Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach
Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach ( born March 7, 1795 in Berlin, † February 18, 1877 same place ) was a Prussian politician, publicist and judge. He is regarded as one of the principal founders and pioneers of the Conservative party in Prussia and was a long time their faction leaders in the Prussian House of Representatives. He was like his brother Leopold von Gerlach, the circle around the " Kreuz-Zeitung ", on whose foundation he was also involved leader.
Life
Gerlach in 1795, the fourth child of the first Lord Mayor of Berlin, Carl Friedrich Leopold von Gerlach, born into a typical family of Prussian officials nobility. Between 1810 and 1815 he studied (with interruptions ) Jurisprudence at the newly founded University of Berlin, then in Göttingen and Heidelberg from 1813 to 1815 and fought in the wars of liberation, most recently in officer rank, where he was wounded several times.
As one of the most formative experiences in Gerlach's life proved to be the acquaintance and friendship with Adolf von Thadden - Trieglaff, whom he met in Berlin in 1815 for the first time. Promoted, not least by this contact, he and his brother Leopold declined the 1820s a lively interest in the Pomeranian revivalism. The religious character, which he received through the Neupietismus in his youth, accompanied him, his actions and thoughts, all his life. His acquaintance with the young Otto von Bismarck dates from this period and this circle.
Gerlach joined 1820 in the Prussian judicial service in 1823 and High Court Judge in Naumburg ( Saale). From 1829 he was a farmer and city court director in Halle and in 1835 Vice President of the Higher Regional Court in Frankfurt (Oder ), in place of his deceased brother William. Already established in 1827 Gerlach, et al Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg, and August Tholuck that. "Protestant church newspaper " that developed in the pre-March period as the leading organ of the early conservatives
He was a member of the " club in the Wilhelmstrasse ", who had the reconstruction of the Christian-Germanic State set as a task, and employees of the "Berliner political weekly paper, the 1831 bs 1841 appeared ( not to be confused with the" Prussian weekly paper " 1851-1861 ). In 1842 he was Privy Councillor top, soon afterwards a member of the State Council and the Commission legislation. In 1844 he became Chief Minister of the Higher Regional Court of Appeal and in Magdeburg, where he fought with his brother Leopold, the Konsistorialpräsidenten Carl Friedrich Göschel and other light friends.
In the revolutionary year 1848 he founded - including Friedrich Julius Stahl - the "New Prussian newspaper ", which was later named because of the Iron Cross on the title page as " Kreuz-Zeitung ", and whose editorial Hermann Wagener, a confidant Gerlach took over. Gerlach later wrote for the Journal of the monthly or quarterly " Rundschau " in the sense of the old conservative direction.
1852 settled Gerlach for the constituency of Koszalin in the House of Representatives of the Prussian Landtag select and became in 1855 the founder and chairman of him ( " fraction Gerlach " ) designated conservative faction. With the beginning of the reign of William I ( from 1858, for his mentally ill brother Frederick William IV ), he lost his seat in Parliament again as a result of an unprecedented electoral defeat of the conservatives and entered thus returned by the leadership of the Conservative Party, but was looking for as the author of " Rundschau continue to make "in the" Kreuzzeitung " his political opinion claims.
The war against Austria in 1866, he refused for reasons of solidarity with the ruling princes as well as from the annexation of northern Germany and the forced expulsion of Austria from Germany, so in the brochure " The annexations and the North German Confederation " (1866 ). In the Prussian parliament since 1873, he appeared as one of the fiercest opponents of the laws of the Church of Bismarck's Kulturkampf and entered ( as a " guest student "), the Centre Party in. He retired to the personal enmity of Otto von Bismarck, with whom he at whose political ascension he and his brother Leopold had hitherto been friends for decades and not insignificantly involved. Because of his essay " The Civil Marriage and the Chancellor " was brought against him in 1874 at the instigation of Bismarck indictment for contempt of authority ( § 131 StGB). Gerlach was subsequently sentenced to a fine and the dissemination of the Scriptures was forbidden what their sales all the more increased more. Gerlach then took voluntary departure as president of the court in Magdeburg, which William I granted him.
In 1877 he was again elected to the Reichstag members of the Guelph party for the electoral district of Hannover 4 (Osnabrück ), where he joined as a guest student of the Centre Party in the Reichstag. But on February 18, 1877 died Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach age of 81 as the result of a traffic accident, which had occurred on the evening of the 16th at the bridge Schöneberg in Berlin.
The judgment of the science of history about Gerlach falls quite ambivalent. The historian Hans -Joachim Schoeps particularly stressed Gerlach's basic religious motivation:
" All in all, Gerlach a less historically systematically oriented spirit, but not a man of objective science [ ... ]. In the past he should probably not be seen as a systematic theocrat, his character probably the only one in modern history. He believed in the kingdom of God and regarded it as a political system; He looked down at the bustle of the day and gave him the eternal demands of God contrary - as a political slogans. Only on this knowledge, guests are able to understand the man and his work. Each only political- historical criticism fails contrast, because it was about Metapolitisches him to something that is more than history. "
Gerlach archive
The estate of Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach today forms the core of the so-called " Gerlach archive ", the family archive of Gerlach, which Hans -Joachim Schoeps was able to win in 1954 for the University of Erlangen- Nuremberg. It is now at the Political Science Institute of the University and will be redeveloped at this time.
The focus of the stocks forming the so-called " pipe Becker archive " that the extensive correspondence Ludwig von Gerlach (about 15,000 letters from nearly 9,000 correspondents ), as well as some relative, and his diaries (1815 - 1877) includes. The archive is accessible to the scientifically interested public for research purposes.