Reichensperger Family

German politician, b. 22 March 1808 at Koblenz, 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 rose to the rank of counselor of the Court of Appeal at Cologne, which he held from 1849 to 1875. From his earliest youth, as a good Rhinelander, he had a particular aversion to Prussian rule and was led to support the Catholic cause fully when in 1837 the Prussian authorities imprisoned the Archbishop of Cologne, Droste-Vischering. A deputy to the National Assembly of Frankfurt in 1848, he became vice-president of the Catholic group and supported the Greater German program. He then repeatedly sat in the Prussian Diet, where he worked for the formation of a compact action phalanx of the Catholic deputies, spoke there several times and opposed the legislation on civil marriage. Of particular importance was the activity he carried out during the Kulturkampf. A prominent member of the Center, in 1877, in Windthorst's absence, he replaced him as group leader.

PETER, German politician, b. 28 May 1810 at Koblenz, d. 31 Dec. 1892 at Berlin. In 1836 he gave up his career as a magistrate and was an assessor at the Regional Court of Koblenz, then at Elberfeld.

Later promoted (1850) to counselor of the Court of Appeal at Cologne, he became in 1859 a counselor of the Supreme Court at Berlin, where he remained until 1879, when he retired. In the meantime he had begun his political career: in 1848 he was a member of the Frankfurt preparatory assembly and a deputy of the Prussian Diet (from 1849) and of the Reichstag (from 1867). From the time he became a member of the Diet he worked for the establishment of the Catholic group, which in the struggles between conservatives and liberals succeeded in securing in Prussia for Catholics a share of those rights which the Catholic deputies of the Frankfurt Parliament had striven in vain to see recognized throughout Germany. On 11 June 1870, in a well-known article in the Kölnische Volkszeitung, he set out the programmatic lines of the future Center Party. During the Kulturkampf he eloquently defended the rights of Catholics in the Prussian Chamber of Deputies.

Silvio Furlani