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.

Power and politics

Roggenbach was a near-contemporary and close friend of Frederick I, who became Grand Duke of Baden in 1858 but had been regent since 1852 due to his elder brother's mental illness. Roggenbach and Frederick were closely aligned politically, both being believers in constitutional liberalism, as it was understood at the time.

Politics in the Grand Duchy during the 1850s were increasingly preoccupied with the Baden Kulturkampf (loosely "...culture wars), a church-state power struggle. At issue were such matters as control over church assets and appointments. Church-state rivalry was inherent in the power structures across and beyond the Holy Roman empire, and English language sources tend to focus on the larger Prussian "Kulturkampf" of the 1870s. One reason that the issues became particularly heated in Baden two decades earlier seems to have been the attitude of the leading bishops in the Upper Rhine region, rejecting the state's insistence on a right of veto over church appointments and demanding that clergy should be educated in their own ecclesiastical places of learning rather than in the universities. From the wings, the governments in Berlin and Vienna looked on and quietly exerted their influence, with the Prussian government generally backing the more secularist position of the Baden government in Karlsruhe, and pressure from the conservative Austrians, reflecting a long-standing community of interests with the Roman Curia, more sympathetic to the idea of compromise with the churchmens' demands. In 1854 a so-called "Interim" (agreement) was concluded between the government of Baden and the church. A more comprehensive "Convention" was negotiated for ratification in 1859. Roggenbach had been sent to Berlin in February/March 1859 in order to report back to the Grand Duke, on the mood and attitudes of the government in Berlin, where the focus of attention was on the pan-European implications of Austria's war in Italy rather than on church-state rivalry in Baden. During the summer of 1859 Roggenbach removed himself to the Island of Mainau. His purpose was to draw up plans for a new kind of state structure. In Autumn 1859 he presented his remarkably wide-ranging and detailed "Bundesreformplan" to the Grand Duke. Roggenbach was by now a trusted advisor to the Grand Duke, and it was with the uncompromising backing of Roggenbach that the Grand Duke refused to sign the "Convention", declaring it to be unconstitutional. In a memorandum dated 6 December 1859 Roggenbach had stated baldly "This convention is impossible" ("Diese Konvention ist unmoeglich"). Roggenbach was a practicing catholic believer, but in matters of church-state relations, as in his political world-view more generally, his liberal instincts would always prevail. In rejecting the convention, the Grand Duke was opposing a convention negotiated by his own government, but his attitude nevertheless enjoyed support from a majority in the second chamber of the parliament, which was dominated by liberals who would have seen the church as a reactionary force. After losing the parliamentary vote on the convention in March 1860 the Stengel government was out of power. That led to the installation of a new government under Minister President Anton von Stabel, which enjoyed overwhelming support in the parliament. Without further drama, but in line with the Grand Duke's belief in constitutional monarchy, what now emerged is identified in sources as one of the first examples in the Holy Roman empire of a system of "parliamentary monarchy".

Roggenbach was initially reluctant to become a member of the new Stabel government, but he did so, formally on 2 May 1961, his formal area of responsibility covering foreign affairs and relations with the Royal House. He was one of two or three leading figures in the government. With respect to the German Question he had a clear vision for the future of the Grand Duchy. With his friend Julius Jolly he advocated German unification according to a "Small Germany" model that would exclude Austria-Hungary, and which accordingly would operate under liberal Prussian leadership. Unsurprisingly, this was also the model favoured by the Grand Duke himself. In 1863, following the retirement of Gideon Weizel, the trade-commerce portfolio was added to Roggenbach's portfolio of ministerial responsibilities.

1861 wurde Roggenbach badischer Minister des großherzoglichen Hauses und der auswärtigen Angelegenheiten. Er kämpfte zusammen mit Julius Jolly für die deutsche Einigung unter preußischer Vorherrschaft, die sogenannte Kleindeutsche Lösung. 1863/64 war er zudem badischer Handelsminister. 1865 trat Roggenbach im Zuge der Schleswig-Holstein-Krise zurück.

Von 1861 bis 1866 besaß er für den Wahlbezirk der Ämter Schopfheim und Kandern ein Mandat in der Zweiten Kammer der Badischen Ständeversammlung. Von 1868 bis 1870 gehörte er als Abgeordneter des Wahlkreises Baden 4 (Lörrach, Müllheim) dem Zollparlament an. 1871 bis 1874 war Roggenbach Mitglied der Reichstagsfraktion der Liberalen Reichspartei.