Hermann Gottlob von Greiffenegg
Hermann Gottlob Xaver von Greiffenegg-Wolffurt (born April 17, 1773 , † January 19, 1847 in Freiburg im Breisgau ) was the son of Hermann von Greiffenegg . He served the House of Habsburg as a diplomat and officer.
Life
origin
Hermann Gottlob had inherited a strong sense of duty and love for the Austrian family from his father. Like his grandfather and father, he also studied law at the Albertina in Freiburg and entered the diplomatic service. Initially, he worked as an assistant to his father, who in 1793 as chargé d'affaires at the Habsburg embassy was appointed to Basel.
Austria or Baden
When the Habsburg embassy in Switzerland temporarily closed in 1800 during the 2nd coalition war against France, he became a major in command of the 4th battalion of the front-Austrian Landwehr in Freiburg. In 1803 he married a Freiburg citizen's daughter and was transferred as legation secretary to the now imperial Austrian embassy in Bern, where he served until 1809. In 1805 French troops occupied Breisgau and Baden took control of Breisgau and Ortenau . At this time, Greiffenegg went to Memmingen and Ulm to visit Archduke Ferdinand Karl of Austria-Este with his father's orders . In 1807 he was on vacation in Freiburg when his father died. He inherited the Greiffeneggschlössle on the Schlossberg and lived there when he was not in the service of the House of Austria. During this time he was a member of the Freiburg Freemasons' lodge Zur edlen Aussicht , where he served as master of the chair for several years .
After the outbreak of war between France and Austria in 1809, the young Grand Duchy of Baden , which was only created in 1806 as a member of the Rhine Confederation, called on all children of the country to give up the services of Austria under penalty of ostracism . During this time he was in Freiburg to settle his estate. Greiffenegg, loyal to the emperor, ignored the call to leave the Austrian service. He left his belongings in the lurch and put together a free corps of Austrian soldiers dispersed during the war, which operated in partisan fashion in the rear of the French general Beaumont . The enterprise was a complete failure, and Greiffenegg was badly wounded. Outlawed, wounded and persecuted, he managed to escape to Switzerland with the help of his Waldshut relatives. His Freiburg friends obtained an amnesty from the French commandant against his word of honor not to take part in this campaign. He suffered all his life from the consequences of the wound, and in future he was watched with suspicion as a renegade by the Baden state bureaucracy.
Chargé d'affaires at the Baden government in Karlsruhe
From 1810 to 1816 worked Greiffenegg to 1813 as secretary and then as chargé d'affaires of the Austrian embassy in the Baden Government in Karlsruhe under the envoy Anton Apponyi . During this troubled time, Greiffenegg was also given particularly spicy orders. In the spring of 1813 he spied on behalf of Apponyi as a French civil engineer disguised the Kehl fortress, which had been restored and strengthened since 1809 . In August 1813 he was given the task of informing the Baden government of the opening of hostilities between Austria and the Confederation of the Rhine . In mid-November 1813, the Baden State Council decided to change the alliance and was suddenly an ally of Austria again. As an unconditional opponent of Napoleon, he was visibly annoying to the Baden government in these changeable years, marked by espionage, mistrust and insecurities, in his loyalty to the emperor, occasionally he also embarrassed his employer Metternich through undiplomatic behavior . This made Greiffenegg uncomfortable for his foreign minister.
Chargé d'affaires in Kassel and Hanover
In 1816 he was transferred from Karlsruhe as chargé d'affaires to less important courts, first to Hessen-Kassel and then to the Kingdom of Hanover . In Hanover, he made friends with the painter Johann Heinrich Ramberg .
At the outpost of the House of Austria
In the harsh climate of Hanover, Greiffeneggs increased suffering from war injuries. His requests for a transfer to a warmer area led him to less attractive posts in the Habsburg Empire, to the fortress of Osoppo , to Ferrara and Zengg . He was made to feel that his unauthorized manner was a nuisance to Austrian diplomacy, and so he finally asked for his early retirement. During this time he was awarded the Order of Christ . The actor Carl Ludwig Costenoble , who made Greiffenegg's acquaintance in Hanover in September 1817, described him in his diary as follows:
“In addition to a few members of the stage, I also found the Austrian Chargee d'affairs, a colonel, Herr von Greiffeneck. This man still took part in all the joys of life, although they were greatly denigrated by physical ailments. He had fought a lot of battles, and almost every one of them suffered a few fatal wounds; therefore his whole head was as if patched up, and every impending storm was announced to him with great pain and discomfort. One could not look at this war hero without feeling the deepest awe when, out of a tendency to socialize in the midst of physical torments, he let his soul be happy with the happy. "
Back in Freiburg as a pensioner
After the now 58-year-old moved back to Freiburg, he married the Freiburg saddler's daughter Agathe Mauch (1794–1872, known as Adele) in 1833. There he wrote, suffering from an unspecified nerve fever that he contracted in 1809, with regard to Baden's previously particularly close relations with Napoleon:
“Scars as a result of services and sacrifices rendered to Germany before the epoch of 1813 do not count because they arouse unpleasant reminiscences of their own behavior in certain people. Services after 1813 against Napoleonid appendages of any color are also not recommended for people. "
And he accused the House of Habsburg, which in his opinion were ungrateful:
" Knotted together from this world in such a way that every opponent [or [crook] ) robs the honest, this man has saved nothing, nothing at all, but his honor and his aging head."
