Friederike von Bodelschwingh

Friederike Charlotte Sophie Wilhelmine Henriette von Bodelschwingh (born Freiin von Plettenberg , born May 7, 1768 in Heyde's house in Uelzen in what is now Unna ; † September 5, 1850 there ) was a wealthy landowner in the Unna- Hamm area . She and her husband Franz von Bodelschwingh are the first parents of the von Bodelschwingh branch on Velmede and Heyde, which has produced a number of important personalities.

Origin and family

Friederike's full maiden name is Friederike Charlotte Sophie Wilhelmine Henriette Freiin von Plettenberg. Her father was Henrich Ludwig von Plettenberg (1744–1799), master of the Heyde house and the associated Gut Binkhoff , her mother, Sophie Charlotte, nee Freiin Quadt-Wykradt-Hüchtenbruck (1734–1799), who had been married since 1767. In 1785 Friederike's father bought the nearby Bögge house in today's Bönen with the adjoining Gut Nordhof. Friederike's grandfather was the Prussian equestrian general Christoph Friedrich Steffen von Plettenberg , who had bought Heyde's house in 1743. On January 21, 1785, at the age of 17, Friederike married Franz von Bodelschwingh (1754–1827) from Velmede in what is now Bergkamen, 14 years her senior . He brought the Velmede and Töddinghausen estates into the marriage. The couple had four children:

• 1. Ludwig, b. 1789, who dies at the age of eleven.
• 2. Sophie (1791–1855), who married the Prussian infantry general Constant Freiherr Quadt-Wykradt-Hüchtenbruck in 1815.
• 3. Ernst (1794–1854), who later became President of the Rhine Province and was Minister of State for seven years.
• 4. Carl (1800–1873), who later also served as district president and was Minister of Finance for eleven years.

Two of Friederike's grandchildren, Friedrich von Bodelschwingh the Elder (1831–1910) and Ida von Bodelschwingh (1835–1894) married in 1861 and later built the v. Bodelschwinghschen Anstalten Bethel in today's Bielefeld , today the largest diaconal institutions in Europe.

Friederike had only one surviving sister, Albertina, half of whom became a co-heir when her father died in 1799. Just a year later, she transferred half of her inheritance to Friederike, who made an adjustment in return. At the beginning of their marriage, when her father still lived at Haus Heyde, Friederike and her family probably lived mostly on Gut Velmede, later often in the center of Hamm, where the family owned a representative house, the Nassauer Hof. The city, which at that time was the seat of a Prussian garrison as well as a war and domain chamber , gave opportunities for diverse contacts and for a good education for the children. From 1827, the death of her husband, who died 23 years before her, she probably lived permanently at Haus Heyde, which from then on became “the real center of the family”, as her great-grandson Pastor Fritz later put it.

During the Wars of Liberation she was one of the women in Hamm who founded the “Women's Association for the Promotion of the Welfare of Patriotic Warriors” in November 1813, which was dedicated to caring for wounded Prussian soldiers. She was one of the “heads” of the association, had drawn up its statutes and was apparently its strongest driving force. The association was active long after the Wars of Liberation to support the disabled or their families. For her services, Friederike was awarded the Order of Luisen , the highest order of women in the Kingdom of Prussia.

Apparently, in 1816, she and her husband went on a six-month educational trip to Italy, as did many who could afford it.

financial situation

Friederike was one of the wealthiest women in the Hamm district , which at that time also included what is now the Unna district. She owned four estates: Heyde, Binkhoff, Bögge and Nordhof. However, as early as 1803 she had the “grandiose” manor house of Bögge demolished - the reasons are not clear - and instead listed a small tenant apartment. Furthermore, she later had the usufruct of her husband's two estates, namely Velmede and Töddinghausen. The Heyde house also had a grain mill and an oil mill. She also owned the dilapidated windmill belonging to the city of Unna (today the exhibition space of the Unna Art Association) in today's Mühlenstraße. She rebuilt the mill and leased it to a miller. In 1845 she sold the mill. Most of the individual estates still included farms, ten at Haus Heyde alone.

