Magnus von Moltke

Good Noer

Count Magnus von Moltke (born August 20, 1783 at Gut Noer ; † March 12, 1864 in Kiel ) was a Schleswig-Holstein lawyer and politician .

Life

He was a son of the general, Count Christian Magnus Frederik Moltke († 1813). Magnus von Moltke received private lessons until he was 16 and then attended a renowned school in Gotha . He studied at the Kiel University and Göttingen Law and graduated in the fall of 1806 in Schleswig with honors.

After completing his studies, he traveled through Europe for two years ( Grand Tour ), after which he worked as a lawyer at the Gottorf Supreme Court, where he was appointed to the youngest councilor in 1813. Later he also became district administrator . In 1834 he was made a knight of the Order of Dannebrog .

On October 3, 1818, he married Countess Juliane Charlotte Brockdorff (March 26, 1794 - October 10, 1844), the daughter of Count Christian Ulrich Brockdorff. Through his brother Adam von Moltke he gained access to liberal ideas.

In the election for the first Schleswig Estates Assembly in 1836, he was elected a member of the second municipal electoral district. In the opening session he was elected President of the Chamber with 34 votes. He chaired the meetings with the necessary neutrality, but felt the office as a restriction of his possibilities of parliamentary debate.

After being re-elected to the Chamber in 1838, he decided not to run for President and Niels Nikolaus Falck was elected President. Moltke was one of the most active MPs in the stands. On the language issue, he pragmatically took the Danish position. He belonged to the minority when the Chamber rejected King Christian VIII's language rescript (Danish should become the official language in Danish-speaking North Schleswig) with 33 votes to 9. On the constitutional question, however, he was one of the most important representatives of a common constitution and a common parliament for Schleswig and Holstein. In 1840 he decided not to run again and left the assembly of estates.

In the Schleswig-Holstein survey of 1848 he became active on the part of the duchies. He renounced the Danish titles and medals and campaigned in the letter "Open letter to my fellow citizens in Schleswig-Holstein" for Schleswig-Holstein to join the German Confederation.

After the collapse of the uprising and the restoration of Danish rule, he was deposed in July 1850 as senior judge and district administrator. For the last years of his life he lived withdrawn in Kiel.

Works

• "Thoughts on freedom of trade", Lübeck 1830
• "About the nobility and their relationship to the bourgeoisie", Hamburg 1830
• "The electoral law and the chamber with consideration for the duchy of Schleswig and Holstein", Hamburg, 1834

literature

• Klaus Volquartz: On the 150th anniversary of the Schleswig Assembly of Estates; ISBN 3-88042-319-9 , 1986 pp. 106-109
• HR Hiort-Lorenzen, "Moltke, Magnus": in: CF Bricka (ed.), Dansk biografisk leksikon , Copenhagen 1887–1905.
• Alberti, Schleswig-Holst.-Lauenb. Writer-Lex., P. 75, online