Canton of Mainz

The canton of Mainz ( French Canton de Mayence ) was one of ten administrative units into which the arrondissement Mainz in the Département du Mont-Tonnerre was divided. The Canton was in the years 1798 to 1814 of the French Republic (1798-1804) and the Napoleonic Empire (1804-1814).

location

The canton includes the main town of Mainz with the communities of Kastel and Kostheim on the right bank of the Rhine. The eastern border was the Main and the Landgraviate of Hessen-Darmstadt , the northern and northwestern border was the Duchy of Nassau . The western border was formed by the canton of Oberingelheim and the southern border by the canton of Nieder-Olm .

Before the occupation of the left bank of the Rhine in the First Coalition War , the area of ​​the Canton of Mainz belonged predominantly to Kurmainz .

After the siege of Mainz (1814) , the Donnersberg département and thus also the canton of Mainz were temporarily placed under the administration of the Generalgouvernement Mittelrhein . Article 47 of the Vienna Congress Act on the division of territory gave the canton to the Grand Duchy of Hesse and was incorporated into the province of Rheinhessen , of which Mainz was the provincial capital.

Administrative division

Coat of arms of the Mairie of the city of Mayence

The canton of Mainz is divided into three communities .

to Schaab:

• the historical core of the city of Mainz
• the historical bridgehead Kastel
• Kostheim with the Maaraue island belonging to Kostheim
  • from 1805 the Zahlbach incorporated into Mainz

The first elected Maire (mayor) in Mayence was Franz Konrad Macké .

Agricultural land

In the historical-statistical yearbook of the Donnersberg department for the years 9 and 10 of the Franconian Republic, the agricultural area, which is naturally very small for a city canton, is described as follows:

• Terres laborables: 173.76 hectares
• Prés (grassland): 50.88 hectares
• Vignes (vineyards): 21.12 hectares
• Forêts (forests): none

Infrastructure

From Mainz the direct trunk road connection ( Pariser- or Kaiserstraße ) via the Palatinate and Saarbrücken to Paris began, which at the time the Prefect Jeanbon St. André had built by his “Ingénieur en chef” Eustache de Saint-Far at the instigation of the Emperor. After the Martinsburg was demolished, a ship wintering facility was built directly at the customs office at the former electoral palace using its stones. In Mainz, grand boulevards like the Grand Rue Napoléon and the Große Bleiche have just been laid out.

In 1803, the main cemetery in Mainz was built in order to no longer organize funerals exclusively from an ecclesiastical point of view, but to place them under the primacy of the political or civil community. In his position he worked closely with Jeanbon St. André and Franz Konrad Macké , the Maire of Mayence.

In 1806 construction began on the Hospice Josephine , named after Joséphine de Beauharnais , Napoleon's wife, but it was never completed. It was supposed to represent one of the few examples of revolutionary architecture in the area of ​​what would later become Germany. The university's medical faculty was to be transformed into an École spéciale de médicine , for which a new building was planned to replace the Welschnonnen Church .

Military buildings

The Fort Montebello , at the time of the German Confederation , was renamed Fort Grand Duke of Hesse, a fortification in Mainz-Kastel . It was part of the outer belt around the Mainz fortress . The fort, located on the right bank of the Rhine, had the task of contributing to the covering of the ship bridge as an external work in conjunction with the forts Kastel, Mars and Petersaue . Construction of the fort began in 1805, eight years after the annexation of Mainz - the year after Napoleon I was coronated as emperor , and ended in 1813.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Elmar Rettinger: The Mainz-Bingen district in history
2. ^ Wilhelm Hesse: Rheinhessen in its development from 1798 to the end of 1834 | a statistical and economic trial , Mainz, Verlag Kupferberg, 1835, p. 13 ( Google Books )
3. ^ Karl Anton Schaab : History of the City of Mainz. four volumes, Mainz 1841–1851, Volume 3: (1847) History of the Grand Ducal Hessian Rhine Province
4. ^ Friedrich Lehne : Historical-statistical yearbook of the Department of Donnersberge for the years 9 and 10 of the Franconian Republic , Mainz, Pfeiffer and Craß, 1801 and 1802
5. ↑ ( Page no longer available , search in web archives: From the Mainz history calendar by Hans Baumann )
6. ↑ Pierer's Universal Lexikon , Volume 10. Altenburg 1860, pp. 746-748.
7. ^ Dictionnaire de la conversation et de la lecture , Volume 37, Verlag Belin-Mandar, Paris, 1837, p. 359