Joseph Fontanesi
Joseph Fontanesi (* around 1710; † May 10, 1795 in Mannheim ) was an Electoral Palatinate or Electoral Palatinate-Bavarian court official and promoter of the city of Frankenthal (Palatinate) .
Live and act
Nothing is known about his origin other than that he was of Italian descent. He first appeared in a document in 1739, under Elector Carl Philipp , as a secret secretary at the Palatinate court in Mannheim. In 1740 he married Maria Dorothea Rapparini there, a relative of the chamber councilor and librettist Georg Maria Rapparini , who had moved from Düsseldorf .
In 1743, Elector Karl Theodor took over as Italian language secretary. Joseph Fontanesi lived in Mannheim to rent, but owned his own house in Frankenthal, in Lambsheimer Gasse (now Bahnhofstrasse).
1756 the elector appointed him "because of his tireless diligence" to Hofgerichtsrat ; At that time Fontanesi was already a close confidante of Karl Theodor. At court, he had distinguished himself by suggesting improvements to fill the treasury and he was referred to as a “project maker” .
In 1765 Fontanesi presented the ruler with a plan for the industrialization of the Electoral Palatinate, a reform project in the sense of mercantilism by Jean-Baptiste Colbert , in which context he also called for the introduction of a chair for camera sciences at the University of Heidelberg for the training of civil servants , which was finally in 1774 led to the establishment of the High Camera School in Kaiserslautern .
According to these plans, Frankenthal was to become the industrial center of the country. It was at the intersection of important trade routes and had an agriculturally rich hinterland to provide cheap supplies for the employees. A disadvantage was the location away from the Rhine , which is why Joseph Fontanesi suggested building a branch canal from the city. The center of this regional reform was the Frankenthal-based Commercial Commission, founded in 1768 with the task of organizing the state's industrial self-sufficiency. It was later called the "Frankenthal Police, Privilege and Commerce Commission" ; Joseph Fontanesi and the Oggersheimer Oberschultheiß Karl von Maubuisson were the leading figures. A porcelain factory had existed in Frankenthal since 1755, and many new businesses followed, including several cloth and silk factories. Since there was a lack of such skilled workers here, Fontanesi brought them from Seligenstadt as well as from Italy and the Lyon area . Most of them were of the Catholic faith, whereby he - himself a great supporter of the Catholic community - deliberately increased the proportion of Catholics in the Protestant-dominated city. At his order, the walls of Frankenthal were planted with mulberry trees for silkworm breeding, and these trees were also planted in the surrounding area.
In 1771 Joseph Fontanesi became a privy councilor . In the following year the realization of his canal plan was started and the Frankenthal Canal was built by 1781 as a connection to the Rhine . In the quay wall of the harbor basin, the elector had a memorial plaque still preserved, on which Joseph Fontanesi is also named. It bears the inscription:
"Palatinate or foreigner, if you read this, know Karl Theodor a father and Elector of the Palatinate and Baierlands completed this work in 1781, through Se. Franz Albr, loyal to the Elector's Highness . Freyh. v. Oberndorff , Minister of State and Conference, Joseph Fontanesi and Karl von Maubuißon, secret councilors, Jakob and Christoph Dyckerhoff Vatter and son, court chamber councilors. "
When Kurbayern fell to the Electoral Palatinate in 1777 and Elector Karl Theodor moved to Munich, Mannheim only had a regional government for a part of the country with great economic power. In this situation, Joseph Fontanesi and Karl von Maubuisson received the order to draw up a contract on transit traffic between the distant parts of the state of Palatinate and Bavaria, with the knighthood of Kraichgau , the Duchy of Württemberg and the city of Heilbronn .
At the suggestion of Fontanesi, Elector Karl Theodor founded the St. Elisabeth Hospital in Frankenthal. With Fontanesi's support, a “ philanthropist for Protestant young women ” was established in the city in 1780 , which, at his instigation, was privileged and financially supported by the state two years later. From 1786 the institute opened up to Catholic students and Joseph Fontanesi tried to attract the best teachers to Frankenthal; u. a. the English teacher at the electoral Pagenschule in Munich . This resulted in today's Karolinen-Gymnasium .
