Johann von Pronath

Johann Baptist von Pronath (born January 17, 1757 in Köfering near Regensburg ; † November 20, 1839 at Offenberg Castle near Deggendorf ) was a Bavarian administrative officer and politician.

biography

Johann Baptist Pronath was the seventh child of Michael Pronath (1688–1780) and his third wife Anna Cäcilia, geb. Erlbauer (died 1797). His father was court administrator for the Counts of Lerchenfeld on Köfering .

After attending the Latin school of the convent near Regensburg , where his considerably older half-brother Martin Pronath lived as a monk, Johann Baptist Pronath began studying law at the Bavarian State University of Ingolstadt , which he graduated with a licentiate in both rights in 1788. From 1790 he held the position of government lawyer in Straubing and also successfully applied for the position of tax collector in the Bavarian countryside. During this time he married his first wife, Johanna Paumann (1760–1800), a daughter of the Straubing doctor Johann David Paumann. After the marriage, he also received the post of mayor of the city of Straubing.

In 1797 Johann Baptist Pronath became one of the 16 members of the Bavarian Landscape Ordinance and moved to Munich , where his wife, whom he loved above all, died two years later. As a landscape ordinator, he supported the unsuccessful attempt by the representatives of the Bavarian estates to prevent the planned secularization of the Bavarian monasteries by the elector.

In 1802 Johann Baptist Pronath acquired Offenberg Castle from the impoverished Imperial Count Christian Adam August von Königsfeld . He did not move from Munich to Offenberg until 1811, three years after the Bavarian Landscape Ordinance was dissolved. In 1810, Pronath had already acquired large parts of the estates and buildings of the nearby Benedictine monastery Metten , which was secularized in 1803, in order to secure its economic security .

In 1813 Johann Baptist Pronath married his second wife Maximiliane (1780–1860) from the noble Spreti family, who immigrated from Italy in the 17th century. The long-cherished wish of Pronath to be admitted to the nobility was connected with the marriage. He successfully submitted a corresponding request to the Bavarian king in 1818 and was henceforth allowed to call himself "von Pronath".

From 1824/24 Pronath's plan can be recognized to repopulate the Metten Monastery, which is now almost completely in his possession, with Benedictine monks. After various submissions to the king and tough struggles with the Bavarian government, as well as considerable personal commitment, Pronath's plan became a reality in 1830. An official recognition of his achievement and his material sacrifices by the Bavarian state was denied to him for life.

After the death of his wife in 1839 Pronaths occurred, as previously discussed, in the Salesian Sisters - Pielenhofen Abbey one.

literature

• Michael Kaufmann, Secularization, Desolation and Restoration in the Benedictine Abbey of Metten (1803 - 1840) (= Development History of the Benedictine Abbey of Metten, Vol. 4), Metten 1993.
• Ernst Schütz, Johann Baptist von Pronath , in: Alt und Jung Metten 74/2 (2007/8) 231–243.