Franz August Schenk von Stauffenberg

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The leaders of the Secessionists (from: Die Gartenlaube 1880), Franz August von Stauffenberg on the left

Franz August Freiherr Schenk von Stauffenberg (born August 3, 1834 in Würzburg , † June 2, 1901 in Rississen ) was a German lawyer , large landowner and liberal politician . He was President of the Chamber of Deputies (Bavaria) and a member of the Reichstag after the establishment of the German Empire .

Stauffenberg advocated the unification of Germany under Prussian leadership and worked as a national liberal with Chancellor Otto von Bismarck , but turned into one of Bismarck's opponents. In 1884 he was a co-founder of the opposition German Radical Party . His hope, the accession to the throne of Frederick III. 1888 could bring about a political upheaval, but it did not come true. Stauffenberg's extraordinary intelligence and education, his diplomatic talents and his balancing sense of justice with firm principles are praised.

family

Franz August Schenk Freiherr von Stauffenberg

Franz August was the son of Baron Friedrich Schenk von Stauffenberg (born October 23, 1806 in Wetzlar ; † May 2, 1874 in Riississen) and his wife Countess Karoline Klementine Butler von Clonebough, called Haimhausen (born January 31, 1812 in Ansbach ; † November 6, 1879 in Lindau ). Franz August's uncle, Franz Ludwig Schenk Freiherr (from 1874 Count) von Stauffenberg (1801–1881) was the great-grandfather of Claus and Berthold Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg , who were executed as resistance fighters against National Socialism .

Stauffenberg lived mainly in Rississen , his other possessions were in Wilflingen (Langenenslingen) and Geislingen (Zollernalbkreis) . On August 25, 1860, he married Countess Ida Therese von Geldern-Egmont in Würzburg (born October 16, 1837 in Thurnstein Castle ; † March 27, 1887 in Pallanza ). They had ten children, five of whom died in infancy. His tenth child Franz Schenk von Stauffenberg survived as the only son and inherited him.

  • Wilhelmine A. Therese Johanna Maria Schenkin von Stauffenberg (born June 24, 1861 in Augsburg, † March 10, 1876 in Mentone )
  • Friedrich Adam Maria Sebastian Vinzenz Schenk Freiherr von Stauffenberg (born January 20, 1863 in Augsburg, † January 30, 1863 in Augsburg)
  • Elisabeth Klementine Gabriele Maria Schenk Freiin von Stauffenberg Schenk (born February 15, 1864 in Augsburg; ⚭ July 3, 1893 with Hugo Freiherr von Linden in Rississen; † April 20, 1939 in Ulm )
  • Walter Ludwig Friedrich Gotthold Agatha Maria Schenk Freiherr von Stauffenberg (* February 21, 1865 in Augsburg, † September 30, 1865 in Augsburg)
  • Olga Gabriele Schenk Freiin von Stauffenberg (lady-in-waiting of Duchess Margarete Sophie, wife of Duke Albrecht von Württemberg) (born September 11, 1866; ⚭ May 6, 1902 with Friedrich Graf von Otting and Fünfstetten in Rississen; † March 23, 1953 in Wiesenfelden ) : Children: Maximilian, Franz and Ludwig Graf von Ottingen and Fünfstetten
  • Johanna Friederike Klementine Marie Freiin von Stauffenberg (born February 16, 1868 in Riißissen, † July 19, 1868 in Riississen)
  • Gabriele Philippine Marie Barbara Schenk Freiin von Stauffenberg (* December 4, 1869 in Rißtissen; ⚭ April 8, 1896 with Gustav Freiherr von Habermann in Munich ; † October 18, 1956 in Munich)
  • Friedrich W. Schenk Freiherr von Stauffenberg (born September 2, 1873 in Riißissen, † October 25, 1873 in Riississen)
  • Daughter (* July 18, 1874 in Rississen, † July 19, 1874 in Rississen)
  • Franz Wilhelm Karl Maria Gabriel Schenk Freiherr von Stauffenberg (born August 14, 1878 in Rißtissen; ⚭ May 27, 1903 in Bonn with Countess Huberta Wolff-Metternich; † November 9, 1950 in Riedlingen )

Studies and legal career

From 1851 he studied law at the Julius Maximilians University of Würzburg and from 1853 at the Ruprecht Karls University of Heidelberg . In 1853 he became active in the Corps Guestphalia Heidelberg . In 1857 he became a trainee lawyer and in 1860 deputy public prosecutor . From 1862 he was a public prosecutor in Augsburg . In 1866 he left the administration of justice on his own initiative .

Political career

Bavarian State Parliament

On September 30, 1866, Stauffenberg was elected to the Chamber of Deputies (Bavaria) in a by-election in Augsburg , to which he belonged until 1898, from 1871 to 1875 as its president.

