Wessenburg, Ignatz Heinrich

Baron von, was a prominent liberal among the prelates in the Romish Church of Germany, and also a theological writer and a participant in civil affairs. He was born at Dresden, November 4, 1774. His education, being largely under the direction of Jesuits, was defective to a degree that impaired his efficiency as a scholar while he lived. He visited the schools at Augsburg, Dillingen, Wurzburg, and Vienna, nowhere finding the assistance which his active, questioning intellect demanded, and eventually confining his efforts to the use of the libraries and the study of art, for which latter employment the society of Vienna afforded opportunity. He had come into the possession of benefices as early as 1792, and to one of them, at Constance, he retired when the unpatriotic policy of the state in the closing years of the century drove him from the capital in disgust. In 1799 he published at Zurich a poetical epistle on the corruption of manners in Germany. In 1800, Dalberg (q.v.) called Wessenburg to be his vicar in the diocese of Constance, and he entered on the duties of the place with enthusiasm. He regulated the secular affairs of the diocese with a skill which elicited the commendation of the pope himself. He sought to help his clergy to a more systematic and thorough culture, and to stimulate it to greater activity, giving to the enterprise his personal efforts and reorganizing the seminary at Meersburg in its behalf. He also sent individual clergymen to Pestalozzi, that they might become more practically acquainted with the work of educating the young, and established teachers' seminaries within his own diocese. By such measures he not only contributed materially to the prosperity of his work, but also arrayed against himself the opposition of Rome, which was yet further intensified by his attempts to introduce the German language into the liturgy, and to place Ess's New Testament and Schmid's Biblische Geschichte in the schools as text-books. The nuncio in Luzerne, Testaferrate. succeeded in taking Switzerland from under the jurisdiction of Constance. In 1817 Wessenburg was unanimously chosen to succeed Dalberg as bishop of Constance, having previously been coadjutor to that prelate; but the election was set aside at Rome in the most unqualified manner, and when Wessenburg went to Rome to plead his own cause, he was not granted audience of the pope. The grand-duke Charles of Baden laid the matter before the German Diet, but without effect, and the next duke, Louis (1818), was not favorably disposed towards Wessenburg. On the erection of the archbishopric of Freiburg, the local clergy proposed Wessenburg as its head; but the government this time refused its assent as decidedly as the curia had done in the former instance. The king of Wurtemberg next desired him to fill the episcopal chair of Rottenburg, without being able to secure the assent of Rome. In 1819 a new career opened before Wessenburg through his election to the Chambers of Baden, in which he retained a seat during the next fourteen years, and in which he was a most zealous, eloquent, and influential representative of liberalism in its best and purest form. In 1833 he retired to private life, devoting his declining years to literary occupations and to the collection of works of art. His circle of friends was very wide, and his influence over them very strong. Queen Hortense, who resided near Constance, was among his friends, and it was her influence which induced Loutis Napoleon in 1838 to voluntarily relieve Switzerland of the embarrassment occasioned by the demand of king Louis Philippe for his banishment by forsaking the country. He died August 6, 1860. His leading ideas as a Churchman had occasioned the erection of a German National Catholic Church, and a revivification of Church councils. His principal work was written with an eve to the latter subject. It is entitled Die grossen Kirchenversamml. des 15. u. 16. Jahrhunderts (Constance, 1840, 4 volumes), and is considered of some value. His other works are of but little importance, because they lack an adequate basis in historical research. See Wessenburg's writings; Beck, Freiherr I.H.v. Wessenburg (Wagner, 1862); Baur, Kirchengesch. d. 19. Jahrhunderts, page 147 sq.; Herzog, Real-Encyklop. s.v.