Franz August Schenk von Stauffenberg

Franz August Schenk Freiherr von Stauffenberg (1834 to 1901) was a German jurist, landowner and politician, born in Würzburg, who became president of the Bavarian Landtag and a member of the Reichstag. A prosecutor in Augsburg, he was elected to the Bavarian Landtag in 1866 and remained a member until 1898, serving as its president from 1871 to 1875. In his first motion, in 1867, he called for the abolition of the death penalty in Bavaria, which won a majority in the Landtag but was rejected by the Reichsrat. He sat in the Reichstag for eight terms from 1871, as its vice president from 1876 to 1879, first as a National Liberal who worked with Bismarck and later as one of his opponents, and in 1884 he co-founded the German Free-minded Party. He was praised for his intelligence and education and for his balanced sense of justice.