Wilhelm von Heespen

Wilhelm von Heespen , also Wilhelm von Heespe (born March 13, 1625 , † August 20, 1686 in Oldenburg (Oldb) ) was a German office director in the service of the County of Oldenburg .

Life

Heespen was the son of the Klevian judge Tilemann Heespen and his wife Sophie geb. from Langenhorst. He studied law at the University of Cologne and initially worked as a secretary . In 1651 he entered the service of Count Anton Günther von Oldenburg , for whom he worked as a correspondent ( diplomat ) in The Hague . In 1652 he was given the newly created position of chamber secretary who, as a count's private secretary, was supposed to support and relieve the aging sovereign. One of his main tasks was the management of diplomatic correspondence, for the processing of which a count's council was called in, who also had to check the outgoing letters. In addition, Heespen monitored and logged the handling of all important matters in his function. All petitions to the sovereign passed through his hands. After the establishment of the County's Privy Council in 1656, which was to serve as the Count's advisory body on all government affairs, Chamber Secretary Heespen also became the secretary of this new body. The connection between the sovereign and the Privy Council ran through him, whose correspondence was also handled by the Chamber Secretariat, which remained in full force. This competition was probably one of the reasons why the work of the Secret Council came to a standstill after only two years.

In the 1650s a period of decline began in the Oldenburg administration. With the apparently subordinate post of chamber secretary, Heespen had received a position that could be expanded and that gave him considerable influence. Like all higher officials of Anton Günther, he was often entrusted with diplomatic missions in addition to his actual official duties. In 1653 he was sent to Osnabrück , in 1657 to Kleve for negotiations with Johann Moritz Fürst von Nassau-Siegen and in 1658 to the Netherlands . In connection with the settlement of the Oldenburg succession issue , he stayed in Holstein in 1659, 1662 and 1664 and in Zerbst in 1665 . In 1659 he became a Privy Council and since 1663 it belonged to the revived Privy Council, which after the death of Anton Günther still existed under the designation Etatsrat as the highest government council in the Danish time of Oldenburg.

On June 20, 1676 Heespen, considered one of the oldest officials embodied the tradition of Count time for the Offices and Government appointed. When, five years later, in December 1681, Christoph Gensch von Breitenau was appointed Danish Chancellor in Oldenburg and thus his superior, Heespen initially found this to be an insulting dismissal. However, Gensch von Breitenau, who initially stayed little in Oldenburg, carefully spared the position of the old office director. He respected his position externally and left all lucrative matters such as consistory, civil litigation and Reichshofrat business to him, so that Heespen quickly reconciled himself with the new chancellor. As a result, one of his sons became Gensch von Breitenau's closest collaborator and heir.

Ennoblement

Shortly before his death, Heespen was supposedly raised to the imperial nobility. However, there is neither the original of the nobility letter of June 6, 1686, nor a note in the files of the imperial chancellery in Vienna . Only a copy made in Württemberg in 1701 , which itself raises considerable doubts, is available. It is unclear whether Heespen himself carried the title of nobility or whether it was only later claimed by his descendants.

family

Heespen married Anna Margaretha born in 1660. von Velstein (1648–1704), the youngest daughter of his colleague, the Privy Councilor Anton Günther von Velstein, and granddaughter of the Consistorial Councilor Hermann Velstein (1565 or 1555–1635). Of the couple's ten children, Elisabeth Augusta Heespen (1667–1713) married government councilor Gerhard von Halem (1644–1723), Anton Günther von Heespen (around 1655–1723) was envoy in Württemberg and later in the service of God in the service of Wilhelm von Heespen (1669–1742) was oldenburg chancellery director in Esens and Alexander Tilemann von Heespen (1673–1738) was a Danish conference councilor and one of the closest collaborators of Chancellor Christoph Gensch von Breitenau, who also made him his universal heir.

literature

• Wilhelm von Heespen. In: Hans Friedl u. a. (Ed.): Biographical manual for the history of the state of Oldenburg . Edited on behalf of the Oldenburg landscape. Isensee, Oldenburg 1992, ISBN 3-89442-135-5 , pp. 290-291 ( online ).