Eduard von Flottwell

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Chief President Flottwell

Eduard Heinrich Flottwell , from 1861 von Flottwell , (born July 23, 1786 in Insterburg , East Prussia , † May 28, 1865 in Berlin ) was a German judge , administrative lawyer and Minister of State in the Kingdom of Prussia . His most important political task is his term of office as President of the Province of Poznan from 1830 to 1841. With his reform and Germanization policy, he pursued the goal of strengthening the citizens and peasants who were more loyal to the king than the Polish nobility and the Catholic clergy. His term of office, also known as "Arä Flottwell", is on the one hand a time of illiberal, anti-Polish Germanization. On the other hand, a political and social modernization is seen as the result of Flotwell's policy.

origin

His parents were the police director of Insterburg Johann Friedrich Flottwell (* 1752; † July 23, 1829) and his wife Amalie Barbara Charlotte, b. Sanden (1764 - January 5, 1835).

Life

Flottwell studied law at the Albertus University in Königsberg . After graduating as Dr. iur. In February 1805 he began a legal career as an auscultator at the court in Insterburg . After the assessor examination he came to the higher regional court in Königsberg , which in 1808 transferred him to the subordinate higher court in Insterburg. He moved from the administration of justice in the internal administration of Prussia and was 1812 Government and counsel for the Government in Gumbinnen . In 1816 he came to his mentor Heinrich Theodor von Schön in Gdansk, West Prussia, as senior councilor . In 1825 he became regional president in Marienwerder . He proved himself in the administration of the Marienwerder administrative district , which was often hit by famine and floods of the Vistula .

Eduard Heinrich v. Flottwell before the age of 75

At the time of the November uprising of the Poles in Congress Poland, the Prussian government feared that an uprising could also occur in Posen. Therefore Flottwell was appointed President of the Province of Poznan in December 1830 and the governor Anton Radziwiłł was relieved of his office. As a result, the Russians were supported in suppressing the uprising, while Flottwell implemented a policy of Germanization over the next ten years, as had already been pursued by Schön in West Prussia and which became known as the "Flottwell era". The aim was to push back the Polish nobility and the Catholic clergy and to strengthen the bourgeoisie and the peasants.

Flottwell ensured that the district administrators would no longer be appointed by the district estates but by the Prussian state, and that it was no longer the Woyts , but state district commissioners who exercised local police power. He had the city ​​ordinances and the regulations on freedom of trade revised in order to strengthen the cities' self-government rights. Poles were thus removed from the administration. The Polish language was pushed out of schools and public life when the German language was declared the official and court language in 1832 and German schools were founded. Flottwell financed the purchase of Polish goods through a state fund set up by him, in order to then sell the land to Germans. It was made easier for Jews to acquire civil rights in order to ensure their loyalty to the Prussian state. The conflict with the Catholic Church intensified when Flottwell enforced the union of the Archdiocese of Gniezno with the Diocese of Posen . In the dispute over interdenominational mixed marriage , Flottwell ordered the removal and exile of Archbishop Marcin Dunin-Slugustowski in 1838 .

When Friedrich Wilhelm IV took office in 1840, Prussian politics changed again. While Flottwell was appointed Upper President of Saxony and District President of Magdeburg in 1841 and was thus transferred, a so-called "era of reconciliation" began in Posen under the new Upper President Adolf von Arnim-Boitzenburg .

Flottwell's policy is assessed differently. While Hans Haussherr in the New German Biography 1961 saw Flottwell's intention above all in the fact that he wanted to “fully integrate Posen as a province into the Prussian state and the Polish inhabitants with the state” and ascribe it to Flottwell's work that the province of Poznan had "had a full share in the economic and cultural rise of the decade from 1830-40", said Andrea Schmidt-Rösler 1996 the "Flottwell era" as the end of the liberal course in Poznan. Flottwell had “relied on the melting down and Germanization of Poznan”. On the Polish side, the “Flotwell era” is seen as a time of indomitable Germanization and illiberal, anti-Polish politics. Stefan Hartmann noted in 1976 that Flottwell's measures had "had a positive effect on the Polish middle class, the development of which was achieved through the expansion of municipal self-government, the expansion of civil trades and the continuation of the peasant replacement". For Helmut Glück and Konrad Schröder, Flottwell's policy was a “modernization of the administration, the legal and transport system and [the] economic development.” In an annual report in 1841, Flottwell himself defined the ultimate goal of his policy as “the complete unification of both Nationalities as the conclusion of this task may be achieved through the decisive emergence of German culture ”. Robert E. Alvis points out that Flottwell's policies profoundly changed the province's political landscape. In contrast to the traditional dividing lines between liberals and conservatives , Prussian politics have strengthened the national element. The attitude of Polish conservatives to be loyal to the Prussian state and at the same time to remain loyal to their Polish heritage has lost credibility, while the idea of ​​independence has been strengthened.

