Johann Balthasar Hundeshagen

Johann Balthasar Hundeshagen (born February 17, 1734 in Kassel , † June 22, 1800 in Hanau ) was a German lawyer and historian.

Life

Johann Balthasar Hundeshagen was the son of the regimental surgeon Johann Christian Hundeshagen (1692–1772) and his wife Anna Dorothea (née Winter).

He attended the pedagogy in Kassel and then studied law at the University of Marburg from spring 1752 to September 1754 ; There he mainly heard lectures from Johann Georg Estor and Christoph Ludwig Hombergk (1709–1757) and passed the examination required for lawyers at higher courts. Due to an illness of his father, he broke off a dissertation that he had started for admission to a teaching position and returned to Kassel and began to work as a lawyer there.

In 1761 he was appointed professor of law at the High State School in Hanau, where he was its rector from 1761 to 1767 . In 1762 he took on legal advice at the consistory of the Evangelical Reformed Church as a syndic . In 1767 he was given the title of consistorial assistant . He also got a teaching position for history at the military academy of Wilhelm I ; after he became seriously ill in 1775, his teaching activities at the high state school ended. He was appointed advocatus fisci and received the title of court judge in 1775 as well as an offer for a top position in the government and the consistory of Neuwied , which he declined.

In 1780 the Hanauian trials at the Imperial Court of Justice were transferred to him and in 1798 he was appointed to the position of the secret councilor.

Johann Balthasar Hundeshagen married Dorothea Charlotte, daughter of Johann Nikolaus Stein, valet of Wilhelm I on May 16, 1769; his wife was a sister of the professor of medicine Georg Wilhelm Stein , who was also godfather of some of his children. Together they had five sons and a daughter who survived childhood, of whom we know by name:

• Christian Georg Hundeshagen (born April 10, 1770, † January 14, 1793), died as an ensign in the Hanstein regiment during the storming of Frankfurt am Main ;
• Ludwig Wilhelm Hundeshagen (born December 27, 1777 in Hanau, † unknown);
• Johann Christian Hundeshagen (born August 10, 1783 in Hanau; † February 10, 1834 in Gießen ), forest scientist ;
• Helfrich Bernhard Hundeshagen (born September 18, 1784 in Hanau; † October 9, 1858 in Endenich ), art historian , most recently mentally ill in Endenich near Bonn .

Writing

In addition to his legal work, Johann Balthasar Hundeshagen also worked as a historical, geographical and political writer; this was favored by his friendly relationship with the librarian Johan Arckenholtz and the possibility of using the landgrave's library. His first publication appeared in 1756, dealing with the separation of the Landgraviates of Hesse and Thuringia .

The library also contained materials for the description of the city of Kassel, which the Justizrat Friedrich Groschuf (1701–1784) had begun to summarize in book form, but the project stalled when he left and Hundeshagen was commissioned to complete the work. He first made a short extract for the benefit of the strangers . When the Seven Years' War broke out and Landgrave Wilhelm VIII died , he had to move to Hanau, which significantly disrupted work on the work, so that the short version could not initially appear. In 1766, Friedrich II ordered the archivist, librarian and director of the art collections, Friedrich Christoph Schmincke , to complete the project and in 1767 an attempt was made to give a precise and cumbersome description of the royal Hessian residence and capital, Kassel , without the author on the title page , but only in the foreword, appeared.

From 1778 to 1785 he was also an employee of the Hanauischer Magazin and published a treatise on the Hanau annual fairs in 1776, the materials on a topography of the city of Hanau in 1778 and the treatise Something on the History of the Imperial Postal Service in Germany in 1781 .

Fonts (selection)

• Brief investigation into the separation of the Landgraviates of Hesse and Thuringia . Kassel 1756.
• The real reason for the state laws passed in Teutschland against the increase in leases and the discontinuation of goods . Hanau 1767.
• Something about the history of the imperial postal system in Germany . Published in: Hanauisches Magazin from 1781. P. 97 f.
• Geographical description of the county of Hanau-Munzenberg . Hanau 1782.

literature

• Johann Balthasar Hundeshagen . In: Hans Joachim Weimann : Johann Christian Hundeshagen - Genius and Zorn in Vormärz . Remagen-Oberwinter, Kessel Verlag, 2013.
• Johann Balthasar Hundeshagen . In: Heinrich Bott : The professors of the High State School in Hanau 1665-1812 . In: Communications from the Hessian Family History Association, Vol. 7, 1942, pp. 130-131.
• Johann Balthasar Hundeshagen . In: Johann Georg Meusel : Lexicon of the German writers who died between 1750 and 1800 , Volume 6. Leipzig 1806. P. 181 f.

Web links

• Hundeshagen, Johann Balthasar . In: Hessian biography .
• Hundeshagen, Johann Balthasar . In: Index entry: German biography .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Friedrich Groschuf, Johann Balthasar Hundeshagen: Attempt to give a precise and complicated description of the high-fore-Hessian residence and capital Cassel: along with the nearby pleasure palaces, gardens and other things of interest . Schmiedt, 1767 ( google.de [accessed October 31, 2019]).