Emanuel Meier

Emanuel Meier as envoy from Baden at the Rastatt Congress

Emanuel Meier (born October 17, 1746 in Müllheim (Baden) , † June 5, 1817 in Karlsruhe ) was a lawyer and a Baden civil servant and politician.

Live and act

Meier was the eldest son of the merchant Emanuel Meier and his wife Marie Elisabethe (née Daler) , the daughter of the church council and special superintendent Philipp Jacob Daler (1668–1763) from Müllheim. In his first marriage, Meier was married to Willhelmine Rosine Maler (1747–1809), the daughter of the rector of the Illustrious Gymnasium in Karlsruhe , the church councilor Jakob Friedrich Maler (1714–1764). After her death in 1809, he married Sophie Steinheil (1753–1827), widow of Chamber Councilor Christoph Friedrich Lidell (1720–1793), a friend of his late first wife , in 1811 . The first marriage resulted in six children, of which only the last three survived childhood, including the later General Staff Doctor Wilhelm Meier (1785-1853), through whose female descendants the Meiers later became related to the Princely House.

At an early age, at the age of five, orphaned by the death of both parents within a week, Meier was looked after by grandfather Daler . He was the only one of the four siblings to reach adulthood - two sisters had already died in infancy before their parents, while the three years younger brother Philipp Jacob died in 1765 as a teenager. On the initiative of his grandfather, who did not miss his grandson's talent, he attended the illustrious grammar school in Karlsruhe, where he met his daughter Willhelmine Rosine , his future wife, as a boarder in the house of the church councilor Jakob Friedrich Maler . After graduating from high school, according to his grandfather's wishes and his own inclination, he first studied theology at the University of Halle , but after his and his younger brother's death, at the insistence of his guardians, he switched to law and continued this study at the University of Göttingen , from where he moved to 1768 Karlsruhe returned to join the Baden state service as a lawyer after taking the exam. In 1771 he was appointed real secretary to the Privy Council and married that same year. The further career path led through the court council, court court and church council, the administration of the rent chamber up to the appointment on July 5, 1790 as a real secret council and member of the secret council college, the cabinet of Karl Friedrich von Baden. the cabinet of Karl Friedrich von Baden, which is not yet subdivided into departments . He belonged to this group for almost 27 years until his death.

Due to his extensive technical knowledge, his reliability and his hard work, Meier became one of the most important members of the Privy Council, which played a key role in almost all important decisions and reform measures through its memoranda, its study of files and its weighty contributions to the discussion, always advising moderation, caution and restraint , and the closest confidante of the princely family in their personal legal affairs. According to the verdict of the Privy Councilor and Chief Justice Baron Karl Wilhelm Ludwig Friedrich von Drais von Sauerbronn , who devoted an unusually detailed biographical portrait to him in his necrology attached as an appendix to his history of the government and formation of Baden , he was “one of our most distinguished statesmen in terms of ingenuity , in extensive and many work, in precise knowledge of the country, in the spirit of implementation, in faithful perseverance into old age. " Like his close friend and colleague Johann Nicolaus Friedrich Brauer , he attached great importance to an ethical foundation of political action and was therefore an opponent and critic of Sigismund von Reitzenstein's research and opportunistic interest and reform policy . Significant for his way of thinking is a contribution to the debate by Meier communicated by Friedrich von Weech from the minutes of the deliberations held from January 23 to March 4, 1815 on the establishment of a state constitution for the Grand Duchy of Baden: “He (Staatsrath Meier) knows no difference between the Duties of a civil servant and those of a citizen and representative of the people. The one and the other are bound to always have the inseparable welfare of the regent and the country in mind, to advise them to the best of their knowledge and belief, and to promote them with all possible strength. Nevertheless, one could have different opinions about the admission of civil servants (as state deputies of the second chamber). He regards the free, impartial choice of a servant as evidence that the voters, regardless of his employment relationships, have confidence in him. "

From 1797 to 1799 he represented Baden's interests at the Peace Congress in Rastatt , where he was involved in the rescue of the French ambassador Heinrich Karl Rosenstiel on the occasion of the murder of the Rastatt ambassadors , and again in 1802 at the Reich Deputation Congress in Regensburg . After the introduction of the department system, Meier was assigned to the State Department (Foreign Affairs) in 1807, after the renewed reform in 1808 he became Ministerial Director in the Department of Foreign Affairs and a member of the State Council. At the deliberations on the establishment of a constitution for the Grand Duchy of Baden that were held in the same year on the basis of a sovereign ordinance of July 5, the draft of which, drawn up by Friedrich Brauer and signed by the members of the State Council, was nevertheless not to come into force due to the following war events Meier involved. Hardly covertly, he criticized the decision of his employer, Karl-Friedrich von Baden, to publicly promise not only to establish a constitution, but also to provide for a state representation (i.e. an elected parliament) as a mistake, the problematic consequences of which must now be contained . He was quite skeptical about their possible benefits. In any case, their influence on legislation and tax collection, in order to prevent damage to the Grand Duchy, is kept to a minimum. On the other hand, it is not enough to “just introduce them pro forma” “ut aliquid fecisse videamur” (so that it looks as if we have done something). Meier explicitly warned against the content of the new constitutions of the Kingdom of Westphalia and the Kingdom of Bavaria , to which Karl-Friedrich had referred in the regulation. This reference only refers to the an (whether), but not to the quomodo (how).

