Johann Wilhelm Mannhardt, a Germanistic specialist, the oldest child of Pastor Jakob Mannhardt and Adriana Margaretha (nee Thomsen), was born at Friedrichstadt on 26 March 1831. The stories of his great-grandmother and of his mother, who was reared by her, stirred the interest of the boy in folk tales and philology, and especially mythology and folk ways and Germanic legend. He studied at the universities of Tubingen and Berlin 1851-1854. In 1858 he settled in Berlin as a private lecturer at the university. In several larger works, Germanische Mythen (1858), Die Götter der deutschen und nordischen Völker (1860), and Weihnachtsblüte in Sitte und Sage (1864), Dr. Wilhelm Mannhardt contributed to the scholarly development of folklore. He was also an active co-worker on the Zeitschrijt für Mythologie und Sittenkunde. He continued his study along this line when his frail and misshapen body compelled him to return to his paternal home in Danzig, where he was city librarian. By sending out questionnaires, by private research in folk tradition, by visiting the internment camps in the wars of 1864, 1866, and 1870, he unceasingly gathered material for an Urkundenbuch der Volksüberlieferungen he was planning. He also published some smaller works as the fruit of his research: Roggenwolf und Roggenhund, Die Korndämonen, Wald- und Feldkulte.

To German Mennonitism Mannhardt rendered an essential service in the time when the final struggle of the Mennonites of East and West Prussia for the preservation of their freedom from military service was in progress. In 1863 he published the valuable book, Die Wehrfreiheit der Altpreussischen Mennoniten, in which he presented a reliable, authenticated understanding of the historical development of the Mennonite principle of nonresistance and of the effort to preserve freedom from military service.

Wilhelm Mannhardt also devoted a great deal of energy to the service of the Danzig Mennonite Church. After 1869 he was frequently asked by the church to take the place of his aged father and read a sermon. This congregation owes to him its chronicle covering the years 1862-1873, which he worked out with conscientious truthfulness and insight into the problems of the decisive period when nonresistance was dropped and mixed marriages were permitted. On 25 December 1880, a heart attack put a sudden end to the life of this humbly pious and modest scholar with his rich knowledge and clear vision and honest search for the truth.

Bibliography

Adapted by permission of Herald Press, Scottdale, Pennsylvania, and Waterloo, Ontario, from Mennonite Encyclopedia, Vol. 3, pp. 467-468. All rights reserved. For information on ordering the encyclopedia visit the Herald Press website.

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