Günther Jansen (politician, 1831)

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Günther Jansen

Günther Gerhard Friedrich Jansen (born January 5, 1831 in Oldenburg (Oldb) , † December 31, 1914 in Weimar ) was a German politician and Minister of State of the Grand Duchy of Oldenburg.

origin

Jansen came from a civil servant family in Jeverland . His parents were the Chamber President Gerhard Friedrich August Jansen (1791–1869) and his wife Emilie geb. von Berg (1805–1862), a daughter of State Minister Günther von Berg .

Life

Jansen attended the old grammar school in Oldenburg . He studied after high school at the Georg-August University and was a member of the 1850 to 1854 Corps nominal end fraternity Teutonia Göttingen. He passed his first legal exam in Oldenburg and initially worked as an official auditor in Oldenburg and Berne . After the second state examination (1857) he was assigned to the government in Oldenburg as secretary. In 1859 he was appointed official assessor and in the following years was entrusted with the administration of the offices of Löningen and Damme (Dümmer) .

Confidante of the Grand Duke

Since 1864 Jansen was one of Peter II's (Oldenburg) close collaborators . He was commissioned by him to propagate the (dubious) Oldenburg inheritance claims to Schleswig-Holstein in public and in the press. For this purpose, Jansen was transferred to the court and private chancellery created in 1859, which served the Grand Duke as a bureaucratic instrument to pursue his own foreign policy goals. This law firm, of which Jansen was appointed managing director in 1865, gained importance for Oldenburg politics and stood independently next to the State Ministry. In the months that followed, Jansen established contacts with various newspapers and built up a network of confidants in the Duchy of Holstein and in the Duchy of Schleswig . In 1864/65 (after the German-Danish War ) he explored the Oldenburg chances of success in confidential exploratory talks in Hanover , Berlin and Eutin . After the failure of the project, which was hopeless from the start, Jansen became a  ministerial advisor in the State Ministry on July 1, 1866 - during the German War . He was involved in the internal deliberations on the planned constitution of the North German Confederation . In January and February 1867, he also took part in the final conferences in Berlin on the advisory board of Prime Minister Peter Friedrich Ludwig von Rössing . As a member of the Commission for Administrative Reform, he worked in 1868 on the introduction of the modern ministerial administration. At the end of the year he was promoted to government councilor.

Political and dynastic tasks

Grand Duchy of Oldenburg

In addition to his official business, the now proven civil servant, who was also personally valued by the Grand Duke because of his workforce and flexible readiness for action, was repeatedly entrusted with special courtly diplomatic and political missions. In 1869 Nikolaus Friedrich Peter sent him to Bamberg and Munich, where J. was able to clarify and regulate the inheritance claims of Queen Amalie of Greece (1818–1875), the sister of the Grand Duke, in lengthy negotiations . On July 4, 1870, he took over the management of the court and private chancellery as a director and accompanied the Grand Duke during the campaign against France at his request . During the official and unofficial deliberations in the headquarters of Versailles on the imperial constitution , Nikolaus Friedrich Peter endeavored to implement his plan, which had already been propagated in 1866, to create an upper house , which, as a federal representative of the German princes, would counterbalance the overpowering Prussia and the unitarian and democratic aspirations the Reichstag of the general suffrage should form. On behalf of his sovereign, Jansen tried to win over Friedrich I (Baden, Grand Duke) for this project and at the end of the year published an extensive brochure anonymously in order to provide the upper house idea with broader public support. This proposal, which was characteristic of the Grand Duke's conservative attitude, had no prospect of success and quickly disappeared into the drawer.

Two years later, Jansen took on another special order. Following the instructions of Nikolaus Friedrich Peters, he drafted the new house law that excluded children from unequal marriages from succession. Jansen traveled to Saint Petersburg in May 1872 and obtained the approval of the House of Romanow-Holstein-Gottorp for this design.

