Franz Heinrich Gossen

Franz Heinrich Gossen (born 1776 in Düren , died 2. October 1835 in Cologne ) was a Prussian civil servant and 1832-1834 representation as District President of the administrative district of Cologne .

Life

Origin and education

Franz Heinrich Gossen was a son of the respected ducal Jülischen civil servant and electoral rent master Arnold Winand Gossen and his wife, Anna Cordula Gossen, née Schmitz. The father lost his position and income with the French occupation and annexation of the Left Bank of the Rhine as a result of the First Coalition War and the Treaty of Lunéville .

Career

After completing his studies, Franz Heinrich Gossen entered French service in 1796. He was employed there in the domain administration of the Département de la Roer , where after a few years he found work in the department for indirect and direct taxes. Because of his efficiency, his employer hired him in 1812 to manage the canton of Krefeld , with an annual salary of 10,000  francs .

With the withdrawal of the French troops and the formation of the Generalgouvernement Niederrhein based in Aachen under the direction of Johann August Sack in 1814, this Gossen took over because of his professional qualities and human integrity. Two years later, when the Generalgouvernement came to an end in 1816 and was to be replaced by a new administrative structure, Gossen was in charge of the entire domain system as rentier supervisor. With only 3% administrative costs, he was able to transfer 8 million francs to the Prussian treasury from the New Prussian domain administration, which was still chaotic in its structure in the post-French era. As confirmation of this work performance, Sack envisaged Gossen in an organizational report from the end of 1815 as government director of Department II (finance, domains, trade police, agriculture and hydraulic engineering) at the government in Aachen, which was yet to be established . But Friedrich zu Solms-Laubach , the head president of the Jülich-Kleve-Berg province, formed in 1815 and who was also the district president of Cologne until December 6, 1817 , had noticed Gossen and hit him on November 1, 1815 in a first organizational report for the administrative district Cologne to the 3rd council there. Finally Gossen was in setting up the Royal Prussian government in Cologne as a Councilor appointed and an annual salary of 1800 Reichstalern to the post in question. In the period from 1818 to 1820, he succeeded in selling a large number of small state domains for 3.5 million Reichstaler, which would later lose half of their value. Previously, these domain estates had low returns. His further sales by the end of 1831 resulted in a further 4,822,729 Reichstaler, plus 369,907 Reichstaler from forest sales.

Gossen's successes, however, did not correspond to his professional advancement. While Sack had planned for him a position as government director in Aachen, he stayed in Cologne on a government council position. In 1818 Ludwig von Hagen took over as his previous head of department in the successor to Solms-Laubach, the position of district president in Cologne. For Gossen, this implementation should mean that he now had to take over not only his previous work, but also those previously carried out by von Hagen as head of department. On September 15, 1818 , the State Chancellor, Karl August von Hardenberg , rejected his application to assign him to the position of department head he had already practiced, but on the grounds that the district president would have to continue to run the business as department head in the future. When the head of Department I was appointed to Berlin in 1819, von Hagen had the option of transferring this position and thus freeing up the management position of Department II for Gossen, but another appointment was to be made. After the new government director left Cologne after only a few years, Gossen had to provisionally fill his post again for 18 months. When he was finally able to take over the management in 1825, this was accompanied by the abolition of the official title of government director; the department heads were now called senior government councilors. In addition, the new Cologne district president, Daniel Heinrich Delius , who previously worked in the same position in Trier, brought the government councilor Westphal with him and appointed him head of Department I and his deputy, with a higher allowance of 300 Reichstaler, compared to 100 for Gossen. Only after Westphal was transferred to Berlin in 1829 was Gossen able to move up to the first department head position and now also represented Delius , who was increasingly absent due to the negotiations on the Rhine Shipping Act until the signing of the Mainz Act on March 31, 1831. After Delius' death on December 25, 1832, Gossen applied for his successor and offered to continue the official business of Head of Department II. His request was rejected. In order to recognize his overtime, which far exceeded the usual level, he received on June 5, 1834 and as recognition from the king a gratuity of 1,000 Reichstalers from his saved salaries. The following year Gossen died "bitter and scornful".

family

The Catholic Franz Heinrich Gossen was married twice. First with Susanna Friderika Gossen, née Ising, and after her death with Wilhelmine Gossen, née Heuser. His daughter from his first marriage, born around 1805/06 in Andernach, Clara Henriette, married the appellate judge Georg Heinrich Franz Nicolovius in Cologne on May 14, 1833. The economist Hermann Heinrich Gossen was a nephew of Franz Heinrich Gossen through his younger brother Georg Joseph Gossen (1780–1847).

literature

• August Klein: The personnel policy of the Hohenzollern monarchy in the Cologne government. A contribution to Prussian personnel policy on the Rhine. (= Publications of the Historical Association for the Lower Rhine, especially the old Archdiocese of Cologne, 10), L. Schwann , Düsseldorf 1967, DNB 457217359 ; Pp. 36-38, 122 f.

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b c} Landesarchiv NW, civil status archive Rhineland, civil status register, regional court district Cologne, registry office Cologne, deaths, 1835, document no. 1437.
2. ^ Horst Romeyk : The leading state and municipal administrative officials of the Rhine Province 1816–1945 (=  publications of the Society for Rhenish History . Volume 69 ). Droste, Düsseldorf 1994, ISBN 3-7700-7585-4 , p. 305 note 130 .
3. ↑ ^{a b c} August Klein: The personnel policy of the Hohenzollern monarchy in the Cologne government. P. 36.
4. ↑ ^{a b} August Klein: The personnel policy of the Hohenzollern monarchy in the Cologne government. P. 37.
5. ^ August Klein: The personnel policy of the Hohenzollern monarchy in the Cologne government. P. 38.
6. ^ Landesarchiv NW, civil status archive Rhineland, civil status register, regional court district Cologne, registry office Cologne, marriages, 1833, document no. 204.