REICHENSPERGER FAMILY. - AUGUST, German politician, b. 22 March 1808 at Coblenz, d. there 16 July 1895, brother of Peter R.
In 1830 he entered the judiciary as an auditor at the Higher Regional Court of Münster and there attained the rank of Councillor of Appeal at Cologne, which he held from 1849 to 1875. From his early youth, as a good Rhinelander, he particularly opposed Prussian rule and was led to fully support the Catholic cause when in 1837 the Prussian authorities imprisoned the Archbishop of Cologne, Droste-Vischering. Deputy to the National Assembly of Frankfurt in 1848, he became vice-president of the Catholic group and supported the Greater German programme. He then repeatedly sat in the Prussian Diet, where he worked for the formation of a compact phalanx of Catholic deputies, spoke on several occasions, and opposed civil marriage legislation. His activity during the *Kulturkampf* was particularly noteworthy. A prominent member of the Centre Party, in 1877, in Windthorst’s absence, he took his place as leader of the parliamentary group.
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Peter, German politician, b. 28 May 1810 at Coblenz, d. 31 Dec. 1892 at Berlin. In 1836 he embraced a judicial career and was assessor at the Regional Court of Coblenz, then at Elberfeld.
Later promoted (1850) to Councillor of Appeal at Cologne, in 1859 he became Councillor of the Supreme Court at Berlin, where he remained until 1879, when he retired. Meanwhile he had begun his political career: in 1848 he was a member of the Preliminary Parliament at Frankfurt and deputy to the Prussian Diet (from 1849) and to the Reichstag (from 1867). From the time he entered the Diet he worked for the formation of the Catholic group, which in the struggles between conservatives and liberals succeeded in securing for Catholics in Prussia a share of those rights which the Catholic deputies of the Frankfurt Parliament had vainly striven to see recognized throughout Germany. On 11 June 1870, in a well-known article in the *Kölnische Volkszeitung*, he set out the programme of the future Centre Party. During the *Kulturkampf* he eloquently defended Catholic rights in the Prussian Chamber of Deputies.
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