Jonas de Gélieu

Jonas de Gélieu (born August 21, 1740 in Les Bayards , † October 17, 1827 in Colombier NE ) was a Swiss pastor and beekeeper .

Life

As the son of pastor Jacques Gélieu, after studying at the University of Basel and the Geneva Academy in 1760, he received the right to exercise the reformed pastoral office from the Vénérable Classe ou Compagnie des Pasteurs in Neuchâtel . Between 1760 and 1763 he was a deacon and assistant preacher in parishes in the Val de Travers and between 1762 and 1763 he worked with the pastor Frédéric-Guillaume de Montmollin in Môtiers , who became notorious for his conflict with Jean-Jacques Rousseau . There were encounters with Rousseau.

In 1763 Jonas de Gélieu received the parish of Lignières . He maintained a boarding school for young men there and devoted himself to beekeeping, on which he published several papers in the following years. Jonas de Gélieu is considered one of the pioneers of modern beekeeping. He also undertook further scientific studies, was a member of several "learned societies" and published conservative political writings. On September 28, 1778 he married Isabelle Frêne, the daughter of the pastor Théophile-Rémy Frêne from Tavannes . The couple had eleven children. The later Prussian general Bernhard von Gélieu was his grandson.

Jonas de Gélieu received the parish of Colombier and Auvernier in 1790 . As a preacher in Colombier, he had contact with the enlightenment-minded circles around Isabelle de Charrière , whose political ideas, unlike his predecessor David de Chaillet, he rejected and fought against. In 1793 he accepted his sister Salomé de Gélieu, who had returned from Darmstadt , in the rectory of Colombier and received visits from the Prussian King Friedrich-Wilhelm III after the defeat of Napoleon and the regaining of Neuchatel by the Prussian royal family . together with his son Wilhelm and the Prussian Crown Prince Friedrich-Wilhelm .

When Jonas de Gélieu suffered a stroke in 1821 , he learned to write with his left hand. He died of another stroke six years later.

literature

• Claudia von Gélieu , Christian von Gélieu: The educator of Queen Luise. Salomé de Gélieu. Pustet, Regensburg 2007, ISBN 978-3-7917-2043-2 .
• Carsten Peter Thiede , Eckhard G. Franz: Years with Luise von Mecklenburg-Strelitz. From notes and letters from Salomé von Gélieu (1742–1822) . In: Archive for Hessian History and Archeology. NF 43, 1985, ISSN  0066-636X , pp. 79-160.

Web links

• Marcel S. Jacquat: Gélieu, Jonas de. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .