Marie-Elisabeth von Humboldt

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Marie-Elisabeth von Humboldt, detail from a painting by Johann Heinrich Schmidt , around 1775

Marie-Elisabeth von Humboldt (born December 8, 1741 in Berlin ; † November 19, 1796 in Tegel ), born in Colomb , widowed von Holwede , was the mother of Wilhelm and Alexander von Humboldt .

Life

origin

The colombs

Marie-Elisabeth von Humboldt came from a family of merchants and craftsmen, some of Huguenot origin. Her grandfather, the Paris merchant Henri Colomb († 1719), first emigrated to Copenhagen after the edict of Nantes was repealed (1685) , where he became a trimmings maker at the royal court . Around 1711 he moved to Neustadt an der Dosse in the Brandenburg-Prussian region and held an office in the directorate of the royal mirror manufacturer. This move was brought about by his father-in-law, the goldsmith Jean-Henri de Moor († 1722) from Wageningen in the province of Gelderland , himself director of the manufactory from 1696 to 1711. Jean-Henri de Moor was the founder of the French colony in Neustadt. His son Jean Henri de Moor (Johann Heinrich de Moor) continued to run the company together with Henri Colomb as a partner.

Marie-Elisabeth's father, Johann Heinrich Colomb (1695–1759), was director of the Neustädter Spiegelmanufaktur from 1733 to 1741. He then entered the Prussian civil service as director of the East Frisian Chamber. He and his family settled in Berlin as a homeowner. His grave is in the vaults of the Parochialkirche in Berlin .

Marie-Elisabeth was a cousin of Amalie von Colomb (1772-1850), the youngest daughter of the Aurich Chamber President Peter von Colomb , sister of the Prussian general Peter von Colomb and from 1795 second wife of the future Field Marshal Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher .

The Durhams

On her mother's side, Marie-Elisabeth came from the Prussian civil servant family of Scottish origin, Durham of Grange. They moved from Scotland to Prussia in 1650. The great-grandfather of Alexander and Wilhelm von Humboldt was Wilhelm Durham (1658–1735), royal Prussian general tax, secret court of appeals and church council as well as elder and head of the parish parish in Berlin. He and his family lived in the house at Jüdenhof 9 in Berlin. His daughter Justine Susanne (1716–1762) was Marie-Elisabeth's mother.

Marriages

Young Alexander , holding a barometer, with his widowed mother

Marie-Elisabeth Colomb married Friedrich Ernst von Holwede (* March 12, 1723, † January 26, 1765), baron, heir and court lord on Tegel , Ringenwalde and Crummecavel in 1760 . This marriage had two children, a daughter who died in childhood, and the son Heinrich Friedrich Ludwig Ferdinand von Holwede (1762-1817), whom the mother later placed in the prestigious Berlin cuirassier regiment "Gens d'armes" as ( Rittmeister ). Friedrich Ernst von Holwede was canon of St. Sebastian Stift in Magdeburg . He died in 1765, leaving his widow the Erbpachtgut Tegel in Berlin and the goods Ringenwalde with the Vorwerk Crummecavel in Neumark (Kreis Soldin , today Poland). With this legacy and the legacy of her parents, which included the library with around 300 book titles and, above all, the house at Jägerstrasse 22 in Berlin, Marie-Elisabeth was a very interesting party. Today the Berlin House is the seat of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences .

On October 19, 1766 Marie-Elisabeth von Holwede married for the second time. At the Lancke estate near Berlin, which belonged to the brother of her first husband, she gave the royal chamberlain and sergeant major (major) of the cavalry a. D. Alexander Georg von Humboldt (1720–1779) said yes. This came from a family of Pomeranian officials and officers who had served various Brandenburg-Prussian princes. Only the father, Johann (Hans) Paul von Humboldt (1684–1740), Prussian captain and lord on Zeblin, “asked for and received the hereditary nobility award in 1738.” Alexander Georg was the royal Prussian major and adjutant of general Prince Ferdinand von Braunschweig - Wolfenbüttel , involved in all three Silesian Wars . In 1761 he retired from the military and was appointed chamberlain by Friedrich II in 1764 . From 1765 he was chamberlain to Elisabeth Christine von Braunschweig , the wife of the heir to the throne Friedrich Wilhelm . In 1769 von Humboldt resigned from the civil service and devoted himself to agriculture on Gut Tegel. He died on January 6, 1779 and was initially buried on the Ringenwalde estate.

