Friedrich von Gerlach

Chronicle

1. 1828

   Born on 27 June in Berlin as the fourth son of Wilhelm von Gerlach, baptised on 9 July. His uncle Ernst Ludwig recorded it and added that in his old age this nephew was to him "my friend, my support and my comfort in the hard struggles against the sins and false teachings in state and church".

2. 1858

   Marries Marie von Rohr (1837–1910) of the house of Hohenwulsch on 1 October. Children: Martin (b. 1860, pastor, m. 1894 Klara von Treskow), Adolfine (b. 1862, m. 1887 Horst von Rosenberg-Gruszczynski), Servatius (b. 1868, major, m. Elsbeth Baroness von Maltzahn), Katharina (1872–1914) and Klaus (1875–1955), Landrat at Bütow and Kolberg-Körlin. Martin, senior pastor, becomes engaged in April 1894 to Clara von Tresckow of Schmarfendorf (Berliner Börsen-Zeitung 24 April 1894); Klaus is assigned in 1902 as Regierungsassessor to the Landrat at Mülheim on the Rhine and becomes engaged in October 1908 (Reichsanzeiger 28 October 1902, 31 October 1908). Marie dies in October 1910 at Rohrbeck (Reichsanzeiger 31 October 1910).

3. 1864–1884

   Landrat of the Oschersleben district; member of the provincial diet of the Province of Saxony. He owns a quarter of Rohrbeck. The obituary from Oschersleben praises above all the expansion of the district road network; transferred to Danzig in 1884 as Oberpräsidialrat, he retires because of increasing ill health and lives at Rohrbeck from then on (Hallische Zeitung 1 December 1891). In 1867 he is permitted to wear the Russian Order of St Stanislaus, second class (Staats-Anzeiger 16 September 1867); in 1883 the great list of decorations for the Province of Saxony brings him the Crown Order, third class (Reichsanzeiger 19 September 1883). In 1881/82 the Magdeburg provincial government pursues a "lawsuit against Landrat v. Gerlach in Oschersleben for reimbursement of an income-tax shortfall of the landowner Dettmar at Crottorf" (Saxony-Anhalt State Archives, C 28 IIIc no. 5).

4. 1887

   He had the family history of March 1847 to April 1851 copied out – 474 pages, now in the family archive. The original came from his uncles Ernst Ludwig and Leopold; the years of revolution and reaction were to stay legible for the next generation.

5. 1891

   Dies at Rohrbeck on 24 November after a long illness – as Actual Privy Senior Government Councillor, a title conferred on his retirement from state service; since then he had lived on the family estate (Hallische Zeitung, 1 December 1891). Rohrbeck remains in his family until 1945.

6. Kinder

   Martin (1860–1929) becomes a court Referendar at Naumburg in December 1882, then turns to theology and, as pastor, marries Clara von Tresckow in October 1894; in 1906, as pastor at Tormersdorf near Rothenburg (Upper Lusatia), he sits on the governing committee of the Berlin Missionary Society, in 1910 he marries Eva von Tiedemann in a second marriage and in 1923 publishes a "German guide to the Hebrew Psalter" (Hallische Zeitung 17 December 1882; Reichsanzeiger 16 October 1894, 2 June 1906, 31 January 1910; Aufwärts 16 March 1923). Servatius (1868–1950), retired major, runs Rohrbeck after his mother's death: in 1920/21 his oat and rye crops appear in the seed-certification lists, and in June 1920 he is elected to the board of the Rohrbeck savings and loan association (Reichsanzeiger 10 August 1920, 18 January and 3 September 1921). From the archives: Martin studies law and theology at Tübingen in 1880 – his student file names Münster as his birthplace, Braunschweig as the place of his death, and describes him as pastor at Kraschnitz and founder of the brothers' house "Zoar" at Rothenburg (Upper Lusatia); in 1897, as chaplain of Countess von der Recke-Volmerstein's Kraschnitz institutions, he attends the dedication of the Liebenwerda hospital (Tübingen University Archives UAT 40/69,55; Hallesche Zeitung 7 May 1897). Servatius marries Elsbeth Baroness von Maltzahn on 12 October 1893 and takes over the manor of Crampe near Neuwedell in the Neumark from his father-in-law Ludwig Wilhelm Baron von Maltzahn; his pension file as major is held in the Berlin State Archives (A Rep. 240 no. 562; Brandenburg State Main Archives Rep. 53A Kredit 1027/1028). Klaus is appointed Landrat at Bütow in early September 1910 while Regierungsassessor there, still signs wartime notices there in July 1916 and in April 1918 sits as "Landrat von Gerlach-Kolberg" on the supervisory board of a Pomeranian light railway (Reichsanzeiger 2 September 1910, 3 August 1916, 15 April 1918); his personnel file of the Interior Ministry (1901–1933) is held in the Prussian Privy State Archives (I. HA Rep. 77 no. 783). Letters from Servatius from the years 1915 to 1923 are kept in the Lübbenau estate archive of the Counts zu Lynar (Brandenburg State Main Archives, Rep. 37 Lübbenau no. 5418/20). The clergy yearbook of the church province of Saxony (1897) fills in Martin's path: born at Münster in Westphalia on 28 December 1860, assistant preacher at the Neumarkt church in Halle, deacon at Paska in 1889, ordained on 4 March 1891, then senior pastor of St Bartholomew's in Ziegenrück, where in 1892 he addresses the Gnadau Easter conference on the question "Is the Old Testament still God's word for us?"; as head of the deacons' institution at Kraschnitz he leaves it in 1898 with 35 brothers and founds, with senior pastor Ulbrich, the brothers' house Zoar at Tormersdorf (opened 1899); in 1912/13 the pastor at Tormersdorf petitions the House of Representatives for a higher pension, and he spends his retirement at Blankenburg in the Harz. As a nephew of the president, Martin put his brotherhood house of Zoar at the disposal of the Berlin mission: there the applicants were to show, among like-minded deacons, whether they were fit for mission service, a route that proved more practical than the earlier attempt to lodge candidates in Berlin.

Sources and literature