Teilw. zugl.: Bamberg, Univ., Diplomarbeit, 2009

In den Jahren nach 1789 emigrierten zehntausende Menschen aller Stände aus dem revolutionsgeschüttelten Frankreich in benachbarte Staaten – teils aus politischem Dissens, teils aus Angst um Leib und Leben. Unter den zahlreichen Territorien des Heiligen Römischen Reiches, in denen diese Emigranten Aufnahme fanden, war auch das Hochstift Bamberg. Die vorliegende Studie nimmt die Geschichte der Revolutionsemigranten in Hochstift und Diözese Bamberg auf der Basis einer neuen Auswertung der Quellen in den Blick. Sie unterzieht die Emigrantenpolitik der Fürstbischöfe Franz Ludwig von Erthal (1779–1795) und Christoph Franz von Buseck (1795–1802) einer differenzierten Analyse, untersucht die Sozialstruktur der Emigranten und geht kulturellen Transferprozessen nach. Die konkrete Alltags- und Lebenswelt sowie die ambivalente Wahrnehmung durch die einheimische Bevölkerung werden anhand von Beispielen rekonstruiert. Detaillierte Daten zu über 260 archivalisch nachgewiesenen Emigranten sind in einem prosopographischen Anhang zusammengefasst.

In the wake of 1789, revolutionary France lost a significant number of inhabitants through emigration towards adjacent realms such as the Netherlands, Spain, England and the Estates of the Holy Roman Empire. The historian Donald Greer, who researched the sociological composition of the émigrés, proposes a number of some 130.000 people (plus an estimated amount of 20.000 to 30.000 unnamed persons) having left France since July 1789. During the 1st Revolutionary War (1792-1797) many French emigrants abandoned their first exiles such as Turin, Trier and Koblenz, due to the continuing victories of the Revolutionary army on almost all fronts and arrived at more remote regions of the Empire. Within the Franconian Circle, the Prince-bishopric of Bamberg was a conceivable destination of emigration. Both prince-bishops in this period, Franz Ludwig von Erthal (1779-1795) and Christoph Franz von Buseck (1795-1802), enacted relatively strict regulations for emigrants moving in, in contrast to the permissive specifications in the nearby principalities of Brandenburg-Ansbach and Brandenburg-Bayreuth governed by Carl August von Hardenberg, the future foreign minister and Staatskanzler of Prussia. Regarding the emigration policy, it is important to distinguish between the orders put into force under Erthal’s and under Buseck’s rule: whereas the former generally disapproved of incoming refugees, allowing only a few exceptions, the latter often passed the responsibility for permission or rejection on to his princely government. Despite of all administrative limits and burdens, emigrated members of the clergy in particular sought admittance in the catholic Bamberg territory. This fact points to the importance of the confessional character of an Imperial Estate in the emigrants’ choice of location; a proposition which can be verified by statistical indication: The vast majority of emigrants, i.e. members of the 2nd and 3rd estate, were drawn into the protestant and neutral Ansbach and Bayreuth territories, whereas clergyman preferably came to Bamberg with the exception of higher ranked prelates, who were constantly rejected by the governmental authorities. About 71 % of the emigrants in the prince-bishopric were clergymen. In addition to those who left France (in its borders of 1789), this study also includes individuals who fled from regions conquered by the Revolutionary army after 1792, such as the Austrian Netherlands and the Imperial Estates situated on the Rhine. Almost 270 emigrants, most of them by name, are attested in the Prince-bishopric of Bamberg between 1792 and 1802. They were normally staying in the residence town of Bamberg, whereas a smaller group of emigrants dispersed in rural districts of the prince-bishopric, especially during the region’s short-term occupations by the French army in 1796 and 1800/01. The study makes clear that the revolutionary emigrants, most notably the clerics, were noticed by the government as political and religious refugees entitled to Christian solidarity as well as to material and financial benefits. Thus, the relation between government and prince-bishop was tense regarding the question of how to deal with the emigrants. While the rulers tended to confine their number, several members of the government argued for a broader support and cancellation of the rigorous restrictions. Some subjects from parishes, where emigrant priests said Mass and heard confession, even urged the prince-bishop to prolong residence permits for them as they had advanced to be highly-appreciated spiritual advisors. Nevertheless, individual emigrant priests could cause a destabilization of the social network within parishes by their sheer presence. Where such social disturbances occurred, emigrants were banished by the central authorities and consequently lost their subsistence. Compared to the outcome of the Huguenot emigration to the German states after 1685, which brought upturn through transfer of knowledge and skills as well as through entrepreneurial spirit, the French revolutionary emigration almost entirely lacked these economic effects. The reasons for this can be located in the temporally-limited character of the emigration and the comparatively smaller interest of the host society to take usage of the skills of those moving in. Both aspects appear valid for the Prince-bishopric of Bamberg. Only a small number of emigrants achieved a high level of integration, e.g. by working as language teachers and tutors whereby they gradually lost their status as refugees. The majority of the emigrants left the exile in Bamberg as soon as possible, at the latest in the wake of new restrictions adopted in 1802. The present study emphasises also an investigation in the (self-)perception of the émigrés, in their social interaction, cooperation patterns, acculturation processes as well as in the reconstruction of their Lebenswelten in Bamberg. A detailed prosopography of all emigrants attested by name in the Prince-bishopric and Diocese of Bamberg accompanies this study.