Günther von Berg

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Günther Heinrich Freiherr von Berg (27 November 1765 – 9 September 1843) was a German jurist and politician in the Grand Duchy of Oldenburg.

Biography

Family and nobility

The lineage of his family begins with Veit vom Berg (Latin: Vitus de Monte; 1541–1610), pastor in Rüdisbronn (today a district of Bad Windsheim) in Middle Franconia. In the 18th century, the non-noble family arbitrarily changed its name from vom Berg to von Berg.

Berg, as Grand Ducal Geheimrat of Oldenburg, member of the State and Cabinet Ministries, and Commander of the Order of Saint Stephen, was elevated to the rank of Austrian baron on June 19, 1838, at Schönbrunn Palace, with a letter of nobility dated August 29, 1838, in Vienna. The Oldenburg recognition followed on December 7, 1838.

Early life

Berg came from a family of craftsmen and civil servants. He was born at Schwaigern, Heilbronn, the son of Friedrich Christoph von Berg (1733–1807), a bailiff of the Imperial Count of Neipperg, and Maria Veronika née Hummel (1741–1797). After attending the grammar school in Öhringen, he studied law at the Eberhard Karls University in Tübingen from 1783 to 1786 and then completed a six-month internship at the Imperial Chamber Court in Wetzlar, where he received important impulses for his later academic work.

Career overview

In May 1787, he became secretary to the Imperial Count Leopold von Neipperg. On several trips to Vienna, he became acquainted with the practice of the Imperial Court there. During these years he also published his first scientific works. In 1792 he went to Göttingen to complete a major study of the Imperial Chamber Court. With the support of the well-known constitutional law scholar Johann Stephan Pütter, Berg then received an associate professorship along with a seat on the Göttingen Spruchkollegium from 1794. He was also subsequently awarded a doctorate in Tübingen. Berg, who was a fast worker of great creativity, published a series of thorough studies during these years and also edited two journals.

Hanover

In October 1800, he entered the civil service of the Electorate of Hanover and became a court councillor at the Hanover Chancellery of Justice as well as legal advisor Advocatus patriæ to the government. Here he was involved, among other things, in the seizure and secularization of the Prince-Bishopric of Osnabrück and dealt with the question of the reorganization of the authorities. In addition, he found time for a number of legal and political science works, of which the multi-volume Handbuch des teutschen Polizeyrechts, which is probably his most important work, is particularly noteworthy.

Schaumburg-Lippe

After Hanover was incorporated into the Kingdom of Westphalia, Berg entered the service of the Prince of Schaumburg-Lippe in Bückeburg, for whom he had already worked as a part-time legal advisor. On March 27, 1810, he was appointed president of the governmental college of this microstate, whose administration he modernized in the following years. In August 1814, Berg was a participant in the Congress of Vienna as envoy of the principalities of Schaumburg-Lippe and Waldeck, where he played an influential role as one of the representatives of the small German states and helped to finalize the German Federal Act. In June 1815, he returned to Bückeburg and made the decisive preparations for the introduction of the Landständische Verfassung, which was enacted in 1816.

Oldenburg

In 1815, Berg had joined the civil service of the Grand Duchy of Oldenburg. On October 14, 1815, he was appointed President of the Higher Appellate Court of Oldenburg, but was relieved of his official duties and appointed envoy to the Bundestag of the German Confederation in the Free City of Frankfurt. In 1819/20, he participated as Oldenburg representative in the conferences on the Vienna Final Act. In June 1821, he was recalled from Frankfurt and in August took office in Oldenburg as President of the Higher Appellate Court, which he held until December 1829.

At the same time, on July 23, 1821, he was appointed as the second member of the newly formed State and Cabinet Ministry with the title of Privy Councilor. This activity as de facto minister again occupied the bulk of his working time. In the following years, he was responsible for a number of very different areas, such as relations with the German Confederation and the other federal states, general financial and sovereign affairs, and domain administration. In addition, he exerted influence on the regulation of Catholic church affairs and pursued an emphatically state-church course. Between 1830 and 1832, he was also entrusted with the management of the internal preparatory work for a state constitution. In addition to his own draft, he wrote the final draft of a constitution, which was later shelved by order of the grand duke after the revolutionary movement had subsided. In 1834, Berg took part in the Vienna ministerial conferences as the Oldenburg representative. After the retirement of Baron Karl Ludwig von Brandenstein, Berg was finally appointed the first member of the ministry and minister of state and cabinet on July 1, 1842. However, he died of esophageal cancer the following year.

Legacy

As a close associate of Duke Peter I and Grand Duke August I, Berg played an important role in the administration of the state. He began his career as an reform oriented conservative, but since his entry into the Oldenburg civil service at the latest, he changed into a status quo conservative who, out of conviction or resignation, limited himself to safeguarding what already existed.

On August 23, 1795, Berg was married to Sophie Caroline Amalie née Stromeyer (1777–1868), the daughter of Ernst Johann Friedrich Stromeyer (1750–1830), professor of medicine in Göttingen, and his wife Marie Magdalena Johanne von Blum (1756–1848). The couple had five sons and five daughters, including:

Works

  • Versuch über das Verhältnis der Moral zur Politik (1790–1791; 2 volumes)
  • Darstellung der Visitation des Kaiserlichen und Reichskammergerichts nach Gesetzen und Herkommen (1784)
  • Über Teutschland's Verfassung und die Erhaltung der öffentlichen Ruhe in Teutschland (1795)
  • Staatswissenschaftliche Versuche (1795; 2 volumes)
  • Grundriß der reichsgerichtlichen Verfassung und Praxis (1797)
  • Handbuch des teutschen Polizeyrechts (1799–1809; 7 volumes)
  • Juristische Beobachtungen und Rechtsfälle (1802–1810; 4 volumes)
  • Abhandlungen und Erläuterung der rheinischen Bundesacte (1808)
  • Vergleichende Schilderung der Organisation der französischen Staatsverwaltung in Beziehung auf das Königreich Westphalen und andere deutsche Staaten (1808)
  • Betrachtungen über die Wiederherstellung des politischen Gleichgewichts in Europa (1814)
  • "Georg Ludwig, Herzog von Holstein-Gottorp". In: Oldenburgische Blätter (1830)

References

  • Friedl, Hans (1992). "Günther Heinrich Berg". In: Biographisches Handbuch zur Geschichte des Landes Oldenburg. Oldenburg: Isensee, pp. 67–68.
  • Merzdorf, Johann Friedrich Ludwig Theodor (1875). "Berg, Günther Heinrich von." In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). 2. Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig, p. 363.
  • Schmieden, Werner von (1963). Die Lebensdaten von Günther Heinrich Freiherr von Berg (1765–1843) und seinen Söhnen Edmund und Carl. Möckmühl: Selbstverlag.
  • Sellmann, Martin (1982). Günther Heinrich von Berg 1765–1843. Oldenburg: Heinz Holzberg Verlag.

External links

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