Canton of Lechenich

The canton of Lechenich was one of the ten cantons in the Arrondissement de Cologne in the Département de la Roer (Rurdepartement). The cantons of Cologne , Bergheim , Brühl , Dormagen , Elsen , Jülich , Kerpen , Lechenich , Weiden and Zülpich , which existed from 1798 to 1814, were in the annexed territories due to the administrative reform carried out by Commissioner François Joseph Rudler after the Peace of Campo Formio in 1797 emerged, which divided the area on the left bank of the Rhine into departments and cantons based on the French model .

Lechenich 1809, title page of the description of the canton

history

When the French army took possession of it in the autumn of 1794, profound changes began for the town and office of Lechenich, which continued in the following years. The centuries-long electoral rule that had shaped life until then no longer existed. The majority of the population had not yet noticed the beginning of a new era. She lived as it was customary for centuries. The administration also insisted on traditional rights and customs. Now we had to make up a gap of 150 years.

The administrative structure

Administrations in the period of occupation

In November 1794, a central administration based in Aachen was set up for the occupied areas on the left bank of the Rhine . The area was initially divided into seven arrondissements, which in December were divided into cantons and the cantons in turn into municipalities . In the following years changes were made to the administration and the division of the administrative districts, in 1796 the division into six arrondissements, in 1797 the division of the arrondissements into large offices (Baillages). The largest part of the former Electoral Cologne Office Lechenich belonged as a municipality to the canton until 1797, until the Rudler reform to the Baillage Rheinbach in the arrondissement of Cologne with its administrative seat in Bonn .

In parallel with this administrative reform, a first judicial reform was carried out, in which the large number of courts that had existed until the French army marched in was repealed. After the reform, which came into force in June 1795, Lechenich, as the main town of the municipality , was given a peace tribunal for small legal cases alongside Rheinbach .

The assignats , paper money, were introduced as a means of payment, which , when printed in excess without corresponding countervalues, had lost considerable value. The money was withdrawn from circulation in 1797 and replaced by francs and centimes.

As in other deployment areas of the French troops, a hospital was set up in the municipality of Lechenich on the orders of War Commissioner Pigeon from February to October 1795 at Schloss Gracht . In the years 1794 to 1797, the population of the occupied territories was not only heavily burdened by billeting , but the French government also demanded contributions , manual and clamping services and forage deliveries from the inhabitants of the occupied territories to supply their army . These could often not be raised by the residents of the municipality of Lechenich due to flood damage or poor harvests .

The presidential administration

During the administrative reform carried out by the French government by Commissioner François Joseph Rudler in 1798, the large number of old territories and dominions was eliminated. The area on the left bank of the Rhine became a territorial unit, consisting of four departments, with a single administration made up of a five-person directorate headed by a president. The lower administrative level was made up of the cantons with their municipalities, which consisted of the municipal administration or the municipal agents of the associated municipalities. Each municipality received a municipal agent and an adjoint representative. All agents in a canton formed the cantonal community, which elected a president from among its members. Lechenich was the main town in the canton of the same name, to which over 40 towns and farms belonged. As the main town, Lechenich remained the seat of a peace court.

After all feudal rights were abolished in 1798, the old class structure no longer existed. For all citizens ( citizen ) were the same laws . The freedom of trade introduced in 1798 enabled the canton's traders to practice their profession without restrictions after obtaining a trade license, which was subject to a fee .

The French government was determined to incorporate the areas on the left bank of the Rhine into French territory. At the instigation of the authorities, reunion circles were formed in 1798 with the aim of officially joining France as soon as possible. In Lechenich, based on the Cologne model, a Réunionsgesellschaft was founded, which went public on April 10th. On that day a freedom tree was planted in Lechenich . The Reunion addresses, 38 signatures, were sent to Commissioner Rudler at the instigation of the Brühl commissioner Franz Biergans together with the Brühl addresses.

