Johann Georg August Wirth

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Johann Georg August Wirth

Johann Georg August Wirth (born November 20, 1798 in Hof (Saale) ; † July 26, 1848 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a German lawyer, writer and politician in Vormärz .

Life

Information board at Wirth's birthplace, with the date of death incorrectly stated

Wirth was married to Regina Wirth . The marriage came from the journalist Max Wirth and the co-founder of the Frankfurt Peace Association Franz Ulpian Wirth . The writer Rudolf Lavant was a great-nephew of Wirth.

Wirth first attended the high school in his hometown as a classmate of Karl Ludwig Sand and in 1811 moved to the Royal College in Bayreuth . After graduating from high school, he studied law at the Friedrich Alexander University . In December 1817 Wirth was co-founder and committee member of the Erlangen fraternity (Arminia) together with other Corps-Renoncen. Wirth resigned from the fraternity at the beginning of January 1818, became a senior in the Corps Franconia and remained a corps student all his life. In 1818 he received the Consilium abeundi from the university. He practiced as a lawyer in Schwarzenbach an der Saale and from 1823 in Gottlieb Keim's Bayreuth office . He was denied a legal career because he could not pay the doctoral fees. At the beginning of 1831 he had the magazine Kosmopolit printed in Bayreuth at his own expense , in which he criticized the "backward steps of the Bavarian government" and called for freedom of the press. In the same year he moved to Munich and took over the editing of the pro-government magazine Das Inland from Johann Friedrich Cotta . Soon after, he changed political direction and founded the Deutsche Tribüne . It quickly became famous among the people and notorious among the princes, because Wirth and a. used as a platform for promoting freedom of the press; So he called out to the ruling nobility: "The free press is the people's defense against the tyranny of those in power." He was increasingly harassed by persecution, but used the loopholes in censorship and always voted for the strengthening of civil rights. Then he went to the Rhine district . Political censorship prevented his work here too. In March 1832, his newspaper was banned by the then Bundestag . Wirth became a board member of the German Fatherland Association, founded in 1832 to support the free press .

At the end of May 1832 , Wirth organized the Hambach Festival together with his colleague Philipp Jakob Siebenpfeiffer . After a speech to many thousands of people, in which he called for the formation of a league of patriots and had already celebrated “confederate republican Europe” beyond “the united free states of Germany”, Wirth was taken into custody and was brought to Zweibrücken .

In prison he wrote a pamphlet with his political ideas entitled: The Political Reform of Germany . In June 1833 he was acquitted by the jury in the spectacular assis trial in Landau - Wirth had defended himself in an eight-hour speech and declared the princes high traitors. But in November 1833 the Zweibrücken Breeding Police Court sentenced him to a maximum of two years in prison for insulting domestic and foreign authorities. He was imprisoned in Kaiserslautern . In the prison there he wrote the fragments on the cultural history of mankind . After his release in December 1835, he was taken to Passau to serve a Kontumaz sentence (conviction due to failure to appear in court). However, he managed to escape. At the end of December 1836 he came to France and in 1839 to Kreuzlingen im Thurgau (Switzerland). There he edited the of the Constance publisher Ignaz Vanotti (1798-1870) in the exile publishing Belle-Vue published German People's Hall and the history of the Germans . In 1847 he moved to Karlsruhe . In the Prussian principalities he was elected to the German National Assembly, but died shortly afterwards on July 26, 1848 in Frankfurt and was buried in the main cemetery there. The funeral speech was given by Robert Blum .

monument

Sculpture Tribune II by the sculptor Andreas Theurer in honor of Wirth with a stylized side of the German Tribune in front of the Freedom Hall in Hof

On the 150th anniversary of his death in 1998, the city ​​of Hof (Saale) erected a memorial that honors Wirth's person by making his work as a fighter for freedom of the press the content. It was created by the sculptor Andreas Theurer and has the shape of a wave-shaped newspaper page lying on the floor. The surface consists of black and white paving stones, the structure of which is reminiscent of a typeface. The pixel font creates a reference to the present and shows the title “Deutsche Tribüne” as an extract. The “D” from “German” is missing so that Wirth's struggle for German unity is not associated with dull nationalism. Before the inauguration, the then Federal President Roman Herzog commented : "This will double the number of republican monuments in Germany".

In 2012, the memorial was removed from its original location in the city center and a second, reduced version was installed near the Freiheitshalle .

Honors

Honorary grave of Johann Georg August Wirth in the main cemetery in Frankfurt

The Academy for New Media in Kulmbach , an institution for journalist training, has been awarding the Johann Georg August Wirth Prize since 2009. The Johann-Georg-August-Wirth-Realschule exists in Hof . In Hof and Bayreuth , Wirthstrasse is named after him, in Neustadt an der Weinstrasse and in Haßloch, Dr.-Wirth-Strasse .

The volume: Johann Georg August Wirth, The Rights of the German People was published in the Library of European Freedom Movements series in the Federal Archives in 1998 . A defense speech before the Assises zu Landau (1833) .

Works

  • Draft criminal code. A contribution to the discussion of the question: “Whether the draft of the penal code for Bavaria from 1822 meets the currently possible degree of completeness and Righteousness? ” . Bayreuth 1825 digitized
  • Censurfreye brochures as compensation for domestic subscribers . First delivery. Munich 1831 digitized
  • Johann Georg August Wirth (Ed.): Deutsche Tribüne , 1831–1832. Reprint KG Saur, Munich 2007 ISBN 3-598-11543-1
  • The political reform of Germany. One more urgent word to the German friends of the people . Strasburg 1832 digitized
  • The national festival of the Germans in Hambach. 2 vols. Christmann, Neustadt 1832. ( digitized and full text in the German Text Archive, issue 1, digitized and full text in the German text archive, issue 2)
  • The law of the German people and the resolutions of the Frankfurter Bundestag of June 28, 1832. Unknown and unused Digitalisat
  • Fragments of the cultural history. First part . JJ Tascher, Kaiserslautern 1835 digitized
  • Fragments of the cultural history. Second part . JJ Tascher, Kaiserslautern 1836 digitized
  • The political and reformatory direction of the Germans in the XVI. and XIX. Century. A contribution to contemporary history . Publisher of the Deutsche Volkshalle, Belle-Vue 1841 digitized
  • Memories from my life . First ribbon. Literary Institute, Emmishofen near Konstanz 1844 digitized
  • The history of the German states. From the dissolution of the empire to our day . Vol. 1. Kunstverlag, Karlsruhe 1847 digitized
  • The history of the German states . 2. Vol. 2. thoroughly improved rev. Hoffmannsche Verlags-Buchhandlung, Karlsruhe 1846 Digitized
  • The history of the German states . 3rd vol. 2. thoroughly improved rev. Hoffmannsche Verlags-Buchhandlung, Karlsruhe 1846 Digitized
  • The history of the German states . 4th vol. 2. thoroughly improved ed. Hoffmannsche Verlags-Buchhandlung, Karlsruhe 1846 Digitized
  • A word to the German nation . Kunstverlag, Karlsruhe 1848 digitized
  • JGA Wirth's last word to the German nation. With marginal glosses by M. Wirth . Sauerländer, Frankfurt am Main 1849 digitized

literature

Web links

Commons : Johann Georg August Wirth  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Johann Georg August Wirth  - Sources and full texts

Remarks

  1. ↑ The Bubenreuther fraternity emerged from the Arminia in 1833 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Das Große Pfalzbuch , Pfälzische Verlagsanstalt, Neustadt an der Weinstrasse 1976, 5th edition, p. 591.
  2. ↑ a b c Karl Müssel: Bayreuth in eight centuries. History of the city. Gondrom, Bayreuth 1993, ISBN 3-8112-0809-8 , p. 148.
  3. ^ Ernst Meyer-Camberg: Franconia III to Erlangen 1810-1831 . In: then and now. Yearbook of the Association for Corporate Student History Research 28 (1983), p. 20.
  4. ↑ A privilege, not a luxury in: Nordbayerischer Kurier from 7./8. April 2018, p. 2.
  5. ↑ Speech by Wirth. In: Johann Georg August Wirth: The national festival of the Germans in Hambach. Issue 1. Neustadt 1832, pp. 41–48, p. 48 ( online at Deutsches Textarchiv (DTA) ).
  6. ↑ Kaiserslautern 1835, 2 volumes.
  7. ↑ Stuttgart 1843-45, 4 volumes. 4th ed., Cont. by Zimmermann, 1860-62.
  8. ↑ Grave site: Gewann A, series 98-88. Signpost to the graves of well-known personalities in Frankfurt cemeteries . Frankfurt am Main 1985, p. 8.
  9. ^ Homepage of the Johann-Georg-August-Wirth-Realschule , accessed on March 9, 2013.
  10. ↑ Complete list of publications in the Federal Archives (as of June 2013), p. 16 ( Memento of April 7, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
personal data
SURNAME Wirth, Johann Georg August
BRIEF DESCRIPTION political writer of the Vormärz
DATE OF BIRTH November 20, 1798
PLACE OF BIRTH Hof (Saale)
DATE OF DEATH July 26, 1848
Place of death Frankfurt am Main