich Bösner at the time, who was so enthusiastic about the work that he suggested Gemeiner to work in the city's archives. Since no employment could be found in a ministry, Gemeiner accepted the offer. However, he still lacked knowledge of law and diplomacy for his future tasks , which he acquired at the universities of Ingolstadt and Erlangen , as well as during a three-week instruction from archivist Philipp Ernst Spieß on the Plassenburg .

At the beginning of 1782 he entered the service of his hometown Regensburg as "Syndikus-Archivarius". In the following year he was promoted to the first in-house counsel and secret registrar. His tasks included, among other things, the logging of council meetings, the management of the city chancellery, as well as the file registry and the development and research of old documents and contracts that Regensburg had concluded over the centuries with the House of Bavaria and the Catholic clergy of the city, and the were still required as legal evidence in disputes.

In the years that followed, Gemeiner concentrated on recording, organizing and cataloging the holdings in the Regensburg archives and libraries. He also wrote a number of bibliographical writings on these holdings, some of which have appeared in print.

The development of the libraries and archives in his hometown also motivated him to conduct historical research, which was reflected in several small publications from 1785 onwards. As early as 1785 he was admitted to the Bavarian Academy of Sciences . With the "History of the Duchy of Bavaria under Emperor Friedrich I. Government", he published a major historical work for the first time in 1790. This was followed by a particularly productive creative period in which numerous other works appeared up to 1803, including a treatise on the Reformation in Regensburg, a treatise on the Perpetual Reichstag and finally the first two volumes of his Regensburg Chronicle, which was to develop into his main work.

Commoner in the service of the Principality of Regensburg (1803-1810)

The end of Regensburg's imperial city independence in 1803 brought radical changes for commoners. After the city passed to Electorate Chancellor Karl Theodor von Dalberg , he entered the service of the Principality of Regensburg as a state directorate . His responsibilities remained similar: In addition to tasks in the city administration, he was entrusted with archiving. It was here that he took on an important function, because during Dalberg's time the plan was to unite the municipal archive and the various religious institutions in one central main archive. More common should lead this project. To this end, he was appointed archivist general and given the overall supervision of all Regensburg archives. The former Benedictine priest, historian and archivist of St. Emmeram , Roman Zirngibl , was assigned as an assistant to support him. But there was no constructive cooperation between the two. Zirngibl disapproved of his Protestant superior, polemicized and intrigued against him and hindered his work wherever he could. Gemeiner himself was also often occupied with other activities, so that the restructuring of the Regensburg archive landscape made slow progress.

However, Gemeiner's new position as archivist general was of great importance for his historiographical work, as he now had access to all archives and libraries in the city, including above all the important monastery archive of St. Emmeram and the archives of the prince-bishops. From then on he was able to include this tradition in his historical research.

In his office as regional directorate, Gemeiner was also confronted with the emancipation efforts of the Regensburg Jews towards the end of Dalberg's era . In his reports and statements he always showed a negative attitude towards Jewish interests. In 1808 he turned against an application by the Jewish community for citizenship and legal equality for Jewish merchants. In doing so, he consistently defended the interests of the established Regensburg trading company.

More common than civil servant in the Kingdom of Bavaria (1810–1823)

The incorporation of Regensburg into the Kingdom of Bavaria in 1810 brought another turning point in Gemeiner's life. Immediately after the city passed, he was taken over into Bavarian services, leaving his previous position as state directorate and archivist general. There he was again confronted with major tasks, because the Regensburg archives did not come to rest even after the renovation work of the Dalberg period. His new employer endeavored to bring together the archival material from the newly acquired mediatized and secularized territories in a central state archive in Munich. Even if, due to lack of space, initially only a part of the holdings was affected and in 1811 a separate archive conservatory was set up in Regensburg, the management of which was entrusted to Gemeiner, in the long term this meant the loss of the most valuable archive material to the Munich central authority. Gemeiner was commissioned to handle the transfer as archival curator. He had to get an overview of the Regensburg archives and to report them to the Bavarian authorities. The first holdings were transferred to Munich as early as 1811.

