Hieronymus Meyer

Joseph Reinhart: Hieronymus Meyer, painting, ca.1790.

For services to Bavarian agriculture, Meyer was raised to the nobility in 1814.

Hieronymus Meyer , called Jérôme Meyer (born September 17, 1769 in Aarau , † November 14, 1844 in Munich ), von Meyer since 1814 , was a Swiss entrepreneur, revolutionary and alpinist. After the counter-revolution against the Helvetic Republic ( Stecklikkrieg ) he emigrated to Bavaria . With his brother Johann Rudolf (1768–1825) he climbed a four-thousand-meter peak in Switzerland for the first time . He was raised to the nobility for services to Bavarian agriculture.

Life

youth

Hieronymus Meyer, called Jérôme, was the son of the Aarau silk ribbon manufacturer, philanthropist, patron and revolutionary Johann Rudolf Meyer (1739–1813) and the doctor's daughter Elisabeth Hagnauer (1741–1781). His brother Johann Rudolf Meyer was closest to him of his siblings. When Jérôme was eleven, he lost his mother. Two years later the father married Marianne Renner (1747–1823) for the second time. Destined to be a merchant, Jérôme traveled to Germany with the brother mentioned in 1788. After an internship in Hamburg, he studied physics with Georg Christoph Lichtenberg for a semester in Göttingen . In 1789 he joined his father's company and married Julie Rothpletz, who was the same age. Together with Johann Rudolf he lived in his villa, the Meyerhaus, built between 1794 and 1797 .

Participation in the Helvetic Revolution

In 1798 the Meyer family took part in the Helvetic Revolution and made a significant contribution to the creation of the independent canton of Aargau from the Bernese Unteraargau . With his father, his brother Johann Rudolf and his brother-in-law Johann Gottlieb Hunziker, Jérôme belonged to the Aarau Revolutionary Committee (Security Committee). He was entrusted with missions to the French charge d'affaires Mengaud and to the French generals Brune and Schauenburg . Like his father Meyer, he helped finance the oldest canton school in Switzerland in 1801/02 . Its foundation was operated by his brother Johann Rudolf and his friend Bergdirektor Johann Samuel Gruner (1766-1824). The tutor of Johann Rudolf's children, the Bavarian Pestalozzi pupil Andreas Moser (1766–1806), was also involved.

Emigration to Bavaria

The first location of the Meyer's factory colony in Bavaria was Rohrbach Castle on the Ilm in 1802.

A smear campaign against Moser, who had propagated Deism in a work published in 1800 , and the subsequent counter-revolution against the Helvetic Republic prompted the Meyer family to emigrate to Bavaria in 1802. Relatives of Jérôme's stepmother had made a career there. The first location of Meyer's factory colony was Rohrbach an der Ilm Castle ( Pfaffenhofen an der Ilm district ), to which Jérôme moved. In 1803 the family bought the nearby monasteries Geisenfeld and Wolnzach , which they exchanged in 1804 for those of Polling , Rottenbuch and Steingaden ( Weilheim-Schongau district ). Jérôme and Johann Rudolf took turns managing the Bavarian goods. Jérôme's first marriage, which had remained childless, was divorced in 1803. In 1804 or 1805 he married the Frankfurt merchant widow Luise Vinnassa b. Wagner (1770–1826) and returned to Aarau with him and their children from their first marriage. The silk ribbon factory that was transplanted to Bavaria did not flourish because the Basel silk ribbon cartel poached the weavers from it. The emigrants, on the other hand, were successful in breeding Swiss cattle. When father Meyer withdrew the management of the Bavarian property from his son Johann Rudolf in 1807, Jérôme stayed with his brother. In 1809 he gave his stepdaughter Luise Vinnasssa (1793-1859) to wife. He also bought the Meyerhaus from him so that Johann Rudolf could build a new factory behind it around 1810.

First ascent of the Jungfrau

Meyer and his brother managed the first ascent of a four-thousand-meter peak in Switzerland. Virgin, photography, 1878.

Johann Rudolf and Jérôme achieved international fame when they climbed the 4158 m high Jungfrau on August 3, 1811, together with the chamois hunters Joseph Bortis and Alois Volken from Fieschertal (Wallis), making them the first people in Switzerland to climb a four-thousand-meter peak. In 1812 the brothers organized a second expedition, during which Johann Rudolf's son Johann Gottlieb repeated the ascent of the Jungfrau and three guides are said to have succeeded in the first ascent of the 4274 m high Finsteraarhorn .

Ennoblement

An approaching thunderstorm over Ammerland Castle, which Meyer bought in 1818 (Wilhelm von Kobell, 1798).

In 1812 Jérôme received his Polling inheritance, after which he returned there. On March 23, 1814 he was raised to the hereditary nobility for services to Bavarian agriculture. At the Oktoberfest in 1816 he received the first prizes for the most beautiful bull and the most beautiful cow. In 1817 he sold Polling to a nephew of his stepmother, Major Samuel Abraham von Renner (1776–1850), and the villa in Aarau to Johann Rudolf's sons Johann Rudolf (1791–1833) and Johann Gottlieb (1793–1829). In 1818 he acquired Ammerland on Lake Starnberg . Earlier, a loyal follower of Napoleon, Count Lavallette (1769–1830), who had been sentenced to death , was hiding on the lonely castle estate . Perhaps Jérôme wanted to give refuge there to his indebted brother Johann Rudolf. He was arrested for counterfeiting in Karlsruhe in 1820 and sentenced by the Baden judiciary to three years in prison in 1822. Jérôme sold Ammerland in 1821 and from then on lived in Munich. After the death of his second wife, he married the Aarau doctor's daughter Sophie Tanner (1806–1872) in 1828, with whom he had the daughters Sophie (* 1829) and Franziska (* 1831). Sophie's husband, Major Rudolf von Esenwein (1822–1870), died in the Franco-Prussian War . Franziska was married to Johann Matthias von Meyer (1814–1882), the senior consistorial president of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria , who was not related to her . Renner had to cede Polling to a creditor in 1843 after investing too much in the property.

literature

Web link

Commons : Hieronymus Meyer - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

personal data
SURNAME	Meyer, Hieronymus
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Meyer, Hieronymus von (full name); Meyer, Jérôme
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Swiss-Bavarian entrepreneur and mountaineer
DATE OF BIRTH	September 17, 1769
PLACE OF BIRTH	Aarau
DATE OF DEATH	November 14, 1844
Place of death	Munich

[1] The family wrote to themselves without exception Meyer. In Bavaria, however, she had to put up with the spelling Mayer and a number of others.

[2] Andreas Moser: Common sense about the art of making people happy (...) printed in the land of freedom for the year of the present and the time of the future (Johann Jacob Hausknecht, St. Gallen 1800); 2nd edition, (Huber & Co., St. Gallen) 1807 ( digitized version ).

[3] Journey to the Jungfrau Glacier and climbing its summit. Taken by Joh. Rudolf Meyer and Hieronymus Meyer von Aarau in August 1811. Especially reprinted from the miscommunication for the latest world customer. (Aarau 1811). ( Digitized version )

[4] Heinrich Zschokke : Journey to the ice mountains of the canton of Bern and climbing their highest peaks in the summer of 1812. With a map of the glaciers traveled. Aarau 1813. ( digitized version )

[5] Bavarian Main State Archives Munich, nobility register Aristocrats M 29.

[6] Lavallette's escape from death row tells Golo Mann in: A true story, edited by Peter Marxer, Kilchberg 1985.