Johann Christoph von Stecher

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Johann Christoph Stecher , von Stecher since 1754 (born July 26, 1706 in Rothenburg (Saale) , † December 19, 1762 in Schönebeck (Elbe) ) was a German administrative lawyer and Prussian civil servant. He was the leaseholder of the royal salt works in Halle an der Saale and Schönebeck as well as the heir to Beuchlitz and Schlettau.

Life

Johann Christoph von Stecher was born as the youngest of four sons and six daughters of Johann Paul Stecher and his wife Maria Elisabeth (maiden name uncertain). Initially brought up with his siblings by an informator in Rothenburg, he visited the Latina in Halle, led by August Hermann Francke , in 1718 , while his father oversaw the mills in Berlin. On October 13, 1723, he began to study law in Halle, switched to administrative service and was appointed to the War and Domain Council on August 22, 1729 at an extraordinary early age.

In 1732 he received a benefice from the collegiate monastery of St. Gangolf in Magdeburg and was first Canonicus, later a senior member of the monastery. He first married Johanna Christina Stöffler, daughter of a councilor, in Berlin in 1733. She died on September 6, 1736. With her son Johann Martin Friedrich Stecher, who died early, his Stecher line died out in the male line.

In 1737 he married the wealthy Dorothea Elisabeth Lucia Eversmann (1717–1769), daughter of the valet of Friedrich Wilhelm I (Prussia) , Rudolph Wilhelm Eversmann and his wife Margarethe Elisabeth Köhler. He had three daughters with her. The third also died early.

After the death of his father, he inherited the feudal estates of Beuchlitz and Schlettau (value at that time approx. 23,500 thalers) including privileges (hunting and mining rights of 128 kuxes) and converted them into inheritance for his female descendants between 1747 and 1749 .

On November 5, 1754 he was appointed a secret war council and raised to hereditary nobility. His coat of arms (e.g. in the shell room in Beuchlitz) shows the Jerusalem cross with an arrow above it. On the one hand, it was the reward for discovering a new brine spring in Schönebeck. On the other hand, the hereditary nobility made his daughters befitting to marry the majors of the royal bodyguard Christoph von Billerbeck (1714–1790) and Dittrich Gottlieb von Witzleben (1723–1785) in a double wedding in Schönebeck on February 20, 1755 . Her dowry was 12,000 thalers plus an annual grant of 200 thalers. Friedrich II himself, who had already met the Stechers as crown prince during guest stays at the Stecher house in Schönebeck, had an influence on the mediation . So at the same time the z. Partly in the Saxon town of Beuchlitz, Stechersche invested wealth in Prussia. The king became the godfather of Billerbeck's first child, Friedrich Christoph Constantin (1756–1805).

Johann Christoph Stecher combined his career with social advancement and now associated with the nobility and the Moravian Brethren as well as with Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf .

After his death on December 19, 1762 in Schönebeck, Christoph von Stecher found his final resting place in the family's hereditary funeral in Beuchlitz at the side of his father. His second wife followed him on August 25, 1769.

From 1737, after the death of his father, Christoph von Stecher took over the management of the salt pans in Halle and Schönebeck with lease contracts until 1756. Wasting of increasingly scarce firewood by workers, he punished as severely as his father with gauntlet and imprisonment, e.g. B. with Heinrich Schaaf and his men in Schönebeck in 1743.

In 1748 Johann Christoph Stecher was mentioned as a member of the War and Domain Chamber. As a co-heir of the Beuchlitz manor, he acquired hunting and mining rights, with a saltpeter mine being particularly noteworthy.

From 1751 to 1753 he opened up other strong brine springs in Schönebeck. While both Stechers had already saved wood by including hard coal from Wettin, Bernburg and (their own) lignite from Beuchlitz, it was decided in the extended paragraph in 1754 to build a graduation tower like in Westphalia (e.g. in Königsborn or Nordherringen) according to the revised draft von Waitz von Eschen. The expansion was delayed due to the war and after Stecher's death cost twice the originally planned 150,000 thalers. Beuchlitz was attacked by French hussars during the Seven Years' War on August 21, 1757, who, based on rumors, demanded the surrender of the Hallesches Salzkasse, which was suspected there. Since it was not in Beuchlitz at all, they robbed the property and took von Witzleben's son-in-law with them. On a second visit, they asked for a box office of 21,000 Reichstalers. The General Directory weighed up a report on the incident with reference to the French who had not yet attacked and declared that it was not responsible because Beuchlitz was in Saxony.

Johann Christoph Stecher, like his father Johann Paul, increased the yield of the salt works, continued to benefit from the Prussian salt monopoly, which prohibited the import of salt from outside, and expanded the sales market far beyond Prussia, so that from 1721 to 1764 exports to Silesia, Franconia, Poland and Mecklenburg (3,030 loads) exceeded domestic sales (2,270 loads). So he filled the war and domain treasury of Frederick II and brought it himself to respect and wealth.

