Carl Theodor Welcker

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Portrait of Carl Theodor Welcker, lithograph around 1848 after a drawing by Valentin Schertle. Welcker's signature:
Signature Carl Theodor Welcker.PNG

Karl Theodor Georg Philipp Welcker (born March 29, 1790 in Ober-Ofleiden near Homberg (Ohm) , Landgraviate Hessen-Darmstadt , † March 10, 1869 in Neuenheim , Grand Duchy of Baden ) was a German legal scholar and politician. He sat on the Constitutional Committee of the Frankfurt National Assembly .

Life

Welcker's grave in the Bergfriedhof (Heidelberg)

Carl Theodor Welcker was one of 17 children of the pastor Heinrich Friedrich Welcker and Johannette Welcker, geb. Strack. His older brother Friedrich Gottlieb Welcker was a famous classical philologist .

Carl Theodor Welcker studied law and political science in Giessen and Heidelberg . He was enrolled in Giessen on August 18, 1806 and a member of the Corps Franconia II from 1807 . Together with Friedrich Ludwig Weidig and Adolf Ludwig Follen , he was involved in the unauthorized re-establishment of the Franconia Landsmannschaft on May 8, 1809. This was dissolved by the authorities on July 1 of the same year, but founded again in 1811. In Heidelberg Welcker is proven to be a member of the Upper Rhine Landsmannschaft .

In the year of his habilitation in 1813, Welcker published his work The Last Reasons of Law, State and Punishment as a private lecturer . The University of Giessen appointed him full professor of law in 1814 . In 1814, in a speech about Germany's freedom, he called for a strong Germany with a restored empire and a reflection on Germanic-Christian traditions while sharply rejecting all French, and foreign ideas in general, because he was disappointed by the political development. Welcker took part in the Wars of Liberation together with over 100 other students from Giessen in 1814 as a volunteer in a hunter battalion .

After his return, Welcker taught law as a professor at the Universities of Kiel (1814-1816), Heidelberg (1816-1819), Bonn (1819-1822) and Freiburg im Breisgau (1822-1832, 1840/41). In Kiel, together with Friedrich Christoph Dahlmann , August Twesten and Nikolaus Falck, he was the editor of the early liberal Kieler Blätter , which demanded that the German princes keep their constitutional promise. As a leading representative of southern German liberalism, he was a member of the Second Baden Chamber from 1831 to 1851 and was retired in 1832 because of his political activities.

Other important stages in Welcker's life were his participation in the Heppenheim conference in 1847 and as a member of the Frankfurt National Assembly in 1848/49 . In 1848 he was a member of the preliminary parliament . There he belonged first to the casino faction and from December 1848 to the Pariser Hof faction . In addition to Friedrich Daniel Bassermann , Friedrich Christoph Dahlmann, Georg Waitz and Johann Gustav Droysen , he was a member of the Constitutional Committee , whose task was to draft an all-German constitution . He fought violent speeches with the Giessen MP Carl Vogt . During this time he became an honorary member of the Freemason Lodge Zur Einigkeit in Frankfurt am Main .

Carl Theodor Welcker on the Hambach cloth

Welcker worked from March to July 1848 as the Baden Bundestag envoy , from May to July 1848 as Baden, later also as Lauenburg representative at the provisional central authority in Frankfurt, from August to October as the extraordinary envoy of the provisional central authority in Sweden and in October and November 1848 as Reich Commissioner in Austria .

From March 1832, Welcker was together with Karl von Rotteck in Freiburg im Breisgau publisher and editor of the liberal newspaper Der Freisinnige , which was banned several times. Together with Rotteck he published the first edition of the Staats-Lexikon ( Rotteck-Welckersches Staatslexikon ) in 15 volumes from 1834 to 1843 , which at the time formed one of the foundations of a liberal worldview. After Rotteck's death in 1840, he was in charge of the second (12 vol., 1845–1848) and third edition (14 vol., 1856–1866) alone.

Honors

In Hamburg, a street in Neustadt was named after Welcker and a fountain, which had been torn down in the meantime, was built in front of the United 5 Lodge lodge house. In Bonn there is a Welckerstrasse in the old government district.

