Ida from Bodelschwingh

Ida von Bodelschwingh around 1865

Ida Friederize Caroline Luise Wilhelmine von Bodelschwingh, née von Bodelschwingh (born April 15, 1835 at Haus Heyde near Unna , † December 5, 1894 in Lemgo ) helped her husband Friedrich von Bodelschwingh , the world-famous v. Bodelschwingh Foundation Bethel .

origin

Ida's parents both came from the old Westphalian nobility. Her father Carl von Bodelschwingh (1800–1873) was first seven years district administrator of the Hamm district , to which Unna also belonged, then two years regional president in Arnsberg , a total of eleven years Prussian finance minister , as well as state and Reichstag member and chairman of the Protestant Order of St. John of Westphalia . He was deeply religious, extremely conservative, apparently also helpful and pleasant in personal contact. They lived at the moated house Heyde in what is now Unna- Uelzen , as far as the professional and political activities of their father allowed.

Ida's mother Elise, née Freiin von Bodelschwingh-Plettenberg (1806-1889) came from the moated castle Haus Bodelschwingh in what is now Dortmund-Bodelschwingh . She had eleven children, seven girls and four boys, although the oldest of them died when she was just under four. Ida was the fifth child. Two sons died in the battle of Königgrätz in the war against Austria in 1866 . Elise was later described by one of the biographers of her famous son-in-law Friedrich as "a model of a simple and thrifty housewife of the old Prussian aristocratic attitude who strictly adhered to order and punctuality and was completely absorbed in her large circle of domestic duties". She outlived her husband by 16 years. She spent her widow years with her unmarried daughters at Haus Heyde.

Childhood and youth

Ida (full first name: Ida Friederize Caroline Luise Wilhelmine) was born on April 15, 1835 at Haus Heyde and baptized on April 29, according to the church book of the Reformed parish Unna. She was confirmed on August 31, 1851 in Arnsberg, where her father Carl was the district president at the time and the family lived there during this time. When Ida's father Carl became the Prussian finance minister in July 1851, the family moved to Berlin . Her apartment was then for seven years the third floor of the Prussian Ministry of Finance near the Neue Wache . The contact with Uelzen and Unna never broke off. In the summer, the family spent longer periods at Haus Heyde.

Together with her sister Luise and a small group of friends, she received private lessons in history and literature from a professor in Berlin . Due to her musical talent, she received piano training; she also learned to play the organ. Like her other siblings, she was brought up very religiously. The revival preacher Gustav Knak from the Pietistic Community of the Awakened had a special influence on them . Early on she was active in social welfare and distributed advertising letters for the “Marthahof”, a newly established refuge for unemployed girls in Berlin, and took part in the poor relief of the Berlin Cathedral parish . Ida would have liked to become a deaconess , but her unsteady health would not allow it.

At the age of 22, Ida fell seriously ill for several months for the first time. An overly strong water regimen because of a protracted stomach ailment had shattered her nerves. The triggering moment, however, was probably that her parents did not want to agree to her engagement to the young officer and son-general Wilhelm von Diest . Since then, her nervous condition was fragile.

Engagement and marriage

On October 8, 1860, Ida got engaged to her cousin Friedrich von Bodelschwingh (1831–1910) at Haus Heyde , who from 1858 worked as a pastor in the Protestant congregation among the Germans in Paris . It mainly consisted of the many German guest workers there at the time . Ida and Friedrich knew each other from childhood; their fathers were brothers and successively Prussian finance ministers. After her father's first term as minister, Ida's family lived at Haus Heyde all year round from 1858. When cousin Friedrich stopped by on a collection trip, the engagement surprisingly took place. Shortly before, Wilhelm von Diest had released it. When he got engaged, Friedrich knew exactly about Ida's unstable health.

At the engagement, Ida gave him all of her gold and silver jewelry. With the proceeds from the sale and a number of other donations, Friedrich was able to purchase a small organ for his parish in Paris . Ida then often helped out as an organist in Paris and also practiced songs with the congregation. According to a friend, she was "a master of the piano and a great friend and connoisseur of church music".

The wedding took place on April 18, 1861. The church wedding took place in the nearby Protestant church in Heeren, the wedding ceremony afterwards at Haus Heyde.

In Paris

At the end of April 1861, Ida moved to the so-called hill church in the suburb of Montmartre where her husband worked in Paris . The church was not yet in place when they moved; the foundation stone was not laid until August. Next to it was the rectory, a small wooden house inhabited by three parties. The apartment was cramped and poorly furnished.

