Ferdinand Duke

Ferdinand Herzog (born January 12, 1761 in Graz ; † January 12, 1834 in Stainz ) was an Austrian Benedictine who was abbot of St. Lambrecht's Abbey from 1811 to 1820 .

Life

Ferdinand Herzog was born on January 12, 1761 as the son of a gunsmith in Graz and joined St. Lambrecht Abbey at the age of 19 . After he had made the temporary profession here on August 5, 1781 , the solemn profession followed in 1785, as well as the primacy on September 8, 1785 . Only a few months later, on January 4, 1786, the monastery was abolished by an imperial decree as part of the Josephine church reform begun in 1782 . Herzog then spent his time as a curator in Sankt Anna am Lavantegg from 1788 to 1790 and was then pastor in Lind near Spielberg . In the meantime, the abbey was restored in 1802 and Joachim Röck was elected the new abbot. After Abbot Joachim's death, after a fourteen- month interregnum , Herzog was elected Abbot of St. Lambrecht on October 4, 1811 and designated as such on October 14, 1811. Abbot Ferdinand took over a considerable mountain of debt from his predecessor, who during his tenure had tried to regain expropriated monastery property and to restore the monastic order as it had existed before the abolition, which is said to have amounted to around 300,000 guilders.

Abbot Ferdinand - referred to as Hofmann in contemporary literature - is said to have shattered the abbey's financial situation even more, so that after his voluntary resignation no new abbot was elected, but the abbey by the administrators Rupert Schmidmayer (1820–1832) and Kilian Drocker ( 1833-1835) and only after the death of Abbot Ferdinand in 1834 did a new abbot take up his duties for the following year. Since he was above all unable to cope with the economic problems of the abbey from the beginning of his term in office, he asked Emperor Franz I in vain for the abolition of the monastery again in 1812. After the emperor had refused, Herzog submitted his resignation in 1814 , which, however, was also not accepted. It was not until a state commission, which examined the situation in 1817, that Abbot Ferdinand, who at that time often stayed away from the monastery, resigned his economic administration on July 18, 1817. In January 1820, he also resigned the spiritual direction of the monastery, whereupon the aforementioned Rupert Schmidmayer took over the monastery agenda as administrator.

Ferdinand Herzog then moved to his native Graz and later to Stainz , where he died on his 73rd birthday and was subsequently also buried.

literature

• Sebastian Brunner : A Benedictine Book. History etc. of the Benedictine founders . Wuerzburg 1880.
• Pirmin Lindner : Monasticon metropolis Salzburgensis antiquae . Kösel-Verlag , 1908.
• Benedikt Plank : History of the St. Lambrecht Abbey. Festschrift for the 900th anniversary of the death of the founder Markward v. Eppenstein, 1076-1976 . Kösel-Verlag , Sankt Lambrecht 1976.
• Benedikt Plank: St. Lambrecht . In: The Benedictine monasteries and nunneries in Austria and South Tyrol. Arranged by Ulrich Faust and Waltraud Krassnig ( Germania Benedictina Vol. III / 2) . Sankt Ottilien 2001, p. 318-380 .

Web links

• Ferdinand Herzog in the Biographia Benedictina (Benediktinerlexikon.de)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Benedictine abbots of St. Lambrecht. In:  Grätzer Zeitung. The attentive one. Steyermärkische intelligence papers. Steyermärkisches intelligence sheet. Steyermärkisches Official Journal / Stiria, a sheet of the useful and the beautiful / Gratzer Zeitung. Styrian Official Gazette , May 21, 1829, p. 7 (online at ANNO ). , accessed on June 15, 2020
2. ↑ ^{a b} feuilleton. - An old abbey in the Styrian Alps. In:  community newspaper / community newspaper. Independent, political journal , August 24, 1873, p. 9 (online at ANNO ). , accessed on June 15, 2020

predecessor	Office	successor
Joachim Röck	Abbot of St. Lambrecht Abbey 1811–1820	Joachim Suppan (1835–1864); between Rupert Schmidmayer (administrator from 1820–1832) and Kilian Drocker (administrator from 1833–1835)