Administrative Office
“Good Order”
The 18th century was a time of “growth of state power.” This led to a constant expansion of the administrative system. For, as was said at the time: The prince should promote the best interests of his state with all his might – therefore the state is obliged to support the prince.
Administrative offices thus became the decisive intermediate authority between the government (prince) and the towns and villages of the administrative districts. The administrative office in Kirchheimbolanden was responsible for good order in the residential city and 23 villages in the area of today’s eastern Donnersberg district.
Georg Von Neumayer
Admiralty Councillor Prof. Dr. Georg von Neumayer (1826-1909), born at Amtsstraße 27-29, ennobled in 1900, worked like no other German geoscientist in the 19th century equally in the fields of geography, mechanical geophysics, astronomy, oceanography, meteorology, and ocean navigation. His main areas of work were primarily Australia, the oceans, and Antarctica.
In Australia, after his studies in Munich (physics, mathematics, astronomy, and related natural sciences) and a helmsman’s training in Hamburg, he was primarily active in geomagnetic and meteorological questions. The oceans were his subject, especially as the founder and director of the German Naval Observatory (today the Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency) in Hamburg. And he laid the foundation for Antarctic research in numerous, including international, publications (especially “Auf zum Südpol”, 1901) and in conference contributions.
The tributes to his scientific work are correspondingly diverse. This also includes the naming of the German research station in Antarctica as the “Georg von Neumayer Station” in 1981.
He received honorary citizenship in Kirchheimbolanden, Frankenthal, and Neustadt. In addition, his hometown commemorates him in several ways even today: with a memorial plaque on his birthplace, as well as Neumayerstraße, the Georg von Neumayer School, the Neumayer Prize of the Nordpfalzgymnasium, and a Neumayer section in the Museum im Stadtpalais [Location 28].
Carl Philipp and Theodor Seyler
Amtsstraße 27/29 is also closely associated with the Seyler family.
Carl Philipp Seyler (1800-61), brother of Georg Kaspar Seyler, who was a militia colonel during the 1848/49 Revolution [Location 57], was one of the pioneers of industrialization in Kirchheimbolanden. In 1833, he built a tannery on Haider Straße. In the 1888 industrial census, the tannery, by then operated by the second generation, ranked fifth among the seven ‘factories and industrial facilities’ with 13 employees.
The continued growth of the business, which existed until 1956, even earned Karl Theodor Seyler (1870-1955), grandson of the tannery founder, the honorary title of Commercial Councillor. Such an honor could be bestowed upon ‘distinguished personalities in business’ in Bavaria until 1928.
