August Reichensperger

File:August Reichensperger.jpg

August Reichensperger

August Reichensperger (22 March 1808 – 16 July 1895) was a German jurist and politician as well as a patron of Cologne Cathedral.

Biography

Reichensperger's father, who came from Simmern, was at first a criminal judge, then a prefectural councilor in Koblenz, the capital of Rhin-et-Moselle. After the latter's early death (1812), the mother raised her four children alone and even enabled her two sons to study. After graduating from high school in 1827, Reichensperger studied law in Berlin, Bonn and Heidelberg. He was awarded a doctorate before entering the civil service. He found his first position at the Trier District Court, where he worked from 1844 to 1848. Subsequently, from 1849 to 1879, he was a councilor of the Court of Appeal in Cologne, where his brother Peter Reichensperger also worked for a time.

Reichensperger had been involved in the further construction of Cologne Cathedral since 1840, and was a founding member of the Central Cathedral Building Society.

In 1848 he was a member of the Frankfurt Parliament and in 1850 of the Erfurt Union Parliament. In both cases, he fought Prussian hegemonic ambitions and voted against the Prussian hereditary emperorship and the Union plans. Reichensperger held a seat in the Prussian House of Representatives from 1850 to 1863 and was one of the leading figures in the Catholic faction. On September 6, 1858, he was president of the Catholic Congress in Cologne. From 1871 to 1884 he was a member of the Imperial Diet for the electoral district of Krefeld and joined the newly founded parliamentary group of the Center Party. Along with Ludwig Windthorst, Hermann von Mallinckrodt and his brother Peter, he was one of the leading figures of political Catholicism and a committed champion of the Catholic lay movement in Germany. In 1851, he was involved in the founding of the Akademischer Leseverein (now KStV Askania-Burgundia Berlin) in Berlin in the KV and became its honorary member in 1871.

Reichensperger had a wide range of interests and, in addition to politics, was intensively involved in art, architecture and literature. In numerous publications, he propagated above all the neo-Gothic style and, in addition to the continued construction of Cologne Cathedral, advocated the restoration of medieval architectural monuments. In doing so, he demanded the removal of later furnishings or additions and a "stylistically appropriate" addition in medieval forms. For numerous building and restoration projects he gave expert opinions or expressed himself through publications, sometimes in quite polemical form.

In 1895 Reichensperger became an honorary citizen of the city of Cologne, having previously become an honorary citizen of Oppenheim in 1889 and of Koblenz in 1892.

After his death, the city of Cologne renamed the square at the intersection of Merlo street and Weißenburg street with Riehler street as Reichenspergerplatz in 1897. The judicial building for the Cologne Higher Regional Court and other courts was inaugurated here in 1911. The subway stop there also bears the name of the square.

Reichensperger is buried in a grave of honor at Melaten cemetery.

Works

• Die 14 Standbilder im Domchore zu Köln (1842)
• Die christlich-germanische Baukunst (1852)
• Die katholischen Interessen im 19. Jahrhundert (1853)
• Vermischte Schriften über christliche Kunst (1856)
• Parlamentarische Reden 1848–57 (1858)
• Phrasen und Schlagwörter (1872)
• Allerlei aus dem Kunstgebiete (1867)
• William Shakespeare (1871)
• Augustus Pugin, der Neubegründer der christlichen Kunst in England (1877)
• Die Bauhütten des Mittelalters (1879)
• Zur neueren Geschichte des Dombaus in Köln (1881)
• Friedrich Freiherr von Schmidt. Zur Charakterisirung des Baumeisters (1891)

References

Attribution:

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: 

Further reading

• Lewis, Michael J., August Reichensperger: The Politics of the German Gothic Revival (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1993)

External links

• Works by August Reichensperger at Gallica