Franz von Roggenbach

Franz von Roggenbach (23 March 1825 - 25 May 1907) was a leading Baden politician. During the 1860s he served as the final Foreign minister of the Grand Duchy of Baden.

Life

Provenance, early years and 1848

Franz Freiherr von Roggenbach was born in Mannheim. He came from an ancient family of Catholic nobility. His father, Heinrich von Roggenbach (1787–1870), was a career soldier. His mother, the Countess Melanie von Walderdorff (1795-1868), also came from a prominent ancient family.

He concluded his school years at the Mannheim Lyceum (secondary school) in September 1843. At university, he became a member of the Heidelberg Burschenschaft (student fraternity) shortly after arriving, in 1843. He studied Jurisprudence under various distinguished teachers such as the historian Friedrich Christoph Schlosser, the historian-politicians Georg Gottfried Gervinus and Ludwig Häusser, along with the jurist - and a particularly influential mentor - Robert von Mohl. In Autumn 1845 he moved away, for a year, to study in Berlin where his lecturers included Friedrich Julius Stahl. One of the friends he made during this time was the young law student Julius Jolly, a future political colleague. After passing his state law exams in February 1848 he moved to his parents' house at Freiburg, intending to deepen his education in history and education, and to "come to an understanding of his times and their needs" ("zum Verständnis seiner Zeit und ihrer Beduerfnisse zu gelangen") The revolutionary outburst in March of that year may have provided clues, and he moved to Frankfurt which had quickly become the focus of many of the important political developments of 1848. During 1848/49 he served briefly as a volunteer secretary in the Foreign Ministry of the short-lived Provisional Central Government ("Provisorische Zentralgewalt") established by the liberal-nationalist "revolutionaries" of the Frankfurt Parliament. Roggenbach resigned his post, however, after the King of Prussia refused the Frankfurt Parliament's "offer" of the "crown of Germany" in April 1849.

During the middle part of 1849 Roggenbach stayed for several months in Berlin before returning west. From 1849 till 1851 he served the Grand Duchy as a young diplomat at its mission in Bonn, which by this time was becoming an important administrative centre in the Kingdom of Prussia's Rhine Province. In Bonn he came to know the influential writers Prof. Ernst Moritz Arndt and Friedrich Christoph Dahlmann. In April 1851 he resigned from his diplomatic post and undertook a lengthy "study tour" of France and England, during which he took the opportunity to network with diplomats, members of the nobility and of the political elites in those countries.