Georg Karl Philipp von Struensee

Georg Karl Philipp Struensee , from 1820 Georg Karl Philipp von Struensee, (born November 30, 1774 in Greifenberg in Pomerania , † October 2, 1833 in Breslau ) was a Prussian administrative officer. Among other things, he was the first police chief in Cologne after the city was taken over by Prussian rule.

Origin and family

Struensee came from an original in the Brandenburg -based clothier family whose name in 1477 Neuruppin is first mentioned. Some members of the family later switched to the Prussian civil service. Struensee's parents were the Prussian district tax administrator and first district director Christian Philipp Struensee (1743–1811) and his wife Charlotte Friederike, b. Moldenhauer.

He was closely related to the personal physician and Minister of State in the Danish service, Johann Friedrich Struensee (1737–1772), since his great-great-grandfather and Johann Friedrich Struensee's grandfather were brothers.

Life

Early years

Nothing is known about Struensee's training. It can be assumed that he began studying after graduating from high school and completed it with the exams required for higher administrative service in the Kingdom of Prussia. In 1806 he consequently entered the state service in Prussia. From 1807 to 1809 he was the mayor and district administrator of his hometown Greifenberg in Pomerania . In Greifenberg, Struensee was also significantly involved in the formation of the Schill Free Corps , whereupon his house was looted by French soldiers in retaliation. During the siege of Kolberg in 1807 , he provided supplies for the Köslin fortress . From 1810 Struensee was then employed as a police director in Stargard and later in the same function in Magdeburg . He gained a high reputation in Magdeburg and was called in to consult with city leaders even after he left.

As police chief in Cologne

Starting position and taking office

On November 8, 1816, Struensee, who was a protégé of the Prussian interior minister Friedrich von Schuckmann, was appointed police president of Cologne. The appointment was problematic from the start. Cologne, together with the province of Jülich-Kleve-Berg, had only come to Prussia the year before during the territorial reorganization of the Congress of Vienna . It was previously occupied by the French from 1794 and was honored for the loyalty of its citizens to the French Empire in 1812 with the title of a Bonne ville de l'Empire français . Before the French occupation, the city was for a long time a haven of intolerant, obscurantistic and anti- progressive Catholicism . The Cologne citizenship was therefore not necessarily pro-Prussian and would have preferred a local and Catholic candidate by far. The confessional conflict between the Catholic Church and the Protestant representatives of the Prussian state, which was already smoldering at this time, culminated in the confusion of Cologne a few years after Struensee left Cologne .

In addition, the position of police chief was fundamentally a new feature in Cologne's administrative apparatus, as the local police duties had previously been carried out by the Cologne mayor . These tasks have now been separated, which brought Struensee into conflict with the incumbent Mayor Karl Josef von Mylius .

On December 27, 1816, by order of Schuckmann, Struensee was given the administrative duties of the Cologne district in addition to his local police duties . This corresponded to the usual administrative organization of Prussia in other provinces, but brought Struensee into conflict with Mylius, who had been entrusted with these tasks in this case too. Struensee arrived in Cologne on February 1, 1817 and took over his official duties a short time later. Due to the areas of conflict, he immediately met the negative attitude of the mayor, the city council and the citizens. This attitude became even stronger, as it was a concern of Struensee throughout his entire service in Cologne to consolidate Prussian rule in the new part of the country and to prevent any attempts at sovereignty by the city of Cologne and the Rhineland .

At the beginning of his activity, Struensee had some success. He was able to successfully take action against the city ​​begging characteristic of Cologne at that time by means of an ordinance issued at the request of Mayor Mylius on September 17, 1818 . However, the success was not permanent and begging increased again considerably in the later years under Struensee's administration.

The crime , in this time mostly petty crime, Struensee could tackle adequately. The lack of organization of the police and the disputes over competence with the city administration came to the fore, also because Struensee ignored the wishes and suggestions of the city administration towards the police, which further increased the dislike of the committee towards him.

Instead, Struensee, who continued to be sponsored by the Prussian Police Minister Wilhelm zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Hohenstein , set up a real informers' system in Cologne. Here he also worked closely with the later police director in Aachen Schnabel. Within a short time, Struensee created a system that effectively controlled social movements in the city, making free expression in this context difficult or impossible. Furthermore, Struensee expanded his competencies into important areas of the city administration and was able to issue orders himself from this position without consulting the regional president of the province of Jülich-Kleve-Berg Friedrich zu Solms-Laubach , his direct superior. The aim was to give the Prussian government in Cologne an effective instrument to exercise power.

As a censor

On March 31, 1817, Struensee was also appointed chief censor of Cologne by the district president Solms-Laubach . He retained this position until he retired in 1830. In addition to political and political publications, Struensee's activities also included all newspapers and pamphlets appearing in Cologne . Shortly before the end of his service in Cologne, he also took over the censor position for legal writings for Cologne and Düsseldorf .

