Pankraz Vorster

Pankraz Vorster (born July 31, 1753 in Naples , † September 9, 1829 in Muri ) was the last prince abbot of St. Gallen from 1796 to 1805 .

Contemporary portrait of Pankraz Vorster

Plaque on the grave in the east crypt of the collegiate church St. Gallen

Life

Vorster came from an old family from the Princely Land . He was born in Naples as the son of Captain Joseph Zacharias Vorster and Countess Anna Maria Rosa Berni. He grew up mainly with his uncle, who was a pastor in Grub and Wittenbach . He made his profession in St. Gallen in 1771 and taught philosophy, natural sciences and moral theology at the collegiate school. He was ordained a priest on July 13, 1777. In 1784 he went on an educational trip to Swabia and Bavaria with Johann Nepomuk Hauntinger . In 1785 he leads the opposition to Abbot Beda Angehrn , who endangered the existence of the monastery in the eyes of numerous monks through his large investments and his autocratic administration. In September 1788, he was therefore as vice governor ( suboeconomus ) in the sanktgallische exclave Ebringen in Freiburg demoted. The local rule of St. Gallen there was under Austrian sovereignty. There he mainly took care of the dairy industry and set up a dairy. It was not until 1796 that Vorster reconciled himself with Abbot Beda Angehrn and returned to St. Gallen.

On June 1, 1796, Vorster was elected abbot and immediately opposed the democratic aspirations in the monastery's dominions. But in 1797 he had to grant the old landscape its own seal and the election of a district administrator. When on February 3, 1798 the chapter arbitrarily released the subjects into independence, the secular rule of the monastery came to an end. The last bailiff of the monastery in the county of Toggenburg , Karl von Müller-Friedberg , had already released the Toggenburgers into independence on January 1st. On February 14th, the constituent rural community of the "Free Republic of the St. Gallen Landscape" took place in Gossau . Vorster moved to Neu-Ravensburg , a St. Gallen exclave north of Lake Constance, and on March 3, 1798, raised a formal protest against the actions of his subjects. After the French invaded St. Gallen, Vorster tried in vain to proclaim the prince abbey from Switzerland on June 9, 1798 and reintegrate it into the Holy Roman Empire . When the coalition troops marched into St. Gallen, Vorster returned to the monastery on May 26, 1799 and began to rebuild the rule. However, he had to flee to Mehrerau again on September 29 , as the tide had turned again after the defeat of the coalition near Zurich . (→ Second coalition war )

From exile in Austria's sphere of influence, Vorster worked continuously to restore his monastery. From 1801 he resided mainly in Ehaben, the last remaining territory of the prince abbey. There he uncompromisingly refused all offers to restore the monastery without sovereignty rights. In 1803 he sent an envoy to the Helvetic Consulta in Paris in order to have Napoléon personally restore the monastery. Despite the assurance in the mediation act that all the monasteries should be restored, the first Landammann of St. Gallen, Karl von Müller-Friedberg, was able to prevent the restoration of the St. Gallen monastery, since Vorster's far-reaching demands would prevent the existence of the newly founded canton of St. Gallen would have endangered. Nevertheless, on November 17, 1804, Vorster received the benediction as abbot of St. Gallen by the Basel bishop Franz Xaver von Neveu in Offenburg . The Grand Council of the Canton of St. Gallen then decided on May 8, 1805 to liquidate the monastery. At the beginning of the third coalition war in September 1805, Vorster left Ehaben and finally came to Vienna via Slavonia. From there in 1806 he demanded lifelong rule from the canton and an annual pension of 4,000 guilders. In 1806, however, Austria finally lost control of the Breisgau and the canton of St. Gallen therefore did not respond to Vorster's territorial claims, but sold Ehaben to Baden in 1807.

Despite his efforts, Vorster must tragically be called the grave digger of the monastery, as he prevented any compromise solution.

From the point of view of the Catholic Church, Vorster remained abbot of the monastery, as the repeal was not sanctioned by the church. In 1814/15 Vorster tried personally at the Congress of Vienna to reestablish monastic rule, but was only able to get the congress to award him a pension of 6,000 guilders on November 20, 1815, which the canton of St. Gallen had to pay. With the support of the Pope, Vorster then tried at least to establish a diocese of St. Gallen , but failed on July 16, 1816 before the federal diet . In the same year he moved to Arth . From 1819 on, he withdrew bitterly to Muri Monastery , where he died in 1829. Formally, he remained abbot of St. Gallen until his death, as the monastery was not abolished until 1845 from the perspective of the Catholic Church. His body was transferred to St. Gallen Cathedral in 1923 .

literature

• Johannes Dierauer :  Vorster, Pankraz . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 40, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1896, pp. 312-319.
• Historisch-Biographisches Lexikon der Schweiz , Vol. 7, Neuchâtel 1934, p. 300.
• Alfred Meier: Abbot Pankraz Vorster and the abolition of the Prince Abbey of St. Gallen . Freiburg i.Ue. 1954 (Studia Friburgensia NF 8).
• Werner Vogler: Abbot Pankraz Vorster of St. Gallen and the Congress of Vienna 1814/15 . St. Gallen 1982.
• Pankraz Vorster , in: Helvetia Sacra III / 1/2 (1986), pp. 1348-1350.

Web links

Commons : Pankraz Vorster  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Abbot Pankraz Vorster (1796-1805) in the city encyclopedia of the city of Wil
• Lorenz Hollenstein: Pankraz Vorster. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .

predecessor	Office	successor
Beda Angehrn	Abbot of St. Gallen 1767 - 1796	---