Johann Georg Herber

Georg Herber (30 January 1763 - 11 March 1833) was a child of The Enlightenment and jurist who entered government service, becoming a politician in his late middle age. He came to prominence in the Duchy of Nassau as a member of the duchy's "estates" (bicameral parliament). Though small in terms of territory, the duchy was not without influence in Germany due, in part, to the status of its ruler as a senior archbishop and as a prince-elector of the empire. Herber sat as a member of the lower house between 1818 and 1832, during most of which period he served, between 1819 and 1832, as president of the chamber.

Life and career Johann Georg Herber was born at Winkel, a small town stretched out along the north bank of the Rhine between Rüdesheim and Wiesbaden. Johann Georg Anton Herber , his father, is described as a cooper (maker of wine barrels) and the owner of a winery, indicating that the boy was born into circumstances of at least some modest financial security. Herber studied Jurisprudence, probably across the river at Mainz, and in 1785 entered the service with the "Kurfürst" (loosely, "Prince-elector-archbishop") of Mainz. For the next fifteen years he was employed in an administrative capacity, probably working in the justice system. Like many contemporaries who had grown up as believers in Enlightenment ideals, Herber was nevertheless appalled by the bloodshed and "Revolutionary Wars" unleashed following the French Revolution. From his time as a government justice official several hand-written reports survive in which he advocates a curtailing of the privileges of the aristocracy, and the introduction of a new social order based on equality before the law. From the much changed perspective of the twentieth century, an admiring commentator has been able to identify Herber as an outstanding representative of moderate bourgeois liberalism in Nassau. Taking what is known of his career in the round, however, there is no indication that he ever renounced the monarchical principle, and he later emerged as a resolute defender of the constitutional rights of the state parliament. In 1801 he accepted the more senior position as Amtskeller, for nearby Eltville. The estate had been "secularised" during the reforms of 1803, passing to the Duke of Nassau who had managed to remain closely allied to Napoleon. The Duke had gifted it to his valued representative at the "Imperial Diet", Hans Christoph Ernst von Gagern, and it was from Gagern that Georg Herber acquired it. The next year Herber took over from his fellow parliamentarian, the former Theology professor Christian Wilhelm Snell, as president of the assembly. He was re-elected to the parliament in 1825, at which point his presidency of the chamber was re-confirmed.

The success of the 1830 July Revolution in Paris intensified the nervousness of rulers and their governments across much of western Europe, while those keen to move on from absolutist government were also encouraged by regime change in France. As leader of the liberal faction in the elected part of the bicameral Nassau parliament, Herber asserted to the duke that parliament was entitled to reject government tax measures. The exchange took place in the presence of Chief Minister von Bieberstein. Herber was neither a dangerous democrat nor any sort of a regicidal republican. In terms of many of the ideas that the French Revolution had, for a time, legitimised, and in terms of many of the radical ideas that resurfaced during the revolutions of 1830, Herber was very moderate in his own reformist agenda. The duke's The duke's hostility against him nevertheless grew. During 1931 a handwritten memorandum in which Herber set out his proposals for constitutional reform found their way to the media. A printed version of the memorandum was published as a supplement with the "Hanauer Zeitung", a "foreign newspaper" produced in the adjacent Electorate of Hesse, on 20 October 1831. There was no suggestion that Herber had either wished or known that his constitutional proposals would appear in the newspaper. By the end of 1831 the Ducal Appellate court ("Hof- und Appellationsgericht") of Nassau was working on criminal charges to be brought against Herber. As government pressure intensified, Herber remained robust in sharing is views. In 1832 Herber was one of 15 members of the "estates" who boycotted the chamber as a protest against the government's anti-democratic "Pairsschub", which involved appointing additional members to the upper (nominated) house of parliament in order to increase the balance of support in favour of the government. The government responded by withdrawing his parliamentary mandate, thereby removing him permanently from his parliamentary seat. The landed gentlemen of Wiesbaden elected a man called Nikolaus Kunz, of whom relatively little is known, to take his place and remained a member of the chamber till 1838.

Georg Herber appeared before The Ducal Appellate court at the end of 1832. The charge was that he had insulted both The Duke and his Chief Minister.