Charles de Villers

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Charles de Villers, portrayed by Friedrich Carl Gröger

Charles François Dominique de Villers (born November 4, 1765 in Boulay-Moselle , † February 26, 1815 in Göttingen ) was a French officer , philosopher and author . He became particularly important because he made the ideas of Immanuel Kant known in France.

Life

youth

Villers was born in 1765 in the Lorraine town of Bolchen (Boulay). His father was a tax officer, his mother, nee de Lannaguet, came from the provincial nobility of Languedoc . From the age of nine to fifteen he attended the Benedictine school of St. Jacques in Metz . In 1780 he became a candidate and in 1781 a pupil of the artillery school in Metz. In the same year he became a second lieutenant in Toul , in 1783 he joined the Metz regiment in Strasbourg , in 1787 he became a lieutenant and in 1792 a captain in the Besançon artillery regiment . He was aide-de-camp of the Marquis de Puységur , through whom he came to deal with mesmerism . His novel Le magnétiseur amoureux (Geneva 1789) comes from this period . Charles de Villers co-founded the Sociéte harmonique in Metz, an offshoot of the Sociéte Harmonique des Amis Réunis, founded in Strasbourg in 1785 . Villers also studied the Greek and Hebrew languages, as well as the theory and practice of poetry.

exile

He was soon disappointed by the revolution and wrote several satirical and critical writings, which is why he was forced to join the government-in-exile of the royal brothers Stanislas Xavier, Comte de Provence and Charles Philippe in 1792 . After that he stayed in different places. He had to flee from his hometown because he was wanted. Liège , Münster , Driburg and Holzminden were the first stages of his exile. In 1796 he enrolled as a student at the Georgia Augusta in Göttingen . He was particularly interested in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant . When the emigrant was allowed to return to Paris for a few months in 1801, de Villers succeeded in getting Napoleon interested in Kant's thinking, which he had previously dismissed as a “German ideology”: “The first consul in all of Europe has very little time lose, and I was only allowed four pages to tell him what it was about and four hours to think about it. ”Under this time pressure, de Viller's philosophy de Kant was born. Aperçu rapide des bases et de la direction de cette philosophie , an antiquarian rarity, as the brochure was neither kept in Paris nor in Göttingen. In addition to a copy in Goethe's library, only the first edition was found in the author's estate, after which a bibliophile reprint was published in 1925.

When the five universities in Göttingen, Helmstedt, Marburg, Rinteln and Halle threatened to close in the Kingdom of Westphalia under Jérôme Bonaparte , de Villers pleaded for their preservation in a letter addressed personally to Napoleon. The publication of the Coup d'œil sur les universités et le mode d'instruction publique de l'Allemagne protestante, en particulier du royaume de Westphalie was supported by the director of public education, the former Minister of State Johannes von Müller . Müller also advocated a translation, first from Achim von Arnim , then from Joseph Görres , with whose “explanatory and corrective notes” the book appeared in German in the same year 1808.

In Göttingen, de Villers met Dorothea Schlözer , who was married to the later mayor of Lübeck, Mattheus Rodde , and was accepted into her household in Lübeck in 1797, creating a classic ménage à trois for life. In 1803, on a trip to Paris, I met Madame de Staël in Metz , who wanted to win him over. Villers resisted, but remained in constant correspondence with her and influenced her image of Germany significantly.

Report on the occupation of Lübeck in 1806

Fight at the castle gate

As a house guest, Villers was able to save the Roddes in Lübeck from the worst during the French occupation in 1806 ; he reported on these catastrophic events in his letter to Countess Fanny de Beauharnais containing a message about the events that took place in Lübeck on Thursday the 6th November 1806 and following occurred . This letter was printed and was a highly regarded document in Europe in its day and is an important historical source today. Here, however, only the personal experience of Villers is to be presented, for the events as a whole, see the main articles about the battle of Lübeck and the Lübeck French period .

Villers writes that Lübeck had no idea of ​​the size or location of the advancing troops until the Prussians, fleeing from the French , appeared in front of the city on November 5th under Blücher . Ignoring the protest of the city administration and their references to the neutrality of Lübeck, Blücher demanded that the city accommodate a considerable part of his troops and provide billeting for a few thousand soldiers. The taking of quarters was chaotic as evening was already falling and you were completely surprised in the city and accordingly unprepared. But the soldiers, although very exhausted, behaved correctly and the officer quartered at Roddes would have assured that they would move out of town the next day and surrender.

