Ludwig von Hess

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Heinrich Ludwig von Hess (* 29. November 1719 probably in Gothenburg ; † 11. April 1784 in Berlin ) was a publicist , Royal Danish Judicial Council and Executive Council .

Live and act

The exact place of birth of Ludwig von Hess is not known. While he himself said he was born "somewhere in Swedish Pomerania " where he grew up, other sources suspect Gothenburg as the place of birth. There is no known information about his ancestors or family circumstances. He studied law at the University of Greifswald and the University of Leipzig . He finished his studies in 1744 as a doctor of both rights and accepted a civil service position in Wismar . In 1746 he wrote a satire in the style of the satirist Christian Ludwig Liscow , which was directed against the Magistrate of Stralsund and due to which he had to quit the service. Since he was involved in disputes between the king and the estates in the Swedish Reichstag, he fled the Swedish capital in 1756 via Hamburg to Altona , which at the time belonged to Denmark .

Johann Hartwig Ernst von Bernstorff , who had great influence at the Danish court in Copenhagen , sponsored von Hess, who was thus appointed royal Danish judicial councilor in 1760. After von Bernstorff had failed politically, von Hess was accused of having reported incorrectly about the Danish state. In 1767 he had to surrender his title of judicial councilor and flee to Mecklenburg due to an arrest warrant against him. In 1771 he returned to Hamburg.

Gustav III von Sweden , who peacefully ousted the Estates in Sweden in 1772, commissioned van Hess to translate the most important documents on this from Swedish into German. Von Hess published the translation with a preface in 1773. For this he received a pension, was appointed to the royal Swedish government council and was awarded the North Star Order.

Hess, who studied Enlightenment such as Friedrich von Hagedorn , Christian Fürchtegott Gellert or Gotthold Ephraim Lessing , wrote extensively in the following years. He criticized the prevailing conditions; in Hamburg especially the council, which he considered autocratic, the Lutheran clergy who presumed power to themselves, problems in the field of justice and taxes, arbitrary censorship and reprisals against ordinary people and Jews.

In 1780 he took a stand in the debate about the Mannheim price question , in which effective measures against the killing of children were discussed. Von Hess expressed himself radically liberal and advocated social support for illegitimate mothers instead of discriminating against them. In the same year he called in Hamburg to comply with the wishes of the Reformed, who wanted to practice their religion freely.

In 1782 von Hess came into conflict with the City Council of Hamburg. The occasion was the so-called “main trial” from 1712, which up until then was not open to the public as a “fundamental law”. Von Hess published the wording of the law with extensive explanations in which he did not interpret the law as desired from the point of view of the authorities with enlightened natural law wording. Von Hess explained that the law would result in extensive claims to freedom for the residents of Hamburg and sharply criticized the rulers as lazy, selfish and arrogant, whereupon he was threatened with immediate banishment. After mediation by ambassadors, von Hess committed himself to a compromise: in return for the promise not to comment on the Hamburg constitution from now on, he was allowed to stay in Hamburg. The Council itself had only approved this solution because of political pressure. Two months after the legal texts and their comments were published, Joseph II awarded the publicist a gold medal showing the emperor's half-length portrait as a sign of the “highest imperial benevolence” - an award that further annoyed the Hamburg superiors.

Even if von Hess was delighted with the imperial award, he regretted having made a compromise with the Hamburg rulers. He therefore violated the agreement and issued 500 new copies for the main trial in the same year, all of which he was able to sell immediately. The Hamburg council had the work burned on the “dishonorable goat” on October 31, 1782; von Hess received the order to leave Hamburg within eight days. Von Hess left the Hanseatic city on November 6, 1782 and lived in Erfurt for a few days . There he wrote an apology in which he defended himself against the Hamburg council. He then traveled to the court of the Prussian king in Berlin, where he tried unsuccessfully to obtain permission to reproduce the book that was banned in Hamburg.

Ludwig von Hess died alone in April 1784 in Berlin.

family

Ludwig von Hess was married to Beata, nee Taube. The couple lived apart for a long time. The son Jonas Ludwig von Hess emerged from the marriage.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Otto Beneke:  Hess, Heinrich Ludwig von . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 12, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1880, p. 277 f.
personal data
SURNAME Hess, Ludwig von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hess, Heinrich Ludwig von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Publicist, royal Danish judicial councilor and government councilor
DATE OF BIRTH November 29, 1719
PLACE OF BIRTH unsure: Gothenburg
DATE OF DEATH April 11, 1784
Place of death Berlin