Feodor von Gnauth

Feodor von Gnauth (born June 24, 1854 in Stuttgart , † February 21, 1916 in Cologne-Mülheim ) was a German politician, Lord Mayor of Giessen and Minister of Finance of the Grand Duchy of Hesse .

family

Feodor von Gnauth was the son of the lithographer Adolf Gnauth sen. (1812–1876) and his wife Marie Kasten (1818–1868). His brother Adolf Gnauth (1840–1884) was an architect (among other things he built the Villa Siegle in Stuttgart), architectural painter and professor at the Nuremberg School of Applied Arts.

Life

After graduating from high school, he studied civil engineering at the TH Stuttgart from 1873-77 and graduated as a civil engineer. He worked for the Württemberg Railway Construction Commission and in the construction of the Hohenzollern Railway and joined the Hohenzollern State Construction Office in 1878 . In 1880 he passed the 2nd state examination and became a district architect in Hechingen . In 1882 he became district engineer in the district of Gießen and provincial engineer of the province of Upper Hesse in Gießen, responsible for road construction.

politics

From 1886 he was an alderman of the city of Gießen and in 1889 became mayor (in 1890 he received the character of mayor).

In 1900 he was appointed head of the Hessian Ministry of Finance and served as Minister of Finance in Hesse from 1901 to 1911. From 1905 to 1910 he was the Hessian representative in the Federal Council .

His attempts to eliminate the national debt by increasing the income tax by a third and the wealth tax by almost half led to a conflict with the state estates of the Grand Duchy of Hesse , the Hessian state parliament. In particular, Cornelius Wilhelm von Heyl zu Herrnsheim , manufacturer and leading member of the first chamber, opposed these plans. After the state parliament opposed him in a joint closed meeting of both committees on February 24, 1910, he gave up his ministerial office. Fedor von Gnauth was the only minister in the Grand Duchy to give up his post due to the distrust of parliament.

General Director

A few months after his resignation, Gnauth moved to Mülheim am Rhein and became General Director of Felten & Guilleaume .

Awards

The universities of Giessen and Darmstadt made him an honorary doctorate.

literature

• Friedrich Knöpp:  Gnauth, Feodor. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 6, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1964, ISBN 3-428-00187-7 , p. 483 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Eckhart G. Franz : Hessen-Darmstadt 1820–1935. In: Klaus Schwabe (Ed.): The governments of the German medium and small states. 1815–1933 (= German leadership classes in modern times. Volume 14 = Büdinger research on social history. Volume 18). Boldt, Boppard am Rhein 1983, ISBN 3-7646-1830-2 , p. 298.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Gnauth was not aristocratic, see # Knöpp 1964 .