Johann Michael von Loën

Johann Michael von Loen

Johann Michael von Loën (born December 11, 1694 in Frankfurt am Main ; † July 24, 1776 in Lingen / Ems) was a German writer, scholar and statesman of the early Enlightenment .

Life

Loën was born in Frankfurt as the son of Michael Loën, who came from a respected Dutch merchant family, and his wife Marie, née Passavant. He first attended the public school in Frankfurt and in 1707 came to the boarding school Birstein near Gelnhausen. In 1711 he began to study law as well as fine sciences and arts in Marburg . In 1712 he moved to the University of Halle , where he studied with Christian Thomasius , among others . After a short stay in Frankfurt he went to Wetzlar in 1715 to get to know - in his words - "the chamber stroll", ie to get to know the local court of the Reich .

In 1716 Loën embarked on extensive trips through Germany and the Netherlands. Financially secured by a considerable inheritance in 1718, he extended his travels to Switzerland, France and Northern Italy. His path took him to Augsburg, Regensburg, Nuremberg, Jena, Berlin (1717–1718), Dresden (1718), Vienna, Strasbourg, Paris, Prague and Breslau, among others. In 1724 he returned to his hometown Frankfurt. Here, thanks to the fortune inherited from his maternal grandfather, he lived independently as a private scholar and freelance writer. The Enlightenment published numerous controversial religious, state-political and nobility-critical writings in the next few decades, including the state novel Der Redliche Mann am Hofe . He collected books and works of art and became the center of a sociable and educated circle of friends. In 1734 he began the inventory of his sizeable library ( Bibliotheca Loeniana selecta realis systematica ), but he never finished it.

In 1729 Loën married Katharina Sibylla Lindheimer in Frankfurt, the sister of Goethe's grandmother Textor (and was thus great-uncle of Goethe, who was born in 1749). After his brother's death in 1729, Loën became the sole owner of the Merian's country house on the banks of the Main below the city of Frankfurt, where Goethe's parents would later be married. In 1733 he bought the Mörfelden estate.

In 1752, the Prussian King Friedrich II. Appointed Loën to Lingen an der Ems as district president of the County of Lingen and the County of Tecklenburg . Although he had previously turned down offers from the Prussian government, Loen accepted the position, possibly due to a lack of success as a writer.

In the Seven Years' War Loën fell into French captivity in 1757 and was abducted to Wesel , where he was held hostage for four years in a “most miserable and indecent room”. He was released in 1761, but had to let one of his sons take his place until the peace agreement. In 1765 he asked the king to leave. In the last years of his life he was almost completely blind; the ophthalmologist Johann Heinrich Jung-Stilling operated on him without success. In 1776 Loën died in Lingen.

family

With his wife Katharina Sibylla Lindheimer (1702–1776), whom he married in 1729, he had 7 children, including:

• Johann Wolfgang (October 18, 1732; † November 14, 1783), Court Chamber Councilor of the Count of Solms-Laubach ⚭ Louise Henriette Albertine von Clotz-Ostheim (* October 18, 1757; † November 17, 1776)
• Rudolf Emanuel (March 12, 1734; † 1813) ⚭ June 30, 1778 Jeanne Elisabeth Franziska Fleischbein (* August 21, 1756; † January 5, 1780)
• Johann Michael († August 10, 1731)
• Johann Justus (born February 3, 1737 - † May 17, 1803), Anhalt-Dessau court marshal ⚭ Henriette Katharina Agnes von Anhalt-Dessau (1744–1799)
• Cornelius (* 1739; † 1739)

Works

• Evangelical peace temple
• The Secret of Decay and Burning of All Things , 1729
• The reasonable divine service according to the easy teaching of the Savior , 1738
• The honest man at court; Or the events of the Count of Rivera , Roman, 1740
• The image of a wise man and a Christian at court in the life of Archbishop Fenelon , 1743
• The merchant nobility , 1st edition 1742 ( digitized version )
• Des Herr von Loen Free Thoughts for the Improvement of Human Society , 1746–1752 ( digitized version )
• Draft of a state art in which the most natural means are discovered to make a country powerful, rich, and happy , 1747 ( digitized 3rd edition 1751 )
• The only true religion, general in its principles, confused by the quarrels of the scribes, divided into all kinds of pages, united in Christ , 1750–1752, changes. Ed. 1756
• Collected small writings , 4 parts, 1749–1752 (digitalis: Volume 1 , Volume 2 , Volume 3 , Volume 4 )
• Moral Poems , 1751
• The nobility , 1752 ( digitized Google , digitized Munich )
• The secret of Mr. Loen Freye's advice on the court, the policey, the learned, civil and peasant class, on religion and a permanent peace in Europe: including an appendix of three treatises on the salaries of ministers, war discipline and the spread of false Victories and advantages in war . 2nd, presumably edition Gaum, Ulm, Frankfurt & Leipzig 1761 ( digitized version )

literature

• Christiane Büchel: Johann Michael von Loen through the ages. A little research story . In: The eighteenth century, ISSN  0722-740X , Vol. 16 (1992), H. 1, pp. 13-37
• Christiane Büchel: The officer in the society of the early enlightenment. The soldier writings of Johann Michael von Loen . In: Daniel Hohrath, Klaus Gerteis (ed.): The art of war in the light of reason. Military and Enlightenment in the 18th Century . Part 1. (= Enlightenment, vol. 11, booklet 2). Meiner, Hamburg 1999, ISBN 3-7873-1398-2 , pp. 5-23
• Heinrich Haeckel: Johann Michael von Loen and the German Enlightenment . In: Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte , ISSN  0044-3441 , 6th year 1954, pp. 36–48
• David G. John: Johann Michael of Loen's Ideal City. A Reflection of Eighteenth-Century Currents in Germany . In: Journal of Urban History, ISSN  0096-1442 , Vol. 6, No. 1, November 1979, pp. 80-95 (on Loens' treatise Brief Draft, How a City ... could be built up in the "Free Thoughts for the Improvement of Human Society" )
• Lieselotte E. Kurth-Voigt: Johann Michael von Loen and Christoph Heinrich Korn: "The honest at court". On eighteenth-century women's literature . In: MLN, ISSN  0026-7910 , Vol. 114, Number 3, April 1999 (German Issue), pp. 590-593
• Siegfried Sieber: Johann Michael von Loen, Goethe's Großoheim (1694-1776), his life, his work, and a selection from his writings . Historia, Leipzig 1922
• Johann Christoph Strodtmann: History of Sr. Hochwohlgebornen of Mr. Johann Michael von Loen. In: The new scholarly Europe. Second part . Meißner, Wolfenbüttel 1753, pp. 520-570 ( digitized version )
• Wilhelm Stricker:  Loen, Johann Michael von . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 19, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1884, pp. 86-88.
• Adalbert Elschenbroich:  Loën, Johann Michael von. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 15, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-428-00196-6 , pp. 47-49 ( digitized version ).

Web links

• Literature by and about Johann Michael von Loën in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by Johann Michael von Loën at Zeno.org .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ New genealogical manual p. 155, digitized
2. ↑ http://www.frankfurter-patriziat.de/node/64871  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
3. ↑ http://www.frankfurter-patriziat.de/node/64881  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
4. ^ New genealogical manual p. 146, digitized
5. ↑ http://www.frankfurter-patriziat.de/node/64883  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.