Johann Ernst von Voss

Coat of arms of the place Groß Gievitz (derivative of the family coat of arms)

Johann Ernst von Voss (born January 25, 1726 - † May 26, 1793 in Groß Gievitz ) was a Prussian diplomat, Magdeburg's district president and, most recently, chief steward of Queen Elisabeth Christine . He was married to Sophie Marie von Pannwitz (1729–1814), who also worked for a long time at the Prussian court and followed him after his death in the office of chief steward.

Life

Johann Ernst came from the Mecklenburg noble family von Voss . His brother was Friedrich Christian Hieronymus von Voss . In 1739, after the early death of his father Friedrich Ernst von Voss (* November 5, 1700 ; † January 1, 1739 ), Johann entered the paternal inheritance at the age of 13, consisting of the Mecklenburg-Schwerin estates Groß Gievitz , Klein Gievitz, Alt Schönau , Neu Schönau and Rumpshagen . With his brother Friedrich Christian Hironymus, he studied law in Halle in 1741 and in Leipzig in 1743, and in 1744 , when the Prussian King Friedrich II. Was 18 years old, he was appointed Privy Councilor at the Higher Appeal Court in Berlin . In 1747 he moved to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where in 1748 he was envoy to the Dresden court of King August III. of Poland was. The diets in 1748 and 1750 in Warsaw , he represented the interests of Prussia. In Warsaw he held a parade courtyard whose spending his finances very stressed and could not be covered by it by the Prussian king paid for this mission thousand ducats, he that after his return to Berlin his estate Rumpshagen to the family of Gundlach sell had to. Following the Warsaw mission, he was to become the Prussian envoy at the Austrian court, but the Austrian side asked for another envoy because of Voss' anti-Austrian stance at the Warsaw Diet, so that Voss stayed at the Prussian court in Potsdam for the time being .

In 1751 he married the court lady at the Prussian court Sophie Marie von Pannwitz . In the same year he was initially charged with diplomatic tasks vis-à-vis Saxony and Poland again before he was regional president in the Duchy of Magdeburg from 1753 (first second and from 1755 first regional president). There he did not feel properly called, however, and asked the Prussian king several times to accept a ministerial post in Kassel, which the Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel had offered him. However, the king refused. At that time Magdeburg was several times alternative quarters for the Prussian court, which felt threatened by the effects of the Silesian Wars in Berlin. In such cases, Voss and his wife had to leave their representative Magdeburg house to the Princess of Prussia for months.

The Prussian king finally appointed Johann Ernst von Voss as court marshal of Queen Elisabeth Christine in 1763 . This position included the permission to stay several months of the year on his Mecklenburg country estates. He therefore spent most of the late summer and autumn in Mecklenburg, during the winter he lived in a house on Heilig-Geist-Strasse in Berlin and in spring and early summer he was mostly in the company of the Queen at Schönhausen Palace . The standard of living in the wake of the Prussian court was extremely expensive, so that a Count Lehndorff reported in 1770 that Voss was bankrupt. After the death of the Oberhofmeister von Wartensleben in 1783 Voss was appointed the Queen's Oberhofmeister with the rank of Minister of State. He and his wife were part of the Queen's entourage for a long time in the year and only lived on the Mecklenburg country estates for a few weeks.

After a serious illness in 1792, he died on his estate in Groß Gievitz.

After his death his wife was appointed the Prussian chief stewardess; In the course of her life she worked at the Prussian court for a total of 69 years.

literature

• Sophie Wilhelmine Countess von Voss: Sixty-nine years at the Prussian court. From the diaries and notes of Oberhofmeisterin Sophie Wilhelmine Countess von Voss. Richard Schröder Verlag Berlin, ca.1930

Individual evidence

1. ^ Hanns Gringmuth: The organization of the authorities in the Duchy of Magdeburg - its development and integration into the Brandenburg-Prussian state. Dissertation at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg 1934.