In 1809 Meier contracted a life-threatening typhoid infection , to which his wife, who was also sick, fell victim. Despite the support of his second wife, he found it difficult to recover from this stroke of fate. The hardly to be expected return of his son Wilhelm from the Russian campaign in 1812 and the birth of grandchildren allowed him to find new courage to face life and to regain his labor.

After Napoleon Bonaparte's defeat in the Battle of Leipzig , in which his son Wilhelm had participated as a member of the Baden contingent until the change of front after the Frankfurt accession treaty of November 20, 1813, he was therefore considered one of the most experienced (brewer 1813 died) Appointed in 1814 by Karl Ludwig Friedrich von Baden as a member of the government commission, which was responsible for running Baden during the absence of the Grand Duke in Paris and later in Vienna . He was also in 1815 Chairman of the Commission to draw up a constitution for Baden whose submitted on 4 March 1815 draft should, however, shall not be valid, but one of Karl Friedrich Nebenius had to give compiled version, which after death Meiers of Grand Duke Karl Ludwig Friedrich signed by Baden on August 22, 1818.

Emanuel Meier died in Karlsruhe on June 5, 1817 . For his services, Meier was awarded an honorary doctorate utriusque iuris in 1803 after being given a riding horse by Prince Wilhelm Ludwig von Baden-Durlach (1732–1788), Karl Friedrich's younger brother , and the necessary forage himself the University of Heidelberg and on June 11, 1815, the appointment to the Grand Cross of the newly founded Zähringen Order of Lions .

literature

• Gereon Becht-Jördens: The real secret advice and later state advice Emanuel Meier (1746-1817). A life in the service of Karl Friedrich von Baden, in: Hermann Wiegand, Ulrich Nieß (Hrsg.): Karl Friedrich von Baden. Margrave, Elector, Grand Duke (series of publications by the Karl-Friedrich-Gymnasium Mannheim in cooperation with the Mannheim City Archives - Institute for City History 1). Wellhöfer, Mannheim 2012, pp. 95–135, Meier's portrait ibid. Ill. P. 95; his résumés and other sources ibid. pp. 109–135. ISBN 978-3-939540-97-7
• Gerald Maria Landgraf: "Moderate et prudenter" - studies on the enlightened reform policy of Karl-Friedrich von Baden (1728-1811). Diss. Regensburg 2008 (online). [5]
• Hans Merkle: The "plus-mover". The Baden statesman Sigismund von Reitzenstein and his time. Braun, Karlsruhe 2006, ISBN 978-3-7650-8352-5 .
• Christian Würtz: Johann Niklas Friedrich Brauer (1754-1813). Baden reformer in Napoleonic times (publications by the Commission for Historical Regional Studies in Baden-Württemberg, Series B Research 159). Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2005. ISBN 3-17-018497-0
• Christian Würtz: Emanuel Meier (1746-1817). In: Das Markgräflerland , Volume 2/2004, pp. 74–92. Digitized version of the Freiburg University Library
• Albert Eisele: Emanuel Meier, the great son of Müllheim. In: Das Markgräflerland, 23, 1961, Issue 1, pp. 189–191, digitized version of the Freiburg University Library
• Willy Andreas : History of the Baden administrative organization and constitution in the years 1802-1818, Vol. 1 (no more published). Quelle & Meyer, Leipzig 1913.
• Carl Friedrich Nebenius: Karl Friedrich von Baden. Edited by Friedrich von Weech . Müller, Karlsruhe 1868 [6] .
• Friedrich von Weech: The eighth and ninth Baden constitution edict. In: Zeitschrift für die Geschichte des Oberrheins 46, 1892, pp. 249-313.
• Friedrich von Weech: History of the Baden constitution. A. Bielefeld, Karlsruhe 1868. [7]
• Wilhelm Meier: Memories from the campaigns 1806 to 1815. From the papers left by a military doctor. Müller, Karlsruhe 1854 [8]
• Carl Wilhelm Friedrich Ludwig von Drais : History of the government and education of Baden under Carl Friedrich, Bd. 1–2. Müller, Karlsruhe 1816-1818, here vol. 2. [9]

swell

• Political correspondence of Karl Friedrich von Baden 1783-1806 ; Vol. 1-6, ed. by Bernhard Erdmannsdörffer, Karl Obser. Winter, Heidelberg 1888-1915.
• Recuil des portraits des ministres et députés au congrès de Rastadt, en 1797, 1798 et 1799, 6 deliveries, Decker and Nouvelle librairie Française, Basel Darmstadt 1799-1802

