Philippe Joseph Boucqueau

Philippe Joseph Boucqueau (born September 3, 1773 in Brussels , † November 5, 1834 in Liège ) was Prefect of the Department de Rhin-et-Moselle from 1800 to 1803 .

Life and work

Philippe Joseph Boucqueau was a lawyer by profession and an avid supporter of the French Revolution . He worked in the central administration under General Commissioner François Joseph Rudler in Trier , from where the conquered areas on the left bank of the Rhine were administered.

He was married and had a son. After his son's early death, Boucqueau became a priest and his wife went to the Sisters of Mercy. In 1830 he was elected to the Belgian parliament. Most recently before his death in 1834 he was dean of the cathedral in Liège. He bequeathed his fortune of one million francs to the local seminary.

prefect

After the French revolutionary army conquered Koblenz in 1794 , the Trier electoral state came to an end. In the Treaty of Lunéville on February 9, 1801, the left bank of the Rhine now formally fell to France . Previously, the conquered territories had been divided into departments under Commissioner General François Joseph Rudler on January 23, 1798, following the French model . The capital of the Département de Rhin-et-Moselle was Koblenz, and on June 22, 1800, Rudler appointed Philippe Joseph Boucqueau as the first prefect. During his term of office, the law of June 9, 1802 on the secularization of church goods and thus the enforcement of a strict separation of church and state fell . With the dissolution of ecclesiastical rule and the change in ownership, a new social order emerged.

The introduction of the Civil Code was another deep encroachment and a step towards the creation of public indictment processes in contrast to the previously common secret inquisition processes . This modern legal system was based on individual freedoms, equality before the law, adherence to the rule of law and the protection of property. It continued to apply in the areas on the left bank of the Rhine even after the French period until the introduction of the civil code in 1900.

With the Concordat of July 15, 1801, the new freedoms guaranteed religious tolerance. After the abolition of the monasteries and monasteries , the French state guaranteed the continued existence of the Catholic parish churches. Evangelical residents received full equality in 1802. The first Protestant pastor Johannes Justus Cunz (1774-1853) was able to hold the first service in Koblenz in 1803 in the former St. Martin monastery church.

Boucqueau promoted the sciences with the establishment of the “Société d´Emulation”. This took care of the cultivation of agriculture and trade, science and art as well as the French language. In the Koblenz theater , German and French theater companies alternated. The everyday life of the people was now shaped by the French language, streets and squares were given French names, as well as the French revolution calendar , in which the week gave way to the decade with 10 days.

At the end of 1803 Boucqueau left Koblenz and moved to the United Justice Administration in Maastricht . His successor was François Louis René Mouchard de Chaban .

Presumably at the end of his tenure as prefect of the Rhine-Moselle department, in 1803/04 he created a detailed, statistical description of the population, economy, personalities etc. of the area on the left bank of the Rhine between Nahe and Lower Rhine. This almost 200-page work for the Ministry of the Interior in Paris is a collection of facts about the end of the "Old Empire" in the Rhineland, as there are few for this region from this time of social upheaval.

"La situation du département Rhin-et-Moselle, six ans après la conqête et au moment de sa réunion définitive à la République."

literature

• Wolfgang Schütz: Koblenz heads. People from the city's history - namesake for streets and squares. Verlag für Werbung Blätter GmbH, Ed .: Bernd Weber, Mülheim-Kärlich 2005 (2nd revised and expanded edition), p. 90ff.
• Boucqueau, PJ, Mémoires statistique du département de Rhin-et-Moselle. To XII, http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k84904f/f4.image.r=Boucqueau.langDE

Individual evidence

1. ^ From PP Boucqueau, Mémoires statistique ..., online library of the French National Library, Paris