Andreas Joseph Hofmann

Andreas Joseph Hofmann (14 July 1752 – 6 September 1849[1]) was a German philosopher and revolutionary active in the Republic of Mainz. As Chairman of the Rhenish-German National Convention, the earliest parliament in Germany based on the principle of popular sovereignty, he proclaimed the first republican state in Germany, the Rhenish-German Free State, on 18 March 1793.[1] A strong supporter of the French Revolution, he argued for an accession of all German territory west of the Rhine to France and served in the administration of the department Mont-Tonnerre under the French Directory and the French Consulate.

Andreas Joseph Hofmann
Born(1752-07-14)July 14, 1752
Zell am Main
DiedSeptember 6, 1849(1849-09-06) (aged 97)
Winkel
NationalityGerman
OccupationPhilosopher and revolutionary
Known forProclamation of the Republic of Mainz
The Deutschhaus building in Mainz, where Hofmann proclaimed the republic, now seat of the Landtag of Rhineland-Palatinate

Early life and education
Former Jesuit college in Würzburg, now the Catholic seminary

Hofmann was born in Zell am Main near Würzburg as the son of a surgeon.[2] After the early death of his parents, he was educated by his uncle Fahrmann,[3] likely Andreas Joseph Fahrmann (1742-1802),[nb 1] professor of moral theology at the University of Würzburg and later auxiliary bishop in the Diocese of Würzburg.[4] After a one-year course in poetics and rhetoric at the Würzburg Jesuit college,[12] Hofmann studied law at the University of Mainz and at the University of Würzburg.[13] In 1777 he moved to Vienna to gain experience at the Reichshofrat or Aulic Council, one of the supreme courts of the Holy Roman Empire[14] and became a Privatdozent in 1778.[15] In Vienna, Hofmann was influenced by the enlightened principles of Josephinism.[16] Besides philosophical publications such as Ueber das Studium der philosophischen Geschichte (About the study of the history of philosophy), where Hofmann argued for the introduction of the history of philosophy as a subject in the Universities in Austria, following the example of Würzburg,[17] he started writing articles for various journals and founded a theatre journal in 1781.[1] His satirical articles caused conflict with the authorities, and instead of being given a position at the newly re-founded University of Lviv as had been originally envisioned, he was forced to leave Austria.[18] He returned to Würzburg in 1783,[14] and was soon after employed by the Prince of Hohenzollern-Hechingen.[3][4]

Professor and revolutionary in Mainz
The Mainz Jacobin club in 1792, by Johann Jacob Hoch

In 1784, Hofmann was made Chair of Philosophy in Mainz as part of the progressive reforms of Elector Friedrich Karl von Erthal[1] that had made the University of Mainz one of the centres of Catholic Enlightenment.[19] Like many other future members of the Jacobin Club of Mainz, he was a member of the secret society of the Illuminati (under the name Aulus Persius[20]) but the Illuminati were outlawed in 1785 and the lodge dissolved soon after.[21] Hofmann first taught History of Philosophy until 1791, when he also became chair of natural law. Besides philosophy and law, Hofmann also was talented in languages. He was proficient in Latin, Ancient Greek, French, Italian, and English, and offered classes in English on Alexander Pope over many years.[14] Among his students were Klemens von Metternich, who later became Chancellor of State of the Austrian Empire and the architect of the reactionary European Restoration, and Johann Adam von Itzstein, who became a leading liberal politician and member of the 1848 Frankfurt Parliament.[22] As a liberal and progressive thinker, Hofmann supported the use of German instead of Latin in University lectures[1] and in church.[23] Eventually he became disillusioned with the pace of the reforms in Mainz[19] and welcomed the French Revolution from the start. As Hofmann declared his support of the ideas of the French Revolution openly in his lectures, he was soon spied on by the increasingly reactionary Mainz authorities,[24] who had outlawed all criticism of state and religion on 10 September 1792.[25] However, before the investigation of his activities had progressed beyond the questioning of his students, the archbishop and his court fled from the advancing French troops under General Custine, who arrived in Mainz on 21 October 1792.[26]

