WERMELSKIRCHEN, a town of Germany, in the Prussian Rhine province, situated 4 m. S.W. from Lennep by rail and at the junction of a line to Remscheid. Pop. (1900) 15,469. It contains an Evangelical and a Roman Catholic church and a Latin school. Wermelskirchen is the centre of many thriving industries, chief among which are the manufacture of silks, cotton and silk ribbons, plush, tobacco and steel goods.
WERMUND, an ancestor of the Mercian royal family, a son
of Wihtlaeg and father of Offa. He appears to have reigned in
Angel, and his story is preserved by certain Danish historians,
especially Saxo Grammaticus. According to these traditions, his
reign was long and happy, though its prosperity was eventually
marred by the raids of a warlike king named Athislus, who slew
Frowinus, the governor of Schleswig, in battle.
Frowinus’s
death was avenged by his two sons, Keto and Wigo, but their
conduct in fighting together against a single man was thought
to form a national disgrace, which was only obhterated by
the subsequent single combat of Offa.
It has been suggested
that Athislus, though called king of the Swedes by Saxo, was
really identical with the Eadgils, lord of the Myrgingas, mentioned
in Widsith. As Eadgils was a contemporary of Ermanaric
(Eormenric), who died about 370, his date would agree with the
indication given by the genealogies which place Wermund nine
generations above Penda. Frowinus and Wigo are doubtless to
be identified with the Freawine and Wig who figure among the
ancestors of the kings of Wessex.
For the story of the aggression against Wermund in his later years, told by the Danish historians and also by the Vitae duorum Offarum, see Offa; also Saxo Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum, edited by A. Holder, pp. 105 ff. (Strassburg, 18S6); Vitae duorum Offarum (in Wats’s edition of Matthew Paris, London, 1640). See also H. M. Chadwick, Origin of the English Nation (Cambridge, 1907).
WERNER, ANTON ALEXANDER VON (1843–), German painter, was born at Frankfort-on-the-Oder, on the 9th of May 1843. He first studied painting at the Berlin Academy, pursued his studies at Carlsruhe, and, having won a travelling scholarship upon the exhibition of his early works, he visited Paris in 1867, and afterwards Italy, where he remained for some time. On his return he received several state commissions, and on the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 he was sent with the staff of the third corps d'armée, and stayed in France till the close of the campaign. In 1873 he was appointed professor at the Berlin Academy, of which he afterwards became director. Among his more important works must be named “The Capitulation of Sedan,” “Proclamation of the German Empire at Versailles,” “Moltke before Paris,” “Moltke at Versailles,” “The Meeting of Bismarck and Napoleon III.,” “Christ and the Tribute Money,” “William I. visiting the Tombs,” “The Congress of Berlin,” and some decorations executed in mosaic for the Triumphal Arch at Berlin. Von Werner’s work is chiefly interesting for the historic value of his pictures of the events of the Franco-German War.
See Kunst für Alle, vol. i.; Knackfuss, Künstler-Monographieen, No. 9.
WERNER, ABRAHAM GOTTLOB (1750-1817), father of German
geology, was born in Upper Lusatia, Saxony, on the 25th
of September 1750. The family to which he belonged had been
engaged for several hundred years in mining pursuits. His
father was inspector of Count Solm’s iron-works at Wehrau and
Lorzendorf, and from young Werner’s infancy cultivated in
him a taste for minerals and rocks. The boy showed early
promise of distinction. He began to collect specimens of stones,
and one of his favourite employments was to pore over the
pages of a dictionary of mining. At the age of nine he was sent
to school at Bunzlau in Silesia, where he remained until 1764,
when he joined his father at Wehrau with the idea of ultimately
succeeding him in the post of inspector. When nineteen years
of age (1769) he journeyed to Freiberg, where he attracted the
notice of the officials, who invited him to attend the mining
school established two years previously. This was the turning
point in Werner’s career. He soon distinguished himself by his
industry and by the large amount of practical knowledge of
mineralogy which he acquired. In 1771 he repaired to the
university of Leipzig and went through the usual curriculum of
study, paying attention at first chiefly to the subject of law,
but continuing to devote himself with great ardour to mineralogical
pursuits. While still a student he wrote his first work
on the external characters of minerals, Von den äusserlichen
Kennzeichen der Fossilien (1774), which at once gave him a
name among the mineralogists of the day. In 1775 he was
appointed inspector in the mining school and teacher of
mineralogy at Freiberg. To the development of that school
and to the cultivation of mineralogy and geognosy he thenceforth,
for about forty years, devoted the whole of his active and
indefatigable industry. From a mere provincial institution the
Freiberg academy under his care rose to be one of the great
centres of scientific light in Europe, to which students from all
parts of the world flocked to listen to his eloquent teaching.
