Philip Wilhelm von Hornick

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Austria over everything whenever it wants , 1684

Philip Wilhelm von Hornick (born January 23, 1640 in Frankfurt am Main , † October 23, 1714 in Passau ; also written as Hörnigk or Horneck ) was a German-Austrian economist and cameraman of the Baroque period . He represented a mercantilist economic policy and is known above all for his main programmatic work, Austria, whenever it wants .

Life

His parents were the Frankfurt pharmacist and city doctor Ludwig von Hornick (also Hörnigk ) and his wife Maria Elisabeth de Jacobinis (* 1616). In 1650 he went to Mainz with his father and studied law there from 1654, from 1657 in Leuven, which was then part of the Spanish Netherlands, and from 1660 in Ingolstadt in Bavaria at the prestigious Catholic University, where he received his doctorate in 1661. In 1664/1665 he went to Vienna, where he initially served the Wiener Neustädter Bishop Christoph de Rojas y Spinola . From 1669 he was its administrator in the parish Hartberg in Styria .

From 1673 he worked together with Johann Joachim Becher in Vienna on trade statistics for the Austrian and Bohemian hereditary lands . Johann Joachim Becher was his brother-in-law and married to his sister Maria Veronika von Hörnigk (* ​​1642). In 1680 he was secretary to Count and Austrian ambassador Johann Philipp Graf Lamberg in Berlin. In 1682 he published two treatises on public law in which he severely criticized any French desires for imperial territory. After the Second Siege of the Turks in Vienna in 1683, which was only fought off with great difficulty , in 1684 he wrote a programmatic paper on the economic policy necessary to be able to survive economically and militarily against the Ottoman Empire in the future . Since at that time paid mercenaries made up a large part of the army and the loyalty of the Hungarian nobility in particular was dependent on monetary payments, he advocated a consistently mercantilist policy, the main goal of which is to increase the available funds. In this initially anonymously published work entitled Austria above everything, if only it wants to , he complained:

“All such misfortune and evil would have been to be controlled, if not, by means of a depraved national economy […] the means of resistance, nervus rerum gerendarum, would have been let out of our hands. [...] When, a few months before the real Turkish break-in, a few bare million thalers more than was actually found at the time, were at hand ... "

Above all, he demanded military security for important sources of income such as ore mines. In particular, the Transylvanian gold mines in the Apusen Mountains were meant. In his opinion, the prosperity of an empire depended mainly on the raw materials it contained and less on trade, which at that time was mostly limited to luxury goods. He proposed an incomprehensible project for the formation of an army of one hundred thousand men from the Imperial Hereditary Lands , in which he posed the question:

"What does 100,000 armed men cost and to what extent is that affordable?"

This work is considered to be one of the most important works of mercantilism and dominated the economic and political discussion for a generation. A total of 15 editions were published up to 1784. He understood the Habsburg territories as a coherent economic area for the first time and thus laid the foundation for the absolutist economic policy in the 18th century.

In 1690, when his influence at the Viennese court declined, he moved to the Hochstift Passau and entered the service of Johann Philipp von Lamberg, who has now become bishop there, and became his personal advisor and privy councilor. He then spent the rest of his life in Passau, which at the time was politically closely aligned with Austria. In 1708 he published his last work, Historical Report of the Real Causes of the Privileges of the Most Highly Praised Ertz House in Austria .

Philip Wilhelm von Hornick was close friends with Johann Joachim Becher , who came from Speyer, and was in correspondence with his contemporary Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz .

reception

His work was first scientifically processed by Karl Theodor von Inama-Sternegg , his successor as an Austrian statistician and economic theorist in the late 19th century. In 1997 a facsimile print of his writing from 1684 appeared for the first time.

Germany song

When August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben wrote the text of the Deutschlandlied on Heligoland in 1841 , he was inspired by the title of Hornick's Austria, above all , in the opening line . Baron Philipp von Gemmingen, who died in 1800, had already taken this up and published a magazine under the title Teutschland über alles . In 1809 the Austrian poet Heinrich Joseph von Collin used the same line for a patriotic soldier's song. Its first stanza is:

“If it only wants, Austria is always above everything! Military men now cheerfully shout: It wants, it wants! High Austria! "

Works

  • Matthias Kautt, Philipp Wilhelm von Hörnigk: Dispvtatio Jvridica De Jvrisdictione In Genere Et De Ecclesiastica Et Secvlari SRI Principvm-Episcoporvm In Specie . 1661 ( digitized in the Google book search).
  • Philipp Wilhelm von Hörnigk: HGDC Francopolitae True Report from the ancient Kingdom of Austrasia . 1682 ( digitized in the Google book search).
  • Philipp Wilhelm von Hörnigk: Franco-Germania that is HGDC Francopolitae True France, or report of the Kingdom of Germania, and clear evidence that the ancient, true, real and some kingdom of the Francken, eight hundred years ago on the German Empire alone passed . 1682 ( digitized in the Google book search).
  • Philipp Wilhelm von Hörnigk: Austria over everything, whenever it wants. that is: well-meaning forbearance, like the Kayserl by means of a well-ordered country economy. To raise hereditary lands in a short time above all other states of Europe, and to make more than some of them independent of the others . 1684 ( digitized in the Google book search). Facsimile edition: Verlag Wirtschaft und Finances, Düsseldorf 1997
  • Philipp Wilhelm von Hörnigk: Vindiciæ S. Rom. Imperii Et Vicinæ Europæ, Adversus Regum Galliæ Capetinorum Origines, Nomine Gastonis Joannis Ducis Espernonii . 1686
  • Philipp Wilhelm von Hörnigk: Historical display of the actual causes of the privilege of the most highly praised Ertz house in Austria . 1688 ( digitized in the Google book search).
  • Philipp Wilhelm von Hörnigk: Franco-Germania: That is: Hippophili Galeacii de Corneliis Franco-Politae, report of the kingdoms of Austrasia, Lorraine and Germania . 1708 ( digitized in the Google book search).
  • Philipp Wilhelm von Hörnigk: Historical display of those privileges of the Ertzhauses Austria . 1708 ( digitized in the Google book search).

Individual evidence

  1. Harrassowitz, Christoph Reske from: The book printers of the 16th and 17th centuries in the German-speaking area: Based on the work of the same name by Josef Benzing. (2007), p. 252
  2. ^ Barbara Dölemeyer: Frankfurt lawyers in the 17th and 18th centuries ; Vittorio Klostermann, 1993, ISBN 3-465-02583-0 , page 82
  3. Thomas Simon: good policey . Vittorio Klostermann, 2004, ISBN 3-465-03313-2 page 391
  4. Germany, Germany over everything , textlog.de

literature

Web links