Johann Erasmus von Senckenberg

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Johann Erasmus Freiherr von Senckenberg (born April 30, 1717 in Frankfurt am Main ; † June 21, 1795 ibid) was a German lawyer and councilor in Frankfurt am Main. He was imprisoned as a state prisoner in the Hauptwache on February 28, 1769 for various offenses and spent the rest of his life in detention.

life and work

Johann Erasmus was the youngest son of the Frankfurt city ​​physician Johann Hartmann Senckenberg (1655–1730) and his second wife Anna Margaretha nee. Raumburger (1682-1740). He was born in his parents' home, Zu den Drei Hasen, on the corner of Hasengasse and Töngesgasse . His parents' marriage was considered unhappy. His mother is portrayed by the biographers Georg Ludwig Kriegk and Rudolf Jung as a fury and megarist who exerted an unfavorable influence on her sons - in addition to Johann Erasmus Christian, his older brothers Heinrich Christian , Johann Christian and Conrad Hieronymus (1709–1739), so that they all developed into eccentricities.

Johann Erasmus is described by his biographer Georg Ludwig Kriegk as a highly gifted enfant terrible of the family, who was spoiled by his mother, but who troubled the family with obstinacy and malice. He attended the Frankfurt high school . At the age of 15 he began studying law at the University of Altdorf and later moved to the University of Göttingen , where his oldest brother had been a professor since 1736. Johann Erasmus returned to Frankfurt without a degree. Although he was not formally accepted among the city's lawyers, he was considered an able lawyer. In 1745, as legal advisor to the Alten Limpurg patrician society, he ensured that the society's common-law primacy, which provided 14 of the 28 councilors of the first and second banks, became a mandatory provision. The procedure gave Senckenberg access to the archives and internal documents of the Limpurger. He made secret copies that he later used for his own purposes.

On August 17, 1745, he took the citizens' oath and was co-opted into the council on September 5, 1746 on the recommendation of his influential brother Heinrich Christian and the patrician Friedrich Maximilian von Lersner . There he turned against his supporters and fought against the supremacy of the old Limpurger with all means, partly through polemical speeches in the council, partly through anonymous diatribes. Kriegk described him as the greatest rabulist who had ever lived in Frankfurt . Senckenberg was also seen as greedy, vengeful and despotic. At the beginning of 1747 he raped his housekeeper Johanna Maria Katharina Agricola , who then became pregnant and gave birth to a daughter in December 1747. He refused to pay her compensation and the required alimony , so the injured party turned to the consistory for help. Thereupon Senckenberg tried to shift the blame on a servant, accused Agricola of inciting murder and forged minutes of the investigative court. However, the Council failed despite the existence of evidence to press Senckenberg from his office because he was under the protection of his elder brother, who is now the Imperial Aulic had risen. In 1751, Emperor Franz I even elevated Johann Erasmus to the rank of baron.

There were further disputes in 1754 when Senckenberg discredited the candidates for a council election in the polemical pamphlet The Shepherd's Voice to a Highly Noble Council about the upcoming election . The council then had the writing publicly burned by the executioner.

In 1761, a request from the Citizens' Committee caused the investigation into the Agricola case to be resumed. After the Senckenberg council passed a lay judge election - usually the aldermen of the first council bank were elected according to seniority - and suspended him with full pay, Senckenberg appealed to the emperor. His dispute with the council lingered for years until it escalated into two anonymously published pamphlets in 1769. He wrote the first for the butchers ' guild in their legal dispute with the council about the Metzgerbruch , a wetland on the Bornheimer slope . In it he claimed that the entire land of the Free Imperial City of Frankfurt was imperial property that the city had illegally taken possession of. In the second pamphlet, which concerned a dispute within the shoemaker's guild, he covered the council with violent slander.

Mayor Johann Philipp von Heyden then had him arrested on February 28, 1769 and arrested at the main station . The indictment of August 25, 1769 accused him of rape, violation of territorial jurisdiction, arbitrary detention of a person, forgery, legal representation of two contending parties at the same time, lese majesty, slander, attempted murder, riot, extortion, theft and embezzlement of public funds and demanded the death penalty .

Although his brother had died in Vienna in 1768, Johann Erasmus received support from the imperial chancellery. Emperor Joseph II appointed Prince Karl von Nassau-Usingen as the imperial investigative commissioner. With the help of the commissioner, Senckenberg succeeded in delaying the proceedings. The council was also not interested in a judicial decision, so Senckenberg remained in custody without a judgment even after the commissioner's death in 1775. During his imprisonment he wrote his main work, published in 1773, Appendix to von Moser's treatise on the Reichsstädtische Regimental Constitution and continued to work as a legal advisor, especially in confessional disputes between Catholic and Reformed clients with the Lutheran Frankfurt Council.

He died of old age on June 21, 1795 in his detention center in the Hauptwache. He is considered one of the most prominent prisoners in the history of Frankfurt.

literature

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personal data
SURNAME Senckenberg, Johann Erasmus von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Senckenberg, Johann Erasmus Freiherr von (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer and councilor
DATE OF BIRTH April 30, 1717
PLACE OF BIRTH Frankfurt am Main , Germany
DATE OF DEATH June 21, 1795
Place of death Frankfurt am Main , Germany