Friedrich Ernst von Schönfels

Friedrich Ernst von Schönfels (1796–1878)

Reuth manor around 1859

Friedrich Ernst von Schönfels (born November 25, 1796 in Tobertitz near Plauen, † May 1, 1878 in Dresden ) was a Saxon officer , manor owner and liberal politician. He was a member and president of the first chamber of the Saxon state parliament and comes from the Saxon noble family von Schönfels .

Life

The son of the Vogtland governor Carl Heinrich August von Schönfels and his wife Ernestine Sophie Henriette, née von Oelsnitz, took over two of the six manors owned by his father in 1822: Rodersdorf lower part and Reuth . He sold Rodersdorf in 1830, but kept the Reuth manor suitable for state assembly.

From 1813 to 1815 he was involved in various campaigns and fights in the coalition wars. He had enrolled at the University of Leipzig in 1814 , but then pursued an officer career. When his father withdrew from the management of his manor, Schönfels resigned from the Dresden Guard Regiment in 1825 with the rank of Rittmeister . However , he did not participate in the last two pre-constitutional meetings of the estates in 1830 and 1831. From the Vogtland knighthood he was elected for life in the first chamber of the Saxon state parliament in 1842 . From his contemporary Bernhard Hirschel he was considered to be a representative of " genuine liberalism ". As a political goal he pursues the " equality before the law, the truth of the constitution and its further education " and defends the " eternal rights of humanity ... not the interests of the class ".

In the course of the March Revolution , on March 16, 1848, a liberal cabinet under Karl Braun took over the affairs of state in the Kingdom of Saxony . When the Landtag met on May 18, it was appointed President of the Chamber. The liberal electoral law of November 15, 1848 temporarily ended his parliamentary career. After the election of December 1848, not a single member of the 1848 state parliament belonged to the upper house of the state parliament, which had previously been dominated by the noble manor owners. In his closing address on November 15, Schönfels addressed the “ painful, deeply felt moment ” when the MPs would be deprived of their “ right to appear as state deputies [in parliament] ”.

In the new state election, which had become necessary after the dissolution of the state parliament, which met from January to April 1849, he ran as a candidate in the electoral district in Oelsnitz , but was unable to obtain the mandate. After the pre-March parliament and the electoral law of 1831 had been restituted in the summer of 1850 by the government under Ferdinand Zschinsky , Schönfels resumed his mandate in Chamber I and was reappointed President of the Chamber. He held this office until the Landtag in 1862. By selling his Reuth manor, he lost the right to belong to the Landtag and thus also his office as President of the Chamber.

From 1866 he became the deputy chairman of the Saxon-Bohemian Steamship Company . Schönfels died in Dresden in 1878 and found his final resting place in the Trinity cemetery there .

literature

• Bernhard Hirschel: Saxony's government, estates and people. Mannheim 1846, pp. 249, 253-257. ( Digitized version )
• Josef Matzerath: Aspects of Saxon State Parliament History. Presidents and members of parliament from 1833 to 1952. Dresden 2001, p. 17 f.
• Josef Matzerath: Schönfels, Friedrich Ernst von . In: Institute for Saxon History and Folklore (Ed.): Saxon Biography .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ cf. on this, GA Pönicke (ed.): Album of the Saxon manors and castles, V. Section Voigtländischer Kreis. Leipzig 1859. ( digitized version )
2. ↑ Bernhard Hirschel: Saxony's government, estates and people. Mannheim 1846, pp. 249, 253-257.