Title page of Der Aristokraten-Katechismus, published 1792

Two days later, Hofmann helped found the Mainz Jacobin club and became one of its most active members. A popular and powerful orator, he criticised both the old regime of the Elector and the French military government in his speeches, which were especially supported by the more radical students[27] who idolised the incorruptible Hofmann.[28] In late 1792, he published the Aristokraten-Katechismus, a revolutionary pamphlet criticising the old regime and its instrumentalisation of religion to protect the absolutist order.[29] Hofmann and his supporters called for official posts to be reserved for native born citizens.[30] Hofmann lectured in the rural areas of the French occupied territory,[31] calling for support of the general elections in February and March 1793 which he helped organize.[32] He was elected into the Rhenish-German National Convention as a representative of Mainz[31] and became its president, beating Georg Forster in a contested election.[33] On 18 March 1793 Hofmann declared the Rhenish-German Free State from the balcony of the Deutschhaus.[1] Three days later, Hofmann signed the Convention's unanimously resolved decree asking for accession of the Free State to France. On 1 April 1793, Hofmann switched roles to become the president of the provisional administration.[16]

French government official and later life
Map of the département Mont-Tonnerre, by Louis Brion 1802

When the republic ended after the Siege of Mainz, Hofmann was able to leave the city with the retreating French troops and went into exile in Paris, where he headed a society of exiled Mainz republicans, the Societé des patriotes Mayençais and was working towards an exchange of prisoners to free the German revolutionaries captured by the authorities.[16][34] After a short service in the military, where he commanded an equestrian regiment that fought against insurgent royalists in the Vendée and was wounded several times,[35] he was sent to England on espionage missions. However, at a Joseph Haydn concert in London on 2 June 1794, he was recognized and reported to the authorities by his former student Klemens Wenzel von Metternich.[4][1] Hofmann went into hiding and returned to Paris via Hamburg, where he visited Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock.[1] In Paris, he was made chief of the bureau des étrangers by the French Directory. In his 1795 essay Des nouvelles limites de la republique française, he argued for the Rhine as natural Eastern border of France.[36][31] When the incorporation of areas west of the Rhine into France had become a reality with the Treaty of Campo Formio, Hofmann returned to Mainz, where he became part of the government of the new département Mont-Tonnerre and was appointed by Napoleon as its receveur général (superior tax officer) in 1797,[37] the only non-native French holding this office.[38] In 1801, he was elected as a member of the Mainz city council[37] and refused an appointment as a member of the Corps législatif of the French Consulate.[39][40][37] In 1803, he was forced to resign as receveur général after one of his subordinates had committed fraud,[41][37] and 750,000 francs were missing from his coffers.[38]

After Napoleon's defeat and the return of Mainz to German control, Hofmann moved to his late wife's estates in Winkel. While he was no longer active as a revolutionary, he was suspicious to the authorities as a Jacobin, and his house was searched in the 1830s.[16] Hofmann spent his retirement pursuing activities such as breeding domestic canaries[42] but became a somewhat famous figure among Vormärz liberals and was visited by intellectuals such as Hoffmann von Fallersleben and Ludwig Walesrode. He died on 6 September 1849, having witnessed the failure of the 1848 revolution, and was buried without a Catholic funeral.[16]

Family and legacy

Andreas Joseph Hofmann was the son of Anton Hofmann, a surgeon, and of Magdalena Fahrmann. In 1788, he married Catharina Josepha Rivora (1763-1799),[43] the daughter of Peter Maria Rivora and Christina Schumann. They had three daughters, of which two died early.[18] His daughter Charlotte Sturm died in 1850 and bequeathed most of her belongings to Charlotte Lehne, the granddaughter of Hofmann's student Friedrich Lehne.[44] None of Hofmann's personal papers and correspondence have been preserved,[3] and there is no known picture of him.[45] Overall, there is far less known about Hofmann's life than about most of the other leading members of the Mainz Jacobin club.[3]

In 2018, a road in Winkel was named Andreas-Joseph-Hofmann-Straße.[46]

Selected works
  • Hofmann, Andreas Joseph (1779). Ueber das Studium der philosophischen Geschichte (in German). Vienna: Ghelensche Erben.
  • Hofmann, Andreas Joseph (1792). Der Aristokraten-Katechismus: ein wunderschönes Büchlein, gar erbaulich zu lesen : für Junge und Alte (in German). Mainz.
  • Hofmann, Andreas Joseph (1795). Des nouvelles limites de la republique française (in French). Paris.

Notable students

Notes
  1. Many sources claim that the uncle's name was "Franz Xaver Fahrmann", following Otto,[4] but the only person matching either of the descriptions as professor of moral theology or of auxiliary bishop in Würzburg during the time in question is Andreas Joseph Fahrmann (1742-1802),[5][6][7][8][9] see also the list of auxiliary bishops of Würzburg. Otto's reference for Fahrmann is Franz Xaver von Wegele's history of the University of Würzburg, which does not give Fahrmann's first name.[10] In Hofmanns CV for his application for the position in Mainz, he mentions an uncle Professor Fahrmann without first name.[3] The Mainz University historian Helmut Mathy claims the uncle's name is Franz Xaver Fahrmann, but cites the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie article about Andreas Joseph Fahrmann[11] for details about uncle Fahrmann's life.[3]
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gollark: You should not ever change your PFP picture. It's an important part of your brand.
gollark: This would be a violation of GTech™ policy.
gollark: You did not.

