Hans von Held

Hans von Held

Hans Heinrich Ludwig von Held (born November 15, 1764 in Auras near Breslau , † May 30, 1842 in Berlin ) was a German civil servant and writer .

Life

Hans von Held studied law and economics at the universities of Frankfurt an der Oder , Halle and Helmstedt from 1784 to 1787 . He had to change his place of study because he was involved in various idealistic secret societies. Along with Ignaz Aurelius Feßler and Joseph von Zerboni, he was one of the founders of the League of Evergetes ("Gutesthuer").

From 1788 he served the Prussian state as secretary of the Lower Silesian excise and customs directorate in Glogau and Küstrin , in 1793 he was transferred to Posen and promoted to chief excise and customs council. In Küstrin he was admitted to the Freemason Lodge Friedrich Wilhelm there in 1791 to the golden scepter .

As a tax officer, he observed the way in which lands that had come to Prussia during the second partition of Poland were given to speculators and high officials were used for self-enrichment. Held put the resulting damage for Prussia in the millions.

Held is portrayed as a hard-working and extremely correct civil servant who, on the side, published poems on various occasions as a writer. On the birthday of Friedrich Wilhelm II in 1797, Held had a poem printed in which his official observations were also expressed; it says z. B .:

To all boys their wages, who
deceive the state,
And out of predicament, to snuggle up to the throne
like snakes.

With this method he hoped to attract attention in order to be able to describe his observations at a higher level. But the poem only led to an official reprimand and his transfer to Brandenburg an der Havel . The attempt of a friend and colleague to report to the war council Joseph von Zerboni in Glogau , grievances and corruption in his service area to his superiors, resulted in a prison sentence for Zerboni. However, this did not change the situation. During the investigation against Zerboni, the members of the Evergetenbund were suspected of planning a revolution based on the French model in Prussia, which is why they were persecuted as Prussian Jacobins.

Title page of the "Black Book"

Held decided to use a commented collection of files and letters in book form to make the system of dubious property awards and the network of relationships between the people involved publicly known. He secretly had a 256-page book printed in 1800 with the title “The true Jacobins in the Prussian state or act-like representation of the evil intrigues and fraudulent management of two Prussian ministers of state” , with the place of printing “Everywhere and nowhere” and the year 1801. The The author is not named, the comments are marked with “A. v. H. “ signed.

Held received twelve copies as an author's wages, which he bound black and also had the cut colored black. The black books had the names of the two chiefly attacked officials, the Minister of State Karl Georg von Hoym (1739–1807), and the Grand Chancellor Heinrich Julius von Goldbeck and Reinhardt (1733–1818), embossed with gold on the back . Held sent some of the black copies to important persons in the Prussian government apparatus and to the king, while at the same time the remaining edition was to be sold through bookshops. Since all previous attempts to initiate an investigation into the situation had been suppressed by the bureaucratic apparatus, Held hoped to force such an investigation through public discussion. The authorities succeeded in taking most of the circulation off the market. But the few copies distributed by Held's friends produced the hoped-for scandal. Because of the bulky title, the Aufdeckungsschrift was simply called "the black book" or black book , although most copies in circulation had a light paper cover with a leather back, typical of the time.

The personal consequences for Held, however, were not praise and recognition for the uncovering of criminal machinations. He was quickly recognized as an author by the censorship authorities. After lengthy interrogations, he was arrested and eventually sentenced to 18 months' imprisonment for insulting ministers Hoym and Goldbeck.

Nor did Held's book end the criticized practice of the award of goods. An example is the War and Forests Councilor Peter Friedrich August von Triebenfeld, who between 1795 and 1798 for helping to arrange and carry out the donation of goods, was given eight goods, valued at 51,000 thalers. In 1801 and 1802, while Held was still in custody, Triebenfeld sold these goods for a total of 750,000 thalers. For comparison: Held himself received an annual salary of 900 thalers as a civil servant. The enormous profit margin on goods sales is, however, also due to the sharp rise in property prices after 1800.

To what extent von Hoym and Goldbeck were actually guilty of corruption or breach of service, tried at the end of the 19th century. the historian Colmar Grünhagen to clarify on the basis of the files. He showed that the most important of the criticized processes, viewed from a different point of view, by no means have to have been criminal, even if the awarding practice is not always appropriate.

After his release from prison, Held survived with the help of friends and relatives and as a casual poet. In 1812 he received a civil servant position as a salt factor in Berlin, which he kept until the end of his life.

In 1842, Held shot himself at the age of 77 after 3,000 thalers had been stolen from the salt coffers for which he was responsible. He was buried in the Invalidenfriedhof . The tomb has not been preserved.

family

Hans von Held was married twice (first to a merchant's widow in 1797, then to a daughter of Major General von Treuenfels in 1813 ) and had three daughters and three sons.

Works (selection)

• The true Jacobins in the Prussian state, or representation of the evil schemes of two Prussian ministers of state , 1800.
• (Anonymous) The vaunted Prussia or illumination of the current government, parallels, anecdotes and stories. All truths in files. OO, available in the finest bookshops in Germany , 1802.
• About the sea bath near Kolberg and the best and cheapest way of making use of it , 1803.
• God dam! A heroic poem in 4 songs by a Frenchdog, translated from French , 1804.
• Struensee - a sketch , 1805.
• History of the three sieges of Kolberg during the Seven Years' War . 355 pages, with 2 maps, Berlin 1847, published posthumously by his son ( digitized in the Google book search).

literature

• German Biographical Encyclopedia . 2nd edition (Rudolf Vierhaus, ed.), Volume 4, Saur, Munich 2006, pp. 644–645.
• Rolf Straubel: Biographical manual of the Prussian administrative and judicial officials 1740–1806 / 15. In: Historical Commission to Berlin (ed.): Individual publications, Bd. 85. KG Saur Verlag, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-598-23229-9 , p. 400 f. (limited preview in Google Book search).
• Karl August Varnhagen von Ense : Hans von Held - A Prussian character image. Weidmann'sche Buchhandlung, Leipzig 1845, with a portrait behind the front book cover ( digitized in the Google book search).
• Colmar Grünhagen : Zerboni and Held in their conflicts with state power 1796-1802. Berlin, Vahlen 1897.
• Hermann Markgraf:  Held, Hans von . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 50, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1905, pp. 159-161.
• Adolph Carl Peter Callisen (ed.): Medical writers' lexicon of the now living authors , 28th volume, Copenhagen 1840, p. 460 ( digitized in the Google book search).
• New Nekrolog der Deutschen (Bernhard Friedrich Voight, ed.), Volume 20, Part 2, Weimar 1844, p. 1084 ( digitized in the Google book search).
• Joachim Bahlcke , Anna Joisten (Ed.): Words. Hans von Held - An enlightened public servant between Prussia and Poland. Edited by the German Cultural Forum for Eastern Europe , Potsdam 2018. ISBN 978-3-936168-81-5

Web links

• Works by and about Hans von Held  in the German Digital Library
• Literature by Hans von Held in the catalog of the Berlin State Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ cf. Hermann Fechner:  Hoym, Karl George Heinrich von . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 13, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1881, pp. 219-225.
2. ^ Erich Mende: Lexicon of Berlin tombs . Haude & Spener, Berlin 2006, p. 36.