Heinrich Wilhelm Hartwig

Heinrich Wilhelm Hartwig, photographed painting

Heinrich Wilhelm Hartwig (born December 29, 1792 in Hofgeismar ; † March 1, 1863 in Kassel ) was a German politician and mayor of Kassel from 1848 until his death.

Life

Hartwig was born in 1793 as the son of Johann Heinrich Hartwig (* 1760) in Hofgeismar.

In 1816 Hartwig became a lawyer in Carlshafen (today's Bad Karlshafen ) and later a senior court attorney in Kassel, where he married Elise Großheim (1800–1863), the daughter of the music teacher Großheim. The marriage resulted in a son (Ferdinand, born August 15, 1828, married to Sophie, née von Leonhard, a granddaughter of the mineralogist Karl Caesar von Leonhard ).

In the spring of 1836, the city elected him to be one of its representatives in the Hessian state parliament. On March 7, 1848, Hartwig was elected Lord Mayor for a period of 30 years. On the same day he received the sovereign confirmation of the lord mayor of the royal seat from Elector Wilhelm II .

In the struggle for the achievements of the German Revolution of 1848/49 , Hartwig joined the policy of tax refusal in September 1850, with which the state parliament and authorities wanted to oppose the reactionary elector and his chief minister Ludwig Hassenpflug . When almost the entire Kurhessian officer corps refused ( Kurhessischer constitutional conflict ), the elector fled from Kassel. But a few months later he returned to Kassel with the help of federal troops. These occupation troops, the so-called penal Bavaria , were not housed in barracks, but billeted in private houses, preferably with politically progressive citizens. As an exponent of a political direction that the Elector did not want, Hartwig received billeting for 28 Bavarian soldiers in his official apartment in the town hall on Obere Karlsstrasse, which he also had to feed for four weeks. In addition, a court martial sentenced him to three months' imprisonment , which he - as acting mayor - served in 1851 in the Spangenberg fortress .

Grave of Heinrich Hartwig in the main cemetery in Kassel

On December 10, 1851, after a fully served prison sentence, Hartwig was able to leave the Spangenberg fortress. The electoral authorities had banned a public reception ceremony on the streets of Kassel. But the city committees greeted him in the festively decorated hall of the town hall and presented him with a silver mug with the inscription:

"Your Lord Mayor HW Hartwig, the martyr of the just cause, after three months of imprisonment

The City Council and Citizens' Committee of Kassel on December 10th. 1851 "

When the state government found out about it, they started a search for the cup. House searches and interrogations were carried out and a formal investigation was initiated, but to no avail. Thereafter, Lord Mayor Hartwig remained in office, so to speak, and stood up for the interests of the city until his death in 1863.

From 1860 he also fought as a member of the state parliament for the establishment of earlier constitutional conditions. Hartwig's longtime liberal fellow campaigner, President Friedrich Nebelthau , paid tribute to the exceptional merits of this man in an obituary before the Landtag. Nebelthau particularly emphasized the strength of character and moral courage with which Hartwig had fought for free-democratic ideas throughout his life, despite personal persecution.

Web links

• Biography on stadt-kassel.de

literature

• Carl Wirth: Lord Mayor Hartwig in Kassel , in: The collector (supplement to the Augsburger Abendzeitung). A sheet for entertainment and instruction. Volume 32, No. 1, Augsburg 1863, p. 112.