Carl d'Ester (medic)

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Carl d'Ester
Non-profit weekly newspaper of the Cologne Trade Association from February 8, 1845
Carl d'Ester's tombstone in Châtel-Saint-Denis (1864)

Carl Ludwig Johann d'Ester (born November 4, 1813 in Vallendar near Koblenz , † June 18, 1859 in Châtel-Saint-Denis ) was a German doctor, publicist and radical democrat.

Life

He was the son of the leather manufacturer Theodor d'Ester and his wife Therese (née Pidoll). D'Ester began studying medicine in Bonn in 1831 and later moved to Heidelberg. He completed his studies in 1835 with a dissertation on symptoms of spinal cord diseases. During his studies, d'Ester was a member of the Old Bonn Burschenschaft Germania from 1831 and was interrogated by the Central Investigative Authority in 1834 after the Frankfurt Wachensturm . In 1838 he became a doctor and obstetrician in Cologne and married Elenore Koch a year later. His marriage noticeably improved his financial situation and made his political activities easier.

Politics in the pre-march

His work as a doctor for the poor meant that for d'Ester, the social question was initially at the fore of his political activities. For example, he called for workers' freedom of association and state intervention in wage issues and, finally, the "restructuring of the existing work and traffic conditions."

He made his first public appearance in 1842 when he published a petition to the Rhenish provincial parliament , calling for the maintenance of the insane asylum in Siegburg . In the same year, d'Ester took part in the founding of the Rheinische Zeitung as a shareholder . Shortly before the newspaper was banned, he made the unsuccessful proposal to found a new paper with the capital that was still available in Baden without the danger of Prussian censorship. Also from 1842 on, d'Ester took part in the so-called “Monday wreath” organized by political oppositionists in Cologne. The participants included Gustav von Mevissen , Moses Hess and Karl Marx . As a result, d'Ester joined the Cologne trade association and was elected to the board in 1844 and secretary in 1846/47. From 1845 d'Ester was also the publisher of the non-profit weekly newspaper of the trade association in Cologne , which had been a supplement to the Rheinische Zeitung until it was banned.

When the General Aid and Educational Association for Cologne and Deutz was formed in 1844 at the suggestion of the Central Association for the Welfare of Working Classes as a local organization , d'Ester played a key role in formulating the statutes. After these were not approved by the President, d'Ester and Georg Gottlieb Jung founded the association to remedy the current misery , which among other things organized soup kitchens. In addition, he was a member of the League of Communists , but also in the left-liberal society Eintracht and even in the Cologne Cathedral Building Association . When it came to military attacks at the Martinskirmes (fair) in 1846, d'Ester belonged to Franz Raveaux, a commission that was supposed to investigate the incidents and to forward the results to the king. After the publication of the critical report, d'Ester was exposed to political reprisals, which increased his popularity and led to his being elected to the Cologne municipal council (October 1846–1848). In addition to social demands, he spoke out in the city council for universal suffrage and full equality for Jews. With the separation of the pre-March opposition into liberals and democrats, d'Ester belonged to the democrats and committed himself to the principle of popular sovereignty and the republic.

Activity during the revolution of 1848/49

At the beginning of the revolution of 1848 , d'Ester helped found the democratic society in Cologne. In spring 1848 he prepared the publication of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung together with Fritz Anneke , Heinrich Bürgers , Roland Daniels and Moses Hess . However, he made himself unpopular with the radicals when he called for moderation in the riots on March 3rd. Nevertheless, he was part of a delegation that presented the petitions from Cologne to King Friedrich Wilhelm IV on March 18. D'Ester was later a member of the Frankfurt preliminary parliament . Via a by-election in Mayen , he became a member of the Prussian National Assembly in May 1848 and belonged to the left parliamentary group . There he was particularly involved in the development of a new municipality, district and district order. He sharply criticized the counter-revolution that gradually began in Prussia in late summer 1848. So he demanded the lifting of the state of siege imposed on Cologne in September 1848 and the indictment against the responsible generals. The specific political agitation was served by the newspaper “Der Demokratische Urwähler”, which d'Ester published between December 1848 and February 5, 1849 together with Eduard von Reichenbach , among others . D'Ester took part in the democratic counter-parliament and the second democratic congress in Berlin. Concerned about political persecution, he fled to Leipzig after the abolition of the Prussian National Assembly , where he met Michail Bakunin and Richard Wagner . As a member of the second chamber of the Prussian state parliament , he returned to Berlin in early 1849. In parliament he polemicized sharply against the restrictions on freedom of association and assembly and combined this with general criticism of the political system. “ By rejecting these laws, we do not want to overthrow the current ministers, but the entire current system, after which, of course, the supporters of the system, who I understood by the term Junkerism, would no longer have any hope of getting into the ministerial bank. "

