What does the German word Erbpräfektor mean?

February 2, 2008 2:42 PM

What does the German word Erbpräfektor mean? I have some genealogical data in German. I don't speak German. The data mentions a man whose occupation was Erbpräfektor. What does that mean? If context helps, he lived in Germany in the 19th Century. My dead tree German-English dictionary fails me, as does dict.cc and Babel Fish.
posted by thinman to writing & language (15 comments total)

My curory results translate it as Hereditary/Ancestral Prefect. I have no idea what that means though, nor what such a job (even if translated better) would entail.
posted by astrochimp at 2:52 PM on February 2

Yeah, you could make it more exact by calling it "hereditary prefector" (there's a rare English prefector that means the same as prefect), but that doesn't really help. I can find no trace of a German Präfektor, let alone the compound you give, in even the largest dictionaries. Do you need to actually know what he did (in which case you'll need to consult a specialist in the history of whatever little principality he lived in), or can you just call him a "hereditary prefect(or)" and let it go at that?
posted by languagehat at 3:00 PM on February 2

The Duden does have an entry for Präfektur, but nothing for Erbpräfektur. My guess is that the writer was confused and wrote Präfektor/Präfektur (i.e., the prefecture over which a prefect has authority) when they meant Präfekt (i.e., the prefect himself). I would further speculate that the Erb- prefix is an ad hoc way of indicating that it was a hereditary position rather than a civil service or ministerial one.
posted by jedicus at 3:15 PM on February 2

The german language does like to just stack words together to make a new word. Do you have any context that might be helpful?

Could it simply be a fancy word for "head of houseshold"?

My great grandfather was a truck driver, and his occupation is listed as Chauffeur, so who knows?
posted by gjc at 6:09 PM on February 2

erb- would indicate this was inherited. a praefekt was a person who was entrusted with running something... i.e. to supervise the military in prussia. it would help to know more about the circumstance here since the word itself is not commonly used nowadays. the german wikipedia has a couple entried for praefekt but nothing dead-on either.
posted by krautland at 6:11 PM on February 2

Hereditary prefect it is, I guess. It's a little peculiar in that his father's occupation is shown as blacksmith, and his son was a shepherd.

Thanks all.
posted by thinman at 6:12 PM on February 2

Oh... a couple more responses snuck in while I was writing my comment above. gjc, the only other context that might help is that following the shepherd I mention above, there are three generations of lawmen. In general, we're talking about a pretty humble lineage here: butchers, soldiers, farmers and the like.
posted by thinman at 6:30 PM on February 2

then again -- it could indicate that this person was supposed to administer inheritances ... i.e. in case of minor heirs. I'm gonna ask someone who should know more about this and will post if I find anything out.
posted by krautland at 8:51 AM on February 3

little update: a Praefekt is a roman empire administration official - fairly high up the ladder.

my source thinks combined with Erb- we're talking about what nowadays is called a Nachlassverwalter or Nachlasspfleger - an executor. this person gets installed by a court if there isn't a known heir to an inheritance.

it could also be a Testamentsvollstrecker, - an administrator of a will - a person installed by the deceased him- or herself in their will.
posted by krautland at 10:24 AM on February 3

a Praefekt is a roman empire administration official

That's pretty much completely irrelevant. In the OED's words, in post-classical Latin it denoted "a variety of officials," and in the medieval and modern world it has been used for "a person holding any of various positions of command or superintendence, as a governor, a director, a police or civil magistrate, a mayor, etc." There is absolutely no way of knowing what this particular title meant without going into local history. Since thinman hasn't said where this person lived, there's no way we can help with that.
posted by languagehat at 1:02 PM on February 3

Since thinman hasn't said where this person lived, there's no way we can help with that.

He was born and died in Amt Großer Plöner See. Does that help?
posted by thinman at 2:17 PM on February 3

I don't think it's entirely irrelevant because many official german job titles are directly related to old latin job titles. considering that we're talking schleswig-holstein here, which is where I was born, I'd put my money on Nachlassverwalter now.
posted by krautland at 8:08 PM on February 3

When did this man live? Before 1864 Schleswig-Holstein, the area where Amt Großer Plöner See is, was part of Denmark. In Denmark in the 17th and 18th Century there was a great fashion for latinate titles and names (that's probably how my latinate last name came to be). Erbpräfektor may well have been a latinate version of some less impressive title.

