Hergenhahn, Jacob Ludwig Philipp August Franz

Prime Minister, lawyer

born: 16.04.1804 in Usingen

died: 29.12.1874 in Wiesbaden

After studying law in Heidelberg and Göttingen, the son of a Nassau bailiff began his professional career in 1824 as a procurator at the court in Usingen. In 1825, he moved to Wiesbaden in the same capacity. In 1832 he set up as a freelance lawyer, first in Usingen and from 1833 in Wiesbaden, but returned to the civil service in 1841 as a procurator at the Wiesbaden High Court of Appeal.

As a member of the fraternities, he came into contact early on with the leading representatives of southwest German and Rhenish liberalism. A member of the state parliament since 1846, he took the lead in the revolutionary movement in Nassau in 1848. The "Nine Demands", which he co-authored and announced on March 2nd, formulated the goals that guided him as Chairman of the Central Security Committee and, from May 16th, as Minister President. In Nassau as well as in the Frankfurt Pre-Parliament and in the National Assembly, he belonged to the right wing of the Liberals, who advocated a small German-Prussian solution in terms of national policy. The fact that the imperial constitution failed due to the resistance of the Prussian king hit him particularly hard as a member of the Imperial Deputation. On June 7, 1849, he resigned from his ministerial office, but continued to campaign for a solution to the German question by participating in the Gotha Assembly and as a member of the Erfurt Reichstag.

In 1850 he returned to judicial service, initially as Procurator General at the Higher Court of Appeal in Wiesbaden, in 1860 as Director of the Court and Court of Appeal in Dillenburg and in 1861 as Director of the Court and Court of Appeal in Wiesabaden. In 1864, the government transferred him to the politically less exposed position of director of the Nassauische Landesbank. After the annexation of Nassau in 1866, he was appointed managing director of the Ministry of State and Justice.

In 1867, he was active in parliament for the last time as a representative of the National Liberal Party in the constituent Reichstag of the North German Confederation, before returning to his usual professional field in the same year when he was appointed President of the Court and Court of Appeal for the administrative district of Wiesbaden.

In 1848, the city of Wiesbaden made him an honorary citizen, and a street has been named after the Nassau politician since 1903/4.