Franz Friedrich Wilhelm von Fürstenberg

Franz Friedrich Wilhelm von Fürstenberg (7 August 1729 in Schloss Herdringen16 September 1810 in Münster) was a German politician and the most important statesman in the Principality of Münster in the second half of the 18th century. Fürstenberg was committed to a cautious and enlightened course of reform.

Life Franz Friedrich Wilhelm von Furstenberg was born 7 August 1729, at Herdringen in Westphalia. He was the son of Christian Franz Dietrich von Fürstenberg from the Westphalian noble family of Furstenberg, and Helene von Galen, daughter of Wilhelm Goswin Anton von Galen. His sister Maria Anna (1732–1788) was abbess in Fröndenberg Abbey.

After receiving his early education from private tutors, Franz studied from 1746 to 1748 at the Jesuit School in Cologne. In 1748 he became cathedral capitular in Münster and Paderborn. The cathedral chapter of Münster at that time traditionally consisted of sons of the Westphalian nobility. He received minor orders and the subdeaconship, though he had no intention of entering the priesthood.

From 1750 to 1751, he studied jurisprudence at the University of Salzburg, which he completed at the Sapienza in Rome in 1753. During the Seven Years' War (1756–1763) he rendered signal services to his country as intermediary between the opposing camps, and through his influence warded off many a calamity from the city and principality of Münster. In 1773, he founded the Old University of Münster. In 1777, the general compulsory education in the Principality of Münster was tightened. Together with Bernhard Heinrich Overberg, he worked out a reorganization of elementary schools in the 1780s. On his initiative, a school experiment began in 1780 at the Gymnasium Paulinum: High German became a school subject. He initiated a reform of the Gymnasium, and founded the University of Münster and a seminary.

Fürstenberg was also an important stenographer. From 1761, he used the English stenography system of Aulay Macaulay for his diary entries in French and made his own creative changes within this system.

Princess Amalie von Gallitzin In Münster Fürstenberg belonged to the Catholic Münster Circle (familia sacra) around the Princess Amalie von Gallitzin, who lived in Münster since 1779 and with whom he had a close friendship. His letters to the princess are an important literary testimony of the century. After the French Revolution of 1789, Fürstenberg took intensive care of fleeing clerics from Flanders and Brabant, who were stranded in Münster, during the Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars together with Amalie von Gallitzin.

Fürstenberg was buried at the Überwasserfriedhof in Münster; since 21 October 1929 his grave has been in the cemetery of the canons of St. Paul's Cathedral in Münster.