The population of the departments should also be integrated into the French state through the language. To this end, Rudler issued an ordinance in 1798 that made French the sole official language . However, French was limited to the official documents, since in the towns of the cantons it was not possible to teach French without compulsory schooling and without qualified teachers.

Another innovation introduced by Rudler in 1798 was the French revolution calendar with a new calendar. It was an expression of the departure from the old religious order that had previously determined people's lives. The new calendar, which began on September 22, 1792, met with little response from the population. At the beginning of 1806 it was abolished and the Christian calendar reintroduced.

The prefecture

Seal stamp of the "Mairie de Lommersum"

With the prefectural constitution introduced by the consular government under Napoleon Bonaparte on February 17, 1800 with a three-tier structure of administration, which was also introduced in the areas on the left bank of the Rhine on May 26, 1800, the canton of Lechenich, like all cantons, lost its function as the administrative office of the in it lying municipalities.

The four departments remained, but were divided into arrondissements. At the head of a department there was a prefect, the arrondissement was headed by a sub-prefect as the middle instance, and at the lower administrative level, Mairien ( German mayor's offices ), in which several small communities were combined, took on administrative tasks. Cologne became the administrative seat of the Cologne arrondissement .

The Mairien received a Maire subordinate to the sub-prefect ( German mayor ). The mayor, the one adjoint ( dt. Councilor ) stood to the side, the Mairie managed by the other members of his sub-prefects and prefects instructions. A Conseil municipal (municipal council), which met once a year, was assigned to him to prepare the budget and audit the accounts. The budgets had to be presented to the sub-prefect and approved. The management of the civil status registers introduced in 1798 was part of the Maires' other official activities .

Seven Mairien belonged to the canton of Lechenich, each composed of several municipalities. It was the Mairien: Erp , Friesheim , Gymnich , Lechenich, Liblar , Lommersum and Weilerswist . Lechenich, which lost its town charter, formed a Mairie together with the towns of Ahrem , Blessem , Konradsheim , Herrig and Meller .

Taxes were collected according to the French tax system . Five tax collectors were active in the canton of Lechenich. The money flowed into the cash register of the district collector of the Arrondissement of Cologne. This is also where the indirect taxes collected by the domain administration in Brühl went .

Incorporation into the French state

The affiliation of the areas on the left bank of the Rhine to the French state became legally binding with the Treaty of Lunéville on March 9, 1801. The Rhenish departments were put on a par with the old French departments on September 23, 1802.

Mairie	Population from 1801
	Places, hamlets and homesteads	Houses	Inhabitants 1801	Inhabitants 1809
Erp	Erp (768), Pingsheim (320) and Dorweiler (132)	340	1220	1319
Friesheim	Friesheim (919), Hover Hof (6), Borr (223), Scheuren (34), Niederberg (196)	?	1278	1346
Gymnich	Gymnich (1181), Burg (12), Hof Ving (11), Dirmerzheim (518)	370	1722	1873
Lechenich	Lechenich (1091), Hof Frauenthal (11), Ahrem (324), Blessem (188), Konradsheim (84), Herrig (108), Meller (22)	370	1828	2057
Liblar	Liblar (543), Gracht (20), Köttingen (119), Bliesheim (604) Buschfeld (32), Kierdorf (131) Roggendorf (145), Höfgen (10), Zieselsmaar (13), Schildgen (6)	290	1623	1552
Lommersum	Lommersum (705), Bodenheim (80), Derkum (96), Hausweiler (136), Ottenheim (23), Schneppenheim (35)	?	1075	1064
Weilerswist	Weilerswist (469), Kühlseggen (14), Swisterhof (8), Großvernich (339), Kleinvernich (223), Horchheim (12), Metternich (355)	?	1400	1588
Total	French statistics 1801		10146	10799

Tranchot map section of the canton of Lechenich

In the topographical office set up in Aachen in 1801, the head of the office, geodetician Jean Joseph Tranchot , began the geographic survey of the country with statistics of the cantons recorded, which were recorded in statistical notebooks. In 1807 the editing of the statistical notebooks passed to the squadron chief of the engineer-geographer Etienne Nicolas Rousseau, who compiled, edited and signed the details of the engineer-geographers responsible for the canton of Lechenich.

