Theodor Schmalz
Theodor Anton Heinrich Schmalz (17 February 1760 – 20 May 1831) was a German cameralist and jurist. He was a brother-in-law of Gerhard von Scharnhorst.
Contents
Biography
He attended the Athenaeum Stade gymnasium, studied theology from 1777 to 1780, then became a Hofmeister and studied law. From 1785, as private lecturer in Göttingen, he earned his doctorate at the University of Rinteln, where he became an associate professor of law in 1787 and a full professor in 1788.
In 1788, he was appointed to Königsberg, where he became Assessor at the East Prussian War and Domain Chamber in 1793, was appointed "Konsistorialrat" in 1798 and Chancellor and Rector of the Albertus University Königsberg in 1801. In 1802, he was transferred to the Friedrichs University of Halle and as its chancellor and rector was appointed "Geh. Justizrat".
After the incorporation of the city and the university into the Kingdom of Westphalia in 1808, he resigned from all offices. In 1809, he was appointed a councilor at the "Oberappelationssenat" of the Kammergericht. When the Friedrich Wilhelm University of Berlin was founded, he became a full professor and the first rector of the new university. His successor was Johann Gottlieb Fichte.
A critic criticized
Up to this point, he had made little appearance outside his field of expertise. This changed in 1815, when, under the transparent pretext of improving a biographical note concerning him personally in the Venturinische Chronik, he had a pamphlet published in which he spread in an excited and devious manner about the secret societies existing in Germany in the manner of the Tugendbund, their sinister-revolutionary sentiments and moral depravity. A writing that "clearly bore the stamp of demagogue sycophancy and the desire to emphasize one's own loyalty on its brow." Schmalz sent this work directly to several German governments.
He had probably misjudged the public mood, because the reaction to his writing was fierce. Among other things, he had claimed that "the fight for freedom against Napoleon had not been waged as a result of so-called enthusiasm, but only through the sense of duty of the people, who had obediently taken up arms at the call of the prince: 'All rushed to arms, as one rushes out of quite ordinary civic duty to extinguish a conflagration at the noise of the fire'. This to a Schill, to a Blücher, to an army that had consisted for the most part of volunteers. Was it any wonder that German students, who had volunteered for the campaign, surrendered this bottomless meanness to the flames at the Wartburg?" Not only was his writing burned at the Wartburg Festival in 1817, along with other paraphernalia of reactionary Prussianism, but he also found himself exposed to factually and formally superior criticism from men such as Barthold Georg Niebuhr, Friedrich Schleiermacher, Wilhelm Traugott Krug, Friedrich Christoph Förster, and Ludwig Wieland, among others. The dispute finally took on such proportions that its end had to be brought about by a royal decree of January 6, 1816, banning polemics and any further publication on the subject of secret societies.
Although Schmalz received a medal from the King of Württemberg and the Order of the Red Eagle shortly thereafter (in the case of the first award in particular it could be assumed that it was the reward of an informer), overall he emerged from the battle defeated and damaged.
Freemasonry
He was said to have distinguished himself in the further course of his life by friendliness, urbanity and charity and to have approached pietism towards its end. In 1779, he joined the Masonic Lodge Zum goldenen Zirkel in Göttingen and was later for a long time speaker of the Lodge Zu den drei Kronen in Königsberg. In 1808, he became Master of the Chair (Chairman) of the Lodge Zum flammenden Stern in Berlin and in 1809 member of the Old Scottish Federal Board of Directors of the Great National Mother Lodge Zu den drei Weltkugeln. In 1814 he joined the Grand Landlodge of the Freemasons of Germany and became Grand Orator and Lodge Master of the Pegase Lodge in Berlin.
Death and burial place
Theodor Schmalz died in Berlin in 1831 at the age of 71. He was buried in the cemetery of the Cemetery of the Dorotheenstadt and Friedrichswerder Parishes on Chausseestraße. The grave has not been preserved.
Works
- Encyclopaedie des gemeinen Rechts. Zum Gebrauch academischer Vorlesungen (1790)
- Das reine Naturrecht (1792)
- Handbuch des römischen Privatrechts (1793)
- Das natürliche Staatsrecht / Von Theodor Schmalz, D. Professor der Rechte in Königsberg (1794)
- Berichtigung einer Stelle in der Bredow-Venturinischen Chronik für das Jahr 1808 (1815)
- Ueber politische Vereine (1815)
- Ueber des Herrn B. G. Niebuhr's Schrift wider die meinige, politische Vereine betreffend (1816)
- Letztes Wort über politische Vereine (1816)
- Lehrbuch des teutschen Privatrechts; Landrecht und Lehnrecht enthaltend / Vom Geheimen Rath Schmalz zu Berlin (1818)
- Vorläufiges Reglement für die Universität zu Berlin bis nach Publication ihrer Statuten (1810)
References
- Hans-Christof Kraus, Theodor Anton Heinrich Schmalz. (1760–1831). Jurisprudenz, Universitätspolitik und Publizistik im Spannungsfeld von Revolution und Restauration (Studien zur europäischen Rechtsgeschichte. 124). Frankfurt: Klostermann (1999).
