Franz Hugo Hesse

Franz Hugo Hesse (born February 27, 1804 in Marburg an der Lahn, † January 25, 1861 in Lisbon ) was a Prussian civil servant, politician and diplomat.

Life

Hesse studied law in Marburg and Halle. In 1825 he became a member of the Corps Guestphalia Halle . Since 1835 he was assessor at the district court in Koblenz . During this time he was in contact with the officer and political opponent Gustav Höfgen . Later he worked at the higher court in Berlin . At the instigation of the Prussian Ministry of the Interior, he wrote articles for some Rhenish newspapers that dealt critically with the jury courts preferred by the liberals because they allegedly preferred the accused in political trials.

As a result, Hesse was appointed to the Ministry of the Interior in 1838 as a councilor. There he was responsible for press affairs. Among other things, he was responsible for press law. As far as he could, he advocated liberal press law. In 1842, for example, he was involved in the creation of the order of October 4, 1842, which abolished the censorship for printed matter of over twenty sheets. As part of a reform of the press legislation, he also published a book in 1842/43. This brought him into contact with David Hansemann , one of the leading personalities of Rhenish liberalism . In the high Prussian bureaucracy, however, his ideas met with rejection and Hesse was first transferred to the government in Merseburg and later to Dommitzsch .

The revolution of 1848 ended this period. In March the Ministry of Ludolf Camphausen , Hansemann was finance minister and took Hesse as secret government advice to the Ministry of Finance. There Hesse became a close associate of the minister and was involved in the preparation of important legislative proposals. In May 1848 he was elected to the Prussian National Assembly for the constituency of Solingen . In this he belonged among other things to the constitutional commission. On November 9, 1848, he was one of those MPs who left the meeting to protest against the government's counter-revolutionary efforts. Nevertheless, he traveled to Frankfurt on behalf of the State Ministry in December 1848 to announce to the members of the Frankfurt National Assembly that the king would not accept an emperor election by the people's representatives.

In 1849 he belonged temporarily to the first chamber and between 1849 and 1851 he was a non-attached member of the second chamber of the Prussian state parliament . In 1850 he was also a member of the state house of the Erfurt Union Parliament .

Between 1851 and 1858, Hesse was the Prussian Consul General in Central America . He was involved in drawing up trade agreements with Guatemala and El Salvador . He also took care of the problems of German immigrants. At the end of 1858 he was appointed Consul General and Minister-Resident for Persia. However, he did not take up this office. In 1859 he was appointed Consul General for Spain and Portugal and received the title of Secret Legation Council. He held this office until his death on January 25, 1861 in Lisbon. In 1857 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Philosophical Faculty of the Philipps University of Marburg.

He married Karoline Herwarth von Bittenfeld (March 30, 1824, † October 28, 1889), a daughter of the Prussian Field Marshal Eberhard Herwarth von Bittenfeld , on October 18, 1853 in Mülheim on the Moselle .

Fonts

• The Prussian press legislation, its past and future . Schroeder, Berlin 1843 digitized , digitized
• Most important document on the existence of the reaction in the National Assembly: In the penultimate session of the high assembly, as is well known, the Schweidnitz military exception was brought up . signed F. Hesse u. a. Löwenherz, Berlin August 9, 1848 Digitized version
• To the land! We have already addressed our words to you, inhabitants of our Prussian Empire, during this fateful time ... / The elected committee of the Right and Right Center of the National Assembly. Tree strong. v. Daniels. Harkort. vd Heydt. Hesse. Ostermann. Simons. Vennewitz. Walter. v. Wittgenstein. The members present today: v. Bard life . signed Hesse u. a.

literature

• Martin Hundt : At the beginning of Marx's activity as editor of the " Rheinische Zeitung " Franz Hugo Hesse to Karl Marx , November 4, 1842 Addendum to MEGA III / 1 In: Marx-Engels-Jahrbuch 2005 pp. 210–221 Partial digitization
• Minutes of the Prussian State Ministry, Vol. 2, p. 420 Digital copy (PDF; 2.9 MB)
• Thomas Schoonover: Germany in Central America. Competitive imperialism, 1821-1929 .Tuscaloosa, Univ. Of Alabama Press 2010, especially pp. 34–54 ( Franz Hugo Hesse's Mission to Central America 1851-1858 )
• Jochen Lengemann, The German Parliament (Erfurt Union Parliament) from 1850 , Urban & Fischer bei Elsev, 2000, p. 164 Biography

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Kösener Corpslisten 1960, 116 , 607
2. ↑ in Central America (Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Honduras and Free State of New Granada, today: Colombia). In 1852 Franz Hugo Hesse was welcomed to El Salvador as the Prussian chargé d'affaires , who in 1853 hired a certain Ludwig Kronmeier (also Kronmeyer) as consular agent for El Salvador. With this we find the first official representative from Germany specifically for Salvadoran affairs, but he never received official confirmation for this post from Prussia. Nor was his term of office long. German Embassy in Sansalvador accessed on May 22, 2011 Digital version  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.