Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl Stanhope

Philip Henry Stanhope, 4th Earl Stanhope (around 1825)

Philip Henry Stanhope, 4th Earl Stanhope (born December 7, 1781 in Chevening , Kent , † March 2, 1855 ibid) was an English aristocrat, politician and private scholar.

From 1829 to 1837 he presided over the "Medico-Botanical Society" in London, was a member of the "Royal Society", at times Vice-President of the "Society of Arts" and was involved in numerous political, economic and social associations and societies. In the 1830s he was involved in the Kaspar Hauser affair .

Family, life and politics

Lord Stanhope, circa 1835. Detail of a Members of the House of Lords drawing , probably by Isaac Robert Cruikshank.

As the eldest son of the politician and inventor Charles 3rd Earl Stanhope , Philip Henry initially held the title Viscount Mahon. His half-sister was Lady Hester Stanhope , the legendary "Queen of the East". The German politician and legal scholar Gustav Radbruch thought they were "strange people without balance" , at least they seem to have been gifted and headstrong personalities. The historian Aubrey Newman points to Stanhope's diverse interests, his unusual enthusiasm, but also to his self-contradictions.

As a young man, Philip Henry fled from his authoritarian father Charles, an ardent supporter of the French Revolution, to Germany, where he briefly attended the University of Erlangen and anonymously published a prayer book in Dresden in 1800 for believers and non-believers, for Christians and non-Christians . When he returned home, he married the daughter of Robert Smith, 1st Baron Carrington, in 1803; a reconciliation with the father failed. Support came from Prime Minister William Pitt , a second cousin who arranged two sinecurs for Lord Mahon and the post of lieutenant governor at Dover Castle. For several years he represented various constituencies in the House of Commons , in line with his father-in-law's liberal political ideas. When Charles 3rd Earl Stanhope died in December 1816, Philip Henry inherited title, fortune and independence, and a seat in the House of Lords . Politically he was now close to the anti-Catholic Ultra- Tories , but increasingly isolated himself. a. because he did not want to belong to any party himself. He campaigned for land and agrarian reform, agitated for protective tariffs and against free trade, advocated the abolition of slavery and, in his rejection of the new poor law, worked with chartists and workers' organizations without giving up his rather paternalistic point of view. Fearing revolutionary upheavals, he appealed to the social responsibility of his peers in the House of Lords. Basically, he strove for a parliamentary reform in order to enable broader and fairer participation of all social classes.

Whether his numerous trips to the European continent were subject to systematic (double) agent activity is based on arbitrary assumptions. In England, on the other hand, his great passion for everything German irritated.

Stanhope and Kaspar Hauser

In May 1831 he got to know the Nuremberg "foundling" Kaspar Hauser, whose story he had been interested in for a long time. He was fascinated by him beyond measure, as was Paul Johann Anselm von Feuerbach , who was no less enthusiastic about Hauser . Stanhope trusted the famous legal scholar's opinion of the young man and immediately provided financial support. He presented Kaspar with useful and less useful things; He financed trips several times to clarify its origin.

On December 2, 1831, he received the care of Kaspar Hauser, while Feuerbach took care of his moral and physical well-being. Guardianship had passed from court assessor Gottlieb von Tucher to Nuremberg mayor Jakob Friedrich Binder . Von Tucher had criticized Stanhope's behavior, which had undermined his educational principles.

On Feuerbach's recommendation, Kaspar Hauser was housed in Ansbach in the family of the teacher Meyer and the Gendarmerie Unterleutnant Josef Hickel was placed at the side of the pupil as a "special curator". The entire maintenance costs, until then borne by the city of Nuremberg , were taken over by Lord Stanhope.

In the summer of 1831 Stanhope had encouraged Feuerbach to write a book about Hauser. A project that Feuerbach had previously discussed with the Berlin lawyer and publisher Julius Eduard Hitzig . At the turn of the year, immediately after the publication of Kaspar Hauser or an example of a crime against a person's soul , Feuerbach had Stanhope and Hickel personally convey his work to the Baden and Bavarian courts. Their letters and reports did not seem to confirm Feuerbach's suspicion, mainly caused by newspaper reports, that Kaspar Hauser might be an exchanged Hereditary Prince of Baden. Stanhope had only half-heartedly upheld this assumption; he saw in Kaspar the offspring of a Hungarian magnate . Hauser's apparently Hungarian language skills, which were publicly discussed, had led him to this assumption. The "special curator" Hickel was sent on the trip again, but this did not provide any confirmation or evidence of Hauser's Hungarian origin. The ineffectiveness of this research was so in contradiction with the statements made previously and Hauser's behavior that Stanhope began to have doubts about his credibility. In the end there were more questions than answers and Stanhope merely stuck to the assumption of an early isolation of Hauser, although it could not have happened as Kaspar said. Because of these doubts, he decided not to hand over an English translation of the Feuerbach book he had made to a publisher, but only to have it privately printed and distributed to friends.

