Lorenz Brentano

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Lorenz Brentano (1848)
Lorenz Brentano (1878)

Lorenz Peter Carl Brentano (born November 4, 1813 in Mannheim , † September 17, 1891 in Chicago ) was the son of Johan Peter Paul Brentano from the German line of the Brentanos from Bingen am Rhein and his wife Helene, née. Heger. Lorenz Brentano was first married to Caroline Leutz and then to Caroline Aberle. He was a lawyer and liberal democratic Baden politicians in the period before and during the March revolution of 1848 / 1849 . He then made a political career in exile in the United States, including being President of the City Council of Chicago, Congressman in Washington, DC and US Consul in Dresden .

Legal and political curriculum vitae

Legal career and entry into politics

After graduating from high school, Brentano studied law in Freiburg im Breisgau and Heidelberg from 1831 to 1834 , where he became a member of the Corps Allemannia and the fraternity . After that, he initially embarked on a legal career that led him via Bruchsal to the Rastatt court , and in July 1848 to the court of the Lower Rhine District in Mannheim.

Since December 1845 Brentano was a member of the second chamber of the Baden Estates Assembly . There, for example, he founded a bill on judicial independence , which brought him into conflict with the President of the Justice Ministry . In 1846 a more radical group split off from the previous chamber opposition, which Brentano also joined. In the state parliament of 1847/1848 Brentano was one of the supporters of a motion for representation of the German chamber parliaments in the Bundestag in Frankfurt am Main .

Brentano's role in the March Revolution

After the beginning of the March Revolution in 1848, Brentano became a member of the preliminary parliament and the Frankfurt National Assembly as a member of the second and ninth Baden electoral districts ( Radolfzell , Engen , Stockach , Hüfingen / Ettenheim , Haslach , Wolfach ). The National Assembly should prepare for German unity and draw up an all-German constitution . After the uprising of Friedrich Hecker and others in April 1848 (see Heckerzug ), Brentano applied for recognition of the election of Hecker, who, after the suppression of his uprising in the battle on the Scheideck near Kandern in the Black Forest, first emigrated into Swiss exile and finally to the USA .

Not long after this application was rejected, Brentano withdrew from the National Assembly and took over the chairmanship of the provisional "regional committee" of the Baden people's associations . His demand for the dissolution of the Baden Chamber after its rejection ultimately led to Brentano and other leftists leaving the Baden Chamber by March 1849.

During this time Brentano made a name for himself as a defender of some radical democratic left revolutionaries in the Freiburg high treason trials. Gustav Struve , a participant in Friedrich Hecker's uprising of April 12, 1848 and the " Heckerzug ", was among his clients . Struve was charged as the ringleader of the so-called Struve Putsch in Loerrach , where he tried to proclaim the republic in September 1848.

At the beginning of 1849 Brentano was elected Lord Mayor of Mannheim, but not recognized as such by the Baden government because of his oppositional stance.

As a result of the May uprisings in 1849 , after the Grand Duke Leopold's flight, Brentano was appointed head of the provisional revolutionary government in Baden , first by the state committee of the people's associations and then by the constituent assembly . Here, however, Brentano's policy was rather moderate and hesitant. The Grand Duke's escape was not convenient for him.

To suppress the Baden Revolution, Prussian troops from the neighboring Kingdom of Württemberg advanced to Baden under the command of the so-called "Kartätschenprinzen" and later German Emperor Prince Wilhelm of Prussia , the brother of the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm IV . The revolutionary government evaded to Freiburg im Breisgau on June 25, 1849 . A conflict arose between Brentano, who wanted to negotiate with the Prussians, and Struve, who wanted to continue the resistance. The Polish Revolutionary General Ludwik Mierosławski , who had led the Baden Revolutionary Army since the beginning of June, resigned from his command, partly because of Brentano's hesitant attitude.

Struve, who had been released from prison in May 1849, and his supporters finally prevailed against Brentano. After his dismissal as head of government, Brentano fled into exile in Switzerland from June 28 to June 29, 1849. Brentano was head of government in Baden from May 15 to June 28, 1849.