Structural measures and plans of the administration

Road construction

As an urgent task, the canton administration carried out the repair of the inner-city unpaved roads and the country roads. The first repairs on the 3rd class road leading from Aachen to Bonn were carried out as early as 1799 on the section between Liblar and Lechenich on the Erftbrücke. Further improvements through repairs followed in 1807 and 1809–1813, with the labor force being provided by the municipalities of Liblar, Lechenich and Erp.

Cartography of the area

Another positive measure was the measurement of the new departments according to the metric system . The cartographic recordings of the areas, the topographical description of which served military purposes, also provided a well-founded record of the area that could be used to better understand the economic opportunities in the cantons.

agricultural economics

The canton of Lechenich reached a length of 18 kilometers in its north-south extension and a width of 14 kilometers from east to west. It was predominantly agricultural, but the type of cultivation with the still operated three-field economy was ineffective and the only innovation was potato cultivation . Plans to improve the yields in agriculture through increased fertilization with manure and in cattle breeding, in particular horse breeding , cattle breeding and sheep breeding through crossbreeding with other breeds, as well as the breeding of merino sheep , did not succeed in the short period of time up to 1814.

Small industry

Except for a small mining of brown coal in Liblar, which was owned by the domain administration or privately owned, the canton of Lechenich had no industrial facilities. Also in the cadastre created in 1810 for the canton of Lechenich , in which for the first time all properties were recorded and described with details of the owners, no other industrial plants were listed.

Water management

The most common diseases were marsh fever and chills, caused by the swamps on the Erft . A planned drainage of the swamps to remove the breeding grounds of the Anopheles mosquito was postponed due to the size of the area, only the swampy areas on the strongly meandering Bleibach (now called Rotbach) could be removed by the stream regulation between Niederberg and the confluence with the Erft between Dirmerzheim and Gymnich become. Although the danger of the leaded water of the Rotbach , from which many wells in the villages were fed, was known, only one cleaning of the Rotbach was carried out, which could not improve the water quality .

Health care

Two doctors living in Lechenich (a doctor and a surgeon ), a pharmacist also living in Lechenich and two midwives in Lechenich and Friesheim were responsible for the medical care of the canton . The smallpox vaccination introduced in 1804 was already showing success in the health sector . Instead of the church's previous poor relief, the central charity office set up in Lechenich for the canton in 1803, which was looked after by a doctor and respected citizens appointed by the mayor, took over this task.

Education

In the canton of Lechenich the school conditions changed only slightly. According to the School Act of 1802, the maintenance of the primary schools was transferred to the municipalities, which could not set them up because of their large debts. Since the government did not vigorously pursue the reform, the angle schools continued to exist.

A survey on the school situation carried out by Governor Sack, head of the Lower and Middle Rhine Governorate in August 1814, showed that there were no trained teachers employed in almost all places in the canton, although teachers had been trained at the Academy in Liège established for the Roerdepartement since 1808 . Instead, the old sexton teachers from the electoral era taught, or they were replaced by sextons who moved up in this function due to age. Lessons were mostly held in small school buildings, in the sexton teacher's apartment or in other private homes. Due to the lack of compulsory schooling , around a third of around 100 school-age children in the canton's villages attended school classes held in the winter months.

In contrast to the smaller towns in the canton, there was a primary school in the main town of Lechenich, at which a teacher trained in Liège , who had been checked and appointed by an inspector of the Roerdepartement, taught since 1812 . Classes took place in the school building on Kirchplatz, which was built in 1738, after the rented rooms in the Franciscan monastery were no longer available since 1802. The lessons were given all year round. Of the 393 school-age children of Mairie Lechenich, around 10% attended classes in the summer months, and significantly more in winter. The teacher taught the boys in the mornings and early afternoons and the girls in the late afternoons in the subjects religion, German, French, arithmetic and church singing. The teacher's annual income consisted of school fees of around 350 francs, plus he received six Malter rye and four Malter wheat as deputation wages .