Your traditional essence

If the mother of the Humboldt brothers is portrayed as a reserved, brittle and very serious person, then the Humboldt biographers agree on the lively, cheerful and life-affirming nature of the father. This is how Mrs von Briest, mother of the writer Madame de la Motte-Fouqués , said about Marie-Elisabeth von Humboldt in a letter to her sister in 1785:

“Everything is as it was with the Humboldts. Nothing changes in the house, neither the people nor the manner. I will always miss him there (meaning Alexander Georg von Humboldt) . His easy, lively conversation made a charming contrast to the quiet calm and measuredness of his wife. This, I assure you, looks today as it looked yesterday and will look like tomorrow. The headdress as it was ten years ago and longer, always smooth, firm, modest! The pale, fine face, on which no trace of any affect is ever visible, the gentle voice, the cold, straight greeting and the unshakable loyalty in all its connections! She always tolerates her brother-in-law (probably meaning Victor Ludwig Baron von Holwede (d. 1793), who was married to Marie-Elisabeth's sister, Wilhelmine Anne Susanne (1743–1784)) , his daughter, her old aunt around her; the old, snoring dog Belcastel is always lying on the sofa; their equanimity suffers neither from contradiction nor from domestic disturbances. You can swear by how you leave them today, so after year and day you will find the family inside and out again. "

Marie-Elisabeth made an impression in society with her cleverness and character, so that Caroline von Dacheroeden from Erfurt wrote to her fiancé Wilhelm von Humboldt in Berlin:

“Your mother has a great reputation here. General Knorr spoke to General von Lengefeld in Frankfurt about my marriage. She really highlighted Mama, her mind, her character, in a word everything. The general spoke to me about it and said: 'I hear infinitely good things from your future wife's mother-in-law. It should be a worthy, excellent, great woman. '"

Education of the Humboldt Brothers

One of the greatest merits of Marie-Elisabeth von Humboldt was the consistent planning and implementation of the training of her sons to "spiritual and moral perfection"; "Instead of motherly warmth, she gave them the best upbringing." Alexander wrote about it:

“My science education was very careful. My father and especially my mother (because the former died when I was nine years old) made every sacrifice to keep us from the most famous men […] at home, without attending school, in the summer in the country, in the winter in the city to be taught, always in great seclusion. "

The caretaker Gottlob Johann Christian Kunth (1757–1829), "who was responsible for teaching for many years, treated [the brothers] with a peculiar mixture of displeasure and disappointment, while at the same time nurturing a feeling of dependency in them." It was particularly difficult for Alexander because, although he was two years younger, he had to learn the same things as his precocious brother. ”The (still incomplete) list of teachers who were hired to teach his sons is impressive:

