Caspar Friedrich von Hofmann

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Caspar Friedrich von Hofmann

Caspar Friedrich von Hofmann (* 1740 in Wetzlar ; † November 28, 1814 there ) was a lawyer, procurator at the Imperial Court of Justice and Prussian secret war council

Life

Career as a lawyer

Caspar Friedrich (von) Hofmann was the son of the procurator Georg Melchior Hofmann and came from a family of lawyers. He was baptized Protestant and initially had private lessons with Johannes Matthäus Stein from Langenschwalbach . After brief studies in Marburg and 1759 in Göttingen, he became a doctor of law in 1760. However, his two-year internship with the renowned lawyer Johann Stephan Pütter in Göttingen was more regarded than his studies . He then moved to Wetzlar, maintained a law firm and was a respected lawyer for high princely and noble clients and magistrates, such as the Landgraviate of Hessen-Darmstadt, the Counts of Schulenburg and others. He was legal counsel for the imperial city of Frankfurt.

Prominent clients

From May 8, 1761 he was an attorney at the Supreme Court. From October 11, 1769 to 1806, he worked as procurator at the Imperial Court of Justice in Wetzlar. From 1776 he was the representative of Brandenburg-Prussia at the Imperial Court of Justice appointed by Friedrich II , maintained a lively correspondence with Minister Ewald Friedrich von Hertzberg and was Prussian Privy Councilor of War. In November 1789, as a representative of the Liège estates and Prussian agent, he was the opponent of the episcopal attorney Christian Jacob von Zwierlein.In 1793, however, the assessor Freiherr von Weinbach on behalf of Carl Theodor von Bayern was against him to succeed Zwierlein as procurator in a legal dispute offered the imperial city of Nuremberg, which, however, was already one of Hofmann's clients. Even wealthy private clients, such as the Hamburg merchant Lorenz Levin Salomon Fürst , who sued for equal rights from 1792 to 1802 , represented Hofmann with sympathy and great commitment.

Johannette Elisabeth von Hofmann
Property in Wetzlar

In 1765 he married Johannette Elisabeth Freudenberger, with whom he had 11 children. In Wetzlar he lived and worked in the family's spacious house on Pariser Gasse , built in 1695 , where the Hofmann family often hosted high-ranking visitors, such as the Elector Johann Wilhelm von der Pfalz in 1711 and the Saxon-Gotha legation councilor Philipp von Gemmingen in 1767 . Other guests were the Braunschweig Legation Councilor Gotter and the later Minister of State Freiherr von Stein . Caspar Friedrich von Hofmann, however, was an enlightened thinker and sympathized with the ideals of the French Revolution . He wrote numerous legal writings and in 1799 the family chronicle " News from the Hofmann family in Wezlar, Frankfurt and Braunfels ". Due to the prosperity developed in years with high business attacks, the family was able to acquire two more houses with coach houses and stables in the area, Pariser Gasse 8 and Kleine Pariser Gasse , and rent them lucratively.

As a member of the Wetzlar Freemason's lodge , which was influential at the time , Hofmann was integrated into a wide network of important personalities.

Procurator's costume

family

Coat of arms of those von Hofmann

The Hofmann family came from the Hessian area around Marburg . On June 18, 1598 Michael Hofmann had received a letter of coat of arms from Emperor Rudolf II in Prague , whereby this coat of arms was retained even after the ennoblement. The coat of arms shows in the shield in red an obliquely right corrugated silver bar , accompanied above by a gold star, and from the with red-silver ceiling provided, crowned helmet grows a red-clad with silver cuffs and collar, golden belted mercenary with silver-rolled-back, red cap with three ostrich feathers (red, silver, red), which holds a pusikan in the raised right hand and supports the left in the side.

One of the direct descendants of Michael Hofmann was the, currently unknown, father of Johann Friedrich Hofmann, who had studied law in Gießen , became school rector and, like the Imperial Court of Justice itself, moved from Esslingen am Neckar to Speyer in 1674 .

