August Christian Wilmanns

Memorial stone to August Christian Wilmann near the town church Vegesack

August Christian Wilmanns (born July 23, 1757 in Bielefeld -Neustadt; † May 21, 1839 in Vegesack near Bremen ) was a German lawyer .

family

Wilmanns came from a Bielefeld-based family of local lawyers and mayors. From his marriage to Dorothee Charlotte Louise Christiane Meyer (1766-1840) 11 children were born. A grandson of August Wilmann was a classical philologist and librarian a. a. in Göttingen and Berlin.

biography

He studied law at the University of Halle and, after completing his doctorate in Rinteln, was awarded a Dr. jur. from 1781 active as a lawyer and notary in Hanover and Celle . In 1782 he became a citizen of Bremen and from 1803 to 1815 acted as legal advisor to the St. Petri cathedral community during the so-called cathedral dispute between the community and the Bremen council . In September 1815 he was appointed by the council as the first bailiff of the Bremen port of Vegesack . In this capacity, he played a key role in the development of the town's infrastructure until his retirement in 1836. His successor as bailiff was the judge Dr. Conrad Gustav Kulenkamp (1800–1877) from Bremen.

At the beginning of his term of office he initiated the founding of the United Evangelical-Protestant Church Congregation Bremen-Vegesack . On the occasion of the 300th anniversary of the Reformation on October 31, 1817, followers of the Lutheran and Reformed Churches formed a church union based on the Prussian model . Vegesack was subsequently separated from the then Hanoverian parishes of Blumenthal and Lesum and, after extensive fundraising, a church was consecrated on July 8, 1821, which was expanded in 1832 according to plans by the Bremen architect Jacob Ephraim Polzin and the Vegesack master builder Johann Friedrich Kimm received its characteristic tower in the classical style. Today it is known as the Vegesack City Church .

As a Freemason, Wilmanns was a member of the Lodge for the Silver Key in Bremen. An unsigned portrait of him is in the Vegesack church (ill. Also by D. Steilen, p. 136). His sandstone tomb is in the churchyard next to the church. It bears the slogan: "To the loyal official, the co-founder of our church, the benefactor of the poor, his grateful friends set this monument ."

Honors

The street Wilmannsberg in Bremen-Vegesack, where his house was located, was named after him. ^▼

literature

• Diedrich Steilen : History of the Bremen port city of Vegesack, Vegesack 1926, pp. 136-138 (with illustration of the portrait).
• Thomas Begerow, Volker Keller, Ingbert Lindemann (eds.): 200 years of the Evangelical Church Community Vegesack 1817-2017 , Bremen ( Donat Verlag ) 2017, ISBN 978-3-943425-73-4 ; P. 48 (with illustration of the portrait).
• Wilmann family line, in: German Gender Book, Volume 82, Görlitz 1934, p. 548.
• Richard Rüthnick u. Kurd Schulz: The deacons of St. Petri Cathedral in Bremen, Bremen 1963, pp. 50–63.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Website of the Wilmanns family: Wilmannsstrassen