The office of censor apparently provided Struensee with great zeal, so that the police administration soon largely determined the press in Cologne.

Struensee paid particular attention to writings that could cast the new Prussian rulers in a bad light. Right at the start of his work on May 4, 1817, the Sunday edition of the Kölnische Zeitung published by the publisher Marcus DuMont had to appear with a blank title page, although Struensee DuMont had given precise instructions on how to comply with the censorship criteria in a personal conversation when he took office. The article intended for the front page was objected to by Struensee and not approved because it ended with demands for the repayment of the Prussian national debt and tax cuts. DuMont received a reprimand for the blank page because, like other newspaper makers at the time, he had deliberately submitted the article to the preliminary censors late. The reason for this was that in the past these texts were objected to under time pressure, but were then released in order to avoid gaps. Not so in this case. The incident was unique in Germany up to that point and the practice of putting blank spaces in place of objectionable articles found many imitators at short notice, pending a corresponding ban by the Prussian government.

In another case, when Dumont had to release part of a newspaper page due to a lack of time after being censored by Struensee, Struensee received a reprimand from the Prussian State Chancellor Hardenberg .

Furthermore, Struensee prohibited any writings from the Rheinische Immediat-Justiz-Kommission , headed by Christoph von Sethe , which from 1816 compared Prussian and French law with regard to territorial legislation for the Rhineland and ensured that the French Civil Code was modified as a so-called Rhenish law in the Prussian Rhineland continued to apply. Struensee accused the commission of wanting to set up its own Rhenish Ministry of Justice and edited its writings particularly sharply. In addition, he forced Cologne newspaper publishers, including DuMont, to publish articles against Rhenish-French law.

carnival

Just like the Prussian government, Struensee, as a Prussian Protestant, was skeptical of the carnival , also because Struensee was often satirically attacked during the carnival . However, he did not make serious attempts to ban the carnival, especially as King Friedrich Wilhelm III. the festivities as Cologne folklore ultimately reluctantly accepted. However, Struensee often tried to hinder the carnival celebrations, such as the parade, through measures and diversions.

On June 6, 1820, Struensee was raised to the hereditary Prussian nobility .

End of his service in Cologne and later activities

In 1830 Struensee's service time in Cologne came to an abrupt end. This was preceded by increased unrest in the Cologne population triggered by the French July Revolution and especially a leaflet campaign calling for the Rhineland to rise up against Prussia. As a result, there were rallies by the population in front of the police headquarters at the end of August 1830, some of which were violently dissolved. Leading representatives of the city now turned against Struensee. At the beginning of September 1830 he was finally called to Berlin. Struensee's successor was his previous employee, Police Councilor Laurenz Dolleschall. The city leaders as well as the Archbishop of Cologne Ferdinand August von Spiegel expressly welcomed the departure of Struensee.

A short time later, Struensee was called to Breslau, where on March 27, 1831 he took the position of conductor in the Department of the Interior of the provincial government under Friedrich Theodor von Merckel and was appointed to the senior government council. He retained this position until the end of his life.

family

Struensee was married to Friederike, née von Laurenz. The couple had nine children, but only five of them reached adulthood. Among the children were the civil servant and novelist Gustav von Struensee (1803–1875) and the Prussian major in the engineering corps Johann Friedrich Albert von Struensee (1820–1863)

literature

• Karin Hachenberg: The development of the police in Cologne from 1794 to 1871. Böhlau publishing house. Cologne, Weimar, Vienna. 1997. ISBN 3-412-03297-2 .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Gustav Kratz : The cities of the province of Pomerania - Outline of their history, mostly according to documents . Berlin 1865, p. 179 ( online ).
2. ↑ Christoph Nebgen: Confessional experiences of difference: Travel reports from the Rhine (1648-1815) . De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2014, ISBN 978-3-11-035159-0 .
3. ↑ Article: May 4, 1817: Why the Kölnische Zeitung published a white front page. Cologne city gazette. Edition of May 6, 2017 ( published online on the Yahoo News webpage )
4. ↑ Willi Spiertz: Eberhard von Groote: Life and Work of Cologne Social politician and literary critic (1789-1864). Diss. Page 158, Cologne 2007, ISBN 978-3-412-20016-9 .
5. ↑ Leopold Zedlitz-Neukirch: Neues Preußisches Adels-Lexicon: or genealogical and diplomatic news of the princely, countless, baronial and noble houses residing in or related to the Prussian monarchy, Volume 4, Page 250, published in 1837.

Remarks

1. ↑ Naming according to the entry in the German National Library . In the literature, the first names are sometimes given in a different order.