Jørgen Herman Vogt

Jørgen Herman Vogt.

Jørgen Herman Vogt (born July 21, 1784 , Bragernes (near Drammen ), Viken , † January 12, 1862 in Christiania ) was a lawyer, civil servant and politician.

Life

His parents were the timber merchant, later district judge ( sorenskriver ) Nils Nilsen Vogt (1755–1809) and his wife Abigael Monrad (1759–1812). His father ran a deteriorating timber trade in Drammen, which he eventually sold. He moved to Kongsberg . Vogt grew up as one of 13 siblings in close relationships. After graduating from Latin school, he was sent to study with an uncle in Copenhagen. Vogt passed the exam artium in 1800. A year later, while studying, he became a copyist in the Finance College. In 1806 he passed the law exam with distinction. In 1807 he became an assessor at the Finance College.

In the meantime his father had become a district judge in Nordfjord in 1803 . When he died in 1809, Vogt took over this office. But this office offered him no development opportunities. He married on January 21, 1810 in Bragernes Ingeborg Maria Lorentzen (born November 13, 1788; † September 24, 1821), daughter of the businessman Jacob Lorentzen (1738-1810) and his wife Karen Rosenberg Stranger (1751-1817). After three years he got the position of assessor in the treasury department and became archivist of the finance college in Copenhagen. Here he succeeded in reorganizing the state expenditure budget with classification of state expenditure according to the purpose of the expenditure.

In his second marriage, he married on November 22, 1822 in Christiania Hedvig Lovisa Frölich (* June 26, 1787 - January 7, 1880), daughter of Captain Count Adolf Fredrik Frölich (1756–1831) and his wife Hedvig Eleonora Hummelhielm (1768– 1846). That marriage ended in divorce in 1837.

His memoirs, Optegnelser om sit Liv og sin Embedsvirksomhed , written down in the last years of his life and published in two volumes in 1871 and 1895, are an important source for what happened during his tenure.

His grave is in the Gamle Aker kirkegård cemetery in Oslo.

Act

Basic political attitudes

Vogt was liberal-conservative. He advocated equality between Norway and Sweden in the Union and heeded the government's authority over both the Storting and the King. He was a supporter of contemporary progress with a sense of proportion, not far from Frederik Stang's conservative reform stance after 1845. In dealing with the constantly expanding power of storting, the preservation of the existing gained the highest priority. Vogt's Scandinavianism and increasing sympathy for the Union did not lead him to approve of Crown Prince Karl Johann's endeavors to expand the integration of the Union and for more independent government. Above all, he felt himself to be the guardian of Norwegian independence and (only) constitutional royalty.

career

His experience in the Danish civil service aroused in Vogt a deep aversion to the absolutist government. After the Peace of Kiel in January 1814, he took out a private loan to help Norwegians travel home. He offered his services to King Christian Frederik and became a member of the finance committee at the imperial assembly in Eidsvoll . In October he was appointed head of the finance department to succeed Poul Christian Holst, who had been elected to the extraordinary storting. After the unification of Norway with Sweden, Vogt applied to Crown Prince Karl Johan for a position in the Norwegian administration and received the post of "expedition secretary" in the finance department. Count Wedel was the head of the finance department, and a close and familiar relationship developed between the two. Count Wedel was the driving force, but Vogt's zeal for work and creativity was an important contribution to the restructuring of the state budget and the monetary system.

Vogt was a co-founder of the newspaper Den norske Rikstidende in 1815 , and here he attacked the Union war flag, much to the displeasure of Karl Johan. That is why he was replaced by Poul Christian Holst in the negotiating committee with Denmark on the regulation of mutual financial relationships. When the government proposed Vogt as the successor of Holst as State Secretary to the government, the king refused. Vogt responded with a request for dismissal. But the irritation quickly subsided. When Holst succeeded Count Wedel as State Councilor in 1822, Vogt became State Secretary.

In 1818 he became a member of the Legal Committee. Here he was the driving force in the endeavor that locally elected organs should be in charge in the towns and districts (minimizing the central government). It was also left to him to formulate the new penal law in 1815.

