Dr. Johann Georg August Wirth

A great freedom fighter

Dr Johann Georg August Wirth was born in Hof on 20th November 1798 and died on 26th July 1848 in Frankfurt. All his life Wirth fought as a publicist, publisher, historian, lawyer and politician for the freedom of the press, for public court trials, for the separation of administration and judiciary, for a head of state elected by the people and for a united Germany.

Together with Dr Philipp Jakob Siebenpfeiffer he drew up the proclamation calling delegates to attend the greatest public meeting to be held on German soil, the so-called Hambacher Fest. There he was the main speaker. Wirth, who was celebrated as a freedom fighter, persecuted as a revolutionist and put on trial for high treason, spending over four years in prison before finally escaping into exile, remained all his life – in the words of Heinrich Heine – “a brave knight in the cause of freedom”.

For Wirth and his wife Magdalena, their unfaltering uprightness meant persecution, separation, financial hardship and exile. Wirth lived to see the 1848 Revolution in Germany and was made a member of the Frankfurt Parliament in the Paulskirche, the first national assembly in Germany. However shortly before starting his work there, he died in Frankfurt without quite reaching his fiftieth birthday.

On the 150th anniversary of his death, Hof honoured this great freedom fighter and liberal thinker with a monument in the pedestrian zone, set up in a little square named after him “Dr.-Wirth-Platz”. This monument, the work of sculptor Professor Andreas Theuer from Berlin, measures 14 by 11 metres and can be walked on. It represents a page of the newspaper Wirth published, the “Deutsche Tribüne”.