In fact, the city of Blücher was provisionally fortified at this time and the city gates were equipped with artillery. The attempt to offer resistance to the French, however, failed. Due to a stubborn folly of the "Black Duke" of Braunschweig-Oels , French troops penetrated through the castle gate at noon on November 6th and the Prussians could only flee. Here Villers personally accuses Blücher that, in view of the small advantage that the Prussian troops could have gained in the best case scenario (Blücher himself estimated only two days that he could have held), the violation of the city's neutrality with all its consequences did not was to be represented.

So the street fight began, the Prussian soldiers holed up in the houses that the citizens tried to close. Villers had closed the entrance to his house as well as possible and went to the neighboring house of the Roddes, where only Dorothea Rodde was with the children (Mattheus Rodde was at the Senate). The house was near the castle gate, so the French invaded and the slaughter that followed. The fighting ended around 3 p.m. after all of the Prussians who had remained in the city were either dead or captured. The residents thought they had already got away.

But that was not the case, rather a violent looting began in the conquered city. Villers, who feared the worst for Frau Rodde and her two daughters, put on a hat with a French cockade, put on a blue coat, and stood in the doorway armed with his old adjutant's saber. Villers succeeded in preventing soldiers who wanted to penetrate Roddes by remembering the harsh tone of command from his military service and using all kinds of excuses. B. claimed to be here as the guard and quartermaker of a general.

Around 9 o'clock Rodde returned safely from the Senate Assembly with the news that he had made his house available to the French commander Bernadotte , the Prince of Ponte Corvo. Bernadotte arrived that night and dined with the Rodde and Villers family, whom he allowed to appear as his secretary and accordingly to assert himself, which Villers did many times over the next few days. Already in the first night the door of the house was besieged by those seeking help and despair, who hoped that Villers would rescue him from the violence of the soldiers.

Villers did what he could, and not just him. Numerous officers and even an entire regiment (the 32nd Infantry Regiment) tried to stop the looting and mistreatment, but only to a small extent succeeded and some were even injured.

The surrender took place on November 7th, but this did not put an end to the looting. After all, there were around 70,000 soldiers (French and captured Prussians) in the city, thus more than twice the number of inhabitants, there were numerous wounded and the damage (as Villers explains) was particularly significant because of the fact that

  1. there were winter supplies stored everywhere,
  2. At the beginning of November there was a date for annual payments in Lübeck, which is why there were relatively large amounts of cash in all households,
  3. For fear of fires, all valuables were carried as close as possible to the body during the bombardment ("The Marauders repast everything together."),
  4. To make matters worse, Lübeck carried out an important trade in wine and brandy, and the stocks of alcohol were correspondingly large.

Villers reports some gruesome and some grotesque episodes of the looting: how the marauders thought they felt a money belt under the clothes of an old wine merchant , took it off and found only a truss strap , were so angry that they stuck a bayonet in his body . How a woman overturned some furniture, tore her hair, tore her clothes and rolled on the floor crying with the door open, whereupon all the Soldateska passed by thinking that others had already been at work here.

Villers describes the rapes that have apparently occurred in large numbers with particular emphasis:

Blood-stained wretches used the fear of terror to poison unhappy victims and half-dead women with their horrific lust. Most of them will not long survive their dishonor; and their unhappy families, their husbands, their mothers, their beloved ones keep in their hearts a deadly gnaw of it for a later time.

He reports:

  • A mother pursued by soldiers with her child in her arms jumped into the water, causing her child to drown. The woman now thinks she is a child murderer and has lost her mind about it.
  • A squad of the 4th Corps broke into the madhouse and abused and mistreated the insane prostitutes trapped there.
  • A woman was raped by 22 soldiers and thrown into a pond for dead, where she actually died.
  • He himself saw a victim, a young woman with a blank look, a torn dress and a scratched bosom, who was supported by two older women. This image left a deep impression on him.

