Karl Emil Adelbert von Herder

Karl Emil Adelbert von Herder (born August 25, 1779 in Weimar , † July 8, 1857 in Regensburg ) was a German landowner and farmer in Bavaria.

Life

The fourth son Johann Gottfried Herders was born on his father's birthday (which was also the anniversary of his engagement to Caroline Flachsland ).

The boy was christened Karl Emil Adelbert . His godparents were Duke Karl-August , Countess Emilie von Bernstorff (wife of Johann Hartwig Ernst von Bernstorff ), the lady-in-waiting Fraulein Adelheid von Waldner, Prince August of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg , the Secret Councilor of Frankenberg from Gotha , the Canonicus Johann Wilhelm Ludwig Gleim in Halberstadt and the government secretary Christine Wilhelmine Flachsland in Darmstadt. Adelbert developed an interest in agriculture as a child. After graduating from high school, he first went to an apprenticeship as a farmer on an estate near Halberstadt, which he succeeded in recommending Gleim. The next stop was an estate near Dänischenhagen in the Eckernförde district . He learned agriculture in Hedersleben in 1794/95 and in Eckhof in 1796/97 and worked in Oberweimar from 1797–1799 , but in the end it was difficult to find an administrator position as a farmer from an acquaintance of Jean Paul in the Upper Palatinate. In 1799 he came to Bavaria, where at the beginning of 1800 he accepted the position of administrator of the landowner Freiherr von Voelderndorff (Völderndorff) in Colmberg . Adelbert gave up this position as early as 1801, however, as a result of which there was a dispute over the accounts, which then led to lengthy processes. In 1801 he also became a doctor of philosophy in Jena .

In the same year Adelbert had decided to buy his own estate. His choice fell on the Hofmark Stachesried in the county of Cham . According to Adelbert's ideas, this lonely but gracefully situated estate with its little castle from 1692 should later also serve as his father's retirement home. The purchase contract was signed on October 4th, 1801 to secure the upcoming harvest, but Adelbert and the Herder family never enjoyed this property. The 22-year-old soon had to take out three mortgages for 18,000 thalers, but ownership of the property was at first risk. For the first repayment, a loan taken out from the Herzogliche Altenburger Kammer-Leihbank through the mediation of the baron Heinrich Friedrich Karl vom Stein was used, for which the baron gave a guarantee in 1802. In Bavaria, every nobleman had the right to take it back from a bourgeois buyer who purchased an item at the cost price in the first year after the purchase. Baron von Voelderndorff, his former employer, threatened to take the estate back from Adelbert. In order to avert this danger, his father asked the Bavarian Elector Maximilian Joseph for the ennoblement, which took place on October 8, 1801. This enabled Adalbert to avail himself of the nobility.

Adelbert managed this estate with a lot of idealism, but little sense of the economic context. As early as 1809 the estate was so heavily indebted that it was taken into judicial administration, which his parents no longer experienced. Adelbert went to court for decades to get the property back. He became more and more dogged in this matter and increased himself into the feeling that he had been treated unfairly, so that he finally came under suspicion of insanity. The hopeless struggle for his possessions filled the rest of his life. He was supported by his siblings for the rest of his life, but from this income he spent a lot of money on other shady characters instead of looking after himself. He died in extreme poverty in Regensburg in 1857.

literature

• Gerhardt, Peter von and Schauer, Hans: Johann Gottfried Herder - his ancestors and his descendants. Leipzig 1930.
• Michael Zaremba , Johann Gottfried Herder - preacher of humanity. A biography (2002); ISBN 3-412-03402-9