Christian Wurm

This article deals with police officer Christian Wurm. For the historian and politician see Christian Friedrich Wurm .

Christian Heinrich Clemens Wurm (born September 22, 1771 in Ansbach ; † January 12, 1835 in Munich ), Royal Bavarian Police Director, was from 1806 to 1818 "Police Commissioner" of the city of Nuremberg and in this capacity since 1808 practically the head of September 15 City incorporated into the Kingdom of Bavaria in 1806 .

Wurm came from a Franconian civil servant family and studied law in Erlangen from 1789 . As the first assessor of the Prussian police commission in Fürth , he drew attention to himself from 1800 to 1802 through his tough administration. Although he was removed from his position in 1805 because of this, he was accepted into the Bavarian civil service and made police director in Fürth in 1806. Immediately after the handover of Nuremberg to Bavaria, the Bavarian military governor for Franconia, General Count Friedrich Karl von Thürheim , entrusted him with the Nuremberg Police Department and the difficult task of integrating the rebellious Nuremberg into the Kingdom of Bavaria. The main focus was on paying off the high debts of the former Free Imperial City . Wurm was therefore primarily responsible for bringing a wealth of valuable works of art from Nuremberg to Munich for this purpose.

As a representative of the new government, he was arrested by the Nuremberg people during the unrest in 1809, but after his release he was again given police power in the city. He reorganized the city's police force. For many arbitrary acts and acts of violence by the police during this time, the Nuremberg Wurm saw the originator. As a “police commissioner” he was also the head of the city and acted like a mayor, as there was no civil administration. The old Nuremberg patrician families consistently refused to work with him, but Wurm was able to find support from the educated and economic bourgeoisie. In his role as head of the city, he also tried to design the cityscape according to ideas that were then considered modern, but he did not succeed in the intended razing of the city fortifications and defensive systems, which were considered to be obstructive and unattractive. In the hunger crisis of 1816/18 he made great contributions to the supply of Nuremberg.

When a civil administration was set up in Nuremberg as in the rest of Bavaria in 1818 on the basis of the royal municipal edict, Christian Wurm's services were no longer needed. Wurm wanted to keep the newly established office of “city commissioner”, which had been created to control the Nuremberg municipal authorities. He was only offered a transfer to Regensburg , which he refused. He moved to Munich, where he lived for 17 years until his death.

See also : History of the City of Nuremberg

literature

• Gerhard Hirschmann: The Wurm era in Nuremberg 1806-1818. In: Communications from the Association for the History of the City of Nuremberg. Volume 48