Joseph Ignaz Philipp of Hessen-Darmstadt

Prince-Bishop Joseph Ignaz Philipp of Hesse-Darmstadt

Joseph Ignaz Philipp of Hessen-Darmstadt

Coat of arms of the Prince-Bishop

Joseph Ignaz Philipp von Hessen-Darmstadt (born January 22, 1699 in Brussels , † August 20, 1768 in Plombières-les-Bains ) was Prince of Hessen-Darmstadt and Prince-Bishop of Augsburg .

His parents were Landgrave Philipp von Hessen-Darmstadt (1671–1736), a younger brother of the ruling Landgrave Ernst Ludwig von Hessen-Darmstadt , and Princess Marie Therese von Croy (1673–1714), a daughter of Ferdinand François Joseph von Croÿ , the 3rd Duke of Havre.

The election of bishops

He grew up partly in Mantua. He was ordained a priest on March 13, 1729 and appointed Bishop of Augsburg on August 18, 1740 . The bishop's consecration on February 12, 1741 was carried out by the Augsburg auxiliary bishop Johann Jakob von Mayr . His election was preceded by strong efforts on the part of the cathedral chapter to prevent the election of a Wittelsbacher as bishop. In the medium and long term, it would have endangered not only the freedom of choice of the cathedral chapter, but possibly also the empire-direct position of the bishopric on the Palatinate-Bavarian border. At the insistence of the Wittelbachers, the Freising and Regensburg prince-bishop Johann Theodor von Bayern was supposed to be appointed coadjutor with the right of succession. With the help of the Habsburgs , in whose service both his father and his uncle Georg von Hessen-Darmstadt had stood, Joseph von Hessen-Darmstadt was able to assert himself.

The Habsburg-Wittelbach opposition also played a role in his own successor. Prince-Bishop Clemens Wenzeslaus of Saxony , ordained Prince-Bishop of Regensburg and Freising on April 29, 1764 , was also appointed coadjutor of the Prince- Bishop of Augsburg. The Holy See approved this candidacy on the condition that Clemens Wenzeslaus renounced one of his other bishoprics if he was elected.

His work as a bishop

Prince-Bishop Joseph von Hessen-Darmstadt tried by a series of measures to maintain an appropriate court despite the modest possibilities of the bishopric of Augsburg. The size of the court reached a high point during his reign. The economic situation should be improved by the establishment of factories . A faience manufacture was founded in Göggingen in 1747 . He was also a great lover of music, which is why the prince-bishop's court orchestra in Augsburg was able to develop into a respectable ensemble by the middle of the 18th century, which repeatedly brought well-known composers of the time to Augsburg.

Between 1743 and 1754 he also tried to develop his residence in Augsburg into adequate accommodation for a baroque prince. According to the plans of the Eichstätter building director Gabriel de Gabrieli , three individual buildings were combined to form a three-story overall structure with a uniform facade. The medieval Palatinate Tower was preserved. The rococo décor of the residence's former table room and a representative staircase have been preserved from his reign . The staircase was frescoed by Johann Georg Bergmüller in 1752 with personifications of the three main rivers of the Diocese of Augsburg (Danube, Lech and Wertach) and the four cardinal virtues - Prudentia (wisdom), Justice (justice), Fortitudo (bravery) and Temperantia (moderation). The “Providentia Divina” watches over everything on the ceiling.

However, he did not stay very often in his residences in Augsburg and Dillingen , but underwent lengthy spa treatments because of his gout or visited the courts in Mannheim , Munich and Stuttgart . During one of his stays in Mannheim in 1760 he consecrated the Jesuit church there . He also had intensive correspondence with the related ruling houses in Hesse and England / Hanover. The costs for his spa stays amounted to almost 10% of the monastery budget in some years. He died during a cure in the French seaside resort Plombières-les-Bains near Épinal on August 20, 1768.

literature

• Wolfgang Wüst : The Principality of Augsburg. A spiritual state in the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. Augsburg 1997, ISBN 3-929246-23-6 .
• Wolfgang Wüst: Joseph: Landgrave of Hessen-Darmstadt 1699–1768. In: Life pictures from Bavarian Swabia. Vol. 14, ed. v. Wolfgang Haberl, Weißenhorn 1993, pp. 64-75.

Web links

Commons : Joseph Ignaz Philipp von Hessen-Darmstadt  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Hessen-Darmstadt, Joseph Ignaz Philipp Landgrave von. Hessian biography. (As of February 12, 2020). In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS).

predecessor	Office	successor
Johann Franz Schenk von Stauffenberg	Bishop of Augsburg 1740–1768	Clemens Wenzeslaus of Saxony