However, the gradual liquidation of the Regensburg archives brought with it major problems. As early as the Dalberg period, the attempt to set up a central archive authority had torn the archive materials from their organically grown unit and brought them into great disorder. The situation was exacerbated by the fact that there was insufficient space available to store the documents and files. Gemeiner reports to us from 1813 about the relevant conditions in Regensburg: “The files, e.g. Partly covered with 100-year-old dust and roof mortar, was torn from their quiet camps and mixed up with the new files, thrown on floors under the roof or in vaults, where they were exposed to decay, moisture, mice, and often the access of bricklayers and Day laborers are exposed ”. Against this background it becomes understandable why essential parts of the Regensburg tradition were lost during the political upheavals at the beginning of the 19th century. Gemeiner has partially processed these stocks in his works and thus preserved them for posterity.

Gemeiner had already written a "History of the Old Bavarian Lands" in 1810. It was a pro-French trend publication about the history of Bavaria at the time of the Agilolfinger . For political reasons, the Bavarian Minister Maximilian von Montgelas , to whom Gemeiner had sent his work , spoke out against publication. More Gemeiner therefore withheld the work and only published it after a fundamental revision in 1814. During this time he also wrote several works on Regensburg's economic and trade history, including a treatise on the salt trade between Regensburg and Passau from 1810. Above all but he resumed work on his large Regensburg Chronicle, which had been idle since the publication of the second volume in 1803. However, the continuation and completion of the work was in danger when in 1820 the decision to dissolve the Regensburg Archives Conservatory was passed. The remaining archive material was to be finally transferred to Munich. At his urgent request, Gemeiner obtained the suspension of the decision until he had completed work on his Regensburg Chronicle. The third volume of the work appeared in 1821, while the fourth and final volume was published posthumously in 1824. Gemeiner could no longer complete his chronicle, which was originally laid out in six volumes. After a short and serious illness, he died on November 30, 1823. He was buried in the Protestant consecration of St. Peter cemetery in Regensburg.

Today's meaning

Memorial plaque for Carl Theodor Gemeiner in Regensburg, Keplerstraße 11.

For a long time, more common has received little attention in historiography . One reason for this is that his historical works largely do not meet the requirements of critical historical research. Even his contemporaries sometimes sharply criticized the methodological approach and source work of the Regensburg historian. Thus Gemeiner often uncritically adopts source statements in his works or even uses arbitrary sources from a completely different time context; For example, in his Regensburg Chronicle, the Carolingian capitularies serve him as evidence of spiritual rights in the 15th century. Such mistakes by Gemeiner were mostly related to his pronounced imperial city patriotism: Wherever he tried to depict the historical size and importance of his hometown in particularly bright and lively colors, he repeatedly slipped into methodical arbitrariness. But when "nothing was involved that moved him, he worked in an exemplary manner, relied on primary sources, especially on documents and legal books, and almost consistently avoided citing several sources from different time periods for a fact". Despite indisputable shortcomings in detail, many of his representations remain on the whole of high quality and reliability.

The low response that Gemeiner received for a long time may also be due to the modest scientific-theoretical claim of his work. A theoretical recording of larger lines of development and connections, for example in order to arrive at knowledge on a higher level of abstraction, is missing in his works. Commoner did not develop theories or paradigms about the story. This was sometimes interpreted as a lack of intellectual originality, but it also contributed to the fact that his work was “less exposed to the change of judgment in the course of the methods”. Gemeiner's works, especially his Regensburg Chronicle, are more like the form of a large report in which it is largely unreflected to tell what happened. But it is precisely in this story that the special and lasting value of his work lies, because it offers a detailed overview of Regensburg and Bavarian history with essential perspectives also on the general history of the empire, in Regensburg due to its medieval significance, its special position in the Reformation and its function has always played a prominent role as the seat of the Perpetual Reichstag. Gemeiner sheds light on the history of his hometown from very different angles, including, for example, trade and economic history and thus creates a comprehensive picture of urban life, the special value of which was only really recognized by the newly emerging history of the 20th century - this All the more so since a large part of the source material evaluated by Gemeiner is difficult to access or is completely lost today. Last but not least, Gemeiner left behind an extremely material and ultimately indispensable “collection of sources”.

The city of Regensburg honors commoners with a street name and a memorial plaque on the house where he was born and where he died.

Works (selection)

A complete bibliography of Gemeiner's writings can be found in Hermann Hage: The Regensburg historian and archivist Carl Theodor Gemeiner, in: Zeitschrift des Verein für Oberpfalz and Regensburg 123 (1983), pp. 232-234.