In addition to the public school, there was a private school facility that the Offermann maintained in his apartment provided by the community. The number of students was similar to that of the public school, but the tuition fees were lower and the tuition was not at the level of the public school.

The Latin school in the monastery, which has been run by the Franciscan Fathers since 1783 , was discontinued after the convent was abolished. The concerns expressed by Maires Kiel about the financial situation of the community prevented Lechenich from taking over the monastery building as a public school (primary school). After the property was sold, there was no further possibility of acquiring the building for school purposes at a later date.

The reorganization of the judiciary

In parallel with the reorganization of the administration, the court constitution was organized in 1798. The canton of Lechenich had a peace court with seat in Lechenich for small civil and criminal cases, which were heard before a justice of the peace with two assessors and a clerk. A court messenger brought summons or decisions to the places belonging to the canton of Lechenich. According to the constitution introduced by Napoléon in 1800, the judicial districts of the lowest instance corresponded to the borders of the cantons. As the main town, Lechenich remained the seat of a peace court. The judge was subordinate to the Tribunal of First Instance established in Cologne, which was responsible for major disputes and criminal matters as well as for appeals.

By 1798 newly created Public Notary public were in Lechenich notaries working for the certification of legal transactions. In 1798 Joseph Lievenbruck was appointed, in 1807 Johann Wilhelm Bendermacher, appointed by Napoleon, followed as the second notary in Lechenich.

The new legal system was completed in the French Empire with the introduction of the "Cinq codes" between 1804 and 1811, of which the Code civil or Code Napoléon (civil law) became the best known. In the Rhineland, this right was still valid after the withdrawal of the French as "Rhenish law" until the introduction of the civil code on January 1, 1900. and the "Rhenish Notariat" still applies today.

The Jews living in the canton were put on an equal footing with other citizens by French law. However, since 1808, after a decree by Napoléon, they had to adopt fixed first names and surnames in order to be able to be named in the notarization of births, marriages and deaths.

As citizens of the French state, young men from the canton served in Napoleon's army. According to the French conscription system , the recruits who were recruited could free themselves from military service by providing a substitute, which was only possible for financially better off. Young men from the Lechenich canton also took part in Napoleon's campaign against Russia in 1812, many of whom lost their lives on the march back.

The gendarmerie

The military subordinate gendarmerie was used to maintain public peace, order and security . In the Arrondissement of Cologne, the gendarmerie units were distributed to locations where suitable buildings were available as barracks . In Lechenich there was such a building in the former hussar quarters . A gendarmerie brigard (a train) was stationed there, which was subordinate to the lieutenant's office in Cologne and the Rur company.

Pompiers ( fire brigade ) were used in the municipalities to put out fires .

The reorganization of church conditions

Sale of the Franciscan monastery in 1805

After the 1801 Concordat between Napoléon Bonaparte and Pope Pius VII , which authorized the French government to reorganize the ecclesiastical situation in France as well as to abolish the religious institutions and nationalize their assets, the dioceses were reorganized at the end of November 1801 with the creation of the diocese of Aachen and a new division of the parishes in the Département de la Roer, which was completed in 1803. Since ecclesiastical and state administrative boundaries corresponded, each judicial district (canton) received a cantonal parish at the seat of the tribunal, the other parishes in the canton became auxiliary parishes. The patronage rights and tithe rights no longer apply. The pastors were paid by the state, the assistant pastors initially from the community, from 1807 also from the state. In the canton of Lechenich, St. Kilian was a cantonal parish and was headed by a senior pastor , the other parishes were occupied by auxiliary pastors . The first pastor Johann Kilian Kiel was a former canon of St. Aposteln in Cologne.

