Philipp Adolph von Münchhausen

Philipp Adolph von Münchhausen (* July 7, 1694 ; † December 11, 1762 ) was a German administrative lawyer and most recently Hanoverian Minister of State and head of the German Chancellery in London .

Life

Philipp Adolph von Münchhausen studied law at the universities of Jena and Halle , was introduced to the court in Wolfenbüttel in 1717 as a Brunswick-Lüneburg chamberlain and later on to the court council. In 1724 he changed to royal Polish and electoral Saxon services as a senior appellate councilor. In 1728 he was called to Osnabrück by Bishop Ernst August as Real Privy Councilor. After the bishop's imminent death, he entered service in the Electorate of Hanover and became a secret and first councilor in Stade . From 1731 he was Count of Hadeln . On April 11, 1741 he was appointed Minister of State, and in 1749 head of the German Chancellery in London. The written correspondence of the British kings from the House of Hanover with the government offices in Hanover always went through the German Chancellery in London and its minister. At the same time Münchhausen was president of the government council for the duchies of Bremen and Verden in Stade until 1758 .

Münchhausen died in Hanover in 1762 while passing through to his Steinburg estate and was buried in the St. Marien garden church in Hanover.

family

He was a son of Gerlach Heino von Münchhausen (1652-1710), Lord of Wendlinghausen (in the county of Lippe ), and Catharina Sophia von Selmnitz from the Steinburg family , co-heir of the estate in Straussfurt . His father was in Prussian service as chamberlain to the great elector , then as chief stable master of Frederick I. The couple had twelve children. The oldest brother was the Oberhofmarschall of the Duchess of Saxe-Weimar, Ernst Friedemann von Münchhausen (1686-1762), Herr auf Wendlinghausen (1731 sold) and Herrengosserstedt (1730 acquired), the second oldest brother was the Royal British Prime Minister of the Electorate of Hanover, Gerlach Adolph von Münchhausen (1688–1770), Lord of Straussfurt.

Philipp Adolph von Münchhausen was married twice, his first marriage from 1724 to Charlotte von Münchhausen from the Neuhaus-Leitzkau house (1705–1730), and his second marriage from 1738 to Sophie Charlotte von der Schulenburg from the Altenhausen family (1714–1789). Amalie (1757-1844) was one of his children from his second marriage. In 1785 she caused a scandal at the Weimar Musenhof by going through a mock funeral with August von Einsiedel , whom she married in 1788 as a second marriage.

He was an uncle ( second cousin of the father) of Karl Friedrich Hieronymus Freiherr von Münchhausen, famous as the " baron of lies " .

possession

Philipp Adolph von Münchhausen probably spent the first years of his life in Berlin. Since after the death of the father in 1710 the paternal estate Wendlinghausen and the maternal estate Straußfurt passed to the older brothers, Philipp Adolph received the estate Steinburg , which had belonged to his maternal grandfather Ernst Friedemann von Selmnitz and which his father had to his brother-in-law Selmnitz in 1686 had bought. In 1753, Philipp Adolph acquired the neighboring Tauhardt estate as a Vorwerk. As part of the Eckartsberga office, Steinburg belonged to the Thuringian Circle of the Electorate of Saxony.

Two years before his death, he finally inherited the "Gut Althaus" in Leitzkau (with Vorwerk Hobeck), in the Brandenburg-Prussian Duchy of Magdeburg , from a cousin in 1760 - together with his brothers .

Since he was not resident in Kurhannover, because his inherited goods were in other principalities, he received from his employer Georg III. shortly before his death in 1762 a "general fiefdom prospect " for the next fiefdom to become free in the Electorate of Hanover. Because of this, his son Friedrich Otto was enfeoffed with the Bettensen estate in 1764 , which is still owned by his descendants today.

literature

• Rauch: The heads of the Stader government until 1866 . In: Jahrbuch der Männer vom Morgenstern 24 (1930), p. 76