Justus von Gruner

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Justus von Gruner

Karl Justus Gruner , from 1815 von Gruner (born February 28, 1777 in Osnabrück , Hochstift Osnabrück , † February 8, 1820 in Wiesbaden , Duchy of Nassau ) was royal Prussian Privy Councilor , high-ranking state official and first police president of Berlin.

origin

Gruner came from a family from the Vogtland , the direct line of which began with Ehrhardt Gruner, witness and councilor in Tanna ( Principality of Reuss , Thuringia ), mentioned in 1662.

His parents were Christian Gruner (1732–1787) and his wife Wilhelmine, née Baumeister (1752–1831). His father was an Osnabrück vice chancellery director and consistorial councilor. The Bremen merchant August Wilhelm Gruner was his brother.

Karl Justus Gruner was raised to the Prussian nobility on October 19, 1815 .

Life

After the early death of his father in 1787, he was only able to complete his training with the financial support of his godfather Justus Möser . Gruner studied law and political science at the Universities of Halle (member of the Corps Guestphalia ) and Göttingen . Initially, Gruner worked as a lawyer in Osnabrück. Here he also published little-noticed writings on criminal law and public safety. In 1800 he first became an employee of a company based in the then Prussian town of Posen , which dealt with the settlement of Germans in the former Polish territories, before entering the Prussian civil service in 1802 and becoming a member of the Chamber of Commerce in Ansbach-Bayreuth in Brandenburg-Prussia . Because of his experience in Poznan, he was appointed to the General Directorate for the South Prussia region (Poznan) in Berlin in 1804 . In 1805 he became director of the War and Domain Chamber in Poznan, where he remained after the city was taken by the French in October 1806. Despite the French occupation, Gruner organized a money collection in Posen for the benefit of the widow of the Nuremberg bookseller Johann Philipp Palm, who was executed by the French . At the beginning of 1807 Gruner went to East Prussia as an administrative officer , where he got in touch with Freiherr vom Stein and Karl August von Hardenberg and subsequently belonged to the circle of Prussian reformers.

After a short stay in Western Pomerania , Gruner went to Berlin in 1809 and was appointed commissioner for the introduction of the town regulations before he was appointed the first police president of Berlin on March 25, 1809 . At first he was busy with the enforcement of the transfer of silver against paper money, with which the Berliners should be involved in the elimination of the financial distress of the Prussian state. In addition, Gruner was instrumental in the constitution of the Berlin city council and the Berlin magistrate. With some secret police measures, Gruner tried to prevent anti-French actions by the population. He also banned meetings in front of the French and Austrian legations. He also succeeded in removing urban matters from the jurisdiction of the military. So were u. a. the fire extinguishing system, the meat tax and the building evacuation lines transferred from the jurisdiction of the governor to that of the police headquarters. His efforts to get the Berlin Citizens Guard, created by Napoleon in 1806, under his command as a police protection force, failed because of the opposition of the city council and the Prussian Ministry of the Interior. His reform of the Berlin police authority, however, was approved by the Interior Ministry. From October 1809 he divided the Berlin police into a main office, police office, foreigner's office and security office (with secret police). With the so-called Audikandum of October 28, 1809, Gruner's intended “Extended Berlin Police District” was created, including the districts of Teltow and Niederbarnim . With this, Gruner wanted to be able to better fight the crime emanating from places close to Berlin. The exemption he sought for the security office from the jurisdiction of the criminal court failed because of the Minister of the Interior, since according to the General Prussian Land Law of 1794, every accused had to be brought to a judge. After the devastating fire of the Petrikirche in Berlin on September 20, 1809, Gruner also began to reorganize the Berlin fire fighting system. In preparation for the return of the Prussian royal couple to Berlin, the new police administration developed by Gruner was published in the Police Ordinance of December 3, 1809. In addition, on December 10, 1809, Gruner issued an ordinance to clean the streets of Berlin from rubble, rubbish, broken glass and faeces. At the turn of the year 1809/10, Gruner issued the order that police officers were forbidden from accepting gifts in cash or in kind at the turn of the year. In the course of the police reform, numerous, z. Police privileges and fees, some of which date from the Middle Ages, have been abolished. This was followed in January 1810 by the ban on street begging, which, however, was hardly obeyed and proved to be unenforceable.

