Karl Ledderhose

Eduard von Moeller

Ledderhose was a protégé and close collaborator of Eduard von Moeller, particularly during the transition to Prussian rule, at which time von Moeller was named Oberpräsident of the newly formed Prussian Province of Hesse-Nassau.[42] When von Moeller was transferred to Strasbourg and named Oberpräsident of Alsace–Lorraine (German: Elsaß–Lothringen) in 1871, he specifically wrote to Chancellor Otto von Bismarck requesting that Ledderhose be made his vice-president.[43] By 1875, due to an increasing personality clash between von Moeller and the District President (German: Bezirkspräsident) of the Unterelsaß District, Adolf Ernst von Ernsthausen, von Moeller requested that Bismarck transfer von Ernsthausen to Colmar and make him the District President of Oberelsaß, so that while they might still have to work together, they would not have to live in the same city.[44][45] Consequently, Ledderhose was elevated to the position of District President, which position he held until 1879, when Edwin Freiherr von Manteuffel was appointed the first Imperial Lieutenant (German: Reichsstatthalter) of Alsace-Lorraine.[46] During his tenure as District President, Ledderhose was able to take part in many great events of state, including several visits by the Kaiser and the imperial court.[47] On the occasion of the Kaiser's visit to inaugurate the opening of the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Universität, Ledderhose received much praise, but his wife Minna was also singled out for her charm and the dignity with which she "played Hausfrau" for the Imperial retinue.[48]

In 1875, Ledderhose was dispatched to Paris to assist a group of Bishops to re-negotiate the borders of the various bishoprics and dioceses in the state of Alsace-Lorraine. The predominantly Catholic French and the predominantly Protestant Germans were ever at odds over dogma, but in this case, property, land, and income were involved, so it became more of a political issue than a religious one.[49] Another interesting event during Ledderhose's tenure as District President occurred in 1877. Two brothers, August and Franz Scherbeck, were Alsatian-born French citizens who had fought in the French army during the Franco-Prussian War, but were now requesting naturalization in Alsace so they could take care of their ailing father and his farm.[50] As enemy combatants, their application process was stymied at various points along the way, including by von Moeller himself, but eventually one of the brothers wrote a letter directly to Bismarck himself, which caused the Chancellor to issue an edict that Ledderhose approve their application.[51] This incident highlights a curious occurrence in the region, whereby the central imperial authorities in Berlin were often more engaged in local administrative matters than the local magistrates themselves.[52]

After his old rival Manteuffel was named Imperial Lieutenant of Alsace-Lorraine in 1879, Ledderhose was replaced by Otto Back, former mayor of Strasbourg as Bezirkspräsident and given the position of Undersecretary of State (German: Unterstaatssekretär) for Agriculture, Industry, and Public Works.[53] According to Alberta von Puttkammer, the daughter of Ledderhose's colleague and former Bezirkspräsident of Lorraine Robert von Puttkamer, the decision to put Ledderhose in this position was based not only on Manteuffel's annoyance with him, but also because "...[he] had neither a lively interest nor a pronounced talent, while he was sympathetic to internal political administrative questions and worked effectively on their solution."[54] In short, Ledderhose was seen as a perfectly serviceable mid-level functionary, who would neither cause trouble nor rock the boat.

Bebauungsplan for the City of Strasbourg (1880)

Shortly after being reassigned to the role of Unterstaatssekretär, in 1880, Ledderhose was involved in the overhaul of Strasbourg's urban center. Most of the planning was done while he was Bezirkspräsident, but even after he lost that position, the project fell under his purview as a matter of public works, so he remained closely involved.[55] Among those who worked with Ledderhose to redesign the city was the famed French architect Jean Geoffroy Conrath.[56] There are records of Ledderhose's impassioned speeches to the government, in which he defended a wide variety of issues that fell under his purview. In one, the government proposed to do away with certain subsidies from forestry income that went to support vocational carpentry schools in the region, which Ledderhose believed to be a grave mistake, and he so impressed his colleagues with statistics and data about the breadth of benefit these schools provided for the poor of their region that the motion was tabled.[57] In another, Ledderhose took up the defense of allowing children to work in the local mines, arguing that "they are given relatively light duties" and are "not compelled to work on Sundays."[58] His speeches before the government also tied into his role as curator of the university, such as one he gave imploring his peers to approve the funding of new greenhouses on campus, to expand the research capabilities of both the departments of botany and medicine.[59] Due to Ledderhose's support, Heinrich Anton de Bary was able to preside over the opening of what was then one of the premier botanical institutes in Europe.

Kaiser Wilhelm addressing the faculty of Strasbourg university in the aula of the Palais Universitaire.

