LUTHERAN THEOLOGICAL REVIEW - Concordia Lutheran Seminary

THREINEN: FRIEDRICH MICHAEL ZIEGENHAGEN 61
members predeceased Ziegenhagen 12 so that, at the time of his death in 1776,
he had no living heirs who were family members.
It is not known where Ziegenhagen received his early education or what
he did during the first twenty years of his life. The first concrete information
one has is that he enrolled in the faculty of theology at the University in
Halle on 24 April 1714. Other students from Pomerania also enrolled at the
University around that time, evidence of how ineffective the Swedish
strategy was of using orthodox Lutheranism to advance their political
agenda, and of the extent of Brandenburg-Prussia’s influence on the German
population in Pomerania. For, since the founding of the University of Halle
in 1694, “the educated world of the Brandenburg-Prussian state gathered
more and more around this new centre of intellectual life”. Halle became the
university to attend, particularly by future pastors; in 1717, the Prussian king
went so far as to require Lutheran clergy in his land to study for two years in
Halle. 13 The Germans in Pomerania evidently followed the same trend even
prior to 1720, when Pomerania again became part of Brandenburg-Prussia.
There is no information about Ziegenhagen’s experiences in Halle except
that he suffered from boils brought on by the “bad air”. 14 These physical
ailments notwithstanding, he remained in Halle for three years. During this
time, he became fully acquainted with August Hermann Francke who had
the practice of meeting regularly with small groups of theological students
for edification. Among his fellow theologicals was Gotthilf Francke, son of
August Hermann who also began studying theology in the University of
Halle in 1714. In the summer of 1717, as Gotthilf Francke accompanied his
father and two other men from the Francke Foundations on an extended trip
to southern Germany, Ziegenhagen transferred to the University of Jena in
the nearby Duchy of Saxony-Eisenach. He officially entered that university
on 22 July 1717. 15
In contrast to the University of Halle, Jena University at the time still
viewed its role theologically as a seedbed for producing pastors who would
adhere to orthodox Lutheran doctrine. 16 Yet, it was a more moderate
12 The will of the Rev. Frederic Michael Ziegenhagen.
13 Rudolf von Thadden, Die Brandenburgisch-Preussischen Hofprediger im 17. und 18.
Jahrhundert (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co., 1959) 91.
14 Freylinghausen, ix. As Richard Gawthrop, 169, observes, “Francke’s interest in medicine
stemmed in part from the problem posed to the Anstalten [institutions] by the unhealthy
environment of Halle and its surroundings. Glaucha, in particular, was an unsanitary place; its
populace, ignorant of elementary hygiene principles, lived amid the filth and stench of
pigpens and distillery wastes.”
15 Reinhold Jauernig, editor, Die Matrikel der University Jena, 1652-1723 (Weimar:
Hermann Boehlaus Nachfolger, 1967) 2:922.
16 Geschichte der Univeresitaet Jena, 1548-1958 (Jena: Veb Gustav Fischer Verlag, 1958)
173.