Karl Friedrich von Savigny

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Carl Friedrich von Savigny. Photograph by L. Haase Comp. Berlin, around 1874.
Karl Friedrich von Savigny,
steel engraving by A. Weger after a photograph, Leipzig, around 1870

Karl Friedrich von Savigny (born September 19, 1814 in Berlin , † February 11, 1875 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a Prussian diplomat and Catholic politician . He was a close associate of Bismarck during the time when Germany was unified (1864–1871). He then contributed to the formation of the Catholic Center Party .

Life

Savigny was the son of the prominent Prussian legal scholar and statesman Friedrich Carl von Savigny and Kunigunde Brentano, a sister of Clemens Brentano and Elisabeth Brentano, who became known as a writer and who called herself Bettina von Arnim after their marriage .

After studying law in Munich and Berlin , Savigny entered the Prussian civil service and got to know Otto von Bismarck better while working in the Aachen regional council. In 1840 he joined the Diplomatic Corps of Prussia and worked in the embassies in Dresden (1840), Lisbon (1842), Kassel (1844) and The Hague (1845). In the revolutionary year of 1848 Savigny was active in diplomatic missions in London, Paris and Frankfurt.

In June of the same year Savigny became a real councilor and lecturer in the political department of the Foreign Ministry and in November 1849 was active in the immediate vicinity of the future Kaiser Wilhelm .

politics

20 years followed, during which he was the Prussian envoy in various German and European capitals. From 1849 to 1859 in Karlsruhe , then until 1862 in Dresden and the other Saxon duchies and from 1862 to 1864 in Brussels .

In 1864 he was appointed Minister of Prussia to the Bundestag of the German Confederation in Frankfurt am Main. This office ended in the summer of 1866: after the federal decree of June 14 (against Prussia), Savigny declared that this unlawful decision had dissolved the federal government. Of course, this was only recognized by Austria and the other medium-sized states after their defeat in the German War .

Afterwards Savigny was involved in the establishment of the North German Confederation as a federal state. He worked out a draft for a North German federal constitution and chaired the conferences of the allied governments. Bismarck originally intended the office of Federal Chancellor to be a more executive activity, comparable to the presidential envoy in the old Bundestag. He had chosen Savigny for this position. However, when the constituent Reichstag had adopted the lex Bennigsen, which made the Federal Chancellor the federal executive, Bismarck took over the office himself. Savigny

During his term of office, the first two wars of unification against Denmark and Austria fall . The German Confederation ended in 1866 with Savigny's declaration that Austria had broken the federal treaty. In 1866 he worked out a draft for the constitution of the North German Confederation , from which the Bismarckian Reich constitution was developed. After the victory over Austria and its allies, Savigny was Bismarck's commissioner for negotiations on the establishment of the North German Confederation and then chairman of an intergovernmental conference that drafted the constitution of the North German Confederation.

Bismarck originally planned Savigny for the office of Federal Chancellor in the North German Confederation , but revised his commitment because he had underestimated the powers of the Federal Chancellor and now wanted to hold this office in personal union with that of the Prussian Prime Minister. Savigny then went into temporary retirement in 1868 and finally resigned from civil service after a brief period during the Franco-Prussian War in 1871.

Savigny had sat for the free conservatives in the North German Reichstag since 1867 . He was a member of the Prussian House of Representatives in 1867 and 1868 and again from 1870 to 1875. From 1871 until his death, von Savigny represented the constituency of Koblenz 3 ( Koblenz - St. Goar ) in the Reichstag for the Center Party . There he campaigned both for the hegemony of Prussia in Germany and for the interests of the Catholic population in the new empire. He was instrumental in founding the Center Party , whose parliamentary group he became both in the Reichstag and in the Prussian House of Representatives. The name “Center” proposed by Savigny was intended to make it easier for Protestants to join the new parliamentary group.

Together with Ludwig Windthorst , the brothers Peter and August Reichensperger and Hermann von Mallinckrodt , he was one of the most important people in the early phase of the center. As chairman of the parliamentary group, he played a key role in balancing the various positions within the center.

family

He married Freda Sophie Karoline Marie (born von Arnim-Boitzenburg ) (1831–1906) in Boitzenburg in 1853 , a daughter of the Interior Minister Adolf Heinrich von Arnim-Boitzenburg (1803–1868). The couple had four sons and five daughters, including:

  • Leo (1863–1910), professor of state, administrative, international and church law in Marburg and Münster ∞ Freiin Maria von Amelunxen (1882–1957)
  • Karl (1855–1928), member of the Prussian House of Representatives and the Reichstag ∞ Freiin Maria von Amelunxen (1882–1957)
  • Adolf (1857–1920), Prussian court trainee
  • Elisabeth (1856–1902) ∞ Baron Rudolf von Buol-Berenberg (1842–1902)
  • Maria Freda (1859–1890), merciful sister of St. Karl Borromeo in Osnabrück
  • Helene (1864–1908), nun of the Sacred Heart of Jesus , superior in Graz
  • Hedwig (1867–1898), religious of the Sacred Heart of Jesus
  • Josepha (1874–1945) ∞ Baron Adolf von Schönberg (1864–1927), Fideikommißherr on Niederzwörnitz

Remarks

  1. ↑ Bernd Haunfelder , Klaus Erich Pollmann : Reichstag of the North German Confederation 1867-1870. Historical photographs and biographical handbook (= photo documents on the history of parliamentarism and political parties. Volume 2). Droste, Düsseldorf 1989, ISBN 3-7700-5151-3 , photo p. 287, short biography p. 460–461.
  2. ↑ Bernhard Mann (arrangement) with the assistance of Martin Doerry , Cornelia Rauh , Thomas Kühne : Biographisches Handbuch für das Prussische Abrafenhaus 1867–1918 (= handbooks on the history of parliamentarism and political parties. Volume 3). Droste, Düsseldorf 1988, ISBN 3-7700-5146-7 , p. 335; for the election results see Thomas Kühne: Handbook of elections to the Prussian House of Representatives 1867–1918. Election results, election alliances and election candidates (= handbooks on the history of parliamentarism and political parties. Volume 6). Droste, Düsseldorf 1994, ISBN 3-7700-5182-3 , pp. 359–362 (= constituency Oppeln 6, free conservative member) and pp. 786–789 (= constituency Aachen 1, member of the Center Party).
  3. ^ Fritz Specht, Paul Schwabe: The Reichstag elections from 1867 to 1903. Statistics of the Reichstag elections together with the programs of the parties and a list of the elected representatives. 2nd Edition. Carl Heymann Verlag, Berlin 1904, p. 159; see. also A. Phillips (Hrsg.): The Reichstag elections from 1867 to 1883. Statistics of the elections for the constituent and North German Reichstag, for the customs parliament, as well as for the first five legislative periods of the German Reichstag . Berlin: Verlag Louis Gerschel, 1883, p. 108; for a short biography see also: Hirth, Georg (Ed.): Deutscher Parlament-Almanach . 9th edition of May 9, 1871. Berlin: Verlag Franz Duncker, 1871, pp. 251f

literature

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personal data
SURNAME Savigny, Karl Friedrich von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German clergyman, diplomat and politician (center), MdR
DATE OF BIRTH September 19, 1814
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH February 11, 1875
Place of death Frankfurt am Main