  • Ernst Ludwig Heim (1747–1834) was the family doctor with an interest in the botany of mosses, and a friend of the English naturalist Sir Joseph Banks . He taught the brothers the basics of botany.
  • Johann Jakob Engel (1741–1802): teacher at the Joachimsthalschen Gymnasium and academician, moralist and rationalist, writer and philosopher. He taught the brothers philosophy and made them familiar with Mendelssohn's philosophy.
  • Josias Friedrich Christian Löffler (1752–1817), professor of theology and philosophy in Frankfurt an der Oder and later senior consistorial councilor and general superintendent of the Duchy of Gotha, editor of the “Magazin für Prediger”. Alexander says: " Löffler, the author of a free-thinking book about the New Platonism of the Church Fathers, laid the groundwork for his [Wilhelm] deep Greek studies ".
  • Ernst Gottfried Fischer (1754–1831), teacher of mathematics at the Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster and academician; Alexander characterized him as: "a man who, which is quite unknown, besides mathematics, knew a lot of Greek".
  • The privy councilor Christian Konrad Wilhelm von Dohm (1751-1820) taught the Humboldts from autumn 1785 to June 1786 economics (political-statistical lectures) with a geographical focus. He became known for his writing on the emancipation of the Jews "On the bourgeois improvement of the Jews" (1781). He especially shaped Wilhelm, who kept in touch with him for a long time.
  • Chamber judge Ernst Ferdinand Klein (1744-1810) taught the Humboldt natural and constitutional law. He was one of the editors of the Prussian General Land Law .
  • The Jewish doctor and philosopher Marcus Herz (1747–1803) (from 1782 head of the Jewish Hospital in Berlin) gave lectures on medicine, philosophy and experimental physics to a select audience from 1776, in which the Humboldt brothers participated from 1784/85. They were also in the literary circle around Henriette Herz (1764–1847), where they a. a. learned to dance.
  • David Friedländer (1750-1834) was a German manufacturer and author who campaigned for the emancipation of the Jews in Berlin. He had a close friendship with the brothers since their earliest youth.
  • Claude Étienne Le Bauld de Nans (1735–1792), actor, writer and editor of the Gazette littéraire de Berlin , father of Claudius Franz Le Bauld de Nans , Freemason in the Berlin grand lodge "Royale York de l'Amitié" , taught the Humboldt- Brothers of modern languages.
  • Daniel Nikolaus Chodowiecki (1726–1801), the most popular Polish-German engraver, graphic artist and illustrator of the 18th century, taught Alexander to draw and engrave.
  • Johann Friedrich Zöllner (1753–1804), member of the Natural Research Society and the Academy of Sciences in Berlin, provost at Berlin's Nicolaikirche and consistorial councilor, gave lectures on (applied) technology. After the months of study in Frankfurt, he and Alexander visited manufacturing companies in the Berlin area and in Brandenburg on several trips, thus laying the foundation for Alexander's remarkable knowledge of machines.
  • Johann Friedrich Reitemeier (1755–1839), in addition to important philological, legal (in the tradition of natural law) and political science writings, he wrote what was then a fundamental study on the history of mining.

The German-Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn (1729–1786) - pioneer of the Jewish Enlightenment ( Haskala ) - influenced the brothers, especially Wilhelm, through his writings. Mendelssohn's motto also became Wilhelm's motto in life: The destiny of man consists in the "exercise, development and training of all human powers and abilities".

Falkenberg as the burial place of the Humboldt parents

Marie-Elisabeth von Humboldt bought the Falkenberg estate near Berlin (today a part of the Berlin district of Lichtenberg ) from Lieutenant Colonel von Lochau in 1791 . Local historians mistakenly assumed that she also settled there as a landlady. There is no evidence for this, but from the letters of Wilhelm von Humboldt it emerges that due to her illness from 1794–1795, the mother hardly moved from Schloss Tegel or Berlin, where she spent the winter months.

Memorial plaque for the destroyed Falkenberg village church

The reason for Marie-Elisabeth's choice of Falkenberg as the burial place for herself and her deceased spouse is unknown. In order to make the burial place worthy, the Berlin builder Paul Ludwig Simon carried out extensive alterations to the Falkenberg field stone church . The wooden church tower was replaced by a 47 foot high tower made of brick, in an Egyptian style. The builder transformed the old cross vault of the church longhouse into a flat ceiling. A relief, probably from the Schadow School, was placed above the entrance door in the church tower, which is flanked by Doric columns . It showed an ancient youth standing behind a seated figure and pushing a dying torch on the ground. The burial place was created on the ground floor of the tower. After she died on November 19, 1796 of complications from a long history of breast cancer , Marie-Elisabeth von Humboldt was laid to rest on December 3, 1796 next to her spouse and a daughter from her first marriage who died early. The coffin of Alexander Georg von Humboldt was previously in the Ringenwald church. Friedrich Ernst von Holwede's coffin was transferred from a burial place that is now unknown. Around 1890, with the consent of the von Humboldt family, the coffins were transferred to the old vaults of the previous patron saints below the chancel on the east side of the church. This gave the community easier access to the church through the tower.