  • Johann Friedrich Hofmann (1660–1735), Reformed Confession, studied in Strasbourg , procurator from 1693 to 1733 and from 1699 representative of Brandenburg-Prussia at the Imperial Court of Justice in Wetzlar
    • Philipp Ernst Hofmann (1692–1764), Solms-Braunfels Government Councilor, 2 daughters
    • Anna Dorothea Hofmann; ⚭ Johann Paul Besserer (1691–1762)
    • Georg Melchior von Hofmann (1688–1781)
      Georg Melchior von Hofmann (* 1688 in Speyer; † May 19, 1781 in Wetzlar), court attorney, from 1717 procurator at the Reich Chamber of Commerce in Wetzlar. Representative of Duke Carl Eugen , the Princes of Anhalt , the Counts Solms-Braunfels and the Imperial City of Frankfurt . Imperial nobility 1778, had a son and a daughter
      • Dorothea Wilhelmina Hofmann (1743–1776); ⚭ Procurator Johann Gottlob Fürstenau
        • Johanna Fürstenau, ⚭ businessman Johann Jacob XI. Waldschmidt (1762–1850), mayor of Wetzlar
      • Caspar Friedrich von Hofmann (1740-1814); ⚭ 1765 Johannette Elisabeth Freudenberger. 11 children
        • Maria Anna von Hofmann; ⚭ in Wetzlar with innkeeper and procurator Jakob Sebastian Frech (1757–1831)
          • Johann Friedrich Frech (born March 21, 1796 in Wetzlar; † March 24, 1881 in Berlin), judge and parliamentarian
        • Friedrich Wilhelm von Hofmann (1766-1828), studied in Göttingen, doctor of law, internship with Pütter , took over his father's office, 1789 lawyer, November 1797 councilor and legation secretary of the city of Frankfurt at the Reichsfriedensdeputation zu Rastatt , from 1799 procurator at the Reich Chamber of Commerce Wetzlar, also a royal Prussian councilor
        • Georg Wilhelm von Hofmann (1777-1860); around 1813 lieutenant colonel in Russian service, later Prussian general
          • Marie Elisabeth Friederike Wilhelmine Sophie von Hofmann (born October 5, 1819 - † December 26, 1890), daughter-in-law of François Louis von Chappuis
        • Juliane Wilhelmine von Hofmann (1768-1844); ⚭ 1792 in Frankfurt with Carl Ludwig Böhmer (born August 29, 1744 Zweibrücken , † November 27, 1817 Frankfurt ), former Councilor in Lauterecken , went to Wetzlar in 1792 and from there to Frankfurt in 1793, office director there, had 5 children
          • Carl Böhmer (* and † 1793)
          • Johann Friedrich Böhmer (1795–1863), city archivist and historian
          • Charlotte Friederike Juliane Böhmer (1796–1811)
          • Friederike Böhmer (later married Freudenberg, * 1798)
          • Johann Friedrich Georg Böhmer, called Jean (1799–1851) lawyer, 1834 senator (author of a history of church records in Frankfurt)

Literature and web links

  • Anette Baumann: Lawyers and Procurators: Lawyers at the Reichskammergericht (1690–1806) (Böhlau Verlag 2006) ( limited preview at books.google.de )
  • Anette Baumann: Lawyers at the Reich Chamber of Commerce. The Hofmann procurator dynasty in Wetzlar (1695–1806) . Editor: Gesellschaft für Reichskammergerichtsforschung, Issue 28. Wetzlar 2001. ISBN 5-935279-31-2 ( Online, accessed June 23, 2020 )
  • Hans-Werner Hahn: Old class bourgeoisie between persistence and change: Wetzlar 1689–1870 (Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG, Munich 2019) ISBN 3486827324
  • Friedrich Jacob Dietrich von Bostells: Contributions to the Supreme Court literature and practice . First part (Meyersche Buchhandlung, Lemgo 1780), p. 274 ( books.google.de )

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Johann Stephan Pütter (1781): Litteratur des Teutschen Staatsrechts , Volume 2 (Vandenhoeck, Leipzig), p. 56 ( books.google.de )
  2. ↑ Georg Christoph Hamberger: The learned Teutschland, or Lexicon of the now living German writers , Volume 3 (Meyersche Buchhandlung, Lemgo 1797). P. 397 ( books.google.de )
  3. ^ Heike Wüller: Sources and research on Brandenburg and Prussian history , (Duncker & Humblot, 2004), volumes 26-27. P. 126 and 252 ( Limited preview at books.google.de )
  4. ↑ Heinrich Gloel: Goethe Wetzlar time (Verlag ES Mittler, 1911). Pages 32–33 ( online at archive.org)
  5. ↑ Handbook of the Prussian Nobility. Volume 1, 1892, p. 219 ff.
  6. ^ Hock, Sabine (2017): Böhmer, Carl Ludwig . In: Frankfurter Personenlexikon (online edition), http://frankfurter-dienstleistungenlexikon.de/node/6151
personal data
SURNAME Hofmann, Caspar Friedrich von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hofmann, Caspar Friedrich; Hofmann, Kaspar Friedrich; Hofmann, Caspar Fridericus
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Procurator at the Reich Chamber of Commerce
DATE OF BIRTH 1740
PLACE OF BIRTH Wetzlar
DATE OF DEATH November 28, 1814
Place of death Wetzlar