Justus von Gruner (politician)

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Justus Karl Alexander Friedrich Elliot Wilhelm Ferdinand von Gruner (born April 2, 1807 in Berlin , † October 2, 1885 in Berlin) was a Prussian diplomat and politician.

Youth and education

His father was Justus von Gruner , a Prussian statesman, his mother a born Freiin von Pöllnitz. In 1810 Gruner's mother moved with her two sons to her brother, who lived in Franconia, and was divorced from her husband in 1811. Justus von Gruner grew up in Leutershausen in the family of his uncle, a district judge.

He attended grammar school in Ansbach until 1827, did his military service with the Guards Rifle Battalion in Berlin the following year and then studied law at the universities of Göttingen , Heidelberg and Berlin , where he passed the first legal exam in 1830. He worked at the City Court in Berlin and at the Higher Regional Court in Münster . In 1832 he passed the 2nd legal exam. However, since he did not want to work in the legal service, but in the administrative area, he had to spend two years at the provincial administration in Wroclaw to prepare for the great "government examination" that he passed in 1835. In the following years he worked as an administrative clerk in the district government of Frankfurt an der Oder , at the main tax office in Cologne and the main tax office in Berlin. At his request, he was transferred to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and passed his exam to become a Legation Councilor in 1844 , which was a prerequisite for an activity in the Foreign Service .

Profession and Politics

From the beginning of 1845 to 1847 he was a member of the Prussian Bundestag legation, but in the summer of 1846 he took a six-month vacation to improve his French in Geneva and Paris. The Prussian ambassador in Paris asked von Gruner to write a brochure on the Schleswig-Holstein question in order to present Prussia's position to the French public. The brochure was published anonymously in Paris in 1846 under the title De la succession dans la monarchie danoise considerée principalement sous le point de vue du droit public . At the beginning of 1847 von Gruner resumed his service and in the same year was transferred to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where he was active as a "lecturing council". In the summer of 1851 von Gruner, together with General von Rochow and Otto von Bismarck, became a member of the Prussian legation at the now restored Bundestag . Only three months later, on November 1, 1851, von Gruner resigned from the Prussian civil service at his own request - probably out of disappointment that the eight years younger von Bismarck had been appointed Bundestag envoy, but not von Gruner.

On November 26, 1851, von Gruner was elected to the city ​​council of Berlin , but left at the end of 1852.

After von Gruner was a member of the Second Chamber of the Prussian Landtag from 1849 to 1850 , he was re-elected to the Prussian Landtag in 1852 after his resignation from civil service and represented the constituencies of Paderborn , Duisburg and Magdeburg one after the other . He joined the state parliament of the liberal-conservative weekly newspaper party around Moritz August von Bethmann-Hollweg , of which he was a member until he left the state parliament in 1861. During that time he also worked very intensively on the parliamentary group's journalistic organ, the “Preussischer Wochenblatt”, whose editor-in-chief he later took over. Through his relationships with Bethmann-Hollweg he got to know Crown Prince Wilhelm and his wife Augusta better.

After Crown Prince Wilhelm took over the reign, von Gruner returned to the civil service at the beginning of the New Era , was promoted to the “Real Secret Legation Council” and became Undersecretary of State in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Shortly after the liberal ministers left the government, von Gruner was “put on hold” at his request and, from July 1862, suspended his civil service status. Wilhelm, King of Prussia since 1859, appointed von Gruner as a member of the Prussian mansion in September 1862, against the will of Interior Minister Eulenburg , who particularly opposed the appointment. Von Gruner was one of the seven members who were appointed to the manor house at Wilhelm's personal request during his reign.

Von Gruner was friends with the brothers August and Peter Reichensperger , Ludwig Windthorst and other politicians belonging to the Catholic parliamentary group and, as a member of the manor house, he fought against the culture war policy pursued by Bismarck against the Catholic Church, which earned him the hatred of Bismarck, especially since he was from 1861 to at his death in 1885 belonged to the circle of those from whom the Queen or later Empress Augusta received regular reports on current political developments.

In February 1867 von Gruner was elected from the constituency of Duisburg (Düsseldorf 6) as a member of the constituent Reichstag of the North German Confederation and was able to prevail in the runoff election against the then Duisburg mayor Otto Keller . Von Gruner did not join any parliamentary group and remained an independent liberal and mostly voted against the government, which led to a campaign by the "Rhein-Ruhr Zeitung" against von Gruner, so that he was not put up as a candidate again.