He wrote but little, and though he elaborated a complete system
of geognosy and mineralogy he never could be induced to publish
it. From the notes of his pupils, however, the general purport
of his teaching was well known, and it widely influenced the
science of his time. He died at Freiberg on the 30th of June 1817.
One of the distinguishing features of Werner’s teaching was the care with which he taught lithology and the succession of geological formation; a subject to which he applied the name geognosy. His views on a definite geological succession were inspired by the works of J. G. Lehmann and G. C. Fuchsel (1722-1773). He showed that the rocks of the earth are not disposed at random, but follow each other in a certain definite order. Unfortunately he had never enlarged his experience by travel, and the sequence of rock-masses which he had recognized in Saxony was believed by him to be of universal application (see his Kurze Klassifikation und Beschreibung der verschiedenen Gebirgsarten, 1787). He taught that the rocks were the precipitates of a primeval ocean, and followed each other in successive deposits of world-wide extent. Volcanoes were regarded by him as abnormal phenomena, probably due to the combustion of subterranean beds of coal. Basalt and similar rocks, which even then were recognized by other observers as of igneous origin, were believed by him to be water-formed accumulations of the same ancient ocean. Hence arose one of the great historical controversies of geology. Werner’s followers preached the doctrine of the aqueous origin of rocks, and were known as Neptunists; their opponents, who recognized the important part taken in the construction of the earth’s crust by subterranean heat, were styled Vulcanists. R. Jameson, the most distinguished of his British pupils, was for many years an ardent teacher of the Wernerian doctrines. Though much of Werner’s theoretical work was erroneous, science is indebted to him for so clearly demonstrating the chronological succession of rocks, for the enthusiastic zeal which he infused into his pupils, and for the impulse which he thereby gave to the study of geology.
See S. G. Frisch, Lebensbeschreibung A. G. Werners (Leipzig, 1825); Cuvier, Éloge de Werner; Lyell, Principles of Geology; and Sir A. Geikie, Founders of Geology (1897; 2nd ed., 1906).
WERNER, FRIEDRICH LUDWIG ZACHARIAS (1768-1823), German poet, dramatist and preacher, was born on the 18th of November 1768 at Königsberg in Prussia. From his mother, who died a religious maniac, Werner inherited a weak and unbalanced nature, which his education did nothing to correct. At the university of his native place he studied law; but Rousseau and Rousseau’s German disciples were the influences that shaped his view of life. For years he oscillated violently between aspirations towards the state of nature, which betrayed him into a series of rash and unhappy marriages, and a sentimental admiration—in common with so many of the Romanticists—for the Roman Catholic Church, which ended in 1811 in his conversion. Werner’s talent was early recognized and obtained for him, in spite of his character, a small government post at Warsaw, which he exchanged afterwards for one at Berlin. In the course of his travels, and by correspondence, he got into touch with many of the men most eminent in literature at the time; and succeeded in having his plays put on the stage, where they met with much success. In 1814 he was ordained priest, and, exchanging the pen for the pulpit, became a popular preacher at Vienna, where, during the famous congress of 1814, his eloquent but fanatical sermons were listened to by crowded congregations. He died at Vienna on the 17th of January 1823.
Werner was the only dramatist of the Romantic movement
