Gottfried Benjamin Bartholdi

Gottfried Benjamin Bartholdi (born November 28, 1778 in Danzig ; † 1819 ibid) was a German educator who attracted attention as the leader of a conspiracy in Danzig in 1797.

Life

Bartholdi was born as the son of the hairdresser and wig maker Gottfried Bartholdi and his wife Florentina Auguste in Danzig. The family was of Lutheran creed. After attending the Marienschule, he went to the famous Academic Gymnasium from 1793 . In the same year, as a result of the Second Partition of Poland-Lithuania , Prussia occupied Danzig, which had been Polish until then. This met with considerable resistance from large parts of the local population, who feared for their previous special rights in the Rzeczpospolita .

Bartholdi, who was familiar with the ideas of the French Revolution , soon gathered a small group of friends who called themselves the union of the free Prussians . Of course, there were hardly more than a dozen young people in her membership . Impressed by the Polish Kościuszko uprising of 1794, she forged plans to overthrow the city. Bartholdi gave the impression of being the head of a much larger conspiracy. The group decided to strike on the fourth anniversary of the anti-Prussian unrest after the occupation of Danzig, April 13, 1797 , Maundy Thursday . The idea, which was not very realistic in a city with a strong military occupation, was betrayed by a classmate to the Prussian authorities and was therefore not implemented.

Bartholdi and his friends were arrested. Since the Prussian government feared a major uprising, extensive investigations began, which were carried out in Berlin . The local court sentenced Bartholdi to death and his colleagues to long prison terms. Since the Danzig authorities feared that the high school student would become a political martyr, they pleaded for his pardon, which King Friedrich Wilhelm II also granted. The delinquent only found out about this immediately before the planned execution. The young people were then all released relatively quickly, after a pardon to the new King Friedrich Wilhelm III. 1802 also Bartholdi.

He then went into French military service, from which he only returned to Gdansk after the defeat of Napoleon in 1815. There he worked as a private tutor, but died four years later.

swell

• Secret State Archives Prussian Cultural Heritage Berlin, II. HA GD, Dept. 6, I, No. 317: Unrest in the city of Danzig and the related investigation against the instigators, in particular the student Gottfried Benjamin Bartholdi

literature

• Hans-Jürgen Bömelburg : The connection of the free Prussians. Republican tendencies in Gdansk at the end of the 18th century . In: Contributions to the history of West Prussia 14 (1995), pp. 69–86.
• Bogdan Głębowicz: Związek wolnych Prusaków w Gdańsku 1793–1797 (partly spisek Gotfryda Beniamina Bartholdiego) . In: Zeszyty Historyczne 26 (1961), No. 1, pp. 7-33.
• Erich Keyser : The conspiracy of the Danzig high school student Bartholdy in 1797 . In: Journal of the West Prussian History Association (1922), no. 62, pp. 73–86.