Karl von Grothaus

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Silhouette of a Grothaus in the Schubert Silhouettes Collection (1779)
Hannoversche Landsmannschaft catching up with the Duke of York, Göttingen 1765
Entry of Lieutenant Colonel von Grothaus in the register of the Swedish officer Johan Daniel af Sandeberg, Göttingen, April 3, 1778

Friedrich Wilhelm Karl Ludwig von Grothaus (born April 12, 1747 in Apensen , † November 4, 1801 in Bayreuth ) was a German officer, military theorist and adventurer.

Life

Grothaus was the son of the Hanoverian captain Nikolaus Anton Heinrich von Grothaus and his wife Sophie von Horn. His older brother Nikolaus Anton Heinrich Julian von Grothaus (* 1743; † after 1802) became a lawyer and the biographies of both brothers are often mixed up in the literature due to a mistake by Heinrich Wilhelm Rotermund and, based on this, by Karl Ernst Hermann Krause in the General German Biography or confused.

Karl von Grothaus visited the Page Institute in Hanover, where his first circle of friends of the same age formed from the first families of the Electorate of Hanover , including the later Prussian State Chancellor Karl August von Hardenberg . He studied mathematics as ensign of the guards regiment of the Hanoverian army from March 14, 1765 at the University of Göttingen and from this time is recorded as a carrier in various studbooks and in that of Ernst Ludwig Julius von Lenthe , senior of the Hanoverian Landsmannschaft in SS 1765 , written report and a list of participants on the visit of the Duke of York on August 22, 1765 in Göttingen. The circle of friends and acquaintances in Göttingen was determined not least by time at the page institute in Hanover. In 1767 he took the leave the military with the character of a lieutenant . As a pedestrian he marched across Europe and is said to have helped Pascal Paoli with his emigration from Corsica to London in 1769 . His marches, with which he was probably trying to cure a bipolar disorder , made him a legend throughout Europe during his lifetime. In 1770 the Grothaus, who was in London at the time, became a corresponding member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences . Reactivated for military service in 1772, Grothaus enrolled at the University of Leipzig on March 20, 1773 . In 1778 Grothaus gave his much-noticed lecture Oratio de re militari as a lieutenant colonel at the Göttingen Academy. In the further course of the year he took part in the War of the Bavarian Succession under the Prussian flag . He frequented King Frederick the Great's table , which was reported by Prince Carl of Hesse in 1816 , and as a friend of the Prince of Wales , later King George IV, he was under the protection of the London court. His ideas presented to the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen were taken up by General Scharnhorst in 1790 , but it was Napoleon's Grande Armée who first implemented them. As a thinker, Grothaus was ahead of his time. He is mentioned by Goethe in his diary on August 25, 1779 and documented again when he met again on August 31, 1793 near Verdun, where Grothaus is said to have offered himself as a parliamentarian at the handover of the fortress. However, the confusion between the two Grothaus brothers by Rotermund and Krause continues throughout Goethe research . His future path in life is unclear and, due to the mix-ups and legends, cannot be determined unequivocally.

Prinzessinenhaus in St. Georgen, insane asylum in Bayreuth from 1784–1870

His mental and physical health deteriorated from 1790 onwards, he was bedridden and at times almost a prisoner in Küstrin . In 1797 he was brought to the Plassenburg Fortress , where four rooms were specially renovated for him, but did not stay there. Another time remains unclear and the role of the leading minister in Ansbach-Bayreuth , Grothausen's school friend Karl August von Hardenberg, in the matter has been passed down through Rotermund's biography, but has not yet been scientifically investigated. Colonel Grothaus died in the lunatic asylum of St. Georgen in Bayreuth in 1801 and was buried in the presence of the local Prussian officer corps.

reception

The good-looking Grothaus captivated his fellow men. Caroline Schelling describes him in a letter to her friend Julie von Studnitz in Gotha as a “handsome man” and a “romantic figure.” His contacts at the highest level of European courts and the legendary formation of the modest, ascetic hiker who was a heroic deed, already cultivated during his lifetime one after the other, as well as the mostly confusing, if not confused, publications on his person led to a confusing view of his life, which Ulrich Joost only partially clarified and corrected in 1989 by proving that Grothaus wrote his biographies at Rotermund and in the ADB owes on the one hand to his encounters with Goethe, on the other hand the mistakes of these two biographies have been accepted without criticism in secondary literature to this day.