References
  1. Schweigard, Jörg (23 May 2002). "Ein Leben für die Republik". Die Zeit (in German). ISSN 0044-2070. Archived from the original on 22 January 2017. Retrieved 14 September 2019.
  2. Schweigard, Jörg (2005). Die Liebe zur Freiheit ruft uns an den Rhein (in German). Gernsbach: Casimir Katz Verlag. p. 146. ISBN 3-925825-89-4.
  3. Mathy, Helmut; Dotzauer, Winfried (1995), Gerlich, Alois (ed.), "Eine neue Quelle zur Jugendgeschichte von Andreas Josef Hofmann, Präsident des Rheinisch-Deutschen Nationalkonvents", Landesgeschichte und Reichsgeschichte (in German), Steiner, pp. 321–333, retrieved 27 September 2019
  4. Otto, Friedrich (1898). "A. J. Hofmann. Präsident des rheinisch-deutschen Nationalkonvents zu Mainz. Seine Sendung nach England in den Jahren 1793, 1794, 1795 nebst einigen anderen Nachrichten über sein Leben". Annalen des Vereins für Nassauische Altertumskunde und Geschichtsforschung (in German). Wiesbaden. 28/29: 77–92. Archived from the original on 14 September 2016. Retrieved 13 September 2019.
  5. Himmelstein, Franz Xaver (1843). Reihenfolge der Bischöfe von Würzburg: Eine Festgabe (in German).
  6. Eubel, Conrad (1913). Hierarchia catholica medii aevi, sive Summorum pontificum, S.R.E. cardinalium, ecclesiarum antistitum series ... e documentis tabularii praesertim vaticani collecta, digesta, edita (in Latin). Monasterii Sumptibus et typis librariae Regensbergianae. Archived from the original on 23 February 2017. Retrieved 23 September 2019.
  7. "Bishop Andreas Joseph Fahrmann". Catholic-Hierarchy.org. David M. Cheney. Retrieved 25 September 2019.
  8. "Würzburger Totenzettel". vb2.uni-wuerzburg.de. Retrieved 21 September 2019.
  9. Nekrolog der Teutschen für das neunzehnte Jahrhundert (in German). Perthes. 1802. p. 74.
  10. Wegele, Franz Xaver von (1969) [1882]. Geschichte der Universität Würzburg. 1. Geschichte (in German). Stahel. p. 456.
  11. Heinrich Kellner (1877), "Fahrmann, Andreas Joseph", Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB) (in German), 6, Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, pp. 535–536
  12. Deutsche Jakobiner: Handbuch (in German). Bundesarchiv und Stadt Mainz. 1982.
  13. Schweigard, Die Liebe zur Freiheit, p. 146
  14. Mathy, Helmut (1977). Die Universität Mainz 1477, 1977 : mit e. Bildteil 1946-1977 u. e. tabellar. Anh. Mainz: Krach. pp. 194–198. ISBN 3874390411. OCLC 5751732.
  15. Haasis, Hellmut G.; Bockel, Rolf von (13 December 2016). "Hofmann, Andreas Joseph". In Asendorf, Manfred (ed.). Demokratische Wege. Deutsche Lebensläufe aus fünf Jahrhunderten: Ein Lexikon (in German). Springer-Verlag. pp. 283–285. ISBN 9783476035516.
  16. Scheel, Heinrich (1993). "Andreas Joseph Hofmann, Präsident des Rheinisch-Deutschen Nationalkonvents". In Landtag Rheinland-Pfalz (ed.). Die Mainzer Republik : der Rheinisch-Deutsche Nationalkonvent (in German). Mainz: V. Hase & Koehler. OCLC 32666345.
  17. Longo, Mario (2015). The Göttingen School and Popularphilosophie (Report). Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands. pp. 515–693. doi:10.1007/978-94-017-9966-9_9.
  18. Wolf-Heino Struck (1972), "Hofmann, Andreas Joseph", Neue Deutsche Biographie (NDB) (in German), 9, Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, p. 446; (full text online)
  19. Rowe, Michael (2003). From Reich to State: The Rhineland in the Revolutionary Age, 1780-1830. Cambridge University Press. p. 61. ISBN 0-521-82443-5.
  20. Kreutz, Wilhelm (1991). "Die Illuminaten des rheinisch-pfälzischen Raums und anderer außerbayerischer Territorien. Eine 'wiederentdeckte' Quelle zur Ausbreitung des radikal aufklärerischen Geheimordens in den Jahren 1781 und 1782". Francia (in German). 18 (2): 115–149. doi:10.11588/fr.1991.2.56842. ISSN 2569-5452.
