Friedrich Ludwig Weidig

Friedrich Ludwig Weidig

Ludwig Friedrich Alexander Weidig (born February 15, 1791 in Oberkleen ; † February 23, 1837 in Darmstadt ) was a German Protestant theologian , educator , publicist and gymnastics pioneer . He worked primarily as a teacher in Butzbach , and briefly as a pastor in Ober-Gleen . In the area of what is now Hesse and the adjacent Middle Rhine , he was one of the key protagonists of the Vormärz and pioneer of the revolution of 1848 .

Life

Grave of Friedrich Ludwig Weidig in the old cemetery in Darmstadt

Weidig was born in the village of Oberkleen in the Hüttenberger Land northwest of the Wetterau as the son of the chief forester Ludwig Christian Weidig (1765-1835). His mother was Wilhelmine Christine Weidig geb. Liebknecht (1766-1831).

In the church register, the first names are entered in the following form "Ludwig, Friedrich Alexander". In the later compiled family book of the father as follows: "Ludwig Friedrich Alexander" (Friedrich underlined). In the private sphere as well as in official correspondence, the nickname was "Friedrich" or "Fritz". The doctoral certificate from the University of Giessen was awarded to "Friderico Ludowico Alexandro Weidig".

The Weidig family stayed in Oberkleen for two years. Then she moved to Cleeberg, where her father worked as a forester. In Cleeberg, the Weidig family lived next to the Liebknecht family. After spending eleven years in Cleeberg , Friedrich Ludwig Weidig came to the nearby Landgrave of Hesse in Butzbach in 1803 , where he went to school. During his theology studies at the Ludoviciana in Giessen, he was a member of the Franconian Landsmannschaft. In 1812 he became vice principal at the Butzbach boys' school.

Weidig's brothers were the foresters, judges and members of the 2nd Chamber of the Estates of the Grand Duchy of Hesse Gottlieb (1792–1875) and Wilhelm Weidig (1798–1873).

Friedrich Ludwig Weidig also stood over his great-grandmother Louisa Dorothea Kalenberg, from Ober-Ramstadt comes, with the descendants of the gunsmith , princely Controller and Viscount to Lichtenberg Johann Leonhard Boßler in ancestral community , as his wife Anna Elisabeth Kalenberg a sister of Weidigs great-grandmother and daughter of the pastor and schoolmaster of Ober-Ramstadt, Samuel Ulrich Kalenberg.

Following the example of Friedrich Ludwig Jahn , Weidig carried out gymnastics and drill exercises with his students and founded (around 1814) a gymnasium on the Schrenzer, a north-eastern branch of the Taunus . For this reason, later historians and biographers dubbed him the “Hessian gymnastics father”.

Since 1818, Weidig was monitored by the authorities for political activity in school lessons, in sermons and privately. Weidig was one of the Liberal Democrats who wanted a unified Germany as a democratic nation-state. Therefore, he traveled to southwest Germany in 1832 and helped with the preparations for the Hambach Festival , which he was unable to attend due to official surveillance.

Weidighaus in Butzbach with Hexenturm in the background

Weidig was imprisoned for the first time in 1833; nevertheless he illegally published four editions of the "Leuchter und Beleuchter für Hessen (or the Hessen self-defense)" in 1834. In the same year he met Georg Büchner for the first time . Weidig reworked a manuscript submitted by Büchner for the first print version of the “ Hessischer Landbote ”. The distribution of the illegal leaflet was also largely organized by Weidig and his students. (The original from Büchner is lost and he later distanced himself from Weidig's changes.)

Weidig was suspended from duty on April 5, 1834. He was transferred as a pastor to the village of Ober-Gleen , which today belongs to Kirtorf , in Vogelsberg . When the “Hessischer Landbote” project was betrayed in the summer of 1834, Büchner fled to Strasbourg , while Weidig refused to emigrate to Switzerland with his family . His sermon in Ober-Gleen on September 7, 1834, with which he proclaimed the Christ of the poor, "who fought against the injustice and hypocrisy of the mighty of his time" - a theology of liberation avant la lettre, caused a sensation .

Soon afterwards, Friedrich Weidig was arrested again, detained in the monastery barracks in Friedberg and transferred to the detention center in Darmstadt in June 1835 , where he presumably committed suicide on February 23, 1837 after being investigated by examining magistrates (especially Konrad Georgi , the known to be an alcoholic) had been tortured and physically abused. The letters that the sick and desperate man had written to his wife from prison were withheld for many years after his death "for reasons of state police". The gravestone in the old cemetery in Darmstadt (grave site: IF 141b), on which his friends had noted that he was a fighter for freedom, was walled up on the orders of the government.

