Franz Georg Pfeiffer

Franz Georg Pfeiffer (11 January 1784 – 15 April 1856) was a German legal scholar and politician.

Early life Franz Georg Pfeiffer was son of the reformed preacher, University of Marburg theology professor and Councilor of the Consistory Johann Jakob Pfeiffer and his wife, Luise Rebecke Rüppel. He and his brother Christian Hartmann Pfeiffer were identical twins, and their birth was so stressful on their mother that it led to her death shortly thereafter. Contemporary sources describe not only their identical appearance, but also their identical handwriting and mannerisms, which allowed them to play tricks on their friends and family from an early age. One anecdote even says that the brothers were so similar that their wives could sometimes not tell them apart. They had four children Theodor Karl Georg (12 October 1819 – 5 January 1893), doctor of medicine and proprietor of the Cold-water cure resort at Alexandersbad.

Political career In 1806, under Westphalian rule, he was made , and in 1810 (crown prosecutor) in Cassel. Pfeiffer and his twin brother, Christian, published from 1808 to 1813, which catalogued and explained the laws and regulations that had been put into place during the short-lived Westphalian Kingdom. In 1814, with the return of the Electorate of Hesse, Pfeiffer was named to the High Court in Cassel and by 1817 he was appointed a (government councillor) and member of the (Council of the Treasury). Between 1821 and 1831 he held the position of (senior government councillor) and (director of the police) in Kassel, and in 1831 he was promoted to Director of the Police for the Hessian Interior Ministry, and appointed to the Hessian (privy council). In 1837, he was named Director of the Consistory, and from 1841 to 1844 he held the position of Director of the Landskreditkasse (National Credit Union) in Cassel. In 1844 Franz Pfeiffer fell gravely ill with a nervous fever, which killed his twin brother and almost killed him. Having only just recovered, in 1846 he was made Chief of the Governmental Deputation in Rinteln, a posting which he saw as a personal slight against him by the Elector, Wilhelm II, Elector of Hesse. In letters to his brothers in Cassel, Franz speculated that his apparent banishment was the result of a land dispute, wherein Franz and his late brother Christian built their home on a part of Wilhelmshöhe Tor that the Elector wanted for himself.