Ehrenfried von Willich


Ehrenfried von Willich was an evangelical preacher by the Swedish regiment of the queen in Stralsund.

Life

Ehrenfried von Willich came from the theological family Willich from the Margraviate of Brandenburg. He was born in Sagard on the island of Rügen as the son of the priest and half-brother of the country doctor , the first country physician in Swedish Pomerania.
Willich was first educator and partner of Wilhelm Graf von Schwerin-Putzar in Prenzlau. Since the spring of 1803 he was a field preacher in the regiment of the Queen of Stralsund, which at that time belonged to Swedish Pomerania.
In 1803 Willich became engaged with the two-year orphaned, just 15 year-old Henriette von Mühlenfels, daughter of the royal Prussian lieutenant colonel Friedrich Gottlieb von Mühlenfels, Squire on Sissow, and Pauline of Campagne. On 5 September 1804 he married the then 17-year-old. From this marriage came two children: Henriette and Ehrenfried von Willich. Willich was since May 1801 a close friend and correspondent of the theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher, who married in 1809, two years after his death, Willich's now 21-year-old widow Henriette.
Almost two months before the birth of his eponymous son, Willich died during the siege of Stralsund by Napoleonic troops of nerve fever, which at that time was rampant in the city.