Frédéric-César de La Harpe

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Frédéric-César de la Harpe, 19th century lithograph

Frédéric-César de la Harpe (born April 6, 1754 in Rolle , † March 30, 1838 in Lausanne ), also de Laharpe , was a Swiss politician of the Helvetic Republic and educator of Tsar Alexander I of Russia .

Life

Study and start of career

Frédéric-César de la Harpe was born in 1754 in simple but noble circumstances. After basic training in Rolle, the 14-year-old attended the seminar at Haldenstein Castle for two years . The lessons in the institute run by Martin von Planta and Johann Peter Nesemann and the republican enlightenment attitude prevailing there were formative for the young Laharpe. After a two-year study visit to Geneva , the now 18-year-old began studying law in Tübingen . At the University of Tübingen he made a close friendship with Henri Monod , who also came from Vaud . After receiving his doctorate in 1774, Laharpe returned home. He settled in Lausanne and was accepted into the Council of Two Hundred. He practiced his profession as a lawyer at the Welschen Appellationskammer in Bern . He increasingly suffered from the degrading behavior of the Bernese rule over the Vaud and its residents. He was therefore happy when he received an offer in 1782 to accompany some of Tsarina Catherine II's favorites as a mentor on her “Grand Tour”. The journey led via Rome and Sicily to Malta . In Naples Laharpe was accepted into the Masonic Order . At the request of the Tsarina, he accompanied his pupils via Vienna and Warsaw back to St. Petersburg , where he arrived in the spring of 1783.

Educator in the tsarist family

The Russian Tsarina Catherine II around 1780.

Laharpe's first year in Sankt Peterburg was primarily devoted to learning the Russian language. From 1784 he was brought in by the tsarina directly to bring up her two grandchildren Alexander , the future tsar and his brother Constantine, who was one and a half years younger . In the beginning, his work was limited to teaching French. Over time, Laharpe was able to largely implement his educational concept. The focus was on history and geography, and he also placed great emphasis on teaching philosophy and political science. In this way he was able to bring the ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau ( Contrat social ) and John Locke ( Upon civil government ) to the tsarist house. In 1790 Laharpe married Dorothea Boethlingk, only 16 years old, daughter of a wealthy Peterburg merchant.

During his stay in Russia, Laharpe never lost contact with Western Europe. He remained closely connected to Vaud through his correspondence with Henri Monnod. He followed developments in France after the revolution of 1789 with interest. He tried with success to prevent the Tsarina from attacking France. Laharpe wanted to influence developments in his homeland through a series of anonymous letters in the London Chronicle . In 1790 he published several letters under the name Philantropus und Helvetus in which he fictitiously described that a revolution had taken place in Bern and that the estates had been convened in Vaud. Shortly afterwards he sent three personal letters to Vaud, in which he proposed that the estates be convened. However, one of these letters was intercepted by the Bern censorship, whereupon the Bern authorities in Russia intervened and demanded that Laharpe be dismissed. For the time being, the Tsarina did not respond to the request. However, she released Laharpe in December 1794. Her grandson Alexander was able to ensure that Laharpe could stay until May 1795. A return to Vaud was not possible for him. Laharpe therefore retired to an estate in Genthod , Geneva , from where he stayed in close correspondence with Alexander.

Grave digger or rescuer of the Swiss Confederation?

Frédéric-César de la Harpe

In 1796 he moved to Paris , where he gave the French Directory the occasion to intervene in Switzerland by referring to the Lausanne Treaty of 1564, guaranteed by France , in which the Vaud were guaranteed their existing freedoms. He was therefore referred to in conservative circles as the "gravedigger of the Old Confederation". Laharpe was at times the undisputed leader of the radical Swiss Revolutionary Party, the so-called Patriots.

When, according to the plan agreed by him and Peter Ochs with the board of directors, the Swiss Confederation was converted by the French into the Helvetic Republic in 1798 , he was disappointed not to be elected to the first Swiss board of directors because of the resistance of the republicans . It was only through pressure from the French ambassador that he and Ochs became a member of the Directory on June 29, 1798 and used his dictatorial preponderance in the Directory for measures of violence, through which he hoped to save the unified republic threatened from all sides. In the wake of Napoléon Bonaparte's coup on November 9, 1799 against the Paris directorate, Laharpe also tried to obtain dictatorial powers in the Helvetic Republic with a coup , but this failed after a short time. After the directorate was overthrown in the coup d'état of January 7, 1800, he had to leave the country again and flee to Paris.

