Peter Emanuel von Zedtwitz

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Lost epitaph, formerly St. Sebastian Church, Ludwigshafen-Mundenheim

Peter Emanuel Freiherr von Zedtwitz-Liebenstein (born December 8, 1715 in Libá , Czech Republic , Liebenstein Castle ; † July 23, 1786 in Ludwigshafen-Mundenheim ) was a baron , as well as an Electoral Palatinate and Palatinate-Bavarian official and minister.

biography

He came from the originally Franconian, later Bohemian-Bavarian noble family of the von Zedtwitz and was the son of the imperial dragoon captain Wolf Dietrich von Zedwitz, as well as his wife Catharina Dorothea nee. Zedtwitz (from another line of the house).

With his older brother Peter Emanuel von Zedtwitz came to the court of the Palatinate Elector Karl Philipp , where he served as a chamber page . After studying law at the University of Heidelberg , the nobleman was promoted to court judge in 1729, councilor of government in 1743 and finally to judge of higher appeal. On February 6, 1751 he became court judge of the Electorate of the Palatinate . In addition, von Zedtwitz was chief treasurer and chief magistrate of Neustadt an der Haardt .

From 1756, under Elector Karl Theodor , he acted as Minister of State at the Mannheim court and was responsible for foreign policy in the Electorate of the Palatinate. His most momentous achievement is the drafting of the Wittelsbach house contracts , as a result of which Bavaria fell to the Palatinate Elector in 1777. In addition, von Zedtwitz, together with Claude de Saint Martin , introduced a lottery based on the Italian model in the Electoral Palatinate . He was a knight of the Bavarian Order of St. Hubertus .

Peter Emanuel von Zedtwitz first married Josepha von Jungwirth, daughter of the court judge Joseph Benedikt von Jungwirth, lord of the castle at Handschuhsheim . After her death he married Magdalena Edle von Herding, from one of the richest families in Mannheim. The couple were appointed by the Elector as the guardian of his illegitimate daughter Karoline Franziska Dorothea von Parkstein (1762-1816), who also grew up in their home.

In 1770, Elector Karl Theodor von Zedtwitz gave the estate in Mundenheim along with six Rhine islands as a fief and this used the Mundenheim manor house as a country residence. The building was redesigned at that time, possibly by the Palatine court architect Pieter-Antoon Verschaffelt (1710–1793). Von Zedtwitz created a model agricultural business on the Hofgut with the first beer brewery in Mundenheim.

There he died on July 23, 1786 of an "inflammatory breast disease" and was buried on July 26 in the crypt of the Catholic St. Sebastian Church in Mundenheim. The historic church was destroyed in the Second World War and rebuilt in a modern way from 1952. On the outer south wall of the nave there used to be an epitaph for Peter Emanuel von Zedtwitz, which has been lost since the reconstruction.

After the death of his widow (1814), his sister-in-law Josepha Ursula von Herding inherited the Mundenheim estate and the Rhine islands as the closest living relative.

Peter Emanuel von Zedtwitz was a friend and supporter of the natural scientist Friedrich Casimir Medicus , who also acted as his family doctor.

literature

  • Wolfgang Kunz: In loyalty to the Electoral Palatinate: Freiherr Peter Emanuel von Zedtwitz-Liebenstein (1715-1786), village lord and minister in: Mannheimer Geschichtsblätter, 1995, pp. 283–296

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Illustrated website on the history of the Zedtwitz estate, Mundenheim
  2. ^ Adolf Kistner: The care of the natural sciences in Mannheim at the time of Karl Theodor , Mannheimer Altertumsverein, 1930, page 122; Excerpts from the source