Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach

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Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach

Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach (born March 7, 1795 in Berlin ; † February 18, 1877 there ) was a Prussian politician , journalist and judge . He is considered to be one of the leading founders and masterminds of the Conservative Party in Prussia and for a long time was its parliamentary group leader in the Prussian House of Representatives . Like his brother Leopold von Gerlach, he belonged to the circle around the “Kreuzzeitung” , which he was also involved in founding.

Life

Origin and youth

Gerlach was born in 1795 as the fourth child of the first Lord Mayor of Berlin, Carl Friedrich Leopold von Gerlach , into a typical family of the Prussian nobility. Among his brothers ( see also Gebrüder Gerlach ) were the future general and adjutant of the Prussian King Leopold von Gerlach and the theologian and court preacher Otto von Gerlach . Between 1810 and 1815 Ernst Ludwig studied (with interruptions) law at the newly founded University of Berlin, then in Göttingen and Heidelberg and fought in the Wars of Liberation from 1813 to 1815 , most recently in the rank of officer, where he was wounded several times.

One of the most formative experiences in Gerlach's life turned out to be the acquaintance and friendship with Adolf von Thadden-Trieglaff , whom he met for the first time in Berlin in 1815. Promoted not least by this contact, he and his brother Leopold took a lively part in the Pomeranian revival movement from the 1820s . The religious imprint he received through neo-pietism in his youth accompanied him, his actions and thoughts, throughout his life. His acquaintance with the young Otto von Bismarck also dates from this time and this circle.

Prussian State Service

View of a page from one of Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach's diaries, entry from September 23, 1817 ( Gerlach Archive )

Gerlach entered the Prussian judicial service in 1820 and became a higher regional judge in Naumburg (Saale) in 1823 . From 1829 he was regional and city court director in Halle and from 1835 vice-president of the higher regional court in Frankfurt (Oder) , succeeding his late brother Wilhelm. Already in 1827 Gerlach, u. a. with Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg and August Tholuck , the "Evangelical Church Newspaper", which developed into the leading organ of the early conservatives in Vormärz .

He was a member of the "Klubs in der Wilhelmstrasse", which had set itself the task of reconstructing the Christian-Germanic state, and worked for the "Berliner Politisches Wochenblatt", which appeared from 1831 to 1841 (not to be confused with the "Preussisches Wochenblatt") , 1851 to 1861). In 1842 he became a Privy Senior Justice , and soon afterwards a member of the Council of State and the legislative commission under Friedrich Carl von Savigny . In addition to being an expert on the planned establishment of a press court, Gerlach was employed here as a consultant for a further intended reform of Prussian marriage law. In 1844 he became chief president of the Higher Regional and Appeal Court in Magdeburg, where he fought the Friends of Light together with his brother Leopold, the consistorial president Carl Friedrich Göschel and others . In 1874 he took his leave.

Political career in parliament and journalism

The events of the revolutionary year of 1848 strengthened Gerlach's willingness to become active in politics. After he saw in March of hostility on the part of Berlin and Magdeburg Revolutionary regarding his Magdeburg judicial office exposed - which confirmed him in his own words in his positions only - he appeared on the " Junker Parliament " called General of the " Association for the protection of the interests of the Landownership and for the Promotion of the Prosperity of All Classes ”in the summer of 1848 with a high-profile speech for the old conservative positions. He and his brother Leopold also played an important role in the so-called " camarilla " around King Friedrich Wilhelm IV .: A group of influential politicians who tried to influence the governance with the king in their favor. From the same circle he also founded the “Neue Preußische Zeitung” with Friedrich Julius Stahl in the course of 1848 , which was later called “Kreuzzeitung” because of the Iron Cross on the title page, and its editor was Hermann Wagener , a confidante Gerlachs, took over. Gerlach later wrote the monthly or quarterly “Rundschau” for the paper in the sense of the old conservative direction.

Since 1849 a member of the First Chamber of the Prussian Landtag , later the mansion, he again fought alongside Stahl as chairman of the young Conservative Party in a persistent struggle against radical liberalism and democracy and for the restoration of the “godly”, pre-revolutionary order of the ancien Regime . He also represented the same views as a member of the Erfurt Union Parliament . Revolution and absolutism were seen in his political thinking as equally devastating deviations from the ideal of a well-ordered, i.e. H. Christian state corresponding to God's will to create. The development of his political views was shaped early by the writings of Karl Ludwig von Haller and later by the acquaintance and close cooperation with Friedrich Julius Stahl.

In 1852 Gerlach was elected to the House of Representatives of the Prussian state parliament for the constituency of Köslin and in 1855 became the founder and chairman of the conservative parliamentary group named after him (“Fraktion Gerlach”). With the beginning of the reign of Wilhelm I (from 1858, for his mentally ill brother Friedrich Wilhelm IV.) He lost his state parliament mandate again as a result of an unprecedented electoral defeat by the Conservatives and thus resigned from the leadership of the Conservative Party, but was looking for the author of the " Rundschau ”in the“ Kreuzzeitung ”continues to assert his political views.