Anyway, enough unfounded speculation. Googling for Erbpräfekt gets me one hit, this catalog of what I believe to be antiquities which gives the word in context:

782 HASLANG, Georg Christoph Freiherr von (1602 – 1684). Brustbild nach dreiviertellinks des bayerischen Hofmarschalls, oben das kurbayerische, unten das eigene Wappen. Kupferstich von P. de Jode nach A. van Hulle, 1648, 30 x 20 cm. 180,–
APK 10855. - Mit dem Privileg, vor der Jahreszahl und vor der Nr. 61. - Der Oberstkämmerer war auch Freiherr in Hohenkammer und Giebing, Gouverneur in Pfaffenhofen, kurfürstlicher Erbpräfekt von Ober- und Niederbayern und Gesandter zum Westfälischen Frieden. 1641 baute er das 1634 zerstörte Schloß Hohenkammer in der noch heute existierenden Form wieder auf. - Im breiten Rand gering fleckig.

Now, I'd tell you what all of that means but I don't know more than 20 words of German. Looks like a hoity-toity title to me, though :)
posted by Kattullus at 11:40 PM on February 3

One point. I know you were looking for Erbpräfektor but Erbpräfekt is close enough to be relevant. To me, and here I'm rampantly speculating again, Erbpräfektor sounds like a more latinate or "learned" way of spelling Erbpräfekt.
posted by Kattullus at 11:45 PM on February 3

A few comments thinman.

As a native German who grew up in the area you mention and has an amateur interest in history, I feel that the following scenario is perhaps likely: Following the Prussian takeover from the Danes after the second Schleswig war in 1864, the Duchy of Holstein (including the Ploen area) became a Prussian-administered territory under the Gastein convention of 1865, and was eventually merged with Prussia after the treaty/peace of Prague which concluded the Austro-Prussian war of 1866. This was further elaborated after the foundation of the Reich in 1871 which unified all Germanic states.

The second Schleswig war arose from the uncertain succession in Denmark after the sudden death of childless King Frederik VII in 1863 just as he was about to sign a new national constitution affecting the duchies of Schleswig (ethnically Danish) and Holstein (ethnically German) which had been without constitutional cover since 1858 and had previously been the object of the inconclusive first Schleswig war with Prussia of 1858-61.

In the middle of the 19th century, the so-called Schleswig-Holstein question, a perpetual source of international dispute in Northern Europe, exercised many political minds endlessly. Lord Palmerston famously said of the issue that only three people understood the Schleswig-Holstein question: one was dead, the other had gone insane, and the third was himself, but he had forgotten it.

Clearly, this was a conundrum which ultimately lent itself only to a resolution by force, and Bismarck duly obliged. A strong resonance with today's Palestine and Iraq affairs, albeit without the religious strife overlay.

As with all territories conquered in war, the question of how to achieve effective administration immediately arises. The old Danish administration had been swept away, and the Prussians would have struggled to bring in enough of their own to do the job with any knowledge of local affairs. Hence there would have been openings for rapid promotion for talented locals, and I surmise this is the origin of your ancestor's curious position, being the son of a low-ranking artificer. Clearly he was unable to pass on his acquired rank to his son (it is exceedingly unlikely, although remotely possible, that they had a falling-out and the son chose to become a shepperd in preference to an inheritable and prestigious administrative post).

As outlined above, further political developments cemented the new powers in Holstein over the subsequent decade, and this made it likely that the initial improvised new power structure would subsequently have been further "prussified". Bear in mind also, that Bismarck's efforts to build a coalition of German states first to fight the Austrians (who had been Prussia's partners in the second Schleswig war and had obtained Lauenburg for their prize) and then the French, necessitated yielding some juicy bits to various Southern German powers, and this would likely have found expression, among other things, in allowing a number of plum admin posts in the new Northern territories to go to Southerners once Germany had been unified into the second Empire. This, I feel, is the more likely explanation of why your ancestor failed to pass on his position, despite its nominally hereditary character implied in the title. It was probably usurped by a Prussian or Southern German after 1871.

Does this make any sense to you?
posted by kairab at 2:59 AM on February 4 [1 favorite]