Christian Joseph Matzerath

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Christian Joseph Matzerath (born January 28, 1815 in Linnich ; † March 24, 1876 in Cologne ) was a German lawyer , administrative officer , politician and poet .

Life

Matzerath, offspring of a Rhenish family of lawyers, son of the notary Johannes Matzerath (1762-1835) and his wife Maria Adelheid Alexandrina Schotten (1777-1859), studied after attending grammar school in Düren , which he obtained in 1830 with "a brilliant certificate of intellectual maturity" left, law studies at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn . He then began his professional activity as an auscultator and trainee lawyer at the Cologne District Court .

At the same time he pursued historical and literary studies. In 1838 he published a collection of his poems with Johann Georg Cotta in Stuttgart . In 1840/1841 - together with Karl Simrock and Ferdinand Freiligrath - he published the Rheinisches Jahrbuch für Kunst und Poetry in two years . Matzerath, a member of the Maikäferbund , encouraged his friend Nikolaus Becker to do his Rheinlied in 1840 .

After he was appointed assessor in 1840 , the Prussian Ministry of Justice appointed him to Berlin as an "unskilled worker" . Five months later he was transferred to the Ministry of Education under Friedrich Eichhorn for employment. During this time (1842) he married Amalia Augusta Paulina (Pauline) Löwe (1821-1853), daughter of the Berlin manufacturer Heinrich Joseph Löwe († 1861) and his wife Amalie Wallach (1798-1877), daughter of the calico manufacturer Heymann Moses Gelding. The couple had two children, daughter Hedwig (1843–1911) - wife of the sugar industrialist ( Pfeifer & Langen ) Valentin Pfeifer , and their son Walter (1849–1878).

Gravesite of the Matzerath family

At his own request, he was transferred to the royal government in Aachen on October 1, 1847, as a legal advisor in the administrative service of the Rhine Province. He held this position until March 1856. In 1850 he was a member of the Volkshaus of the Erfurt Union Parliament . From 1849 to 1851 he worked as a deputy for Montjoie in the Second Chamber of the Prussian Landtag . In 1852 he refused re-election “because he was unable to subordinate his convictions to the direction of the state government at that time”. In 1856 he became the Prussian State Commissioner in the management of the Cologne-Minden Railway Company , a position he had strived for intensively. As such, he lived in Cologne again and campaigned vehemently for the construction of the cathedral bridge .

A serious eye condition that had affected him for a long time led him to retire from civil service in 1866. From then on he devoted himself mainly to poetry . Some of his poems were published in the Kölnische Zeitung . Matzerath died in Cologne in 1876 at the age of 61; his grave is in the Melaten cemetery (lit. M, between HWG and lit. O).

Fonts

literature

  • Christian Joseph Matzerath . In: Oscar Ludwig Bernhard Wolff : Encyclopedia of German National Literature or biographical-critical lexicon of German poets and prose writers since the earliest times, together with samples from their works . Eighth or supplement volume, Verlag von Otto Wigand, Leipzig 1847, p. 307 ( Google Books ).
  • Franz Brümmer :  Matzerath, Christian Joseph . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 52, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1906, p. 237 f.
  • Jochen Lengemann : The German Parliament (Erfurt Union Parliament) from 1850. A manual: Members, officials, life data, parliamentary groups (= publications of the Historical Commission for Thuringia. Large series, Vol. 6). Urban & Fischer, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-437-31128-X , p. 218.
  • Chronicle of the Pfeifer family , around 1975 (only published in the family circle)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Pauline Löwe , genealogical data sheet in the portal merkel-zeller.de , accessed on October 14, 2018
  2. ↑ Christian Joseph Matzerath / Amalia Augusta Paulina (Pauline) Loewe , genealogical data sheet in the portal heidermanns.net , accessed on October 14, 2018
personal data
SURNAME Matzerath, Christian Joseph
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer, civil servant, politician and poet
DATE OF BIRTH January 28, 1815
PLACE OF BIRTH Linnich
DATE OF DEATH March 24, 1876
Place of death Cologne