Johann Christian Chelius

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Title page of the administrative manual by Johann Christian Chelius, edition 1834

Johann Christian Karl Ludwig Chelius (born November 20, 1797 in Sankt Alban (Palatinate) , † August 11, 1870 in Homburg ) was a Bavarian administrative officer, member of the state parliament and author of a standard administrative work in the Kingdom of Bavaria .

Live and act

He was the son of the Lutheran pastor Philipp Jakob Chelius from Hohensülzen and his wife Maria geb. Haudel. His father officiated as a pastor in St. Alban, which until 1797, like his birthplace Hohensülzen, was part of the county of Falkenstein , part of the Winnweiler district of Upper Austria .

Johann Christian Chelius attended grammar school and volunteered for a Landwehr regiment in Mainz at the age of 17 because he still wanted to actively participate in the fight against Emperor Napoleon . He was accepted into the Bavarian Army after his home region fell to Bavaria in 1816. With the rank of lieutenant of the 6th Bavarian Line Infantry Regiment , he joined the Bavarian administrative service in October 1824 as an actuary at Landau's Landau commissioner . On November 10th of that year he married Carolina Appelius, with whom he had several children.

On November 10, 1832, Chelius was promoted to land commissioner (later district administrator) of the Homburg Land Commissioner . Johann Christian Chelius remained in Homburg as head of administration until 1869 for 37 years. He was known to be extremely loyal and loyal to the king. When the people in his district were suffering from a crop failure in 1837, he recommended cutting government employees' salaries in order to organize aid. The Landkommissär was an avid supporter of the new building of the Catholic parish church St. Michael (Homburg) , which Pastor Johannes Jackel explicitly pointed out in his speech at the consecration of the church in 1841. In 1848 Chelius went out personally with a troop of 50 country hunters to dissolve a revolutionary May Festival of railway workers in Mittelbexbach . When a revolutionary government was formed in Kaiserslautern on May 17, 1849 as part of the Palatinate uprising , the official, known to be decidedly loyal to the king, fled across the state border to Saarbrücken . When the uprising collapsed, he returned and went to Mittelbexbach to personally arrest the court messenger there, Veit Zöller, a revolutionary activist. In 1851 Chelius received the Order of Merit from Saint Michael , and in 1864 the Bavarian Order of Ludwig .

In 1826, Johann Christian Chelius was the author of the then very popular administrative manual teaching about the official duties of the local boards, both in relation to the administration of the communities and their assets, as well as with regard to the police functions of these boards . The book first appeared in Landau in the Palatinate , but was published and expanded several times by the middle of the 19th century, so that the last edition comprised four volumes. It was a standard work that was available in all district offices and municipal administrations in the Bavarian Rhine District and was also widely used in Bavaria on the right bank of the Rhine. In 1850 he published a proposal for a municipal code of the Palatinate that he had drawn up, which aimed to significantly strengthen local self-government.

From 1855 to 1861 Chelius was a representative of the Homburg electoral district in the Bavarian Chamber of Deputies (Landtag) .

One of the brothers of Johann Christian Chelius was Ludwig Christian Chelius (1794–1871). He followed in his father's footsteps, became a pastor and as such worked first in St. Alban, later in Sankt Arnual near Saarbrücken; he lived and died in Goffontaine (today Schafbrücke ).

literature

  • Viktor Carl: Lexicon of Palatinate Personalities Hennig Verlag Edenkoben, 2004, ISBN 3-9804668-5-X , page 134

Web links

Commons : Johann Christian Chelius  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Intelligence Gazette of the Rheinkreis , No. 273, September 27, 1824, page 1177 of the year
  2. ^ Speech by Pastor Jackel on the consecration of the church in 1841, page 6
  3. ^ Digital scan of the first edition of the book, with a foreword by the author
  4. ^ Digital scan of the memorandum
  5. ^ Genealogical website about the brother Ludwig Christian Chelius
personal data
SURNAME Chelius, Johann Christian
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Chelius, Johann Christian Karl Ludwig
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Bavarian member of the state parliament and administrative officer
DATE OF BIRTH November 20, 1797
PLACE OF BIRTH Sankt Alban (Palatinate)
DATE OF DEATH August 11, 1870
Place of death Homburg