At the same time, Ledderhose was also made curator of the newly established Kaiser-Wilhelm-Universität, whose construction and development he oversaw; at this phase the university occupied the now-vacant Palais Rohan. He was replacing Franz von Roggenbach in this role, and the latter's resentment would make Ledderhose's first several years in the post somewhat difficult.[60] Due to Roggenbach's abrupt resignation, certain crucial aspects of the university's organization were left undone, including the acquisition of faculty, the outlaying of permanent statutes, and construction of new buildings for teaching and research.[61] Despite these obstacles, from 1872 to 1875, Ledderhose successfully argued for more than 6 million marks worth of subsidies toward the university from the Alsatian government, accounting for about 3% of the annual regional budget, compared to the .7% of the total Prussian budget was spent on all nine universities in the Kingdom.[62] He also realized that support from the Alsatian government would be insufficient to build and staff the new university to the standard expected by the Kaiser, so he argued and won an additional 5.9 million marks from the Prussian government.[63] Ledderhose's success in securing early funding for the university helped assuage local concern about the rise of German Culture over French, which was and would remain a complex issue in the border region.[64] In addition to developing and fighting for the budget that the school needed to grow and survive, Ledderhose brought prominent architects like Otto Warth and Hermann Eggert to Strasbourg to design the growing universities' teaching and research spaces. As curator, Ledderhose was also able to exact some real on-the-ground change in the way the university's culture was structured. Among his first acts as curator was to abolish both student prisons and faculty policing, both surprisingly common in German-speaking universities at the time, and the removal of which was credited with increasing morale and camaraderie between faculty and students alike.[65] Among Ledderhose's achievement ins the early years of the university was his strong conviction that all faculties should remain united, rather than splitting the liberal arts and natural sciences into two separate schools, an idea which was supported by Generalfeldmarschall Edwin Freiherr von Manteuffel himself.[66]

The Palais Universitaire of Kaiser-Wilhelm-Universität, inaugurated in 1884.

Ledderhose's tenure as curator was not without drama, however. In dealing with the pushback from Roggenbach loyalists at the early days, Ledderhose came into direct conflict with Friedrich Althoff, who, while a competent educator, possessed fewer skills than were desired as an administrator, which often left him at odds with both his faculty and his colleagues.[67] Ledderhose, it was noted, had a much softer touch when it came to dealing with the faculty, who quickly grew to appreciate his style, and with whom he would enjoy a very close and productive relationship for the years of his curatorship.[68] In particular, one change that Ledderhose instituted which forever ingratiated him with his faculty, was that he would not appoint anyone to the university faculty without first having the applicant vetted and approved by that body, to avoid any conflict of interest or personality on campus.[69] In one hiring coup, Ledderhose was able to establish two separate chairs for English and Romance studies, two disciplines which had previously only ever been bundled together as "non-German." Effectively, Ledderhose hired both Bernhard ten Brink (in English) and Carl Eduard Böhmer (in Romance, and who had been recommended personally by Wilhelm Dilthey), and made it the government's decision as to which to fire, which they declined to do.[70] Among his attempts to increase the visibility of the university's faculty, Ledderhose courted the renowned astronomer Hugo von Seeliger to come to Strasbourg and direct the newly constructed, state-of-the-art observatory, but von Seeliger declined the offer for unknown reasons.[71] Less successfully, Ledderhose and Bismarck both championed the hiring of Heinrich Julius Holtzmann to the faculty of theology despite having no published work and little teaching experience. This political appointment can be seen through a historical lens as an example of the Kulturkampf waged by the Protestant Prussian establishment against their Catholic subjects.[72]

In November 1885, the position of Imperial Lieutenant of Alsace–Lorraine, which had been vacated by Manteuffel in June of that year, was filled by Chlodwig, Prince of Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst, a high-ranking German nobleman, former Minister-President of Bavaria, and future Chancellor of the German Empire. At first, the relationship between Hohenlohe and the extant cabinet was fine, but over time, personalities began to clash, which led Hohenlohe to correspond directly with the Kaiser and his privy council about replacing his subordinates.[73] Hohenlohe's enemies in Berlin were determined to depict him as weak and ineffectual, so he was forced act decisively in his role as Imperial Lieutenant, and Ledderhose and von Mayr were the victims of that show of strength.[74] In particular, Ledderhose and von Puttkammer's suggestion that a leading Alsatian industrialist, Jean von Schlumberger, be made Bezirkspräsident in Colmar irritated Hohenlohe, and after corresponding with the Kaiser and his aides about the issue, he made the decision to fire both men.[75] The cover of the 1887 parliamentary election was used to disguise the dismissals, and Ledderhose was replaced by the longtime mayor of Strasbourg, Otto Back, while von Mayr was replaced by the Regierungspräsident of Königsberg, Conrad von Studt.[76]

With his removal from his government post, Ledderhose was also replaced as curator of the university. As the end of Ledderhose's tenure approached, theology professor Franz Xaver Kraus noted with no small concern that the loss of such a popular leader among both faculty and students was the cause for much unrest, and caused him to fear for the future of the university.[77] Despite these concerns, the university continued to prosper, and Ledderhose faded into obscurity. Nothing is known of his life between his dismissal in 1887 and his death. He died in Strasbourg on 2 January 1899, having outlived his wife and his youngest son.[78][79]