See also in the chapter "Literature" the work of Andreas; Becht-Jördens; Landgrave; from Weech; Würtz.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ On his writings cf. [1]
2. ↑ On his writings cf. [2] .
3. ↑ See Christoph Friedrich Lidell in Stadtlexikon. karlsruhe.de ; Christoph Friedrich Lidell in ka.stadtwiki.net .
4. ↑ See Becht-Jördens (see literature below), pp. 104f .; P. 116; P. 118.
5. ↑ See Wilhelm Meier, memories from the campaigns 1806 to 1815; from the papers left behind by a military doctor. Müller, Karlsruhe 1854; Friedrich von Weech , Wilhelm Meier, in: Ders., Badische Biographien, Vol. 1–6, Heidelberg 1875-1935, Vol. 2, 1875, p. 71; Portrait [3] .
6. ^ The daughter of Wilhelm Meier, Emilie von Beust, b. Meier (1820–1878), was the mother of the morganatic wife of Prince Karl von Baden (1832–1906), Countess Rosalie Luise von Rhena, born. Freiin von Beust (1845–1908), and thus grandmother of Count Friedrich von Rhena (1877–1908), who emerged from this connection .
7. ↑ See Becht-Jördens (see literature below), pp. 100–102; Pp. 110-115.
8. ↑ See Becht-Jördens (see literature below), p. 119.
9. ↑ See Becht-Jördens (see literature below), note 7, p. 98; Note 19, p. 104.
10. ↑ Drais, History of the Government and Education of Baden (see literature below), Vol. 2, Supplements, No. XII Samples of a necrology from particularly deserving locals and a few foreigners, relating to the margravial time of Carl Friederich, pp. 99f., the quote on p. 99 [4] .
11. ↑ See Würtz, Johann Niklas Friedrich Brauer (see literature below), esp.p. 65.
12. ^ Friedrich von Weech: History of the Baden constitution. A. Bielefeld, Karlsruhe 1868, p. 11f.
13. ↑ Cf. Friedrich von Weech: History of the Baden Constitution. A. Bielefeld, Karlsruhe 1868, p. 152f .; P. 169f., The following excerpt p. 170: “If one wants to consult the representatives on the first subject (ie legislation), one has to expect a lot of writing, a lot of stay and little that is good, and least of all it would be advisable to allow the representatives to take a decisive share in the legislative power (blocked in the original), and consequently to make it (ie the legislative power) divisible between the sovereign and the people. In other respects it is just as dubious to be bound by the consent of the representatives with regard to the conditions. "Since the" public promise (His Royal Highness, the Grand Duke) has been made, a state representation [... ] "and" The very ones who will not want to take back your given word without further ado, [...] something will have to happen that could either consist in constituting a state committee, but restricting its cognition solely to finance [. ..] and only when new conditions are required, his consent is obtained, or by choosing a means to provide the country with a guarantee in itself and without outside influence that the country's constitution will always be upheld and unharmed. "
14. ↑ See Becht-Jördens (see literature below), pp. 105-107; Pp. 125–127 (Meier's own notes in CV I); Wilhelm Meier (see literature below), p. 75f.
15. ↑ See Wilhelm Meier (see literature below), pp. 89–93.
16. ↑ See Becht-Jördens (see literature below), pp. 127–130.
17. ↑ Cf. Ina Ulrike Paul, Die Völkerschlacht bei Leipzig in the culture of remembrance of Southwest Germany 1813–1913, in: Martin Hofbauer, Martin Rink (ed.), Die Völkerschlacht bei Leipzig. Processes, consequences, meanings 1813-1913-2013. de Gruyter, Berlin Boston 2016, ISBN 9783110464887 , p. 259.
18. ↑ See von Weech, Geschichte (see literature below), p. 6; P. 11f .; Pp. 166-170, especially p. 169; Pp. 176-184, especially p. 184.
19. ↑ On the history of the constitutional reform in Baden, cf. Würtz, Johann Niklas Brauer, pp. 211-269; Pp. 351-383; Andreas, pp. 56-73; Pp. 81-85; Pp. 153-227; Pp. 259-271; Pp. 322-350; Pp. 366-484; von Weech, esp. pp. 6-19; Pp. 166-170; Pp. 176–184, there also the texts of the various draft constitution (all see literature below).
20. ↑ See Becht-Jördens (see literature below), p. 118; P. 123; P. 130.