Rudolf Schleiden

Rudolf Schleiden

Rudolf Schleiden (born July 22, 1815 at Gut Ascheberg near Plön , † February 25, 1895 in Freiburg im Breisgau ) was a German administrative lawyer. Like many German officials , he served the Crown of Denmark in the Duchy of Schleswig and the Duchy of Holstein . In the Schleswig-Holstein survey he entered the diplomatic service of the Provisional Government (Schleswig-Holstein) . Later he was Hanseatic Prime Minister in Washington DC and London. Before and after the founding of the German Empire , he sat in the Reichstag.

Life

Rudolf's father Christian Schleiden was a merchant and landowner. The mother was Elise geb. von Nuys (born July 6, 1785 in Aurich ). After getting married, the couple moved to Bremen in 1806. Because the business did not flourish due to the continental blockade, the father acquired the Ascheberg estate near Plön in 1810/11. Rudolf was born there. In 1825 the father had to sell the property again. The father took a commercial position at the German-American Mining Association in Elberfeld . He worked for the company in Mexico for several years . The family moved back to Bremen. Rudolf's school days began here. After the father's return, the family lived in Elberfeld again from 1828, where Rudolf passed his Abitur in 1834 at what would later become the Wilhelm-Dörpfeld-Gymnasium . Two years earlier, his father had died of typhus on a business trip abroad .

With the help of an older brother, Rudolf began to study law and camera science at the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel . In 1838 he was one of the founders of the Corps Saxonia Kiel (which was spent ten years later in the Schleswig-Holstein War). When he was inactive , he moved to the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Berlin , the University of Jena and the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen . There was Friedrich Christoph Dahlmann family friend. Rudolf experienced his dismissal as one of the Göttingen Seven . At the end of his studies he went back to Kiel. Finding himself at one (before the exam) pistol duel had been involved, he was to two years imprisonment convicted. Christian VIII pardoned him after his coronation .

Schleswig and Holstein

Schleiden passed the state examination in 1840 and became official secretary in Reinbek . He then moved to Copenhagen as an unskilled worker in the General Customs Chamber and in the Commerzcollegium. Schleiden was soon entrusted with important tasks such as the inspection of the customs authorities in Schleswig and Holstein and then he studied the railways and customs in some states of the German Confederation , Belgium , Holland and France . After his return in 1845 he presented his impressions to the king. He was then promoted to second chief for all customs and trade in the duchies. In 1846 he was appointed a Privy Councilor of Justice. When a more centralized tendency became more and more prevalent in Denmark, Schleiden continued to advocate the old rights of the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein. As a result, there were conflicts with his superiors. The situation became even more difficult after Frederick VII's accession to the throne and the revolution in Copenhagen in March 1848. Schleiden resigned from his offices and, like many German officials in the Danish service, went to Kiel.

Schleiden made himself available to the provisional government of Schleswig-Holstein in Rendsburg . He was sent to Hanover as a diplomat to ask for military help there. He then traveled to Frankfurt as a representative of the duchies as a member of the preliminary parliament . In the second session, the succeeded in getting the Duchy of Schleswig into the German Confederation. Schleiden was also a member of the Fifties Committee . In mid-May 1848 he returned to Schleswig-Holstein to be sent to Berlin on a diplomatic mission. There he also sought to recruit soldiers and officers for the nascent army of the duchies . He returned to Schleswig and worked in the Department of Foreign Affairs. After the governorship had moved to Flensburg during the first German-Danish war , he continued to try to work in the interests of the duchies. In 1850, for example, he traveled to Brussels and Paris . A memorandum written by him in French was printed in Paris and made available to all important politicians. After the end of the war Schleiden was banned from the entire Danish sphere of influence, to which the two duchies belonged again.

Prime Minister in Washington and London

In 1852 Schleiden moved to Bremen and, on the recommendation of Mayor Johann Smidt, was commissioned to set up a Bremen diplomatic mission in the USA . In the summer of 1853 he traveled to Washington as Minister-Resident of Bremen (diplomatic rank). He soon undertook an extensive journey through various states in the United States and Canada. In the middle of the 1850s he traveled to Mexico on behalf of the Hanseatic cities of Bremen, Hamburg and Lübeck to negotiate a trade and shipping agreement. However, this was not ratified by the Mexican side.

In 1861 he succeeded in building a good relationship with the new American President Abraham Lincoln . At the same time, however, he also had good relations with the Confederate government . He tried in vain to mediate between the two sides. During the difficult situation of the Civil War, he often intervened successfully with the warring parties in favor of Bremen and other German ships. He advised the US State Department on issues of international law . Other diplomats in Washington, including the British ambassador, also sought advice from Schleiden. In 1862 he was also officially Hanseatic Authorized Representative for Bremen, Hamburg and Lübeck in the USA. In 1864 he moved to London in this capacity. After he had sharply criticized the Prussian-Austrian occupation of the Duchies of Holstein and Schleswig as a result of the German-Danish War , he could no longer be held as a diplomat.

MP

Schleiden then became a member of the magistrate in the now Prussian city of Altona ; He only had this post until 1870. After the German War (the Second War of Unification ) he was elected to the constituent Reichstag of the North German Confederation for Altona in 1867 . He was a member of parliament and then the German Reichstag until 1873. He was a member of the Liberal Reich Party around Clovis zu Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst . In 1870 he was part of the Reichstag commission that asked Wilhelm I in Versailles to accept the imperial crown.

See also : List of Members of the Constituent Reichstag of the North German Confederation , List of Corps Students in the Reichstag of the North German Confederation and the Customs Parliament and List of Reichstag Members of the German Empire

Last years

After losing his constituency to a Social Democrat in 1873, he moved to Freiburg im Breisgau, where a sister of his lived. He worked as an author and wrote mainly for the scientific supplement of the Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung. He published the memoirs of a Schleswig-Holsteiner , which appeared in four volumes between 1886 and 1894. A history of Schleswig-Holstein remained unfinished. He also published smaller writings. He also traveled to the USA twice, among other things. In 1883 he took part in the opening of the Northern Pacific Railway . Despite a relatively low income, after his death he was able to leave the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg with a foundation for the promotion of international law work.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Kösener corps lists 1910, 135 , 4
2. ↑ Bernd Haunfelder , Klaus Erich Pollmann : Reichstag of the North German Confederation 1867-1870. Historical photographs and biographical handbook (= photo documents on the history of parliamentarism and political parties. Volume 2). Droste, Düsseldorf 1989, ISBN 3-7700-5151-3 , photo p. 291, short biography p. 463.
3. ^ Specht, Fritz / Schwabe, Paul: The Reichstag elections from 1867 to 1903. Statistics of the Reichstag elections together with the programs of the parties and a list of the elected representatives , 2nd edition. Carl Heymanns Verlag , Berlin 1904, p. 112

literature

• Johannes Rösing:  Schleiden, Rudolf . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 54, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1908, pp. 33-41.
• Eduard Alberti, Lexicon of the Schleswig-Holstein-Lauenburg and Eutinian writers from 1829 to mid-1866 , Volume 2, p. 332, digitized
• Andreas von Bezold: Rudolf von Schleiden (1815–1895). A Schleswig-Holstein diplomat and politician during the struggle for the independence of Schleswig-Holstein . In: Journal of the Society for Schleswig-Holstein History, Vol. 142, 2017, pp. 119–138.

Web links

• Rudolf Schleiden in the database of members of the Reichstag