Wilhelm von Gerlach

Chronicle

1. 1789

   Born in Berlin, eldest son of Carl Friedrich Leopold.

2. bis 1812

   Studies law at Halle, Göttingen and Heidelberg – the same universities his brothers attend; from Heidelberg come the ties to Romanticism about which a separate study has been written.

3. 1813–1815

   He joins the Neumark Dragoons as a volunteer Jäger – he thought the hussars unsuitable for himself and saw in the word "Neumark" a reference to Rohrbeck. The regiment first stands at Pleß observing the Poles and joins Blücher's corps only shortly before the battle (family history, 1903).

4. 1819–1822

   As a Kammergericht judge, refuses to investigate E. T. A. Hoffmann and others during the persecution of the "demagogues".

5. Wo Kläden liegt und wem es gehörte

   Kläden was never his estate. His property was Rohrbeck in the Neumark; Kläden is a village in the Altmark and belonged to the von Levetzow family. The link runs through his wife: Ida's sister was married to the Levetzow of Kläden. That is why Jakob was born there – his uncle notes it as the estate of Herr von Levetzow – why Ida died there three weeks later, why the christening fell on 4 April, the birthday of aunt Levetzow, and why the youngest child grew up with the Levetzows. The Kläden estate archive lies today in the state archive of Saxony-Anhalt: one thousand five hundred and three units from 1541 to 1936, among them the papers of the families von Levetzow, von Lattorff, von Jeetze and von Goldbeck.

6. Die Papiere seiner Schwiegerfamilie

   The same Kläden estate archive holds two files leading straight to Ida's family. One settles in 1822 the estate of the late Lieutenant von Chambaud and calls him expressly the brother-in-law of the von Levetzow of Kläden (H 120, No. 1278). The other, running from 1790 to 1795, concerns the family affairs of Henriette Dorothea von Goldbeck, married von Chambaud at Dessau (H 120, No. 1072) – Dessau, where he himself married in 1820. To these come fifty-three units on the von Goldbeck family, from 1631 to 1856. None of it is digitised; all of it lies at Wernigerode.

7. Die Akten seiner Ermittlungen

   In the Prussian Privy State Archive an entire classification group of the Ministry of the Interior bears his name: "Investigations of Kammergerichtsrat Wilhelm von Gerlach (1819–1821)", filed under the special enquiries of individually commissioned officials. It contains two volumes, both concerning the same man: "Investigation against Professor Friedrich Ludwig Jahn", volume 1 for 1819/20, volume 2 for 1820/21 (I. HA Rep. 77, Tit. 25 K Lit. J No. 1). The father of German gymnastics was imprisoned from 1819; his investigating judge was thus, on the record, the eldest of the four brothers.

8. 1820

   Marries Ida von Chambaud-Charrier.

9. 30. November 1820

   Married to Ida von Chambaud-Charrier in the castle at Dessau. Because Ida was a lady-in-waiting, the duke gave the wedding. His brothers Leopold and Ernst Ludwig were present, but not their mother nor Otto. For Ernst Ludwig the day was memorable for another reason: he was presented to Prince Friedrich of Prussia, the duchess’s brother – the first royal prince of his life.

10. 1823–1824

    As a judge of the Kammergericht he lived with his mother: the directories name him at "Hinter der katholischen Kirche 1", in the same house as the widowed president's wife and his brother Leopold. This was the time immediately after the persecution of the demagogues, in which he had refused to conduct the investigations against E. T. A. Hoffmann.

11. 1824–1837

    A book of remembrance of 211 pages, preserved in the family archive, accompanies these years. Recorded in it beside him are his wife Ida (1800–1830) and her sister Bertha von Levetzow née von Chambaud (1797–1866), his brother Otto (1801–1849), his daughter Bertha (1822–1863), Leopold von Gerlach (1821–1837), who died at sixteen, and Marie von Blanckenburg (1821–1846).

12. 22. September 1825

    In Berlin his second daughter Luise was born – called Wieschen in the family, later Frau Pastor Kirsch. The numbering is telling: until then he had had only one daughter. His brother counts five sons: Leopold, Ernst, Friedrich, Jakob – and one more before Friedrich who is missing from the family tree.

13. 1826

    His name came up at the Russian court. His brother Leopold, in St Petersburg as aide-de-camp to Prince William of Prussia, noted on 3 April that after the report on the Gossner affair "His Imperial Highness" had spoken with him "of demagogic machinations, of the importance of legal forms, of my brother Wilhelm, of the isolation of a king without institutions". In what sense he was named is not said. The order of the subjects suggests it: Wilhelm was the Kammergericht judge who had refused to act in the persecution of the "demagogues".

