Paul Camille von Denis

Who was Paul Camille von Denis?

Paul Camille Denis, later von Denis, was an engineer, railway pioneer and participant in the Hambach Festival, the German political protest of 1832.

Denis was at Château des Saales in Montier-en-Der, in the Département of Haute-Marne, France. He grew up as a child of the Mainz city councillor, Peter Denis, and attended the Lyceum Louis le Grand in Paris. In 1814 and 1815 he studied at the École Polytechnique in Paris. After the conclusion of his studies he returned to the Palatinate to his father who had since settled at Neustadt.

Initially employed as a trainee by the Bavarian state - to which the Palatinate then belonged - from 3 March 1816 he worked as a construction overseer in Germersheim. In 1822 he became an engineering inspector at Speyer and, in 1826, was promoted to engineer, first class, at Zweibrücken.

Here he came into close contact with the democratic opposition organised by Friedrich Schüler, Johann Georg August Wirth, Joseph Savoye and Ferdinand Geib. In a report from the state police to the Bavarian king he was described - incorrectly - as their boyhood friend and fellow student. The German Press and Fatherland Union of democrats was founded in 1832, in which the wealthy Paul Camille Denis was a major financial contributor. In his personal files for that year his wealth was stated at 300,000 Gulden. When in August 1832 the secretary of the Preß- und Vaterlandsverein, Georg Eifler, was arrested, Paul Camille Denis put up 10,000 Gulden as bail.