The fate of the Humboldt Crypt from 1945

The memorial wall on the vault with today's memorial plaque

On the morning of April 21, 1945, the day the Red Army marched into Falkenberg, an SS unit blew up the Protestant churches in Wartenberg, Malchow and Falkenberg. At the beginning of the 1950s, the neglected Humboldt Crypt was walled up before restoration work began in 1969. The external reason for the restoration was not, as the date suggests, the 200th birthday of Alexander von Humboldt, but the 20th anniversary of the GDR , which was celebrated in the same year . For this anniversary a memorial wall with a stone grave slab was built; it bore the inscription: "Crypt vaults of the von Humboldt family ..." On November 18, 1998, a new memorial plaque was attached, donated by Edith Minert († October 13, 1998), the long-time chairman of the Tegel local history working group.

Legacy Marie-Elisabeth von Humboldt for Falkenberg

In her will of May 28, 1796, Marie-Elisabeth von Humboldt donated the “ Legacy for the preservation and care of the church tower and the Humboldt burial site in Falkenberg” through a capital investment of 500 thalers . Thanks to this foundation , her memory was preserved in Falkenberg for more than a century and a half. The legate was under the direct control of the royal government in Potsdam. By government decree of February 17, 1891, the Royal Consistory of the Province of Brandenburg took over the supervision of the foundation. The administration of the legacy has since been transferred from the pastor to the parish council in Falkenberg. The property manager and confidante of Marie-Elisabeth, Gottlob Johann Christian Kunth , also donated 100 thalers from his fortune in the spirit of Mrs. von Humboldt, which is why the Falkenberg church records contain the name "Humboldt-Kunthsches Legat". The Falkenberg parish was able to benefit from the foundation for around 130 years. In addition to the maintenance of the church tower, part of the interest on the foundation capital was to be spent on precisely defined charitable purposes. The Falkenberg village school teacher received a modest annual salary allowance, and hard-working students received small school bonuses. “ For eternity  […]”, as Marie-Elisabeth von Humboldt would have liked to see, the foundation did not last. In the Great Depression in 1929 their capital was melting at a value of less than 200 Reichsmarks together and was also no longer be used as an imperial detachment bond debt.

The Heritage

Memorial plaque , Dorfstrasse 37, in Berlin-Falkenberg

A few days after Marie-Elisabeth's death on November 19, 1796, the news reached her sons. Wilhelm von Humboldt was in Jena with Friedrich Schiller , a meeting that he had postponed several times because of his mother's illness. In the spring of 1796, Alexander von Humboldt met his brother at his maternal hospital bed. It was the last time he saw his mother. At the time of her death, after a steep career, he was Oberbergrat in the Franconian principalities of Ansbach and Bayreuth, which belong to Prussia. He learned of their mother's death on November 24, 1796. Wilhelm and Alexander were unable to attend their funeral on December 3, 1796 in Falkenberg. On the other hand, this is to be assumed for her son from his first marriage, Rittmeister Ferdinand von Holwede, because he was also the one who had placed an obituary notice for his mother in the “Vossische Zeitung” on November 22, 1796. The death of his mother was a decisive event for Alexander in particular, as the financial independence he had gained enabled him to realize his long-cherished travel and research plans.

The inheritance was divided up in Dresden in June 1797 under the supervision of the mother's loyal confidante, friend and former tutor of the brothers, Christian Kunth. Gut and Schloss Tegel essentially fell to Wilhelm, while Gut Falkenberg was inherited by half-brother Ferdinand von Holwede. Alexander received mortgage payments from both goods as well as a remaining mortgage from Ringenwalde, which had already been sold. With the inherited cash of around 38,000 thalers, he was able to finance a large part of the trip to America and later the more than 30 volumes of the travel book. In her will, Marie-Elisabeth von Humboldt wrote: "Since I wish to keep the Falkenberg estate with my family for a long time, I will bequeath it to my eldest son Ferdinand von Holwede". However, her wish to keep the property in family ownership for a longer period of time did not come true. In 1804 Ferdinand von Holwede sold the property to a member of the von Alvensleben family .

