Otto von Gerlach

Karl Friedrich Otto von Gerlach, the youngest of the four brothers, turned to theology after studying law and became a licentiate of theology. As pastor of the Schinkel-built St Elisabeth's Church in northern Berlin he was active in social work among the Berlin working class; he later became court and cathedral preacher and was regarded as a confidant of Frederick William IV. He also published as a biblical commentator. In 1835 he married Pauline von Blanckenburg (1804–1887); their sons Konrad (1836–1875) and Leopold Friedrich (1839–1874) founded the branch known within the family as "the Ottonians". Otto von Gerlach died in Berlin in 1849.

Chronicle

1. 1801

   Born in Berlin, the youngest of the four brothers.

2. 1815/16

   Keeps a diary at fourteen (preserved in the Gerlach Archive).

3. 1813–1815

   He was himself too young for the war – twelve years old in 1813 – but grew up under the impression of the Wars of Liberation, in which, according to the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, two of his brothers took part.

4. nach 1815

   Turns from the study of law to theology. He becomes a pupil of court preacher Gerhard Friedrich Strauß and a friend of Franz Theremin, and in 1827 is among the founders of the "Evangelische Kirchenzeitung"; in 1834 he takes up the pastorate at St Elizabeth's in northern Berlin.

5. 1820

   At Göttingen, after three years of legal study, he decided for theology. Jasper von Oertzen, his friend and later minister of state in Mecklenburg-Strelitz, wrote in his memoirs that Otto’s company had been "a support, an example" to him in his last Göttingen days. In July 1820 nine students signed a joint letter of thanks to their teacher; beside Otto stand the brothers Carl and Jasper von Oertzen, two Counts zu Stolberg, Felix Count Stosch, Ludolph Heinrich von Lüderitz, Friedrich von Ompteda, and Wilhelm von Raumer, from his mother’s family.

6. 1825

   A letter of 22 January from Berlin shows his tone: "My dear, beloved Jasper! At last I must write to you again, my faithful and diligent correspondent." He means to go to Wittenberg at Easter, study there a year in quiet and then take his doctorate in Berlin; he reports the awakening of young men in Berlin since the previous summer and the banker Delmar, who came to faith through close contact with him. At the end the news that belongs to the family history: that his brother Ludwig is engaged to Auguste von Oertzen. The letter is signed "your Otto v. G."

7. 1826

   When his brother Ludwig’s wife died on 6 April he wrote two poems: "On beholding the dear departed" and "The sister is home". Three pages, preserved as a copy in the family archive. A year earlier he had reported the engagement to Mecklenburg.

8. 1831

   He went to Hartau in Lusatia and stayed with his dying mother to the end. Before him Ernst Ludwig and Leopold had been there, both only for days. The master of the house, Count Stosch, wrote afterwards to Ernst Ludwig that Otto’s being there had worked a blessing: his manner had suited her best, and to him she could pour out her heart most freely.

9. 1835

   Marries Pauline von Blanckenburg; becomes pastor of St Elisabeth's in Berlin.

10. 1839

    Has for some time refused to bless the remarriage of divorced persons and justifies this in a pamphlet – reported in the press as far as Gotha (Allgemeiner Anzeiger, 19 August 1839).

11. 1840

    For the tercentenary of the Reformation in Brandenburg the "licentiate of theology and preacher at St Elizabeth" re-edits the catechism sermons of 1540 with a preface (advertisement in the Barmer Wochenblatt 15 April 1840).

12. 1842

    In February he travels "on higher orders" to England to study the Anglican church with the preachers Sydow and Abeken (Düsseldorfer Zeitung, 1 February and 1 August 1842); from there letters to his St Elisabeth congregation, "Mittheilungen über Irland" and an official report to the minister of education (Potsdam 1843). In the autumn he is said to have worked in London with Bunsen on the draft of a strict divorce law. On 11 October he preaches at the wedding of his niece Bertha and Friedrich Wilhelm von Kröcher. The Berlin correspondence of the Altonaer Mercur explained the purpose as early as October 1841: the King wished to see how London provided spiritual care for its fast-growing population; he chose Sydow himself and left the choice of Gerlach to minister Eichhorn – "originally a thoroughly scholarly jurist, then a theologian", fluent in English and with many connections in England (4 November 1841).

13. 1842 (Diakonissen)

    The king had him and his brother Leopold summoned to dinner at Charlottenburg; afterwards both were called into the cabinet. "The main subject of the conversation was the introduction of the diaconate and of deaconesses," Leopold noted in his diary. Frederick William IV thus discussed the matter directly with the pastor of the Elisabeth parish, in whose district Berlin’s poverty was densest.

