Hugo Wesendonck

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Hugo Wesendonck, 1848

Hugo Maximilian Wesendonck (born April 24, 1817 in Elberfeld (now part of Wuppertal ), † December 19, 1900 in New York City ) was a German entrepreneur and politician.

Life

Wesendonck was the third son of five children of the businessman August Wesendonck and his wife Sophia. One of his brothers was Otto Wesendonck , whose wife Mathilde Wesendonck was a close friend of Richard Wagner . Hugo Wesendonck studied after his Abitur at Gymnasium in Elberfeld 1834-1837 Law at the University of Bonn , where he one of the founders of the Corps Saxonia belonged. After completing his military service and finishing his studies in Berlin, he began a civil service career as an auscultator (trainee lawyer) at the district court in Elberfeld in 1837 . In 1842 Wesendonck became a lawyer in Düsseldorf .

After the outbreak of the March Revolution in 1848, Wesendonck was a co-founder of the Association for Democratic Monarchy in Düsseldorf and took part in the pre-parliament . From May 18, 1848 until the end of the rump parliament on June 18, 1849, Wesendonck was a member of the Frankfurt National Assembly for the Düsseldorf constituency . There he was a member of the left parliamentary groups Deutscher Hof and Donnersberg as well as secretary of the Central March Association . Wesendonck was one of the speakers at the people's assembly on the Pfingstweide in Frankfurt am Main in September 1848 , which ended in the September riots. In October he took part in the Berlin Democratic Congress and in the anti-parliament. From March to May 1849 he edited the parliamentary correspondence of the Left in Frankfurt am Main . In the same year he became a member of the Second Chamber of the Prussian Landtag .

After the escalation of the imperial constitution campaign , an investigation was brought against Wesendonck in Düsseldorf in July 1849 for high treason and treason , which he escaped in December by fleeing to the United States via Switzerland and France . In 1850 Wesendonck was sentenced to death in absentia.

In the USA, Wesendonck started a business with manufactured goods based in Philadelphia with the help of his older brother Otto, who emigrated to Zurich with his wife . In 1860 he founded Germania life insurance and Deutsche Sparbank in New York .

literature

  • Heinrich Best , Wilhelm Weege: Biographical manual of the members of the Frankfurt National Assembly 1848/49. Droste, Düsseldorf 1998, ISBN 3-7700-0919-3 , pp. 356-357.
  • Egbert Weiß: Corps students in the Paulskirche , in: Einst und Jetzt , special issue 1990, Munich 1990, p. 45.
  • Hugo Wesendonck: Memories from 1848 , New York, 1898

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Werner P. Seiferth: On the 100th anniversary of Mathilde Wesendonck's death
  2. ^ Digitized memories from 1848 by Hugo Wesendonck
personal data
SURNAME Wesendonck, Hugo
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wesendonck, Maximilian Hugo (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German entrepreneur and politician
DATE OF BIRTH April 24, 1817
PLACE OF BIRTH Elberfeld
DATE OF DEATH December 19, 1900
Place of death New York City