Wolfdietrich legend were transferred to the Dietrich cycle, and in the Anhang to the Heldenbuch it is stated in despite of all historical considerations that Wolfdietrich was the grandfather of the Veronese hero. Among the exploits of Wolfdietrich was the slaughter of the dragon which had slain Ortnit (q.v.). He thus took the place of Hardheri, one of the mythical Hartung brothers, the original hero of this feat. The myth attached itself to the family of Clovis, around which epic tradition rapidly gathered. Hugdietrich is generally considered to be the epic counterpart of Theodoric (Dietrich), eldest son of Clovis. The prefix was the barbarian equivalent of Frank,[1] and was employed to distinguish him from Theodoric the Goth. After his father’s death he divided the kingdom with his brothers. Wolfdietrich represents his son Theodebert (d. 548), whose succession was disputed by his uncles, but was secured by the loyalty of the Frankish nobles. But father and son are merged by a process of epic fusion in Wolfdietrich. The rape of Sydrat, daughter of the heathen Walgunt of Salnecke, by Hugdietrich disguised as a woman, is typical of the tales of the wooing of heathen princesses made fashionable by the Crusades, and was probably extraneous to the original legend. It may, however, also be put on a semi-historical basis by adopting the suggestion of C. Voretzsch (Epische Studien I. Die Comp. des Huon von Bordeaux, Halle, 1900), that Wolfdietrich is far more closely connected with Theodoric than Theodebert, and that Hugdietrich, therefore, stands for Clovis, the hero, in the Merovingian historians, of a well-known Brautfahrtsaga.
Ortnit and Wolfdietrich have been edited by Dr J. L. Edlen von Lindhausen (Tübingen, 1906). G. Sarrazin, in Zeitschr. für deutsche Phil. (1896), compared the legend of Wolfdietrich with the history of Gundovald, as given by Gregory of Tours in books vi. and vii. of his Hist. Francorum.
WOLFE, CHARLES (1791–1823), Irish poet, son of Theobald Wolfe of Blackball, Co. Kildare, was born on the 14th of December 1791. He was educated at English schools and at Trinity College, Dublin, where he matriculated in 1809 and graduated in 1814. He was ordained priest in 1817, and obtained the curacy of Ballyclog, Co. Tyrone, which he shortly exchanged for that of Donoughmore in the same county. He died at Cork on the 21st of February 1823 in his thirty-second year. Wolfe was well known as a poet in Trinity College circles. He is remembered, however, solely by his stirring stanzas on the “Burial of Sir John Moore,” written in 1816 in the rooms of Samuel O’Sullivan, a college friend, and printed in the Newry Telegraph.
See John Russell, Remains of the Rev. Charles Wolfe (2 vols., 1825; 4th ed., 1829), and a correspondence in Notes and Queries, 8th series, vol. viii. pp. 145, 178, 235, 253, 331 and 418.
WOLFE, JAMES (1727–1759), British general, the hero of Quebec, was born at Westerham in Kent on the 2nd of January 1727. At an early age he accompanied his father, Colonel (afterwards Lieutenant-General) Edward Wolfe, one of Marlborough’s veterans, to the Carthagena expedition, and in 1741 his ardent desire for a military career was gratified by his appointment to an ensigncy. At the age of fifteen he proceeded with the 12th Foot (now Suffolk Regiment) to the Rhine Campaign, and at Dettingen he distinguished himself so much as acting adjutant that he was made lieutenant. In 1744 he received a company in Barrel’s regiment (now the 4th King’s Own). In the Scottish rising of the “Forty-five” he was employed as a brigade-major. He was present at Hawley’s defeat at Falkirk, and at Culloden. With his old regiment, the 12th, Wolfe served in the Flanders campaigns of the duke of Cumberland, and at Val (Lauffeld) won by his valour the commendation of the duke. Promotion followed in 1749 to a majority, and in 1750 to the lieutenant-colonelcy of the 20th, with which he served in Scotland. Some years later he spent six months in Paris. When war broke out afresh in 1757 he served as a staff officer in the unfortunate Rochefort expedition, but his prospects were not affected by the failure, for had his advice been taken the result might well have been different. Next year he was sent to N. America as a brigadier-general in the Louisburg expedition under Amherst and Boscawen. The landing was effected in the face of strenuous