Matthias Balthasar Nicolovius

Matthias Balthasar Nicolovius (born October 24, 1717 in Königsberg i. Pr. , † December 4, 1778 ibid) was a German administrative officer and East Prussian court councilor and senior secretary.

Life

Matthias Balthasar Nicolovius was born in Königsberg in the official apartment of his father, the chief treasurer and later war councilor George Nicolovius, and was baptized as a Protestant. His mother was Anna Sophia geb. Dreßler, daughter of the Lithuanian wood scribe Matthias Dreßler, who owned the Enzunen estate, later became a lumberjack and was promoted to state commissioner in the Prussian administration. His mother died on June 17, 1731 when he was not yet 14 years old, and his father died on October 22, 1738 when he was not yet 21 years old. After receiving private tuition on his grandfather's estate Enzunen, he went to the Collegium Fridericianum . On May 16, 1733 he moved to the University of Königsberg , where he studied philosophy, mathematics, physics and law.

Nicolovius opted for a legal career and was appointed court lawyer on April 28, 1739. Before he took up a permanent position, he traveled to Berlin and Potsdam and worked in the general management of the Prussian government under Privy Councilor Warth . After he had worked as a court attorney on his return and had also completed a number of business trips on behalf of the administration in legal matters, he was appointed court counselor on August 19, 1743, and in 1748 he was appointed senior secretary of the budget ministry. He held the office to the full satisfaction of his superiors, who increased his salary in 1751 to the impressive sum of 800 thalers .

During the Seven Years' War he took on important diplomatic and administrative tasks as a Prussian negotiator after the occupation of Königsberg on January 22, 1758 by troops of the Russian Empire . He also played an important political and administrative role in the implementation of the reunification of East Prussia in 1772 with the cities of West Prussia that fell away from the Teutonic Order State of Prussia in association with the Prussian Confederation before the Thirteen Years of City War, from which Gdansk and the oldest city in Prussia, Thorn , were initially missing .

On September 20, 1763 he married Elisabeth Eleonore Bartsch. Her marriage resulted in five children, the eldest and the youngest daughters. His eldest son was Georg Heinrich Ludwig Nicolovius (1767–1839). On May 18, 1768, the twins Theodor Balthasar Nicolovius (1768–1831) and Friedrich Nicolovius (1768–1836) followed.

On September 17, 1769, he had had an aunt on his mother's side, a woman Adami née. Dreßler inherited the Sperlings and Sprittlauken manors in the parish of Schaaken . He later enjoyed spending his free time with his family on these estates. After the death of his wife on January 5, 1778, he had a family tomb built in the Schaaken church, in which she was later buried and in which, after he had also died in December of the same year, he was buried himself.

literature

• Ludwig von Baczko : Memorandum to the Hofrath and Ober-Secretair Matthias Balthasar Nicolovius . In: Contributions to Prussia's customer , Volume 2, Königsberg 1819, pp. 1–28.
• Hagen: Prussia's fate during the Swedish Wars . In: Contributions to the customer of Prussia . Volume 1, Königsberg i. Pr. 1818, pp. 106-153.

Web links

• German biography: Nicolovius, Matthias Balthasar

Individual evidence

1. ^ Alfred Nicolovius : Nekrolog . In: Prussian provincial sheets . Volume 8, Königsberg i. Pr. 1832, pp. 93-110.