After the chamber was dissolved, an arrest warrant was issued for d'Ester and sentenced to death in absentia, from which he escaped by fleeing to the Palatinate. There he took part in the Palatinate uprising and worked in the provisional government. In his report on what happened in the Palatinate, Friedrich Engels also commented on d'Ester's work:

“Behind the provisional government stood d'Ester as a kind of secret general secretary or, as Mr Brentano called it, as a“ red camarilla that surrounded the moderate government of Kaiserslautern ”. Incidentally, other German democrats also belonged to this “red camarilla”, namely refugees from Dresden. In d'Ester, the Palatinate regents found that administrative overview that they lacked, and at the same time a revolutionary mind that impressed them because it was always limited to what was initially undeniably possible and was therefore never at a loss for detailed measures. D'Ester thereby gained considerable influence and the absolute confidence of the government. Even if he sometimes took the movement too seriously and z. If, for example, he believed he could achieve something important by introducing his for the moment totally unsuitable community order, it is certain that d'Ester urged the provisional government to take all reasonably energetic steps and, in particular, always had suitable solutions at hand in detailed conflicts.

After the provisional government of the Palatinate was defeated, d'Ester fled to Switzerland. In Châtel-Saint-Denis he worked as a doctor until his death and made great contributions to the poor population.

Works

literature

  • Karl Obermann : Karl D'Ester, doctor and revolutionary, his activity in the years 1842–1849 . In: From the early history of the German labor movement . Akademie Verlag, Berlin 1964, pp. 102-200
  • Karl Obermann: D'Ester, Carl Ludwig . In: Biographical Lexicon on German History . Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, Berlin 1967, pp. 91–92
  • Kurt Koszyk : Karl D'Ester as councilor and parliamentarian 1846–1849 . In: Archives for Social History . Hanover 1961. Volume 1, pp. 43-60
  • Dr. Karl D'Ester . In: Helmut Dressler: Doctors around Karl Marx . Volk und Gesundheit Verlag, Berlin 1970, pp. 29–46
  • Karl Obermann: D'Ester, Karl Ludwig Johann . In: History of the German labor movement. Biographical Lexicon. Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1970, pp. 90-91
  • Kurt Koszyk: Carl d'Ester (1813-1859) . In: Rheinische Lebensbilder , 11, 1988, pp. 149–165.
  • Axel Koppetsch: Carl d'Ester (1813-1859) In: Ottfried Dascher and Everhard Kleinertz (eds.): Petitions and barricades. Rhenish revolutions 1848/49 . Aschendorff, Münster 1998, pp. 317-332, ISBN 3-402-05378-0
  • Helge Dvorak: Biographical Lexicon of the German Burschenschaft. Volume I: Politicians. Sub-Volume 1: A-E. Winter, Heidelberg 1996, ISBN 3-8253-0339-X , pp. 267-268.
  • Friedrich Engels : The German Reich constitution campaign . In: Marx, Karl : Works . Volume 7. Berlin (GDR) 1960, pp. 109–197. mlwerke.de, accessed April 29, 2017.
  • An exile's grave . In: The Gazebo . Issue 9, 1864, pp. 139–142 ( full text [ Wikisource ]).

Web links

Commons : Carl d'Ester  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Carl d'Ester was often written “Karl d'Ester” and possibly wrote himself “Karl” at times, for example in his letters to Karl Marx. Karl d'Ester was also the name of his great-nephew, a pioneer in newspaper science.
  2. ^ Helge Dvorak: Biographical Lexicon of the German Burschenschaft. Volume I: Politicians. Sub-Volume 1: A-E. Winter, Heidelberg 1996, ISBN 3-8253-0339-X , p. 267.
  3. ↑ Koppetsch, p. 320.
  4. ^ Friedrich Engels : The German Reich constitution campaign . In: Marx, Karl : Works . Volume 7. Berlin (GDR) 1960, p. 149 f.
personal data
SURNAME d'Ester, Carl
ALTERNATIVE NAMES d'Ester, Carl Ludwig Johann (full name); d'Ester, Karl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German doctor, publicist and democratic politician
DATE OF BIRTH November 4, 1813
PLACE OF BIRTH Vallendar
DATE OF DEATH June 18, 1859
Place of death Châtel-Saint-Denis