Reinhard Scheffer the youngest

Reinhard Scheffer the youngest

Reinhard Scheffer the Youngest (born August 20, 1590 in Marburg ; † February 11, 1656 ibid) was a German lawyer, diplomat and statesman.

origin

Scheffer came from outstanding Hessian civil servant families on both his father's and his mother's side. He was the eldest son of the Hessen-Kassel Council and Samthofgericht - assessor Reinhard Scheffer the Younger (1561–1623), who in 1615 became Chancellor of Landgrave Moritz . His mother was Margarethe Heintzenberger (1567–1632), daughter of Johann Heintzenberger (1531–1581), who was Chancellor of Landgrave Ludwig IV of Hesse-Marburg from 1569 until his death .

career

Scheffer joined the pedagogy of the High School in Herborn in 1605 . From December 1606 he studied at the Philipps University of Marburg , which had become Calvinist by landgrave order that year , where his conceptions of constitutional law were formed under Hermann Vultejus , and probably also at the University of Heidelberg . His training was therefore emphatically Calvinistic. After a long educational trip through Germany, France, England and the Netherlands, Scheffer entered the service of Landgrave Moritz in 1617, probably on the intervention of his father, who was appointed chancellor in 1615, but became a councilor in 1624 when Moritz increasingly relied on foreign officials and was in dispute with the Hessian estates , dismissed for insubordination.

After the Landgrave's abdication, forced by the estates, in 1627, his son and successor Wilhelm V. Scheffer appointed almost immediately as councilor and bailiff in Wolfhagen and Zierenberg . Two years later he was the secret councilor of the Kassel government, and from 1635 he was the Hesse-Kassel general (war) commissioner . The high esteem that Scheffer received from Landgravine Amalie Elisabeth , widow of Wilhelm V, who died in 1637, and regent for the still underage Wilhelm VI. , enjoyed, was shown in the fact that she appointed him, together with Peter Melander von Holzappel and Philipp von Scholley , to the five-member Regency Council that Wilhelm V had appointed in his will and of its originally nominated members only Vice Chancellor Helfrich Deinhard and the later Rent Chamber President Nikolaus Sixtinus were alive.

In 1638 he was sent by Landgravine Amalie Elisabeth , widow of Wilhelm V, who died the previous year, and regent for the still underage Wilhelm VI. to negotiate with the States General in The Hague . On the way back he fell into the hands of the Spaniards on the Lower Rhine , who held him captive for some time. In 1641 he was envoy to the Reichstag in Regensburg .

From June 1644, Scheffer was one of four Hesse-Kassel envoys at the Westphalian peace negotiations in Osnabrück , where he faced the hostility of Emperor Ferdinand III. knew how to use the early alliances with both France and Sweden with great skill. Essentially, it was thanks to Scheffer, who agreed with Landgravine Amalie Elisabeth in achieving equality of the Reformed Confession in the empire , that the internal Protestant dissent on this issue was overcome and that Sweden and France agreed to the tri- confessionalism . In 1648 he signed the peace treaty in Osnabrück on behalf of the Kassel regent.

Under Landgrave Wilhelm VI., Who took over the business of government in 1650, Scheffer became president of the government of Upper Hesse in Marburg in 1653, where on June 24, 1653 he led the celebrations for the reopening of the university together with Johann Heinrich Dauber .

death

Scheffer died, unmarried, three years later at the age of 65 on February 11, 1656 in his native town.

Notes and individual references

1. ↑ http://www.uni-mannheim.de/mateo/camenaref/adam/adam3/s277.html
2. ↑ Eduard Vehse: History of the courtyards in the houses of Baiern, Würtemberg, Baden and Hesse, fifth part. (History of the German courts since the Reformation. Volume 27, Fourth Department.) Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg, 1853, p. 105
3. ↑ In addition to him, the chairman of the Privy Council, Adolph Wilhelm von Krosigk , the later Chancellor Johann Vultejus , the former mayor of Kassel Nicolaus Christoph Müldener and the Legation Secretary Sebastian Friedrich Zobell of the Kassel delegation.
4. ↑ Established at the beginning of the 17th century in place of the previous governor on the Lahn .

Web links

• Gerhard Menk: Reinhard Scheffer the youngest