Carl Theodor Welcker
Karl Theodor Georg Philipp Welcker ( born March 29, 1790 in Ober- Ofleiden ( Homberg ( Ohm) ); † March 10, 1869 in New Home in Heidelberg ) was a lawyer, university professor and liberal politician.
Life
Welcker was one of 17 children of the pastor Heinrich Friedrich Welcker and Johannette Welker, nee Strack. His older brother, Friedrich Gottlieb was a famous classical scholar.
Welcker studied law and political sciences at Giessen and Heidelberg. In Giessen, he was enrolled since 18 August 1806 and since 1807 member of the Corps Franconia II Together with Friedrich Ludwig Weidig and Adolf Ludwig Follen he was involved in the illegal re-establishment of the homeland Franconia on May 8, 1809. This was dissolved on 1 July of the same year by the authorities, but since 1811 one more time.
After his habilitation in 1813 he published a lecturer in the same year his writing The ultimate reasons of law, state and punishment. The University of Giessen in 1814 he was appointed a full professor. In 1814 he had demanded in a speech on the freedom of Germany a strong Germany with a restored empire and reflection on Germanic- German -Christian traditions with sharp rejection of any French at all foreign ideas, because he was disappointed by the political development.
Welcker took along with over 100 students in Giessen in 1814 in part as a volunteer of a rifle battalion in the wars of liberation.
He then served as a professor at the universities of Kiel, Heidelberg, Bonn and Freiburg im Breisgau. In Kiel he was with Friedrich Christoph Dahlmann and Nicholas Falck editor of the early liberal Kiel leaves that demanded compliance with their constitutional promise of the German princes. The leading representatives of the southern German liberalism was from 1831 to 1851 Member of the Second Chamber of the Baden and was therefore added in 1832 because of his political activities in retirement.
Other significant positions in 1847 to participate in the Heppenheim Conference and 1848-1849 he was a member of the Frankfurt National Assembly. He belonged to the first Casino Group, and from December 1848 to the fraction Parisian courtyard. He was beside Friedrich Daniel Bassermann, Friedrich Christoph Dahlmann, Georg Waitz and Johann Gustav Droysen to the Constitutional Committee, whose task was to draw up an all-German constitution. He delivered himself fierce battles of words with the Giessen deputies Carl Vogt. He became an honorary member of the Masonic Lodge to unity in Frankfurt / Main.
He was from March 1832 together with Karl von Rotteck in Freiburg im Breisgau, publisher and editor of the liberal newspaper The Liberals were the multi prohibited. Together with Rotteck was from 1834 to 1842, the twelve-volume Staatslexikon out ( Rotteck Welckersches Staatslexikon ) that formed one of the foundations of liberal worldview in his time.
In Hamburg, a street was named in the new town after him and erected a temporarily demolished fountain in front of the lodge house of the United 5 lodges.