Ferdinand von Hompesch zu Bolheim
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Ferdinand Joseph Hermann Anton Freiherr von Hompesch zu Bolheim (born November 9, 1744 at Bollheim Castle near Oberelvenich ; † May 12, 1805 in Montpellier , France ) was the 71st and so far only German Grand Master of the Sovereign Order of Malta , an office he held from July 17, 1797 until his resignation on July 6, 1799.
Under his leadership, had the Order the island of Malta , which was of the order since 1530 homestead, give up after French troops under then General Napoléon Bonaparte landed in June 1798 with a large contingent of ships and soldiers on the island. The order's rule of not fighting against Christians forbade fighting the invaders. In addition, the majority of the knights themselves were French. Ferdinand von Hompesch zu Bolheim therefore surrendered Malta without a fight and left the island with all the knights of the order. He moved into his new headquarters in Trieste , Italy , and two months later in Ljubljana , what is now Slovenia .
After his resignation from the office of Grand Master in 1799, he first moved to Austria and Italy . In 1804 he finally settled in Montpellier in France, where he joined the Brotherhood of Blue Penitents. A short time later, in May 1805, he died a poor man at the age of 60.
Life
As a scion of the Rhenish nobility , Ferdinand von Hompesch (noble family) was already at the age of twelve one of the pages of the Portuguese grand master Manuel Pinto de Fonseca and, after five years of qualification, was accepted into the order cum dispensatione minoris aetatis on July 10, 1761, in which he quickly Should make a career. As early as 1768 he held the office of castellan, in 1770 he was jointly responsible as a lieutenant for the supervision of the galleys and the fortifications and in 1774 he was given responsibility for armaments as armaments commissioner.
From the end of 1775 he also represented the Viennese court as ambassador (he held this post until he took over the office of Grand Master in 1797). In 1776 he was awarded the dignity of the Grand Cross, so that from that point on he was a member of the Permanent Council of the Order. His plan to bring the Order of Malta closer to the Evangelical Johanniter failed in the same year due to resistance from several German knights. In the following years he received the Kommenden Rothenburg ob der Tauber and Reichardsroth (1777), Herford and Lage (1783, in this year v. H. was also Prodomo of the convent church of St. Johannes), Basel-St. Johann and Dorlisheim (1785), Sulz, Colmar and Mülhausen (1786) and Villingen in the Black Forest (1796). In 1796 he gained the position of Großbailli (the head) of the German tongue.
On July 17, 1797, Ferdinand von Hompesch was unanimously elected Grand Master of the Order - not least with the help of imperial protection and due to the fact that the various tongues were at odds. He took up this office in difficult times, as the Order was in a phase of decline and Malta had aroused the military interest of the great powers due to its strategically important location. This was particularly true of France, which by resolution of the National Assembly in 1792 had declared all religious holdings in France to be national property. France saw the order's increased commitment to Russia, whose Tsar Paul - as a non-Catholic sovereign - was admitted to the order and was given the title of “Protector of the Order of Malta” as the abandonment of the order's neutrality and the danger of a Russian takeover of power in Malta. At Napoleon's insistence, on April 12, 1798, he was commissioned by the French Directory to seize the island on the occasion of his Egypt campaign. As early as March 3, 1798, a small French fleet had tried to call at Malta, but the Order refused the ships unrestricted entry into the port , citing the Treaty of Utrecht from 1713 . On June 9, 1798, a French fleet of over 500 ships with 54,000 men appeared off Malta. The renewed refusal to allow the ships to enter the port was taken by Napoleon as an opportunity to attack the island in breach of international law. On June 10, 1798, 15,000 men landed in eleven different locations on Malta. In addition to the poor condition of the defenses, the dissatisfaction of large parts of the Maltese population with the rule of the order, acts of sabotage and the vanishingly small number of knights capable of fighting (of 332 knights, around 50 were no longer of serviceable age) contributed to the fact that Malta was already on the 11th. June 1798 had to capitulate.
The grand master went into exile in Trieste in Austria on June 18, 1798, accompanied by 16 knights . After two months he moved his headquarters to Ljubljana. Less than half a year later, on November 7th, 1798, the Russian Tsar Paul was elected Grand Master of the Order by a few knights. On July 6, 1799, von Hompesch declared in a letter to Franz II that he was renouncing the office of Grand Master.
After several years of wandering through Austria and Italy, he moved to Montpellier in 1804 , where he joined the Brotherhood of Penitents Bleus on December 25 of the same year and died on May 12, 1805. He was buried in the Chapel of the Brotherhood of Sainte Eulalie . His makeshift grave was not marked as the transfer of the body to his home was planned. However, this did not take place.
Historical assessment
Ferdinand von Hompesch can be seen as the tragic figure of the order; the first and only German grandmaster was soon accused of losing Malta as the result of personal cowardice. Czar Paul raised this reproach as early as September 1798, and until recently it was generally accepted that von Hompesch was an extremely incapable and discouraged grandmaster. Only in the past few years, almost exactly 200 years after the allegedly dishonorable surrender, has a new picture been drawn that does justice to its historical figure and role in the surrender of Malta. It is true that there may have been questionable aspects in his personal life (in addition to overwhelming debts, the defamation of his former secretary Franz Sinsteden, according to which Hompesch had a lover named Natale Farrugia, should be mentioned here); the fact that France promised him an annual allowance of 300,000 francs for the surrender contributes to the impression that Malta was not given up solely on the basis of factual considerations. But it would certainly be wrong to draw the conclusion from any personal misconduct that he left Malta to the French purely out of cowardice and personal pursuit of profit. Rather, the intertwining of various factors meant that he ultimately had no choice but to hand the island over to the French armed forces: The order was extremely weakened in the late 18th century due to internal disputes and general decline, and the island's defenses were only limited ready for action, the armament turned out to be largely out of date or unusable, the majority of the knights could not be unconditionally relied on due to their French or Spanish descent (Spain was Napoleon's ally at that time), and there was also a lack of popular support. Requests for financial support to improve Malta's defense readiness, which had been sent to Spain, Russia and Austria years earlier, had hardly been answered, and there was obviously no excessive interest among the great powers in strengthening the island on a sustainable basis. The order's own economic power, which had been severely weakened not least by the expropriations of the three French tongues (Auvergne, France, Provence), was by far not sufficient for the necessary measures.
literature
- Tade Matthias Spranger: Ferdinand von Hompesch zu Bolheim. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 20, Bautz, Nordhausen 2002, ISBN 3-88309-091-3 , Sp. 773-778.
- Michael Galea, Ferdinand von Hompesch, a German grandmaster in Malta, Valetta 1992.
- Thomas Freller: Grand Master - Prince - Exile. Ferdinand von Hompesch - a political biography , St. Ottilien: EOS Verlag 2019, ISBN 978-3-8306-7968-4 .
Web links
- Ferdinand von Hompesch zu Bolheim Official website of the Order of Malta on the 200th anniversary of his death
- Ferdinand von Hompesch zu Bolheim on the pages of the Order of Malta
| predecessor | Office | successor |
|---|---|---|
| Emmanuel de Rohan-Polduc |
Grand Master of the Order of Malta 1797–1799 |
Paul of Russia |
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Hompesch zu Bolheim, Ferdinand von |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Hompesch zu Bolheim, Ferdinand Hermann Anton von (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | 71st and so far the only German Grand Master of the Order of Malta |
| DATE OF BIRTH | November 9, 1744 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | at Bollheim Castle near Oberelvenich |
| DATE OF DEATH | May 12, 1805 |
| Place of death | Montpellier , France |