Johann Georg Baldus

Johann Georg Baldus (born January 18, 1789 in Langenhahn ; † January 30, 1855 in Bellingen ) was mayor in Langenhahn ( Westerwald ) from 1818 to 1840 . During the pre-March period in the Duchy of Nassau, Baldus was a member of the Nassau Chamber of Deputies , the second chamber of the parliament in Wiesbaden, from 1823 to 1848 , and at the beginning of the 1830s he was part of the leadership of the liberal opposition to the policies of Duke Wilhelm in the disputes over the rights of the members of parliament .

After this role in the "Nassau Domain Dispute", which was noticed throughout Europe, the presidency of the Nassau Chamber of Deputies from 1834 to 1836 and membership in the pre-parliament of the German Confederation in St. Paul's Church in 1848 were further highlights of Johann Georg Baldus' political career.

Baldus was a geometer (land surveyor) by profession . He was elected to the Chamber of Deputies as representative of the landowners.

Family and social origins

Johann Georg Baldus came from the Catholic milieu of the Rotenhain parish in the Oberwesterwald , which, in addition to the parish seat, included the villages of Langenhahn , Bellingen , Hölzenhausen and Stockum .

Since 1687, his male ancestors with the surname Balthes, Balthus or Baldus as mayor or mayor of the parish have been recorded in the sources. Hellmuth Gensicke suspects that the name is derived from "Baldo", an original form that can also be found in the place name "Bellingen".

His father Johann Georg Baldus, the son of a farmer, was born on October 28, 1764 in Langenhahn, and was also mayor and sender . His mother Elisabetha Gertrude Catharina nee Benner was born on May 12, 1768 in Hintermühlen as the daughter of a farmer.

On May 2nd, 1809 he married Anna geb. Baldus, daughter of the mayor from Bellingen. After her death in 1821 he married his second wife Anna geb. Henrich, daughter of the mayor of Stockum.

When Baldus moved to the neighboring town of Bellingen, it is not clear from the sources. It can be assumed on the occasion of the wedding in 1809. A document already signed by him with "Baldus, Geometer in Bellingen" dates to 1817 (map of the Marienberg office).

As mayor, wealthy landowner and deputy, Baldus belonged to the rural upper class. In his role as a surveyor, he played a key role in the reconstruction of the Westerburg area after the two fires in 1814 and 1819. In particular, he personally coordinated the construction work after the second fire.

Position in the Duchy of Nassau and in Parliament

The political stance of Johann Georg Baldus can be viewed as moderately liberal and, until the domain dispute escalates, as loyal to the prince.

In the Duchy of Nassau , before the annexation by Prussia in 1866, the old municipal code (only briefly broken by the March Laws of 1848) still applied, according to which the mayor was an administrator appointed by the sovereign and accountable to him. Baldus held the position of mayor for a period of 22 years.

Baldus was one of 22 members of the Nassau Chamber of Deputies in Wiesbaden. For the first time he moved into the Chamber of Deputies (the second chamber of parliament) for the tax class of landowners in a by-election in the Dillenburg constituency, Rennerod, in 1823. The by-election had become necessary because the Limburg-based opposition MP Joseph Trombetta resigned his seat in protest against the policies of the ducal government.

According to the then strict census suffrage in Nassau, only the wealthiest 157 people in the group of landowners had the right to stand for election in the entire duchy.

As a member of parliament, Baldus received diets of 6 florins ( guilders ) per day plus all other personnel and material costs incurred - an amount that contemporaries regarded as comparatively high. During the years as President of the Chamber, this amount tripled.

The role of Johann Georg Baldus in the domain dispute

In the parliamentary work, Johann Georg Baldus had two focal points, which were also typical for the overall work of the assembly of deputies.

On the one hand, the contributions of Baldus in the so-called Nassau domain dispute have been taken into account to this day, since this has been dealt with by regional history since the 1960s.

Part of the Duke's domains and one of his most important sources of income: Niederselters mineral water well.

In this dispute, which was noticed throughout the German Confederation and also in Europe, which stretched over almost the entire history of the Duchy of Nassau and was at times bitter on both sides, it was primarily about the ownership rights to the ducal domains such as manors, forests, Vineyards, mines or mills. Ultimately, this was due to the conflict between the principle of sovereignty of the princes on the one hand and the constitutionality of state action on the other. At the beginning of the 1830s, Baldus was part of the leadership of the opposition to the actions of the prince and his government.

