Otto Mettal

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Otto Mettal

Otto Mettal , 1897–1904 Mettal von Frivald , from 1912 Knight von Mettal (born January 30, 1848 in Humpolec , † April 2, 1921 in Prague ) was a large Bohemian landowner and politician.

Life

Otto Mettal was the son of a textile manufacturer in Humpolec , studied law with a subsequent doctorate to become a Dr. jur. and then taught as a professor of economics at the Bohemian Agricultural Academy Tetschen-Liebwerd . He married in Karolinenthal in 1880 Amalie Schebek (1853-1924), a daughter of the railway construction company Jan Schebek , with whom he fathered four daughters. In 1889, the Mettal couple bought the Zdechovice castle from Karl von Paar as well as the goods in Zruč nad Sázavou , Větrný Jeníkov , Rozsochatec and the Telčice farm in Bohemia .

His daughter Hannah became known as the German-language translator for James Joyce and she had a good relationship with Jan Masaryk . Her sister Marie was married to Emanuel Greif, the chief state official of Prime Minister Karel Kramář , and she inherited her father's property.

After the Velvet Revolution , the valuable Rozsochatec castle library, which was confiscated in 1948 and which goes back to Lazan's Bechinie, was returned to Otto Mettal's grandson Jan Greif.

Nobility

In the 1890s Otto Mettal tried to provide evidence of his descent from the Silesian noble family Mettel . A branch of this family moved from Silesia to Frývald in Hungary (today northwestern Slovakia ) at the beginning of the 17th century , and on June 13, 1658 a Peter Mettel / Mettal was ennobled with the title of Frivald . In 1897, the submitted documents, which identified Otto Mettal as a descendant of Peter Mettal von Frivald, were finally recognized by the authorities on intercession from the ranks of the influential large landowners, despite concerns about their authenticity, and the nobility was confirmed while retaining the old coat of arms. However, the genealogist Alois Müller von Mildenberg successfully filed a lawsuit against this, calling the documents submitted for this purpose a forgery and the title of nobility, for which Otto Mettal had paid 20,000 guilders, as bought. In 1904 the title and coat of arms were withdrawn from him. Emperor Franz Joseph appointed Otto Mettal as a member of the Reichsrat for life on December 26, 1911, and proposed him for his services to be knighted. He was ennobled on January 31, 1912 with the predicate Knight of Mettal and was awarded a completely new coat of arms.

The existence of Peter Mettal von Frivald is considered controversial. Since the Silesian Mettel can also be shown to have been in the Freiwaldau area in the Jeseníky Mountains - that is, by no means in Frývald in Hungary - an ancestry of Otto Mettal from the Silesian aristocratic Mettel family is rather unlikely.

politics

From 1892 to 1913 Otto Mettal was a member of the Bohemian Landtag as a representative of the Allod estate. Between 1897 and 1907 he was a member of the Austrian House of Representatives as a representative of the conservative large estates in Bohemia. From 1907 to 1918 he belonged to the parliamentary group of the right in the House.

tomb

Mettal and his wife were buried in the Zdechovice castle chapel. After the withdrawal of the Red Army from Zdechovice Castle, the crypt was found partially open in August 1990, with bones clearly visible. An official opening of the crypt revealed that both the coffins and the tin inserts with windows for viewing the embalmed bodies had been destroyed and the remains were in the groundwater. The corpses were exhumed and, after being cremated in the Pardubice crematorium, dignifiedly reburied in the crypt.

literature

  • Letters and documents on the history of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy , fol. 26th

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://patricus.info/Rodokmeny/Schebek.txt
  2. ↑ http://www.zdechovice.cz/cs/vsichni/fotogalerie/detail-otto-mettal-s-rodinou/
  3. ↑ http://www.lib.cas.cz/en/vydano-avcr/rocnik-1-1994-c-1  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.lib.cas.cz  
  4. ↑ Stenographic minutes of the meetings of the House of Representatives of the Austrian Reichsrath in 1902 (XVII. Session), Volume 19, Vienna 1902, p. 16407. [1]
  5. ↑ See Nová šlechta v českých zemích a podunajské monarchii
  6. ↑ http://www.zdechovice.cz/cs/navstevnik/sochy-a-pomniky/
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personal data
SURNAME Mettal, Otto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Bohemian-Czechoslovak politician
DATE OF BIRTH January 30, 1848
PLACE OF BIRTH at Humpolec
DATE OF DEATH April 2, 1921
Place of death Prague