Alfred Wegener: Difference between revisions
→Early life
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Born in 1843, Richard Wegener was ninth of the eleven children of Friedrich Wilhelm Wegener, an owner of a military uniform factory in Wittstock, in the northwest corner of Brandenburg, about 90 kilometers from [[Berlin]]. Richard realized his father's ambition to study theology and become an evangelican clergymen. After his seminary study and ordination in 1868, he spent a year as an assistant pastor to parish in Kolmar, Posen -- the Prussian province centered on the historic Polish city of Poznan. Later, he returned to Wittstock and asked Anna Schwarz to marry him. Anna was herself an orphan, born in the tiny hamlet of Zechlinerhutte and raised by relatives in nearby Wittstock. She and Richard had met as students.
Richard studied Greek, Latin and Hebrew and earned a PhD from the Friedrich-Wilhelms University in Berlin in 1873. In that same year, Richard and Anna took over the Schindler Orphanage (''Schindlersches Waisenhaus''), a privately endowed orphanage for sons of clergy, teachers, civil servants, landowners and merchants. Richard also began his parallel career teaching Greek and Latin at the Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster,
Later, Alfred Lothar Wegener was born in Berlin, 1 November 1880. Alfred was the fifth and youngest child of Richard Wegener and Anna Schwarz. His birthplace was a converted Austrian embassy at 57 Friedrichsgracht, a scant few blocks from the Imperial Palace, facing the Spree Canal, on the southeastern side of the island. This structure was home to Schindler Orphanage. The spacious interior of the building was more than adequate to house the Wegener family, the thirty or so orphans in their charge, Richard Wegener's assistants in the teaching and daily supervision of the orphans, and the resident domestics under the direction of Anna Wegener.
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