Heinrich Christian Flick

The rectory in Petterweil; Flick worked here with interruptions from 1812 to 1854

Heinrich Christian Flick (born April 26, 1790 in Petterweil ; † March 19, 1869 in Petterweil) was a German Lutheran clergyman and freedom fighter of the Vormärz .

Life

Flick was born as the son of pastor Johann Henrich Flick and his wife Susanna Catharine, nee. Appel, born. He grew up in Petterweil, a village in the Wetterau north of Frankfurt am Main . Today Petterweil belongs to the city of Karben . After graduating from school, he began to study theology at the University of Giessen in 1807 . After completing his studies, he returned to his hometown, initially became a private tutor in neighboring Nieder-Wöllstadt and in 1812 took over his father's pastoral position in the Petterweiler Martinsgemeinde . He was married to Christiana Friederike, b. Drullmann (March 16, 1801 - September 6, 1822), who died in childbed.

In Giessen he was influenced by the burgeoning ideas of liberalism . Flick became an advocate of the wars of freedom against Napoleonic rule in Europe. He published speeches, song texts and poems on the national unity of Germany as well as sermons in which he justified his social demands for practical neighborly love as a Christian commandment. With these sermons, Flick is now considered to be one of the theological forerunners of evangelical social movements ( Inner Mission ), as they were brought to life in 1848 by Johann Hinrich Wichern as an evangelical answer to the social questions of the 19th century.

Under the impression of the protagonists of Vormärz active in Upper Hesse and the unfulfilled freedom rights in the course of the restoration (story) under Prince Metternich and the restoration of police authority and arbitrariness , he became a member of the Wetterau Society , an association of nationally and Christian-minded men, among them the Butzbach pastor Friedrich Ludwig Weidig , who wrote the pamphlet Der Hessische Landbote together with Georg Büchner in 1834 . The political turning point for Flick was the Södel bloodbath in September 1830 in the Wetterau.

In connection with the Frankfurt Wachensturm of 1833, Flick was arrested as a co-suspect on April 23, 1835, although it can be proven that he had not participated in it. However, his name was found among the rebels, and incriminating writings were also found in his chicken coop in Petterweil. After several years of pre-trial detention in prisons in Friedberg (Hesse) , Gießen and Darmstadt , Flick was sentenced on December 8, 1838 in Gießen by the Grand Ducal Court of the Province of Upper Hesse to an eight-year prison sentence for high treason , but already pardoned on January 7, 1839 with humiliating and ruinous conditions . Furthermore, he was forbidden from parish service, even if Flick held the Petterweiler pastor's office until 1839.

The Grand Ducal Court in Giessen found Flick guilty of the following offenses in the 1838 trial:

• Knowledge and preparation of treasonable companies, especially the Frankfurt uprising.
• Making his home available for meetings and deliberations relating to treasonous companies.
• Obtaining invitations to these meetings for Dr. Breidenstein zu Homburg through the intermediary Johannes Lenhart from Petterweil.
• Personal delivery of a letter from Dr. Gärth to Pastor Weidig in Butzbach in February 1838.
• Granting shelter and maintenance to political refugees in his home.
• Drafting and clandestinely printing rebellious pamphlets, which also contained insults of majesty.
• Drafting incendiary appeals to the electors in 1834.
• Planning the liberation of political prisoners who were in custody in Friedberg in 1834/35 by bribing a soldier and using imitation prison keys.

The Flick parsonage in Petterweil was from 1832 a. a. a locally designated meeting point for the political protagonists of Vormärz in the Wetterau. After the Hambach Festival , it becomes a politically explosive place that was no longer considered safe. From 1834 these meetings were held in Friedberg in Theodor Trapp's pharmacy . It was there that the liberation of Karl Minnigerode , a student imprisoned in Friedberg's dungeon, was organized. Minnigerode was caught in Giessen with copies of the Hessischer Landbote. The guards were bribed, but Minnigerode was no longer able to escape due to the frailty he had inflicted in prison. Georg Büchner fled on March 1, 1835, and Flick, Weidig and others were incarcerated on April 23.

Against the background of the March Revolution and the revolutionary events of 1848 in the Paulskirche in Frankfurt , Flick became politically active again. He considered running for the Frankfurt National Assembly , but waived in favor of Darmstadt lawyer Jacob Ludwig Theodor Reh , Ludwig Weidig's former legal advisor. Flick's renunciation of candidacy was compelled by political intrigue . In an anonymous article in the Frankfurter Journal he was accused of betrayal of political ideals and - through confessions during his imprisonment - of complicity in Weidig's death. Should Flick continue his candidacy, his court files will be published.

In a reply dated May 5, 1848 in the Frankfurter Journal, Flick contradicted these allegations. The examining magistrate Konrad Georgi and his methods were solely responsible for Weidig's death , not his (Flick's) confessions, which were obtained under threat of severe torture. The intrigue against Flick was blamed on the lawyer Reh as the author. Knowing the court files and the political career of Reh, Flick again accused Weidig's former legal advisor of political opportunism . In the inns in the Offenbach am Main electoral district, deer “spoke in the interests of those present,” said Flick.

In July 1848, Flick organized an open-air public meeting in his home village of Petterweil with the MP Robert Blum . This Petterweiler “belly meadow speech” by Blum met with a great political response in the Wetterau as well as in Upper Hesse and in the Vogelsberg . It was Blum's last public speech in Germany. In November of the same year he was shot dead in Vienna. Today a memorial stone commemorates Blum's speech in Petterweil.

At the instigation of the Petterweiler parish, Flick was allowed to enter the pastoral service provisionally again in 1849, which he performed in Petterweil with full salary until 1854. He was denied full political rehabilitation. As early as 1850, a church disciplinary investigation was initiated against Flick and in 1851 the administration of the pastor's office was denied. His permanent removal from the parish was ordered in 1854. Flick then made his living as a farmer. In 1866 he donated his house to a poor and sick foundation in Petterweil . He died at the age of less than 79 on March 19, 1869 in Petterweil.

Talk

• 1815: Speech on October 18, 1815: as on the second anniversary of the Battle of Nations near Leipzig, which was decisive for the liberation of Germany, and the German national festival founded on this day ( Text ; PDF; 5.5 MB)

swell

• Frankfurter Journal , May 1848 issues
• Georg Schellwanisch: From the life of the Petterweiler pastor Heinrich Christian Flick, in: Helmut Heide (Red.): Karben - history and present , Karben 1973, ISBN 3-88004-000-1 .
• Association of Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts , tribe “Gray Eagles” Petterweil: Petterweil on the eve of the revolution , Karben book No. 6 of the “Historical Commission City Karben”, editor Helmut Heide, Karben 1979.
• Gerhard Beier : Labor movement in Hessen. On the history of the Hessian labor movement through one hundred and fifty years (1834–1984). Insel, Frankfurt am Main 1984, ISBN 3-458-14213-4 .
• Heinrich Steitz: The Petterweiler pastor Heinrich Christian Flick (...). In: Wetterauer Geschichtsblätter 34 (1985), ISBN 3-87076-047-8 .