Johann von Miquel

Johann von Miquel (19 February 1828 – 8 September 1901) was a German statesman.

Born Johannes Miquel at Neuenhaus, Kingdom of Hanover, in 1829 as a descendant from a French family that had emigrated during the French Revolution, Miquel learnt law at the universities of Heidelberg and Göttingen. Studying the writings of Karl Marx he became a convert to an extreme revolutionary, socialistic and atheistic creed; but though he entered into correspondence with Marx with the object of starting a revolutionary movement, he does not appear to have taken any overt part in the Revolutions of 1848–1849.

Further study of political economy soon enabled him to pass out of this phase, and in 1850 he settled down to practise as an advocate at Göttingen. He acquired a reputation as an able lawyer and rising politician, especially for his knowledge of financial questions. He was one of the founders of the German National Association, and in 1864 he was elected a member of the Hanoverian parliament as a Liberal and an opponent of the government. He accepted the annexation of Hanover by Prussia without regret, and was one of the Hanoverians whose parliamentary abilities at once won a commanding position in the Prussian parliament, which he entered in 1867.

For some reason, perhaps because Bismarck did not entirely trust him, he did not at this time attain quite so influential a position as might have been anticipated; nevertheless he was chairman of the parliamentary committee which in 1876 drafted the new rules of legal procedure, and he found scope for his great administrative abilities in the post of mayor of Osnabrück. He held this position from 1865 to 1870, and again from 1876 to 1879, having in the meantime moved to Berlin, where he was first a director of the Discontogesellschaft (1870–1873), and then a member of its advisory board (1873-1876).

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