Friedrich Wilhelm von Ferber

Friedrich Wilhelm Ferber , from 1776 von Ferber , from 1789 Freiherr von Ferber (born June 7, 1732 in Dresden , † October 25, 1800 in Leipzig ) was a statesman from the Electoral Saxony . As a court and judiciary, he was one of the programmatic heads of the Saxon rétablissement .

Life

Ferber's father was Friedrich Traugott Ferber (1701–1763), royal Polish and electoral Saxon councilor, secret cabinet secretary, provost of Zeitz . The mother was Elenore Magdalene geb. Conradi (1707-1763). He was related by marriage to Karl Ferdinand Lindemann (1714–1782), Vice-President of the Chamber College in Dresden. Both are ancestors of the historian Heinrich von Treitschke .

Through contact with his father, the lawyer Ferber took up his work in the administrative and financial area of ​​the Saxon-Polish Prince-Elector August III. and its premier Count Heinrich von Brühl (1700–1763) in Dresden and Warsaw. He found that the state finances had been shattered by the input and output policy of Brühl, mainly caused by the high costs of the Seven Years' War . Saxony was on the verge of national bankruptcy. To get to the root of the problem and to work out solutions, Dresden was not the right place, but Leipzig. Leipzig was the most important money and trading center in Saxony and the collecting point for land tax receipts in the entire Electorate. Processing and distribution took place from there. In Leipzig, Ferber found a like-minded person for new reform movements through Christian Gotthelf von Gutschmid . He became his teacher and raised him according to the principles of enlightened absolutism, which advocated civil liberties and order.

This was the basic orientation with which Elector Friedrich Christian set to work for the rétablissement in 1763 with the people he had chosen under the chairmanship of Thomas von Fritsch . Thus a few selected men from the people took over the affairs of state. The core of the group of these reformers came from the Leipzig bourgeoisie, who brought this spirit (bourgeois spirit against bourgeois power) into Electoral Saxon politics. The aim of the work was defined: the renewal of society through fundamental policy changes, restoration and expansion of prosperity in the Electorate of Saxony . In addition to the reforms to be addressed, such as the judiciary (including legal certainty in business dealings), promotion of agriculture and forestry, organization of authorities, improvement of health care, education, the person responsible was responsible for the key areas of economic, financial and tax policy. His offices were Councilor, Saxon Secret Finance Council, Vice Director of the Commerzdeputation, Director of State Economics and Manufacturing Commission. His professional competence was derived from the number of these offices. Through the consistent implementation of the austerity and consolidation policy, for example releasing property from restrictions on disposal, it was possible to reduce debts of 40 million talers over the next few years. Nobody spoke of the earlier corrupt favoritism. Ten years after the establishment of the Rétablissement Commission, the national debt was reduced.

Paper money of stable value from 1772: Saxon "1 Taler note" 1855

The Saxon cash register , which was issued for the first time in 1772 and in whose "Commission" was temporarily also held by Ferber, are famous as paper money of relatively stable value .

One of the main reasons for the debt relief was tax policy. The lowering of the consumption taxes and the state economic development favored the upswing of trade and business economy. As head of the Rétablissement Commission, Thomas von Fritsch was able to announce a surplus in the Saxon state budget for the first time. Although not all reform plans in the financial and economic sectors could be implemented due to the resistance of the estates, Saxony held the leading position in the early industrialization of Germany in the late 18th to mid-19th centuries. Even the fact that the Saxon state was almost halved by the Congress of Vienna did not have a negative effect.

Ferber married a daughter of the silk merchant Jan Dubose in Leipzig in 1767.

He significantly supported the Dresden Freemasons Institute and promoted Karl Wilhelm Daßdorf and Johann George Palitzsch . In 1777, at the request of Moses Mendelssohn, he campaigned for the Dresden Jews who were “threatened with expulsion” .

In recognition of his services to the state of Electoral Saxony, Ferber was raised to the nobility in 1776 and baron in 1789. Ferber died in Leipzig in 1800.

