Jauch Family

The Jauch family of Germany is a Hanseatic family, originating from Bergsulza in Thuringia and for the first time documented in the 15th century. A number of prominent family members and descendants are known for their accomplishments in politics, in the military, in commerce, in the fine arts and sciences.

1799 the Jauchs gained the ordinary burghership and became burghers of the Free Imperial City of Hamburg, followed by the hereditary grand-burghership (German: Großbürgerschaft). Thus they became in one of the oldest stringent civic republics members of the ruling class, which preserved its constitutional privileges till the German Revolution of 1918. These First Families of Hamburg, along with the equal First Families of the Free and Hanseatic cities Bremen and Lübeck, constitute the class of Hanseatics.

The stirps being ennobled with the Electoral Saxon Major General and Royal Polish Colonel Joachim Daniel von Jauch (1688–1754) became extinct in the 18th century.

Captain August Jauch (1861–1930) was for almost twenty years till 1915 member of the Hamburg Parliament, though delegated as a representative of the grand burghers (Notabelnabgeordneter) and not contesting an election by the burghers. Colonel Albert August Wilhem Deetz (1798–1859), son of Ludovica Jauch (1772–1805), was one of the thirtytwo members of the Emperor Deputation (Kaiserdeputation), chosen by the Frankfurt National Assembly, which offered on 3 April 1849 the Imperial Crown of Germany to Frederick William IV of Prussia. Lieutenant Colonel Jan Pawel Lelewel (1796–1847), grandson of Constance Jauch (1722–1802), participated on 3 April 1833 in the Frankfurter Wachensturm, the attempt to start a revolution in all German states. His brother, the famous Polish historian and rebel Joachim Lelewel (1786–1861), creator of Poland's unofficial motto "For our freedom and yours", member of Poland's Provisional Government in the November Uprising 1830, was jointly with Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels founder and vice-president of the Democratic Society for the Unification and Brotherhood of all People in Brussels (Demokratische Gesellschaft zur Einigung und Verbrüderung aller Völker (Brüssel)). Colonel Johann Christoph von Naumann (1664–1742), husband of Catharina Elisabeth Jauch (1671–1736), was a member of the diplomatic mission of the Holy League in the course of the Treaty of Karlowitz 1699 with the Ottoman Empire, which ended the Great Turkish War.

To the direct descendants of the Jauchs belong furthermore the German painter and head of the Nazarene movement Johann Friedrich Overbeck (1789–1869), the Nobel Prize-winning novelist Henryk Sienkiewicz (1846–1916), Lieutenant Colonel Otto von Feldmann (1873–1945), as Feldmann Pasha chief of military operations department at the Ottoman General Headquarters in World War I, SS-Gruppenführer and Generalleutnant der Waffen-SS Karl Fischer von Treuenfeld (1885–1946), inter alia commander of the escalade of Prague's Ss. Cyril and Methodius Cathedral after the Operation Anthropoid, the Barons Bolton, owners of the former Duchy of Bolton, and stirps of the Princes Czartoryski and the Princes Woroniecki.

Major General Hans Oster (1887–1945), one of the earliest and most determined opponents of Adolf Hitler and Nazism, moving spirit of German resistance from 1938 to 1943, was a first cousin-in-law of Captain Walter Jauch (1888–1876) and supported by Jauch & Hübener (Walter Jauch's partner Otto Hübener being executed in April 1945), today's German branch of Aon Corporation.

The Jauchs are descendants of Salomon Gesner (1559–1605), Lutheran theologian of the Protestant Reformation, persecutor of Calvinism, professor at the University of Wittenberg and propst at the All Saints' Church, Wittenberg.