Old St. Matthew Cemetery Berlin , Justus von Gruner's family grave

After von Gruner finally resigned from the civil service at his own request in April 1867 and was not nominated again for the Reichstag, von Gruner withdrew from the public. In 1877 there was a much-discussed scandal in the press when Kaiser Wilhelm I von Gruner wanted to appoint the “Real Privy Councilor” and give him the title of “Excellency”, but the State Ministry - evidently on Bismarck's instructions - refused to grant it Issue and countersign the certificate. Kaiser Wilhelm I thereupon instructed the Minister of the Royal House, Alexander von Schleinitz , to draw up and countersign the certificate of appointment.

Since the beginning of the 1880s von Gruner suffered several strokes and died on October 2, 1885 in Berlin.

family

On April 30, 1839, he married his cousin Clara von Halle (* December 8, 1819 - November 18, 1878), the daughter of the Berlin banker Gottlieb von Halle and Johanna von Gruner. The couple had several children:

  • Johanna Karolina Klara (born August 19, 1848 - January 21, 1924) ⚭ 1871 Wilhelm von Düring , District Administrator of the Münden District
  • Karl Fridrich Gottlieb Justus (born June 29, 1857), private animal ⚭ 1883 Bertha Amalie Marie Stüve (born June 29, 1863)
  • Son (1859-1859)
  • Karl Johanne Richard (born June 3, 1861 - † April 28, 1865)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See the biography of Justus von Gruner . In: Heinrich Best : Database of the members of the Reichstag des Kaiserreich 1867/71 to 1918 (Biorab - Kaiserreich) (the exact dataset must be determined with the search function)
  2. ↑ General German biography. Volume 49, p. 600; New German biography. Volume 7, p. 229
  3. ↑ The booklet was published in English translation under the title On The Succession In The Danish Monarchy , printed in: Otto von Wenckstein: Memoir On The Constitutional Rights Of The Duchies Of Schleswig And Holstein . Longman, Brown, Green & Longman, London 1848, pp. 79-118
  4. ↑ Otto von Bismarck: Thoughts and Memories . Popular edition. Volume 1. Cotta, Stuttgart and Berlin 1909, p. 97.
  5. ^ New German biography. Volume 7, p. 229; General German biography. Volume 49, p. 600.
  6. ↑ On November 22, 1853, von Gruner moved up to the Prussian House of Representatives in a replacement election for the resigned MP Oechelhäuser. Cf. Otto Röttges: The political elections in the districts on the left bank of the Rhine in the Düsseldorf government district 1848-1867 . Kempen / Niederrhein 1964 (series of publications by the district of Kempen-Krefeld, vol. 15), p. 175
  7. ↑ General German biography . Volume 49, p. 600.
  8. ^ In total, Wilhelm I. appointed 107 people to the manor house during his term of office; see. Hartwin Spenkuch: The Prussian mansion. Nobility and bourgeoisie in the First Chamber of the Landtag 1854–1918 . Droste, Düsseldorf 1998 (Articles on the History of Parliamentarism and Political Parties, Volume 110), p. 418
  9. ↑ General German biography . Volume 49, p. 601.
  10. ^ Election result see: A. Phillips: The Reichstag elections from 1867 to 1883 . Verlag Louis Gerschel, Berlin, p. 104.See also: Fritz Specht and Paul Schwabe: The Reichstag elections from 1867 to 1903 . 2nd edition, Verlag Carl Heymann, Berlin 1904, p. 167.
  11. ↑ Ludger Heid: From the guild to the workers' party. The social democracy in Duisburg 1848–1878 . Walter Braun Verlag, Duisburg 1983 (Duisburger Forschungen, Volume 32), pp. 164-172.
  12. ↑ Georg Hirth: Parliament Almanac . Volume 4. Verlag Franz Duncker, Berlin 1867, p. 59, there also a short biography.
  13. ↑ Rhein-Ruhr Zeitung No. 92/1867 of April 14, 1867 and more often.
  14. ↑ Bismarck presents the processes in detail in his memoirs. Otto von Bismarck: Thoughts and memories. Popular edition . Volume 2. Cotta, Stuttgart and Berlin 1909, pp. 226-233.
  15. ↑ General German biography . Volume 49, p. 602.

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Gruner, Justus von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gruner, Justus Karl Alexander Friedrich Elliot Wilhelm Ferdinand von (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Prussian civil servant and liberal politician
DATE OF BIRTH April 2, 1807
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH October 2, 1885
Place of death Berlin