Johann Michael Gries

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Johann Michael Gries (born July 22, 1772 in Hamburg , † April 12, 1827 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a Hamburg diplomat and politician. As in-house counsel for the Hamburg Council, he represented his hometown at the Congress of Vienna and at the German Confederation .

Life

Gries was the son of the businessman and senator Franz Lorenz Gries , a half-brother of the lawyer Johann Ludwig Gries and the older brother of the poet Johann Diederich Gries . After attending the academic high school, he studied law in Göttingen from 1792 to 1795 and, after an educational trip through Germany, settled as a lawyer in his hometown. He was involved in the lower court and for the general poor institution and in 1798 published a memorandum on the establishment of a commercial court , which was implemented a few years later under the French occupation .

Already the syndic of the Hamburg council since 1800, after the annexation of Hamburg by the French Empire, Gries was appointed general secretary of the newly created department of the Elbe estuaries . As such, he worked for the French prefect and even represented it at times. When the French temporarily withdrew from Hamburg at the beginning of 1813, Gries resumed his post as syndic and was sent by the Senate as an envoy to the Swedish Crown Prince Karl Johann . As Hamburg during his absence by the French under Marshal Davout was occupied again Gries remained in exile and founded on August 15, 1813 Güstrow along with his Lübeck colleague Carl Georg Curtius and other Hamburg exiles the "Interimistic Board of Hanseatische affairs", which to act as a kind of government in exile for the three Hanseatic cities of Bremen, Hamburg and Lübeck and to prepare the assumption of government power after the liberation from the French. Gries was intended as the provisional head of government for Hamburg.

After the Directory was dissolved a few months later, Gries traveled to Paris with the Bremen Senator Johann Smidt and the Lübeck-born Johann Friedrich Hach to take part in the armistice negotiations there and to preserve the independence of the three cities. In the process, Gries also managed to return the silver holdings from the Hamburger Bank that Davout had previously confiscated .

Then Gries took part in the Congress of Vienna and from 1816 represented his hometown in the Bundestag of the German Confederation in Frankfurt. He died there in 1827 after a long illness.

Honors

The Griesstraße in Hamburg-Hamm was named after Gries and his brother Johann Diederich .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Bernhard Rosenkranz a. Gottfried Lorenz: Hamburg in a different way . Himmelstürmer, Hamburg 2012, p. 339 ( digitized from Google Books).
personal data
SURNAME Gries, Johann Michael
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Hamburg council syndic, diplomat and politician
DATE OF BIRTH July 22, 1772
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg
DATE OF DEATH April 12, 1827
Place of death Frankfurt am Main