Martin Wilhelm Fonck

Grave complex of the Cologne cathedral chapter in the Melaten cemetery

Martin Wilhelm Fonck (born October 28, 1752 in Goch , † June 28, 1830 in Cologne ) was a German Roman Catholic clergyman and provost in Cologne .

Live and act

After graduating from high school, Fonck studied law with a degree in both rights (utroque jure) and theology at the Old University of Cologne . On June 4, 1776 he was ordained a priest and then worked as a vicar and from 1781 as a pastor in Goch before he was accepted as a canon at the collegiate church in Kranenburg . After the abolition of the monastery by Napoléon in 1802, Fonck was appointed by Bishop Marc-Antoine Berdolet to the newly established diocese of Aachen , where he was appointed vicar general and a member of the cathedral chapter . After Berdolet's death on August 13, 1809, Napoléon made Jean-Denis-François Camus his successor, but Camus was not approved by the Vatican and was allowed to serve as diocesan administrator until his death in 1814 . After that, the position remained vacant and Fonck was obliged as the vicar of capitulars together with the new vicar general Michael Klinkenberg (1772-1822) to take over the tasks of the bishop until the final dissolution of the diocese in 1825.

During this time he was awarded the Order of the Dutch Lion by King Wilhelm I of the Netherlands for his special services in the areas of the Diocese of Aachen near Liège and Roermond, which were then on Dutch territory . After the dissolved Diocese of Aachen was incorporated into the Diocese of Cologne in 1825 , Fonck was taken over as Provost of Cologne, where he died in 1830 at the age of 77 after a stroke . Fonck was buried in the grave of the Cologne cathedral chapter on the Melaten cemetery (HWG, between lit. D + E).

Fonck earned special services in the reorganization of the church structures after the withdrawal of the French and the revitalization of the Catholic faith. With his attitude he laid the basis for a strictly ecclesiastical Catholicism. After his death he bequeathed a large amount of money to his hometown Goch to support the needy there. He also set up a capital fund that was earmarked for high school and university studies, for students from the Fonck family up to the sixth generation, and as a scholarship for candidates for priesthood in the diocese of Münster and for the seminary in Cologne . In 1953 a street in Goch was named after Martin Wilhelm Fonck.

literature

• Reimund Haas : Fonck, Martin Wilhelm , in: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon , Vol. 18, Supplementary Volume V, Herzberg 2001, Sp. 446–452
• Reimund Haas: Martin Wilhelm Fonck (1752-1830). Canon, vicar general and provost . In: Christians between the Lower Rhine and Eifel - Pictures of Life from Two Centuries , 1993, pp. 103–128.
• Reimund Haas: The Aachen vicar general Martin Wilhelm Fonck . In: French on the Lower Rhine 1794–1814 . Catalog on the occasion of the exhibition in the Museum of Art and Cultural History of the City of Goch from October 9 to November 27, 1994, pp. 44–47.
• Heinrich Schiffers: Der Gocher Martin Fonck (1752-1830) , in: Niederrhein-Heimatbeilage No. 35 of September 25, 1931, reprint p. 137
• New necrology of the Germans ; Volume 8, BF Voigt 1832 ( digitized )
• Thomas R. Kraus : On the way to the modern age - Aachen in the French time 1792/93. 1794–1814 , Verlag des Aachener Geschichtsverein , Aachen 1994, ISBN 3-9802705-1-3 ; P. 630

Web links

• Portrait on the pages of the city of Goch
• Death note