When Friederike took over her inheritance, there were still considerable debts that she apparently paid back over the years. Above all, however, she had to pay off her sister, whose inheritance she had taken over. At times it had over 80 creditors who came from a wide variety of backgrounds: from the nobility, especially among the acquaintances in Hamm, relatives, farmers, even their own rent master and their own miller. Possibly she also built - perhaps together with her father - the 60 m long barn west of the graves and it was probably she who converted the hitherto baroque garden into an English landscape garden. Although it could not freely dispose of the great wealth, it largely determined how it was administered. As early as 1824, Friederike and Franz had appointed their three children as joint heirs in equal parts by will, but Friederike retained the usufruct of the entire property. After that, each child inherited two estates, namely Sophie Bögge and Nordhof, Ernst the paternal estates Velmede and Töddinghausen and Carl Haus Heyde with Binkhof. The different values ​​of the individual goods were balanced out by various measures, above all by pension letters and by the redemption amounts from the previously associated farms.

personality

The business documents received all indicate that Friederike had the administration of her extensive fortune in her own hands; her name keeps appearing. In this respect, she differed from most women of her time, including aristocratic women, who mostly only cared about family and household. Her husband Franz seems to have been of a completely different nature, tender-hearted, with little business ambition. She was evidently very determined in her business conduct and should be more comparable to a modern entrepreneur. So she campaigned for the improvement of the often marshy paths around Haus Heyde near the city of Unna and the district of Hamm, because their two millers could only be supplied with difficulty because of the poor road conditions. She even switched on a relative, Baron Ludwig von Vincke (1774–1844), at that time the first senior president of the newly formed province of Westphalia. She also seems to have taken care of everything else.

As one great-grandson reports, she was “with a small, delicate body a proud and very strong-willed nature”. Her daughters-in-law would not have had it easy with her. In her home she “tolerated no other will besides herself”. For her grandchildren she was the "highest person of respect on earth". When in later years she could no longer directly supervise the workers in the field, she is said to have observed everything that was going on outside with a telescope from a window seat. She is said to have slapped one of her workers.

Apparently she maintained a wide range of contacts with all the important people in the Hamm district at the time, such as Freiherrn vom und zum Stein , the great reformer, to whom her son Ernst was even on friendly terms. There is a lot of evidence of close contact with Ludwig von Vincke, the Upper President of Westphalia. The later court preacher and bishop Rulemann Friedrich Eylert (1770-1852) frequented her house and is said to have written down part of his collection of sermons at the Heyde house. She only gave up part of the administration in later years, namely when her second son Carl had finished his studies - law and administration - and his service as a one-year volunteer and returned to Haus Heyde. He then apparently supported them primarily with regard to the then pending division of the village brands and in the context of the peasant liberation with the release of the farms from the manorial system.

The Bodelschwingh cemetery in Velmede

The documents do not report any health problems with her, apart from the fact that she "broke her collarbone by knocking over the car" and suffered from her feet in old age. She was buried in the private cemetery of Haus Heyde, which she probably had laid out in 1832. When this was dissolved in 1938, their bones were relocated to the Bodelschwinghs' hereditary burial in Mühlenbruch near Velmede. Her tombstone is still there today, a sandstone stele that was also transferred here from Haus Heyde.

literature

• Maria Perrefort: from Bodelschwingh, Friederike . In: Protestant profiles in the Ruhr area - 500 life pictures from 5 centuries . Editors: Michael Basse , Traugott Jähnichen , Harald Schroeter-Wittke . Verlag Hartmut Spenner, Kamen 2009, ISBN 978-3-89991-092-6 , pp. 158f.
• Maria Perrefort: The Hammer Women's Association in the time of the Wars of Liberation - " Unite , German sisters in a pious league ..." . In: Unna district yearbook . Vol. 31, Unna 2010, ISBN 978-3-9810961-8-7 , pp. 143-157.
• Maria Perrefort: "There are excellent minds here" - The Prussian Hamm around 1800. In: We are Prussia - The Prussian core areas in North Rhine-Westphalia, 1609–2009. Klartext Verlag, Essen 2009, ISBN 978-3-89861-965-3 , pp. 119–155, in particular pp. 147–151.
• Josef Cornelissen: Haus Heyde lives on - 36 pictures about an extraordinary spot in Unna . Publication series of the city of Unna, Volume 46, Unna 2005, ISBN 3-927082-49-X (31 pages, DIN A 4).
• Josef Cornelissen: Heyde House near Unna - A Westphalian aristocratic residence in its eventful fate . Publication series of the city of Unna, Volume 35, 1998, ISBN 3-927082-37-6 , pp. 125–129, 135–149 as well as a family tree made by Friedrich Wilhelm von Bodelschwingh-Velmede in 1981 by those from Bodelschwingh to Velmede and Heyde in the envelope (352 pages, DIN A4).

Web links

• Women's biographies in the Ruhr area
• Chronicle Mühlhausen / Uelzen