Villers is particularly outraged by some of his compatriots' reactions to such reports:

The recklessness of our nation sometimes takes on the account of the misfortunes of this species with an indecent, inhuman smile. […] Such a smile seems to me like the smile of hell; and I know nothing morally hideous!

In general he complains about the lack of insight into the injustice committed by the French troops. Other honest young soldiers among the soldiers are also convinced that "the city of Lübeck and everything in it belong to them, and one must write it down to them as an excellent gentleness that they have not burned it completely and devastated it."

Villers saw himself prompted by these riots to write a letter to Bernadotte in which he implored him to put an order to end these attacks. Such an order was actually issued on the morning of November 8th, admittedly only to the 1st Corps led by Bernadotte. On the same day Villers also went to Murat , the Grand Duke of Berg, and conjured him up in the same way. He didn't meet Soult , the third in command. So although Bernadotte and Murat tried to put a stop to it, the riots continued, especially as new troops were still pouring into the city. It was not until November 9th that order was halfway restored, with the abuse still continuing in the countryside, in the surrounding villages and in the suburbs. The country pastors in particular were played badly, they were beaten up, robbed to the limit and their wives and daughters raped.

Overall, Villiers estimates the direct and quantifiable damage to be at least 12 million francs. He gives the number of direct deaths in the population of Lübeck at over 100.

The letter appeared in bookshops on March 5, 1807 and was immediately banned by the French authorities in Hamburg, Lübeck, Amsterdam and Paris. Napoleon, from whom one had hoped for help for the plundered Lübeck, threatened the German ideologist with arrest. If Marshal Davout had got hold of the author, he would probably have been arrested as a traitor and defiler of the honor of the French army. At least Davout confiscated Villers papers and had him, who was in Paris at the time, deported from Lübeck on March 8, 1811.

Goettingen

Göttingen memorial plaque for Charles de Villers

In 1811 Villers became professor of philosophy at the Georgia Augusta in Göttingen and was able to help the Roddes after the bankruptcy in Göttingen within the scope of his possibilities. However, since the appointment did not come from the university but from the government of Kassel, he was not very popular with the professors, who also accused him of having “not learned a single science according to the guild”.

In 1814, after the fall of the Kingdom of Westphalia , he was immediately dismissed by the government of the Kingdom of Hanover . He received an annual pension of 3,000 francs and was asked to leave the kingdom. Villers defended himself against this and cited the fact that he was a citizen of Bremen, and thus a naturalized German: “I am being chased away from Göttingen, my last asylum, me, who I so often used the university in word, in writing and in deed against the enemies of the I defended the German spirit. ”Since the expulsion met with outrage everywhere, they gave in, granted him a right to stay and increased his pension to 4000 francs.

However, Villers could not enjoy the pension for long. On February 11, 1815, he suffered a stroke . After another stroke, he died on February 26th. He was buried in the Albani cemetery in Göttingen. The tomb has not been preserved.

