Wilhelm Michael Schaffrath

Wilhelm Schaffrath (1 May 1814 – 7 May 1893) was a German jurist and politician. He was a member of the Frankfurt Parliament in 1848, and after 1871 a member of the national Reichstag. He was also, at various stages, a member of the Landtag of Saxony.

Life

Early years Wilhelm Michael Schaffrath was born, one of his parents' ten children, in Schöna, a small town in southern Saxony, close to the frontier with Austria. Two years after his birth the family relocated in connection with his father's work the short distance to Lauterbach, a parish of Stolpen. His father, Michael Gotthold Schaffrath, worked at one stage as a master weaver, and later, in Lauterbach, as a village school teacher.

Wilhelm was identified early on by the local priest as a talented scholar, and his ability was encouraged, notably by the Stolpen deacon who taught him Latin. The Stolpen municipality awarded him a free school place which enabled him to obtain a first-class education at the Saint Afra School for gifted students in the city of Meissen. As a result, he found himself denied a university teaching post, or indeed any job in public service. and the ("The Saxony Fatherland's journal"). Schaffrach was present at meetings of the , and was elected a member of the Frankfurt Parliament when it convened in May 1848. the Saxony component of what was becoming the pan-German left-wing liberal Progressive Party. Between 1865 and 1872 he sat as a member of the Dresden City Council, remaining active in city politics till the mid 1870s. and again between 1878 and 1879.

At the same time, in October 1871 he was also elected a member of the Landtag of Saxony, where he would sit as a member till 1879. Despite the unceremonious nature of his exclusion from the chamber in 1849, following his high-profile participation in the political aspects of the events of 1848, in 1871 he was promptly elected president of the Saxony Second Chamber, and the king confirmed the appointment.

During the ten years from 1883 till his death he served as an elected judge in the Saxony district court. He also undertook other senior functions of a political and administrative nature, both locally and on a national level.