Gregor Koch

Gregor Koch (born March 21, 1747 in Altwis as Kaspar Benedikt Koch , † October 4, 1816 in Muri ) was a Swiss Benedictine monk . From 1810 until his death he was abbot of the Muri monastery in the canton of Aargau .

biography

The son of the farmer Josef Koch and Maria Anna Müller received his education at the monastery school in Muri and at the University of Dillingen . He made his profession on April 26, 1767, and was ordained priest on September 22, 1770 in Constance . Bucher initially worked as a preceptor at the monastery school, from 1773 as a professor of philosophy and as a notary . In 1778 he was appointed novice master and head of the monastery school, in 1787 that of dean .

After the French invasion of 1798, Koch came into conflict with the authorities of the Helvetic Republic when they intervened in the administration of the monastery. In January 1799 he went into exile to Glatt am Neckar and from there in the summer of 1800 to the rule of Klingenberg in Thurgau , where he managed the monastic estates. In the autumn of 1802 he returned to Muri.

On February 27, 1810, Koch was elected Abbot of Muri. He acted as an energetic defender of the rights of the abbey in relation to the new state system of the canton of Aargau. In the other cantons in which the abbey owned goods, the state authorities tried to exert increasing influence. In numerous memoranda and submissions, Koch justified the monastery's right to exist. With the approval of the Congress of Vienna in 1815, an article of the constitution that guaranteed the continued existence of the monasteries was included in the federal treaty. A year later, Koch died of a stroke.

literature

• Biographical Lexicon of the Canton of Aargau 1803–1957 . In: Historical Society of the Canton of Aargau (Ed.): Argovia . tape 68/69 . Verlag Sauerländer, Aarau 1958, p. 458 f .

predecessor	Office	successor
Gerold II. Meyer	Abbot of Muri 1810-1816	Ambrosius I. Bloch