Ernst August I. (Hanover)

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Ernst August I. (around 1842)
Signature of Ernst August I.
Coat of arms of Ernst August, 1st Duke of Cumberland and Teviotdale
Crowned italic monogram Ernst August I. "EAR" (Ernst August Rex)

Ernst August I. (born Prince Ernst August, Duke of Braunschweig-Lüneburg ; in Great Britain Prince Ernest Augustus, 1st Duke of Cumberland and Teviotdale, KG , KP , GCB , GCH ; born June 5, 1771 in Buckingham House , London ; † November 18, 1851 in Hanover ) was a British prince from the House of Hanover , a branch line of the Guelphs and, since 1837, King of Hanover .

Life

Military career

Ernst August I. (around 1840)
Memorial plaque for the former prince's house and its famous guests in Göttingen

Prince Ernst August was born at Buckingham Palace in 1771 . He was the fifth son and the eighth child of King George III. of Great Britain and Ireland and Queen Sophie Charlotte . Ernst August was brought up by private tutors and in the summer of 1786 went to Göttingen to study with his brothers, Prince August Friedrich and Adolph Friedrich under the supervision of Georg Christoph Lichtenberg . In 1791 he entered and Adolph Friedrich in the Hanoverian army in order by Field Marshal Wilhelm von Freytag to receive military training. Ernst August received cavalry and tactical training from Captain von Linsingen from the Light Dragoons. He proved to be an excellent rider and a good marksman, although he was very myopic. After only two months of training, Field Marshal von Freytag was so impressed by the progress of his pupil that he appointed him Rittmeister .

In March 1792 Ernst August received the patent of a colonel of the 9th Hanoverian light dragoons and in December 1793 was appointed chief of the 2nd heavy cavalry regiment and commander of the 1st cavalry brigade. During the First Coalition War (1793-97) he was stationed in Flanders and served under his older brother Friedrich, Duke of York and Albany , the commander-in-chief of the combined British, Hanoverian and Austrian troops. He lost his left eye in the Battle of Tourcoing (1794) and returned to England to recover - for the first time since 1786. He returned the following year and commanded the rear guard as the British Army retreated through Holland. In 1798 Ernst August was promoted to lieutenant general and in 1803 to general. On March 29, 1801 he was appointed field marshal. He served from 1801 to 1827 as Colonel of Honor of the 15th ( The King's ) (light) Dragoon (Hussar) Regiment of the Royal German Legion and was Colonel of the Royal Horse Guards from 1827 to 1830. With the royal dignity he also took over the supreme command of the Hanoverian army .

Marriage and British nobility

His father, King George III, accepted him in 1776 as a Knight Companion in the Order of the Garter and on August 29, 1799 awarded him the hereditary British peer title Duke of Cumberland and Teviotdale and the hereditary Irish peer title Earl of Armagh . On May 29, 1815, the now Duke married his cousin Princess Friederike , the daughter of Charles II , Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz in Neustrelitz . She had become pregnant as the widow of Prince Ludwig of Prussia and was only saved from a scandal by marrying Prince Friedrich Wilhelm zu Solms-Braunfels . This second marriage turned out to be unhappy and the plans for a divorce were already in progress when the Prince zu Solms-Braunfels suddenly died of a stroke . This is why Queen Charlotte was against this marriage, even though her scandalous future daughter-in-law was her niece. The new Duchess of Cumberland and Teviotdale had eight children in their previous marriages, six of whom she brought into their third marriage. The marriage with Ernst August produced three more children, only one of whom survived - a son, who later became King George V of Hanover .

The Prince Regent and later King George IV appointed him Knight Grand Cross of the Bath Order and Knight Grand Cross of the Guelph Order in 1815 , in 1831 he became Knight Companion of the St. Patrick Order and in 1837, after his accession to the throne in Hanover, he became sovereign and Grand Master of the Guelph Order. In 1839 he founded the Order of St. George as the Hanoverian house order .

Ernst August was the most controversial of the sons of George III. He was considered the arch-reactionary and opposed the Catholic Emancipation ( Catholic Emancipation Bill ), which in 1828 by the Prime Minister , the first Duke of Wellington , was promoted.

