Eduard Heinrich Flottwell (23 July 1786 – 28 May 1865; after 1861 von Flottwell) was a Prussian Staatsminister. He served as Oberpräsident (governor) of the Grand Duchy of Posen (from 1830) and of the Saxony (from 1841), Westphalia (from 1846) and Brandenburg (from 1850) Provinces. He was also Prussian Minister of Finance (1844-1846) and Minister of Interior (1858-1859).

Flottwell was in fact the originator and administrator of the Naturalization of the Jews of the Grand Duchy of Posen in 1834 and 1835. This procedure provided Jews with limited civic rights if they kept their business records in the German language and retained a certain minimum of property. Even so, according to Luft, Jewish citizens did not have all the rights of other citizens in that under the 1833 Decree they could not hold public office and could not vote for members of Parliament. Full rights did not come until the fall of the Empire in 1918.

Naturalization was, according to Edward David Luft, the legal way for the Jews to escape the cultural, social and economic ghetto. Source: The Naturalized Jews of the Grand Duchy of Posen by Edward David Luft published by Avotaynu 2004. Data from the original published in Bromberg in 1836 by Isidor Hirschberg in German.

The Naturalization program enabled towns to enroll their Jewish people into a higher class, and collect fees for doing so. The town of Lissa=Leszno enrolled 440 people, mostly men, on July 17, 1834. The largest number of people enrolled were in the town of Posen with 573 individuals on several dates in the summer of 1834. The grand total of Naturalizations of Jews was 5,173. In another program for the Jews the Duchy created the Tolerated classification. Lists of Tolerated Jews are available and a small sample is available in the Geni Project for Ostrowo in the Documents Tab.

Flottwell was born in Insterburg in the Province of East Prussia (present-day Chernyakhovsk in Russian Kaliningrad Oblast), studied law at the University of Königsberg and entered the civil service at the Insterburg court in 1805; from 1812 he was a member of the East Prussian Regierungspräsidium of Gumbinnen.[1] After the Napoleonic Wars he together with Oberpräsident Theodor von Schön re-organised the administration of the West Prussian province at Danzig. In 1825 he was appointed Regierungspräsident of Marienwerder.

When in 1830 the Polish November Uprising led by Michał Gedeon Radziwiłł broke out at Warsaw in Russian Congress Poland, his brother Antoni Radziwiłł was dismissed as Duke-Governor of the Prussian Grand Duchy of Posen by King Frederick William III and the sole rule passed to Flottwell as the new Oberpräsident. He was a strong supporter of Germanisation and standardised schooling policies, which by some was seen as directed against ethnic Polish Prussians in the region. In 1843 in "Anerkennung der Hilfe nach dem großen Hamburger Brand" (acknowledgment of the assistance after the great Hamburg fire), he was named an honorary citizen of Hamburg. Source: Wikipedia, sourced July 30, 2020.

Copied from the Posen Project here on Geni:

The Posen region was inhabited mainly by Roman Catholic Poles, although it had a minority of mostly Protestant Germans. https://agoff.de/?p=29020 : Orte im Kreis Hohensalza-Inowrozlaw / Places in inowrozlaw county

The Jewish population of the Posen region before, during, and after it was a Province of the Grand Duchy is well documented. The foremost series of record extracts were developed by Edward David Luft in the 1986-2020 period. Here are two citations to introduce his materials to researchers who are interested in the Jewish presence in Posen:

The Jews of Posen Province in the Nineteenth Century. A Selective Source Book, Research Guide, and Supplement to The Naturalized Jews of the Grand Duchy of Posen in 1834 and 1835 https://www.wbc.poznan.pl/dlibra/show-content/publication/edition/3...

The Naturalized Jews of the Grand Duchy of Posen in 1834 and 1835, Revised Edition, Compiled by Edward David Luft, published 2004 by Avotaynu. This is an Alphabetical List of Jews Naturalized in the Grand Duchy of Posen in 1834 and 1835 as published in 1836 by Isidor Hirschberg in Bromberg. Available from the publisher Avotaynu. Copyright 1986, 1987 by Edward David Luft, All Rights Reserved. For a complete list of Luft source materials see this site: https://sites.google.com/site/edwarddavidluftbibliography/home/edwa... .

Posen Province was the successor to the Grand Duchy of Posen and not a province of it. Posen became the 17th province of Prussia in 1850, on an equal footing with the other 16 "old" provinces. Source: Luft.

sources for research: https://genwiki.genealogy.net/Bromberg https://www.familysearch.org/search/catalog/106980?availability=Fam... (erteilung von Heimatscheinen 1825- 1919

Heinrich Eduard Flottwell
FamilySearch Family Tree
Birth: July 23 1786 - Insterburg, Ostpreußen, Preußen, Deutschland
Death: May 25 1865 - Potsdam, Brandenburg, Deutschland
Parents: Johann Friedrich Flottwell, Charlotta Amalia Barbara Flottwell (born Sanden)
Spouses: Johanne Friederike Flottwell (born Koslowski), Auguste Ernestine Henriette Flottwell (born Lüdecke)
Children: Friedrich Wilhelm Eduard Flottwell, Elise Auguste Flottwell, Ernst Theodor Flottwell, Maria Friederike Hegel (born Flottwell), Richard Flottwell, Hermann von Flottwell, Henriette Emilie Flottwell, and names of 3 more children
Siblings: Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Flottwell, Jacobine Friderique Amalia Flottwell, George Leopoldt Julius Flottwell