Fonts

  • Talk of the art of war: held at Göttingen in a meeting of the royal. Society of Sciences in the presence of the Highest Hessian Prince Carl General and Chief of the Danish Army on March 19, 1778. Schönfeld, 1780 (also reproduced in: Neues militairisches Journal. Volume 4, Helwing, 1790, p. 175 ff. ( Digitized ))

literature

Web links

Commons : Karl von Grothaus  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Friedrich Wilhelm Karl Ludwig von Grothaus  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Heinrich Wilhelm Rotermund: The learned Hanover, or lexicon of writers who have lived in the Kingdom of Hanover since the Reformation. Volume 2, 1823, p. 181
  2. ^ Karl Ernst Hermann Krause:  Grothaus, Nicolaus Anton Heinrich Julius von . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 9, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1879, p. 766. with a note from Wikisource after Ulrich Joost (literature).
  3. ↑ Karl August von Hardenberg in his autobiographical notes , Brandenburgisches Landeshauptarchiv Potsdam, Pr. Br. Rep. 37 Herrschaft Neuhardenberg No. 1621 Bl. 6; according to Stamm-Kuhlmann, p. 87 (1757); No. 1621 Bl. 6 RS, S 89 (1758)
  4. ^ Entry list of the Göttingen City Archives 1765/66: Studbooks of Levin Joachim von Barner from Mecklenburg : 45 , 61; 85 , 149 and the studbook of Lorenz von dem Busch from Hanover : 223 , 50.
  5. ↑ As Einträger in Göttingen 1778: Studbook of the Swede Johan David af Sandeberg (1759–1795), sheet 134, in the Skara Stifts- och Landsbibliotek, literature: Hans Salander: Stamböcker i Skara Stifts- och Stifts- och Landsbibliotek. Skara 1980, pp. 44-47; in Leipzig 1787: David von Scheidlin (1765–1811) family record in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum , signature Hs. 140.342, page / Folium 55.
  6. ↑ Manuscript Department of the SUB Göttingen ; after Gunnar Henry Caddick: The Hannöversche Landsmannschaft at the University of Göttingen from 1737 - 1809 , Göttingen 2009
  7. ↑ Karl August von Hardenberg confirms the interaction in Göttingen several times in his autobiographical notes , Pr. Br. Rep. 37 Herrschaft Neuhardenberg No. 1621 Bl. 9 and 9 RS ("Hauptumgang"); according to Stamm-Kuhlmann, p. 96/97 (1765–1767)
  8. ↑ Ulrich Joost, p. 5
  9. ↑ See the evidence from Joost.
  10. ↑ Hardenberg's biographical notes only became accessible after the investigation by Ulrich Joost through the publication of Thomas Stamm-Kuhlmann .
  11. ^ Letter of August 25, 1779 in Caroline. Letters from Early Romanticism , Volume 1, 1913, 18 E, quoted from Ulrich Joost, p. 8
  12. ↑ Jürgen Jahnke, Christof Wingertszahn : Karl Philipp Moritz - Complete Works , Volume 5, Part 1, Travels of a German in England in 1782 , Walter de Gruyter, 2015, p. 558
  13. ↑ So z. B. with Alfred Dove . Evidence from Ulrich Joost, who points out that Gustav Roethe alone had doubts, but he dismissed them as a memory error of Goethe.
personal data
SURNAME Grothaus, Karl von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Grothaus, Friedrich Wilhelm Karl Ludwig von; Grothaus, Charles de
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German officer, military theorist and adventurer
DATE OF BIRTH April 12, 1747
PLACE OF BIRTH Apenses
DATE OF DEATH November 4, 1801
Place of death St. Georgen , Bayreuth