Franz Xaver Rewitzer

Franz Xaver Rewitzer

Franz Xaver Rewitzer

Honorary grave in Chemnitz Park of the victims of fascism

Franz Xaver Rewitzer (born October 9, 1798 in Munich , † May 30, 1869 in Chemnitz ) was a liberal German politician. During the 1848 revolution he was briefly President of the Second Chamber of the Saxon State Parliament and a member of the Frankfurt Pre-Parliament .

Live and act

The son of the Munich weaver Johann Rewitzer († 1818) and his wife Maria Anna geb. Wiser († 1818) grew up in simple circumstances. He received schooling at a community school in his hometown until he was eleven . His father took him out of Latin school after a year because he was worried that he would not be able to provide his son with an education, despite the foreseeable scholarships. Instead, he taught him himself in his trade ; At the age of 15, Rewitzer was acquitted of the journeyman's class . After his brother Matthias had done his military service in 1824, the two brothers went on a journey. Originally they planned to move to Lyon as the center of French silk weaving, but were not allowed to cross the border between Switzerland and France due to a lack of identification papers. So they decided to start Chemnitz as the center of the Saxon weaving and textile industry in order to work there for some time. A second hiking trip took her back to Chemnitz via Dresden , Wittenberg , Berlin , Frankfurt (Oder) , Breslau , Vienna and Prague . After a third hiking trip, which they embarked on in 1830 and took them via Regensburg , Landshut , Salzburg , Trieste and Munich , Rewitzer acquired the citizenship of Chemnitz in 1832, allowed himself to be spoken to as a master and married Friederike Wilhelmine Hüfner, daughter of a local citizen.

He was socially involved in the town's craft association and took over its chairmanship in 1840. He founded the Chemnitz Web School. In 1838 he was elected to the city council and had a decisive influence on the fact that it has met publicly since 1843. In 1844 and 1845 he was chairman of the city council. When the German Catholicism movement emerged in the Vormärz and turned against Rome's supremacy within the Catholic Church, he founded a congregation in Chemnitz on March 2, 1845. From this he was sent to the first council of this movement in Leipzig. This opposition movement, headed by Rewitzer, Robert Blum in Leipzig and Franz Wigard in Dresden, was not recognized as a religious community . The confrontation occurred on August 12, 1845 during Prince Johann's visit to Leipzig , during which the protesting crowd was dispersed using firearms.

In the summer of 1845 he was elected as a representative of the city of Chemnitz in the second chamber of the Saxon state parliament. He was the first craftsman who succeeded in entering the Saxon state parliament. In the Chamber he joined the Liberals. During the state parliament he was also elected to the city council of Chemnitz, of which he belonged from 1847 to 1849.

In March 1848, some of the leading liberal politicians took over ministerial posts in Saxony or were elected to the Frankfurt National Assembly in April . Rewitzer himself was a member of the Frankfurt pre-parliament . Only a few prominent representatives remained in the second chamber of the Saxon state parliament who represented the spirit of social change and the 1848 revolution and who were able to take over the presidency of the house. In this situation he took over the presidency of the chamber, Friedrich Wilhelm Pfotenhauer was elected vice-president. Both Saxon chambers met on May 21, 1848 to open the state parliament. On May 22nd, a draft for a more liberal electoral law was submitted to the state parliament, but it did not have a majority. Ultimately, a provisional electoral law was introduced on November 15, and a new state election was carried out on December 15, 1848. This Landtag, which was elected according to liberal suffrage and which was dominated by the Democrats and met from January to April 1849, was again a member of Rewitzer, but was no longer in charge of it. Adolf Ernst Hensel has now been elected President of the Second Chamber.

Because of his close contact with the Provisional Government, he was charged with treason during the restitution after the Dresden May Uprising . In the absence of evidence, however, he had to be released after three months of pre-trial detention and bail for 800 thalers. In October 1849, however, he was unable to accept a mandate for the state parliament that had been won in the 35th constituency ( Limbach ) because of the ongoing investigations against him. When the government under Ferdinand Zschinsky abolished the electoral law of November 1848 in the summer of 1850 and convened the state parliament again in accordance with the Saxon constitution of 1831 , he and ten other members of parliament refused to resume the mandate from the state parliament in 1848. When he did not comply with the third request to return to the Landtag, his right to stand as a candidate was revoked as reprisal. The police continued to monitor his activities with suspicion. In a list of democrats compiled by the Amtshauptmannschaft Chemnitz in 1851 , his name appears first.