Fonts

• L'esprit et le systeme du gouvernement de la Saxe depuis la mort du feu roi Auguste III. jusqu'a l'année 1765 ( digitized version ).
• Speech at a solemn assembly of Freemasons in Dresden: held May 30, 1772 ( digitized version ).

literature

• Thomas Nicklas: Friedrich August II. (1733–1763) and Friedrich Christian (1763) . In: Frank-Lothar Kroll (ed.): The rulers of Saxony. Margraves, electors and kings 1089–1918 . 2007/2013.
• Claus Ritterhoff (Red.), Lessing Academy: The Saxon Politics and Leipzig in the 18th Century . Lambert Schneider Publishing House, Heidelberg 1990.
• Horst Schlechte: The State Reform in Electoral Saxony 1762–1763. Sources on the Electoral Saxon rétablissement after the Seven Years' War, Berlin (East) 1958 (= series of publications of the Saxon State Main Archives Dresden; Vol. 5).
• C. Lening: General Manual of Freemasonry . Leipzig 1893.
• Johann Georg Meusel : Freyherr von Ferber (Friedrich Wilhelm) , in: Lexicon of the German writers who died from 1750 to 1800 . Third volume. Gerhard Fleischer, Leipzig 1804, p. 309 ( digitized version ).
• Johann Heinrich Gottlieb Heusinger (Ed.): Bibliotheca Friderici Wilhelmi Lib.Bar. De Ferber . Auction catalog. Meinhold, Dresden 1801.
• In memory of Friedrich Wilhelm Freiherr von Ferber on the day of his funeral in Leipzig . 1800.
• Johann Riem (Ed.): New collection of mixed economic writings . Volume 2, Waltherische Hofbuchhandlung, Dresden 1792, p. 3 (mention).
• D. Benel: Teaching of coal, its use for all kinds of fires . Dresden 1780, dedicated to "the Highly Born Lord, Mr. Friedrich Wilhelm Ferber" ( digitized version ).

Web links

• Entry in the Dresden address book from 1799
• Entry in the Masonic Wiki

Remarks

1. ↑ Electoral Saxon Court and State Calendar. Leipzig 1790, p. 182
2. ↑ Stable paper money in the 18th century. The Saxon cash register tickets.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.   @ bundesbank.de (PDF 4.7 MB, p. 36ff), with ill. "1 Reichs-Thaler" from 1772, accessed January 26, 2018
3. ↑ “In the years 1770 and 1771, crop failures caused great price increases in Saxony, which soon afterwards led to famine and disease. [...] At the instigation of the Privy Councilor Friedrich Wilhelm von Ferber, 15 members of the lodge ' To the three swords and true friends ' founded the 'Deputation of Freemasons in Chursachsen for Poverty' "," [...] report on the Celebration on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the Freemason Institute [...] 1822 [...] "," [...] who engraved the names of former founders and promoters of the institute on the monument plate 'by Ferber [...]' "see Brothers reaching out to the covenant . 6. The charity institutions of the lodge “To the three swords and Astraea to the greening diamond” , fotothek.slub-dresden.de, accessed October 12, 2014
4. ↑ "... Mr. Schulze , at the instigation of the secret advice of Mr. Ferbers, engraved the portrait of the famous farmer Palizsch, in folio format ... ”, New Library of the Fine Sciences and the Freyen Künste, 1783, Volume 29-30, p. 323.
5. ↑ z. B. Francois Guesnet: The Politics of › Advocacy ‹ - Premodern Jewish Interest Representation . in: Dan Diner (Ed.): Synchrone Worlds: Times Spaces of Jewish History. Verlag Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2005, pp. 67-92, pp. 87f ; Georg Benjamin Mendelssohn : Moses Mendelssohn's collected writings. Volume 1, Leipzig 1843, p. 45
6. ↑ see Ernst Heinrich Kneschke : The coats of arms of the German baronial and noble families. Volume 2, Leipzig 1855, p. 149 and p. 493