Louis von Wildenbruch

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Louis von Wildenbruch after a painting by Franz Krüger , 1832

Anton Albert Heinrich Louis von Wildenbruch (born March 28, 1803 in Berlin ; † November 29, 1874 there ) was a Prussian lieutenant general and diplomat . Due to his geographical field studies, he is considered a pioneer of Prussian research on Palestine .

Life

origin

Louis was the illegitimate son of Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia from a relationship with the merchant's daughter Henriette Fromme. He was, like his sister Blanka, on March 3, 1810 by King Friedrich Wilhelm III. raised to the Prussian nobility . Wildenbruch grew up as the foster son of his aunt Luise of Prussia and her husband Prince Anton Radziwiłł .

Career

After a short time as a cadet in Berlin, he was transferred to the Guard Cuirassier Regiment of the Prussian Army on July 28, 1821 as a Second Lieutenant . Wildenbruch belonged to him until May 1842, from 1840 as Rittmeister and squadron chief .

In 1829 he entered the diplomatic service of Prussia and was appointed consul general in Syria , based in Beirut . In 1830 he started a journey alone on horseback through Syria and Asia Minor . In 1836 he returned to his regiment in Berlin. In August 1842 he returned to Beirut in the same capacity. On his numerous diplomatic mission trips to European envoys and Arab tribal princes, he conducted scientific field studies and sent the results as geographical and climatic reports to the Berlin Geographical Society and the Royal Geographical Society .

In 1848 Wildenbruch , who had been promoted to major three years earlier, returned to Berlin with his family. On behalf of the Prussian king, he was sent to Denmark as a diplomatic negotiator to negotiate the non-annexation of the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein . The Prussian-Danish War ended his mission.

At the beginning of 1850 he was appointed the Prussian legation bearer in Bern , only to return to the Ottoman Empire as a diplomat in August , whose language he was perfectly fluent in. At first he held the Prussian legation post in Athens , before moving to the High Porte in Constantinople in February 1852 as an envoy with the rank of authorized minister . There lived with his family in a country house in Arnavutköy on the banks of the Bosphorus .

On July 13, 1854, Wildenbruch received the military rank of colonel . On June 14, 1856 he took his leave as a major general with a pension . After the death of his first wife, he finally returned to Berlin. In 1860 he traveled again on a semi-official mission to Turin on behalf of the Prussian king .

Due to his diplomatic merits, Wildenbruch was given the character of Lieutenant General on December 24, 1872 after the establishment of the German Empire by Wilhelm I.

After his death he was transferred to Klein-Oels and buried there on December 2, 1874 in the castle grounds of Count Yorck von Wartenburg .

Scientific activity

From the beginning, Wildenbruch used his stays in Asia Minor to research the hitherto largely unknown area. He first sent his reports on geographic, topographical, climatic, historical, folklore and art-historical facts to the Society for Geography in Berlin in 1844, namely to his former teacher at the Berlin Cadet Institute , Carl Ritter , who published them regularly in the monthly reports of the Society for Geography and Wildenbruch's research results were also incorporated into his multi-volume standard work on general and comparative geography.

His field work was characterized by meticulous, precise and regularly carried out measurements, the collection of data and their concentration as well as analyzes and reports on it . His barometric measurements were particularly accurate, as they were compared with the parallel measurements of a second barometer aligned at the level of the Mediterranean Sea .

From 1846 he expanded his scientific activity. He collected observations from other people in the area of ​​Asia Minor and supplemented them with his own observations, for example Wilhelm Mahlmann's climatological research in different areas of Lebanon or the map of the then hardly explored Ledja region to the south-east created by the French doctor Gaillardot and supplemented with his own hypsometric measurements of Damascus , which Gaillardot had drawn when he accompanied Ibrahim Pasha's troops during a campaign against the Druze .

In the same year and the following, Wildenbruch published two articles on elevation profiles in Palestine that could be created thanks to his measurements. He discovered a sharp depression of the Jordan south of the so-called Jacob's Bridge, which he described as a continuous waterfall .

Through his contact with August Petermann , who lives in London , he was able to publish his research results on the course of the Jordan along with a description of the region and the settlements along the river in the Journal of the Geographical Society of London.

Wildenbruch's most important publication is his essay on the canal project between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, which was published in 1849 in the monthly reports of the Gesellschaft für Erdkunde Berlin. In it he provides an overview of the history of ideas of the canal project, in which he did not exclude political, geopolitical and economic difficulties and the problem of their realization.