When the Chamber of Deputies blocked the approval of taxes in the domain dispute, the ducal government resorted to the pair push . Since, according to the Nassau Constitution, both chambers, including the House of Lords and the Herrenbank, voted together according to the heads of the Nassau Constitution, the government had a new politicization of the Nassau population in the wake of the French July Revolution and the deputies became more self-confident again , no more majority in the whole parliament. Therefore, she increased the number of seats in the Herrenbank by exactly the number of inclined noble seats required to allow the household to be decided.

The Chamber of Deputies reacted on November 28, 1831 with a ministerial charge against State Minister Marschall von Bieberstein for "unconstitutional acts" on thirteen points. The ministerial charge, which is expressly permitted under the Nassau constitution - it was the first in the German Confederation and was an unheard of occurrence for the time - was brought forward in the second chamber by the deputies Eberhard senior and Baldus.

In a speech on January 7, 1832, Baldus sharply criticized the increase in the Herrenbank as unconstitutional. In particular, he attacked the duke's argument that the constitution was a “gift” from the prince to his country children, which he could change or withdraw as he pleased. He called on the Duke ( "asked his Ducal Highness most humbly"), restoring the previous situation or to dissolve the lower house.

The deputies had great popular support. Torchlight parades and festivals were held across the country of Nassau. In Oestrich the deputies received a trophy made of silver and gold, on which the names of Chamber President Herber and in smaller letters all deputies are engraved, including Baldus.

On April 18, 1832, the Chamber of Deputies turned to its last resort: the boycott of the meetings. 15 MPs took part in the boycott, signed a notice to this effect in Wiesbaden and were thereupon declared "deserters" by Duke Wilhelm. The “rump parliament” of 7 deputies approved the taxes and dismissed the boycotters from their mandate in a manner that was legally untenable, which in turn declared the activities of the 7 remaining deputies, including the tax permit, “void” in a further communication written on May 14 in Eltville “Explained. The ducal government countered with charges against all 15 boycotters, imprisonment and eleven fines.

In this situation, Johann Georg Baldus now assumed a special role. Due to illness, he had not signed the first communication from the deputies from April, but joined the second from May. He excused his absence from the sessions of the "trunk chamber" with his persistent illness, so that he was not prosecuted and was the only signatory to not be excluded from the further sessions of the parliament by the government.

So after the by-elections for the 15 seats that took place in March 1833, Baldus was elected President of the Chamber of Deputies in the following year, 1834, a position he held until 1836. His predecessor Georg Herber was sentenced to three years imprisonment at the Marksburg in 1832 for "calling for tax refusal, disobedience and resistance". He died on March 11, 1833, at the age of 70, before his sentence began.

Under the presidency of Johann Georg Baldus, which was confirmed by the Duke, the vast majority of the new Chamber of Deputies gave way to the domain dispute with the Duke, which brought them the accusation of being "Jaherren" from radical liberal journalists. This criticism ignores the fact that the Chamber of Deputies had gone to the limit of the constitutional possibilities, accepting the most severe personal consequences, and a violent revolution was never one of its options. The Duke on the other hand was uncompromising like hardly any of his peers in the German Confederation. He went so far as to intimidate 6,000 Austrian soldiers in the Rheingau, i.e. near the Wiesbaden parliament building, to hold an exercise and secured short-term military support from the Grand Duke of Hesse-Darmstadt . The imprisoned and sick 70-year-old President of Parliament Herber was a “guy” for Duke Wilhelm who might “die”. -

Further political work and contributions to the debate

In further contributions to the debate in the 1830s and 1840s, Baldus showed himself to be a representative of moderate-liberal principles.

In a reply to the parliamentary representative of the pastors and higher education institutions, Johann Gottlieb Ammann from Weilburg, Baldus defended the bourgeois principle of public meetings on May 14, 1834.

In 1840 he called for a reform and standardization of the legal system and in 1842 urged military justice by ending the so-called " guarantee system ", ie the possibility of wealthy citizens to buy themselves free from military service in the Ducal Nassau Army by sending a paid representative.

A second focus of his parliamentary work can be seen in the representation of the interests of the rural population, whose difficult situation Baldus knew well, as he was also a member of the poor commission in the Marienberg district , to which Langenhahn belonged.

In the pauperism debate, Baldus proposed an improvement in the education system for the poor sections of the population; in the discussion about the burden on the village population, he advocated lowering the numerous taxes.

One of the most important reform projects of the Nassau parliament was the replacement of the tithe , which, however, had hardly any significance in the Oberwesterwald. In order to be able to finance the repeal, the Landes-Credit-Casse Nassau was brought into being with a law that Baldus described in 1837 as "the most important and most momentous", "which has appeared in the Duchy since the constitution of the country".

