Peter Joseph Valckenberg

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Peter Joseph Valckenberg (born December 2, 1764 in Eygelshoven (then: Duchy of Jülich , today: Netherlands ), † February 22, 1837 in Worms ) was a wine merchant and mayor of Worms from 1812 to 1837 .

Peter Joseph Valckenberg, contemporary painting

Life

He was the son of the Roman Catholic farmer Petrus Valckenberg († 1804 in Wambach) and his wife, Maria Catharina, née Janssen. As a teenager he attended grammar school in Liège and then began commercial training.

Merchant

He came to Worms in 1784. It is not known what connection led him there. Here he deepened his commercial knowledge in the trading house of Georg Friedrich Schuler . In 1787, on the occasion of his impending marriage, he applied for and received the citizenship of Worms. Probably in the same year he founded a trading company (today: PJ Valckenberg GmbH ), which concentrated on the wine trade towards the end of his life. He became a member of the grocer's guild. In 1808 he was able to acquire the vineyards around the Worms Liebfrauenkirche at an auction of national goods as part of the secularization , which previously belonged to the Liebfrauenstift. Valckenberg was able to successfully build up the wine grown here, Liebfrauenmilch , as an export brand, especially to Great Britain : the trading company's customers included the Dukes of Northumberland and Norfolk , the Archbishop of York and Charles Dickens even before 1850 . In 1836, a year before his death, he had real estate assets of 84,000 guilders and his trading company made a profit of 8,500 guilders.

Politician

For the first time in 1792, after French troops had occupied Worms and the city belonged to the Mainz Republic , Peter Joseph Valckenberg became a member of the Jacobin Club and the city council ("Muncipalitätsrat") of Worms. This was sensational in that it was the first time since the Reformation that a Worms Roman Catholic denomination was a member of the city council. He remained in office when the Prussians recaptured Worms, but asked for his dismissal in 1793 on the grounds that he had to have more time for his company. In 1798 Worms became part of France . From 1806 he belonged again to the city council and in 1812 became its chairman and thus mayor ( Maire ) of Worms. He was to keep this office for the next 25 years, under all changing political regimes, until his death: After the end of French rule, he was entrusted with the task by the Bavarian-Austrian interim administration, also in 1816 by the now final Grand-ducal Hessian administration, now with the title "Lord Mayor". After an election preceded the appointment of the mayor by the government in the Grand Duchy of Hesse with the municipal code of 1821, Valckenberg faced it in September 1822, which he clearly won. When he was only runner-up in the 1831 election, the government appointed him nonetheless. Valckenberg died in office in 1837.

family

Gravestone of Peter Joseph Valckenberg, old cemetery, today Albert-Schulte-Park , Worms
Grave inscription of the sister Maria Magdalena Wilhelmina Valckenberg (1761-1830)

On June 12, 1787, Peter Joseph Valckenberg married the Roman Catholic Juliane Margarethe, born Vierling (born February 26, 1767 in Worms; † February 3, 1844 ibid), the daughter of the saddler and postal official in Worms, in the Andreas Church in Worms, Peter Friedrich Vierling (1724–1770) and his wife, Maria Cäcilie ( Helene ), née Arweiler from Cologne . The marriage had eight children, four of whom reached adulthood:

  • Friedrich Valckenberg (1788–1841), wine merchant, head of the "Peter Joseph Valckenberg" company in Worms
  • Wilhelm Joseph Valckenberg (1790–1847), wine merchant, member of parliament
  • Maria Katharina Urbach (1794–1819), married on May 14, 1812 in Worms to Caspar Joseph Urbach (1777–1838), merchant in Cologne
  • Juliane Marianne Stelzmann (* 1801), married on June 8, 1824 in Worms to Johann Michael Eberhard Stelzmann (1801–1870), a businessman from Düsseldorf

His older sisters Maria Sophia Josephina (1758–1844) and Maria Magdalena Wilhelmina (1761–1830) were Cölestine women in Aachen. After the abolition of her monastery (1802), the latter moved to her brother in Worms. Her iron grave cross has also been preserved near his grave.

Honors

The Valckenbergstrasse in Worms was named after Valckenberg.

literature

  • Friedrich Maria Illert : 150 years of wine wholesaling PJ Valckenberg, 1786–1936. PJ Valckenberg, Worms 1936.
  • Friedrich Maria Illert: Liebfraumilch: From the story of a famous wine. Norberg, Worms 1961.
  • Fritz Reuter : Four important Worms families in the 19th and 20th centuries: Heyl, Valckenberg, Doerr and Reinhart. In: Genealogy 42 (1993), 9/10. ISSN  0016-6383 . Pp. 644-661.
  • Tanja Wolf: Active, honest, measured: Peter Joseph Valckenberg (1764–1837), merchant and mayor of the city of Worms (1812–1837) . In: Der Wormsgau 31 (2014/15), pp. 105–118.

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ The family tradition mentions the year 1786 for this. Wolf, p. 107, points out, however, with good reason that this cannot be true: Because without citizenship, neither a company could be founded nor accepted into the guild .
  2. ↑ This was legal due to the municipal code: the government chose a candidate from the three best placed candidates in the elections (Wolf, p. 111).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wolf, p. 107.
  2. ↑ Wolf, p. 107.
  3. ↑ Wolf, p. 107.
  4. ↑ Wolf, p. 107.
  5. ↑ Wolf, p. 108.
  6. ↑ above: Double anniversary for marketing pioneers . In: Wine + Market . No. 9 , 2008, ISSN  1439-6440 , p. 55 .
  7. ↑ Wolf, p. 108.
  8. ^ Wolf, pp. 105, 110.
  9. ↑ Wolf, p. 110.
  10. ↑ Wolf, p. 110.
  11. ↑ Wolf, p. 111.
  12. ↑ Gerold Bönnen: History of the City of Worms . Konrad Theiss Verlag, Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 3-8062-1679-7 , p. 407 f .
  13. ↑ Wolf, p. 112.
  14. ↑ Wolf, p. 105.
  15. ↑ Website on Maria Sophia Josephina Valckenberg, with a scan of her death picture
  16. ^ Genealogical website for the Valckenberg family
personal data
SURNAME Valckenberg, Peter Joseph
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Wine merchant and mayor of Worms
DATE OF BIRTH December 2, 1764
PLACE OF BIRTH Eygelshoven
DATE OF DEATH February 22, 1837
Place of death Worms