State Ministry

Minister Jansen's residence at OL-Roonstrasse 5 from 1877 to 1901

The trust of the Grand Duke, which was established through the close cooperation, and his ability to perform in various areas of activity, opened the way for Jansen to the top of the state. As early as December 1871 he was promoted to lecturing council in the State Ministry. After the resignation of his uncle Karl von Berg in October 1876, he was appointed Minister in the Friedrich Andreas Ruhstrat government; he took over the Department of the Interior and the Grand Ducal House and the Department of the Exterior. Admission to Oldenburg's Literary Society (1877) confirmed that he belonged to the country's narrow ruling class. On March 14, 1890, Jansen was finally appointed Chairman of the State Ministry while retaining his two departments. In doing so, he de facto took over the role of Prime Minister . In April 1897 he was awarded the title of Minister of State . His long and successful tenure ended with a dissonance. For reasons of age, Jansen wanted to resign at the end of 1901. After the death of Nikolaus Friedrich Peters in June 1900, he immediately offered the Grand Duke the entire resignation of the State Ministry. Previous differences with the Hereditary Grand Duke on important questions of internal administration made him fear conflicts between his government and the sovereign in the near future, to which he no longer wanted to expose himself. Grand Duke Friedrich August rejected the offer of resignation on June 14, 1900, but demanded a substantial increase in the civil list . Jansen resolutely opposed the demand because the Oldenburg State Parliament would only approve it in return for significant concessions in other areas.

Discharge

Additional differences on rather minor issues exacerbated the situation and led to the abrupt dismissal of the government on August 19, 1900. At the beginning of 1901 Jansen moved with his family to Weimar, where he devoted himself to literary and historical studies. Since the 1870s he had written works on the history of Oldenburg in the late 18th and 19th centuries , which he now continued and supplemented by writing down parts of his memories .

“Jansen occupies a prominent place among the senior officials in Oldenburg in the 19th century. As a longstanding minister of two important departments and as prime minister, he decisively determined the development and internal expansion of the Grand Duchy in these decades of profound change. In political terms he was a moderate conservative of the type characteristic of Oldenburg, who was permeated by the need to meet the demands of the time and to lead the administration and government of the country according to the principles of moderate liberalism. "

- Hans Friedl

Honors

family

Jansen was married to Marie born in 1864 . Frommelt (1843–1928), the daughter of the pastor Moritz Theodor Frömmelt and his wife Emilie Wilhelmine Friederike geb. Small . One daughter was the writer Emmi Lewald (1866–1946).

literature

  • Helge Dvorak: Biographical Lexicon of the German Burschenschaft. Volume I: Politicians. Volume 3: I-L. Winter, Heidelberg 1999, ISBN 3-8253-0865-0 , pp. 14-15.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Oldenburg State Calendar for the year of Christ 1843 . Oldenburg 1843
  2. ↑ Jansen's father wore the Guelph Order and the Order of Henry the Lion .
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g h Hans Friedl: Jansen, Gerhard Friedrich Günther (Oldenburg State Library)
  4. ↑ Kösener Corpslisten 1960, 46/37
  5. ↑ Ulrich Scheschkewitz: 200 Years of the Literary Society in Oldenburg (1981)
  6. ^ Albrecht Eckhardt: Staatsdienerverzeichnis 1859-1930. The higher officials of the Grand Duchy and Free State of Oldenburg with the regions of Oldenburg, Lübeck and Birkenfeld . Publications of the Lower Saxony archive administration. Inventories and smaller publications of the State Archives in Oldenburg, issue 40 (1994), ISBN 3 87358 390 9 , pp. 125f.
personal data
SURNAME Jansen, Günther
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Jansen, Gerhard Friedrich Günther (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German ministerial official in the Grand Duchy of Oldenburg
DATE OF BIRTH January 5, 1831
PLACE OF BIRTH Oldenburg (Oldb)
DATE OF DEATH December 31, 1914
Place of death Weimar