However, he continued to be socially and politically active. In 1855 he was one of the founders of the Chemnitz non-profit construction company , which tried to alleviate the housing shortage by building “ small, healthy apartments ”. In September 1857 he was elected chairman for a period of three years at the first Saxon trade congress in Riesa . In the same year he moved back into the Chemnitz city council. He held the office of cashier in the credit association founded in 1862 by craftsmen and tradespeople with an advance bank for tradespeople in Chemnitz , which was established in his house at Nikolaigraben 12. He took part in the congresses of German economists in 1858 and 1859 and was in charge of the 2nd section of trade. In March 1862, the municipal electoral association was founded on his initiative . On January 1, 1863, he was instrumental in founding a local association of the left-wing liberal German Progressive Party in Chemnitz, and was elected chairman. On February 12, 1867, he was elected to the constituent Reichstag of the North German Confederation as a representative of the Chemnitz constituency , where he joined the German Progressive Party , with additional support from the Progress Association and the Workers' Education Association , which had come together to form an election committee of the Free German Party . After the constitution of the North German Confederation was drawn up and adopted in the spring of 1867 , the constituent Reichstag ended its activities. In the following election in August 1867, Rewitzer refused to run again.

Rewitzer died in Chemnitz in May 1869. In the Park of the Victims of Fascism , the former Johannisfriedhof , near Zschopauer Strasse, an honorary grave dedicated by the Chemnitz Craftsmen's Association commemorates him. In 2000 it fell victim to vandalism in which the sandstone stele was tipped over and broken. A restoration took place the following year.

Fonts

• Can a German Catholic be a member of the estates of a Christian country? And a few more words to the German people , Grimma 1845
• Petition from 417 citizens and residents of Chemnitz Eduard Theodor Jäkel and comrades regarding the recognition of the German Catholics , 1845

literature

• Josef Matzerath : Aspects of Saxon State Parliament History - Presidents and Members of Parliament from 1833 to 1952 , Dresden 2001, p. 61f.
• Josef Matzerath: Rewitzer, Franz Xaver . In: Institute for Saxon History and Folklore (Ed.): Saxon Biography .
• Wolfgang Uhlmann : Franz Xaver Rewitzer. A 48 from Chemnitz . In: Erzgebirgische Heimatblätter 10 (1988) 3, pp. 75f.
• Wolfgang Uhlmann: Franz Xaver Rewitzer . In: Announcements of the Chemnitzer Geschichtsverein, 63rd year book, new series (II), Chemnitz 1994, pp. 169–178.
• Wolfgang Uhlmann: The work of Chemnitz deputy in the Saxon state parliament (1833-1867) . In: Manfred Hettling (ed.): Figures and structures: historical essays for Hartmut Zwahr on his 65th birthday , pp. 575–601.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Wolfgang Uhlmann: The work of the Chemnitz deputy in the Saxon state parliament (1833-1867) . In: Manfred Hettling (ed.): Figures and structures: historical essays for Hartmut Zwahr on his 65th birthday , pp. 575–601.
2. ↑ Reiner Groß : Geschichte Sachsens , Edition Leipzig, 2001, p. 222.
3. ↑ Reiner Groß : Geschichte Sachsens , Edition Leipzig, 2001, p. 225.
4. ^ Wolfgang Uhlmann: Franz Xaver Rewitzer . In: Announcements of the Chemnitzer Geschichtsverein, 63rd year book, new series (II), Chemnitz 1994, p. 173.
5. ^ Sächsische Constitutionelle Zeitung. No. 3, January 4, 1863, p. 3.
6. ↑ Information from the building permit office: Monument preservation completed on two memorials in the Park of the Victims of Fascism ( Memento of the original from October 19, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed May 20, 2009. 

Web links

• Franz Xaver Rewitzer in the database of members of the Reichstag