Street 2 in Marie-Elisabeth-von-Humboldt-Strasse was named in honor of Marie-Elisabeth on April 10, 2000 in Berlin-Falkenberg .

Web links

Commons : Marie-Elisabeth von Humboldt  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

literature

  • Bärbel Ruben: Marie Elisabeth von Humboldt (1741–1796). Searching for traces in Falkenberg . (PDF; 195 kB) With contributions by Brunhild Dathe, Ingo Schwarz and Christian Suckow. Accompanying material for the special exhibition of the same name at the Hohenschönhausen Local History Museum. November 19, 1993 to March 31, 1994 (1993), published in: Berlin Manuscripts for Alexander von Humboldt Research , No. 7
  • Alexander von Humboldt. A scientific biography. Edit and ed. by Karl Bruhns. Volume 1-3. Otto Zeller, Osnabrück 1969 (reprint of the 1872 edition).
  • Heinrich Freiherr v. Massenbach: Pedigree of famous Germans: Wilhelm and Alexander von Humboldt. 5th episode, 11th delivery, Leipzig 1942.
  • Ev. Alt-Tegel Church 1912–1987. Compiled by Pastor Ohme. Evangelical Church, Alt-Tegel 1987.
  • Paul Ortwin Rave: Wilhelm von Humboldt and the Tegel Castle. Berlin 1979.
  • Eduard Muret: History of the French colony in Brandenburg Prussia. Berlin 1885.
  • Robert Schmidt: Brandenburg glasses. Berlin 1914.
  • Wilhelm von Humboldt. Letters to Friedrich August Wolf . de Gruyter, Berlin and New York 1990.
  • Hans Jürgen Rach: The villages in Berlin. A handbook of the former rural communities in the urban area of ​​Berlin. Berlin 1988.
  • Königl [ich-] privileged Berlinische Zeitung. Of matters of state and scholarship. 140th piece, Tuesday, November 22nd, 1796 .
  • Ilse Jahn , Fritz G. Lange (ed.): The youth letters of Alexander von Humboldt 1787–1799. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin (GDR) 1973 (contributions to Alexander von Humboldt research 2).
  • Herbert Scurla: Wilhelm von Humboldt. Becoming and working. 3rd edition, Verlag der Nation, Berlin 1970.
  • Johannes Eichhorn: The economic living conditions of Alexander von Humboldt. In: Alexander von Humboldt 1769–1859. Commemorative script for the 100th anniversary of his death . Akademie-Verlag, Berlin (GDR) 1959, pp. 181–215.
  • Heinrich Berghaus : Land book of the Mark Brandenburg and the Markgrafenthums Nieder-Lausitz in the middle of the 19th century or geographical-statistical description of the province of Brandenburg. Volume 1-3. Brandenburg 1853-1856.
  • Alste Oncken: Friedrich Gilly 1771-1800. Research on German art history ; ed. v. German Association for Art Science. Volume V, Berlin 1935.
  • Theodor Fontane : Walks through the Mark Brandenburg .
    Volume 3 ( Havelland ) “Spandau and the surrounding area” - Tegel
    Volume 4 ( Spreeland ) “Right of the Spree” - Falkenberg
  • Peter Honigmann: The influence of Moses Mendelssohn on the education of the Humboldt brothers. In: Mendelssohn Studies, Vol. 7. Berlin 1990. pp. 39-76
  • Andrea Wulf: Alexander von Humboldt and the invention of nature . C. Bertelsmann Verlag, Munich, 2016

