Georg Wilhelm Keßler

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Georg Wilhelm Keßler (1782–1846)

Georg Wilhelm Keßler (born March 24, 1782 in Herpf near Meiningen , † May 18, 1846 in Berlin ) was Royal Prussian Real Privy Councilor , then District President of Arnsberg and a writer.

Live and act

Kessler was the son of a pastor. After his early death, the guardianship was in the hands of Anton Heim, court attorney u. Councilor in Meiningen, who took care of his education. After elementary classes, Keßler first attended the city school and later the grammar school in Meiningen. When he was 11 years old, his mother also died and from then on Keßler lived with his guardian Heim. After graduating from high school in 1800, he studied law in Jena under poor conditions . In order to finance his livelihood, he accepted several Hofmeister posts in Berlin in 1802 (that is probably the position of private tutor).

From 1806 Keßler was a trainee lawyer at the Kurmärk Chamber of Commerce. In the same year he went on a six-month trip to Switzerland with his childhood friend Prince Max von Neuwied and Count Reuss, which Keßler later reported in a book. Then Keßler worked for the government in Potsdam under Bassewirz and Ludwig von Vincke . In 1810, Keßler passed the assessor exam, was appointed court counselor shortly afterwards and married the niece of his guardian, Auguste Juliane Heim (1792–1820), daughter of the well-known physician Dr. Ernst Ludwig Heim , honorary citizen of Berlin. With her he had a daughter and three sons, among them the later Duisburg district administrator Anton Kessler .

Between 1813 and 1814 Keßler took part in the Wars of Liberation as a captain . At times he was civil commissioner in Saxony and Niederlausitz . Most recently he was posted to the Russian headquarters in Hamburg .

In August 1816 Keßler came to Münster as a government director and in 1819 he moved to Frankfurt (Oder) . After the death of his wife Auguste on July 13, 1824 in Berlin - married to Friedrich Schleiermacher - he married her cousin Friederike Heim, the former fiancée of the poet Friedrich Rückert . From 1825 Keßler worked as a secret chief finance advisor in the (finance) ministry in Berlin and was appointed director of the domain and forest administration. When his department was converted into an independent ministry under a minister Adalbert von Ladenberg in 1835 , Keßler asked for a transfer to another office.

From 1836 to 1845 he served as district president in Arnsberg . Although he had asked for the position himself, his descriptions of the small town in the Sauerland are similar to those of an exile. Incidentally, they are a testament to the difficult relations between the immigrant Protestant Prussians and the Catholic natives.

Keßler wrote to an acquaintance in London, for example: “... I regarded my referral back as a kind of burial, so unfortunately I was not mistaken. As raw and harsh as the crowd is here, in the garden and in the field, lacking in any higher endeavor in any trade, this soil is also absolutely sterile for all noble social intercourse. Whether that is still youth full of hidden power, called to some beautiful development ... whether old age has evaporated in the old Cologne-Sauerland clergy and dirt. (...) "

However, Keßler hoped that the Prussian government would have a positive influence on progress in society and industry. Probably for this reason too, he refused both the ministerial post offered to him by the Duke of Meiningen and a title of nobility. In 1841 Keßler went on an educational trip to England with a friend Friedrich von Raumer and in 1842 took part in the Cologne Cathedral Festival. He retired in 1845 and died in Berlin in 1846.

Fonts

  • Shakespeare's Ende Gut alles Gut , (translated by Georg Wilhelm Keßler), Berlin 1809, digitized
  • Shakespeare's Cymbeline (translated by Georg Wilhelm Keßler). 2nd, presumably edition Leipzig, 1846. (first Berlin, 1809), digitized
  • Life of the royal Prussian secret councilor and doctor of medical science Ernst Ludwig Heim . Leipzig, 1835.
  • Letters on a trip through southern Germany, Switzerland and Upper Italy in the summer of 1808 . Leipzig, 1808. Digitized
  • Prince Leopold of Braunschweig . Leipzig, 1844.
  • William Shakespeare's Complete Dramatic Works: Translated to the Meter of the Original , Volume 5

literature

Web links

predecessor Office successor
Philip-Ludwig Wolfart District President of the Arnsberg District
1836 - 1845 		Heinrich Friedrich von Itzenplitz
personal data
SURNAME Kessler, Georg Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Prussian civil servant and writer
DATE OF BIRTH March 24, 1782
PLACE OF BIRTH Herpf
DATE OF DEATH May 18, 1846
Place of death Berlin