Late years and a break with Bismarck

He rejected the war against Austria of 1866 for reasons of solidarity with the ruling princes as well as the annexations in northern Germany and the driving out of Austria from Germany, as in the brochure "The annexations and the North German Confederation" (1866). In the Prussian state parliament since 1873 he showed himself to be one of the fiercest opponents of the church laws of Bismarck's culture war and joined the Center Party (as a "guest") . With this he drew the personal hostility of Otto von Bismarck , with whom he had been friends for decades and in whose political rise he and his brother Leopold were not insignificant. Because of his essay "The Civil Marriage and the Reich Chancellor", Bismarck's indictment was brought against him in 1874 for making the authorities contemptuous (Section 131 of the Criminal Code). Gerlach was subsequently fined and the distribution of the writing was banned, which only increased its sales even more. Gerlach then took a voluntary farewell as court president in Magdeburg, which Wilhelm I granted him.

tomb

In 1877 he was elected again as a member of the Reichstag of the Welfen party for the constituency of Hanover 4 (Osnabrück), where he joined the parliamentary group as a guest in the Reichstag. But already on February 18, 1877, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach died at the age of 81 from the consequences of a traffic accident that occurred on the evening of the 16th at the Schöneberg Bridge in Berlin. He is buried in the Dom-Friedhof II in Berlin-Mitte.

The judgment of historical scholarship about Gerlach is quite ambivalent. The historian Hans-Joachim Schoeps emphasized Gerlach's basic religious motivation:

“All in all, Gerlach was less historically than systematically oriented, but not a man of objective science [...]. Ultimately, he must be seen as a systematic theocrat , probably the only one in modern history. He believed in the kingdom of God and viewed it as a political system; he looked at the hustle and bustle of the day and held against it God's eternal demands - as political slogans. It is only from this knowledge that an understanding of the man and his work becomes apparent. Any criticism that is purely political-historical, on the other hand, fails because he was concerned with the metapolitical, with something that is more than history. "

- Hans-Joachim Schoeps : Gerlach, Ernst Ludwig , in: Neue Deutsche Biographie 6 (1964), pp. 296-299.

Gerlach archive

The estate of Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach today forms the core of the Gerlach Archive , the Gerlach family archive , which Hans-Joachim Schoeps was able to acquire for the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in 1954 . The focus of the holdings is the so-called “Rohrbeck Archive”, which contains Ludwig von Gerlach's extensive correspondence (approx. 15,000 letters from almost 9,000 correspondents), as well as some relatives, various official and political documents and his diaries (1815–1877). Today it is located at the political science institute of the university and was newly developed from 2012 to 2015. Since the end of the recording project in spring 2015, the holdings of the archive in the Kalliope union catalog for autographs and personal papers have been fully cataloged.

literature

  • Hellmut Diwald (Ed.): From the Revolution to the North German Confederation. Politics and ideas of the Prussian highly conservative 1848–1866 , 2 volumes. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1970.
  • Michael Dreyer : Gerlach, Ernst Ludwig von . In: Wolfgang Benz : Handbook of Antisemitism . Anti-Semitism in Past and Present , Volume 2/1, De Gruyter Saur, Berlin / Boston, Mass. 2009, ISBN 978-3-598-24072-0 , pp. 276 ff.
  • Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach: Notes from his life and work 1795–1877. Published by Jakob von Gerlach. 2 volumes. Bahn, Schwerin 1903;
    • Volume 1: 1795-1848.
    • Volume 2: 1848-1877.
  • Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach: God's grace and freedom. Selected political writings from the years 1863 to 1866. Edited and provided with an afterword by Hans-Christof Kraus . Karolinger, Vienna et al. 2011, ISBN 978-3-85418-141-5 .
  • Jürgen von Gerlach : Von Gerlach, life pictures of a family in six centuries . Degener, Insingen 2015, ISBN 978-3-7686-5209-4 .
  • Bernd Haunfelder : Biographical manual for the Prussian House of Representatives 1849–1867 (= manuals on the history of parliamentarism and political parties. Volume 5). Droste, Düsseldorf 1994, ISBN 3-7700-5181-5 , p. 280, no. 482, Gerlach, Ernst Ludwig von.
  • Hans-Christof Kraus: Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach. political thinking and action of a Prussian old conservative (= series of publications by the Historical Commission at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences. Vol. 53, 1-2). 2 volumes. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1994, ISBN 3-525-36046-0 (At the same time: Göttingen, Universität, Dissertation, 1992).
  • Hans-Joachim Schoeps (Ed.): From the years of Prussian hardship and renewal. Diaries and letters from the Gerlach brothers and their circle 1805–1820 . Haude & Spenersche Verlagbuchhandlung, Berlin 1966.
  • Hans-Joachim Schoeps :  Gerlach, Ernst Ludwig. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 6, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1964, ISBN 3-428-00187-7 , pp. 296-299 ( digitized version ).
  • Karl Wippermann :  Gerlach, Ludwig von . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 9, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1879, pp. 9-14.

Web links

Commons : Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cf. Kraus: Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach. 1994, p. 33 ff.
  2. ↑ Cf. Kraus: Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach. 1994, p. 398.
  3. ^ Fritz Specht, Paul Schwabe: The Reichstag elections from 1867 to 1903. Statistics of the Reichstag elections together with the programs of the parties and a list of the elected representatives. 2nd Edition. Carl Heymann Verlag, Berlin 1904, p. 117.
personal data
SURNAME Gerlach, Ernst Ludwig von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (Conservative Party), lawyer and publicist, MdR
DATE OF BIRTH March 7, 1795
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH February 18, 1877
Place of death Berlin