Ferdinand Ludwig von Zeppelin

Count Ferdinand Ludwig von Zeppelin with his family on a painting by Philipp Friedrich von Hetsch , 1809

Ferdinand Ludwig Graf von Zeppelin (born November 28, 1772 in Güstrow ; † January 21, 1829 in Vienna ) was a German diplomat and politician in the service of Kings Friedrich von Württemberg and Wilhelm von Württemberg .

family

The Lords of Zeppelin come from an aristocratic family that has been in Mecklenburg since the 13th century . Ferdinand Ludwig von Zeppelin was the son of Melchior Johann Christoph von Zeppelin (* 1731; † 1782), who was in the service of the Electorate of Hanover as Rittmeister . Ferdinand Ludwig's mother was Friederike Charlotte née Edle von Walsleben (* 1737; † 1802), who was the mother of a total of 13 children. Ferdinand Ludwig's older brother, Imperial Count Karl von Zeppelin (* 1766; † 1801), was Minister of State and Conference as well as President of the Privy Council in the service of the Duke of Württemberg. He became the founder of the Reichsgrafenlinie Zeppelin-Aschhausen, which in the Kingdom of Württemberg provided several members of the Second Chamber of the Estates from among the knighthood. In order to replace Ferdinand Ludwig's brother Karl, who died in 1801, Duke Friedrich tried to ensure that Ferdinand Ludwig could also enter the service of Württemberg. Ferdinand Ludwig von Zeppelin married Pauline Freiin von Maucler (* 1785, † 1863) in 1802. She was the sister of Eugen von Maucler , who later became President of the Privy Council. The marriage with Pauline resulted in a total of seven children, including the son Friedrich von Zeppelin (* 1807, † 1886), who was the father of the famous airship pioneer Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin . On the occasion of the elevation of Württemberg to a kingdom, Zeppelin was raised to the hereditary count of Württemberg in 1806.

Military career in Austrian service

Ferdinand von Zeppelin joined the Austrian dragoon regiment Herzog von Württemberg (number 38) as an ensign in 1789 at the age of 16 . The colonel owner of the regiment at the time was Duke Carl Eugen . Zeppelin suffered its first wound during the Turkish war from 1788 to 1791 . In the twelve years of membership in the regiment, he rose to the rank of Rittmeister achieved in 1800. Due to another serious wound in the battle of Marengo on June 14, 1800, he suffered a war disability that caused him more or less serious complications throughout his life. A year later he was honored from his Austrian military service.

Diplomat and politician in the service of Württemberg

On August 16, 1801, Zeppelin entered the service of Duke and later King Friedrich von Württemberg . He was appointed ducal chamberlain, major and wing adjutant of the cavalry. In 1803 he was promoted to lieutenant colonel and in 1804 to colonel and commander of the Gardes du Corps. In 1805 he switched from active military service to the civilian office of an electoral travel marshal for health reasons. In 1807 he was appointed Real Privy Councilor and Envoy Extraordinary Plenipotentiary to Paris. In July 1810 he went from Paris to Ulm to oversee the implementation of the Bavarian-Wuerttemberg border regulation treaty in the office of "bailiff on the Danube", which he himself had helped to create in Paris. On February 12, 1812, King Friedrich appointed him State and Cabinet Minister and made him head of the Department of Foreign Affairs as the successor to Karl August Ludwig Graf von Taube . It was to Ferdinand von Zeppelin's major credit that on November 2, 1813, the Kingdom of Württemberg with the Treaty of Fulda entered the camp of the coalition against Napoleon in good time , so that Prince Metternich gave an assurance that the kingdom would continue to exist. In this way, Württemberg was able to emerge from the Wars of Liberation at the side of the victors . On July 14, 1814, Zeppelin took over the department of royal household and family affairs in place of the sick Count von Taube as Minister of State and Conference and became Grand Chancellor of the royal orders and the police (especially in the two residences in Stuttgart and Ludwigsburg ). The Department of Foreign Affairs went to the Count of Wintzingerode on August 7, 1814 . As early as July 27, 1814, Zeppelin went to Paris to the court of the restored Bourbon King Louis XVIII while retaining his ministerial offices as an extraordinary plenipotentiary envoy . Because of the reign of the Hundred Days associated with Napoleon's return from Elba , Zeppelin had to leave Paris in a hurry in March 1815 and return to Stuttgart. On November 9, 1816 he was again Minister for Foreign Affairs, the Royal House and the Residences Police. With the constitution of the Secret Council in November 1817 he was appointed "Minister of State and Secret Council". On May 17, 1819 he was discharged from the Württemberg civil service. From 1819 to 1826 he was a landowner in the Württemberg town of Münster . On November 19, 1820, Zeppelin received an appointment as a lifelong member of the Chamber of Notaries "as proof of royal confidence" . In 1826 he became envoy extraordinary at the imperial court in Vienna. On the way there, Zeppelin brought a letter from King Wilhelm of Württemberg to King Ludwig of Bavaria , which suggested the establishment of a customs union between the two kingdoms. In Vienna he met his former supreme employer, the Austrian Emperor Franz . Ferdinand von Zeppelin died of a painful stomach ailment in Vienna at the age of 57.

Honors

• 1813 Awarded the Prussian High Order of the Black Eagle
• 1813 Awarded the Hungarian Order of St. Stephen
• 1813 Awarded the Russian Order of Alexander Nevsky
• 1818 Awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of the Württemberg Crown

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Nobility in Transition. 200 years of mediation in Upper Swabia. Exhibition catalog. Thorbecke Verlag, Ostfildern 2006, page 352
2. ↑ Overview of the history of the Austrian Dragoon Regiment Herzog von Württemberg ( Memento of the original from May 5, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
3. ↑ Court and State Handbook of the Kingdom of Württemberg 1824, p. 28

literature

• Frank Raberg : Biographical handbook of the Württemberg state parliament members 1815-1933 . On behalf of the Commission for Historical Regional Studies in Baden-Württemberg. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-17-016604-2 , p. 1064 .
• Frank Raberg : Biographical Lexicon for Ulm and Neu-Ulm 1802-2009 . Süddeutsche Verlagsgesellschaft im Jan Thorbecke Verlag, Ostfildern 2010, ISBN 978-3-7995-8040-3 , p. 487 .
• Eberhard Graf von Zeppelin :  Zeppelin, Ferdinand Ludwig Graf von . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 45, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1900, pp. 79-83.

Web links

• Literature about Ferdinand Ludwig von Zeppelin in the state bibliography MV
• Works by and about Ferdinand Ludwig von Zeppelin  in the German Digital Library
• Ferdinand Ludwig von Zeppelin at Geneanet.org

predecessor	Office	successor
Ludwig von Taube Georg Ernst Levin von Wintzingerode	Württemberg Foreign Minister 1812–1814 1816–1819	Georg Ernst Levin von Wintzingerode Heinrich Levin von Wintzingerode
Friedrich Ludwig III. Truchsess zu Waldburg (until 1807)	Wuerttemberg envoy to France 1814–1816	R. von Schwarz
Friedrich August Gremp von Freudenstein	Wuerttemberg envoy in Austria 1827–1829	Ludwig Heinrich August Blomberg zu Sylbach