Wilhelm Martin Leberecht de Wette

Wilhelm Martin Leberecht de Wette was born 12 January 1780 in Ulla (now part of the municipality of Nohra), Thuringia, where his father was a pastor.

[1] In 1807, de Wette became a professor of theology at Heidelberg, where he came under the influence of Jakob Friedrich Fries (1773–1843), whose hiring he helped arrange (as well as that of Paulus).

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 August Friedrich Ferdinand von Kotzebue.

[1] De Wette retired to Weimar, where he occupied his leisure in the preparation of his edition of Martin Luther and in writing the romance Theodor oder die Weihe des Zweiflers (1822), in which he describes the education of an evangelical pastor.

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.