Just as before in Mannheim, Fontanesi founded a Catholic church choir with orchestra in Frankenthal in 1773, which he also supported financially. The director was initially the local composer Sigismund Ranqué (1743–1795), from 1778 the Italian Giuseppe Bonasegla († 1820), who also functioned as music master at the Frankenthaler Philanthropin and later as a cellist in the Mannheim orchestra , which had emerged from the former electoral court orchestra . Bonaseglas granddaughter Henriette Spitzeder (1800–1828) became a famous opera singer.
Around 1782 Fontanesi was appointed secretary of the Order of St. Hubertus and he remained so until his death.
During the First Coalition War , Joseph Fontanesi stayed mainly in the safer Mannheim. When the Prussians came to Frankenthal in 1792, he temporarily returned to the city and had the Prussian officers entertained.
In 1794 he fell ill, made his will and died childless in Mannheim in 1795. His wife had died before him; The couple had largely bequeathed their fortune to the St. Elisabeth Hospital in Frankenthal.
Fontanesistraße in Frankenthal is named after him. He had a statue of St. John Nepomuk erected in the city by Johann Peter Melchior and a statue of St. Joseph by Johann Matthäus van den Branden . The latter is now in the anteroom of the local church of St. Ludwig.
literature
- Anna Maus: The history of the city of Frankenthal and its suburbs , Frankenthal, 1970, pp. 71–80
- Anna Maus: The privileged parish church choir St. Dreifaltigkeit in Frankenthal in the 18th and 19th centuries , in Archive for Middle Rhine Church History , born in 1963, pp. 373–388
- Peter Ruf: Der Frankenthaler Kanal , Stadtarchiv Frankenthal, 1991, pp. 6-8
Web links
- Website of the city of Frankenthal on Joseph Fontanesi
- PDF document: Biography of Joseph Fontanesi in the portal of the city of Frankenthal
Individual evidence
- ↑ Marcus Popplow: Landscapes of agrarian-economic knowledge: Strategies for innovative resource use in journals and societies of the 18th century , Waxmann Verlag, 2010, ISBN 383096904X , p. 209; (Digital scan)
- ↑ Brief excerpts from Austrian dissertations: Humanities and social sciences , Verlag des Verband der Scientific Societies Austria, 1970, p. 2; (Detail scan)
- ^ Alfons Boegl: The streets of the Palatinate, 1700-1792 , Kirschbaum-Verlag, 1980, p. 22; (Detail scan)
- ↑ Website Karolinen-Gymnasium Frankenthal
- ↑ Anna Maus: From Philanthropist to Girls' High School - The History of the Karolinenschule in Frankenthal / Pfalz , Mushakesche Verlagsanstalt, Trautheim, 1958, pp. 13-29
- ↑ Hans Oskar Koch: Ranqué, Sigismund. In: Ludwig Finscher (Hrsg.): The music in past and present . Second edition, personal section, volume 5 (Covell - Dzurov). Bärenreiter / Metzler, Kassel et al. 2001, ISBN 3-7618-1115-2 ( online edition , subscription required for full access)
- ^ Hermann Mendel: Musikalisches Conversations-Lexikon , Oppenheim Verlag, Berlin, 1872, Volume 2, p. 129; (Digital scan)
- ↑ Gustav Bereths: Music History of Trier (1800-1850): The concert and the Voluntary Sector (= Volume 1), p 122, Schott Publishing, 1978, ISBN 379571317X ; (Detail scan)
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Fontanesi, Joseph |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Fontanesi, Joseph Valentin |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Privy Councilor of the Electoral Palatinate, sponsor of the city of Frankenthal (Palatinate) |
| DATE OF BIRTH | around 1710 |
| DATE OF DEATH | May 10, 1795 |
| Place of death | Mannheim |