In 1840 he sold the Schlössle to the wife of the brewer Schaich and moved into a city apartment to rent. Hermann Gottlob von Greiffenegg died in 1847. His gravestone is in the old cemetery in Freiburg
Awards
The emperor awarded him the exclusive civil honor cross 1813/14 for his services , the elector of Hesse the military merit order Pour la vertu militaire . The newly founded Kingdom of Hanover awarded him the Guelph Order , the Holy See the Order of Christ . His awards are shown below on his headstone. Like his father, he was also an honorary citizen of Freiburg.
estate
From Greiffenegg's estate, a large bundle of works by his friend Johann Heinrich Ramberg came to the Augustinian Museum in Freiburg via the Freiburg lawyer and art collector Ludwig Riegel (1834–1897) . After the death of Josefa Lang (1800–1876, called Josephine), the stepsister of Greiffenegg's second wife, Riegel was able to acquire it at least partially from her bequests. The written estate could no longer be saved and, according to Riegel, was used to fire up the stoves in the hospital.
Title and name
Greiffenegg tried to emphasize his aristocratic status, possibly because of his two marriages with a bourgeois woman. So he added the name Wolffurt to his name, after Wolfurt Castle in Vorarlberg , which his grandfather Joseph Xaver Tröndlin von Greiffenegg (1705–1765) had owned from 1750 to 1752.
literature
- Hermann Kopf: Greiffenegg, the rise and end of a family . Verlag Karl Schillinger, Freiburg 1974.
- Greiffenegg and Ramberg: a friendship in drawings . Exhibition catalog, House of the Graphic Collection in the Augustinermuseum July 8, 2017 - October 3, 2017 / published by Felix Reuße for the Freiburg Municipal Museums, Augustinermuseum. ISBN 978-3-7319-0449-6
- Henning Volle: Colonel Hermann Gottlob Freiherr von Greiffenegg-Wolffurt (1773–1847) and the history of the Tröndlin von Greiffenegg family over almost 500 years. Additions to the catalog of the exhibition "Greiffenegg and Ramberg - A Friendship in Drawings" from July 8, 2017 to October 3, 2017 in the Augustinermuseum Freiburg. Mainz, 2020, ISBN 978-3-00-065275-2
Individual evidence
- ^ Church book of the cathedral parish Freiburg, year 1773, p. 495, no. 66
- ↑ see inscription on tombstone
- ^ Carl Ludwig Costenoble: My curriculum vitae, Vienna Library, Ic 59759, Bd. 1, fol. 422v
- ^ Freiburger Zeitung of June 18, 1833, Wochen- und Unterhaltungsblatt
- ↑ Entry in the Freyburger address calendar: for d. Year 1813
- ^ Ludwig Riegel: Johann Heinrich Ramberg's unknown works and friends. Contributions to the history of artists, corrections and additions . In: Journal of the Society for the Promotion of History, Antiquity and Folklore from Freiburg, the Breisgau and the adjacent landscapes 8, 1889, pp. 1–64 ( digitized version ); Ludwig Riegel: About the fate of certain Breisgau archives . In: Journal of the Society for the Promotion of History, Antiquity and Folklore from Freiburg, the Breisgau and the adjacent landscapes 8, 1889, pp. 65–81 ( digitized version ).
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Greiffenegg, Hermann Gottlob from |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Greiffenegg-Wolffurt, Hermann Gottlob Xaver von |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Austrian officer and diplomat |
| DATE OF BIRTH | April 17, 1773 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Freiburg in Breisgau |
| DATE OF DEATH | January 19, 1847 |
| Place of death | Freiburg in Breisgau |