Christoph Wilhelm von Koch

Christoph Wilhelm Koch, from 1777 Edler von Koch ( French Christophe Guillaume Koch, born May 9, 1737 Buxweiler ( Haut-Rhin ), † 24 October 1813 in Strasbourg ) was an Alsatian university teacher of constitutional law and history, writer, librarian, diplomat and politician.

Academic career

Christoph Wilhelm Koch was initially 1763-1771 Assistant to the historian Johann Daniel Schöpflin, 1772 Professor and finally honor Rector of the University of Strasbourg, one, one follows Eberhard Weis and Jürgen Voss, then both in French as a leader in the German university space.

In 1779 he was offered by the government of Hanover an ordinary chair at the University of Göttingen. His brother Conrad Reinhard then contacted the French ambassador at the Reichstag in Regensburg, Marquis de Bombelles to achieve for him the permission of the French Foreign Minister to be allowed to enter into foreign service, while respecting his rights as a French subject. In the end, however, was achieved by increasing the salary chef that he stayed in Strasbourg. In 1782 he was finally there still a full professor and got after ten years, a scheduled Chair.

Student

Among the students cook in Strasbourg included (in order of their studies ) Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who mentions him in his book " Poetry and Truth ", Maximilian Montgelas and Klemens Wenzel Lothar von Metternich and his own nephew and later Bavarian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Friedrich August Freiherr von Gise, among many other future diplomats and politicians from all over Europe. As a professor of the above, but also through his work as a constitutional law expert and held various political offices he did not insignificant political influence. While Weis assess its influence on Goethe and Metternich as not too big, he states between Christoph Wilhelm von Koch and Montgelas a permanent connection and thus a lasting impact cook; for example, in the issue of state church sovereignty, in the Montgelas Cook " state sovereignty in the ecclesiastical territory " even stretches from Protestant to the Catholic area, but also to the Bavarian constitution of 1808, by the been written by Koch Constitution of the Kingdom of Westphalia. Also the way how Montgelas later legal claims " through the study and interpretation of older documents and files " underscored the fact Weis writes about studying at Koch.

Diplomacy and Politics

The political work of Koch's, especially in the years 1790 to 1792, devoted Jean Richerateau the treatise " Le Rôle Politique du Professeur cooking ". State Legal expert chef was already under the Ancien Régime, as well as during the revolution as a deputy of the National Assembly and during the reign of Napoleon as a member of the State Council, as he was probably also present at the coronation. Focus of his own political activity was mainly in the time of the Revolution to defend the interests of the Alsatian Protestants. Since he had thereby acquired some reputation, he was in 1791 again soon elected to the District Council in Strasbourg, shortly thereafter in the district directorate and then as a Member of the Lower Rhine department in the National Assembly, where he was Chairman of the diplomatic committee. During the reign of terror he was ten months in Strasbourg in custody and was named after its overthrow administrator of the domain offices of the Lower Rhine department. However, he kept this administrative offices for a very short time and soon turned back science, writing and diplomacy.

In the spring of 1797 he met his brother, the Reichstag Messenger Conrad Reinhard, in Regensburg and then sent a "Report on the view of the Regensburg diplomats about the relationship of the kingdom to France " to Paris. At the Congress of Rastatt in implementing the decisions of the Treaty of Campo Formio, he worked as a consultant. He was later appointed as a tribune to Paris, where he stayed until the dissolution of the tribunate, 1807. In 1804 he received the Cross of the Legion of Honour from the hands of Napoleon. A job as Minister of State at the king of the new Kingdom of Westphalia, Jérôme Bonaparte, in Kassel, he refused with reference to his advanced age.

End of life

After giving up his political office at the age of 70 years, Koch went the last six years of his life exclusively on the science. In the summer of 1813 he became ill and died on October 24, 1813 unmarried at the age of 76 years in Strasbourg, where a monument was placed in the St. Thomas Church.