Karl Wilhelm von Fritsch

Karl Wilhelm Freiherr von Fritsch

Baron Karl Wilhelm von Fritsch (born July 16, 1769 in Weimar ; † October 16, 1850 there ) was a German government councilor and long-term minister of state of the Grand Duchy of Saxony-Weimar-Eisenach .

life and work

Fritsch was a son of the politician Jakob Friedrich von Fritsch . He studied at the University in Jena and later moved to Leipzig . After successfully completing his studies, he got a job as a government assessor in his hometown in 1789.

In 1791 he became a member, 1805 head of the General Police Directorate in Weimar, and when it was elevated to a state police college in 1807, he became its president. The politician, appointed to the government council in 1793, became a member of the Secret Consilium in 1811 and for over 30 years (1815–1848) was a real secret councilor and minister of state. In recognition of his services, he was awarded the Grand Cross of the House Order of the White Falcon of the Grand Duchy of Saxony-Weimar-Eisenach on January 30, 1816 . At the Carlsbad Congress in 1819 he represented Weimar and at the Ministerial Conference in Vienna in 1833/1834 all of Saxony .

In 1843, his eye disease forced him to resign from all offices and retire into private life. Three months after his 81st birthday, Fritsch died on October 16, 1850 in his hometown, where he found his final resting place. He was married since May 17, 1803 to Henriette Freiin Wolfskeel von Reichenberg, who came from the Franconian nobility . Their son was Carl von Fritsch .

His father had already left him the manor Großgestewitz during his lifetime , which he inherited from his childless sister in 1804.

Freemasons

Karl Wilhelm von Fritsch was accepted into Freemasonry in Rudolstadt in 1807 . In the revival of the lodge Anna Amalia of the three roses in Weimar in 1808, he was there in 1818 was the Worshipful Master ; he remained so until his death. In the lodge he held the obituary for the Freemason brother Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , who was also a member of this lodge.

In 1833 von Fritsch openly professed Freemasonry at a cabinet conference in Vienna. In correspondence, speeches and writings, Fritsch successfully refuted all suspicions against Freemasonry that were publicly expressed by Klemens Wenzel Lothar von Metternich . With this, Fritsch achieved a move away from the threatened closure of the lodges in Austria.

Correspondence

The family was able to secure two volumes of letters from the estate and family archives at Seerhausen Castle with 256 historically valuable letters to Karl Wilhelm von Fritsch and his father Jakob Friedrich von Fritsch, including 25 from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , when the family was expropriated in 1945. The community of heirs handed them over to the Saxon State Archives in 2001 .

literature

• Wolfgang Huschke:  Fritsch, Carl Wilhelm. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 5, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1961, ISBN 3-428-00186-9 , p. 623 f. ( Digitized version ).

source

• British Envoys to Germany , Vol. II, p. 109

Web links

• Website of the von Fritsch family: Carl-Wilhelm Frhr. v. Fritsch

Individual evidence

1. ↑ http://zs.thulb.uni-jena.de/rsc/viewer/jportal_derivate_00226358/Weimarisches-Wochenblatt_1816_0045.tif
2. ^ Eugen Lennhoff, Oskar Posner, Dieter A. Binder : Internationales Freemaurerlexikon , revised and expanded new edition of the edition from 1932, Munich 2003, 951 pages, ISBN 3-7766-2161-3
3. ↑ Tobias Ossyra: Sächsisches Staatsarchiv receives historically valuable letters - including 25 Goethe originals.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Leipziger Volkszeitung from December 14, 2011, accessed on December 15, 2011  

International Masonic Lexicon

1. ↑ Eugen Lennhoff, Oskar Posner, Dieter A. Binder: Internationales Freemaurer Lexikon . 1980. Reprint from 1932, Amalthena Verlag, ISBN 978-3-7766-2478-6 , Lemma Fritsch, Wilhelm, p. 543