Ehrenfried von Willich (5 September 1777According to other sources: 1773.– 2 February 1807) full name: Johann Ehrenfried Theodor von Willich) was a Protestant chaplain at the Swedish Queen's Regiment in Stralsund.
Life Ehrenfried von Willich was from a family of theologians from the Margraviate of Brandenburg. He was born in Sagard on the island of Rügen, the son of the pastor (1720–1787) and half-brother of the country doctor (1750–1810), the first country physician in Swedish Pomerania.Some sources, even Schleiermacher experts, erroneously call Ehrenfried a much younger brother of the pastor Heinrich Christoph von Willich; but he was actually Ehrenfried's uncle (brother of Ehrenfried's father and 39 years his junior).
At first Willich was the tutor and business-partner of Wilhelm Graf von Schwerin-Putzar in Prenzlau. From the spring of 1803 he was a chaplain in the Queen's Regiment in Stralsund, which at that time belonged to Swedish Pomerania.Friedrich Schleiermacher. Kritische Gesamtausgabe. Briefwechsel und biographische Dokumente, part 5, volume 6 (correspondence 1802–1803), page XLVIII (Nr. 30), Verlag de Gruyter, Berlin 2005 ()
In 1803 Willich became engaged to Henriette von Mühlenfels (1788–1840), who was just 15 years old and had been an orphan for two years. She was daughter of the royal Prussian lieutenant-colonel Friedrich Gottlieb von MühlenfelsMühlenfels, Friedrich Gottlieb von on Deutsche Biographie († 1801), a Squire on Sissow (today part of Gustow, island of Rügen), and of Pauline of Campagne.Friedrich Schleiermacher. Kritische Gesamtausgabe. Briefwechsel und biographische Dokumente, part 5, volume 7 (Correspondence 1803–1804), page XXXVI (Nr. 21), Verlag de Gruyter, Berlin 2005 () She was 16 by the time he married her on 5 September 1804. This marriage produced two children: Henriette (1805–1886) and Ehrenfried von Willich (1807–1880).
Almost two months before the birth of his eponymous son, while Napoleon's troops were besieging Stralsund (see Coalition Wars), Willich died of nerve fever (typhus), which at that time was rampant in the city.
Since May 1801 Willich had been a close friend and correspondent of the theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher. In 1809, two years after Willich's death, Schleiermacher married Willich's widow, the now 21-year-old Henriette.Note at
Further reading Rainer Schmitz: Bis nächstes Jahr auf Rügen. Briefe von Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher und Henriette Herz an Ehrenfried von Willich 1801–1807.Bis nächstes Jahr auf Rügen. Briefe von Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher und Henriette Herz an Ehrenfried von Willich 1801–1807 on Worldcat Evangelische Verlagsanstalt publisher, 1984
External links
References