Justus Gruner privileged his successful work as Berlin police chief for other, higher offices. On February 12, 1811, he was appointed as a Privy Councilor to head the higher police force in Prussia. Gruner continued the establishment of a secret police, which he had begun as Berlin police chief, to defend against French agents, now consistently at the state level.

In February 1812 Gruner, who developed a pronounced conservative stance in the course of the coalition wars, quit out of disappointment at the reluctance of the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm III. against Napoléon Bonaparte and the alliance of Prussia with France. Instead, Gruner offered the Russian Tsar Alexander I to set up an anti-Napoleonic informant and diversion network behind the French armies. After the Tsar had accepted Gruner's offer and provided him with the necessary financial means, Gruner moved to Prague and began to build up his network of agents. However, supporters of Napoleon in the Prussian Ministry of the Interior succeeded in denouncing Gruner to the Austrians, who owned Prague at the time. At the instigation of the Austrian State Chancellor v. Metternich Gruner was arrested in August 1812 and interned at the Peterwardein Fortress, but released again in autumn 1813 after Austria joined the Russia-Prussia Alliance.

Freiherr vom Stein immediately won him over for the establishment of an alliance against Napoleon. From the end of 1813 Gruner was a member of the Central Administrative Council for the occupied Rhine Confederation territories and on his behalf governor of the Berg Generalgouvernement , which comprised essential parts of the Grand Duchy of Berg formed by Napoleon in 1806 . In February 1814 he became governor of the Central Rhine Generalgouvernement as part of the Central Administrative Council . After the final collapse of Napoleonic rule after the battle of Waterloo in June 1815, Gruner became chief of the Allied police in France and police director of occupied Paris. In this function he was responsible for the repatriation of the art treasures stolen by Napoleon.

In 1815 Gruner was elevated to the nobility by the Prussian king for his services. Like other reformers in Prussia, Gruner was politically sidelined and isolated by reactionary forces at court after 1815. With the rank of Minister Plenipotentiary, Justus v. Green Prussian envoy to Switzerland . Gruner died on February 8, 1820 in Wiesbaden after being questioned by secret police during a stay at a health resort. He was buried there in the cemetery by the pagan wall .

In terms of his self-image, Gruner was a supporter of the Protestant , secular Prussian administrative state. This perspective also determines his youth work, the well-known (and controversial at the time) travel report “ My pilgrimage to rest and hope ” from 1802/1803, in which he took a blunt position against what he saw as a completely backward Catholic Westphalia at the time .

To have Gruner is according to current state of research suspected made this journey as a Prussian spy and written his book to the Prussian annexation of the then sovereign state Bishopric Munster prepare, which then successfully the following year in 1803 by the second West German division by the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss done . In 1812 Gruner headed the Russian secret service in Prague, Austria.

family

He was married several times. In 1803 he married Jeanne Francoise Melanie Guilbert in Paris, but they divorced that same year. The following year he married in Ansbach on August 6, 1804 Caroline von Poellnitz (born October 26, 1784; † February 17, 1867), a daughter of the Ansbach court hunter Wilhelm Ludwig von Poellnitz (1732-1816). This marriage was divorced on January 9, 1811. The couple had four sons, three of whom died young. The fourth was:

He then married Emilie Krause (1793–1812) in 1811, who died the following year, presumably during the birth of their daughter. On May 14, 1814, he married Anastasia Robin (born July 21, 1797; May 6, 1826) in Koblenz , a daughter of the inspecteur des transports in Koblenz. The couple had three sons who died young and two daughters. The daughter Bertha Anastasia (* July 31, 1817; † May 12, 1896) married the later Prussian general of the infantry Adolf von Rosenberg-Gruszczynski (1808-1884). The daughter Anna Maria Wilhelmine (* March 31, 1815 - † September 11, 1853) married the real secret Legation Councilor Ernst von Bülow († February 27, 1885) in 1834.

