Karl Edmund Joseph Oppenhoff

Karl Edmund Joseph Oppenhoff (born September 26, 1807 in Bonn ; † October 4, 1854 in Trier ) was the first full-time Lord Mayor of the city of Bonn from 1840 to 1850.

Life

Karl Edmund Joseph Oppenhoff was the son of the Bonn university secretary and councilor Caspar Antoine Oppenhoff (* 1771), whose efforts Bonn owes the preservation of the Kreuzbergkirche and who was elected mayor in 1817 but was overlooked by the Prussian government. The brothers Friedrich Oppenhoff and Theodor Oppenhoff , sons of his uncle Karl Joseph Oppenhoff (1779–1843) were his immediate cousins.

Karl Edmund had also embarked on an administrative career and was active as a councilor in Trier when a cabinet order made him mayor of Bonn in 1840. Edmund Oppenhoff, who was given leave of absence from the civil service for his new job, was the first full-time mayor of Bonn, ie he did not receive any allowance, but a salary.

The development of the city of Bonn into an independent city began under Oppenhoff, who appeared more vigorously against the district administrator . During his term of office, the opening of the Bonn-Cölner Railway (1844), the first Beethoven Festival (1845), the founding of the Agricultural College for Rhenish Prussia (1846) and finally the revolutionary years 1848/49 fall . He himself was considered a moderate democrat.

According to the new municipal code introduced in 1850, the city council was allowed to freely elect the mayor for the first time and unanimously elected Oppenhoff. At the same time, however, the city councils decided against the previous mayor's constitution, in which the mayor combined all competencies in his office, and in favor of the introduction of the magistrate constitution , according to which he had to coordinate with the councilors in the council of the magistrate. Because of this power cut, Oppenhoff rejected the election and went back to Trier as a councilor. He died there a few years later.

Since 1896, a street between Heerstrasse and Adolfstrasse in Bonn's northern part has been named "Oppenhoffstrasse" in his honor .

literature

• The former Lord Mayors of Bonn, in: Deutsche Reichszeitung (Bonn) of October 20, 1931
• The History of the City of Bonn, Volume 4
• Chronicle of the City of Bonn, Bonn 1988
• Josef Niesen : Bonn Personal Lexicon. Bouvier, Bonn 2007, ISBN 978-3-416-03159-2 .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Oppenhoffstrasse in the Bonn street cadastre