Hildesheim Congress
The Hildesheimer Kongress , formerly also Hildesheimer Convent , was an assembly of the north German imperial estates in Hildesheim in the years 1796 and 1797.
In the Peace of Basel of April 1795 during the First Coalition War (1792–1797) between France and Prussia, a demarcation line across northwest Germany was agreed. It ran from the mouth of the Ems in East Friesland via the bishopric of Münster , the county of Mark , Höchst , Hessen-Darmstadt , Franconia to Saxony and Silesia .
Since the bishopric of Munster and Kur-Hannover seemed threatened with the continuation of the war between France and England , Prussia decided, in order to prevent the French from penetrating these areas, the demarcation line with an army of 40,000 men consisting of Prussian, Hanoverian and Brunswick troops to occupy and so secure. The negotiations conducted by Christian Konrad Wilhelm von Dohm in Hanover in April 1796 were initially unsuccessful; It was only when the danger of war approached and General Lazare Hoche's plan to advance into northern Germany became known that Hanover itself urged Prussia to advance rapidly. In June 1796 a convention met in Hildesheim to coordinate armed neutrality in northern Germany and to approve the costs, especially by the Hanseatic cities. From a legal point of view, it was a common district assembly of the Westphalian and Lower Saxony districts . The Lower Saxony Imperial Circle had not met since 1685.
The negotiations dragged on until the end of August. In the Berlin Treaty of August 1796, France accepted the neutrality of the northern German imperial estates behind the demarcation line. A second meeting began on February 25, 1797 and lasted until June 1797, without any concrete results. The progress of the armed conflict with the peace of Campo Formio shifted diplomatic efforts to the Rastatt Congress .
Dohm became an honorary citizen of the Hanseatic City of Bremen in 1797 , because he had campaigned for Bremen's neutrality and the preservation of independence.
Envoy
- Free City of Bremen: Syndic Elking and Georg Gröning
- Braunschweig: Albrecht Edmund Georg v. Munchausen
- Hanover: Wilhelm August von Rudloff
- King of Denmark as Duke of Holstein: Adolf Gottlieb von Eyben
- Free and Hanseatic City of Lübeck: Councilor Mattheus Rodde and Council Syndicate Hermann Adolph Wilcken
- Mecklenburg: Friedrich August von Rudloff
- Hochstift Münster: Matthias von Ketteler and lawyer Forkenbeck
- Prussia: Christian Konrad Wilhelm von Dohm
literature
- Johannes Heinrich Gebauer: History of the city of Hildesheim. Volume 2; Hildesheim: Lax 1924; Unchangeable Reprint. Hildesheim: Lax 1997 ISBN 3-8269-6307-5 , p. 163f.
Individual evidence
- ↑ After: Andreas Wirsching : The last "rest of the north". Prussia's policy of neutrality and relations with France 1795-1806 , in: Klaus Hildebrand, Udo Wengst , Andreas Wirsching (ed.): History and Knowledge of Time: From the Enlightenment to the Present. Festschrift for the 65th birthday of Horst Möller. Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag 2008 ISBN 9783486585070 , pp. 67–82, here p. 74