Christian Friedrich Gottlieb Wilke

Since he was to study evangelical theology according to his father's wishes, he attended the Rittercollegium [de] (Domgymnasium) in Brandenburg from the age of 13.

After Prussia's defeat by France in 1806, his position was cancelled and he had to live – now in Charlottenburg – solely on his income as a private teacher.

From 1 December 1809, he was music teacher at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Gymnasium in Neuruppin as well as cantor and organist at both churches in the town, the Pfarrkirche St. Marien and the Klosterkirche St. Trinitatis.

In Neuruppin, Wilke initiated the founding of a masonic lodge in 1811, which was then officially opened in 1812 under the name Ferdinand zum Rothen Adler.

[9] However, due to the preference given to the self-taught baker Turley, who had become an organ builder, and the neglect of regularly trained organ builders (such as Friedrich Emanuel Marx and Gottlieb Heise), complaints against Wilke became increasingly loud, eventually led by Carl Friedrich Zelter and August Wilhelm Bach, the directors of the Royal Music Institute of Berlin, founded in 1822.

As a result, in 1825 the Prussian Minister of Culture Karl vom Stein zum Altenstein forbade the government in Potsdam from continuing to entrust Wilke with revisions and appointed Bach as Commissarius for Organ Affairs in the Kgl.

[10] Wilke now had to seek clients for organ revisions among the municipal magistrates in more remote regions of Prussia (Altmark and Silesia) as well as in neighbouring countries (Mecklenburg and Anhalt).

Also present were the district administrator of the Ruppinscher Kreis [de] Friedrich Graf von Zieten (1765–1854), the composer Friedrich Johann von Drieberg [de] (1780–1856) and some of Wilke's former pupils, including the organist and composer David Hermann Engel (1816–1877), to whom he had given his first organ lessons.

He also wrote the organ articles for Gustav Schilling's Encyclopädie der gesammten musikalischen Wissenschaften oder Universal-Lexicon der Tonkunst,[27] on which, for example, the Dresden cross organist Christian Gottlob Höpner (1799–1859) referred to in a public dispute about the "flexibility of the organ tone".

A contribution to the illumination and appreciation of the peculiar views and principles of Herr Musikdirektor Wilke zu Neu-Ruppin in relation to the art of organ building.

[30] The Urania, a "musikalische Zeitschrift zur Belehrung und Unterhaltung für Deutschlands Organisten" (musical journal for instruction and entertainment for Germany's organists), summarised the dispute in 1847 under the heading "Kämpfe auf dem Gebiet der Orgelbaukunst" (battles in the field of organ building).