Karl Konstanz Viktor Fellner

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Karl Konstanz Viktor Fellner (1807–1866)

Karl Konstanz Viktor Fellner (in some sources also C arl C onstanz Vi c tor ; * July 24, 1807 ; † July 24, 1866 in Frankfurt am Main by suicide ) was the last mayor of the Free City of Frankfurt before the Prussian occupation .

life and work

Fellner was the son of the Frankfurt banker Johann Christian Fellner and Susanne Dorothea Fellner born. Welcker. His brother was the painter Ferdinand Fellner . He was married to Jeanette Fellner, b. Bansa-Streiber, the daughter of the banker Conrad Adolf Bansa and had three children.

Fellner completed a commercial apprenticeship and was initially authorized signatory in the wool company of his uncle Carl Welcker, after his death partner and managing director until 1854. In 1848 he became a member of the Frankfurt Chamber of Commerce, of which he was appointed senior in 1851. In 1852 he became director of the chemical factory in Griesheim .

In addition to his entrepreneurial activity, he was politically active in the Free City . In 1852 he was elected to the Frankfurt Senate, where he belonged to the liberal Gotha Party . He represented the city, which as a sovereign city-state was a member of the German Confederation , in the negotiations on the German Customs Union . In 1857, 1862 and 1864 Fellner was the younger mayor , d. H. Deputy Head of City and State, the Senior Mayor .

Fellner campaigned politically for the dissolution of the guild restrictions from the Middle Ages, the freedom of trade and the expansion of the Main for shipping. On December 11, 1865, Fellner was determined by Kugelung to succeed Philipp Friedrich Gwinner as Senior Mayor of the Free City for 1866. He held the office until the occupation of the city by the Prussian troops victorious in the German War on July 16, 1866. The Prussian army, led by General Eduard Vogel von Falckenstein, treated the city as hostile, although it had remained formally neutral and loyal to the federal government. As early as July 17th, she was charged an initial contribution of around 5.8 million guilders , which was paid immediately. Edwin von Manteuffel , who was appointed Falckenstein's successor on July 20 , then raised a second contribution claim of 25 million guilders (around 250 million euros based on today's purchasing power), which was to be raised by the then approximately 35,000 citizens of the Free City (of which only around 8,000 were taxable).

Request from Manteuffels to pay the 25 million guilders

Fellner did not refuse a voluntary annexation of the city to Prussia and declared himself ready to continue the city business as an agent of the conquerors. He was sworn in on July 22nd by the Prussian military command and pleaded in the Senate to meet the second contribution demand as well as the first, but to ask the Prussian government for an option to pay in installments.

However, the Legislative Assembly and the Permanent Citizens' Representation of the Free City rejected this proposal on July 23, 1866, to protest the treatment of the city. General Manteuffel and other Prussian military had previously indicated that in the event of resistance they would not shrink from bombing and looting. The new Prussian city commandant, Major General von Röder, asked Fellner to provide him with a proscription list with the names, addresses and ownership of all members of the city bodies by the next morning .

Fellner found himself in an irresolvable conflict between his duties to the city and its citizens on the one hand and his oath as a government representative on the other - a situation in which he saw no other way out than suicide. On the morning of his 59th birthday, July 24th 1866, Fellner hanged himself in his house on Seilerstrasse .

Although the announcement of his death was suppressed by the Prussian military authorities, it quickly spread among the citizens. More than 6,000 citizens gave him final conduct at his funeral in the main cemetery on July 26, 1866 , although the funeral had to take place early in the morning at 4:30 a.m. by order of the city commandant. At the funeral, Fellner's brother-in-law, Judge of Appeal Friedrich Kugler , presented the new Prussian civil commissioner for Nassau, the Wetzlar District Administrator Gustav von Diest , with the empty proscription list and the rope with which Fellner had hanged himself.

Today Fellnerstrasse in Frankfurt's Westend , a memorial on the site of the former Fellner Garden in the Friedbergeranlage and his grave memorial in the main cemetery, commemorate the last mayor of the city republic, almost venerated as a martyr in the following decades . Part of his estate is in the Institute for Urban History in Frankfurt.

  • Memorial plaque in the Friedberger plant

  • Fellner's death mask, removed from July 24th to 25th, 1866, in the Frankfurt Historical Museum

  • Funeral procession for Fellner's funeral
    drawing by Heinrich Hasselhorst

  • Grave in the main cemetery

Fellner's fate was also reflected in literature: as early as 1867, the drama The Last Mayor of the Free City of Frankfurt was published under the pseudonym Alberti . M. In the same year, the French poet Alexandre Dumas d. Ä. during a stay in Frankfurt, inspired by the events surrounding the occupation of the city and the suicide of its mayor, to a novel, which was initially published as a sequel in the Paris newspaper La Situation under the title La terreur prussienne (German as a retelling by Clemens Bachmann , published 2004 ).

literature

  • Rudolf Jung :  Fellner, Karl . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 48, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1904, p. 516.
  • Fellner, Carl , in: Wolfgang Klötzer (Hrsg.): Frankfurter Biographie . Personal history lexicon . First volume. A – L (=  publications of the Frankfurt Historical Commission . Volume XIX , no. 1 ). Waldemar Kramer, Frankfurt am Main 1994, ISBN 3-7829-0444-3 . P. 198f.
  • Wolfgang Klötzer (Ed.): Frankfurt 1866. A documentation from German newspapers. Special edition of the Archive for Frankfurt History and Art (AFGK), Volume 50. Waldemar Kramer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1966
  • Alexandre Dumas: The veil in the Main. The historical Frankfurt novel. Nacherz. ume Nachw. vers. v. Clemens Bachmann . Societäts-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2004, ISBN 3797308965

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Commons : Karl Konstanz Viktor Fellner  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Fellner, Karl Konstanz Viktor
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Fellner, Carl Constanz Viktor
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Mayor of Frankfurt am Main
DATE OF BIRTH July 24, 1807
PLACE OF BIRTH Frankfurt am Main
DATE OF DEATH July 24, 1866
Place of death Frankfurt am Main