Flottwell was appointed head of the Treasury in 1844 and resigned in 1846 to take over the administration of the Province of Westphalia as Chief President . A constituency of the province of Saxony chose him in the German Revolution 1848/49 to Frankfurt National Assembly , in which he fraction of the extreme right ( Café Milani ) belonged. In 1849 he was elected to the First Chamber of the Prussian Landtag by a constituency in Posen . In 1849/50 he headed the provisional administration of the Province of Prussia .

On July 21, 1850, Flottwell took over responsibility for a Prussian province for the fifth time as President of the Province of Brandenburg . On February 16, 1855, on the occasion of his 50th anniversary in office, he received the Order of the Red Eagle with diamonds . In October 1858 he was appointed Prussian Minister of the Interior. On June 3, 1859, he resigned this office for reasons of age and resumed his previous position as President of the Province of Brandenburg. With this resignation the Prince Regent awarded him as one of the first the Grand Commander's Cross of the Hohenzollern Order and at the coronation in Königsberg the Black Eagle Order , with whose possession he also received the hereditary nobility. At the end of 1862 he retired and moved to Berlin, where he died on May 25, 1865.

Fonts (selection)

  • Memorandum of the Upper President, Mr. Flottwell, on the administration of the Grand Duchy of Posen, from December 1830 to the beginning of 1841, together with the address given by several residents of the Grand Duchy of Posen. Strasburg 1841 ( e-copy ).

Honors

family

He married Friederike Koslowski in Tilsit in October 1810 , but she died in January 1812. The couple had a son:

  • Eduard (* August 22, 1811; † December 11, 1862), City Councilor ⚭ 1840 Frederike Behr († 1857)

After the death of his first wife, on February 21, 1814, in Gumbinnen, he married Auguste Lüdecke (* August 15, 1794 - March 6, 1862), widow of the government director Friedrich Schulz and daughter of the pastor Ernst Lüdecke from Berlin. The couple had 5 sons and 6 daughters, including:

  • Auguste (born June 23, 1816 - January 19, 1844) ⚭ 1839 Theodor Thrinkler († March 8, 1871), member of the government
  • Elise (April 19, 1818 - January 18, 1849)
  • Theodor Bernhard (born November 25, 1820 - † March 30, 1886), member of the government
  • Frederike (September 5, 1822; † October 26, 1861) ⚭ 1845 Immanuel Hegel (1814–1891) Consistorial President, son of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
  • Klara (born January 2, 1825) ⚭ 1865 Immanuel Hegel
  • Hermann (born June 26, 1826; † April 20, 1873) ⚭ 1856 Johanna Pauline von Frantzius (born May 7, 1834)
  • Adalbert Julius (* February 3, 1829 - May 29, 1909) ⚭ 1860 Ella von Oppen (* December 7, 1841)

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Andrea Schmidt-Rösler: Poland. From the Middle Ages to the present . Pustet, Regensburg 1996, p. 82.
  2. ^ Jürgen Heyde: History of Poland . CH Beck, 3rd edition, Munich 2011, p. 62.
  3. ↑ Hans Haussherr:  Flottwell, Heinrich Eduard von. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 5, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1961, ISBN 3-428-00186-9 , p. 257 f. ( Digitized version ).
  4. ^ Manfred Alexander: Small history of Poland . Reclam, Stuttgart 2007, p. 211.
  5. ↑ Stefan Hartmann: Review: Dzieje Wielkopolski, Tom II: Lata 1793-1918 . In: Zeitschrift für Ostforschung 25 (1976), p. 505.
  6. ^ Helmut Glück, Konrad Schröder: Learning German in the Polish Countries from the 15th Century to 1918. A partially commented bibliography . Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2007, p. XXIII.
  7. ^ Elisabeth Kraus: The Mosse family: German-Jewish bourgeoisie in the 19th and 20th centuries . CH Beck, Munich 1999, p. 63.
  8. ^ Robert E. Alvis: Religion And The Rise Of Nationalism. A Profile Of An East-Central European City . Syracuse UP, Syracuse 2005, pp. 51f.
  9. ↑ Hamburg honorary citizen ( Memento from September 25, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
  10. ↑ Short biography of the University of Magdeburg
  11. ↑ Honorary Citizen of Berlin ( Memento from July 29, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
  12. ↑ Handbook of the Prussian Nobility , Volume 1, 1892, page 150
personal data
SURNAME Flottwell, Eduard von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Flottwell, Eduard Heinrich von (full name); Flottwell, Eduard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German administrative lawyer and politician in Prussia
DATE OF BIRTH July 23, 1786
PLACE OF BIRTH Insterburg , East Prussia
DATE OF DEATH May 28, 1865
Place of death Berlin