Georg Heinrich Ludwig Nicolovius

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Georg Heinrich Ludwig Nicolovius, lithograph by Henry & Cohen after a painting by Christian Hohe

Georg Heinrich Ludwig Nicolovius (born January 13, 1767 in Königsberg i. Pr. , † November 2, 1839 in Berlin ) was a German ministerial official for church and school affairs in the Kingdom of Prussia .

Life

Nicolovius' parents were the court advisor in the Prussian budget ministry Matthias Balthasar Nicolovius and his wife Elisabeth Eleonore nee. Bartsch . His brother was the publisher Friedrich Nicolovius . Since the age of 11 orphan , Nicolovius grew up with his siblings at a relative who for his education at the Collegium Fridericianum made. From 1782 he studied law and philology , from 1785 theology at the Albertus University of Königsberg . While the philosophy of Immanuel Kant did not suit him, he soon won the friendship of Johann Georg Hamann . While traveling through Europe he met the philosopher Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi in Düsseldorf . In Münster he joined the group of theological reformers around Amalie von Gallitzin , Franz von Fürstenberg , Bernhard Overberg and Friedrich Leopold zu Stolberg-Stolberg . In 1791 Stolberg invited him to a two-year trip to Italy and Sicily . She made the acquaintance of Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock , Matthias Claudius , Johann Caspar Lavater and Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi .

After returning in the spring of 1793, Nicolovius stayed for six months in the house of Count Stolberg in the Duchy of Holstein , who in 1795 helped him to a position as first secretary of the prince-bishop's rent chamber in Eutin . In the same year Nicolovius married Luise Schlosser , a daughter of Johann Georg Schlosser and niece of Goethe . From this marriage the daughters Johanna and Flora, as well as the sons Georg, Friedrich and Alfred Nicolovius emerged.

Overshadowed by the conversion of Count Stolberg and although Duke Peter Friedrich Ludwig tried to keep him , Nicolovius accepted a call to the Königsberg Chamber of War and Domains in 1805 . There he was responsible for the administration of the entire school system and the affairs of the Catholic Church in East Prussia . He fulfilled the expectations placed on him so reliably that Friedrich Wilhelm III. (Prussia) appointed him to the Consistorial Council on August 31, 1805 , and in 1806/07 gave him further offices in the university board of trustees and in the silver library . In the course of the Prussian reforms in 1808 Nicolovius took over the leadership of the section for culture and public education in the Prussian Ministry of the Interior with the rank of State Councilor . The following year the Prussian central authorities returned to Berlin, including Nicolovius and his family. In the Ministry of Spiritual, Educational and Medical Affairs , which was newly established in 1817 , he also retained the department of culture and teaching and only had to hand over the teaching administration from 1824 to 1832.

At the Ministry of Altenstein, he then worked on the implementation of Friedrich Wilhelm III. initiated reform of the Church of the Old Prussian Union . Among other things, he wrote memoranda on the liturgy and synodal order . In the agendas he took the government standpoint , but tried to find a balance. He was also Vice President of the Prussian Main Bible Society .

Prussian ecumenism

The tolerant Protestant managed to mediate between the government and the Catholic Church . This earned him the (unfounded) accusation of being a "secret Catholic" from his orthodox co-religionists and radical opponents of the church like Theodor von Schön . When this conflict came to a head in 1827, Minister of Education Altenstein stood before his officials and the king personally rehabilitated him. Because of the turmoil in Cologne and health problems, Nicolovius took his leave at the end of May 1839.

A few months later, at the age of 72, he died in Berlin of complications from a stroke . He was buried in the cemetery of the Dorotheenstädtische and Friedrichswerder parishes on Chausseestrasse . The grave has not been preserved.

meaning

During his long service in the cultural authority, Nicolovius and Wilhelm von Humboldt were able to give Prussian politics valuable impulses for the reorganization of the educational system, based on his exchange of ideas with Jacobi and Pestalozzi. He shaped Prussian church policy in the first half of the 19th century, on the one hand advocating the sovereign church regime and on the other hand trying to mediate between the extreme positions. Government coercive measures contradicted his sense of justice. He was just as reserved about the Carlsbad resolutions as the treatment of the Catholic bishops by the state authorities in the Kingdom of Prussia .

Honors

Fonts

  • Memories of the Electors of Brandenburg and Kings of Prussia from the House of Hohenzollern regarding their behavior in matters of religion and the Church. Perthes, Hamburg 1838.
  • Rudolf Haym (ed.): Letters from Wilhelm von Humboldt to Georg Heinrich Ludwig Nicolovius: with two appendices. Felber, Berlin 1894 (sources on modern German literary and intellectual history 1)
  • From Josua Hasenclever's correspondence with Georg Heinrich Nicolovius in Berlin . In: Journal of the Bergisches Geschichtsverein . Vol. 1906, pp. 1–102

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ludwig von Baczko : Memorandum to the Hofrath and Ober-Secretair Nicolovius . In: Contributions to the customer of Prussia , Volume 2, Königsberg 1819, pp. 1–28 ( full text , portrait )
  2. ↑ Preußische Hauptbibelgesellschaft ( Memento from September 24, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ^ Hans-Jürgen Mende : Lexicon of Berlin burial places . Pharus-Plan, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-86514-206-1 . P. 102.
personal data
SURNAME Nicolovius, Georg Heinrich Ludwig
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German administrative lawyer and official in Prussia
DATE OF BIRTH January 13, 1767
PLACE OF BIRTH Koenigsberg i. Pr.
DATE OF DEATH November 2, 1839
Place of death Berlin