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Marie-Elisabeth-von-Humboldt-Strasse. In: Street name lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein (near  Kaupert )
  2. ^ Jean Henri de Moor (26) and NN Taher (27). von-humboldt.de [1]
  3. ^ Alfred Dove:  Humboldt, Wilhelm von . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 13, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1881, p. 338.
  4. ^ Walter Deeters: Peter von Colomb. (No longer available online.) Formerly in the original ; Retrieved November 23, 2009 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.organeum-orgelakademie.de  
  5. ↑ See: The German Herald IX. 1878, p. 16
  6. ↑ Text of the coffin table by Friedrich Ernst von Holwede: Ano 1756 his dimission, and married ano 1760 with the // last left Mrs. widow // Mrs. MARJA ELJSABETH // drilled Colomb. with which he fathered two children a son and a daughter. Read in: Hans-Joachim Beeskow : Guide through the Evangelical Church in Berlin-Malchow, Falkenberg and Wartenberg. Published by the Parish Council of the Protestant Church in Berlin-Malchow, Dorfstrasse 38, 13051 Berlin. 1st edition, Lübben 2004, ISBN 3-929600-29-3 .
  7. ↑ a b c d e Alexander von Humboldt Chronology ( Memento from January 18, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
  8. ^ The documents that August Wietholz in his history of the village and Tegel Castle. Berlin 1922 (Reprint 1998; ISBN 3-927611-07-7 ) tell the problems of this inheritance and how Marie-Elisabeth mastered this difficulty: Friedrich Ernst von Holwede had bought the estate in 1764 from his brother Victor Ludwig Heinrich. The Tegel estate had previously passed through different hands with long-term lease contracts in the 18th century. One problem was that the respective tenant was obliged to create “ a mulberry tree plantation there”. In 1752 100,000 (!) Trees should be planted, in 1753 there should be "6000 pieces of 6-7 year old trees ... at your own expense". Marie-Elisabeth struggled (ultimately successfully) all of her life to get rid of this obligation. In 1787 she succeeded in "reducing from 6000 to 2000 pieces" and in 1789 to 1000 pieces. It was not until 1803 that Friedrich Wilhelm III. the obligation “against payment of a redemption sum of 500 Thalern cour [ant]”. The fact that setting up the plantations and raising silkworms was a major economic burden for the leasehold owners was due not only to the unfavorable climatic conditions but also to the fact that the landowners and their servants were overwhelmed with the additional tasks that required a lot of specialist knowledge and time. (See. In Prussia chronicle the concept of silk . Preussen-chronik.de, accessed 7 December 2009 . )
  9. ↑ Kauperts. Street guide through Berlin: Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences. (No longer available online.) Berlin.kauperts.de, formerly in the original ; Retrieved December 7, 2009 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / berlin.kauperts.de  
  10. ↑ See: Alexander von Humboldt. A scientific biography. Edit and ed. by Karl Bruhns. Volume 1, Osnabrück, Otto Zeller Verlag 1969, p. 285
    Anna von Sydow: Wilhelm and Caroline von Humboldt in their letters . First volume: letters from the bridal period . 6th edition, Berlin 1910, p. 54
  11. ↑ From Rudolf Borch: Alexander von Humboldt. His life in self-testimonies, letters and reports. Berlin 1948, p. 12
  12. ↑ Kunth about Marie-Elisabeth von Humboldt in Hanno Beck: Alexander von Humboldt , Franz Steiner Verlag, Wiesbaden 1959–1961
  13. ^ Quote from Andrea Wulf, p. 33.
  14. ^ Quote from Andrea Wulf, p. 33.
  15. ^ Quote from Andrea Wulf, p. 34.
  16. ↑ Peter Honigmann: The Influence ... , p. 76.
  17. ^ Rudolf Schwarze:  Löffler, Josias Friedrich Christian . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 19, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1884, p. 106 f.
  18. ^ Moritz Cantor:  Fischer, Ernst Gottfried . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 7, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1877, p. 62 f. and
    Klemm, Friedrich: Fischer, Ernst Gottfried. In: Neue Deutsche Biographie 5. 1961, p. 182 f. , accessed on January 25, 2012 (online version).
