Johann von Bruyn

Johann von Bruyn (originally Bruyn, later de Bruyn, spoken: Brüün; * in Schleswig , baptized on March 18, 1739 in Schleswig Cathedral ; † January 3, 1799 in Ahlefeldhof, today Friedrichshof, in the Hüttener Mountains / Duchy of Schleswig , buried on January 10, 1799 in Hütten ) was a royal Danish major, land surveyor, Oberlandinspektor and land reformer.

Life

On August 3, 1754, he was registered as "Slesvicensis" at the same time as his brothers Georg and Christian as a student in Göttingen. He was then enrolled as a student at the University of Jena on August 9, 1755, on the same day as his brothers .

He later joined the Danish army as an officer and thus rose to the Danish military aristocracy and was therefore able to bear the German nobility title “von”. In 1757 he bought a lieutenant in the Infantry Regiment recruited from Bornholm, Garrison Rendsburg and settled in Rendsburg, where his maternal grandmother came from (he got the money needed to buy the post in 1757 by selling a piece of land in Schleswig). In 1764 he bought a house in Neuwerk Rendsburg , which he only sold again towards the end of his life in 1797. At his own expense, he took part in a campaign during the Seven Years' War and then became company boss of the infantry regiment recruited from Jutisch. The annual salary was just under 450 Reichsthalers, for which he wrote in his pension application in 1797: "I lasted this 12 years with an increase in my family and a decrease in a fortune left by my father."

In 1767 he began to work part-time as a land surveyor (first contract with official administrator A. Mörck zu Gottorf on the surveying of the manorial estate Satrupholm, as he had been recommended to the administrator several times as experienced). In 1769 he decided to make the sideline his main job and asked to be released from active military service, whereupon he was released as captain on November 22, 1769, he was able to sell his company, and on December 15, 1769 as "Ober-Land-Messer in the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein as well as in the rule of Pinneberg and the county of Rantzau “(with a fee of 300 Reichsthalers annually and an additional 500 Reichsthaler diets, as well as fees for surveying, distribution and mapping of the royal domains). He had four people employed in his mess room.

He then moved from Rendsburg to Schleswig, the official seat of the Schleswig-Holstein Land Commission, where he built a house in 1770 on the plot of land acquired by the brewer and merchant Diederichsen for 2000 Thaler Courant. He worked in the offices of Ahrensbök , Husum , Gottorf , Hütten, Herrschaft Pinneberg and Herrschaft Glücksburg ; annually he had to measure around four domains and the associated villages. After the abolition of serfdom, he divided the estates of large landowners, e.g. B. the Lindau estate. He had to parcel out farmland and sell it on a long lease, he divided wood into royal enclosures and adapted the associated villages to the new way of farming by reallocating land. Because of the lack of surveyors, he began to train young people himself. A private surveyor's office was set up in his house in Schleswig, and he housed his employees there, whom he had to look after.

In order to be able to travel at any time, he set up a carriage shed with horse stable in the courtyard of his house and leased meadows in 1772. On February 2, 1775, he was appointed major in the infantry because of his submission to the king because of his services as Oberlandmesser. From 1781 he was chief inspector of the land commission as the successor to his uncle Johann Nikolaus Otte zu Krieseby, who died in 1780 (certificate of appointment of April 2, 1781 by King Christian VII ). Due to a lack of protection at court, he did not have his own vote in the commission, which annoyed him for the rest of his life. It does not seem to have been due to his work, which was extremely precise (he worked “extremely conscientiously, conscientiously and successfully”, Schütz 1982, p. 72).

Memorial stone on the Aschberg

He acquired a cottage in the village of Ahlefeld in the office of Hütten (first entry in the Erdbuch 1778/79), which he enlarged and considerably expanded in 1783 by acquiring more land; he named the estate Ahlefeldhof. In 1790 he sold due to lack of money his house in Schleswig to his brother Christian Bruyn, whose daughter just the Hardesvogten the Schlies- and Füsingharde had married Nicolai von Klöcker and the Johann von Bruyn'sche house in Schleswig (moved with their family were the grandchildren of Johann von Bruyn close friends). Johann von Bruyn retired to his Gut Ahlefeldhof, where he continued to run his surveyor's office. Because of the many journeys and other stresses, however, his health had been badly damaged since 1792. So at the end of 1797 he asked for retirement, which he was granted. However, he died a good two months before his 60th birthday without being able to retire. A boulder on the Aschberg reminds of him.

family

Johann von Bruyn's brothers were the entrepreneur and shipowner Christian Bruyn, owner of the "Bruynsche Werft" in Eckernförde , and Georg Bruyn , Schleswig mayor and initiator of the Eider Canal . His grandfather was the founder of the Otte company Christian Otte in Schleswig. His father was the wealthy sea captain Jacob Bruyn de Wolff, owner of the castle on Hoyersworth , supposedly a Dutchman. Johann von Bruyn married his cousin Dorothea Louise Otten in Schleswig in 1761, daughter of the Schleswig mayor and entrepreneur Georg Christian Otte (dispensation was granted on December 24, 1760 because of the blood relationship) and granddaughter of the chief official of the duchies, the Danish senior administrator Johann Lorens Bensen . Johann von Bruyn's eldest daughter Elisabeth Margaretha Bruyn continued the family tradition of relatives marriages and married her cousin, chancellery and shipowner Christian Johann Bruyn from Eckernförde, who continued Otte's businesses there.

literature

• V. Hirsch: officers in the Danish service , Rigsarkivet, Rigsdagsgarden 9, 1218 Köbenhavn K
• Hans-Jürgen Kahlfuß: Johann Bruyn as Oberlandmesser as well as Oberlandinspektor of the Landkommission , in: Landesaufnahme ..., Verlag Wachholtz, Neumünster 1969, p. 63 ff.
• Ella Schütz: The Freihaus in VII. Quartier sub no. 169, today Stadtweg 93, its owners and their families , in: Yearbook of the Schleswiger Heimatgemeinschaft, 1982, issue 27, 1982, p. 62ff.