Thank God Ludwig Demiani

Thank God Ludwig Deminani

The Demianis monument created by Johannes Schilling in the small park behind the municipal theater .

Gottlob Ludwig Demiani (born April 22, 1786 in Dresden ; † July 5, 1846 there ) was a German lawyer and politician. He was considered a far-sighted visionary and was the first to hold the office of Lord Mayor in Görlitz.

family

Demiani was born as the son of the well-known doctor Christian Gottlob Demiani (1752-1806). His grandfather worked as a doctor in Dresden, his great-grandfather as a doctor in Muskau . The family had emigrated to Hoyerswerda from Transylvania in the 17th century .

Demiani married Wilhelmine Knaust born on October 22, 1814. Meißner, the widow of Münzwardein Friedrich Leopold Knaust , who was still active in Dresden in 1811 .

Early years and political orientation

Demiani attended the Augustum grammar school in Görlitz, followed by training in a Saxon princely school. This was followed by a law degree in Wittenberg .

After completing his studies, Demiani worked in Dresden and Bautzen as a senior official. On July 1, 1814, he was appointed senator of the Görlitz council. A year later, Görlitz went from Saxony to Prussia as part of the Peace of Vienna . Due to previous experience in the Saxon legal system, he quickly found his way around the Prussian. On July 1, 1820, he was appointed chamberlain.

Political career

In the mid-1830s, he played a key role in the economic boom in Görlitz. The "Görlitzer Heide", a huge forest property of 30,000 hectares in the east of the city, made the city the municipality with the richest land holdings in the 19th century. Demiani gave the order to mine the existing mineral resources and forestry. He enabled the magistrate to introduce a more generous tax policy, which made Görlitz very attractive as a retirement home for Prussian civil servants. Demiani initiated the replacement of the tenant rights. This created a stable economic backbone for the city. The settling industrial companies, such as the newly established wagon construction company Johann Christoph Lüders , also benefited from this .

Demiani was elected mayor of the city of Görlitz on January 3, 1833. Demiani also had his critics, in addition to the approval of great city personalities, such as the building officer Friedrich Wilhelm Weinhold , the later mayor Carl Eduard Maximilian Richtsteig or the pedagogue Ferdinand Wilhelm Kaumaun . Above all, the city council as well as the conservative magistrate were not very impressed by Demiani despite or because of his successes.

Demiani was an advocate of education. So in 1836 the higher citizen school was opened. The Fischmarktschule, then a girls' high school, was built between 1836 and 1838. The primary school building on Langenstrasse and the Nikolaischule followed a few years later. The first city hospital was also built on what was then Salomongasse during Demiani's tenure. Demiani had many parts of the old fortifications removed in order to expand the city towards the south. One of Demiani's plans was to connect Görlitz to a railway network. In 1841 he began to investigate the volume of traffic, which should prove the need for a rail link. Thanks to his negotiating skills and good relations with the Prussian court, the project was approved. Demiani drafted an “Ordinance for the Construction of Streets and Squares”, which was described as the best of its kind in Germany. Later development plans were based on this and on some of the most important cities in Europe.

King Wilhelm IV awarded Demiani the office of Lord Mayor in 1844 . This happened after William and Demiani of the country's crown over the city looked. King Wilhelm was impressed by the size the city had assumed and Demiani drew attention to the more than 15,000 people living here, which made Görlitz a large city under Prussian law and Demiani the mayor.

Demiani died on July 5, 1846 of the effects of nervous fever in Dresden, when he was returning to Görlitz from a cure in Teplitz that had started on May 27 . His body was transferred to Görlitz on July 7 and buried there on the following day in the Görlitz Nikolaifriedhof .

Honors and effects after his death

Demiani's grave in the Nikolaifriedhof in Görlitz

Some of Demiani's projects were only realized or completed after his death. In 1847 the “ Prussian-Saxon double station ” for which he had fought was put into operation. In 1881 the new building of the theater was completed. The introduction of gas lighting, prepared by Demiani, followed in 1884 under his successor Gottlob Jochmann .

As early as November 17, 1846, the old Rademarkt was renamed Demianiplatz . On July 8, 1862, Lord Mayor Hugo Sattig unveiled the monument created by Johannes Schilling for Gottlob Ludwig Demiani. The monument is still in front of the Kaisertrutz today. Heinrich von Treitschke , an important German historian , described Demiani in his book “German History in the 19th Century”, published in 1899, as one of the most important local politicians of that time.

literature

• Richard Jecht: Gottlob Ludwig Damiani , in: Schlesische Lebensbilder , Vol. 1, 1922, pp. 27–30 ( digitized version )
• Gottlob Ludwig Demiani in: New Nekrolog der Deutschen , Volume 24, 1846, Part 2, Weimar 1848, digitized on Google Books, p. 919ff.

Web links

Commons : Gottlob Ludwig Demiani  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Andreas Bednarek: Demiani, Gottlob Ludwig . In: Institute for Saxon History and Folklore (Ed.): Saxon Biography .