opposition, Wolfe leading the foremost troops. On the 27th of July the place surrendered after an obstinate defence; during the siege Wolfe had had charge of a most important section of the attack, and on his lines the fiercest fighting took place. Soon afterwards he returned to England to recruit his shattered health, but on learning that Pitt desired him to continue in America he at once offered to return. It was now that the famous expedition against Quebec was decided upon, Wolfe to be in command, with the local rank of major-general. In a brief holiday before his departure he met at Bath Miss Lowther, to whom he became engaged. Very shortly afterwards he sailed, and on the 1st of June 1759 the Quebec expedition sailed from Louisburg (see Quebec). After wearisome and disheartening failures, embittered by the pain of an internal disease, Wolfe crowned his work by the decisive victory on the Plains of Abraham (13th of September 1759) by which the French permanently lost Quebec. Twice wounded earlier in the fight, he had refused to leave the field, and a third bullet passing through his lungs inflicted a mortal injury. While he was lying in a swoon some one near him exclaimed, “They run; see how they run!” “Who run?” demanded Wolfe, as one roused from sleep. “The enemy,” was the answer; “they give way everywhere.” Wolfe rallied for a moment, gave a last order for cutting off the retreat, and murmuring, “Now God be praised, I will die in peace,” breathed his last. On the battle-ground a tall column bears the words, “Here died Wolfe victorious on the 13th of September 1759.” In the governor’s garden, in Quebec, there is also a monument to the memory of Wolfe and his gallant opponent Montcalm, who survived him only a few hours, with the inscription “Wolfe and Montcalm. Mortem virtus communem, famam historia, monumentum posteritas dedit." In Westminster Abbey a public memorial to Wolfe was unveiled on the 4th of October 1773.
See R. Wright, Life of Major-General James Wolfe (London, 1864); F. Parkman, Montcalm and Wolfe (London, 1884); Twelve British Soldiers (London, 1899); General Wolfe’s Instructions to Young Officers (1768–1780); Beckles Willson, The Life and Letters of James Wolfe (1909); and A. G. Bradley, Wolfe (1895).
WOLFENBÜTTEL, a town of Germany, in the duchy of Brunswick, situated on both banks of the Oker, 7 m. S. of Brunswick on the railway to Harzburg. Pop. (1905) 19,083. Lessing was ducal librarian here, and the old library building, designed in 1723 in imitation of the Pantheon at Rome, contains a marble statue of him. The library, including 300,000 printed books and 10,000 MSS., was, however, transferred to a large and new Renaissance edifice in 1887. It is especially rich in Bibles, incunabula and books of the early Reformation period, and contains some fragments of the Gothic bible of Ulfilas. Opposite the old library is the palace, now occupied by a seminary. The ducal burial-vault is in the church of St Mary.
A castle is said to have been founded on the site of Wolfenbüttel by a margrave of Meissen about 1046. When this began in 1267 to be the residence of the early Brunswick or Wolfenbüttel line of counts, a town gradually grew up around it. In 1542 it was taken by the Saxons and Hessians, who, however, evacuated it five years later after the battle of Mühlberg. In the Thirty Years’ War, in June 1641, the Swedes, under Wrangel and Königsmark, defeated the Austrians under the archduke Leopold at Wolfcnbüttel. The town passed wholly into the possession of the Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel family in 1671, and for nearly one hundred years enjoyed the distinction of being the ducal capital. In 1754, however, Duke Charles transferred the ducal residence to Brunswick.
See Voges, Erzählungen aus der Geschichte der Stadt Wolfenbüttel (Wolfenbüttel, 1882); von Heinemann, Die herzogliche Bibliothek zu Wolfenbüttel (2nd ed., Wolfenbüttel, 1894). For the “Wolfenbüttel fragments” see Lessing and Reimarus.
WOLFF, CASPAR FRIEDRICH (1733–1794), German anatomist and physiologist, justly reckoned the founder of modern embryology, was born in 1733 at Berlin, where he studied anatomy and physiology under the elder J. F. Meckel. He
- ↑ “Hugo Theodoricus iste dicitur, id est Francus, quia olim omnes Franci Hugones vocabantur . . .,” Annales Quedlinburg. (Pertz Script, iii. 420.)
