Heinrich Grimm von Wartenfels

Heinrich Daniel Balthasar Grimm von Wartenfels (* 1754 ; † 1821 in Solothurn ) was an aristocratic Solothurn politician during the Ancien Régime and the foreign rule of Napoleon Bonaparte .

biography

Grimm came from a gender of the upper class of the patrician class, which until 1798 was the only and absolutely ruling upper class in the canton . He was initially a lieutenant in the service of the absolutist French monarchy . In 1775 he became a member of the Grand Council of the sovereign city-state of Solothurn, which was largely closed by the patriciate . In 1787 he took over the office of mayor of the city and from 1789 to 1797 he was governor of the Bailiwick of Lebern . In military terms, he also held the positions of commander of the border cordon of the Bailiwick of Dorneck and then a Solothurn city major.

When the French revolutionary troops marched into Swiss territory in 1798, Grimm was temporarily sidelined as a “representative of the reaction”. In 1802 he became a member of the apolitical cantonal court. With Napoleon's mediation file of 1803, the forces of the old system were partially able to reinstall themselves. Grimm became a member of the so-called government commission, which appealed to the people in March (excerpt): “ After our fatherland had been tortured for five years became, ... in the future it will give itself its own laws again. The religion of our fathers will no longer have to fear foreign attacks ”.

From 1803 to 1814 Grimm sat in the Grand Council as well as in the Small Council (of the government; there was no separation of powers here ) of the new mediation state of Solothurn, and in this context he was mayor several times . In 1811, as Landammann of Switzerland , he took a compliant position towards France on the Ticino question. From 1814/15, after the definitive overthrow of the Napoleonic system at both international and Swiss levels, and a relatively extensive restoration of the old conditions, he continued to exercise these functions until his death in 1821.

literature

• Solothurn State Archives / Hellmut Gutzwiller: Constitutional revisions in the canton of Solothurn in the 19th century , exhibition catalog from 1986
• Friedrich Fiala :  Grimm von Wartenfels, Heinrich . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 9, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1879, p. 695 f.
• Erich Meyer: Grimm, Heinrich Daniel Balthasar (von Wartenfels). In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .