Charlotte Reihlen

Charlotte Reihlen

Charlotte ("Lotte") Luise Reihlen, née Mohl (born March 26, 1805 in Kemnat on the Fildern; † January 21, 1868 in Stuttgart ), was the wife of a Stuttgart manufacturer. She is one of the founders of the Diakonissen-Anstalt Stuttgart and initiated a private girls' school from which the Evangelical Mörike-Gymnasium Stuttgart emerged. Her picture The Broad and the Narrow Way was widespread in many languages.

Life

Youth in Weissach

She was the daughter of the Kemnater pastor Magister Wilhelm Mohl (1751-1832) and his wife, Euphrosina Regina (1774-1847), a daughter of the Stuttgart city pastor Georg Ernst Göz (1737-1807). On the maternal side, she was the great-granddaughter of Johann Christian Storr (1712–1773) and great-niece of Gottlob Christian Storr (1746–1805), whose widow and daughter were among her 25 godparents. In 1808, his father moved to Weissach in the Oberamt Vaihingen an der Enz as a pastor , where Charlotte attended elementary school and spent her youth. At the age of 12, Charlotte had to look after her mother, who suffered from epilepsy , and take over a large part of the family household, which was also joined by numerous needy people in the famine of 1817 . Initially, the five children from the father's first marriage also lived in the rectory. After her confirmation in 1819, she kept staying with an aunt in Stuttgart to learn about the duties of a housewife.

Marital status in Stuttgart

Charlotte was related by marriage to the Stuttgart merchant Wilhelm Reihlen (1793–1868) through her oldest half-brother. So she met his younger brother, the merchant Friedrich Reihlen (1797-1870), whom she married on June 24, 1823. In the same year, together with Carl Reihlen (1799–1862), the three brothers took over the company "Johann Conrad Reihlen colonial and dyed goods, regional products, cigars and oil dealers", the leading store of its kind in Stuttgart's Marktstrasse. In the first few years of their marriage, the young couple actively participated in social life.

In 1824 their first son Adolf was born. The birth was difficult and Charlotte was also in poor health in the subsequent period. In 1826 she gave birth to the second son Julius and in 1828 the third son Theodor. Soon after Theodor was born, Julius developed an inflammation of the trachea at the age of two, from which he died. Charlotte Reihlen fell into a deep depression because she accused herself of God wanting to punish her for her vanity and her pleasurable life of the last few years. During a service on June 19, 1830, held by Pastor Christian Adam Dann in the Leonhardskirche in Stuttgart , she experienced an inner release. She was so sure of the forgiveness of her sins that she felt like in heaven despite the severe pain in her face and ears. Since then she has celebrated this day as her spiritual birthday.

Her pietistic piety alienated her from her husband, who was more interested in the July Revolution that had broken out in France and doubted her state of mind. Shortly after the birth of his daughter Elise in late 1830, he almost expelled her from the house. After the failure of the July Revolution, Friedrich Reihlen planned to emigrate to America. Soon after his daughter Marie was born in June 1833, he secretly set out on the trip, leaving his family behind in Stuttgart. Charlotte found pastoral support from the Stuttgart city vicars, who lived with her one after the other, from Wilhelm Hoffmann (1806–1873) and Albert Ostertag (1810–1871), both later in leading positions at the Basel Mission, as mission inspector (1839–1850) and as a missionary teacher (since 1837). After eight months, Friedrich returned from America disappointed. In Ann Arbor, MI, where he had already been looking for settler land, he had met the Swabian preacher Friedrich Schmid (1806–1860), who helped him understand his wife's piety, also a kind of conversion. After overcoming the crisis, they were happily reunited in the end.

Foundation of the Weidle subsidiary institute

Charlotte Reihlen was committed to the well-being, education and upbringing of her children. On the recommendation of Pastor Then Friedrich Weidle (1808–1876) came into Haus in 1836 , a talented and proven young teacher who was still preparing for the real teacher exam. First of all, he should give the two boys an additional religious lesson every week. It is told how the parents listened in the next room and how the conversation continued over dinner. Friends were soon invited to follow-up discussions. This gave rise to the “Weidle hour”, which continued for decades. Weidle himself lived in the visiting room with the Reihlens for a few years.

When the two daughters reached school age, Weidle gave them private elementary lessons. At first Elise was alone, soon other girls joined them. With Marie, a younger department was set up in 1839. Weidle's classes were very popular. The Reihlen'sche dining room became too small. Some fathers, led by Friedrich Reihlen, applied for a "private educational institution for daughters". His wife is seen as the driving force behind the scenes. On May 5, 1841, the Weidle'sche Töchter-Institut started with 49 students in four classes. After an interim, it was soon possible to move into a new building that the Reihlen company in Eberhardstr. 1, on the top floor above the warehouse. In the beginning Charlotte gave singing and handicraft lessons herself. Soon more teachers were added, often at the mediation of Immanuel Gottlieb Kolb , the schoolmaster of Dagersheim.

As early as 1856 the company moved to its own building in Tübinger Str. 7, where over 500 female students were taught. After Weidle suffered a stroke in 1869, pastor August Schmid was appointed as his successor and in 1873 it was built in Paulinenstrasse. 30 a new building for the Evangelical Daughter Institute , as it was now called, from which today's Evangelical Mörike-Gymnasium emerged .

Foundation of missionary associations

For the new Württemberg hymn book of 1841, Charlotte Reihlen initiated an aid association at the beginning of 1842 that brought out a subsidized edition, the poor songbook , with a circulation of 100,000 copies, twice as high as the official first edition. In addition, also inspired by her, a little Christian house book appeared with over 70 other hymns and an extensive prayer section, a popular confirmation gift for decades.

Together with her friend Charlotte Stammbach and the children of both families, she drove in the summer of 1842 in a specially rented horse-drawn bus to the annual festival of the Basel Mission in Basel. Back in Stuttgart they founded a mission association that met weekly. Against resistance, they succeeded in celebrating the first Stuttgart Mission Festival on August 24, 1843 in the overcrowded collegiate church. For the almost 15-year-old son Theodor, the party turned into a spiritual birthday . The festival has taken place every year since then. In 1845 it was overshadowed by the sudden death of Charlotte Stammbach on that very day.

The year before, the two women and their husbands had founded a Bible Association in order to bring Bibles and Christian tracts to remote station-keepers' houses through a colporteur, a concern that was later taken up by the Evangelical Society .

Changes in the family

After the death of Charlotte's father (1832), Charlotte's mentally ill mother was quartered near the Reihlen house. After her epileptic seizures had calmed down somewhat, the daughter took her into her household around 1844, where she died in the summer of 1847.

In the run-up to the German Revolution in 1848, the Reihlen family's office building was briefly targeted by insurgents. The Stuttgart bread riot on May 3, 1847 almost resulted in looting. The family had barricaded themselves in the house and stones were already flying against the shutters. The military was able to save the situation, the king himself had joined them at half past ten. An uninvolved journeyman cobbler was fatally shot.

On May 1, 1851, the three Reihlen brothers dissolved their previously jointly managed business by mutual agreement. Wilhelm kept the Stuttgart business, Carl the meanwhile founded sugar factory in Mannheim, and Friedrich founded a new sugar factory in Stuttgart with his sons Adolf and Theodor. It was built in the same year on the site a little below the Kaisemer , between the railway lines to Feuerbach and Cannstatt, which were only inaugurated in 1846. The Friedrich Reihlen family moved from the narrow Marktstrasse to the elegant Friedrichsvorstadt right next to the Friedrichstor, into the house at Friedrichstrasse. 2 with a large and beautiful garden.

On June 24, 1853, the parents' 30th wedding anniversary, the three older Reihlen children were married together in the collegiate church in Stuttgart: Adolf (1824–1912) with Theresia Kullen (1832–1917), daughter of the institute's director Johannes Kullen (1787– 1842) from the Korntal Brethren ; Theodor (1828–1869) with Maria Klett (1829–1894), daughter of the Senior Justice Council and diakonia pioneer Maximilian Klett (1788–1851) from Ludwigsburg; Elise (1830–1914) with businessman Friedrich Stammbach (1825–1884), son of textile merchant Carl Heinrich Stammbach (1799–1869) and the aforementioned Charlotte born. Noé (1801-1845). Adolf's marriage remained childless, only two of Theodor's five children reached adulthood, and Elises's twelve were eleven; her youngest Eugen Stammbach (1876–1948) became a well-known painter.

Maria (1833–1907), the youngest daughter of Reihlen, married Carl Sixtus Kapff (also 1833–1907), son of Prelate Sixt Carl Kapff (1805–1879) and pastor himself and later dean in 1861 . The couple had a daughter after a stillbirth in which the mother almost died.

Foundation of the Protestant Diakonissenanstalt Stuttgart

Theodor Fliedner (1800–1864) and his first wife Friederike (1800–1842) founded the modern deaconess office in Kaiserswerth near Düsseldorf in 1836, combining a Christian way of life and professional nursing . Charlotte Reihlen got to know this early on, when Theodor Fliedner went on an advertising trip to Württemberg in 1838 and Friederike accompanied two Swabian sisters trained in Kaiserswerth to Kirchheim / Teck in 1840 , to the Wilhelmshospital founded by Duchess Henriette (1780–1857). The idea of ​​such a deaconess institution was soon taken up elsewhere. In Stuttgart there was apparently no comparable charismatic clergyman with organizational skills to found such an institution.

After several unsuccessful attempts, Charlotte Reihlen, supported by her husband, took the initiative. She won Pastor Gottlob Bührer (1801-1894), secretary of the Evangelical Society since 1851 , for the management. In a sermon about the Good Samaritan, Prelate Kapff campaigned for the deaconess issue. The Strasbourg pastor Franz Härtter (1797–1874) had offered to train the first Stuttgart sisters in his deaconess house. A founding committee of six women and four men, the later board of directors, was constituted in April 1853 and advertised to search for "Protestant virgins" who see their life's work in nursing as a work of faith. When the first three sisters and the intended housemother came back from Strasbourg, they could be in the former court hospital in Büchsenstrasse on August 25, 1854. 28 start work.

Friedrich Reihlen only became a member of the Board of Directors afterwards, as a specialist in construction issues. When the number of sisters grew and a new building was planned, he was a member of the three-person construction committee. In June 1866 the deaconess house Forststr. 20 inaugurate. Kapff took over the chairmanship of the administrative board in 1856 when Bührer became dean in Waiblingen. After a few interim solutions, the management of the house was transferred to Helfer (2nd pastor) Kapff and his wife, i.e. to the Kapff son and the Rehlen daughter, in March 1868 . This house- parenting solution, decided shortly before Charlotte's death, has evidently not proven its worth. In the summer of 1870 the Kapffs resigned. After that, under pastor Karl Hoffmann (1822–1912), who served as headmaster from 1871–1897 , the Diakonissenanstalt Stuttgart grew continuously, as did his successors. Around 1940 there were over 1,600 deaconesses. Since then their number has decreased, but the work continues to be supported by a considerable number of Christian-motivated diaconal sisters and brothers .

Establishment of the school of servants

At the suggestion of Pastor Handel from Stammheim near Calw, Charlotte Reihlen initiated a maid's facility in Stuttgart , which enabled girls aged 14 to 16 to complete a year-long training in all domestic work after leaving elementary school. It is the third of the "very benevolent institutions" that Prelate Kapff praised at her grave because they owed their existence "mainly to their zeal, advice and self-sacrifice" - besides the daughter school and deaconess house. Incidentally, all three concern girls' education. In this case she stayed in the background. But when it was founded in 1860, three out of five members of the board of directors belonged to the Reihlen family, including her daughter-in-law Therese nee. Kullen. The classrooms were initially in Hauptstätterstr. 59, later in Furtbachstr. 10. The name was changed in 1911 to Paulinenheim Servant School. From 1908 until the dissolution in 1923, the housemother was the Rehlen granddaughter Chlothilde Stammbach (1863-1948).

The picture The wide and the narrow way

The wide and the narrow way picture after Charlotte Reihlen, later, widespread version

In April 1867 Charlotte Reihlen published a large-format lithograph (tone print) with the title The Wide and the Narrow Way ( Matthew 7: 13-14  EU ). The reason for the picture was a double catastrophe in the previous year: On July 24th, 1866, three weeks after Königgrätz , the people of Württemberg suffered a severe defeat against the Prussians in the German War near Tauberbischofsheim, and on July 26th, when this became known in Stuttgart , Friedrich Reihlen suffered a severe stroke and had been a nursing care case since then until his death in 1870. Charlotte was doubly shaken by the nearness of death in the field and at home. So she wanted to shake up and call to repentance. She commissioned the Stuttgart lithographer Conrad Schacher (1831–1870) to carry out her designs. Her son Theodor helped her, especially with the eight-page explanation of the picture , which was soon included in the print free of charge.

The structure of the picture is clear. In the foreground is a wall with two entrances, wide open on the left and a narrow passage on the right. A pointer points to the two directions, to the left to “death and damnation”, to the right to “life and bliss”. A preacher invites them there. Behind the two ways. The wide path, lined with an inn, theater and gambling den, leads into the firestorm in which the city of Babylon collapses. The narrow path, on the other hand, meanders between the crucified Christ and the church, past the Sunday school, the child rescue center and the deaconess house, up to the heavenly Jerusalem. The ravine between is getting deeper and deeper, but at the end there is a rainbow above it, and the whole picture is under the triangle with an eye, as a symbol of the triune God. The representation is littered with biblical passages. But you only see that at second glance. First of all, the overall visual impression is fascinating.

The way metaphor is ancient, Hercules was once at the crossroads, and the Jesus word from the Sermon on the Mount has been visualized for a long time. Some two-way pictures appeared around 1840, from which Charlotte Reihlen explicitly wanted to set herself apart. While the forerunners on the hills only list vices and virtues next to the two paths, Charlotte Reihlen depicts the bad and the good deeds as small scenes - a significant improvement. With the others, the heavenly Jerusalem is at the top in the center of the picture, the hellfire is pushed to the edge. With her, on the other hand, damnation on the left and bliss on the right stand side by side on an equal footing - a significant shift in emphasis. With the emphasis on the double exit, she differs from Prelate Kapff, who secretly leaned toward the doctrine of return. Therefore it is rather unlikely that Kapff advised you on the conception of the picture. But she also understands good deeds as "fruits of faith" and not as conditions of access to salvation, as she has often been criticized. This becomes clearer in the explanation than in the picture itself.

The picture is reminiscent of Charlotte Reihlen's biography in some points. The church on the narrow path resembles the Leonhardskirche, your spiritual home. The Sunday school had previously begun shortly in the Württemberg church, in October 1865 with a first group of children in the apartment of her son Adolf in Friedrichsstr. 2. The various child rescue centers in the country were supported by Reihlens for decades. The new deaconess house had only just been inaugurated. The institutional aspect is remarkable. In addition to private charity, represented in the Works of Mercy (Matthew 25: 35-36), the fruits of faith also expressly include the charitable institutions of inner mission . The railroad at the end of the broad way is probably also very important today. A war scene is depicted in front of it, and in front of it again a man with a whip drives three slaves in front of him, in the original version drawn with a bare black back. This is likely to allude to the American Civil War of 1861–65, in which the railroad was first used strategically, as was the case with Königgrätz. The message was originally intended: War and slavery are the devil! But when the declaration appeared in June 1867, the doom and gloom of the previous year was gone and the railroad was just an example of Sunday denunciation .

The Stuttgart version was also published as a color lithograph in 1884; In 1890/91 it was redrawn by the lithographer Paul Beckmann (1846–1919); u. a. women's fashion had changed. As early as 1867 a Dutch version was published in Amsterdam, which the English people's missionary Gawin Kirkham (d. 1892) brought to London and used in his evangelism. In 1883 he published an English version with which he traveled across all continents. Since 1921 the picture has been printed as a lithograph with nine colors in the St. Johannis print shop in Lahr-Dinglingen, and in fact in several languages ​​at the same time (German, English, Dutch, Spanish, Hungarian and even Armenian) and in two languages different versions. Most important difference: one version shows an open-air mission on the meadow in the center (like the English version), the other doesn't (like the German version). Since offset printing in 1960, the German version has followed the English version. It was in the publisher's offer until 2010.

Diseases and death

Charlotte Reihlen always lived frugally and simply. It is said that because of her simple clothes, visitors mistook her for the maidservant instead of the landlady. She suffered a lot from diseases from a young age. A weak stomach only allowed her to eat light meals, frequent severe migraines plagued her, and a heart condition brought her insomnia, which she used in prayer on blessing nights . In the summer she regularly went to spa treatments, for example to the North Sea. A liver disease was alleviated by a cure in Karlsbad in 1857. A complicated knee injury was miraculously healed by Dorothea Trudel through prayer in 1859 . In the midst of plans to build a church for the deaconess house, Charlotte Reihlen caught a cold on New Year's Eve of 1868, from which she did not recover and from which she died on January 21, 1868. She was buried two days later in the Fangelsbach cemetery in Stuttgart . Prelate Kapff gave the funeral sermon. Her grave of honor has been preserved in the cemetery to this day.

literature

• Manfred Berger http://www.bbkl.de/lexikon/bbkl-artikel.php?art=./R/Re/reihlen_c_l.art
• Friedrich Baun: Charlotte Reihlen (1805–1868). A picture of women from the Stuttgart community . Stuttgart, 1922
• Jan Harasimowicz : The imagery of Pietism: The motif of the "two ways". In: Peter Poscharsky (ed.): The pictures in the Lutheran churches. Iconographic studies . Munich 1998, pp. 195-208.
• Friedrich Gustav Lang: Charlotte Reihlen 1805–1868. Life path and two-way picture . Stuttgart: Association for Württemberg Church History, 2014 ( Small Writings of the Association for Württemberg Church History , Volume 15). 182 pp. ISBN 978-3-944051-04-8 [pp. 131-182: illustrations].
• Martin Scharfe : Evangelical devotional pictures. Studies on the intention and function of the image in the history of piety, especially in the Swabian region . Stuttgart: Müller & Gräff 1968 ( publications of the State Office for Monument Preservation Stuttgart ; Series C. Volkskunde , 5). - 366, XCVI S., 161 illustrations. - At the same time Phil. Diss. Univ. Tübingen 1968. [Basic study of Protestant devotional images, especially from the Württemberg-Swabian region.]
  • See p. 25 with note 14; P. 263–270: “Christian and Weltmensch: die 'two ways'”, here p. 267–270 with notes 104–118; also p. 307 on Charlotte Reihlen and the picture she designed; see pp. LXXXV – XC, Figure 146–153, on the subject of the two paths, especially pp. LXXXVI – LXXXVII, Figure 149–150, on the picture designed by Charlotte Reihlen.
  • Conrad Schacher is not yet mentioned; the lithograph by Paul Beckmann mentioned on p. 267, note 106 (see p. LXXXVI, Figure 149) is a later version. - The motif of Heracles at the crossroads and the tablet of kebab are also not mentioned, but for example the famous novel The Pilgrim's Progress from This World to That Which Is to Come by John Bunyan (1628–1688); see. ibid, p. 264 with note 84. - Adolf Reihlen is not “her husband” (see p. 267), but her first son.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Friedrich Gustav Lang: Charlotte Reihlen (1805–1868). Life path and two-way picture . In: Small writings of the Association for Württemberg Church History . tape 15 . Stuttgart 2014, ISBN 978-3-944051-04-8 , pp. 12. 14 .
2. ^ FG Lang: Charlotte Reihlen . 2014, p. 17 .
3. ↑ Thomas Held: Ancestors of Charlotte Reihlen born. Mohl . In: SWDB [Südwestdeutsche Blätter für Familien- und Wappenkunde] . tape 32 , 2014, p. 295–339, here 295 .
4. ^ FG Lang: Charlotte Reihlen . 2014, p. 18 .
5. ^ FG Lang: Charlotte Reihlen . 2014, p. 20-21 .
6. ^ FG Lang: Charlotte Reihlen . 2014, p. 23 .
7. ^ Friedrich Gustav Lang: At the beginning there is Charlotte Reihlen. On the founding history of the Evangelical Mörike-Gymnasium . In: Evangelisches Mörike-Gymnasium (Hrsg.): The tower cock . 44 (1841-2016: 175th anniversary). Stuttgart 2016, p. 14-22 .
8. ^ FG Lang: Charlotte Reihlen . 2014, p. 27-29 .
9. ^ FG Lang: Charlotte Reihlen . 2014, p. 30-31. 35-38 .
10. ^ FG Lang: Charlotte Reihlen . 2014, p. 39-50 .
11. ^ Andrea Kittel: Diakonie in Gemeinschaft. 150 years of the Protestant Diakonissenanstalt Stuttgart . Ed .: Friedrich G. Lang. Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-00-013295-3 , p. 89-91 .
12. ^ F. Baun: Charlotte Reihlen . 1922, p. 29 .
13. ^ FG Lang: Charlotte Reihlen . 2014, p. 51-52 .
14. ^ F. Baun: Charlotte Reihlen . 1922, p. 43 .
15. ^ FG Lang: Charlotte Reihlen . 2014, p. 68-71; Facsimile of the "Declaration": 175–182 .
16. ^ FG Lang: Charlotte Reihlen . 2014, p. 102-105 .
17. ^ FG Lang: Charlotte Reihlen . 2014, p. 107-108 .
18. ^ FG Lang: Charlotte Reihlen . 2014, p. 110 .
19. ^ FG Lang: Charlotte Reihlen . Pp. 73-76. 79-86. For further versions see http://www.pictureswithamessage.com/97/cat97.htm?931 .
20. ↑ F. Baun: Charlotte Reihlen , pp. 40–43.
21. ^ FG Lang: Charlotte Reihlen . 2014, p. 57-58 .