14. 1828/1830

    Sons Friedrich (1828) and Jakob (1830) are born; Ida dies in 1830 aged thirty.

15. 1830

    Vice-president of the higher regional court at Frankfurt an der Oder; he also heads the criminal senate there and dies in office in 1834.

16. 10. April 1830

    Three weeks after Jakob’s birth his wife Ida died at Kläden. On Easter Monday he wrote it to his brother Ernst Ludwig, who took the sentence into his records: "After Ida had been quite well and up for some days, the Lord took her to himself on Easter Saturday, 10 April, at five in the afternoon." Wilhelm was left with seven children; the youngest grew up with the Levetzows in the Altmark.

17. 1831

    Co-founder of the "Berliner Politisches Wochenblatt".

18. Juli/August 1834

    The conflict of 1821 repeated itself. As president of the criminal senate at Frankfurt he refused to have an allegedly demagogic junior official arrested: the sub-delegate of the ministerial commission who demanded it had no competence properly established and published, and the proceedings belonged before the ordinary courts. The Ministry of Justice issued him a reprimand; when he defended himself forcefully, an ungracious cabinet order followed. Leopold and Ernst Ludwig stood on his side.

19. 20. August 1834

    The cabinet order reached him at Frankfurt on Tuesday 12 August; he was unwell the same day. On Thursday he travelled to Berlin to make his reply and to take advice; a doctor had to be called on the way at Müncheberg. On Saturday he had himself carried to his brother Ernst Ludwig’s house in the Luisenstraße, where he died on Wednesday 20 August. Beforehand he made his brother promise to tell him when death approached, and bequeathed him his four sons. He chose himself the hymns that were read to him; at the line "seek thee with a wise heart" he said: "I have not much time left for seeking." To the court preacher who brought him communion: "I travelled here from Frankfurt in good health so that you might give me my escort into eternity." The burial was in Berlin on 23 August; on the evening of the death Ernst Ludwig drove to Frankfurt and fetched the four boys.

20. 1834

    Dies in Berlin; his post as vice-president passes in 1835 to his brother Ernst Ludwig. He dies in August, according to Kraus also shaken by his wife's death, in the midst of a dispute with superiors; Leopold later called him a man "from another age". In the very year of his death the Privy Civil Cabinet opens, under "provision and support", a file on the "family of the Higher Regional Court president von Gerlach" – the provision for the orphaned children, whom his brother Ernst Ludwig takes in (GStA PK I. HA Rep. 89 no. 7633).

21. Ein Widerspruch von 1891

    The introduction to his brother’s memoirs says: "Wilhelm, the eldest, died in 1835 as president of the higher regional court at Frankfurt an der Oder." Neither statement holds against the family letters. Ernst Ludwig wrote from Berlin on 23 August 1834 of his brother’s death three days earlier, and the office was that of vice-president. The error was passed on: later works of reference also give 1835 and Frankfurt.

22. Nachkommen

    Of the children of his marriage to Ida, Bertha (1822–1863) marries Friedrich Wilhelm von Kröcher (1810–1891) on 11 October 1842; Leopold (1821–1837) and Ernst (1827–1837) both die in 1837, Ulrike (1823–1856) keeps up a correspondence with her uncle Ernst Ludwig; Friedrich and Jakob carry on the House of Rohrbeck. The Chambaud-Charrier collection in the Gerlach Archive preserves papers of Ida's family from 1594 onwards. Luise (b. 1825), called "Wieschen" in the family, was confirmed by her uncle Otto in the newly built church at Darnewitz, became engaged in 1848 to the pastor August Kirsch at Kläden, and was a widow by 1851; she died a deaconess. Nine bundles of her letters to her uncle Ernst Ludwig, written between 1837 and 1876, lie in the family archive, together with a manuscript on her last months.

23. Zwei Zeichnungen in Erlangen

    No likeness of him is known – but in the Erlangen archive, under his own fonds, lie two sheets that might be one. The first, shelf mark WI01267, the catalogue records as "1 portrait drawing with frame" and names only two persons: the presumed draughtsman Friedrich Meier and himself. The second, WI01269, is dated before 1815 and names all four brothers. A third, WI01268, shows or concerns his four sons Leopold, Ernst, Friedrich and Jakob. None of the three is digitised; what is to be seen on them the catalogue entry does not say.

Sources and literature