Sigismund Ehrenreich Johann von Redern

Count Sigismund Ehrenreich Johann von Redern (born July 18, 1761 in Berlin , † April 7, 1841 in Weinheim an der Bergstrasse) was a Franco-German aristocrat , diplomat , eccentric , speculator, art collector and writer.

biography

family

Coat of arms of the von Redern

Von Redern came from the Brandenburg nobility dynasty Redern , who were resident in Brandenburg and Pomerania, later in Prussia, even before Christianization. He was born on July 18, 1761 in Berlin as the second son of Count Sigismund Ehrenreich von Redern , who was in Prussian service, and his wife Marie Jeanne de Horguelin (born September 18, 1727 in Paris; † January 1, 1788 in Berlin). The younger sister Sophie Eleonore Charlotte (born November 4, 1765 - January 8, 1842) married on February 15, 1790 with Count Friedrich Leopold zu Stolberg-Stolberg .

Sigismund Ehrenreich Johann von Redern was from 1808 in his first marriage to the writer Henriette de Trémolet de Montpezat (1739-1827) and in his second marriage from 1831 to Alexandra Pauline Emilie Freiin von der Pahlen (1794-1846), from 1842 to the court master in Weimar , married.

Life

The linguistically gifted and eloquent second son of Count Rederns studied at the University of Leipzig Jura . From 1788 to 1789 he was the Saxon envoy to Spain. Then Sigismund Ehrenreich Johann von Redern entered the Prussian civil service and in 1790 became the Prussian ambassador to Great Britain . After the death of his father in 1790 he inherited the paternal estate of Königsbrück in accordance with an inheritance contract , and his older brother Wilhelm Jacob received the Cosel manor .

Due to disagreements with his employer, he was bid farewell in 1792, and he decided to continue his private life in other European countries. In 1795 he sold the rulership of Königsbrück to Georg Werner August Dietrich von Münster . Living in Florence from 1793 to 1796, Sigismund Ehrenreich von Redern took up his permanent residence at the newly acquired Château de Flers (Orne) from 1806. In France he also owned considerable lands from his mother's inheritance in Picardy . After separating from his unreliable business partner Henri de Saint-Simon in 1812, he tried to enter the agricultural trade with new cultivation and animal breeding methods at Château Flers, which had been converted into an agricultural business. He did not succeed in a political career in France, as he was not appointed as a liberal deputy of the Orne department in 1815, despite the support of Jean-Denis Lanjuinais and Marie-Joseph Motier, Marquis de La Fayette . A desired monopoly position in the iron trade was thwarted by competition. He returned to Germany in 1815 and sold the French lands in 1820.

In addition to his work as a businessman, Sigismund Ehrenreich Johann von Redern dealt with the composition of philosophical writings, magnetism and his art collection. Sigismund Ehrenreich von Redern died in 1841 at his last summer residence in Weinheim, which he had only moved into next to a town house in Mannheim in the summer of 1840. His last interest was botany .

The Count's speculations

At the time of his activity as a Saxon diplomat in Spain in 1788, Sigismund Ehrenreich von Redern had made the acquaintance of the shady Marquis Henri de Saint-Simon, who was supposed to recruit soldiers in Spain. According to Saint-Simon's later portrayal, he provided the ideas, von Redern provided the money. In this way, Saint-Simons financed von Redern's speculations with confiscated church property and assignats . At public auctions of church property from 1791 in the Péronne area , whose initial intention was to provide land for the rural population, straw men from the Counts of Redern and Saint-Simon appeared as buyers. After a maximum delay, payment was made with assignats, the inflationary depreciation of which brought further profits. Thanks to his good relationships, Saint-Simon was able to save himself from pre-trial detention in 1794, despite proven speculations. In 1799, they fell out and separated as a result of Saint-Simon's extravagance. Saint-Simon retaliated with a "Mémoire introductive de M. de Saint-Simon sur sa contestation avec M. de Reder, Alecon" published in Alençon in 1812 and a translation of Molière's "L'Avare" into German in which he denied Hapargnon German name "von Redern" gave.

In 1806, Count Redern acquired the emigrant estate of Castle Flers in the Orne department and converted the castle, which he lived in until 1815, into an agricultural business. Count Redern ran an intensified agriculture by growing clover and oats on unused wasteland. A factory farming he wanted to make with specially drawn mast means. In addition to his agricultural business, he set up a chemical products factory in Choisy . From 1814 he switched to the internal Norman iron trade and aimed for a regional monopoly. Count Redern wrote two pamphlets in 1814 against the import of British iron ore. The monopoly failed due to the merger of the competition. After the failure of a candidacy for the regional parliament of the Orne département in 1815 von Redern left France.

In a last large-scale speculation from 1819 to 1827 with land for German emigrants in Virginia and Kentucky in the USA in the form of a "Compagnie de Colonization Américaine" which he founded and sold shares in developable land, von Redern suffered considerable losses.

Works

Sigismund Ehrenreich von Redern, who was related by marriage to Count Friedrich Leopold zu Stolberg-Stolberg from 1790, was friends with Klopstock and had visited Goethe in Weimar. From 1814 he himself published political, philosophical and historical writings.

• The mode accidentels de nos perceptions ou examen sommaire des modifications que des circonstances particulières apportent à l'exercice de nos faucultés. Delaunay, Paris 1815.
• Abrégé historique de la grande émigration des Peuples barbaren, et des émigrations principales arrivées dans l 'Ancien Monde, depuis cette époque. de Mat, Bruxelles 1817.
• Analyze de l'ouvrage intitulé, attempt to portray animal magnetism, etc. (Du magnétisme animal, comme moyen curatif), par M. Kluge, professeur d'accouchement à l'École de médecine et de chirurgie à Berlin, imprimé à Vienne , en 1815, 511 pages: suivie de quelques réflexions. without publisher, Paris 1818.
• De l'influence de la forme des gouvernemens sur les nations, ou Fragment historique et politique. de Mat, Bruxelles 1817.
• Considérations sur la nature de l'homme en soi-même, et dans ses rapports avec l'ordre social, par le Cte ​​de Redern. 2 volumes, Treuttel et Wurtz, Paris 1835.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Annales de philosophie Chrétienne. Volume 51, Bureau des Annales de Philosophie Chrétienne, 1855, p. 157.
2. ^ Friedrich Wilhelm von Redern: Under three kings. Böhlau Verlag, Cologne / Weimar 2003, p. 196f.
3. ^ Maxime Leroy: Les speculations foncières des Saint-Simon et ses querelles d 'affaires avec son associé le Comte de Redern. In: Revue d´Histoire économique et sociale. 1925, pp. 133-167.
4. ↑ Annales de philosophie Chrétienne. Volume 51, Bureau des Annales de Philosophie Chrétienne, 1855, p. 196.
5. ↑ Hector de Masso La Ferrière-Percy (comte de): Histoire de Flers ses seigneurs, son industrie. Dumoulin, 1855, pp. 155f.
6. ^ New necrology of the Germans. Volume 19, 1843, p. 389.

predecessor	Office	successor
	Saxon envoy to Spain from 1788 to 1789
Philipp Karl von Alvensleben	Prussian envoy to the United Kingdom 1790 to 1792	Constans Philipp Wilhelm von Jacobi-Klöst