Heinrich August von Kinckel

Heinrich August von Kinckel (v. Kinkel), (born August 14, 1747 in Heilbronn , † November 10, 1821 in Mannheim ) was a Dutch naval officer and diplomat . He gave suggestions for a marine reform in the Netherlands and had the Trappenseeschlösschen in Heilbronn rebuilt to its present form.

Life

Origin and family

He came from the Schorndorf mayor family Künckelin. The father August Wolfgang Künckelin (1710–1768) was a lawyer in the service of the knightly canton of Odenwald and was general administrator of the province of Kleve in the imperial council. He moved to Heilbronn in 1734, where in 1736 he married the patrician daughter Rosina Elisabetha Pancug (1716–1799), the sister of Mayor Georg Heinrich von Pancug . Heinrich August was the fifth of ten children in the couple, six of whom reached adulthood. With the elevation of the father to the nobility, the family took on the title of Baron von Kinckel in 1752 .

Career as a naval officer and diplomat

Heinrich August came to the United Netherlands in 1764 , where he immediately became titular lieutenant in the Admiralty of Zealand, which was probably only possible through previous contacts made by his father. Under Captain Cornelis Vis , he made his first sea voyage to the Mediterranean on the frigate St. Maartensdijk that same year, where the frigate protected the Dutch merchant ships from privateers. Soon afterwards he appeared as a young officer in the vicinity of Captain Henbdrik Bernhard Lodewijk Graf von Bylandt , with whom he again protected the Dutch merchant ships in the Mediterranean and also the ships on the East India Route between 1767 and 1770 on various ships. In 1771, a trip on the Zierikzee under captain Francois Johan Nebbens took him again to fight pirates in the Mediterranean. He then served on land for three years before he, meanwhile promoted to commander, set sail again on the frigate Walcheren under Captain Bonifacius Cau to fight pirates on the African north coast in 1775/76 .

On November 11, 1777 he was appointed extraordinary captain of the Admiralty of Zealand, but initially received no command of his own. Rather, after France entered the American War of Independence in 1778 , he was hired by the British Navy on the liner Victory , with which he first gained naval experience.

Back in Zealand he was given his own command on the liner Zuid-Beveland in 1779 , for which he had seamen recruited in the vicinity of his homeland (namely in Eßlingen , Mannheim , Dürkheim and Grombach ), especially since naval personnel could hardly be found in the Netherlands . Kinckel's brothers ran the advertising depots in Mannheim and Dürkheim. In August 1780, the Zuid-Beveland was finally put into service with a crew of 418 and 60 cannons. The ship initially served to secure the mouth of the Scheldt in the fourth Anglo-Dutch naval war and was anchored near Vlissingen for a long time . At that time it was the only operational ship of the Zeeland Admiralty. In 1781 Kinckel was ordered to join the entire Dutch fleet in Texel. The ships intended to accompany the Zuid-Beveland were defeated in the battle on the Dogger Bank , but Kinckel managed to capture two English ships with the Zuid-Beveland as the war continued .

Kinckel had gone public with criticism of the poor condition of the Dutch navy since 1779. In a letter dated June 1779 to the Dutch Prince Wilhelm V , he proposed the establishment of a marine corps. In 1780 he specified his proposals to found a corps of 6,000 men. In 1781 he wrote a memorandum on a general naval reform, which included the permanent recruitment of engineers, the establishment of a widows 'and orphans' fund, the consideration of war costs as a permanent item in the state budget, the regulation of clothing and food for seafarers and the increased acceptance of nobles in provided naval officer service. Kinckel's demands were receded before the other political events between 1785 and 1787, but in 1792 a sea corps was founded.

After the Paris Peace Treaty of 1784 , Kinckel was initially the Dutch envoy in Bavaria, where he mediated the political tensions that had arisen between the Netherlands and Austria. At that time he bought the Trappenseeschlösschen in his native Heilbronn and had it rebuilt in its present form. However, he only used the castle sporadically. When Kinckel was given command of the frigate Tholen in 1787 , he was faced with recruitment problems again and wanted to quit active naval service and switch to diplomatic service. As the second highest, after the death of Cornelis Vis, the highest ranking flag officer of the Zeeland Admiralty, Prince Wilhelm V only let him retire from the naval service after lengthy negotiations. In 1789 Kinckel married Elise von Botzheim, the marriage remained childless.

From 1789 onwards, Kinckel was only active as a diplomatic envoy. Until 1795 he was an authorized minister at the Palatinate court in Mannheim. Even after the political upheavals in the Netherlands, which led to Kinckel's dismissal from the naval service in 1795, he stayed in Mannheim, where he had meanwhile bought a house. From his brother Georg August Heinrich von Kinckel , he also acquired the castle in Dirmstein and property in Heimersheim near Alzey in 1796 , so that this property could not be confiscated by the French. He was then in English service and served in Mannheim as a middleman between the English and the supporters of the Dutch prince in Prussia. In 1799 he briefly considered entering Russian service, but soon rejected it.

After the end of the French occupation of the Netherlands, Kinckel was promoted to Vice Admiral. The future King of the Netherlands, Wilhelm I , finally appointed him envoy for Baden, Württemberg and Bavaria in 1814.

He died of old age in Mannheim in 1821 and was buried in the city's Lutheran cemetery. His widow died in 1846 and was buried in the new cemetery in Mannheim, which had now been established.

literature

• Frank CP van der Horst: Biography of an outstanding citizen of Heilbronn: Heinrich August Freiherr von Kinckel (1747-1821) . In: heilbronnica 5. Contributions to town and regional history , Heilbronn town archive, Heilbronn 2013, pp. 171–195.
• Karl Hugo Popp u. Hans Riexinger : On the history of the Heilbronn family Künckelin / von Kinckel . In: Historischer Verein Heilbronn, year book 30, 1983, pp. 145–166.