Theodor Schmalz

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Theodor Anton Heinrich Schmalz, First Rector of Berlin University

Theodor Anton Heinrich Schmalz (born February 17, 1760 in Hanover ; died May 20, 1831 in Berlin ) was a German camerawoman and legal scholar . He was a brother-in-law of Gerhard von Scharnhorst .

Life

He attended the Athenaeum Stade , studied 1777-1780 theology , was then tutor and studied law. From 1785 lecturer in Göttingen, he received his doctorate at the University of Rinteln and became in 1787 an associate and in 1788 a full professor of the rights.

In 1788 he was moved to Königsberg i. Pr. , Where he became assessor at the East Prussian War and Domain Chamber in 1793 , was appointed consistorial councilor in 1798 and chancellor and rector of the Albertus University in Königsberg in 1801 . In 1802 he was transferred to the Friedrichs University in Halle and served as its chancellor and rector . Council of Justice appointed.

After the city and university were incorporated into the Kingdom of Westphalia in 1808, he resigned from all offices. In 1809 he was appointed a councilor at the Oberappelation Senate of the Court of Appeal. When the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Berlin was founded, he became a full professor and first rector of the new university. His successor was Johann Gottlieb Fichte .

Criticized critic

Up until this point he had hardly appeared outside of his department. That changed in 1815 when he published a pamphlet on the transparent pretext of improving a biographical note concerning him personally in the Venturinian Chronicle , in which he excitedly and underhandedly talked about the secret societies that supposedly existed in Germany in the manner of the Tugendbund spread their darkly revolutionary sentiments and moral depravity. A typeface that "clearly bore the stamp of demagogue smell and the desire to emphasize one's own loyalty on the forehead". As if that weren't enough, Schmalz sent his work directly to several German governments.

He must have misjudged the mood, because the reactions to his writing were violent. Among other things, he had asserted that “the struggle for freedom against Napoleon was not waged as a result of so-called enthusiasm, but only through the sense of duty of the people, who obediently took up arms at the prince's call: 'Everything hurried to arms, how one rushes out of the ordinary civic duty to extinguish a conflagration when there is fire noise. ' This was a Schill, a Blücher, an army that had consisted for the most part of volunteers. Was it a miracle when German students who had voluntarily taken part in the campaign handed this bottomless meanness to the flames at the Wartburg? ”Not only was his writing burned at the Wartburg Festival in 1817 along with other paraphernalia of reaction and reactionary Prussia , he saw also exposed himself to objectively and formally superior criticism, among others from men like Barthold Georg Niebuhr , Friedrich Schleiermacher , Wilhelm Traugott Krug , Friedrich Christoph Förster and Ludwig Wieland . The dispute finally took on such proportions that it had to be brought to an end by a royal decree of 6 January 1816, which banned polemics and any further publication on the subject of secret societies.

Although Schmalz received an order from the King of Württemberg and the Order of the Red Eagle shortly afterwards (in particular the first award could be assumed to be the reward of an informer), overall he emerged from the battle defeated and damaged.

Freemasons

He was said to have distinguished himself through friendliness, urbanity and charity in the further course of his life and to have approached pietism towards the end . In 1779 he joined the Freemason Lodge at the Golden Circle in Göttingen and was later a long time speaker of the Lodge at the Three Crowns in Königsberg i. In 1808 he became master of the chair (chairman) of the lodge Zum flammenden Stern in Berlin and in 1809 a member of the old Scottish federal board of directors of the Great National Mother Lodge "To the three world balls" . In 1814 he joined the Grand State Lodge of Germany , where he became the grand speaker and lodge master of the Pegase Lodge in Berlin.

Death and grave

Theodor Schmalz died in Berlin in 1831 at the age of 71. He was buried in the cemetery of the Dorotheenstädtische and Friedrichswerder parishes on Chausseestrasse . The grave has not been preserved.

Works

  • Encyclopedia of Common Law . For the use of academic lectures. Friedrich Nicolovius , Königsberg 1790 ( limited preview in Google book search [accessed on November 27, 2019]).
  • The pure natural law. Koenigsberg 1792
  • Handbook of Roman Private Law. Koenigsberg 1793
  • Natural constitutional law / By Theodor Schmalz, D. Professor of Law in Königsberg. Koenigsberg 1794
  • Correction of a passage in the Bredow-Venturinische Chronik for the year 1808. Berlin 1815 ( digitized version )
  • About political associations. Berlin 1815
  • About Mr. BG Niebuhr's paper against mine, concerning political associations. Berlin 1816
  • Last word on political associations. Berlin 1816
  • Textbook of German private law; Containing land law and feudal law / From the Secret Council Schmalz in Berlin. Berlin 1818
  • Provisional regulations for the University of Berlin until its statutes have been published. Facsimile of the original edition Berlin 1810. - Berlin: University library of the Humboldt-Univ. zu Berlin, 1995. - 5 undefined Bl. Holdings: HUB50.ZB011
  • Speech at the birthday of the king as on Aug. 3, 1811 the king. University of Berlin met publicly for the first time. - Berlin: JE Hitzig in Comm. 1811, 33 p. 8 °

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Pierer's Universal Lexicon of the Past and Present . 4th edition. Verlagbuchhandlung von HA Pierer , Altenburg 1865 ( zeno.org [accessed on November 27, 2019] Lexicon entry "Schmalz, 1) Theodor Anton Heinrich").
  2. ↑ Rector's speech (HKM)
  3. ↑ ADB Vol. 31, p. 625
  4. ↑ Louis Andrée, d. i. Oskar Panizza , in: Zurich Discussjonen No. 13–15 , Paris 1899, p. 10.
  5. ^ Hans-Jürgen Mende : Lexicon of Berlin burial places . Pharus-Plan, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-86514-206-1 . P. 104.


personal data
SURNAME Schmalz, Theodor
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schmalz, Theodor von; Schmalz, Theodor Anton Heinrich von (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German camerawoman and legal scholar; first rector of the University of Berlin
DATE OF BIRTH February 17, 1760
PLACE OF BIRTH Hanover
DATE OF DEATH May 20, 1831
Place of death Berlin