Ida often worked as a writer for her husband. He was very busy dictating most of his extensive correspondence. The paperwork was often exhausting and could go well into the night. Later in Bethel , Friedrich had his own stenographer ; but even then Ida still had to help out sometimes, on vacation anyway.

The first child was born in Paris on February 7, 1863, a son named Ernst, named after Friedrich's father, the former Prussian Minister of State Ernst von Bodelschwingh , who had died in 1854 . Ida's mother came to Paris to give birth.

Eight days after the birth came a heavy Ida puerperal - psychosis to the outbreak. She could no longer attend the baptism in the hill church next door. On the advice of a doctor, she went to Zehlendorf , where she had been before because of her illness - "terminally ill" as her husband later wrote . There her health improved faster than expected, so that by the end of March 1863, about six weeks after the delivery, she was healthy again.

In Dellwig

In May 1864 the family moved from Paris to Dellwig , a good 7 km south of Unna , where Friedrich worked as a pastor until 1872. He had received various job offers in Paris, some of them very tempting, but none of them accepted. When the family stayed at Haus Heyde for a month after Ida's childbed psychosis in the summer of 1863, Friedrich had preached a sermon in Dellwig and was elected second pastor by the community on September 17th of the same year.

It is probably because of this that Friedrich Idas accepted the offer from little Dellwig. He had probably feared that, given her susceptibility to illness, she was not up to the efforts of the ever-growing community in Paris. In addition, Dellwig was only 10 km away from Haus Heyde, Ida's parents' house.

In Dellwig, the family initially lived in the former parish widow's house for six years. As his son Gustav later wrote, "at that time it might have been the most modest parsonage that could be found in the entire county of Mark ". Apparently the family in Dellwig initially had a happy time. Three children were born there: Elisabeth, Friedrich and Karl. Ida supported her husband in his office. As her son Gustav later reported, “Ida accompanied him on Sunday afternoons to the child baptism celebrations , where there was still a lot of bad habit until then. The pastor often went into the houses alone, and her simple, cheerful and yet so resolute word found many a good place. During the week, however, she gathered the women and daughters of the community around some large pots of coffee and a few plates of rusks and sewed with them for the poor and children of their former Paris community ”.

Death of children

Then in 1869, after almost five years in Dellwig, fate struck. Within twelve days, all four children died of whooping cough and contagious pneumonia. Their four graves can still be seen today in the Dellwig cemetery: white marble crosses of different sizes according to their age.

The death of the children affected Ida very much. Son Gustav later reported: “Since that time, the mother's hair began to fall out, and after a year her hand was still shaking while writing. She often stood sobbing by the graves, and one day her husband was seen going to the churchyard with a board and four stakes to make a small bench in the quiet place where the four graves were, so that he could be there at the same time as his mother think about what God wanted to say to them through such suffering. "

In September of the same year, Ida was given another child who was given the name Wilhelm . Wilhelm had a cleft lip and palate that was sewn up for him in the sixth week after his birth and was often ill as a child. In December 1870 a son was stillborn. But later three healthy births followed: Gustav, Frieda and Fritz. Like the deceased children, there were three boys and one girl. All three boys became theologians like their father.

In Bethel

On January 25, 1872, the family moved to ( Bielefeld -) Bethel . Friedrich took over the management of a "sanatorium and nursing home for epileptics" and a deaconess mother house . Both had been founded there a few years earlier. When the Bodelschwinghs arrived, the epilepsy facility was still small: 25 foster children, the house parents and three guards. The establishment of own institutions for epileptics was still completely new at that time and a considerable step forward. Until then, epileptics were mostly housed in asylums .

His best assistant

One of the major building projects that Friedrich and Ida carried out in Bethel was the Zionskirche Bethel with seating for 1,600 people. Ida, next to “Father Bodelschwingh” as the “mother” of Bethel, may have played a significant role in the construction of the church. At the laying of the foundation stone on July 16, 1883, at which the Crown Prince , who later became Emperor Friedrich III. participated, this became clear: After the heir to the throne had executed three hammer blows on the foundation stone and the superintendent and the board members had followed his example, he handed - as is reported - "at last personally the hammer to the pastor von Bodelschwingh so that she could serve as her assistant Man also take part in this peace work ”.

Every afternoon, when Friedrich was at home, and Ida went through the institution together and discussed what had to be done. Ida could definitely disagree with her husband, even if only a few indications are available. Sometimes she saw things more soberly than he did. Her son Gustav praised her for her “delicious immediacy and sparkling humor” and that she “mostly saw the heart of the matter and hit the bull's eye”. She also wanted Friedrich to care more about the sisters in Bethel than about the "Brothers from Landstrasse" and other social projects. In the biography of her work in Bethel, written by her friend Caroline von Zacha, it repeatedly says: "She was our mother" and "She was his best assistant."

