Otto Dresel (lawyer)

Otto Dresel on a drawing by Julius Geißler (1845)

Otto Dresel (born September 21, 1824 in Detmold , Principality of Lippe , † January 5, 1881 in Columbus , Ohio ) was a German-American lawyer, journalist and politician. He was one of the protagonists of the 1848 revolution in the Principality of Lippe. He emigrated to the USA , where he became a lawyer and later a member of the House of Representatives in Ohio for the Democratic Party .

Life

Dresel, son of the Detmold seminar teacher Adolf Dresel, attended the Leopoldinum in Detmold from 1833 to 1842 and then went on to study law in Jena. During his studies in 1842 he became a member of the Burschenschaft in the Burgkeller and in 1845 was probably a co-founder of the Teutonia Jena fraternity .

After completing his studies, he initially worked as a lawyer in Detmold. In July 1848 he became one of the editors of the revolutionary Lippe magazine Die Wage . In May 1849, Dresel took part in the March Association Congress in Frankfurt. As he writes in the Wage , members of the March Association, including himself, to whom the President of the National Assembly had given special seats, had the opportunity to attend a meeting of the National Assembly in the Paulskirche on the morning of May 7th .

On April 28, 1849, an article directed against the prince appeared in the magazine 'Wage'. Dresel, who was responsible for the article as editor and refused to give the name of the author, was charged with "participating in the crime of publicly insulting the sovereign" and sentenced to two years' imprisonment in November of the same year. To avoid the punishment, Dresel emigrated to the USA.

From the spring of 1850 he studied American law in Ohio, took an exam before the Supreme Court of Ohio in 1852 and practiced as a lawyer from 1853. In 1861 he was the school director. However, he continued his practice as a lawyer. As a member of the Democratic Party, he became a member of the House of Representatives of the State of Ohio for Franklin County and campaigned for the abolition of slavery .

Otto Dresel committed on January 5, 1881 in Columbus suicide .

literature

"What great times we are experiencing!" The letters of the Lippe Chancellor Friedrich Ernst Ballhorn-Rosen to his son Georg in Constantinople 1847-1851, edited. v. Agnes Stache-Weiske, Detmold 1999, p. 54, note 236 (short biography)
Biographical notices of the members of the fifty-fifth General Assembly of the state of Ohio. John Wallace, Columbus 1862, p. 55 f. ( Digitized version ).
Helge Dvorak: Biographical Lexicon of the German Burschenschaft. Volume I: Politicians, Part 1: A – E. Heidelberg 1996, pp. 220-221.

Web links

Otto Dresel in the database of Find a Grave (English)

Individual evidence

^ ^A ^b Hanns-Peter Fink: Leopoldinum - Gymnasium zu Detmold 1602–2002 (= special publications of the Natural Science and Historical Association for the Land of Lippe . Volume 64 ). Aisthesis Verlag, Bielefeld 2002, ISBN 3-89528-365-7 , p. 288 .
↑ Die Wage No. 40 of May 10, 1849, p. 176
^ Biographical notices of the members of the fifty-fifth General Assembly of the state of Ohio , John Wallace, Columbus 1862, p. 56
↑ Annegret Tegtmeier-Breit: ... including the poison that are so eagerly eager to get into the veins of our people through their godless and hopeless press. Political associations and the Lippe press in 1848/49 . In: Lippe 1848. To hand over a petition from the democratic manner . Lippische Landesbibliothek, Detmold 1998, ISBN 3-9806297-0-8 , p. 174-176 .

personal data
SURNAME	Dresel, Otto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German-American lawyer, journalist and politician
DATE OF BIRTH	September 21, 1824
PLACE OF BIRTH	Detmold , Principality of Lippe
DATE OF DEATH	January 5, 1881
Place of death	Columbus , Ohio

[Leopoldinum-1] A ^b Hanns-Peter Fink: Leopoldinum - Gymnasium zu Detmold 1602–2002 (= special publications of the Natural Science and Historical Association for the Land of Lippe . Volume 64 ). Aisthesis Verlag, Bielefeld 2002, ISBN 3-89528-365-7 , p. 288 .

[2] Die Wage No. 40 of May 10, 1849, p. 176

[3] Biographical notices of the members of the fifty-fifth General Assembly of the state of Ohio , John Wallace, Columbus 1862, p. 56

[4] Annegret Tegtmeier-Breit: ... including the poison that are so eagerly eager to get into the veins of our people through their godless and hopeless press. Political associations and the Lippe press in 1848/49 . In: Lippe 1848. To hand over a petition from the democratic manner . Lippische Landesbibliothek, Detmold 1998, ISBN 3-9806297-0-8 , p. 174-176 .