Friedrich von Reventlou
Friedrich Graf von Reventlou (born July 16, 1797 in Schleswig , † April 24, 1874 in Starzeddel , Mark Brandenburg ) was a German statesman. He was a member of the Provisional Government of Schleswig-Holstein and governor of the duchies of Holstein and Schleswig.
Life
Friedrich Graf von Reventlou came from the old Schleswig-Holstein nobility. He was born in 1797 as the second son of the royal Danish chamberlain and major general Count Heinrich von Reventlou (1763-1848), landlord on Falkenberg , heir to Wittenberg and Kaltenhof, and Countess Anna Sophia von Baudissin (1778-1853) in the old town of Schleswig . Heinrich and Christian Andreas Julius Reventlow were his brothers.
After his school education at the Katharineum in Lübeck until Michaelis 1816, Reventlou began studying law at the Georg-August University in Göttingen in the fall of 1816 , where he joined the later Corps Holsatia in 1815 . In the summer semester of 1818 he moved to the University of Jena , the following semester to the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel , where he joined the Old Kiel Burschenschaft in 1818 ; In 1819 he became a member of the Corps Holsatia Heidelberg . In the fall of 1820 he passed his first state examination in law.
Reventlou embarked on a career in justice and entered the higher court in Glückstadt as an ausculator . There he was later appointed to the judicial council. In 1834 he became a member of the Higher Appeal Court in Kiel .
Reventlou had married Luise Freiin Löw von und zu Steinfurth († on May 27, 1864) as early as 1831 . Her children were Fanny, Kurt, Werner, Luise, Karl, Adelheid.
In 1836 Reventlou was elected provost of the evangelical aristocratic women's monastery Preetz .
Politics in the pre-march
Politically conservative, he insisted on maintaining the historically developed state rights of the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein and rejected attempts by the Danish government to change them. At the same time he fought against democratic tendencies at home.
Reventlou resisted the creation of a new cadastre for a fairer distribution of taxes. However, he campaigned for the previous separation of aristocratic and bourgeois landowners to be abolished. He also pleaded for a new regional court order.
Reventlou played an important role in the advisory assemblies of the estates since 1834. In 1844 he requested a protest note against the attempt to change the status quo under constitutional law. He was also significantly involved in the protest in 1846 against measures by King Christian VIII . The protest address and the complaint of the estates at the Bundestag (German Bund) are mainly due to him.
Reventlou chaired the members of the Itzeho meeting of the estates, who rejected further negotiations with the crown as long as the co-determination rights of the estates were not secured. The attempt to defuse the conflict in a personal conversation with the king failed because Christian VIII refused to receive him.
At the head of a now permanent deputation of the prelates and the knighthood, he continued to fight for the traditional rights of the duchies in 1847, without being heard by the Danish government.
Provisional government
The situation worsened when the king died in January 1848 and his successor Frederick VII (Denmark) announced a constitution for the entire kingdom. Reventlou pleaded for an examination of the draft constitution, provided that it would guarantee the previous rights of the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein. He took this view at the joint estates meeting of the two duchies.
The situation changed again after the overthrow in Copenhagen and the victory of the national Eider-Danish party in March 1848. As a result, a joint provisional government was formed in Schleswig and Holstein, of which Reventlou was a key member. He was responsible for the external relations. The proclamation of March 24, 1848, which goes back to Reventlou, assumed that the sovereign was unfree in his decisions. The task of the provisional government was to "maintain order, defend the border, secure the rights of the land and its ancestral duke in his name." According to Reventlou, the provisional government was not against the king, but against the revolutionary government in Copenhagen . During the Schleswig-Holstein uprising between 1848 and 1851, however, he had to take note of the limits of the importance of the provisional government. Reventlou failed to prevent the Treaty of Malmö (1848) between Prussia and Denmark.
Lieutenancy
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After a joint government took control of the two duchies, the provisional government dissolved on October 22, 1848. When Denmark terminated the armistice in March 1849, the provisional central authority appointed Reventlow and Wilhelm Beseler as governors. He rejected efforts to completely dissolve the personal union of the duchies with Denmark. This position had failed after the provisional peace agreement. The inseparability of the duchies was abandoned. The Schleswig-Holstein State Assembly had to move from Schleswig to Kiel. The governors' powers were limited to Holstein.
The peace of July 2, 1850 left the duchies to their fate. Reventlou was now anxious to get through the confrontation with Denmark without the support of the German states. However, the conservative Reventlou was opposed to the formation of voluntary corps or similar units. He was still concerned with restoring old rights, not independence. However, he refused to stop the fight when asked by Austria. With the Olomouc punctuation in November, Prussia was also ready to agree to a federal execution to enforce peace with Denmark. Under the pressure of the Austro-Prussian troops, unlike Beseler, further military resistance seemed pointless to him. He trusted in the assurance of the great powers that they would reintroduce the pre-war order. After Beseler had failed in the state assembly, Reventlou continued the governorship for a short time.
Exile and final years
After the final failure, Reventlou had to leave the duchies. From 1853 he lived on newly acquired estates in Niederlausitz and stayed away from politics. Appointed to the Prussian mansion in 1861 , he spoke again for Schleswig-Holstein in a speech in 1863.
The German-Danish War came a year later.
swell
- [ Georg Gottfried Gervinus ]: Manifesto: Signed. Kiel, July 22nd, 1850. The governorship of the Duke of Schleswig-Holstein. Reventlou, Beseler, Boysen, Franke, Krohn, Fontebay , [no location] 1850
- [Proclamation of the provisional government of Schleswig-Holstein, beginning:] Fellow citizens! Our Duke was compelled by a popular movement in Copenhagen to become his previous advisor ...; Kiel, March 24, 1848. The Beseler Provisional Government; Friedrich Prince of Schleswig-Holstein, F. Reventlou. MT Schmidt , [no location] [1848]
literature
- Hermann Hagenah , Thomas Otto Achelis : The Corps Holsatia in the history of Schleswig-Holstein: Festschrift for the 120th anniversary of the foundation day of the Corps Holsatia in Kiel , Kiel [u. a.] 1938
- Gottfried Ernst Hoffmann : Count Friedrich Reventlou: on the 85th return of the day of the Schleswig-Holstein uprising , [no place] [approx. 1934]
- Gottfried Ernst Hoffmann: The memories of the governor Friedrich Reventlou: their biographical and regional historical content published in report and excerpts , Neumünster i. H. [1932]
- August Sach: Reventlou, Friedrich von . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 28, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1889, pp. 338-345.
- Manfred Jessen-Klingenberg : Reventlou, Friedrich Graf von . In: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck . tape 7 , 1985, ISBN 3-529-02647-6 , pp. 190-194 .
- Peter Wulf: Friedrich Graf von Reventlou. A conservative in revolutionary times . In: Journal of the Society for Schleswig-Holstein History, Vol. 140, 2015, pp. 43-104.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Hermann Genzken: The Abitur graduates of the Katharineum zu Lübeck (grammar school and secondary school) from Easter 1807 to 1907. Borchers, Lübeck 1907. (Supplement to the school program 1907), No. 79
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Reventlou, Friedrich von |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Reventlow af Reventlou til Wittenberg, Friedrich greve; Reventlou, Friedrich Graf von |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German statesman in Schleswig-Holstein |
| DATE OF BIRTH | July 16, 1797 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Schleswig , Duchy of Schleswig |
| DATE OF DEATH | April 24, 1874 |
| Place of death | Starzeddel, Mark Brandenburg |