Johann Adam von Seuffert

Johann Adam Seuffert around 1831; Original steel engraving by Carl August Helmsauer, around 1844

Johann Adam von Seuffert (born March 15, 1794 in Würzburg , † May 8, 1857 in Munich ) was a German legal scholar.

Life

Johann Adam Seuffert was born in 1794 as the son of the law professor and court counselor of Würzburg, Johann Michael von Seuffert . After attending elementary school and high school, he studied history for two years and then law at the Julius Maximilians University of Würzburg . He interrupted his studies in 1814 to take part in the final phase of the wars of liberation in France as a lieutenant in the Würzburg volunteer hunter battalion . His enthusiasm for the war quickly cooled, as can be seen from the letters that have survived. In it he laments the indolence , arrogance and coldness of his aristocratic superiors. The peace in Paris and the beginning of the Restoration attracted his displeasure and ridicule. In February 1815, with the help of his father, Seuffert managed to say goodbye to the military. In March 1815 he received his doctorate at the University of Würzburg for a thesis on questions of marriage law. He then moved to the Georg August University in Göttingen , where he attended lectures with Gustav von Hugo , among other things . In the winter semester of 1815/1816 he completed his habilitation in Göttingen . Seuffert was friends with the evangelical Göttingen theologian Friedrich Lücke . He then worked as a private lecturer at the University of Würzburg, where he received an extraordinary professorship for history, pandects and Bavarian civil law in July 1817 . He was appointed full professor in 1819. In the same year he married Augusta Zink in Munich, the daughter of the later director of the Bavarian Court of Appeal , Ernst August von Zink .

In the following years Seuffert devoted himself entirely to his profession. His main work, the “Textbook of Practical Pandektenrecht” appeared in 1825. In 1831 he was elected to the assembly of estates , he was also the second president of the state parliament. In the aftermath of the July Revolution of 1830 in France, there was also political unrest in Bavaria. King Ludwig I reacted with repression and tightened press censorship . In the state parliament this was assessed as a violation of the constitution. Johann Adam Seuffert was accused of leaning too much towards democracy and of having been partly responsible for the unrest. The government withdrew his teaching post on September 1, 1832, and Seuffert was transferred to the Straubing Court of Appeal as a judge . In 1834 he was transferred to Ansbach and in 1838 to Eichstätt . During his work as a judge, he began to comment on the Bavarian court system. In 1838 he turned down a call to the University of Zurich . Because of a nervous condition, he applied for early retirement, which was granted in 1839.

After his retirement, Seuffert moved to Munich, where he revised his comment on the court rules and was in charge of a new edition of the textbook on practical pandemic law . In 1847 he founded the "archive for the decisions of the highest courts in the German states", which was often called "Seuffert's archive". It was continued until 1944. Seuffert published in 1848 under the pseudonym Julius Steinbühl "Epigrams and sayings of an impartial". In 1848 he campaigned for the establishment of a federation of states in Germany, i.e. against a federal state . He also opposed the establishment of a republic . In 1850 he received personal nobility .

He spent his last years physically weak and withdrawn. Seuffert left five daughters and two sons.

tomb

Grave of Johann Seuffert on the old southern cemetery in Munich location

The grave of Johann Seuffert is located in the old southern cemetery in Munich (grave field 30 - row 1 - place 21/22) location . The model of the bronze bust comes from Johann von Halbig , the base is designed by Anselm Sickinger .

literature

• Karl Theodor von Heigel :  Seuffert, Johann Adam Ritter von . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 34, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1892, pp. 58-64.
• Ulrich Zelger:  Seuffert, Johann Adam. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 24, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-428-11205-0 , p. 279 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Dirk Götschmann : Würzburg 1814–1869. In: Ulrich Wagner (Hrsg.): History of the city of Würzburg. 4 volumes; Volume III / 1–2: From the transition to Bavaria to the 21st century. Theiss, Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3-8062-1478-9 ), pp. 25–57 and 1249–1253; here: pp. 49–51.

Web links

• Literature by and about Johann Adam von Seuffert in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by and about Johann Adam von Seuffert  in the German Digital Library

Individual evidence

1. ^ Ferdinand Sander : Johann Adam von Seuffert and his Göttingen friend Friedrich Lücke. In: Allgemeine Zeitung. 1894, Supplement No. 110, pp. 3-6, and No. 112, pp. 1-4.
2. ↑ ^{a b c d} Andreas Quentin: Johann Adam von Seuffert (1794 - 1857) in Legal History Carved in Stone from Two Millennia , Nuremberg Higher Regional Court, 2008.
3. ↑ Claudia Denk, John Ziesemer: Grabstätte 169. In: Art and Memoria, Der Alte Südliche Friedhof in Munich. 2014, p. 475 ff.