See also

Fonts

  • The ultimate reasons of law, state and punishment. Developed philosophically and according to the laws of the strangest peoples , Gießen 1813.
  • Jury, jury or jury as a legal institution and as a political institute. The great ailments of our German criminal justice system and the jury as the only means to remedy them thoroughly , Altona 1840.
  • Johann Ludwig Klüber : Important documents for the legal status of the German nation. With personal notes. Communicated from his papers and explained by Karl Theodor Welcker , 2nd edition, Mannheim 1845.
  • Hermann Klenner (Hrsg.): Legal philosophy at Rotteck / Welcker. Texts from the State Lexicon 1834–1847 , Rudolf Haufe Verlag, Freiburg / Br. including 1994 (= Haufe series of publications on basic legal research , 6), ISBN 3-448-02940-8 .

literature

  • Georg Christoph Berger Waldenegg: Karl Theodor Welcker. In: Frank Engehausen u. Armin Kohnle (Ed.): Scholars in the Revolution. Heidelberg member of the German National Assembly 1848/49. Georg Gottfried Gervinus, Robert von Mohl, Gustav Höfken, Karl Mittermaier, Karl Theodor Welcker, Karl Hagen, Christian Kapp , Verlag Regionalkultur, Ubstadt-Weiher 1998, pp. 121–154.
  • Heinrich Best , Wilhelm Weege: Biographical manual of the members of the Frankfurt National Assembly 1848/49 . Droste, Düsseldorf 1996, p. 353 f.
  • Ewald Grothe , Hans-Peter Becht (eds.): Karl von Rotteck and Karl Theodor Welcker. Liberal professors, politicians and publicists. Nomos, Baden-Baden 2018, ISBN 3-8487-4551-8 (=  understanding of the state. Vol. 108).
  • Karl Theodor Welcker (= Meyer's Groschen library of the German classics for all levels. 360th volume, ZDB -ID 1423064-1 ). With biography and portrait. Hermann J. Meyer, New York NY 1850.
  • Peter Moraw : A brief history of the University of Giessen from its beginnings to the present. 2nd edition, Ferber, Gießen 1990, ISBN 3-927835-00-5 .
  • Heinz Müller-Dietz : The life of the law teacher and politician Karl Theodor Welcker (= contributions to Freiburg science and university history , vol. 34). Albert, Freiburg 1968.
  • Rainer Schöttle : Political freedom for the German nation. Carl Theodor Welcker's political theory. A contribution to the history of German early liberalism. Nomos-Verlags-Gesellschaft, Baden-Baden 1985 (= writings of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation. Scientific series ).
  • Rainer Schöttle: State organism and social contract - the state theory of Carl Theodor Welcker. In: Zeitschrift für die Geschichte des Oberrheins 135 (1987), pp. 207-215.
  • Rainer Schöttle: Political Theories of Southern German Liberalism in the Vormärz. Studies on Rotteck, Welcker, Pfizer, Murhard. Nomos-Verlags-Gesellschaft, Baden-Baden 1994 (= Nomos-Universitätsschriften - Politik. Vol. 49).
  • Johanna Schultze: Carl Theodor Welcker's attempt to lay the foundation for historical science in terms of developmental history. In: Spirit and Society. Kurt Breysig on his sixtieth birthday. Vol. 3: From thinking about history. Marcus, Breslau 1928, pp. 147-174.
  • Klaus Anselm Vogel: The circle around the Kiel sheets (1815 - 1821). Political positions of an early liberal group in Schleswig-Holstein . Lang, Frankfurt / M. 1989 (= (Kiel writings on political science, Vol. 3), ISBN 3-631-41495-1 .
  • Friedrich von Weech :  Welcker, Karl Theodor . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 41, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1896, pp. 660-665.
  • Egbert Weiß : Corps students in the Paulskirche (= then and now. Special issue 1990, ZDB -ID 300218-4 ). N. Streng et al., Fürth et al. 1990, p. 45.
  • Karl Wild: Karl Theodor Welcker. A champion of older liberalism. Heidelberg 1913.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Einst und Jetzt , Vol. 7 (1962), p. 69.
  2. ↑ Biography of the Carl Theodor Welcker Foundation e. V.
  3. ^ Ludwig R. Scheffer: The Heidelberger Oberrheiner (Rhenania II) . In: Deutsche Corpszeitung, No. 5/6, 1919, p. 21.
  4. ↑ Federal Archives: Members of the Pre-Parliament and the Fifties Committee (PDF file; 79 kB).
personal data
SURNAME Welcker, Carl Theodor
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Welcker, Carl Theodor Georg Philipp
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German scholar and liberal politician
DATE OF BIRTH March 29, 1790
PLACE OF BIRTH Ober-Ofleiden
DATE OF DEATH March 10, 1869
Place of death Neuenheim near Heidelberg