On July 23, the Baden Revolution was finally crushed by Prussian troops after Rastatt was taken. At the same time the last bastion of the March Revolution as a whole had fallen.

Exile and new political rise in the USA

Like many other exiled revolutionaries, Lorenz Brentano was denied a risk-free return to Baden. On June 6, 1850 , he was sentenced in absentia by the court in Bruchsal to life imprisonment and compensation. Then Brentano finally emigrated from exile in Switzerland to the USA. He followed other non-prominent and prominent fellow fates such as Friedrich Hecker, Gustav Struve or Carl Schurz .

Brentano first settled as a farmer in Michigan . In Pottsville ( Pennsylvania ) he founded the German newspaper "Der Leuchtturm". In 1859 he became editor of the Illinois state newspaper in Chicago , where he rose to become a co-owner. On the Republican side , like many others in the German Forty-Eighters , as the political immigrants of the March Revolution in the USA were called, he supported the election of Abraham Lincoln as US President . Brentano later became President of the Chicago City Council .

In 1862, Brentano was Lincoln's personal envoy to Scandinavia . In August of the same year, his prison sentence in Baden was waived by sovereign decree. But Brentano only re-entered German soil after he had made sure that the consequences of his conviction were also no longer in force.

From 1872 to 1876 Brentano was the American consul in Dresden . Back in the United States, he was elected to the US House of Representatives, to which he was a member until 1879.

Despite the overturning of the judgments against him in Germany, after 1849 Brentano was only a visitor to his old homeland. Chicago, where he had made his political career, had become his second home. There he died on September 17, 1891 at the age of 77. His son Theodore (1854–1940) was the first US ambassador to Hungary from 1922 to 1927 .

Works

  • To the people in Württemberg: In the name of the people in Baden the provisional government , 1849
  • ... Justification of the motives of the deputy [Lorenz] Brentano for the independence of judges and judicial officials , 1844
  • The republican party of Baden and its leaders judged and judged in the written legacy of Hecker, Struve and Brentano , 1849

literature

  • Sonja-Maria Bauer: Lorenz Brentano. From advocate and revolutionary in Baden to journalist and politician in the USA. A biographical sketch. In: Clemens Rehm, Hans-Peter Becht, Kurt Hochstuhl (eds.): Baden 1848/49. Coping with and aftermath of a revolution. Jan Thorbecke Verlag, Stuttgart 2002, pp. 217-237.
  • Alfred Georg Frei : From the Paulskirche to the Capitol. In: DIE ZEIT , October 31, 2013 ( online ).
  • Johannes M. Goldschmit: "In our otherwise quiet city ...". Revolution 1848/49 in Bruchsal . regional culture publisher: Ubstadt-Weiher, 1998. ISBN 3-929366-83-5
  • Georg F. Sperl:  Brentano, Lorenz Peter Karl. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 2, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1955, ISBN 3-428-00183-4 , p. 595 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Egbert Weiß: Corps students in the Paulskirche , in: Einst und Jetzt , special issue 1990, Munich 1990, p. 16.
  • Irmgard Stamm: For the 200th birthday of Lorenz Brentano. Democrat and dictator, in: "Rastatter Freiheitsbote." Bulletin of the memorial for the freedom movements in German history No. 31; December 2013, p. 15

Web links

Commons : Lorenz Brentano  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Single receipts

  1. Kösener corps lists 1910, 110 , 44.
  2. ^ Alfred Georg Frei : From the Paulskirche to the Capitol. In: DIE ZEIT , October 31, 2013 ( online ).
  3. Federal Archives: Members of the Pre-Parliament and the Fifties Committee (PDF file; 79 kB)
  4. Brentano himself was elected to this assembly in two constituencies on June 3rd
  5. with document in facsimile, signature of Brentano for the "Provisional Government for Baden", with his handwritten addition: "with dictatorial power"