Friedrich Gütte

Friedrich Gütte (born January 19, 1779 in Patin, a village between Wittenberg and Torgau ; † September 16, 1843 in Berlin ) was a German administrative officer and the initiator of the establishment of the Sopot seaside resort near Danzig .

Life

His father, whom he lost at the age of six, had been a preacher at Gütte's birthplace. His mother first sent him to school in Torgau , and then after six years to a higher school in Halle , where he was supposed to prepare for university studies. From 1798 to 1801 he studied law and then found employment as a lawyer on the Celbau estate of his mother's brother, the city judge Faehndrich in Putzig . In 1803 he was appointed to the city court in Gdansk and sworn in as an auscultator . After passing his exam, he was transferred to Neustadt in West Prussia in 1808 , where he was supposed to manage the business of the local city and regional court.

In 1811, Gütte was elected mayor of Neustadt and appointed stage commissioner. In the latter function he had the obligation to procure the means of transport in the district for the soldiers of Napoleon Bonaparte hurrying to the east in large numbers . He succeeded in dampening excessive demands from the French usurpers , for which the rural population was grateful.

In 1813 he signed up as one of the first volunteers and took part in successful battles against Napoleon's army as an officer in the second West Prussian Landwehr regiment. In 1815 he was promoted to captain and company commander. When the regiment was given leave of absence in 1816, he left his former garrison location in Mewe and went to his uncle on the Celbau estate with half pay. There he cured a foot injury that he sustained while marching in the very cold, until he was appointed director of the domain office in the village of Brück an der Putziger Wiek in 1819 .

Impressed by the natural beauty of the surroundings, he made the decision in Brück to expand the fishing village of Sopot, about 19 kilometers further south, which at the time consisted of seven poor huts with thatched roofs, into a glamorous seaside resort. In the same year he moved the domain office to Sopot for this purpose. All efforts to induce private donors to set up a proper seaside bathing establishment in Sopot, as well as the efforts of the royal government to realize such a bathing establishment with the help of a public limited company, had failed until finally the doctor Johann Georg Haffner from Danzig agreed to the to provide the necessary funds and to build a bathing establishment in Sopot.

Sopot was the only larger seaside resort that had to be built without financial support from the state, although Gütte had always advocated public funding. Gütte, whose drive, skill and prudence the seaside resort of Sopot owes its creation, initially withdrew from the business of the actual seaside resort after quarrels and in August 1843 resigned from the civil service. He had wanted to retire in the city of Putzig on the Putziger Wiek, but died unexpectedly in 1843 while visiting the city of Berlin.

literature

• New Nekrolog der Deutschen , Volume 21, Second Edition, Weimar 1845, pp. 819–824.