After Laharpe made a trip to Russia at the invitation of Tsar Alexander I from 1801 to 1802, he lived in a country house near Paris, received the dignity of a general with the Order of Andrew in 1814 after the allies of Tsar Alexander and moved him to that of Bern not to allow the intended restoration of the old subjects of the Vaud and the Aargau . It is also thanks to his influence on the Tsar that Switzerland was not divided up or incorporated into the German Confederation as a monarchy . After serving as envoy for Vaud and Ticino and as Switzerland's unofficial lawyer at the Congress of Vienna , he moved to Lausanne in 1816 and died there in 1838, a highly esteemed person.

Honors

Île de la Harpe. Artificially created island near Rolle.

Laharpe was given a first major honor during his lifetime. On March 30, 1798, the provisional assembly of the Vaud region in honor of Frédéric-César de La Harpe had a medal minted to honor his role in the declaration of independence for Vaud. It was not until 1896 that a memorial plaque was attached to the house where he was born in Rolle. Almost 50 years earlier, the erection of a monument on the man-made island named after Laharpe, Île de la Harpe, had sparked some political controversy. The monument was financed with collection funds mainly from Aargau and Ticino . The obelisk, which was ceremoniously inaugurated on the island in 1844, shows a saying by the tsar about the meaning of Laharpe: " Je dois tout ce que je suis à un Suisse " - "I owe everything I am to a Swiss". Laharpe received a new appreciation in 2009 at the University of Lausanne. Under the patronage of the canton of Vaud, from 30.-31. An international colloquium on Frédéric-César de La Harpe was held in October.

Works

  • Essai on the Constitution du Pays de Vaud. 2 vols. Paris 1796.
  • Instructions pour l'Assemblée Représentative de la République Lémanique (together with Vincent Perdonnet ). Paris 1797.
  • Justification from citizen Cesar Friedrich Laharpe, member of the former board of directors of the Helvetic Republic. Along with some explanatory notes . Basel 1800.
  • Histoire du major Davel, proscrit en 1723 par l'ancien gouvernement de Berne, écrite en 1725, par un contemporain de ce martyr de la liberté vaudoise, seconde édition accompagnée de notes . Lausanne 1805.
  • Quelques observations on the revision de la constitution vaudoise de 1814 . Lausanne 1831.
  • Jacques Vogel (ed.): Mémoires de Frédéric-César La Harpe concernant sa conduite comme Directeur de la République helvétique: addresses par lui-mème à Zschokke [1804] . Paris, Geneva, Bern 1864.

Correspondence

  • Jean-Charles Biaudet , Marie Claude Jequier, Philippe Bastide (eds.): Correspondance de Frédéric-César de La Harpe sous la République helvétique . Neuchâtel 1982-2004.
  • Jean Charles Biaudet, Françoise Nicot (eds.): Correspondance de Frédéric-César de La Harpe et Alexandre Ier, suivie de la correspondance de F.-C. de La Harpe avec les membres de la famille impériale de Russie . Neuchâtel 1978–1980.

literature

  • Raphaël Rosa, Matthias Bolens: Peuple et identité. Représentations vaudoises après la Révolution (1798-1814). Lausanne 2007.
  • Andreas Würgler: Absent revolutionary - moderate revolution: Frédéric-César Laharpe and the Vaud 1789–1798 . In: Christian Simon (ed.): Views on the Helvetik. Basel 2000. pp. 139–159.
  • Jean-Charles Biaudet , Françoise Nicot: La Harpe, Frédéric-César . In: Biographical lexicon on the history of the democratic and liberal movements in Central Europe. Volume 1, Frankfurt am Main 1992. pp. 210-212.
  • Arthur Boehtlingk: The Vaudois Friedrich Caesar Laharpe. The educator and advisor to Alexander I of Russia, the victor over Napoleon I and the initiator of modern Switzerland. 2 vols., Bern, Leipzig 1925.
  • Heinrich Zschokke: Friedrich Caesar Laharpe. In: Heinrich Zschokke's selected writings. Second part, Aarau 1825. pp. 202-262. Digitized

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Boehtlingk I 1926, pp. 3–9.
  2. ↑ Boehtlingk I 1926, p. 66.
  3. ↑ Lettres of philantropes and Lettres de Helvetus . See Würgler 2000.
  4. ^ Encyclopedia Britannica
  5. ↑ Handbook of Swiss History , Volume 2, p. 808
personal data
SURNAME La Harpe, Frédéric-César de
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Laharpe
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss politician
DATE OF BIRTH April 6, 1754
PLACE OF BIRTH role
DATE OF DEATH March 30, 1838
Place of death Lausanne