In 1798, the ecclesiastical property confiscated in 1796, the income of which went to the domain treasury, was declared national property. On 9 July 1802, was then by the Säkularisationsgesetz secularization in the left-bank departments performed. Except for the established dioceses and parishes, nursing orders and school orders were also excluded . In the canton of Lechenich, around 2000 hectares of land and 40 monasteries and monasteries were expropriated. Unless they remained state property, the confiscated goods were auctioned off to the highest bidder in Aachen to improve the finances of the French state . In Lechenich in 1805 both the castle with all its accessories and other electoral properties, including the Turffgruben in Liblar and the building and the church of the Franciscan monastery that had been repealed, were auctioned off, and the church and some of the buildings were then demolished.

From the canton of Lechenich to the city of Erftstadt

After Napoléon's failed campaign against Russia in 1812 and his defeat in the Battle of Leipzig in 1813, the rest of the French army withdrew to the left bank of the Rhine. On January 14, 1814, before the advancing allies, the military left the canton of Lechenich, which was occupied by Cossacks the day after next .

The conquered area was initially formed by the allied powers as a central administrative department under the direction of Baron von Stein , which was divided into the Generalgouvernement, Generalgouvernement Mittelrhein and Generalgouvernement Niederrhein. Johann August Sack was appointed head of the Lower Rhine General Government , to which the Roerdepartement belonged . On June 15, 1814, he took over the management of the Lower and Middle Rhine General Government, which was newly created after the Peace of Paris and was subordinate to the Prussian administration. After the Rhineland Prussia was awarded at the Congress of Vienna in 1815 , a new division followed in 1816 with the formation of the Jülich-Kleve-Berg Province , the later (1822) Rhine Province . The Prussian district of Lechenich in the administrative district of Cologne was formed from the former French cantons of Lechenich and Zülpich in 1816 and existed until 1827. After 1827, all of the former Mairien of the two cantons belonged to the newly created Euskirchen district as mayors .

During the local administrative reform in 1969, the former mayor's offices of Lommersum and Weilerswist became the community of Weilerswist and the five remaining to form the city of Erftstadt . During the administrative reform of 1975, Pingsheim and Dorweiler were assigned to the municipality of Nörvenich , and the city of Erftstadt became part of the newly created Erftkreis .

literature

• Wilhelm Janssen : Small Rhenish History. Düsseldorf 1997, ISBN 3-491-34232-5 .
• Etienne Nicolas Rousseau: Description of the canton Lechenich 1809. edited by Bernd Meyerhoff and Jörg Wiegleb in: Yearbook of the city of Erftstadt. 1991.
• Karl Stommel : The beginnings of the Euskirchen district. In: Local calendar of the Euskirchen district 1966.
• Fritz Wündisch : Mosaic stones on the history of an old city in Cologne. Cologne 1987, ISBN 3-7927-0893-0 .

