Christoph Friedrich Mentz

Portrait of Christoph Friedrich Mentz

Gravestone at the Gertrudenfriedhof in Oldenburg

Christoph Friedrich Mentz (born November 7, 1765 in Berne ; † December 5, 1832 in Oldenburg ) was an Oldenburg conference councilor and district president of the Grand Duchy of Oldenburg.

Life

The Mentz family originally came from Dortmund and moved to Berne in the middle of the 18th century. There Mentz was born as the son of the captain in the Danish National Regiment Oldenburg Ludolph Heinrich Friedrich Mentz († 1797) and Eleonore Maria geb. Bötticher (* or baptized 1744), the daughter of the bailiff Christoph Conrad Bötticher, born in Berne. He attended school in Rendsburg and studied law and mathematics at the University of Kiel from 1783 to 1786 . He then entered the service of the Oldenburg regional surveying department and, after completing his training, carried out the topographical recordings on a scale of 1: 20,000 for the Oldenburg bailiwick . In 1788 he was appointed a conductor and three years later he also took over a law firm in Oldenburg.

In 1793 he was employed as an auscultator at the Oldenburg court chamber and released from his duties as a conductor. In the following years, however, he remained in contact with the land surveying and was in charge of the drawing and copying of the bailiwick maps as well as the design of a general map of the duchy on a scale of 1: 160,000, which was printed as a copper engraving in Bremen in 1804 . In 1801 he was appointed chamber councilor and in 1808 promoted to deputy director of the court chamber.

At the end of 1810, Oldenburg was occupied by French troops and became part of the French Empire . Mentz was dismissed from the civil service in February 1811 and took along with his son Wilhelm Ernst of Beaulieu-Marconnay and Christian Ludwig round to represent the interests of the Russian exile situated Duke Peter I and the management of his private assets. When the duke returned after the end of the French era in Oldenburg , Mentz was reinstated as Vice Director of the Court Chamber and entrusted with a number of additional tasks. In December 1813 he became a member of the provisional government commission, which, as the provisional government agency of the duchy, was to carry out and monitor the reorganization of the administration. At the same time he chaired the newly established military commission and was one of the initiators in founding the Oldenburg military school. In 1818 he was finally appointed director of the court chamber and was already significantly involved in the preparatory work for the reform of the tax system and in the regulation of the landlord's conditions. In 1830 he was given the office of district president of the Grand Duchy of Oldenburg, which he led until his death. At the same time he received the title of conference councilor and was appointed to the board of directors of the military college in 1832.

Mentz evidently excelled through great manpower and thorough expertise. He was one of the most influential employees of Peter I and played an important role in the internal administration of the duchy. The cabinet secretary Ludwig Starklof described it as "the real main wheel in our government machine ". Especially in the years after 1813, as a decidedly conservative bureaucrat, Mentz was decidedly against any change in the traditional circumstances and also strictly rejected the introduction of a rural constitution for the Grand Duchy.

family

Mentz was married twice. First he married Caroline Sophie Louise Bolken († 1820) in 1791, the daughter of chamber councilor Anton Hinrich Bolken (1737–1782) and Anna Elisabeth born. Lentz. After the death of his wife in 1822 he married Franziska von Heimburg (1800–1836), the daughter of the Oldenburg forest master Heino Ernst von Heimburg (1766–1839), who was then married to the court stable master Adam Ernst Rochus von Witzleben ( 1791–1868) was married. His daughter Johanna (1792–1850) married the later Oldenburg State Minister Wilhelm Ernst von Beaulieu-Marconnay (1786–1859). The son Peter Friedrich Georg (1807-1878) became a Privy Councilor.

literature

• Hans Friedl: Christoph Friedrich Mentz. In: Hans Friedl u. a. (Ed.): Biographical manual for the history of the state of Oldenburg . Edited on behalf of the Oldenburg landscape. Isensee, Oldenburg 1992, ISBN 3-89442-135-5 , pp. 451-453 ( online ).