Son Gustav reports about her clothes as a pastor of Bethel: “She herself was a model of simplicity. She didn't go along with fashion. Only once during the 22 years of her life at Bethel did she buy a new hat and a new coat. It was a feast for all of us. Since her scalp hair became very sparse with the death of her first four children, she wore a very dressy white frilled hat. "

Sickness and death

As she got older, Ida suffered more and more from her mental illness. Son Gustav said: “Her in and for herself so cheerful disposition could occasionally be overrun by very small things and brought into a mood that covered her whole soul and thus also our house like a fog. Then there was no persuasion; the condition just had to have its time. We children suffered from this sometimes, and the mother herself suffered most of all. Once the state of displeasure was overcome, the sun of happiness shone all the more cheerfully over our house. "

Ida died on December 5, 1894 at the age of 59. The excitement over the painful death of a childhood friend, on whose deathbed she spent three days, had caused her mental illness to break out again. Since her nervous system was visibly broken, she was taken to the Lindenhaus sanatorium in Brake near Lemgo . There her condition quickly deteriorated and became a confusion of thoughts. Her last words were three times calling: "Friedrich", her husband's first name. As he later reported in a letter, "she slumbered very gently and without any agony".

Ida was buried in the old cemetery in Bethel in the grave of the Bethel Bodelschwinghs. The simple black marble crosses look alike, only the inscriptions are different. The graves of Ida and Friedrich are in the front center. Friedrich held the funeral of his wife himself. In his address, he emphasized Ida's special quality of telling the truth everywhere and not flattering it, not even him. He only died in 1910 and thus survived her by 15 years.

Ida, the woman at his side doing the great work, had almost been forgotten. In 2002, the Ida-von-Bodelschwingh-Weg was named after her in a new development in her birthplace Uelzen (Unna) .

See also

• Bodelschwingh (noble family)

literature

• Claudia Puschmann and Kerstin Stockhecke: von Bodelschwingh, Ida . In: Protestant profiles in the Ruhr area - 500 life pictures from 5 centuries . Editors: Michael Basse , Traugott Jähnichen , Harald Schroeter-Wittke . Hartmut Spenner Publishing House, Kamen 2009; P. 246f; ISBN 978-3-89991-092-6 .
• Josef Cornelissen: death sentence stick cough - the fateful year 1869; The family v. Bodelschwingh loses four children in just two weeks . In: Unna district yearbook . Vol. 30, Unna 2009, pp. 18-31, ISBN 978-3-9810961-7-0 .
• Claudia Puschmann, Kerstin Stockhecke: Ida von Bodelschwingh 1835–1894 - A picture of life ; Bielefeld: Publishing House for Regional History, Bethel Publishing House, 2007; ISBN 978-3-89534-693-4 .
• Josef Cornelissen: Ida von Bodelschwingh - an important woman from Unna. A slide presentation put on paper ; Publication series of the city of Unna, Volume 42; Unna 2002 (2005 ² ); ISBN 3-927082-43-0 .
• Josef Cornelissen: House 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 .
• Josef Cornelissen: Heyde House near Unna - A Westphalian aristocratic residence in its eventful fate ; Publication series of the city of Unna, Volume 35; Unna, 1998; ISBN 3-927082-37-6 ; Pp. 164–176 as well as the family tree of those von Bodelschwingh in the envelope pocket.
• Martin Gerhardt (continued by Alfred Adam ): Friedrich von Bodelschwingh. A picture of life from German church history , Volume 1: 1950, Volume 2/1: 1952, Volume 2/2: 1958.
• Gustav von Bodelschwingh: Friedrich v. Bodelschwingh. A picture of life ; Bethel near Bielefeld, 1966 ¹³ .
• Caroline von Zacha: Some messages from the life, suffering and death of Pastor Ida v. Bodelschwingh ; Main archive of the von Bodelschwinghschen Anstalten Bethel, 1895.

Web links

• Claudia Puschmann, Kerstin Stockhecke: Ida von Bodelschwingh, 1835-1894 Accessed on the Frauen.ruhr.geschichte portal on October 21, 2018.
• Biography on www.bethel-historisch.de Accessed on October 23, 2018.
• Dorfchronik Mühlhausen / Uelzen Private Homepage accessed on October 21, 2018.