He was defended by his brother-in-law Theodor Reh . In 1849 he was the last president of the Frankfurt National Assembly .

Weidigdenkmal (2015)

Honors

A monument in Weidig's honor was erected in 1937 on the Schrenzer on the outskirts of Butzbach, and later a bronze portrait was added. Friedrich Ludwig Weidig is the namesake of the Weidigschule , a grammar school in Butzbach, and the Weidigsporthalle in Oberkleen . In Darmstadt (Eberstadt) and Ober-Gleen (Kirtorf) streets are named after Friedrich Ludwig Weidig. The Hessian Gymnastics Association awards the Friedrich-Ludwig-Weidig plaque to people who have made a name for themselves in gymnastics in Hessen through many years of work.

Individual evidence

^ Weidig, Friedrich Ludwig: Collected writings . Published by Hans-Joachim Müller. Darmstadt 1987 (Hessian contributions to German literature), ISBN 3-7929-0155-2 ; see. to the name forms v. a. the Chronicle, p. 497ff
↑ Eduard Eyßen: The register of a Gießener Franken from 1810. In: Deutsche Corpszeitung 41 (1925), p. 248.
↑ Prof. Dr. Diethard Köhler : Families in Billings, Nonrod, Meßbach, Steinau, Hausen, Lichtenberg 1635–1750 . Volume III: Address book front Odenwald 1635–1750. Ober-Ramstadt 1987, OCLC 74995810 , Hausen and Lichtenberg: Families 1700–1750 .
↑ Hans Deuster: Current events and life of the Büchner family in the Hessian Ried - reports on the Büchner family, their relatives, acquaintances, contemporary witnesses, contemporary events and local stories . Self-published by Hans Deuster, Riedstadt-Goddelau 2004, ISBN 3-8334-1854-0 , p. 148 .
↑ Frederik Hetmann : Georg B. or Büchner ran twice from Giessen to Offenbach and back again . Beltz and Gelberg, Weinheim 1981. ISBN 3-407-80631-0 . P. 146.
↑ “A brother of the dead man, the District Court Assessor Weidig zu Schotten (Vogelsbergkreis), submitted a vacation request to the court court in Giessen on April 27, 1837, which he followed in an unmistakable challenge to the authorities responsible for the death of the pastor and alleged 'gang boss' reasoned: 'I am urged to travel to Darmstadt because of the cruel murder of my brother, proclaimed with shameless lies and scorn.' The proceedings initiated against him dragged through the courts for years without the authorities succeeding in refuting the evidence for the guilt of the court judge Georgi ”(quoted from Bernt Engelmann : Despite all this. German Radicals 1777–1977 , Munich 1977).
^ Rudolf Vierhaus (ed.): German biographical encyclopedia . 2nd revised and expanded edition. tape 8 . Poets - Schlueter. KG Saur Verlag , Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-598-25038-5 , p. 245 ( digitized version ).
↑ Weidig brochure

Fonts

Weidig, Friedrich Ludwig: Collected writings . Published by Hans-Joachim Müller. Darmstadt 1987 (Hessian contributions to German literature), ISBN 3-7929-0155-2 [contains a detailed chronology of life and work (pp. 497-681)].
Ernst Weber: An anti-absolutist program in verse. Friedrich Ludwig Weidig's song book of all Teutschen (1815). In: Georg Büchner Jahrbuch 8 (1990–94) [1995], pp. 126–209.
Georg Büchner, Friedrich Ludwig Weidig: The Hessian country messenger . Published by Gerhard Schaub, Reclam , Stuttgart 1996, ISBN 3-15-009486-0 .