Honors

Fonts

  • Le magnétiseur amoureux. Roman, Geneva 1787 (actually 1789)
  • Ajax fils d'Oilée. (Tragedy; not printed)
  • Les députés aux états généraux. Satire, 1789
  • Exam du serment civique. 1790
  • Regrets d'un aristocrate sur la destruction des moines. 1791
  • De la liberté. : son tableau et sa définition; ce qu'elle est dans la société; moyens de l'y conserver. Metz & Paris 1791
  • Lettres Westphaliennes. 1797
  • Lettre sur le roman intitulé Justine ou Les malheurs de la vertu. 1797
  • Notice littéraire sur M. Kant et sur l'état de la métaphysique en Allemagne au moment où ce philosophe a commencé d'y faire sensation. 1798
  • Idée de ce que pourrait être une histoire universelle dans les vues d'un citoyen du monde. 1798
  • Critique de la raison pure. Summary of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason , 1799
  • Philosophy de Kant, ou Principes fondamentaux de la philosophie transcendentale. 1801
  • Lettre de Charles Villers à Georges Cuvier sur une nouvelle théorie du cerveau, par le Dr Gall, ce viscère étant considéré comme l'organe immédiat des facultés morales. 1802
  • Esquisse de l'histoire de l'Église, depuis son fondateur jusqu'à la réformation, pour servir d'Appendice à l'Essai sur l'esprit et l'influence de la reformation de Luther. 1804
  • Essai sur l'esprit et l'influence de la reformation de Luther, ouvrage qui a remporté le prix sur cette question proposée dans la séance publique du 15 germinal an X, par l'Institut national de France: Quelle a été l'influence de la reformation de Luther sur la situation politique des différens États de l'Europe, et sur le progrès des lumières? 1804
  • Experiment on the spirit and influence of Luther's Reformation . Translated from the French from the second edition by Carl Friedrich Cramer. Hoffmann, Hamburg 1805 digitized
  • Letter to Countess Fanny de Beauharnais containing news of the events that occurred in Lübeck on Thursday, November 6th, 1806 and following. Art and Industry Comptoir, Amsterdam 1807, reprint Lübeck 1981
  • Lettre à Mme la comtesse Fanny de Beauharnais, contenant un récit des événements qui se sont passés à Lübeck dans le journées du jeudi 6 November 1806 et les suivantes. Amsterdam 1807
  • Essai sur l'esprit et l'influence de la reformation de Luther. Paris 1808 digitizedhttp: //vorlage_digitalisat.test/1%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.mdz-nbn-resolving.de%2Furn%2Fresolver.pl%3Furn%3Durn%3Anbn%3Ade%3Abvb%3A12-bsb10450671-6~GB% 3D ~ IA% 3D ~ MDZ% 3D% 0A ~ SZ% 3D ~ double-sided% 3D ~ LT% 3D ~ PUR% 3D ; German: Attempt on the spirit and influence of Luther's Reformation. Reutlingen 1818
  • Coup d'œil sur les universités et le mode d'instruction publique de l'Allemagne protestante, en particulier du royaume de Westphalie. 1808. German: View of the universities and the type of public instruction in Protestant Germany, especially in the Kingdom of Westphalia. Marburg 1808
  • Constitutions des trois villes libres-anséatiques, Lubeck, Bremen et Hamburg. Avec un mémoire sur le rang que doivent occuper ces villas in the organization commerciale de l'Europe. 1814
  • Précis historique sur la présentation de la Confession d'Augsbourg à l'empereur Charles-Quint, par plusieurs princes, états et villes d'Allemagne, ouvrage posthume de Mr Charles de Villers, suivi du texte de la Confession d'Augsbourg. Nouvelle traduction française, accompagnée de notes. 1817
  • Philosophy de Kant ou principes fondamentaux de la philosophie transcendentale. 2 vols. Utrecht 1830ff; Reprint: Brussels 1973