In 1860 Wildenbruch published his last article on Lebanon under the pseudonym El Hadji as a continuation of a daily newspaper. In it, he tried to explain the background to the bloody unrest in this region to the German reader and presented in detail the history of the country and the peoples living there as well as the entanglement of the great powers in the territorial conflicts.

family

Wildenbruch married on August 9, 1837 Castle Kochberg with Ernestine von Langen , whom he had met his foster parents in the house. She was the daughter of the Prussian major general Karl Ferdinand von Langen . The following children were born from the marriage:

  • Luise Rahel (born April 28, 1838 in Berlin, † December 20, 1918 in Klein Oels ) ∞ Count Paul Yorck von Wartenburg
  • Margarete (born June 2, 1839 in Berlin; † July 1, 1839 there)
  • Berta (born July 5, 1841 in Berlin, † July 29, 1843 in Schumlan, Syria)
  • Heinrich Emin (born October 21, 1842 in Beirut, † March 14, 1893 in Berlin), Prussian colonel à la suite of the General Staff
  • Ernst Adam (born February 3, 1845 in Beirut, † January 15, 1909 in Berlin), writer and diplomat
  • Ludwig (born April 8, 1846 in Beirut, † June 26, 1930 in Berlin), Prussian lieutenant general

After the death of his first wife, he married Flora, divorced Cabrun, née Nicolovius (born May 28, 1811 in Berlin; † May 21, 1879 ibid) on April 26, 1860 in Berlin, daughter of Georg Heinrich Ludwig Nicolovius and his wife , Anna Maria Luise Schlosser, a niece of Goethe .

Memberships

  • Knight of Honor of the Order of St. John
  • Society for Geography Berlin

Orders and decorations

Publications (selection)

  • Carte approximatire du Ledja et des Contrées environnantes, dessée pendant la Campagne (1838) d'Ibrahim Pacha contre les Druses par C. Gaillardot, Dr. medic. Hand drawings and accompanying letter dated: Beirut, August 16, 1845. In: Monthly reports on the negotiations of the Society for Geography Berlin in 1846. III. Vol. NF, Simon Schropp and Comp. Berlin 1846.
  • About the difficulties which might oppose the construction of a canal connection between the Mittelland and the Red Seas. In: Monthly reports on the negotiations of the Society for Geography Berlin in the years 1848–1849. VI. Vol. NF, Simon Schropp and Comp. Berlin 1850.
  • Notes on the Physical Geography of Palestine. Extracted from the letters of Colonel von Wildenbruch, late Prussian Consul-General in Syria. In: Journal of the Royal Geographic Society of London. , Vol. XX, p. 230, London 1851.
  • A look at Lebanon. In: Neue Preußische Zeitung (1860), 1st part: edition July 20, 1860; printed: Verlag F. Heinicke, Berlin 1860.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Henriette Fromme (born February 12, 1783 in Berlin; † 1828 in Königsberg ), daughter of August Anton Fromme (born June 6, 1734 in Magdeburg ; † August 23, 1796 in Berlin; son of the Magdeburg cathedral chapter treasurer Wilhelm Conrad Fromme and his wife Marie Elisabeth Steinacker), citizen, hat manufacturer and house owner of Berlin and his wife Marie Charlotte Fetting (born June 21, 1747 in Berlin; † October 3, 1825 in Berlin), daughter of the merchant Christian Friedrich Fetting and Marie, born. Bouillon. Henriette Fromme married the war council and stage director August Ferdinand Alberts (1767-1829) after the prince's death.
  2. ↑ Blanche von Wildenbruch (born April 23, 1805 in Berlin; † April 20, 1887 in Breslau ) married Friedrich von Röder (1798-1858), Herr auf Rothsürben , son of the Prussian general Friedrich Erhard von Röder , on October 19, 1826 . Before her marriage she was a well-known figure in Berlin society and frequented the salons of her friends Rahel Varnhagen and Bettina von Arnim .
  3. ↑ Named after the Hohenzollern Castle and Hofkammergut Wildenbruch in Pomerania .
  4. ↑ See: Georg Friedrich Hermann Müller (Berb.): Register of names and subject index to Carl Ritter's Geography of Asia. In: Carl Ritter: Geography in relation to nature and human history or general comparative geography, as a secure basis for studying and teaching physical and historical sciences. G. Reimer, Berlin 1849.
  5. ↑ a b Haim Goren: Go and explore the land. German Palestine Studies in the 19th Century. Wallstein Verlag Göttingen 2003. ISBN 3-89244-673-3 , p. 181
  6. ↑ These are elevation profiles of the Jaffa region , Jerusalem to the Dead Sea and from Jerusalem via Nablus , Mount Tabor to the Sea of ​​Galilee .
  7. ↑ a b Haim Goren: Go and explore the land. German Palestine Studies in the 19th Century. Wallstein Verlag Göttingen 2003. ISBN 3-89244-673-3 , p. 183 f.
predecessor Office successor
Joseph Maria Anton Brassier de Saint-Simon-Vallade Prussian envoy in Athens
1850–1852 		Hermann von Thile
personal data
SURNAME Wildenbruch, Louis von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wildenbruch, Anton Albert Heinrich Ludwig von (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Prussian lieutenant general and envoy, explorer of Palestine
DATE OF BIRTH March 28, 1803
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH November 29, 1874
Place of death Berlin