14. 1843

    Founds a theological college; with home visits, a young men's association and employment institutions he counts as a pioneer of the Inner Mission – Tholuck calls him the "Berlin Wesley".

15. 1844

    In January appointed consistorial councillor and member of the consistory of the province of Brandenburg – liberal papers comment critically on the choice of the "strictly orthodox" preacher (Kölnische Zeitung, 29 January; Düsseldorfer Zeitung, 3 February 1844). In the summer the first volume of his Bible work appears – the Old Testament in Luther's translation with introductions and notes, edited by the "Royal Consistorial Councillor and pastor of St Elizabeth" (Hamburgischer Correspondent 29 July 1844).

16. 1846

    On 17 June he wrote from Berlin to King Frederick William IV – the letter lies in the family archive. That a cathedral preacher should address the king directly was not unusual in those years, but it shows how close the brothers stood to the court.

17. 1843–1846

    His refusal to marry divorced people became a question of principle for the Prussian state. The ministry of religious affairs opened a file of its own on the marriage he refused to the glovemaker Puhlmann of Berlin with Anna Auguste Louise née Goetze, divorced Lüddicke – and on the "decision of principle which became necessary on this occasion, whether a clergyman is bound under existing law to perform every marriage falling within his parochial competence and permitted by civil law, and whether he can be compelled to it by legal coercion" (I. HA Rep. 76, III Sect. 1 Dept. XVII No. 120). It was not the first case: as early as 1835 the consistory kept a file on the refused marriages, and from 1835 to 1847 an investigation of complaints against him ran there, filed among the investigations against pastors and preachers (I. HA Rep. 99 Nos. 436 and 2971). For twelve years one clergyman kept the supervisory authority busy with the same question.

18. 1847

    Fourth preacher at the cathedral; in 1849 honorary professor of the theological faculty. Six of his ten children survive him. His German adaptation of Thomas Chalmers' work on "church poor relief" (Berlin, W. Thome) is read in 1847 as a call for the clergy to intervene "to rescue society from its social decay" (Frankfurter Ober-Post-Amts-Zeitung 9 April 1847); as late as 1877 he is remembered as the first pastor of the Elizabeth church who devoted himself "comprehensively" to the Inner Mission (Hallesches Tageblatt 4 September 1877).

19. 1840er

    Court and cathedral preacher, a confidant of Frederick William IV.

20. Oktober 1847

    As court preacher he left the parsonage of the Elisabeth parish in the Voigtland and moved to the Luisenstraße – with his two youngest children, who were mortally ill. On 12 October the son Siegmund died. The next day Ernst Ludwig came with his wife and his nephew Friedrich and asked how things were. "A little better," said Otto – "and Siegmund? He died yesterday." The daughter Elisabeth lay unconscious and died that same evening. Of the ten children of the house six died before their father; these two are the only ones whose names are recorded.

21. 1848

    His former landlord from the Auguststraße, a Jewish Berliner named Wiesenthal, lived through the March days. In the city it was said that they had driven him out of his mind; Otto’s widow Pauline told it more exactly in 1875. Wiesenthal had been present on 22 March at the lying-in-state of the fallen, when the King took off his cap before the coffins; he then found his way into the room in the palace where the ministers and adjutants were assembled and called out to them that he had seen with his own eyes how His Majesty had been trampled underfoot, and that it came of men no longer believing in the Lord Jesus. Then, tearing his hair, he came to the Gerlachs; taken home from there as a sick man, he died on the third day. Otto had been fond of him. Wiesenthal often spoke of his affection for Otto’s children and stressed that they were baptised children; his own baptism he had put off so as not to grieve his aged mother. General Thile, one of those present, confirmed the scene in the palace to Otto.

22. 1849

    Died in Berlin on 24 October. His brother Leopold, travelling in those days between Sanssouci and Berlin, wrote down the last hours: in the evening a slight improvement seemed to set in, the royal physician Schönlein and Otto’s own doctor ordered affusions, which had little effect; towards evening he grew more restless, in the morning word came that he was dying. "At half past ten his breath gave out. Snethlage said prayers at the deathbed." And further: "Ah, how hard politics, business and court life become after such a death. I always saw in him the younger brother." When the king received the news he said that now he did not know what was to become of the cathedral.