  • History of the Duchy of Bavaria under Emperor Frederick the First Government. Edited from documents and old journals, Nuremberg 1790.
  • History of the Church Reformation in Regensburg. Described from the original files negotiated at that time, Regensburg 1792.
  • Corrections in German constitutional law and in the history of the empire, Bayreuth 1793, therein:
    • Resolution of previous doubts about the origin of the royal dignity
    • The ranking of the witnesses in the imperial documents
  • History of the public negotiations of the Reichstag, which was still ongoing in Regensburg, from its beginning to more recent times, 3 volumes, Nuremberg 1794–1796, reprinted with an introduction. by Susanne Friedrich, Hildesheim; Zurich; New York 2010.
  • Attempted a history of the submission of the imperial city of Regensburg to the rule of the dukes in Baiern 1486 to 1492, Regensburg 1796.
  • Imperial City of Regensburg Chronicle, 4 volumes, Regensburg 1800–1824, reprint with an introduction ed. by Heinz Angermeier , 2 volumes, Munich 1971.
  • Representation of the old Regensburg and Passau salt trade. A contribution to the patriotic history of trade, Regensburg 1810.
  • History of the old Bavarian states, their regents and inhabitants, Regensburg 1814.
  • About the origins of the city of Regensburg and all the old free cities, namely the cities of Basel, Strasbourg, Speier, Worms, Mainz and Coelln. A contribution to the general history of German trade, Regensburg 1817.
  • Nikolai Löwenkamp (Ed.): Regensburg - Chronicle of a medieval city: a selection from Carl Th. Gemeiner's "Regensburgischer Chronik", Regensburg 2012

estate

The Gemeiner'sche estate is kept in the Bavarian Main State Archives in Munich . In 50 boxes, it contains original documents and later copies, as well as correspondence and tax lists from the Regensburg city archive, which were collected and compiled by Gemeiner.

literature

  • Heinz Angermeier : Carl Theodor Gemeiner and his Regensburgische Chronik, in: Gemeiner, Carl Theodor: Regensburgische Chronik. Reprint of the edition Regensburg 1800–1824, Munich 1971, pp. 11–39.
  • Bettina Blessing: In office and dignity: Employees of the city of Regensburg from 1660 to 1802-10, Regensburg 2005.
  • Walter Fürnrohr : The patriciate of the Free Imperial City of Regensburg at the time of the perpetual Reichstag. A socio-historical study of the bourgeoisie of the Baroque period, in: Negotiations of the Historisches Verein für Oberpfalz and Regensburg 93 (1952), pp. 153–308
  • Hermann Hage: Carl Theodor Gemeiner (1756–1823): an important Regensburg historian, archivist and librarian in times of upheaval, in: The Regensburg Library Landscape at the End of the Old Empire, ed. v. Manfred Knedlik / Bernhard Lübbers , Regensburg 2011 (catalogs and publications of the Regensburg State Library ; 5), pp. 141–147.
  • Hermann Hage: Servant of three masters: the Regensburg city archivist and librarian Carl Theodor Gemeiner, 1756–1823, in: Hermann Hage (ed.): Das Fürstentum Regensburg. From the free imperial city to the Bavarian district capital; Art and history in the field of tension between classicism and romanticism (1789–1848) (= contributions to the 17th Regensburg Autumn Symposium for Art, History and Monument Preservation from November 22 to 24, 2002), Regensburg 2003, pp. 135–138.
  • Hermann Hage: On the question of the emancipation of the Regensburg Jews under the rule of Carl Theodor von Dalberg (1802–1810), in: "City and Mother in Israel": Jewish history and culture in Regensburg; Exhibition from November 9th to December 12th December 1989, 4th edition, Regensburg 1996, pp. 187-191.
  • Hermann Hage: The Regensburg historian and archivist Carl Theodor Gemeiner (1756–1823). Life, work and significance for the historiography of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, in: Negotiations of the Historisches Verein für Oberpfalz and Regensburg 123 (1983), pp. 171–234.
  • Andreas Kraus : Civil spirit and science. Scientific life in the age of the Baroque and the Enlightenment in Augsburg, Regensburg and Nuremberg, in: Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 49 (1967), pp. 340–390
  • Nikolai Löwenkamp: Carl Theodor Gemeiner (1756-1823), life and work / The "Regensburg Chronicle", in: N. Löwenkamp (Hrsg.): Regensburg - Chronicle of a medieval city. A selection from Carl. Th. Gemeiner's "Regensburgischer Chronik", Regensburg 2012, pp. 11-17
  • Edmund Neubauer, royalty and imperial city in the 14th century as reflected in the imperial city of Regensburg Chronicle. Carl Theodor Gemeiner - the historian of the imperial city, in: Negotiations of the Historical Association for Upper Palatinate and Regensburg 117 (1977), pp. 239-258.
  • Edmund von Oefele : Gemeiner, Karl Theodor, in: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB) Vol. 8, Leipzig 1878, pp. 553–554.
  • Karl-Otto Tröger: The training of the imperial city-regensburgisschen chronicler Carl Theodor Gemeiner, 1756-1823, in: Mitteilungen für die Archivpflege in Bayern, special issue 9 (1992), pp. 15-19.
  • Heinrich Wanderwitz: The fate of the imperial city archive and library holdings, in: Hermann Hage (Hrsg.): Das Fürstentum Regensburg. From the free imperial city to the Bavarian district capital; Art and history in the field of tension between classicism and romanticism (1789–1848) (= contributions to the 17th Regensburg Autumn Symposium for Art, History and Monument Preservation from November 22 to 24, 2002), Regensburg 2003, pp. 139–142

