Johann Georg Schlosser

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Johann Georg Schlosser
* 1739; † 1799
copper engraving by Prestel after
Ph.J. Becker
Cornelia Goethe around 1770. Drawing by J. L. E. Morgenstern

Johann Georg Schlosser (born December 7, 1739 in Frankfurt am Main ; † October 17, 1799 ibid) was a German lawyer , historian , translator , statesman , political and philosophical writer of the Enlightenment ; Brother-in-law Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , dealt critically with Immanuel Kant and was a member of the Viennese Freemason lodge Zur Wahr Eintracht .

Life

Johann Georg Schlosser came from a middle-class Frankfurt family. His father Carl Erasmus was a member of the Frankfurt council, his mother Susanna Maria Orth was the daughter of a respected merchant family. His brother Hieronymus Peter Schlosser became a city politician in Frankfurt.

Schlosser attended the municipal high school in Frankfurt. As a student, he was particularly interested in classical languages. He was also interested in contemporary German literature. He studied law in Jena (from 1758) and Altdorf (from 1760). With a dissertation on the guardianship law of Frankfurt am Main, he graduated in 1762 and became a doctor of law. He then practiced as a lawyer in Frankfurt.

From 1766 he was secret secretary of the future Duke Friedrich Eugen von Württemberg in Treptow an der Rega , where he was in command of a Prussian regiment .

In 1769, Schlosser was again a lawyer in Frankfurt. There he wrote his catechism of moral doctrine for the rural people in 1771 . This stood in contrast to the education system represented by the state and church, therefore made it known among the enlightened intellectuals of the country and was highly praised by Christoph Martin Wieland , among others .

In 1773 he became a lawyer and writer in Emmendingen and a margrave of Baden court and government councilor in Karlsruhe. On November 1st, 1773 he married Goethe's sister Cornelia . From 1774 he was chief administrator and chief magistrate in the Baden margraviate of Hochberg with his residence in Emmendingen. In the Emmendingen years he campaigned primarily for reforms in agriculture and in the social field. He also worked as a sponsor of the mining industry and supported the construction of factories. In his reform efforts he often stood in opposition to his sovereign, the Margrave Karl Friedrich von Baden and his government in Karlsruhe .

After Cornelia Schlosser had died in 1777, he married Johanna Fahlmer (1744–1821) from Frankfurt in September 1778, daughter of the businessman and commercial councilor Georg Christoph Fahlmer (1687–1759) from his second marriage, Goethe's confidante in his experiences and inner life Fighting during his Sturm und Drang period .

Schlosser's residence 1774–1787 in Emmendingen (today the city library)

Schlosser maintained contacts with scientists and thinkers not only in the southwest German area of ​​the then empire, but also with those in Switzerland and Alsace such as Johann Caspar Lavater , Isaak Iselin (Illuminat) or Gottlieb Konrad Pfeffel . The poet Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz was also Schlosser's guest in Emmendingen for some time; Or better: Goethe's former comrade, who was mentally confused and difficult at times , migrated to Emmendingen after he was expelled from Weimar and sought refuge with Schlosser.

Goethe himself visited locksmiths in Emmendingen in 1775 and 1778. The two met for the last time in 1793 in Heidelberg . In Poetry and Truth , Goethe briefly describes his relationship with Schlosser.

In the catechism of the Christian religion for the rural people , the Enlightenment attacked the Protestant clergy again in 1776, which is why this writing was indexed and burned in Frankfurt . In Xenocrates, or about the taxes from 1784, he critically examines the teachings of the Physiocrats , who had a strong supporter in Schlosser's sovereign, the Margrave Karl-Friedrich von Baden, among others.

In 1782/83 he was accepted into the Illuminati order with the name 'Dion / Mahomed' and here so-called 'Provincial' of Swabia , which region was called 'Pannonia' in the order. In 1787 he became Provincial of Freiburg / Breisgau under the religious name 'Euclides'. Schlosser traveled to Switzerland several times and in 1783 also spent a long time in Vienna . He was a member of the Viennese Freemasons Lodge on True Unity . In 1785 he was appointed first master of the chair by the Freemason lodge Zur noble Aussicht in Freiburg im Breisgau and in 1786 a member of the Viennese lodge 'Zur Truth' and then until 1794 master of the lodge 'Karl zur Einigkeit' in Karlsruhe.

In 1787 he was transferred to the state government as a secret archivist and secret councilor in Rastatt and later to Karlsruhe . In 1790 he was appointed director of the court court and real secret council. Because of ongoing differences with the Karlsruhe government, he resigned from the Baden service in 1794. The reason for his resignation was the direct intervention of Margrave Karl-Friedrich in an ongoing court case.

After a stopover in Ansbach , Schlosser lived as a private scholar in Eutin from 1796 , where he had contacts with Johann Heinrich Voss and Friedrich Leopold zu Stolberg , among others . His daughter Luise married Georg Heinrich Ludwig Nicolovius here in 1796 .

Already in his last years in Karlsruhe, but also from Ansbach and Eutin , Schlosser dealt critically with Immanuel Kant . He rejected its philosophy as alien to life, rational and ethically questionable. He responded to his attacks on Kant with, among other things, the writings Von ein Recently Raised Noble Tone in Philosophy (1796) and the proclamation of the imminent conclusion of a treatise on eternal peace in philosophy (1796). Schlosser's polemical replies to this work led to it being violently attacked by Kant's followers, including Friedrich Schlegel . In 1797 he became a lawyer in Frankfurt am Main.

In his time, Schlosser was also an important translator, especially from Greek . He translated Plato , Aristotle , Xenophon , Thucydides , Aeschylus , Euripides , Aristophanes , Homer and Callimachus, among others . Outstanding was his translation of Aristotle's politics (1798).

In 1798 Schlosser returned to Frankfurt and was elected syndic by the city council. His area of ​​work was primarily Frankfurt foreign policy.

Works

  • Proposal and attempt to improve German civil law without abolishing the Roman code of law. Leipzig 1777.
  • About pedantry and pedants, as a warning to the scholars of the XVIII. Century. Basel 1787 . With e. Post Comment ed. v. Alexander Košenina . Revonnah Verlag Hannover. ISBN 3-927715-74-3 .
  • Letters about legislation in general, and the draft of the Prusian law book in particular. Johann Georg Fleischer, Frankfurt 1789. MDZ Reader

Trivia

Since 2010, the city ​​buses in Emmendingen have been named after well-known personalities who were born in the city or who lived and worked there temporarily, including Cornelia Goethe , Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz and Johann Georg Schlosser . The name Schlosser is on the side of the bus; supplemented by brief biographical information.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Schlosser, Johanna Katharina Sibylla (born June 16, 1743 in Breuberg, † October 31, 1821 in Remscheid-Ehringhausen). Hessian biography. In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS).
  2. ^ Fahlmer, Georg Christoph (* March 16, 1687 in Michelstadt, † November 16, 1759 in Mannheim), Kommerzienrat - wholesaler. Hessian biography. In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS).
personal data
SURNAME Schlosser, Johann Georg
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer, statesman and translator
DATE OF BIRTH December 7, 1739
PLACE OF BIRTH Frankfurt am Main
DATE OF DEATH October 17, 1799
Place of death Frankfurt am Main