Karl Fahrländer (politician)

Karl Fahrländer (* 1759 in Ettenheim ; † May 29, 1814 in Wissembourg ) was a Benedictine monk from Upper Austria , a Swiss politician of the Helvetic Republic and an Alsatian headmaster.

biography

Karl Fahrländer came from Ettenheim in the Ortenau , which at the time of his birth belonged to Strasbourg and was therefore subject to the Strasbourg prince-bishops , who in turn were vassals of the French crown and the empire. Karl Fahrländer initially chose the clergy and entered the Benedictine order in his hometown . During the years of the French Revolution he resigned from the order and teamed up with his brother Sebastian Fahrländer , who then rose to be governor of the short-lived Canton of Fricktal in 1799 with French help . In 1799, Karl Fahrländer wrote the essay as a political manifesto of the brothers: About the union of a part of Germany with Helvetia . Karl Fahrländer wanted Helvetia to be the heartland of a southern German state that reached as far as the Main and Bavaria. The Fahrländer brothers were overthrown in September 1802 by the opposition country party under the leadership of Johann Karl Fetzer from Rheinfelden and Johann Baptist Jehle from Olsberg .

With the support of remaining friends from the canton, Karl Fahrländer managed to take an active part in the Helvetian Consulta in Paris in January and February 1803 as a freely elected representative of the canton of Fricktal . After the Fricktal was annexed to the canton of Aargau, however, he left Switzerland and initially applied unsuccessfully as a teacher in Baden in January 1804. After studying camera science in Heidelberg , he managed to take up the position of headmaster of the secondary school in Wissembourg in Alsace until 1807. In 1808 he married Marie Louise Franck, who was 19 years his junior. The marriage of the former clergyman to a divorced woman as well as the "passions of extreme animosity" imputed to him led to permanent unpleasant discussions with the upper school authorities. However, Karl Fahrländer was able to hold office in Wissembourg until his death in 1814.

literature

• Erwin Dittler: Jacobins on the Upper Rhine. Self-published, Kehl 1986.
• Erwin Dittler: Karl and Dr. Sebastian Fahrländer von Ettenheim and the revolutionary movement on the Upper Rhine. In: Die Ortenau: Journal of the Historical Association for Middle Baden , 56th annual volume. 1976, pp. 213–276 Digitized by the Freiburg University Library
• Patrick Bircher: The revolutionary movement in southwest Germany and the activities of the Fahrländer brothers. In: Yearbook of the district of Waldshut. 1999, pp. 74-83.