Johann Wilhelm Wernher

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Johann Wilhelm Wernher

Johann Wilhelm Wernher (born February 4, 1767 in Zweibrücken , † June 7, 1827 in Darmstadt ) was a councilor, mayor , lawyer , secret state councilor and court president and winemaker and was known as a judge of the Schinderhannes trial .

family

Johann Wilhelm Wernher was a son of the ducal government councilor Wilhelm Wernher. He was married to Julie Friederike Charlotte Bruch. His son Philipp Wilhelm Wernher was a Hessian liberal politician and winemaker . The son Carl Gustav Adolph Wernher was a surgeon , pathologist and university professor .

Life

Johann Wilhelm Wernher started in September 1789 in the royal seat of Zweibrücken as archives secretary for Georg August Bachmann, the last archivist of the old Duchy of Pfalz-Zweibrücken . He was considered a capable employee with an interest in history and legal scholarship and quickly moved up to the government council in the archive. In 1793 French revolutionary troops occupied Zweibrücken and the entire area on the left bank of the Rhine in the 1st coalition war ; the duchy of Pfalz-Zweibrücken ceased to exist. Bachmann and Wernher fled with the entire archive from the occupied royal seat to the right bank of the Rhine and thus saved it for posterity during the revolution.

Johann Wilhelm Wernher returned after the Peace of Basel and was elected Maire (= French Mayor) of Zweibrücken in 1796. However, since he was distrusted by the French, he had to resign that same year.

Haxthäuser Hof
today: Carl Udo Wernher winery

In 1798, the administration of the annexed area on the left bank of the Rhine was reorganized according to the French model and the Département du Mont-Tonnerre with its seat in Mainz was formed for the Palatinate and Rheinhessen areas under the direction of Prefect Jeanbon St. André . Johann Wilhelm Wernher went to Mainz as a lawyer, where he was appointed supplementary judge at the Donnersberg Department Tribunal in August of the same year.

Prefect Jeanbon St. André in Mainz appointed him in the same year as a judge of a special court for the trial of the robber Johannes Bückler - called "Schinderhannes" - and his fellow offenders (including the young Black Peter, the son of the old Black Peter ). Through this function, Wernher remained known to posterity.

During the years when the areas on the left bank of the Rhine belonged to the French Republic , the confiscated aristocratic holdings in Oppenheim were also auctioned off in 1801 . District court president Wernher auctioned the Adelshof von Wolfskehl-Gemmingen there with four other people , but then parted with his share again. From the proceeds he acquired the Haxthäuser Hof in Nierstein in 1804, gradually enlarged it through acquisitions and made it the permanent seat of the family in Rheinhessen.

In 1803 he became a member of the Charity Committee of the City of Mainz and joined the Department Society of Sciences and Arts . In the course of the changes in the organization of the judiciary at the time, he was appointed lawyer at the tribunals in Mainz and also became a member of the Mainz school commission.

Under Johann Wilhelm Wernher's descendants, several were active in Rhine-Hesse historical research, notably in Nierstein and Oppenheim.

literature

  • Wernher:  Wernher, Johann Wilhelm . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 42, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1897, pp. 81-86.
  • Susanne Bräckelmann, The secret state councilor Johann Wilhelm Wernher, in: Niersteiner Geschichtsblätter, special edition 2016: The Haxthäuser Hof - an aristocratic court with a history, pp. 52–64 ( ISBN 978-3-9817898-0-5 )
  • Carl Wernher (Ed.): Wernher Archive. Chronicle of the Wernher family together with information about the related and related families. No. 2. [self-published], Oppenheim 1906. Digitized

Web links

Individual references, comments

  1. ↑ Carl Wernher (Ed.): Wernher Archive. Chronicle of the Wernher family together with information about the related and related families . No. 2 . [Self-published], Oppenheim December 1906, p. 21-24 .
  2. ↑ see web link "The interrogations of the young Schwarzpeter
personal data
SURNAME Wernher, Johann Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Government councilor, mayor, lawyer, privy councilor and court president, vintner, judge of the Schinderhannes trial
DATE OF BIRTH February 4, 1767
PLACE OF BIRTH Zweibrücken
DATE OF DEATH June 7, 1827
Place of death Darmstadt