Web links

Commons : Arrondissement Cologne  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ^ Fritz Wündisch: mosaic stones, pages 190–191
2. ↑ HSTAD inventory Maas and Rhein 161, published in: Stommel, Sources for the history of Erftstadt vol. V No. 3032
3. ↑ HSTAD inventory Maas und Rhein 391, published in: Stommel, Sources for the history of Erftstadt, Volume V No. 3004
4. ↑ HSTAD inventory Maas and Rhine in 1904 and 2482, published in: Stommel, sources on the history Erft City's Volume V No. 2991, No. 2292 and No. 2,996th..
5. ↑ HSTAD inventory of the Maas and Rhine, published in Stommel: Sources for the history of Erftstadt, vol. V No. 3001
6. ^ ^{A b c} Wilhelm Janssen: Small Rhenish History. Düsseldorf 1997. page 262
7. ^ Joseph Hansen (ed.): Sources on the history of the Rhineland in the age of the French Revolution 1780–1801. Volume IV No. 116-118
8. ↑ Hansen, Volume IV No. 90, 110/6, 117, 126, published in: Stommel, Sources for the History of Erftstadt Volume V No. 3047
9. ↑ Hansen, Volume IV No. 118 and No. 150
10. ↑ Max Bär: The administrative constitution of the Rhine Province since 1815. Bonn 1919. Page 42 ff
11. ^ Fritz Wündisch: Brühl mosaic stones on the history of an old city in Cologne. Cologne 1987.
12. ↑ B. Meyerhoff and J. Wigleb, description of the canton of Lechenich in Weilerswister Heimatblätter issue 8, page 45
13. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} Description of the Canton of Lechenich 1809, edited by Bernd Meyerhoff and Jörg Wiegleb in: Yearbook of the City of Erftstadt 1991. Page 47
14. ^ Karl Stommel: The French population lists from Erftstadt 1798–1801. Erftstadt 1989. Bernd Meyerhoff: The French population lists of the community of Weilerswist in: Weilerswister Heimatblätter No. 5 to No. 11
15. ↑ HSTAD Roerdepartement existing bridge and path construction 4107–4108 and 2018–2019 with plans for the descent on Brühler Berg
16. ↑ Property map in the cadastral office of the Erftkreis and the Euskirchen district, cadastral books of the municipalities in the HSTAD
17. ↑ HSTAD inventory Roerdepartement 4119 and card 384/385 Nouveaux travaux de Bleienbach
18. ↑ HSTAD inventory Roerdepartement 2568
19. ^ Stommel, population lists of Erftstadt 1798–1801. Yearbook of the city of Erftstadt 1991
20. ↑ HSTAD Roerdepartement Charity 2923
21. ↑ ^{a b} Max Braubach, from the Peace of Westphalia to the Congress of Vienna in: Rheinische History Volume 2. Dusseldorf 1976, p 336-337
22. ↑ HSTAD Generalgouvernement of the Lower and Middle Rhine District Cologne 1289 (school questions)
23. ^ Anton Richter: The school system in the Euskirchen district at the end of French rule in 1814 in: "Our home", supplement to the Euskirchener Volksblatt 1928 No. 1, 3, 4
24. ↑ HSTAD government Cologne 2837
25. ^ Wilhelm Janssen: Small Rhenish History. Düsseldorf 1997. page 262
26. ↑ HSTAD Kurköln XIII 152 and 172, published in K. and H. Stommel, Sources for the history of the city of Erftstadt 5th volume No. 3042
27. ^ Sabine Graumann: French administration on the Lower Rhine. The Roerdepartement 1798–1814. Essen 1990
28. ^ Fritz Wündisch: Brühl, mosaic stones, page 259
29. ↑ H. Stommel: Matthias Konstantin Bendermacher in: Yearbook of the City of Erftstadt 2003, pages 100-105
30. ^ Wilhelm Janssen: Small Rhenish History, pp. 263-264
31. ^ Fritz Wündisch: mosaic stones, pages 249-252
32. ↑ HSTAD Roerdepartement 2350 I – II, 2351 I – IV, 2325 (List of Conscripts in the Mairien of the Arrondissement of Cologne 1802, 1808, 1810)
33. ↑ HSTAD Roerdepartement Police 2790
34. ^ Eduard Hegel: History of the Archdiocese of Cologne. IV. Volume. Cologne 1979. Pages 493-521
35. ↑ Eduard Hegel: History of the Archdiocese of Cologne Volume IV Cologne 1979, pages 487-490
36. ↑ Wolfgang Schieder Ed. Secularization and Mediatization in the Four Rhenish Departments 1803–1813. Part V / 1 and V / 2 Roerdepartement. Boppard 1991
37. ^ Karl Stommel: The beginnings of the district of Euskirchen in: Home calendar of the district of Euskirchen 1966
38. ^ Fritz Wündisch: Mosaic stones, page 253
39. ^ Karl Stommel: The beginnings of the district of Euskirchen in: Home calendar of the district of Euskirchen 1966