Karl Schmitz (politician, 1807)

Karl Schmitz, contemporary illustration

Karl Schmitz (born February 11, 1807 in Mainz ; † January 16, 1882 ) was a merchant and mayor of the city of Mainz from 1861 to 1864. He was a member of the board of directors of the Cologne-Düsseldorfer Dampfschifffahrtsgesellschaft.

Schmitz had been the city's first alderman since March 9, 1859, before he was elected and finally introduced to the office of mayor on January 5, 1861. During his tenure, the economy and also the club and party system in the city revived. On October 18, 1862, he inaugurated the Schiller Monument and consequently renamed the “Thiermarkt” to “ Schillerplatz ” - which has remained the name of the square to this day. In the same year, the southern railway bridge over the Rhine was inaugurated on September 20 , the second fixed Rhine bridge after the one in Cologne. This bridge enabled the continuous rail connection to Frankfurt and the capital of the Grand Duchy , Darmstadt .

In 1863 he began converting the Mainz water supply to a pipeline network, initially connected to the private waterworks by a Dr. Rautert on the Kästrich . In the same year, together with Bishop Wilhelm Emmanuel von Ketteler, he founded the " Catholic Casino " in the Frankfurter Hof , where Ferdinand Lassalle , also in 1863, had founded a forerunner of the General German Workers' Association. In 1864 he appointed Eduard Kreyssig as city architect. At the end of 1864 he resigned from his position and moved to his winery in Alsheim near Worms, where he died in 1882.

literature

• Wolfgang Balzer: Mainz: personalities of the city history. Kügler, Ingelheim 1985-1993.
  • Volume 1: Honorary citizens of Mainz, princes of Mainz, military personalities, Mainz mayors. ISBN 3-924124-01-9 .
• Bruno Funk, Wilhelm Jung : The Mainz town hall. Self-published by the Mainz administration, Will & Rothe, 1974.