Karl von Rotteck junior

Karl von Rotteck junior (born December 26, 1806 in Freiburg im Breisgau , † 1898 (?) In Woodstock near St. Louis , USA ) was a radical democrat and republican in Freiburg.

Life

The early years

Karl von Rotteck junior was the second child of Karl von Rotteck and his wife Katharina geb. Mors. After studying law , he became a lawyer and procurator at the grand ducal court in Freiburg in 1838. He married the daughter of court president Wilhelmine Baumgärtner and had six children with her.

The young republican

In 1840 he co-founded the Freiburg gymnastics club and, as secretary, formed the board of directors together with the surgeon Karl Hecker, the factory owner Carl Mez and the medical candidate Georg von Langsdorff . He also worked under his father Karl von Rotteck as secretary of the civil reading society Harmonie. So he got involved early on on the Republican side in the strivings for freedom of the 1840s. Soon he was chairman of the district committee of the fatherland associations on the Upper Rhine.

The revolution of 1848

On April 7, 1848, a leaflet published in Freiburg by the district committee for the Upper Rhine District was circulated in which the men of the fatherland associations were asked to do the same as those in the Lake District (Konstanz): The Lake District is already under arms; the entire male population of all classes from the 18th to the 55th year, well armed and exercised for many weeks, is determined to march .

On April 12, Friedrich Hecker proclaimed the republic in Constance and called on the people to an armed uprising in the name of a provisional government. Hecker marched north with his guerrillas. In Freiburg it was hoped that the revolutionaries would soon arrive on their way to Karlsruhe . But then Karl Hecker received a letter from his brother from Basel , in which he reported about the defeat of his poorly equipped revolutionaries against overpowering government troops in the battle on the Scheideck near Kandern and his flight to Switzerland . On April 22nd, 1848 ( Holy Saturday ), Karl von Rotteck tried to convince the roughly 2,000 irregulars in Freiburg that resistance was pointless in view of the overwhelming power of government soldiers. The rebels, however, considered Hecker's defeat to be a rumor, wanted to keep fighting and chose Georg von Langsdorff as their general.

After the bloody capture of the city by War Minister Hoffmann and his troops, von Rotteck was arrested and taken to Bruchsal prison. He was only released on bail in December. A charge of high treason was put down in the spring of 1849.

The aftermath of spring 1849

From now on, Karl von Rotteck had to act politically cautious. After all, on January 29, 1849, he was a co-founder of the Freiburg People's Association, which campaigned for a future republican form of government. On the other hand, his cousin, Mayor Joseph von Rotteck, delicately founded the liberal patriotic association in the city's department store on February 18, 1849.

In the spring of 1849 the revolution escalated again in southwest Germany, not least because Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia rejected the imperial crown offered to him by the Frankfurt National Assembly . After the failure of a constitutional monarchy , Republicans had a boom. In Freiburg, at the suggestion of the Volksverein and under the direction of Karl von Rotteck, dissatisfied army members of the garrison met on Kanonenplatz on May 10, 1849. As in other places in Baden, the soldiers vowed not to shoot the people. When the Grand Duke of Baden fled, von Rotteck became the spokesman for a delegation that wanted to negotiate a peaceful takeover of government by the people in Karlsruhe. When the state committee of the people's associations finally took over the affairs of state, he was elected to the constituent assembly , where he worked as secretary.

Prussian intervention troops quickly and brutally put an end to the revolution in Baden. On July 7, 1849, they occupied Freiburg without resistance. Karl von Rotteck initially fled to Switzerland, but was expelled from there under pressure from the Baden and Prussian governments, so that he emigrated to America in 1850 . In the same year he was tried in which he was sentenced in absentia to 20 years in prison.

Emigration to the USA

He bought a farm in the USA, but was also politically active in Iowa and Missouri . In 1898 he died at the age of 91 on his farm in Woodstock near St. Louis.

literature

Rudolf Muhs: Presentation of a stranger: Karl von Rotteck jr. (1806-1898). In: Freiburger Almanach 38 (1987), pp. 95-100.

Ulrike Rödling and Heinz Siebold: Der Münstergeneral , Verlag Moritz Schauenburg, Lahr 1998. ISBN 3-7946-0505-5