23. 25. Oktober 1849

    How the other side saw him stands in the Westfälische Volks-Halle at Münster. Its Berlin correspondent wrote on 25 October: "Consistorial Councillor Otto von Gerlach died suddenly yesterday. With that the triumvirate of brothers is torn apart which, in the three great branches of public life – the church, the army and the civil service – was known as the tireless and influential promoter of that policing, pietistic, Germanising theory of salvation which went so completely bankrupt in the March revolution." The sentence is meant as an attack. It is at the same time the most compact picture of the three brothers that survives from those years: one in the church, one in the army, one in the civil service.

24. 3. November 1849

    Ten days after his death a likeness appeared. The Vossische Zeitung announced that the commission house of W. Hertz at Behrenstraße 44 had brought out "the very lifelike portrait of Consistorial Councillor Dr Otto v. Gerlach", painted by Randel – so the name reads in the advertisement – and drawn on stone by C. Lange. It cost fifteen silver groschen in folio, one thaler in large folio, one thaler and fifteen groschen on China paper. No copy has so far been traced. Whoever finds one has a likeness whose date of origin is fixed to the month.

25. September 1849

    "Herr v. Gerlach is said to have been impossible to convince." The sentence stands in a report from Altona of 26 September 1849, four weeks before his death. A deputation from seven parishes of the district of Angeln had come to Berlin, joined by Nielsen, the general superintendent of Schleswig. Pastor Schmidt spoke, the King listened with visible sympathy, the deputation went home satisfied – but with the court preacher it got nowhere. What he had told Nielsen an Aarhus paper recorded in December: that he held the Schleswig-Holstein clergy to be rebels. Nielsen published a pamphlet on the affair and called on the preachers of Christendom to give judgement, appealing in particular to his boyhood friend Martensen, court preacher at Copenhagen, and found no milder opinion there either. By then the Danish report calls him "the now deceased, powerful court preacher".

26. 1867 und 1870

    His books travelled north. In December 1867 a Copenhagen paper advertised an edition published at Christiania: an edifying exposition of the chief articles of the Christian faith, edited by him and translated by the resident chaplain Wilhelm Kaurin. Three years later a second-hand dealer in the Skindergade at Copenhagen offered "Otto von Gerlach, Forklaring over det nye Testamente" handsomely bound for seven rixdollars, listed between Fabricius and Barfod, among the saleable books of the day. Twenty years after his death his work on the Bible was still in the Danish trade.

27. Nachkommen

    His son Leopold Friedrich (1839–1874), a captain, marries Elisabeth von Alvensleben in 1867; their daughter Ehrengard (1868–1909) becomes the wife of Adolf von Thadden-Trieglaff – and mother of the resistance fighter Elisabeth von Thadden (1890–1944, executed at Plötzensee) and of Reinold von Thadden (1891–1976), founder of the Protestant Kirchentag. Leopold's son Otto (1869–1924), lieutenant, becomes engaged in November 1892 to Melitta von Issendorff of Dresden and marries her in September 1893; in October 1897 a son is born to the first lieutenant in Berlin (Reichsanzeiger 26 November 1892, 28 September 1893; Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung 15 October 1897). A file of its own in the family archive gathers the "descendants of Otto von Gerlach": thirty pages of notes, eighteen printed items, two pedigrees and seven photographs, assembled between 1930 and 1941. Named in it are Konrad and Pauline von Gerlach and Adelheid von Reichenbach (1840–1912). Who these are the family tree says: Konrad Leopold Henning (1836–1875), his son; Sophie Pauline née von Blanckenburg (1805–1887), his widow, for whom the folder preserves Pastor Riem’s funeral address; and his daughter Adelheid, married Countess von Reichenbach-Goschütz, whose death notice of 2 May 1912 lies in it. With them lie Jakob’s confirmation certificate of 1846, signed by Otto himself, and a sheet on the centenary celebration for him on 14 April 1901. The folder bears the shelf mark FA02179 and lies in the Gerlach Archive of the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. There is no digital copy, and whom the seven photographs show the catalogue does not say.

28. Die Frau seines Sohnes

    Of Elisabeth Louise von Alvensleben, who married his son Leopold Friedrich in 1867 and died on 26 January 1872 at the age of twenty-five, more survives than the two dates. In the Erxleben II estate archive of the Saxony-Anhalt state archive a classification group of its own bears her married name, and in it lies a "Life of my daughter Elisabeth Louise von Alvensleben, born 8 October 1846", written down by her father Udo von Alvensleben. The catalogue notes only: fragment. It is the only known life of a woman of this family written by her own father.

Sources and literature