Hugo Loersch

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Hugo Loersch

Hugo Loersch (born July 20, 1840 in Aachen , † May 10, 1907 in Bonn ) was a German legal historian and monument conservator .

Live and act

The son of the cloth manufacturer Eduard Loersch and Johanna Quadflieg attended the St. Michel College in Brussels and the Royal High School in Aachen and also received intensive private lessons. After graduating from high school in 1857, he studied law at the University of Heidelberg and legal history at the University of Bonn , where he started on March 17, 1862 with the topic De ortu et incremento superioritatis territorialis in comitatu Juliacensi ( The emergence of sovereignty in the county of Jülich ) PhD in Both Rights. Loersch then studied political science , medieval studies and ancient history at the University of Göttingen with Georg Waitz and at the University of Berlin with Leopold von Ranke (1795–1886) and palaeography with Philipp Jaffé , also in Berlin. During this time Loersch cultivated intensive and scientifically fruitful friendships with the legal historian Richard Schröder , with whom he later published several works, as well as with the canon lawyer Johann Friedrich von Schulte and the historian Alfred Dove (1844-1916).

After this period of study, Loersch was accepted into the Prussian judicial service from 1863 to 1870, initially going through the various departments of the Berlin courts in Berlin. After the Second State Examination on June 25, 1865, he found the time in the same year to do his habilitation in Bonn on a topic of Rhenish law, which in Prussia on the left bank of the Rhine largely consisted of the adoption and continuation of the Civil Code , after he had in the meantime still had passed a third exam in criminal law in Berlin.

On June 13, 1873, he was finally appointed associate professor and on March 25, 1875 as full professor of Prussian and French civil law at the University of Bonn. During this time, the future Prussian King Wilhelm II and Friedrich II of Baden were among his illustrious students. This good references effected on December 25, 1888, the transport Loerschs to the Privy Council of Justice and on 4 June 1891 he was appointed Kronsyndikus and automatically lifelong member of the Prussian manor .

Membership in associations and institutions

Hugo Loersch, 1904

In addition to his work in the judiciary and teaching, Hugo Loersch was a member and sponsor of several professional associations and societies. As early as 1862, he was a member of the historic association for the Lower Rhine , on whose board he was elected for several decades. He was also one of the founding members of the Aachen History Association in 1879 , where he was initially deputy chairman under his friend and sponsor Alfred von Reumont (1808–1887) and took over the management of the association from 1886 and continued until his death. Furthermore, in 1881 Loersch was one of the initiators and founding members of the Society for Rhenish Historical Research, together with Karl Lamprecht (1856–1915), Gustav von Mevissen (1815–1899) and others.

In line with his inclination towards legal archeology , Loersch was a member of the Provincial Commission for the Preservation of Monuments in the Rhine Province, a member of the board of the Commission for Rhenish Provincial Museums, from 1899 to 1906 chairman of the German Monument Preservation Day as well as a founding and board member of the Rhenish Association for the Preservation of Monuments and Heritage . He has also been made an honorary member of several Rhenish, Luxembourg and French historical and archaeological societies.

Hugo Loersch had been married to Helene Reichensperger, the daughter of Chief Tribunal Councilor Peter Reichensperger (1810-1892) and niece of his brother August Reichensperger (1808-1895), with whom he had a daughter, since 1866 .

Fonts (selection)

One of his first major works was undoubtedly the collection of Achener legal monuments from the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries , in which he was entirely in keeping with historicism by including sources and publications by Christian Quix (1773–1844) and Josef Laurent, among others (1806–1867), Friedrich Haagen (1806–1879), Theodor Joseph Lacomblet (1789–1866) and others contributed to general history and above all to the history of the late Middle Ages. This work counted among a model achievement of legal historical edition work.

Another major work was his work Der Ingelheimer Oberhof , which was created when Loersch originally wanted to write a paper about the Aachener Oberhof, but had to do his comparative research in Ingelheim due to missing or insufficient sources due to the great city fire of 1656 . There were certain parallels here in history, since Ingelheim, like Aachen, was also a palace town of Charlemagne (747-814) and has demonstrably had an imperial court since the 14th century, the long-lost archive of which Loersch included in his research in 1870 among other things in the memory of the old Ober-Ingelheim town hall, in the British Museum in London and in Darmstadt, and linked and supplemented it with the estate of the historian Johann Friedrich Böhmer (1795–1863). Here it was his aim, among other things, to record the Franconian organization of the late Middle Ages, whereby the introduction to the entire work resulted in a book in itself. In memory of his time in Ingelheim and his work for the Oberhof, a street was named after him in his honor.

In a third major work, Loersch devoted himself to social and economic history , researching, among other things, sources of Rhenish wisdom , archiving and editing them. This is how the preparation of the wisdoms of the Electorate of Trier came about , the first volume of which he dedicated to the emperor. He put together further volumes on this with Wilhelm Crecelius (1828–1889) and Karl Lamprecht, which were finally published by them in 1883.

Numerous other works, reports in specialist newspapers and extensive collections from local, Rhenish and German history and legal history as well as monument preservation round off the image of an exceptionally talented and committed man.

Further selection:

  • De ortu et incremento superioritatis territorialis in comitatu Iuliacensi usque ad a. MCCCLVI quo Guilelmus V ducatus dignitatem adeptus est. 1862.
  • Achener legal monuments from the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries. 1871.
  • Documents on the history of German private law. 1874.
  • Aachen documents from the 13th, 14th and 17th centuries 15th century. 1879.
  • Documents on the history of German law. 1881.
  • The Ingelheimer Oberhof . Adolph Marcus, Bonn 1885 ( digitized version of the Frankfurt University Library)
  • with Gerhard Rauschen : The legend of Charlemagne in the 11th and 12th centuries. 1890.
  • The French law of March 30, 1887. 1897.
  • The wisdom of the electorate Trier I, Oberamt Boppard, capital and Amt Koblenz, Amt Bergpflege. 1900.

Loersch bequeathed most of his records, collections and works to the Aachen city library after his death in 1907 .

Websites

Commons : Hugo Loersch  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Hugo Loersch  - Sources and full texts
personal data
SURNAME Loersch, Hugo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German legal historian and monument conservator
DATE OF BIRTH July 20, 1840
PLACE OF BIRTH Aachen
DATE OF DEATH May 10, 1907
Place of death Bonn