Franz Joseph Pfeiffer
Franz Joseph Pfeiffer , also Franz Joseph von Pfeiffer (born October 9, 1772 in Heidelberg , † August 27, 1847 in Speyer ) was a French officer, Bavarian administrative officer and ennobled knight of the French Order of Louis .
Live and act
Franz Joseph Pfeiffer was the son of Johann Michael Pfeiffer, an Electoral Palatinate official and later administrator of the Philippshall salt works in Bad Dürkheim , as well as his wife Maria Magdalena König. He grew up in Bad Dürkheim.
After the outbreak of the French Revolution, Prince de Condé recruited volunteers to support the French king in the Electoral Palatinate with the consent of the sovereign. These were both French refugees and Germans. Franz Joseph Pfeiffer was recruited and on September 16, 1790, joined his younger brother Heinrich as a cadet in the regiment of the Strasbourg prince-bishop von Rohan .
After a year and a half both advanced to lieutenants in the regiment of Prince Ludwig Aloysius von Hohenlohe-Waldenburg-Bartenstein . In the Battle of Bodental on September 11, 1793, Franz Joseph Pfeiffer was shot in the right leg and his brother fell at his side. During the battle of Berstheim in Alsace, Pfeiffer was wounded in the left shoulder on December 2 of the same year, and on September 2, 1794 he was promoted to lieutenant. At the meeting near Schussenried on September 30, 1796, Franz Joseph Pfeiffer suffered a severe wound on his left knee that almost made him unable to walk permanently; dated December 2, 1799, he was captain (Captain) of the French army.
In March 1801 the royalist volunteer troops were dissolved and Pfeiffer returned to his Palatinate home in Bad Dürkheim. As part of the left bank of the Rhine, this area had fallen to France in 1797 and was now part of the Département du Mont-Tonnerre . In April 1803 Pfeiffer was given the post of his father, who had since died, as Bad Dürkheim salt works manager; so he came into Napoleonic service. He was transferred in the same capacity to Moûtiers in the Savoie department , then to Basel. Finally he worked in the customs administration of the Département de la Sarre and the Département de la Roer .
In 1816 the Palatinate on the left bank of the Rhine fell to the Kingdom of Bavaria and became the new Rhine District . Franz Joseph Pfeiffer now transferred to the Bavarian administration and in 1817 was given the post of salt minister in Speyer. The main administration of the state salt monopoly in the district capital was transferred to him and he remained in this position until his death in 1847.
After the Restoration of the Bourbons in France, King Louis XVIII. the Palatinate official for his bravery and his services to the French royal family, on December 25, 1815, the Knight's Cross of the Order of St. Ludwig , combined with the title of nobility. The award ceremony took place in Heidelberg in July 1816.
On February 24, 1809, Franz Joseph Pfeiffer married the farmer's daughter Maria Anna Berchtold, who came from there, in Bad Dürkheim. From her two daughters, Elisabeth (Lisette) Pfeiffer married the Speyer magistrate Gustav Leonhard Hilgard. A son from this connection - the grandson of Franz Joseph Pfeiffer - was Heinrich Hilgard, who emigrated to the USA and achieved a great reputation there as a railway entrepreneur under the name Henry Villard (1835–1900). He loved his grandfather very much and passed on his portrait and many details about life in his memoirs.
Pfeiffer died unexpectedly of a stroke and was buried according to the Catholic rite in the old cemetery Speyer , where his tombstone is in today's cathedral chapter cemetery . It also states that he was a knight of the French Order of Louis.
literature
- Memoirs of Heinrich Hilgard-Villard , Reimer Verlag, Berlin 1906; Scan from the source
- Court and State Manual of the Kingdom of Bavaria , Munich, 1846, page 155; Scan from the source
Web links
- Website of the Harvard University Library, on the estate of the Villard family, with several references to documents on Franz Joseph Pfeiffer
- Website about the Knights of the Order of St. Ludwig (enter Pfeiffer and click on "valid")
Individual evidence
- ^ Memoirs of Heinrich Hilgard-Villard , Reimer Verlag, Berlin 1906, page 52; Scan to the circumstances of death
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Pfeiffer, Franz Joseph |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Pfeiffer, Franz Joseph von |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French officer, high Bavarian administrative officer, knight of the French Order of Louis |
| DATE OF BIRTH | October 9, 1772 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Heidelberg |
| DATE OF DEATH | August 27, 1847 |
| Place of death | Speyer |