Theodor Hilgard

Theodor Erasmus Hilgard (born July 7, 1790 in Marnheim , † February 14, 1873 in Heidelberg ) was a German legal scholar .

Theodor E. Hilgard

Life

He was the son of the reformed pastor Jakob Hilgard and his wife Maria Dorothea geb. Engelmann. From 1804 to 1806 Theodor Erasmus Hilgard attended the Progymnasium in Grünstadt from 1804 to 1806 , until 1811 he studied in Heidelberg , Göttingen , Paris and Koblenz , then worked as a lawyer at the Court of Appeal in Trier and later became a judge. In 1821 he became a member of the District Administrator of the Palatinate ; In 1826 he was appointed appellate judge.

He did not take part personally at the Hambach Festival in 1832, but openly sympathized with the freedom and unity movement. He also criticized the government and accused it of Denunziantentums what a rebuke by order of the Bavarian King him Louis I. earned. Hilgard then decided to emigrate with his family to the USA in order to start a new life there.

In 1835 Hilgard emigrated to Belleville , Illinois , where some of his relatives also settled, including his nephew of the same name Theodor Hilgard (1808–1871). He bought large estates, ran a winery and worked as a fruit grower. He managed to make several grape varieties at home in the USA. He now devoted himself increasingly to journalism . Hilgard is also considered to be the founder of the city of West Belleville in Illinois, which arose on his lands (see Latin Settlement ). In 1841 it was naturalized.

Hilgard, who was slow to learn English, always stayed in close contact with his old homeland. His first stay in Germany was in 1850 and lasted 4½ months. In the following year, 1851, a second stay, this time of 10 months, began in Germany to assist with land reform . After entering into a second marriage at the age of 64 in December 1854 with his 25-year-old niece Maria Theveny, whom he had brought in from Kreuznach , he returned permanently to Germany and taught at the University of Heidelberg from 1855 . In 1864/65 he made another trip to the United States to sort out his financial situation.

Two of Hilgard's sons, Julius Erasmus and Eugen Waldemar , achieved lasting fame as scientists in the United States. His great-nephew Heinrich Hilgard rose to become a famous American railroad tycoon; his grandfather (his brother) Georg Friedrich Hilgard (1784-1859) was mayor of Speyer .

Works

• Annals of the administration of justice in Rhine Bavaria, or presentation of strange legal cases and the like. their decision by the upper courts of Rhine Bavaria in the area of ​​civil u. Crimial right . 2 vols., Zweibrücken 1830–1831
• Five paragraphs on Germany's national unity and its relationship to freedom , Zweibrücken 1849 digitized
• A voice from North America. Ten paragraphs on constitutional monarchy and republic . Groos, Heidelberg 1849
• My memories . Mohr, Heidelberg 1860
• On the maintenance or abolition of the death penalty with special reference to Mittermaier's last work on this subject . Stuttgart 1868
• Women's rights . Washington, DC: Type Foundry: 1869

literature

• Wolfgang Krämer (Ed.): Theodor Erasmus Hilgard. Letters to his friend Philipp Heinrich von Kraemer 1835–1865. A contribution to Hilgard's biography as well as to the history of the cultural relations between Saarland-Rheinpfalz and North America Saarbrücker Druck und Verlag, Saarbrücken 1935; (Digital scan of the book)
• Helmut Hirsch : Theodor Erasmus Hilgard, Ambassador of Americanism . In: Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society . XXXVII (1944), pp. 164-172
• Helmut Hirsch: The two Hilgards, a contribution to the history of German-Americanism and the revolution of 1848 . In: the same: thinker and fighter. Collected contributions to the history of the labor movement . European Publishing House, Frankfurt a. M. 1955, pp. 1-18

Web links

Wikisource: Theodor Hilgard  - Sources and full texts