Johann Baptist von Pfeilschifter
Johann Baptist von Pfeilschifter (27 September 1793 – 16 November 1874) was a German historian and philosopher.
Biography
He was born at Gösen, near Cham. After graduating from high school in Straubing, he studied philosophy, history and law in Landshut from 1810-13, then in Munich. Pfeilschifter began writing while still a student. In 1816, he was employed by Heinrich Zschokke in Aarau, and worked for a time at the newspaper Aarauer Zeitung, then for the Oppositionsblatt published in Weimar. He also worked for Friedrich Arnold Brockhaus' Conversations-Lexikon and the magazine Zeitgenossen.[1] He always gained important collaborators and maintained contact with the Mainz circle around Karl Theodor von Dalberg and the Viennese circle around Clement Mary Hofbauer.
In 1817, he founded the newspaper Zeitschwingen, which appeared first in Jena, then in Leipzig, and finally in Frankfurt am Main, where it passed into Ludwig Börne's hands in September 1819, but was soon suppressed by the government. In 1820, he made a trip to Holland, France and Spain and corresponded from there for the Augsburg paper Allgemeine Zeitung. In 1822, he returned to Frankfurt and founded the Der Staatsmann, a monarchical-legitimistic paper and acted sharply and doctrinally against early constitutionalism in southern Germany, Protestantism and liberal currents at the universities. Der Staatsmann appeared from 1831 as Zuschauer am Main until 1838.
From then on, he represented a strictly conservative and even more strictly Catholic direction. In 1825 he received the title of Legationsrath from Duke Ferdinand of Anhalt-Köthen, who had become Catholic, and in 1829 he was ennobled by him. From 1830 to 1840, he lived mostly at Aschaffenburg during the summer, and at Mannheim during the winter. From 1841 to 1851, he lived in Würzburg, then in Darmstadt. The paper Litteratur- und Kirchen-Correspondent, founded by him and Adam Müller in 1829, soon ceased its publication after Müller moved to Vienna. From 1831 to 1837, he was the main editor of the Aschaffenburg Katholische Kirchenzeitung, and from 1837 to 1841 of the Herold des Glaubens.
From 1837 to 1839, he also published a kind of almanac entitled Cölestine. He wrote for the Katholik and other periodicals and published between 1830 and 1846, partly anonymously or pseudonymously, a number of smaller writings. After a long interruption, Pfeilschifter published the first volume of Baierischer Plutarch in 1861, but no second volume followed. He then took over the editorship of the Westfälischer Merkur for some time and tried to found a Katholisches Kirchenblatt.
He died in Regensburg.
Works
- Auch ein Wort über das baierische Konkordat und dessen Gegner (1818)
- Erinnerung an des Markgrafen von Brandenburg Christian Wilhelm Bekehrung zum katholischen Glauben und an dessen Schrift, betitelt: Speculum veritatis Brandenburgicum (1828)
- Zurechtweisungen für Freunde und Feinde des Katholizismus (1831)
- Denkwürdigkeiten aus der spanischen Revolution (1836)
- Mittheilungen aus Spanien (1837)
- Betrachtungen über die Revolutionen in Spanien, Portugal, Frankreich und den Niederlanden (1839)
- Politische Studien (1839)
- Biographien denkwürdiger Priester und Prälaten (1846; under the pen name B. Wagner)
- Papst Gregor XVI, sein Leben und sein Pontifikat (1846; under the pen name B. Wagner)
- Preußens Politik in Bezug auf Deutschland (1849)
- Bayerischer Plutarch, oder Lebensbeschreibungen denkwürdiger und verdienter Bayern (1861)
- Beiträge zu einer Geschichte der Freimaurerei in Österreich (1868)
- Vom deutschen Reiche und dem Ursprunge desselben (1873)
Notes
- ↑ Reusch, Franz Heinrich (1887). "Pfeilschifter, Johann Baptist von." In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie. 25. München/Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, pp. 657–58.
References
- Hubert Rumpel, "Johann Baptist Pfeilschifter und die österreichische Staatskanzlei," Jahrbuch für fränkische Landesforschung 14 (1954), pp. 235–62.
- Ewald Reinhard, "Johann Baptist von Pfeilschifter. Ein Redakteur aus dem Vormärz," Historisch-politische Blätter 168 (1921), pp. 17–32.
- Ewald Reinhard, Johann Baptist von Pfeilschifter, der bayerische plutarch. München: Pohl (1954).