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hermann Hage: The Regensburg historian and archivist Carl Theodor Gemeiner, in: Journal of the Association for Upper Palatinate and Regensburg 123 (1983), p. 175.
  2. ^ Hermann Hage: The Regensburg historian and archivist Carl Theodor Gemeiner, in: Journal of the Association for Upper Palatinate and Regensburg 123 (1983), p. 178.
  3. ↑ Edmund von Oefele:  Gemeiner, Karl Theodor . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 8, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1878, p. 553 f.
  4. ^ Hermann Hage: Carl Theodor Gemeiner (1756–1823): an important Regensburg historian, archivist and librarian in times of upheaval, in: The Regensburger Library Landscape at the End of the Old Empire, ed. v. Manfred Knedlik / Bernhard Lübbers, p. 143.
  5. ^ Hermann Hage: The Regensburg historian and archivist Carl Theodor Gemeiner, in: Journal of the Association for Upper Palatinate and Regensburg 123 (1983), pp. 207-208.
  6. ^ Hermann Hage: Carl Theodor Gemeiner (1756–1823): an important Regensburg historian, archivist and librarian in times of upheaval, in: The Regensburger Library Landscape at the End of the Old Empire, ed. v. Manfred Knedlik / Bernhard Lübbers, p. 144.
  7. ↑ Hermann Hage: On the question of the emancipation of the Regensburg Jews under the rule of Carl Theodor von Dalberg (1802–1810), in: "City and Mother in Israel": Jüdische Geschichte und Kultur in Regensburg, pp. 189–190.
  8. ^ Hermann Hage: Carl Theodor Gemeiner (1756–1823): an important Regensburg historian, archivist and librarian in times of upheaval, in: The Regensburger Library Landscape at the End of the Old Empire, ed. v. Manfred Knedlik / Bernhard Lübbers, p. 145.
  9. ^ Hermann Hage: The Regensburg historian and archivist Carl Theodor Gemeiner, in: Journal of the Association for Upper Palatinate and Regensburg 123 (1983), p. 216.
  10. ↑ Edmund von Oefele:  Gemeiner, Karl Theodor . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 8, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1878, p. 553 f.
  11. ^ Heinz Angermeier: Carl Theodor Gemeiner and his Regensburg Chronicle. In: Gemeiner, Carl Theodor: Regensburg Chronicle. Reprint of the Regensburg 1800–1824 edition, Munich 1971, p. 36.
  12. ^ Hermann Hage: The Regensburg historian and archivist Carl Theodor Gemeiner. In: Journal of the Association for Upper Palatinate and Regensburg 123 (1983), p. 230.
  13. ^ Heinz Angermeier: Carl Theodor Gemeiner and his Regensburgische Chronik, in: Gemeiner, Carl Theodor: Regensburgische Chronik. Reprint of the edition Regensburg 1800–1824, Munich 1971, p. 37.
  14. ↑ Proof in the Bavarian Main State Archive ( Memento of the original from July 7, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.gda.bayern.de
  15. ↑ http://www.digizeitschriften.de/dms/img/?PPN=PPN391118072_0049&DMDID=dmdlog38
personal data
SURNAME Commoner, Carl Theodor
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Syndic and secret registrar
DATE OF BIRTH December 10, 1756
PLACE OF BIRTH regensburg
DATE OF DEATH November 30, 1823
Place of death regensburg