King of Hanover

After the personal union between Great Britain and Hanover ended in 1837, King Ernst August moved to Hanover; here city director Wilhelm Rumann (right in the center of the picture) symbolically hands him the keys to Hanover;
Image relief by August Waterbeck as part of the historical frieze on the New Town Hall of Hanover

William IV , King of Great Britain and Ireland, died on June 20, 1837 . Since he - like his brother George IV before - did not leave any descendants entitled to inherit, his niece Victoria , the only child of Prince Edward , the late Duke of Kent and Strathearn and fourth son of George III, succeeded him on the throne. In Hanover, however, the Sali law applied , which provided for male succession. Therefore, Victoria could not succeed on the Hanover throne. Instead of her, her uncle Ernst August, Duke of Cumberland and Teviotdale, became King of Hanover at the age of 66. This ended the 123-year personal union between Great Britain and Hanover .

Around 1850: “Sr. Most Blessed Majesty's Study of the King of Hanover” in the Old Palace ;
bw photo by Wilhelm August Degèle in the Ernst August album from 1861/62 of an originally multi-colored gouache by Wilhelm Kretschmer

King Ernst August turned out to be an unpopular ruler with an anti-liberal style of government, who repealed the relatively free constitutional constitution that his predecessors had enacted in 1833 when he took office in 1837. The highly acclaimed protest of the Göttingen Seven was directed against the repeal of the constitution in 1837 , all of whom were then dismissed as professors at the University of Göttingen . After the outbreak of the unrest in 1848, he did not use the addition “VGG” for “by God's grace” when minting the thalers in 1848 and 1849, which was interpreted as a concession to the revolutionaries (“ fear thalers ”) who did not want to recognize God's grace .

With the fall of the French King Louis Philippe I as a result of the February Revolution and the announcement of this event in the newspapers in Hanover on February 25, 1848, the citizens of the Kingdom of Hanover were also encouraged to make liberal demands. On March 6, 1848, the Hanover Citizens Committee addressed a petition with liberal demands to King Ernst August I. The latter initially hesitated to make concessions. But the demands for civil arming in other cities threatened to spark a revolution against the monarchy. In order to prevent such a revolution, Ernst August I was persuaded by Alexander Levin Graf von Bennigsen to consent to reforms. He appointed the liberal politician Johann Carl Bertram Stüve as Minister of the Interior and commissioned him to create a contemporary constitution. This came into force on September 5, 1848. It guaranteed freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, the separation of judiciary and administration, and equal rights for all denominations. In this way, Ernst August I achieved popularity among the people in his last years in reign.

Equestrian statue of the Ernst August Monument on Ernst August Platz in front of Hanover Central Station

Ernst August died on November 18, 1851 at 6.45 a.m. in Hanover. He was first laid out in the throne room of the Leineschloss . 30,000 people visited his coffin within two days. On November 25, 1851, a funeral service was celebrated in the castle church. After that, he was great participation of the population in 1847 by court architect Laves completed Welfenmausoleum in mountain garden laid to rest, as well as his Queen Friederike.

Freemasonry

Ernst August was accepted into Freemasonry in England in 1796 . From 1828 he was Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Hanover, which he founded .

monument

In 1861, his son Georg V unveiled the Ernst August monument as an equestrian statue on the forecourt of the main train station in Hanover , which is a popular meeting place - people arrange to meet “under the tail” (of the horse).

See also

literature

Web links

Commons : Ernst August I.  - Collection of pictures

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Alexander Dylong: Hanover's last ruler . MatrixMedia, Göttingen 2012, ISBN 978-3-932313-49-3 , p. 73, 81 .
  2. ↑ Dieter Brosius : Restoration and the "fateful year" 1866 , in: History of the City of Hanover , ed. by Klaus Mlynek and Waldemar R. Röhrbein, Vol. 2: From the beginning of the 19th century to the present , Hanover: Schlütersche Verlagsanstalt und Druckerei , ISBN 3-87706-364-0 , p. 311
  3. ↑ Helmut Knocke , Hugo Thielen : Mausoleum , in: Hannover Art and Culture Lexicon , p. 92
  4. ^ Eugen Lennhoff / Oskar Posner: International Freemason Lexicon. Almathea-Verlag Munich 1980, reprint from 1932, ISBN 3-85002-038-X
predecessor Office successor
William IV King of Hanover
1837–1851 		George V.
New title created Duke of Cumberland and Teviotdale
1799-1851 		George V.
personal data
SURNAME Ernst August I.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hanover, Ernst August I. King of
BRIEF DESCRIPTION King of Hanover, 1st Duke of Cumberland
DATE OF BIRTH June 5, 1771
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH November 18, 1851
Place of death Hanover