  19. ^ Thomson, Ann: Le Bauld de Nans, Claude Etienne. In: Dictionnaire des journalistes (1600–1789): Claude Etienne Le Bauld de Nans. Article numéro 471. Retrieved January 25, 2012 (online version).
  20. ^ Ernst Landsberg:  Reitemeier, Johann Friedrich . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 28, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1889, pp. 154-159.
  21. ↑ Peter Honigmann (Peter Honigmann: The Influence of Moses Mendelssohn on the Education of the Humboldt Brothers. Esp. Pp. 75–76) shows that Mendelssohn's influence on the education of the brothers was indirect. They neither attended Mendelssohn's lectures nor did they meet him at reading and learned societies, mainly because they were too young. The first edition of the morning hours appeared in 1785 when Wilhelm was 16 years old. So it is not unlikely that the tutor Gottlob Johann Christian Kunth or Johann Jakob Engel Wilhelm, who read a lot, got the book. On the basis of the letters from the brothers' youth it can be seen that they were familiar with Mendelssohn's main works Morning Hours and Phaedon and played a role in discussions with friends. Cf. Peter Honigmann: The Influence ... , p. 76 and z. B. Ilse Jahn, Fritz G. Lange (eds.): The youth letters of Alexander von Humboldt 1787–1799 (= contributions to Alexander von Humboldt research, 2). Akademie-Verlag, Berlin (GDR) 1973. In particular. the letters to the friend WG Wegener
    The closest friends of Mendelssohn include Marcus Herz , Johann Jakob Engel , Ernst Ferdinand Klein and Christian Konrad Wilhelm von Dohm .
  22. ↑ See: Alste Oncken: Friedrich Gilly 1771–1800. Research on German art history; ed. v. German Association for Art Science. Volume V, Berlin 1935, p. 104
  23. ↑ Ilse Jahn, Fritz G. Lange (ed.): The youth letters of Alexander von Humboldt 1787–1799. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin (GDR) 1973 (contributions to Alexander von Humboldt research. 2). Bf 352
  24. ↑ See: Archive of the Evangelical Parish Office Malchow: Church book Falkenberg, 1796.
  25. ↑ Cf.: Archives of the Evangelical Parish Office Malchow: Acta regarding mild foundations and associations in Falkenberg, namely I. von Humboldt's legacy for the preservation of the church tower 1882–1915, (46-4) 18, p. 57
  26. ↑ Objects related to Marie-Elisabeth von Humboldt have survived, despite the demolition, the weather vane and of the original three coffin plates, those from Alexander Georg von Humboldt and Friedrich Ernst von Holwede. There is only one photo of Marie-Elisabeth's coffin table. The texts of the coffin tables can be read in: Hans-Joachim Beeskow: Guide through the Evangelical Church in Berlin-Malchow, Falkenberg and Wartenberg. Published by the Parish Council of the Protestant Church in Berlin-Malchow, Dorfstrasse 38, 13051 Berlin. 1st edition, Lübben 2004, ISBN 3-929600-29-3 . The coffin tablets hang today in the foyer of the Evangelical Church Berlin-Wartenberg, Falkenberger Chaussee 93, 13059 Berlin. Evangelical Church Berlin-Wartenberg: Church Berlin-Wartenberg: About the Church. kirche-berlin-wartenberg.de, accessed on December 8, 2009 (photo of the church foyer and the coffin boards and the weather vane displayed there).
  27. ↑ See: Archive of the Evangelical Parish Office Malchow: Renewal of the Humboldt crypt in the church in Falkenberg (5922).
  28. ↑ Archive of the Evangelical Parish Office Malchow: Acta concerning mild foundations and associations in Falkenberg, namely I. von Humboldt's legacy for the maintenance of the church tower 1882–1915 . (46-4), sheet 106 ff.
  29. ↑ See ibid., Sheet 110
  30. ↑ Archive of the Evangelical Parish Office Malchow: Renewal of the Humboldt crypt in the church in Falkenberg (5922), p. 2.
  31. ^ Heinrich Berghaus : Land book of the Mark Brandenburg and the Margraviate of Nieder-Lausitz in the middle of the 19th century or a geographical-statistical description of the province of Brandenburg. Volume 1-3. Brandenburg 1853-1856. Volume 3, p. 339
personal data
SURNAME Humboldt, Marie-Elisabeth von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Colomb, Marie-Elisabeth (maiden name); Holwede, Marie-Elisabeth von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Mother of Alexander von Humboldt and Wilhelm von Humboldt
DATE OF BIRTH December 8, 1741
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH November 19, 1796
Place of death Berlin Tegel