Joseph by Zerboni di Sposetti

Joseph Johann Baptist Andreas von Zerboni di Sposetti (born May 23, 1766 in Breslau ; † May 27, 1831 in Rombschin , Province of Posen ) was a Prussian civil servant, publicist, poet and active Freemason in the second half of the 18th and the first half 19th century.

Life

Zerboni was born as the eldest son of a wealthy Wroclaw merchant of Italian descent. Families of Italian origin in Breslau included well-known families such as the Molinari , who were immortalized by Gustav Freytag in his novel “Soll und haben”. He attended the Jesuit high school in Breslau and in 1778 went to the University of Halle to study law. After completing his studies, he received a position as an assessor at the War and Domain Chamber in Glogau , just like ETA Hoffmann 20 years later. Here he published a volume of poetry in 1792, which showed his talent with feeling and imagination and at the same time his sensitivity to the ideas of the French Revolution .

In Glogau, Zerboni joined Freemasonry . Together with two friends, the assessor von Reibnitz and the lieutenant August Wilhelm von Leipziger , he tried to create a new secret society within Freemasonry, which should carry on the ideas of the Illuminati order, which was repealed in 1785 . The head of the new covenant should be Professor Ignaz Aurelius Feßler . This was a former Capuchin who had been chased away from his professorship in Lemberg because of anti-clerical sentiments and had been accepted by Prince Schönaich-Carolath on his estate in Carolath an der Oder , not far from Glogau. After some hesitation Feßler accepted the position, but endeavored to keep the new federation founded at Carolath Palace and the name of the “Gutesthuer” ( federation of evergetes ) out of politics. Zerboni and his new friend, the romantic writer Christian Jakob Salice-Contessa (like Zerboni a Silesian of Italian origin) had completely different goals, namely the preparation of a revolution in Prussia.

In 1793 after the second division of Poland and the creation of the new Prussian province of South Prussia , Zerboni received a new position at the War and Domain Chamber in Petrikau ( Piotrków Trybunalski ) not far from Czestochowa . In 1794 Zerboni was promoted to legal counsel in Petrikau. In the next year he founded with Leipziger, Salice-Contessa and his revolutionary-minded brother Carl a special secret society under the name of the “Moral Feme Court”, the purpose of which was to protect the people “against oppression by neglected officials” and to fight corruption had (Zerboni sensed corruption everywhere). However, it did not succeed in expanding the activities of the Federation, because no new members had registered. So Zerboni made himself a “moral judge” and began his intrepid journalistic campaign against the Minister Count von Hoym, the chief president of Silesia and South Prussia. The reason for this was a delivery of war material to the South Prussian government, in which Zerboni assumed fraudulent damage to the public interest and demanded that Minister Hoym intervene. In his own opinion, he had no authority in this matter. Irritated by this, Zerboni wrote a letter to Hoym published in the newspapers on October 12, 1796, in which he insulted the minister in the worst possible way. This soon gave Zerboni a reputation for being a great fighter against official corruption. Hoym initially intended to resolve the matter through disciplinary punishment. However, when the letter became even more widely distributed, the minister felt compelled to forward it to King Friedrich Wilhelm II .

The king had Zerboni imprisoned at the Glatz Fortress and ordered further investigations and the confiscation of all papers that brought the secret Femebund to light. All members of the Bund were arrested, house examinations on them produced further incriminating papers, including the correspondence of the younger Zerboni with French Jacobins . Thereupon all Fembrothers were accused of high treason and treason and arrested. In April 1797, the arrested were brought before a commission of inquiry at the Spandau Fortress . The verdict in cases of high treason was a prerogative of the sovereign, and after consulting with his trusted advisor Countess Wilhelmine von Lichtenau , Friedrich Wilhelm II sentenced the captain of Leipzig to a life sentence. The other participants, among them Joseph Zerboni, received imprisonment “at the king's grace” (synonymous with: as long as it seemed appropriate to the king ).

Zerboni was brought to Magdeburg Fortress to serve his sentence and was in a bad position there due to the harsh conditions of his detention. Public opinion was on his side, however, as he was never tried before a judge and royal power was not very popular in society that was influenced by the French Revolution. In 1797 the king died and his successor, Friedrich Wilhelm III. , ordered the release of Contessa and Karl Zerboni as part of the amnesty customary for a change of throne, promised Leipziger a later pardon and had Joseph Zerboni brought before a court of law. In July 1798, however, the Magdeburg judges ruled that Zerboni owed the foundation of a dangerous secret society, that he had earned his prison sentence and that his dismissal must remain legally binding. He was released from prison in the same year and appealed to the Berlin Court of Appeal , which upheld the Magdeburg judgment in 1799.