literature

Arthur Wyß: Weidig, Friedrich Ludwig . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 41, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1896, pp. 450-453.
Friedrich Wilhelm Schulz : The Death of Pastor Dr. Friedrich Ludwig Weidig. A documented and documented contribution to the assessment of the secret criminal process and the political situation in Germany. Literary Comptoir . Zurich and Winterthur 1843 [first documentation of the murderous circumstances under which Weidig was imprisoned and interrogated. The writing sparked wide debate].
Karl Mihm: Alex. Friedrich Ludwig Weidig. A contribution to the history of pre-March liberalism. In: Archive for Hessian History and Archeology, New Series 15 (1928), pp. 348–384 u. 574–608 [also published independently: Darmstadt 1929].
Harald Braun: The gymnastics and political work of Alexander Friedrich Ludwig Weidig 1791-1837 . Diss. Sports science Cologne, Ahrensburg 1977. 2., add. through documentation exp. Ed. UdT: The political and gymnastics work of Friedrich Ludwig Weidig. A contribution to the history of the revolutionary efforts in the German Vormärz . St. Augustin 1983 (publications of the German Sport University Cologne 11).
Thomas Michael Mayer: Büchner and Weidig - early communism and revolutionary democracy. To the text distribution of the Hessischer Landbote. In: Heinz Ludwig Arnold (Ed.): Georg Büchner I / II . Munich 1979 ( text + criticism . Sonderband), pp. 16–298 [in the 2nd, improved and increased by one register edition 1982 pp. 16–298 u. 463].
Thomas Michael Mayer u. a. (Arrangement): Georg Büchner. Life, work, time. An exhibition on the 150th anniversary of the "Hessischer Landbote". Catalog . With the participation of Bettina Bischoff u. a. edit by Thomas Michael Mayer. Marburg 1985 [2nd, significantly improved a. increased edition 1986; 3rd ed. 1987].
Bodo Heil: Weidig's afterlife (on the 150th anniversary of Dr. Friedrich Ludwig Weidig's death). In: Wetterauer Geschichtsblätter 35 (1986), pp. 73-126.
Friedrich Ludwig Weidig, 1791–1837: new contributions for the 200th anniversary of his birthday . Edited by the Butzbach City Administration […] in connection with the Butzbach History Association. Ed .: Dieter Wolf and Annette Reiter. Contributions: Hans-Joachim Müller u. a. Butzbach 1991 [contains a bibliography of literature 1918–1990 (pp. 136–180)].
Hans-Otto Schneider: Weidig, Friedrich Ludwig. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 28, Bautz, Nordhausen 2007, ISBN 978-3-88309-413-7 , Sp. 1551-1578. ( Article / beginning of article in Internet archive )

Web links

Wikisource: Friedrich Ludwig Weidig - Sources and full texts

Commons : Friedrich Ludwig Weidig - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Commons : Weidigdenkmal (Butzbach) - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Literature by and about Friedrich Ludwig Weidig in the catalog of the German National Library
Weidig, Alexander Friedrich Ludwig in the Hessian biography
Background information on the distribution of the Hessischer Landbote and the sometimes different intentions of its authors, Weidig and Büchner
Friedrich Ludwig Weidig at the Georg Büchner Portal
Further information about FL Weidig on the homepage of the Weidig School
Page for the F. L. Weidig badge on the Hess homepage. Gymnastics association

personal data
SURNAME	Weidig, Friedrich Ludwig
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Weidig, Ludwig Friedrich Alexander; Weidig, Friedrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German Protestant pastor and teacher
DATE OF BIRTH	February 15, 1791
PLACE OF BIRTH	Upper clover
DATE OF DEATH	February 23, 1837
Place of death	Darmstadt

[1] Weidig, Friedrich Ludwig: Collected writings . Published by Hans-Joachim Müller. Darmstadt 1987 (Hessian contributions to German literature), ISBN 3-7929-0155-2 ; see. to the name forms v. a. the Chronicle, p. 497ff

[2] Eduard Eyßen: The register of a Gießener Franken from 1810. In: Deutsche Corpszeitung 41 (1925), p. 248.

[3] Prof. Dr. Diethard Köhler : Families in Billings, Nonrod, Meßbach, Steinau, Hausen, Lichtenberg 1635–1750 . Volume III: Address book front Odenwald 1635–1750. Ober-Ramstadt 1987, OCLC 74995810 , Hausen and Lichtenberg: Families 1700–1750 .

[4] Hans Deuster: Current events and life of the Büchner family in the Hessian Ried - reports on the Büchner family, their relatives, acquaintances, contemporary witnesses, contemporary events and local stories . Self-published by Hans Deuster, Riedstadt-Goddelau 2004, ISBN 3-8334-1854-0 , p. 148 .

[5] Frederik Hetmann : Georg B. or Büchner ran twice from Giessen to Offenbach and back again . Beltz and Gelberg, Weinheim 1981. ISBN 3-407-80631-0 . P. 146.

[6] “A brother of the dead man, the District Court Assessor Weidig zu Schotten (Vogelsbergkreis), submitted a vacation request to the court court in Giessen on April 27, 1837, which he followed in an unmistakable challenge to the authorities responsible for the death of the pastor and alleged 'gang boss' reasoned: 'I am urged to travel to Darmstadt because of the cruel murder of my brother, proclaimed with shameless lies and scorn.' The proceedings initiated against him dragged through the courts for years without the authorities succeeding in refuting the evidence for the guilt of the court judge Georgi ”(quoted from Bernt Engelmann : Despite all this. German Radicals 1777–1977 , Munich 1977).

[7] Rudolf Vierhaus (ed.): German biographical encyclopedia . 2nd revised and expanded edition. tape 8 . Poets - Schlueter. KG Saur Verlag , Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-598-25038-5 , p. 245 ( digitized version ).

[8] Weidig brochure