Lorenzo Brentano
Lorenz Peter Carl Brentano (* November 4, 1813 in Mannheim, † September 17, 1891 in Chicago ) was the son of Johan Peter Paul Brentano from the German line of Brentano from Bingen am Rhein and his wife Helene, born Heger. Lorenz Brentano was first married to Caroline Leutz and then in a second marriage with Caroline Aberle. He was a lawyer and liberal democratic Baden politicians in the period before and during the March Revolution of 1848/ 1849. Then he made in exile in the United States political career, including President of the City Council of Chicago, congressman in Washington, DC and U.S. consul in Dresden.
Legal and political resume
Legal career and entrance into politics
Brentano studied from 1831 to 1834 jurisprudence in Freiburg and Heidelberg, where he was a member of the Corps Allemannia and the fraternity. He then beat initially a legal career that took him from Bruchsal to the High Court Rastatt, and in July 1848 to the royal court of the lower Rhine district in Mannheim.
Since December 1845 Brentano deputy was the second chamber of the Baden national assembly. There he reasoned, for example, a bill to judicial independence, by which he became the President of the Ministry of Justice in conflict. 1846 a more radical group of the previous chamber opposition split off, the Brentano also joined. In the parliament of 1847/1848 Brentano was one of the supporters of an application for a representation of the German chamber parliaments in the Bundestag in Frankfurt am Main.
Brentano's role in the March Revolution
After the start of the March Revolution of 1848 Brentano was a member of the Frankfurt National Assembly as a deputy of the second and ninth Baden constituency ( Radolfzell, Engen, Stockach, Huefingen / Ettenheim, Haslach, Wolfach ). The National Assembly should prepare the German unit and draw up an all-German constitution. After the uprising, Friedrich Hecker and others in April 1848 (see Heckerzug ) Brentano applied for recognition of the election Hecker, who had emigrated first into exile in Switzerland, and finally to the United States in combat on the Scheideck at Kandern in the Black Forest to crackdown on its uprising.
Not long after the rejection of this proposal, Brentano withdrew from the National Assembly and took over the presidency of the provisional " National Committee " of the Baden folk clubs. His demand for the dissolution of the Baden Chamber led by their rejection ultimately to extract Brentano and other linker to March 1849 the Baden Chamber.
During this time, Brentano made increasingly known as a defender of some radical democratic left revolutionaries at the Freiburg trials for high treason. Among his clients Gustav Struve, participants had to Friedrich Hecker's insurrection of 12 April 1848 and the " Heckerzug ". Struve was accused of being a ringleader of the so-called Struve - coups in Lörrach, where he had tried in September 1848, proclaim a republic.
Beginning in 1849 Brentano was elected Mayor of Mannheim, but not recognized as such because of its oppositional stance of the Baden government.
As a result of the May insurrections in 1849 Brentano was provided with another after the flight of the Grand Duke Leopold at the head of provisional revolutionary government in Baden. Here, however, Brentano's policy was more temperate hesitant. The flight of the Grand Duke was not located him.
For suppression of the Baden Revolution Prussian troops advanced from the neighboring Kingdom of Württemberg under the command of the so -called " grapeshot Prince " and later German Emperor Prince Wilhelm of Prussia, the brother of the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm IV, after bathing before. The revolutionary government dodged on June 25, 1849 in Freiburg im Breisgau. It came to a conflict between Brentano, who wanted to negotiate with the Prussians, and Struve, who wanted to continue the resistance. The Polish Revolution General Ludwik Mierosławski, who led the Baden revolutionary army since the beginning of June, stepped back, among other things also because of Brentano's hesitant attitude of his command.
Struve, who was freed in May 1849 the prison, and his followers eventually prevailed against Brentano. After his dismissal as head of government Brentano fled from June 28 to June 29, 1849 into exile in Switzerland.
On July 23, the Baden revolution was put down permanently after taking Rastatt by Prussian troops. This means that the last bastion of the March Revolution was a total of like at the same time.
Exile and new political rise in the U.S.
Lorenz Brentano was like many other exiled revolutionaries denied a risk- free return to Baden. He was sentenced on June 6, 1850 in Bruchsal absence from the royal court to life imprisonment and compensation. Then Brentano eventually emigrated to the U.S. from exile in Switzerland. He was followed by other non- prominent and prominent companions in misfortune such as Friedrich Hecker, Gustav Struve or Carl Schurz.
Brentano first settled as a farmer in Michigan. In Pottsville (Pennsylvania), he founded the German newspaper " The Lighthouse ". In 1859 he became editor of the Illinois State newspaper in Chicago and there rose up a co-owner. On the Republican side he supported as many other of the German Forty- Eighters how the political immigrants of the March Revolution were called in the U.S., the election of Abraham Lincoln as U.S. president. Later Brentano Chairman of the City Council of Chicago.
1862 was Brentano Lincoln's personal envoy in Scandinavia. In August of the same year his prison sentence was issued in Baden by country glorious decree. But Brentano entered first German ground again, after he had made sure that the consequences of his conviction were ineffective.
From 1872 to 1876 Brentano was an American consul in Dresden. Back in the U.S., he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, where he served until 1879.
Despite the repeal of the judgments against him in Germany after 1849 Brentano was ultimately only visitor in his old home. Chicago, where he had made a political career, had become his second home. He died on 17 September 1891 at the age of 77 years. His son, Theodore (1854-1940) was from 1922 to 1927 the first U.S. ambassador to Hungary.
Works
- To the People in Württemberg: On behalf of the people in Baden the Provisional Government, 1849
- Reason ... the motives of the deputies [ Lorenz ] Brentano on independence of judges and magistrates, 1844
- The Republican Parthei bathing and their leaders judged and directed in the written legacy of Hecker, Struve and Brentano, 1849