In 1822 he became a co-founder and member of the board of “Christiania Sparebank”. He was also a member of the first tax assessment committee in Christiania and was a member of the board of directors of the Christiania community school. From 1833 until his death he was president of the "Selskabet for Norges Vel" (Society for the Welfare of Norway). In 1825 he was State Councilor in the Army Department. He was also a member of the State Council Department in Stockholm until 1828. In the following 33 years he headed all departments with the exception of the Naval Department. Exceptions were also the years 1829 to 1836, when he was released to work in the Legal Committee for the drafting of a criminal code. He was State Councilor for the Department of Finance for 13 years. He was so influenced by his experience, his zeal for work and his ability that from 1844 onwards people spoke of the “Vogt-Løvenskiolds Ministry”. From 1856 to the end of 1858 Vogt held the office of the First Council of State, an unofficial title for the Council of State, which in the absence of the head of government (the king) directed its official business.

With the establishment of the interior department under the direction of Frederik Stang, his work area experienced a great deal of relief, as many tasks were transferred to the new department. There was a respectful relationship between the two. Although Vogt had a more distant relationship with Storting, unlike Stang, who was initially more accommodating on this point, he was the only one in the government who Stang did not want to have replaced. There was only one point where they differed: while Vogt, Løvenskiold and the majority of the government wanted to support Denmark militarily during the Schleswig War of 1848-1851, Stang and two other state councilors were against it.

Because he championed Norwegian independence in the Union, he was one of the first victims of the cabinet reshuffle of Crown Prince Karl Johan in 1858, with which he brought his confidante Christian Birch-Reichenwald and his supporters into the government.

The process

The struggle between the government and Storting was the background for the trial against him in 1845. The first charge was whether the government had the right to determine the share of customs officials in the customs revenue. The second charge related to the question of whether the government could raise tariffs by means of an interim order. The prosecution assumed that these royal government orders, for which he was responsible, violated the Storting's right to tax. Frederik Stang's brilliant defense led to his acquittal, but in the second point because of no fault of the law, or, as the judgment put it, because the order to raise the tariffs was “committed due to a misunderstanding of the constitution that was not attributable to the circumstances”. Some judges would have liked to see this justification for the first point as well.

Honors

Jørgen Herman Vogt had been a member of " Det Kongelige Norske Videnskabers Selskab " since 1828 , was secretary and master of ceremonies of the Order of St. Olav since the foundation in 1847, was its treasurer from 1851–1857 and in 1857 received the Grand Cross. In the same year he received the Borgerdådsmedaille (Bürgerverdiensmedaille) in gold, the highest award in Norway. In 1844 he also became the holder of the Grand Cross of the Swedish Order of Nordstjärne and in 1853 became a Knight of the Serafim Order , Sweden's highest honor.

Footnotes

The article is essentially based on Norsk biografisk leksikon . Information from other sources is specially marked.

1. ↑ Entrance examination to the university, comparable to the Abitur, but was accepted by the university.
2. ↑ In Norway the government is not divided into ministries but into departments. There are therefore no ministers, but department heads or councilors of state.
3. ↑ The highest position in a department after its head. So corresponds to the State Secretary.
4. ↑ Primary school, but with foreign languages. They were later often converted into middle schools.
5. ↑ Corresponds to the minister in other countries.
6. ↑ The State Council Department in Stockholm consisted of a minister and two State Councilors who changed annually.
7. ↑ Øverland / Keilhau
8. ↑ Øverland / Keilhau
9. ↑ Severin Løvenskiold was the Swedish governor in Norway from 1841-1856. "Ministry" was the Swedish part of the government. Sweden had ministries rather than departments. In this respect, this term was not correct. Because Vogt was never officially head of the government.
10. ↑ Øverland / Keilhau
11. ↑ Øverland / Keilhau

literature

• Paul Thyness: Jørgen Herman Vogt . In: Norsk biografisk leksikon
• OA Øverland, Wt. Keilhau: Vogt, Jørgen Herman . In: Johannes Brøndum-Nielsen, Palle Raunkjær (ed.): Salmonsens Konversationsleksikon . 2nd Edition. tape 25 : Werth – Øyslebø . JH Schultz Forlag, Copenhagen 1928, p. 330 (Danish, runeberg.org ).

predecessor	Office	successor
Viceroy Charles XV.	Prime Minister of Norway 1857 - 1858	Hans Christian Petersen