Ferdinand Eberstadt

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Ferdinand Falk Eberstadt (born January 14, 1808 in Worms ; died February 9, 1888 in Mannheim ) was a German businessman and politician .

Life

Ferdinand Eberstadt came from a Jewish family recorded in Worms since the 17th century . His parents were Amschel Löb (August Ludwig) Eberstadt (1771-1839) and Esther Gernsheim (1775-1819). Eberstadt married Sara Zelie Seligmann from Kreuznach on January 10, 1837 in Worms . Together they had ten children, including Bertha , married in Mannheim.

Ferdinand Eberstadt attended secondary school (today: Gauß-Gymnasium Worms ) in Worms, without a known school leaving certificate, and then joined his father's company. On February 1, 1839, he and his brothers took over the company, whose power of attorney he had held since March 1, 1828. He became a successful businessman.

Ferdinand Eberstadt was a member of the board of directors of the Jewish community in Worms from at least 1840 to 1847 . He was one of those Jews in Worms, which the liberalization of Jewish worship operated. At Easter 1847 the first German church service was celebrated, whereby - also for the first time - the separation between women and men in the synagogue was abolished.

In 1847 Ferdinand Eberstadt was elected lay judge at the Assize in Mainz. At the same time he was a member of the Chamber of Commerce , the High Committee and the Emergency and Relief Society.

Active participant in the revolution of 1848

Ferdinand Eberstadt was a member of the democratically-minded citizens' committee , which on March 1, 1848, sent an address from the Worms to their deputy in Darmstadt and later supervised the execution of the approval of the edict of the Grand Duke of Hesse of March 6, 1848.

After the committee was dissolved, the Worms Democratic Association was founded on June 21, 1848, and Ferdinand Eberstadt was a member of its board. At times he was also president of the association (December 1848).

On April 10, 1848, the Wehrrat took the lead in the Worms vigilante group . Ferdinand Eberstadt worked as a member on the drafting of a provisional defense law for the city of Worms, which came into force on April 15th. The military council was replaced on June 26th by the vigilante command, whose secretary was Ferdinand Eberstadt. The people's assembly in Worms on August 6, 1848, at which Ludwig Bamberger , one of his cousins, also spoke, probably goes back to his initiative.

Mayor of Worms

His political commitment meant that Ferdinand Eberstadt was the first Jew in Germany to be appointed mayor (from 1849 to 1852). The election was preceded by bitter fighting and there was no shrinking from defamation, as a rhyme published on a pamphlet shows:

“Do you want the shame of the city?
just choose the bandel,
and take the boar town
to trade with Jews,
do you want bankruptcy
to the urban driver,
so makes the city a mockery
and choose the blenker. "

In the election of March 14, 1849, the three named candidates had been chosen, and Ferdinand Eberstadt was chosen by the Hessian state government because he was considered the most capable.

On November 30, 1849, the election for the second chamber of the Hessian state parliament took place in Mainz. The candidate of the Democrats of Worms was Ferdinand Eberstadt, but his opponent from the constitutional party, Heinrich von Gagern, won . On December 12th, the members of the First Chamber were elected. This time, too, Eberstadt succumbed to the superiority of the district votes for his opponent. On January 2, 1850, in a by-election in the district of Odernheim / Oppenheim, the lot finally fell on him and on January 16, Ferdinand Eberstadt was introduced to the First Chamber of the Hessian State Parliament. On January 21st, however, the state parliament dissolved again after it had been unable to come to an agreement on the question of the so-called Epiphany Alliance .

Ferdinand Eberstadt was in the Rhenish treason trial from 8 to 10 July 1850 before the assizes to Mainz as "intellectual author" together with Johann Philipp Bandel (1785-1866) and Salomon wage Stein (1809-1854) because of blackmail coercion indicted. They were accused of using pressure to extort money from the Worms in 1848 to arm the vigilante group. Like the others, however, he was acquitted on October 10, 1850. However, there were other charges against him:

  • Impairment of freedom of choice in the state parliament elections of 1849;
  • Irregularities in the public announcement of various orders of the Ministry of the Interior in May 1849;
  • Issuance of a pre-dated certificate of homeland and morality to a young Worms man who was accused of high treason and treason.

During this time (from April 1850) Ferdinand Eberstadt was suspended from his mayor's office . Only after repeated requests was he reinstated in his office after all investigations had failed. As mayor, Ferdinand Eberstadt built a railway line to Worms and built a bridge over the Rhine . However, neither was carried out during his tenure.

In May 1852 he was elected to the Worms municipal council, but on 25 September 1852 he was released from taking over a council seat by a ministerial order. The Restoration had caught up with him and destroyed all his political commitments.

Move to Mannheim

Bitterness over the political change led Ferdinand Eberstadt to submit an application for an emigration permit for himself, his wife and ten children on November 28, 1857, which was approved on December 1. From December 5th, the family lived in Mannheim, the Baden metropolis of liberalism .

There Ferdinand Eberstadt founded the Ferd company on May 1st, 1858 . Eberstadt and Cie. which later passed to his son August Eberstadt (approx. 1830 – approx. 1907). As a commodity, it sold "Manufacture and wool goods, wool yarns en wholesale" . In 1862 Ferdinand Eberstadt left the family company AL Eberstadt in Worms. After the sale around 1897, the Mannheim company existed until around 1933 (it then traded as Ferd. Eberstadt und Cie., Descendants and had branches in Apolda and Chemnitz ).

