Jakob von Gerlach

Chronicle

1. 1830

   Born at Kläden on 20 March, son of Wilhelm von Gerlach; his mother Ida dies three weeks later. From this time comes an envelope with a lock of hair, inscribed "hair of little Jakob"; it is catalogued together with Marie Raumer (1764–1831), a sister of his grandmother Agnes. The child had lost his mother, and the old relative kept a lock. The centenary history of the Berlin mission, on the other hand, gives Berlin as his birthplace in 1924, against the family record, which ties the place to his mother’s death. His uncle’s records are more precise than any register: born "at half past three in the afternoon at Kläden, the estate of Herr von Levetzow", as the fifth son; baptised on 4 April, his aunt Levetzow’s birthday, at Kläden, with Ernst Ludwig as godfather in absentia. And in the same line the reckoning of a long life: "whom I have now loved tenderly for forty-six years, to this day – 18 December 1876".

2. 1858

   Marries Ida Sophie von Kröcher (1830–1905), youngest daughter of Wilhelm von Kröcher and Sophie Countess von Alvensleben-Erxleben, at Vinzelberg; the marriage remains childless. Owner of the Platowo estate and co-owner of Rohrbeck.

3. 1861–1892

   Landrat of the Gardelegen district, Privy Government Councillor; in the House of Representatives 1866/67 and 1882–1888. Owner of the Platowo estate, co-owner of Rohrbeck; a Knight of St John from 1892, Knight of Justice 1898; president of the Berlin Missionary Society. In September 1891 he signs, together with August von Gerlach-Parsow, the appeal for the assembly hall of the Berlin City Mission (Rhein- und Ruhrzeitung 18 September 1891); on 31 August 1892 he is appointed – together with August von Gerlach-Parsow – an honorary knight of the Order of St John on the proposal of the Herrenmeister Prince Albrecht (Reichsanzeiger 31 August 1892). The appointment of the "acting Landrat, court assessor Jakob von Gerlach of Vollenschier" comes in June 1861 (Staats-Anzeiger 25 June 1861). As the "youthful Landrat" he becomes known across Germany in 1862 through the "Letzlingen hunting stories" – the liberal press mocks the loyalty addresses of village mayors and pastors summoned to the royal hunt at Letzlingen, which Bismarck also attends in November (Nationalzeitung 4 April, Kölnische Zeitung 6 November 1862). His requested retirement is granted as of 1 July 1892; Konrad von Goßler-Zichtau takes over the office (Hallische Zeitung 6 July 1892). Even the London Morning Post singles out the loyalty address he drafted and mocks its "Asiatic deification" of the King (Neue Würzburger Zeitung 12 November 1862). In the House of Representatives he amuses the chamber in January 1867 with the remark that without the House of Lords "one would not recognise Prussia at all" (Hallische Zeitung 15 January 1867). Right at the start of his tenure, in the years of the constitutional conflict, the Magdeburg provincial government conducts in 1861–1865 an "investigation against Landrat von Gerlach in Gardelegen for a press-police offence" (Saxony-Anhalt State Archives, C 28 If no. 1878).

4. 1861/62

   A conflict with the Prussian minister of the interior Maximilian Count von Schwerin-Putzar (1804–1872) occupied him from 13 November 1861 to 7 February 1862, in the first year of his office at Gardelegen. The family archive keeps for it four manuscripts in his own hand, two draft letters, seven printed items and nine newspapers – the dispute was therefore carried on in public. A second item shows the occasion: on 18 November 1861 his election appeal appeared in the press, five days after the dispute began. The house of deputies was elected on 6 December.

5. 1890

   At the beginning of May he had extracts from the land register for the Rohrbeck estate drawn up at the district court of Königsberg in the Neumark – eleven pages, preserved in the family archive. His brother Friedrich died on the same estate a year and a half later.

6. 1892

   Honorary knight of the Order of St John (Saxon provincial association), knight of justice in 1898.

7. 1892

   How he came to head the Berlin mission is told by its centenary history: when Rathmann, president of the Kammergericht, gave up the presidency under the weight of his official work, the committee for the first time found nobody in its own ranks and knocked for a long time at various doors in vain. It then elected the newly retired Landrat of Gardelegen, the first president who did not live in Berlin, nor even at an easily reachable railway station. The worry proved groundless: he discharged the office, it says, with the exactness of an old Prussian official.

8. 1894/1897

   Under his presidency the Berlin mission bought, south-east of Bethanie in the Orange Free State, three adjoining farms of ten thousand Magdeburg acres together, at a railway junction with large workshops. They were henceforth called Springfontein, Berlin – and Gerlachstal. In 1897 the station of Springfontein-Gerlachstal was founded there under the missionary Sandrock, an experienced farmer. The congregation stayed small, because in the railway workshops the coloured workers were gradually replaced by white ones; during the Boer War the German ambulance set up a hospital at Gerlachstal, and later two large refugee camps stood there.

9. 1893

   The district assembly elects the retired Landrat as district deputy (Hallische Zeitung 20 April 1893); in 1898 the employers' associations and executive authorities elect him – as board member of the agricultural employers' association of the Province of Saxony – deputy of a non-permanent member of the Imperial Insurance Office (Reichsanzeiger 10 December 1898).

10. 1894/1896

    Spa stays at Marienbad – in 1894 "with his wife from Vollenschier", in 1896 at the Friedrich-Wilhelm foundation house (Marienbader Tagblatt and spa list).

11. 1901

    In the election of the representatives of the employers' liability associations for the Imperial Insurance Office, the "Privy Government Councillor and Landrat (ret.) at Vollenschier" receives 11,400,604 votes (Amtliche Nachrichten des Reichs-Versicherungsamts 1901).

12. 1903

    Publishes the papers of his uncle Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach in two volumes (Schwerin).

13. 1903

    On the Emperor's birthday his wife Ida Sophie receives the Order of Louise, second division, second class (Reichsanzeiger 27 January 1903); already in 1899 "Frau Privy Councillor von Gerlach, née von Kröcher of Vollenschier" appeared in a list of decorations (27 January 1899). In January 1904, as "Geh. Reg.-Rat von Gerlach, Vollenschier", he signs alongside general superintendents and district presidents the appeal to strengthen the social work of Protestant Christendom (Neue Westfälische Volks-Zeitung 4 January 1904).

14. Oktober 1903

    At the fifth ordinary general synod of the Protestant state church the question of duelling came up. The committee moved that the synod should "testify anew that the duel is sin". The rapporteur Count Stosch-Hartau spoke against it, and then the synodal Landrat (ret.) von Gerlach-Vollenschier rose. He objected precisely to the word sin, equated the duel with self-defence, and added that a war too was a duel between two emperors or kings. The record notes catcalls and lively protest. He held his ground: the duel was a legal, not a theological question, and the synod was not competent to decide it. The court chaplain Stoecker replied that the rapporteur would have done better not to take on the report; the gentlemen perhaps did not believe how deeply the duel wounded the feelings of devout people. Against the party of subversion one would fight with a broken sword so long as one declared the duel compatible with Christianity. The grandson of Berlin’s first Lord Mayor thus stood, in his family’s own church, on the losing side. The Saale-Zeitung printed the wording on 29 October 1903; six other papers carried it the next day.

15. 1907

    Red Eagle Order third class with bow for the "retired Landrat, Privy Councillor von Gerlach of Vollenschier" (Reichsanzeiger 19 April 1907).

16. 1908

    Dies in Berlin on 26 November; as a widower he had lived at the Kröcher estate of Vollenschier.

Sources and literature