After his death, his widow, Privy Councilor von Stecher, and then his daughter, Colonel von Billerbeck, continued to run the salt works until 1790.

literature

  • Prussian Academy of Sciences (ed.): Acta Borussica. Monuments of the Prussian State Administration in the 18th century. The government organization and general state administration. Volume 12, Berlin 1926.
  • Werner Konstantin von Arnswaldt: The engraver. A genealogical sketch of a family's rise. In: Quarterly magazine for coat of arms, seal and family customers, XLVI. Year 1918, pp. 1–37.
  • Friedrich Eberhard Boysen: Own biography. Quedlinburg 1795.
  • H. Cramer: Presentation of the main moments in the legal and administrative history of hard coal mining in the Saalkkreis of the Prussian Province of Saxony up to the year 1851. Eisleben 1856.
  • H. Cramer: A fragment from the history of the Royal Prussian Saltworks at Schönebeck. In: Geschichtsblätter für Stadt und Land Magdeburg, Volume 27 (1892), S. #.
  • Johann Christoph von Dreyhaupt: Pagus Neletizi et Nudzici, or detailed diplomatic-historical description of the former primacy and Ertz-Stifft, but now secularized by the Duchy of Magdeburg, which belongs to the Duchy of Magdeburg, and of all the cities, palaces, offices, Manors, aristocratic families, churches, monasteries, parishes and villages, especially the cities of Halle, Neumarckt, Glaucha, Wettin, Löbegün, Cönnern and Alsleben; From Actis publicis and credible ... news, collected diligently, reinforced with many unprinted documents, adorned with copperplate engravings and abstracts, and provided with the necessary registers. Emanuel Schneider, Hall 1749/50 u.ö. (First part and second part in Google Book Search; first part and second part in the Internet Archive). Reprint: Fly Head, Halle 2002. ISBN 3-930195-70-4 .
  • JG Förster: Description and history of the Halle salt works. Halle an der Saale 1799.
  • Hanns Freydank: The Hallesche Pfänerschaft 1500-1926. Halle an der Saale 1930.
  • Uwe Meißner: The foundation and expansion of the royal Prussian salt works Schönebeck and Halle at the beginning of the 18th century. In: Werner Freitag (Ed.): Halle and the salt. A salt town in the Middle Ages and early modern times. Volume 2, Halle an der Saale 2002, pp. 79–95.
  • Fritz Heiber: The salt boil in Schönebeck from the Middle Ages to the present. (= New series of publications of the district museum Schönebeck, issue 2.) Schönebeck (Elbe) 1976.
  • Uwe Meißner: Innovation at the gates of the city. The royal salt works 1721 to 1868. In: Werner Freitag, Katrin Minner, Andreas Ranft (Hrsg.): History of the city of Halle. Volume 1, Halle an der Saale 2006, p. 476ff.
  • Uwe Meißner: The royal saltworks at Halle (Saale) 1719 to 1790 (diss.), Halle 2016 (2017).
  • W. Schulze: 250 years of Schönebecker Saline. (Festschrift) Schönebeck (Elbe) 1955.
  • Gerhard August von Witzleben, Karl Hartmann August von Witzleben: History of the family von Witzleben. 2 volumes, Berlin 1880.
  • Leopold von Zedlitz-Neukirch (edit.): New Prussian Adels Lexicon or genealogical and diplomatic news from the princely, counts, baronial and noble houses residing in the Prussian monarchy or related to it. Volume 4 (P – Z), Leipzig 1837, p. 231. (with Stecher coat of arms from 1754)

swell

  • Engraver: Nobility genealogy, GAN (Volume XVI from 1891 and Volume XIX from 1894)
  • Correspondence with King Frederick the Great (1740–1786), Secret State Archives , collective files: I. HA Reg. 96 No. 435 Litt. S7.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ August Hermann Francke, ST / S L2, 127, 18
  2. ↑ August Hermann Francke, St / SA 1: 118,18, 196e, 29; Bl1.71; Al 194,173 and register of the Latina 1, 263,89
  3. ↑ Arnswaldt, p. 34ff.
  4. ↑ Acta Borussica, Volume XII., Index page 746, s. also vol. XI, 1st volume, index page 735.
  5. ↑ Arnswaldt, p. 32 and Beuchlitz; Meißner, Saline 341f.
  6. ^ Gerhard August von Witzleben, history of the sex von Witzleben, 1st and 2nd part Berlin 1880, pp. 379–382.
  7. ↑ Church book Beuchlitz, Trau-Register 1755, p. 196.
  8. ↑ von Witzleben, p. 379.
  9. ^ Meißner, Saline, pp. 342-345.
  10. ↑ Boysen, p. 86
  11. ^ Photocopy of the original decree of May 28, 1743; Heiber, p. 30f.
  12. ↑ Dreyhaupt I, 594
  13. ↑ Arnswaldt, p. 34ff.
  14. ↑ Cramer, p. 70
  15. ↑ Cramer, p. 67ff .; Heiber, pp. 31-35; Arnswaldt, p. 33
  16. ↑ 196. Report of the Magdeburg Chamber President von Blumenthal to the General Directory in Magdeburg of August 22, 1757
  17. ↑ Cramer, pp. 69f.
  18. ↑ Meißner, Innovation, p. 482
  19. ↑ Meißner, Saline, p. 352.
personal data
SURNAME Stecher, Johann Christoph von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German administrative lawyer and Prussian civil servant
DATE OF BIRTH July 26, 1706
PLACE OF BIRTH Rothenburg (Saale)
DATE OF DEATH December 19, 1762
Place of death Schönebeck (Elbe)