  21. Schweigard, Die Liebe zur Freiheit, p. 87
  22. Schweigard, Jörg (27 July 2012). "Itzstein, unser Stern". Die Zeit (in German) (29). Archived from the original on 30 July 2012. Retrieved 17 September 2019.
  23. May, Georg (1987). Das Recht des Gottesdienstes in der Diözese Mainz zur Zeit von Bischof Joseph Ludwig Colmar (1802-1818) (in German). John Benjamins. pp. 517–518. ISBN 90-6032-289-4.
  24. Schweigard, Die Liebe zur Freiheit, pp. 148-149
  25. Wegert, Karl H. (1987). "Political Engagement and the German Intelligentsia, 1789-1800". Canadian Journal of History. 22 (3): 197–314. doi:10.3138/cjh.22.3.297. ProQuest 1297290053.
  26. Blanning, T. C. W. (1974). Reform and Revolution in Mainz 1743-1803. London: Cambridge University Press. pp. 275. ISBN 0-521-20418-6.
  27. Schweigard, Die Liebe zur Freiheit, p. 254
  28. Bahr, Ehrhard; Saine, Thomas P. (17 June 2016). The Internalized Revolution. Routledge. p. 134. ISBN 9781317203445.
  29. Schweigard, Die Liebe zur Freiheit, p. 150
  30. Blanning, Reform and Revolution in Mainz, p. 285
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  32. Schweigard, Die Liebe zur Freiheit, p. 151
  33. Mathy, Helmut (1990). "Andreas Joseph Hofmann: Der Präsident des Rheinisch-Deutschen Nationalkonvents von 1793". In Mathy, Helmut (ed.). Die Erste Adresse des Landes Rheinland-Pfalz : Geschichte des Deutschhauses in Mainz (in German). Mainz am Rhein: Ph. von Zabern. p. 64. ISBN 3805311362. OCLC 22861815.
  34. Cottebrune, Anne (1 March 2003). "Des " réfugiés mayençais " dans le Paris révolutionnaire : histoire d'un exil politique 1793-1799". Annales historiques de la Révolution française (in French) (331): 77–101. doi:10.4000/ahrf.807. ISSN 0003-4436. Archived from the original on 19 June 2019. Retrieved 20 September 2019.
  35. Schweigard, Die Liebe zur Freiheit, p. 152
  36. Jainchill, Andrew (5 July 2018). Reimagining Politics After the Terror: The Republican Origins of French Liberalism. Cornell University Press. pp. 161–162. ISBN 9780801463532.
  37. Schweigard, Die Liebe zur Freiheit, p. 153
  38. Dufraisse, Roger (1970). "Les notables de la rive gauche du Rhin à l'époque napoléonienne". Revue d'Histoire Moderne & Contemporaine. 17 (3): 758–776. doi:10.3406/rhmc.1970.2108.
  39. BULLETIN DES LOIS DE LA RÉPUBLIQUE (in French). De Lʻimprimerie De La République. 1801.
  40. Dufraisse, Roger; France), Deutsches Historisches Institut (Paris (1992). L'Allemagne à l'époque napoléonienne (in French). Bouvier. ISBN 9783416023771.
  41. Faber, Karl-Georg (1969). Andreas van Recum, 1765–1828: Ein rheinischer Kosmopolit (in German). p. 202. Archived from the original on 13 May 2019. Retrieved 18 September 2019.
  42. Mathy, Andreas Joseph Hofmann, p. 68
  43. Renkhoff, Otto (1 January 1992). Nassauische Biographie: Kurzbiographien aus 13 Jahrhunderten (in German). Historische Kommission für Nassau. p. 339. ISBN 9783922244905.
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  45. Schweigard, Die Liebe zur Freiheit, p. 147
  46. "Bericht von der Stadtverordnetenversammlung am 5.2.2018 › SPD Oestrich-Winkel" (in German). Archived from the original on 25 September 2019. Retrieved 25 September 2019.
  47. Erenz, Benedikt (14 July 2018). "Deutschland und Frankreich: Mehr Wiedervereinigung wagen". Die Zeit (in German). ISSN 0044-2070. Archived from the original on 14 July 2018. Retrieved 20 September 2019.
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  50. Schweigard, Die Liebe zur Freiheit, p. 206
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