Friedrich Wilhelm Lange (clergyman)

Friedrich Wilhelm Lange (born November 23, 1788 in Striegau , Province of Silesia , † March 26, 1839 in Fischhausen , East Prussia ) was a German Protestant clergyman and educator.

Life

Lange was born the son of master planter Johann Gottfried Lange, who with his wife had eleven sons and one daughter. After his father died early, his mother sent him to Gottfried Zahn's orphanage in Bunzlau . There he developed so well as a student that he went to high school in Jauer . Economically supported by a scholarship for the gifted, he acquired the university entrance qualification there. Since he still lacked the means to attend a university, he initially hired himself out as a private teacher on an estate of the Hochberg (noble family) . Later he always remembered this job with great gratitude. Before he took up this position, his mother had probably also died; because afterwards he did not return to his parents' house.

Equipped with his own funds and with the prospect of a scholarship , he, like most of the Silesian students at the time, moved to the Brandenburg University of Frankfurt . The academic life there was in decline, however, and the number of students had already fallen sharply; scientific teaching hardly took place. He was therefore drawn to the Prussian Friedrichs University in Halle , which was shaped by Christian Wolff and the Enlightenment theologian Johann Salomo Semler . Although had Napoleon Bonaparte , the university closed in 1806 and several teachers and the Oberkonsistorialrat Niedermeyer as hostages to France deported, but she left after the Peace of Tilsit during the French occupation in the newly created Kingdom of Westphalia reopen.

Lange had probably come to Halle in the autumn of 1808 . After he began studying there, Napoleon came to the city in person and announced that the young men present in the city would be drafted into his army for military service. Most of the foreign students then left the city, and Lange went with them. He sought refuge in his home state of Prussia and, with a letter of recommendation to Superintendent Weiss of the Old Town Church of St. Nicholas in Königsberg i. Pr. Equipped, in the spring of 1809 by ship via Stettin to Koenigsberg, with the intention of continuing his studies there at the Albertus University . On May 24, 1809, he enrolled at the university. Weiß, who also came from Silesia and whose house he had access to, from then on looked after him as a father. He placed him as a private teacher at prestigious institutions, such as B. that of the landlord Hans Jakob von Auerswald , and employs him at his own high school for girls. At the Tippolt School for the Poor, Industrial and Sunday School , he arranged for Lange to be employed as a second teacher in 1810 and, from 1812, as the first teacher and sub-inspector.

After three years of studying with Wald, Wedecke, Krause and others, Lange had successfully completed his studies in Protestant theology and received his license to preach on May 29, 1812. Lange was now economically independent. The inspector of the Tippolt school, Pastor Waßanski, and Weiss gave him very positive reports.

In the summer of 1813, Lange passed the parish exam. Then he was given the position of second preacher in Pillau , which was also connected with the rectorate of the citizen school, the actual main task. He held this office for seven years. Initially, the consequences of the French occupation of the city and fortress Pillau at the beginning of the wars of liberation caused difficulties for him.

Lange applied for a teaching position at the Burgschule (Königsberg) in 1818 , but remained as a pulpit speaker after changing the community in Pillau. When his compatriot Bretschneider, pastor of Germau , died in 1820 and Lange had given the funeral speech, the mourners wanted him to be his successor. Lange applied for the position and received it. He worked in Germau until the royal government gave him the office of pastor in Fischhausen in 1828 . Since the previous superintendent wanted to withdraw from the inspection duties for reasons of age, Lange was in charge of this office from 1831 until he was assigned it himself in 1833. In his diocese he was particularly concerned with the school system

St. Adalbert Cross on the site of the former St. Adalbert Memorial Chapel near Tenkitten in East Prussia

During his tenure as superintendent in Fischhausen, Lange paid tribute to the memory of Adalbert von Prag , who was martyred in 997 during a missionary trip to East Prussia in an unknown location near Tenkitten . After a chapel of St. Adalbert (Tenkitten), which had previously been built not far from the village, was destroyed by a storm and ultimately only a wooden cross reminded of Adalbert, Lange measured the ground plan of the former chapel and took the initiative to erect an iron memorial cross, which was erected in 1834 and was inaugurated on May 6, 1835 in the presence of the Protestant and Catholic clergy. The cross, which was destroyed in 1945, was replaced by a new one made of stone on the occasion of the 1000th anniversary of Adalbert's death in 1997.

On November 23, 1814 he had Marie Charlotte Henriette, b. Christiani, married, who came from Königsberg. He was married to her for 24 years when he died in Fischhausen after a brief illness in the spring of 1839. His eldest daughter died before him; three of his children, two daughters and one son, survived him.

Fonts

• News about the iron cross erected at Tenkitten in memory of St. Adalbert . In: Prussian provincial sheets . Volume 12, July-December 1834, pp. 441-454.
• Addendum to the description of the St. Adalbert Cross erected near Tenkitten in the Provinzial-Blatte November-Heft 1834 . In: Prussian provincial sheets . Volume 17, Königsberg 1837, pp. 385-386.

literature

• Karl Emil Gebauer : Friedrich Wilhelm Lange, former royal superintendent and pastor of Fischhausen. A biographical sketch. In: Prussian provincial sheets . Volume 22, Königsberg 1839, pp. 289-304.
• Ernst August Hagen : About the St. Adalbert's Chapel in Tenkitten . In: New Prussian Provincial Papers . Volume 5, Koenigsberg 1848, pp. 256-276.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Friedrich Wilhelm Lange: Message about the iron cross erected at Tenkitten in memory of St. Adalbert . In: Prussian provincial sheets . Volume 12, July-December 1834, pp. 441-454.
2. ^ Studies and communications on the history of the Benedictine order . Volume 18, 1897, p. 188.
3. ↑ Ernst August Hagen : About the St. Adalbert's Chapel in Tenkitten . In: New Prussian Provincial Papers . Volume 5, Königsberg 1848, pp. 256-276, especially p. 267.
4. ↑ Information with illustration in the East Prussia picture archive , accessed on March 30, 2017