Stauffenberg's gift of convincing even political opponents with clear arguments and his ability to speak brilliantly, was already evident in his first parliamentary motion: on February 20, 1867, he demanded the abolition of the death penalty for the Kingdom of Bavaria . As a public prosecutor in Augsburg, Stauffenberg had to spend the last hour with those sentenced to death. That shaped him. One of the reasons he gave his request was that the death penalty could not deter anyone from committing a crime. One shouldn't equate the mood of a criminal before and after the crime. Almost all criminals assumed they would not be convicted before the crime. All arguments justifying the death penalty faded with the execution of a single innocent man. The state, the sum of all citizens, like every individual citizen, may only justifiably dispose of a person's life in situations of self-defense or emergency aid. His motion found an unexpected majority of 87:44 votes in the Chamber of Deputies, but was rejected by the House of Lords on November 16, 1867. It was chaired by Stauffenberg's uncle, Franz Ludwig Schenk von Stauffenberg . On May 19, 1870, he submitted his application for the second time, but already failed in the Chamber of Deputies.

National Liberal MP

Stauffenberg advocated a German unification under Prussian leadership, excluding Austria ( small German solution ). This was in contrast to the view of the vast majority of southern German liberals who wanted a German empire under the leadership of Austria ( Greater German solution ).

Stauffenberg was a member of the customs parliament from February 1868 and after the establishment of the German Empire in the Reichstag election in 1871 , he was elected as a representative of Munich for the first of eight times in the Reichstag , to which he was to belong for 22 years, including from 1876 to 1879 as its vice-president.

Stauffenberg was initially a member of the National Liberal Party , which Chancellor Otto von Bismarck supported politically. Bismarck had intended Stauffenberg for a ministerial office, but Kaiser Wilhelm I refused an appointment due to Stauffenberg's political appointment. Stauffenberg wanted to strengthen the civil liberties and self-government , abolish tariffs ( free trade ) and push back state interventions of all kinds. He wanted to expand the limited possibilities of the Reichstag in the Empire and ultimately aimed for a parliamentary monarchy based on the English model. He summarized his basic principles in the Reichstag on March 15, 1870:

"As a rule, and when in doubt, full freedom always seems to be the better choice."

Opponent of Bismarck

Bismarck's change from a free trade policy to a protective tariff policy in 1878 put the previous cooperation with the National Liberals to the test. With the help of National Liberal MPs, Bismarck was able to enforce his protective tariff policy and in 1880 a new seven-year military budget (septate) in the Reichstag. Stauffenberg and other National Liberals accused their party colleagues of betraying basic liberal principles and of having decisively weakened the position of the Reichstag vis-à-vis the executive, and they split off from the National Liberal Party.

A new party emerged from this secession, the Liberal Association , which in the 1881 election with 46 seats had the same parliamentary group strength as the National Liberals . In 1884 the Liberal Association merged with the German Progressive Party of Eugen Richters to form the new German Freedom Party . Stauffenberg became chairman of the central committee, while the radical liberal lawyer and journalist Eugen Richter chaired the seven-member executive committee of the new party.

When it was founded in March 1884, the Liberal Party had 100 seats, the second largest parliamentary group in the Reichstag after the Center Party , but lost a third of its votes in the Reichstag elections in October of the same year and was only able to hold 65 seats in the Reichstag. Only 13 years after the founding of the Reich and in years of great economic upswing, German voters did not want any domestic political unrest or a strong anti-bismarck party. Stauffenberg and Richter stood in bitter opposition to Bismarck's policies. Stauffenberg recognized the importance of the social question , on which he took a position in an election speech on February 12, 1878:

“The political disputes and hostilities come and go. The social contrasts, on the other hand, hurt deeply and eat away forever. The social question is the question of the future before which all other political questions pale. One cannot avoid this question and its consequences by banning it. "

He rejected both Bismarck to suppress the Social Democrats directed socialist law and the social legislation from the Chancellor: Although Stauffenberg advocated unemployment benefits, but wanted this non-governmental, but also organize private law.

On January 11, 1887, Stauffenberg applied to the Reichstag to approve the army strength desired by the Bismarck government for only three, but not for the desired seven years ( septnate ). Stauffenberg's motion was accepted on January 14, 1887 with 186 votes to 154. Bismarck then had the Reichstag dissolved and new elections held. In the Reichstag elections of 1887, shortly after an assassination attempt on Kaiser Wilhelm I, the mandates of the Liberal Party were again reduced by half to 32. The conservative coalition that supported Bismarck was decisively strengthened.