Works

  • Attempt on the legal and most appropriate establishment of public security institutions, their current deficiencies and improvements: in addition to e. Representation of the prisoners, breeding u. Reform houses in Westphalia. Eßlinger, Frankfurt am Main 1802 ( digitized edition of the University and State Library Düsseldorf ).
  • War articles for the under-officers and common soldiers of the Bergisches Troop Corps . Stahl, Düsseldorf 1813 ( digitized version ).
  • My pilgrimage to rest and hope or a description of the moral and civil status of Westphalia at the end of the eighteenth century. In: Gisela Weiß (Ed.): The shackles of the Schlendrians are broken. Westphalia's departure into the modern age. Verlag Bönen, 2002, pp. 49-109.
  • On a critical pilgrimage between the Rhine and Weser rivers. Justus Gruner's writings in the years of upheaval 1801 to 1803. Edited by Gerd Dethlefs and Jürgen Kloosterhuis. Verlag Böhlau, Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 2009, ISBN 978-3-412-20354-2 .

literature

  • Genealogical manual of the nobility . Nobility Lexicon. Volume IV, Volume 67 of the complete series, CA Starke Verlag, Limburg (Lahn) 1978, ISSN  0435-2408 .
  • A. Fournier: Stein and Gruner in Austria. In: Deutsche Rundschau. 53, 1887.
  • J. v. Gruner .:  Gruner, Justus von . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 10, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1879, pp. 42-48.
  • H. Jäger : The secret office. Historical novel. Berlin 1990.
  • EE Kisch : Conspiratorial activity of the Prussian police chief Gruner. In: Prague Pitaval - Late Reports. Collected Works in Individual Editions, Volume II / 2. Berlin / Weimar 1969, pp. 229-234.
  • H. Kriegl: Justus Karl Gruner and the revolutionization of Germany 1810–1813 . Dissertation. Erlangen-Nuremberg 1983.
  • W. Real: Justus Gruner. In: Westphalian pictures of life. 5, 1937, pp. 259-276.
  • H. Redecker: Ernst Moritz Arndt and Karl Justus von Gruner. In: Ernst Moritz Arndt. Festschr. for the 200th birthday. Edited by Ernst Moritz Arndt-Univ. Greifswald 1969.
  • W. Reininghaus, G. Weiß: A journey into the modern age. In: G. Weiß (Ed.): The shackles of the stray man are broken. Westphalia's departure into the modern age. Verlag Bönen, 2002, pp. 44-48.
  • Stephan Skalweit :  Gruner, Justus von. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 7, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1966, ISBN 3-428-00188-5 , p. 229 ( digitized version ).
  • U. Veit: Karl Justus von Gruner, the creator of the Berlin Police Headquarters and the Prussian Secret State Police . Dissertation. Rostock 1937.
  • Kurt Wernicke: Berlin's first police chief. In: Berlin monthly journal. Issue 11, November 1995, Edition Luisenstadt, Berlin 1995, pp. 3–10.
  • K. Zeisler: Justus von Gruner. A biographical sketch. In: Berlin in the past and present. 1994, pp. 81-105.
  • Handbook of the Prussian Nobility , Volume 1, 1892, 177 f.
  • Heinz Monz (Ed.): Gruner, Justus v, Politiker , In: "Trier Biographical Lexicon" , WVT Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier 2000, ISBN 3-88476-400-4 , p. 146.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ His family relationships were undoubtedly complicated. The data in the NDB and in the manual of the Prussian nobility do not coincide in every detail with regard to the number of women and children.
personal data
SURNAME Gruner, Justus von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gruner, Jupiter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Prussian Privy Council of State and high-ranking statesman
DATE OF BIRTH February 28, 1777
PLACE OF BIRTH Osnabrück
DATE OF DEATH February 8, 1820
Place of death Wiesbaden