Wilhelm Martin Leberecht de Wette - Life and Education

Life and Education

He was born at Ulla, near Weimar, where his father was pastor. He was sent to the gymnasium at Weimar, then at the height of its literary fame. Here he was much influenced by Johann Gottfried von Herder, who frequently examined at the school. In 1799 he entered on his theological studies at Jena, his principal teachers being J. J. Griesbach and H. E. G. Paulus; from the latter he derived his tendency to free critical inquiry. In addition, by the time he submitted his dissertation in 1804 (September), he was in regular contact at Jena with Jakob Friedrich Fries and Karl David Ilgen, who perhaps led him to his contact with Johann Severin Vater, a scholar whose work he both admired and, in some respects, duplicated independently. Both in methods and in results, however, he occupied an almost solitary position among German theologians.

Having taken his doctor's degree, he became Privatdozent at Jena; in 1807 professor of theology at Heidelberg, where he came under the influence of J. F. Fries (1773-1843), whose hiring he helped arrange (as well as that of Paulus); and in 1810 was transferred to a similar chair in the newly founded Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin, where he became friendly with Friedrich Schleiermacher. He was, however, dismissed from Berlin in 1819 on account of his having written a letter of consolation to the mother of Karl Ludwig Sand, the murderer of Kotzebue. A petition in his favour presented by the senate of the university was unsuccessful, and a decree was issued not only depriving him of the chair, but banishing him from the Prussian kingdom.

He retired to Weimar, where he occupied his leisure in the preparation of his edition of Luther, and in writing the romance Theodor oder die Weihe des Zweiflers (1822), in which he describes the education of an evangelical pastor. During this period he began preaching, at which he proved to be very popular. But in 1822 he accepted the chair of theology in the University of Basel, which had been reorganized four years before. Though his appointment had been strongly opposed by the orthodox party, De Wette soon won for himself great influence both in the university and among the people generally. He was admitted a citizen, and became rector of the university, which owed to him much of its recovered strength, particularly in the theological faculty.