In his first excitement, Stanhope had promised Hauser that he would take him to England, but his growing skepticism made him refrain from it. Nonetheless, he fulfilled his financial obligations and in 1833 still suspended a life annuity for Kaspar Hauser.

After Kaspar Hauser's (probably self-inflicted ) death in December 1833, the journalistic controversy about Stanhope's role in the tragedy began immediately. He tried to justify himself with brochures and newspaper articles, but in addition to encouragement, especially in Germany, a conspiracy-ideological, moral condemnation of Stanhope prevailed in the long term, which in 1988 in the only German biography with the telling title Lord Stanhope. Kaspar Hauser's opponent culminated.

In the historical-scientific literature about Kaspar Hauser, however, a de-demonization took place. Walther Schreibmüller, for example, wrote, " Stanhope did not make it easy for himself to provide evidence in the 'materials'. He was so objective to admit that the question still remains whether Kaspar should be called a fraud in the true sense of the word; he I hope that the world will judge the unfortunate foundling with fairness in this respect. All in all, the 'materials' of their author give the impression of a carefully weighing man who endeavors to ascertain the truth. "

Stanhope's later life until his death on March 2, 1855 was still shaped by his constant curiosity for more or less scientifically justifiable phenomena. From an intimate bond with his children, who remained after the death (1828) of their son Georg Joseph, Philip Henry (1805–1875), who later became 5th Earl Stanhope and British historian, and Catherine Lucy Wilhelmina (1806–1901), mother of Archibald Philip Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery , testify to numerous letters from the estate.

Honors

According to Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl Stanhope, the plant genera are Stanhopea J.Frost ex Hook. and Stanhopeastrum Rchb.f. named from the orchid family.

literature

• Johannes Mayer: Philip Henry Lord Stanhope. Kaspar Hauser's opponent . Mayer, Stuttgart 1988, ISBN 3-87838-554-4
• Aubrey Newman: The Stanhopes of Chevening A Family Biography . Macmillan, London et al. 1969.
• Graf Stanhope (ed.): Materials on the history of Kaspar Hauser . Mohr, Heidelberg 1835, (Reprint: Introduced and edited by Klaus H. Fischer. Dr. Klaus Fischer Verlag - Scientific publishing house, Schutterwald 2004, ISBN 3-928640-70-4 ).
• Ivo Striedinger : New literature about Kaspar Hauser . In: Journal for Bavarian State History 6, 1933, ISSN  0044-2364 , pp. 415–484, in particular pp. 424–429.

Web links

Commons : Philip Henry Stanhope, 4th Earl Stanhope  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Dictionary of National Biography , ed. By Sidney Lee, London 1898, vol. 54, p. 37ff.
2. ^ Aubrey Newman: The Stanhopes of Chevening; A Family Biography , London / New York 1969, pp. 224-250
3. ↑ Erik Wolf (ed.): Gustav Radbruch Briefe , Göttingen 1968, p. 117.
4. ^ Fritz Trautz : On the problem of personality interpretation: On the occasion of the Kaspar Hauser book by Jean Mistler , in: Francia 2, 1974, p. 719
5. ^ Aubrey Newman: The Stanhopes of Chevening , London / New York 1969, p. 224
6. ^ Aubrey Newman, p. 236
7. ^ Aubrey Newman, p. 237
8. ↑ Johannes Mayer: Lord Stanhope. The opponent Kaspar Hausers , Stuttgart 1988
9. ^ Kaspar Hauser, the Foundling of Nuremberg , London 1832 ( digitized version )
10. ↑ Walther Schreibmüller: Balance of a 150-year Kaspar Hauser research , in: Genealogisches Jahrbuch, Vol. 31, Neustadt 1991, p. 46
11. ↑ Johannes Mayer: Lord Stanhope. The opponent Kaspar Hausers , Stuttgart 1988
12. ↑ Walther Schreibmüller: Balance of a 150-year Kaspar Hauser research , in: Genealogisches Jahrbuch, vol. 31, Neustadt 1991, p. 47
13. ↑ Lotte Burkhardt: Directory of eponymous plant names - Extended Edition. Part I and II. Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin , Freie Universität Berlin , Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-946292-26-5 doi: 10.3372 / epolist2018 .

predecessor	Office	successor
Charles Stanhope	Earl Stanhope 1816-1855	Philip Stanhope