Baldus was a member of the Chamber of Deputies in uninterrupted order until 1848. In the 1848 revolution, the People's Chamber was elected in the Duchy of Nassau on May 1st, which resulted from general and free elections.

March Revolution 1848

In March 1848 Johann Georg Baldus was appointed to the pre-parliament of the German Confederation, like the other deputies of the still existing Nassau Chamber of Deputies . This gathering consisted of 574 people. It met from March 31 to April 3, 1848 in the Paulskirche in Frankfurt and prepared the Frankfurt National Assembly .

literature

• Nassau parliamentary debates. Volume 1: Volker Eichler: Restoration and March 1818–1847 (= Prehistory and history of parliamentarism in Hesse. Volume 1 = Publications of the Historical Commission for Nassau. 35, 1). Published on behalf of the Hessian Parliament. Historical Commission for Nassau, Wiesbaden 1985, ISBN 3-922244-63-7 .
• Jochen Lengemann : MdL Hessen. 1808-1996. Biographical index (= political and parliamentary history of the state of Hesse. Vol. 14 = publications of the Historical Commission for Hesse. Vol. 48, 7). Elwert, Marburg 1996, ISBN 3-7708-1071-6 , p. 60.
• Hellmuth Gensicke : Parish and court of Rotenhain. In: Nassau Annals . Vol. 79, 1968, pp. 341-362.
• Otto Renkhoff : Nassau biography . Historic Commission for Nassau. Wiesbaden 2nd edition. 1992, p. 29, No. 159.
• Michael Riesener: The policy of the dukes of Nassau to secure property and rule (1806–1866) (Part 2). In: Nassau Annals. Vol. 103, 1992, pp. 181-216.
• Michael Riesener: The policy of the dukes of Nassau to secure property and rule (1806–1866) (part 3). In: Nassau Annals. Vol. 104, 1993, pp. 155-188.
• Nassau parliamentarians. Part 1: Cornelia Rösner: The Landtag of the Duchy of Nassau 1818–1866 (= publications of the Historical Commission for Nassau. 59 = Prehistory and history of parliamentarism in Hesse. 16). Historical Commission for Nassau, Wiesbaden 1997, ISBN 3-930221-00-4 .
• Winfried Schüler: The Duchy of Nassau. 1806-1866. German history in miniature (= publications of the Historical Commission for Nassau. 75). Historical Commission for Nassau, Wiesbaden 2006, ISBN 3-930221-16-0 .
• Wolf-Heino Struck : From the struggle for the constitutional state. The political trial against the Nassau People's Chamber President Georg Herber 1831/33. In: Nassau Annals. Vol. 79, 1968, pp. 182-244.

Web links

• Baldus, Johann Georg. Hessian biography. (As of February 1, 2020). In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Rösner, Nassau parliamentarians, p. 6
2. ↑ Gensicke, pp. 344-345
3. ↑ Gensicke, p. 352
4. ↑ Rösner, Nassau parliamentarians, p. 6
5. ^ Hessian main state archive
6. ↑ Nassau parliamentary debates, pp. 205–208
7. ^ Nassau parliamentary debates , p. 373
8. ↑ Struck, Vom Kampf um den Verfassungsstaat, p. 187. If not enough candidates were found in an electoral district, candidates from the next lower tax class could move up since 1821.
9. ^ Nassau Parliamentary Debates , p. 40
10. ↑ Basically the work of Struck (1968) and Riesener (1991 to 1993).
11. ↑ See, among other things, the representation of the domain dispute in: Michael Riesener, The policy of the dukes of Nassau to secure property and rule
12. ↑ Riesener, p. 207
13. ↑ Struck, p. 231
14. ↑ Nassau Parliamentary Debates, pp. 77–79
15. ↑ Nassau Parliamentary Debates, pp. 387–388
16. ↑ Nassau Parliamentary Debates, pp. 387–838
17. ↑ Riesener (Part 3), p. 156
18. ↑ Struck, pp. 199, 205
19. ↑ Riesener, p. 212
20. ↑ Nassau parliamentary debates, pp. 44–45, 82
21. ↑ Nassau Parliamentary Debates, pp. 183–185
22. ↑ Nassau Parliament Debates, pp. 198–199
23. ↑ Nassau Parliamentary Debates , p. 301
24. ↑ Nassau Parliamentary Debates , p. 208
25. ↑ Student, p. 141
26. ↑ Rösner, Nassau parliamentarians, p. 6.