In Mannheim, art and music became an important part of family life. It is said that during the 1880s in the music shop Robert Sohler on Paradeplatz, on the corner of Kunststraße, the supporters of Johannes Brahms around the families Eberstadt and Felix Hecht (married to Helena Bamberger , a cousin of Ferdinand Eberstadt's wife Sara / Zelie, born Seligmann ), Emil Hirsch (married to Bertha Hirsch , née Eberstadt) and Bernhard Kahn (married to Emma Stephanie, née Eberstadt).

Ferdinand Eberstadt also devoted himself to politics in Mannheim on the leadership committee of the Progressive Party and formed a consortium with the lawyer Heinrich von Feder and the publisher and bookseller Siegmund Bensheimer to purchase Johann Schneider's printing works, including the New Badische Landeszeitung , which is well-known far beyond Mannheim's borders . For this purpose they founded the " Mannheimer Verlagsdruckerei Aktiengesellschaft ", in which the printer and the newspaper were absorbed. This company existed until 1876, when the newspaper became the property of the Bensheimer publishing house and was distributed until February 28, 1934.

Ferdinand Eberstadt and his wife Sara are buried in a grave monument in the Jewish cemetery in Mannheim (Linker Mauerweg No. 11).

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  • Charges against Eberstadt, Bandel and Lohnstein from Worms for blackmail. Records of the Assize in Mainz, 8. – 10. July 1850, Mainz.
  • Mannheim in the past and present. Anniversary edition of the city, vol. III: Mannheim since the founding of the empire 1871–1907. Mannheim 1907.
  • Paul Arnsberg : The Jewish communities in Hesse. Beginning - fall - new beginning. Two volumes. Societätsverlag, Frankfurt 1971.
  • Förderkreis historical Grabstätten eV Mannheim: The cemeteries in Mannheim, guide to the graves of well-known Mannheim personalities. Mannheim 1992.
  • Dieter Hoffmann: On the emancipation of the Rheinhessen Jews (Ferdinand Eberstadt). In: Sachor, contributions to Jewish history and memorial work in Rhineland-Palatinate. 5th year, issue 1/95, issue 9.
  • John Juxon: Lewis & Lewis. The Life and Times of an Victorian Solicitor. George Henry Lewis . William Collins Sons & Co., Glasgow 1983.
  • John Kobler: Otto The Magnificent. The Life of Otto Kahn. Otto Hermann Kahn . Charles Scribner's Sons, MacMillan Publishing Company, New York 1988.
  • Kühn, Hans: Political, economic and social change in Worms 1798–1866 with special consideration of the changes in the order, the functions and the composition of the community council. Der Wormsgau , supplement 26, Worms 1975
  • Perez, Robert C. et al. Willet, Edward F .: The Will to Win; A Biography of Ferdinand Eberstadt Ferdinand Eberstadt . Greenwood Press Inc., Westport / USA, 1989
  • Reuter, Fritz: Joh. Philipp Bandel, A Worms Democrat. "Der Wormsgau", Volume 8, 1967/69
  • Reuter, Fritz: Leopold Levy and his synagogue from 1975; A contribution to the history and self-image of the Jews in Worms in the 19th century. "Der Wormsgau", Volume 11, Worms, 1974/75
  • Reuter, F .: Warmaisa, 1000 years of Jews in Worms. Jewish publishing house at Athenaeum, Frankfurt, 1987
  • Richarz, Monika: Jewish life in Germany, personal testimonies to social history, 3 volumes. Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, Reutlingen, 1976
  • Rothschild, Samson: Emancipation efforts of the large Jewish communities of the Grand Duchy of Hesse in the previous century. Worms, 1921
  • Uhrig, Dorothee: Worms and the revolution of 1848/49. Dissertation, Worms / Frankfurt, 1934
  • Wormser Zeitung, February 12, 1888: Report on the death of Ferdinand Eberstadt, Worms City Archives
  • Frankfurter Zeitung, Abendblatt, February 11, 1888: Report on the death of Ferdinand Eberstadt, Mannheim City Archives
  • Neue Mannheimer Zeitung, February 11, 1888: Ferdinand Eberstadt obituary, Mannheim City Archives
  • The Jewish Encyclopedia. Funk & Wagnalls Company, New York / London 1916
  • Jewish Lexicon; various volumes. Jewish publishing house, Berlin around 1920
  • The Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, New York 1948
  • Weimar historical-genealogical pocket book of the entire nobility of Jewish origin (Semigotha) Kyffhäuser Verlag, Munich, 1913
  • Dr. Irmgard Leux-Henschen: Kahn estate. Research on the question of the origin of musicality in the Robert Kahn family. Contains genealogies and biographies of the Eberstadt families. State Library of Prussian Cultural Heritage, Music Department, Berlin
  • City archives Kreuznach, Worms, Mannheim
  • Christof Eberstadt: Family research

literature

  • The cemeteries in Mannheim , grave no. 32: Ferdinand Eberstadt and Sara, b. Seligmann, Mannheim 1992, pp. 327-328

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://gw.geneanet.org/alanguggenheim?lang=de;p=falck+ferdinand+i;n=eberstadt
  2. ^ German biography: Hecht Felix
personal data
SURNAME Eberstadt, Ferdinand
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Eberstadt, Ferdinand Falk
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German businessman and politician
DATE OF BIRTH January 14, 1808
PLACE OF BIRTH Worms
DATE OF DEATH February 9, 1888
Place of death Mannheim