Richard von Friesen

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Richard von Friesen, 1868. Graphic by Adolf Neumann.
Richard Freiherr von Friesen, photograph around 1870

Richard Freiherr von Friesen (born August 9, 1808 in Thürmsdorf , † February 25, 1884 in Dresden ) was a Saxon politician.

Life

Friesen , who comes from an old noble family, studied from 1825 at the Bergakademie Freiberg , where he joined the Corps Montania , and participated in the geognostic study of Saxony . However, he decided against a further career as a geologist and took up further studies in Göttingen and Leipzig in 1829 , which he completed in 1832.

From 1834 Friesen was in the Saxon civil service. During the May Uprising in Dresden , the lecturing council in the Ministry of the Interior was appointed Minister of the Interior on May 6, 1849 . After Friesen was dismissed from office in October 1852 due to conflicts over German domestic trade policy, he was appointed district director in Zwickau in June 1853 . In 1858 Richard von Friesen was appointed finance minister of the Kingdom of Saxony. Friesen was considered a critic of the Prime Minister Friedrich Ferdinand von Beust , Bismarck's declared opponent .

During the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 he was a member of the provincial commission that carried out government affairs during the absence of Johann I. In this capacity, Friesen signed the peace treaty between Saxony and Prussia on October 21, 1866 in Berlin . In the same year he was appointed Foreign Minister .

In 1869, Friesen was also given the office of general director of the collections for art and science in Dresden .

As Saxon Foreign Minister, Friesen traveled to Versailles with Rudolph von Delbrück in October 1870 and took part in the negotiations and contracts concluded with Hesse , Baden and Württemberg for the unification of the empire.

As the successor to Johann Paul von Falkenstein , Friesen was given the chairmanship of the overall ministry ( Prime Minister ) on October 1, 1871 , whose official duties he carried out until his retirement on October 1, 1876.

His two-volume memoir, Memoirs from My Life , published in 1880, prompted Beust to counter-write Memories on Memories , which appeared in 1881. The historian Theodor Flathe also reacted very critically to the work under the title The Memoirs of Herr von Friesen . Falkenstein also accused Friesen of inaccuracies in his memoirs.

Richard Freiherr von Friesen was an honorary citizen of the city of Dresden and Zwickau .

literature

Web links

Wikisource: Richard von Friesen  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. 100 years of Weinheim Senior Citizens' Convention , p. 144.Bochum, 1963