Karl Wilhelm Jerusalem

He was born in Wolfenbüttel to the Lutheran natural theologian Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Jerusalem.

Jerusalem also fell in love with the countess Elisabeth Herd, already engaged to a Palatinate legation secretary.

With a broken heart, he shot himself in his apartment at 5 Schillerplatz in Wetzlar (now a house-museum named the Jerusalemhaus) on 29 October 1772 and died the following day.

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's tragedy Emilia Galotti was afterwards found on Jerusalem's table.

... tormented by unfulfilled passions, in no way externally stimulated to meaningful actions, in the sole prospect of having to stand our ground in a sluggish, mindless bourgeois life, we became friends with thought, with life, when it is no longer one of us, after it leaves us no more than an intention to leave it at one's own discretion[2]After Werther came out, Lessing wrote a sharp polemic protesting against Goethe's presentation of Jerusalem's "Philosophische Aufsätze" ("Philosophical Essays"), one of which was a defence of suicide[3] Lessing particularly objected to his presentation of his friend Jerusalem as a "sentimental fool" whereas Lessing saw him as a "true, reflective philosopher".