Connection to the Crown Prince couple

After the break with Bismarck, both Stauffenberg and Richter placed their hopes in the time after the death of the aged Emperor Wilhelm I, who had appointed Bismarck. Stauffenberg was politically and personally close to Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm (later: Kaiser Friedrich III) and his English wife, Crown Princess Victoria . The Crown Prince visited Stauffenberg z. B. on September 4, 1873 in his hometown in Rississen . In 1884, Crown Princess Victoria Stauffenberg is said to have suggested founding a liberal party based on the English model. The purpose of such a "Crown Prince Party" was to provide the Crown Prince with a strong, liberal faction excluding the National Liberal Party as a platform for the formation of a liberal government for the supposedly imminent change of the throne. This strong liberal platform should make it easier for the Crown Prince to replace the conservative Bismarck government and replace it with a liberal government.

It is doubtful whether the Crown Prince would have made use of this offer, which was expressly supported by the Crown Princess, had he ascended the throne in 1884. Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm had narrowly defined liberal views. They merely comprised the granting of personal freedom rights to the citizens (e.g. freedom of speech , freedom of education, freedom of religion ) and, under constitutional law, the principle of a genuinely constitutional monarchy. Above all, he rejected the way in which existing constitutional norms were frequently and unrestrainedly disregarded by the Bismarck government, and thus came into conflict with both Bismarck and the majority of the German princes, who were rooted in enlightened absolutism . At Bismarck's suggestion, Emperor Wilhelm I appealed to his son in all form and successfully to maintain his loyalty to him and the government he had appointed, unconditionally and unreservedly. In terms of constitutional law, on the other hand, the Crown Prince thought conservatively: In contrast to the Crown Princess, who was also consistently liberal on this point, instinctively, but rarely clearly articulated, left-wing liberal parties opposed the Crown Prince, who, like the DFP Stauffenbergs, wanted to expand the powers of the Reichstag at the expense of those of the Emperor .

The government of 99 days

When Kaiser Wilhelm I died on March 9, 1888 at the age of 91, his successor was already seriously ill with cancer. Bismarck warned the new Emperor Friedrich III that a government led by a liberal chancellor would inevitably end in a republican adventure. The terminally ill emperor Friedrich III. thereupon left Bismarck in office and only put his brother-in-law, the Prussian Interior Minister Robert Viktor von Puttkamer . Not least because of the weakness of the Liberal Party in the Reichstag, the emperor, who was no longer able to speak, held back against Chancellor Bismarck politically to the utmost. Even the emperor's harmless request to award medals to his liberal friends, the historian Theodor Mommsen , the politician Franz August von Stauffenberg and the doctor Rudolf Virchow , failed because of Bismarck's threat to resign. After only 99 days of reign, Emperor Friedrich III died. on June 15, 1888, without having exerted any significant political influence on the government. Like his father, his son, Kaiser Wilhelm II , was not a friend of Bismarck's, but he was not in the least liberal. With the death of Friedrich III. All hopes of Stauffenberg and the Liberals that a government would be formed had vanished.

Kaiser Friedrich legend

Even after the death of Friedrich III. Stauffenberg kept in contact with his politically isolated widow ("Kaiserin Friedrich"). He is considered to be one of the architects of the "Kaiser Friedrich Legende" sponsored by liberals and Empress Friedrich. After that, Emperor Friedrich III, had he been granted a longer reign, would have created a better future for Germany, not from the authorities but from the people. This hypothesis is now doubted by many historians because of the politically ambivalent personality of the monarch.

Retreat into private life

In the Reichstag election in 1890 , the year Bismarck was dismissed, Stauffenberg's Liberal Party was able to double its mandates again to over 60; Stauffenberg left the Reichstag in 1892 because of his diabetes mellitus and retired to Rississen and Munich. In 1893, due to its internal programmatic contradictions, the party split into the right-wing liberal Liberal Society and the left-wing liberal Liberal People's Party . Stauffenberg joined the Liberal Association, but turned down a candidacy for the Reichstag elections of 1893. He left the Bavarian state parliament in 1898.

In 1910, nine years after Stauffenberg's death, both wings of the German Liberal Party reunited under the pressure of the decline in voters in the liberal parties and merged with the German People's Party to form the Progressive People's Party .

Works

  • Friedrich Schenk von Stauffenberg, Franz August von Schenk von Stauffenberg: The Schenken von Stauffenberg historical news of this generation . Mühlthaler, Munich 1876

Honors

Incomplete list

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Kösener corps lists 1910, 112 , 653
  2. ↑ Gerd Wunder: Die Schenken von Stauffenberg , p. 331

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Schenk von Stauffenberg, Franz
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schenk von Stauffenberg, Franz August Freiherr (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer, landowner and politician (DFP), MdR
DATE OF BIRTH August 3, 1834
PLACE OF BIRTH Wurzburg
DATE OF DEATH June 2, 1901
Place of death Cracks