literature

  • Monique Bernard: Charles de Villers et l'Allemagne. Contribution à l'étude du préromantisme européen . Thèse de 3e cycle soutenue à l'université Paul Valéry de Montpellier le 14 juin 1976, under the name Monique Sickermann-Bernard. In: Library of the Department of Romance Philology at the University of Göttingen and the Hamburg State Library. (French digitized version)
  • Monique Bernard: Un homme, deux cultures: Charles de Villers entre France et Allemagne, 1765-1815 , in: Romanische Studien 3, 2016, online .
  • Monique Bernard: Charles de Villers. De Boulay à Göttingen. Itinéraire d'un médiateur franco-allemand. Editions des Paraiges, Metz, Juin 2016, ISBN 978-2-37535-016-4 . Literature Prize of the Académie nationale de Metz 2017.
  • Monique Bernard: "La dernière lettre de Charles de Villers à Germaine de Stael", in Cahiers Staeliens N ° 66, 2016. pp. 252-257
  • Monique Bernard: "Une rencontre historique. Charles de Villers et Germaine de Stael à Metz en 1803", in Les Cahiers lorrains , N ° 1–2, 2018, pp. 61–71 :
  • Charles de Villers. Correspondance 1897-1815. La mediation faite oeuvre . Edition établie, annotée et commentée par Monique Bernard and Nicolas Brucker. Paris, Honoré Champion, 2020. ISBN 978-2-7453-5264-4
  • Un homme, deux cultures. Charles de Villers entre France et Allemagne (1765-1815) , Sous la direction de Nicolas Brucker et Franziska Meier. Paris, Classiques Garnier, 2019. ISBN 978-2-406-08209-5
  • Ruth Ann Crowley: Charles de Villers: mediator and comparatist. Lang, Bern 1978, ISBN 3-261-03060-7 .
  • Meyer Isler: Letters to Charles de Villers. Selection from the handwritten estate of Charles de Villers . Hamburg 1879
  • Kurt Kloocke (Ed.): Correspondance Madame de Staël; Charles de Villers; Benjamin Constant . Etablissement du texte, introd. et notes par Kurt Kloocke avec le concours d'un groupe d'étudiants. Lang, Frankfurt am Main et al. 1993, ISBN 3-631-46107-0 .
  • Hermann Krapoth: Villers In: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck. Vol. 10, Neumünster 1994, ISBN 3-529-02650-6 .
  • Susanne Mildner: L'Amour à la Werther. Concepts of love by Goethe, Villers, de Stael and Stendhal. Wallstein Verlag 2012
  • Friedrich Saalfeld: History of the University of Göttingen in the period from 1788 to 1820. Göttingen 1820, pp. 124–128. (with list of Villers' writings; digitized versionhttp: //vorlage_digitalisat.test/1%3D~GB%3Dq4IfAAAAYAAJ~IA%3D~MDZ%3D%0A~SZ%3DPA124~ double-sided%3D~LT%3D~PUR%3D )
  • Ferdinand Sander:  Villers, Charles de . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 39, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1895, pp. 708-714.
  • Oskar Ulrich: Charles de Villers. His life and his writings. A contribution to the history of the intellectual relations between Germany and France . Leipzig 1899.
  • Peter Winterling: Withdrawal from the Revolution, an investigation into the image of Germany and literary theory with Madame de Staël and Charles de Villers . Schäuble, Rheinfelden 1985, ISBN 3-87718-763-3 .
  • Louis Wittmer: Charles de Villers (1765-1815). Un intermédiaire entre la France et l'Allemagne et un précureur de Mme de Staël . Geneva / Paris 1908.

Web links

Commons : Charles de Villers  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

The page numbers in Viller's letter to Countess Fanny de Beauharnais refer to the German edition of 1807.

  1. ↑ Sabine Kleine: The rapport between animal magnetism and hypnotism. In: Würzburg medical history reports. Volume 13, 1995, pp. 299-330; here: p. 307 f. ( An animistic model: Charles de Villers )
  2. ^ Karl Vorländer, Immanuel Kant - The man and the work, Felix Meiner Vlg., Hamburg 1993. also: http://www.textlog.de/36570.html
  3. ^ "Villers, Kant and Bonaparte", epilogue in: Charles de Villers, Philosophy de Kant. Rédigé à Paris pour Bonaparte et imprimé comme manuscrit. 1801. Hamburg at Buchbund Hamburg, 5th hand print by the Lerchenfeld workshop, 1925.
  4. ↑ Karl Schib, Johannes von Müller, ed. on behalf of the historical association of the canton of Schaffhausen, Augustin-Verlag, Thayngen-Schaffhausen, 1967, p. 308 ff.
  5. ^ Letter p. 18f.
  6. ↑ Letter p. 29 f.
  7. ^ Letter, pp. 36–38.
  8. ↑ Letter p. 42 f.
  9. ^ Letter p. 52.
  10. ↑ Letter p. 69 f.
  11. ↑ Letter p. 74.
  12. ^ Letter p. 82.
  13. ↑ Letter p. 91 and 93.
  14. ^ Eckart Kleßmann : Universitätsmamsellen. Frankfurt am Main 2008, ISBN 978-3-8218-4588-3 , pp. 263 f., 267.
  15. ↑ Kleßmann: Universitätsmamsellen. Frankfurt am Main 2008, pp. 269-270.
  16. ^ A b Walter Nissen, Christina Praus, Siegfried Schütz: Göttinger memorial tablets: a biographical guide. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2002, p. 217.
personal data
SURNAME Villers, Charles de
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Villers, Charles François Dominique de; Villers, Karl Franz Dominicus von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French officer and philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH November 4, 1765
PLACE OF BIRTH Boulay-Moselle
DATE OF DEATH February 26, 1815
Place of death Goettingen