In the eyes of society, he became a political martyr. Numerous supporters, including many high-ranking personalities, were found as advocates. Among them was the famous legal scholar Athanasius Ludwig Mencken (grandfather of Otto von Bismarck on his mother's side ), who had become aware of Zerboni through his pamphlet "About the education business in South Prussia", which he wrote while in prison . His call for moderation was of little help, because Zerboni, flattered by the attention of the public, published the book " Pieces of Acts for the Condemnation of the State Crimes of the War and Domain Council Zerboni and his Friends " in 1800 . There he printed his letter from 1796 to Hoym and showered the minister with new and savage insults such as " ... an unworthy satrap in whose hands the sweat of the poor, hard-working people, collected in individual drops, melts ". This challenged the authorities, Zerboni was brought before a court again and sentenced in 1801 to six months of imprisonment.

This would have been a serious loss for Zerboni, who in the meantime had established a new existence by buying a country estate in the Poznan administrative district and made his property flourish through hard work. Six months in prison would have pulled him out of the rhythm of work. Asked for leniency by Zerboni's political friends, Friedrich Wilhelm III spoke. 1802 granted a conditional pardon. Zerboni fulfilled the condition to abstain from all political activity.

In the period from 1802 to 1806 Zerboni was engaged in agriculture and he managed to acquire a larger complex of goods. After the defeat of Prussia near Jena in 1806, the Polish nobles unleashed an uprising against Prussia in the province of Posen. Zerboni's neighbors tried to persuade him to participate, but he decidedly refused, as he felt bound by the oath he had taken to the King of Prussia. This attitude was not forgotten in Prussia, because in 1810 he was reinstated in the civil service as a Real Privy Councilor (but without the title of Excellency , which Zerboni found hard). As a resident in the newly formed Duchy of Warsaw he was allowed by the protection of the influential Prince Anton Radziwill a Indigenat get and keep his goods. Even his nobility was recognized; Before moving to Silesia, the Zerboni family is said to have used the nobility title “di Sposetti”, which he tacitly accepted again.

In 1815 the Duchy of Warsaw was abolished and its territory was divided into the Russian Congress Poland and the Prussian Province of Posen (then called "Grand Duchy of Posen"). In the same year, Zerboni was appointed President of the Province, in 1816 his nobility was recognized in Prussia, and in 1817 he was appointed Commander of the Red Eagle Order .

His situation as senior president was difficult. Next to or above him worked the governor Anton Radziwiłł , who favored national Polish interests in the province, which did not necessarily coincide with the interests of the Prussian state. Zerboni had to navigate between these different interests, and the conservative political development after the Congress of Vienna did not correspond to his innermost convictions. In 1817 he wrote a memorandum on the Prussian constitutional question, in which he presented a draft of the constitution shaped by the spirit of liberalism. He saw Prussia's position as the leading German state threatened if other federal states would forestall him in creating free institutions. His administration and renewed journalistic activity raised many concerns in Berlin and naturally led to new intrigues against him. In 1824 the Minister of the Interior put Zerboni into retirement without waiting for his application for retirement.

family

Joseph von Zerboni di Sposetti married Dorothea Constantine Auguste von Reibnitz (1773–1842), the sister of his friend and later district president Ernst Karl Wilhelm von Reibnitz (1765–1829) from the Glogau period. The couple remained childless and adopted a girl for their child. This foster daughter, Auguste Emilie Zerboni di Sposetti von, married Freiherr York Wilhelm von Seydlitz-Kurzbach in 1830 , the scion of one of the oldest Silesian noble families.

Zerboni died in 1831 on his Rombschin estate and was buried there.

Joseph's younger brother Karl (* 1772, † 1836), emigrated to Austria in 1816 and founded the Austrian line of the family there, which produced many outstanding officers and a writer, Julius von Zerboni (1805-1884).

Works

• 1800, files on the judgment of the state crimes of the South Prussian War and Domain Council Zerboni and his friends , digitized
• 1800, "Some thoughts on the educational business of South Prussia", Jena, Friedrich Frommann

literature

• Colmar Grünhagen :  Zerboni di Sposetti, Joseph . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 45, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1900, pp. 89-94.
• Association of German Freemasons (ed.): General Manual of Freemasonry , I - II., Leipzig 1900
• Constantin von Wurzbach : Zerboni di Sposetti, family, genealogy . In: Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich . 59th part. Kaiserlich-Königliche Hof- und Staatsdruckerei, Vienna 1890, p. 333 ( digitized version ).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Family history "Zerboni di Sposetti" partially incorporated by Geneanet , publicly accessible after registration under "oholzapfel" and the corresponding persons.
2. ^ Official Journal of the Royal Prussian Government in Bromberg: 1830 p. 310
3. ↑ Incomprehensibly, von Wurzbach (see below) denies the Italian origin of the Zerboni family and connects them with the village of Zerbo "near Sternberg in the Kurmark Brandenburg" - meaning Zerbow, today Serbów , in the Weststernberg district.