Full personal details and background

• Full name: Karl / Carl Wilhelm Gottlieb Leehr.

• Background: he was born in 1785 in Oleśnica as the son of a local pastor / priest. He came from a respected Lower Silesian family of theologians and educators. His relative, Gottlieb Leehr, was a renowned rector and superintendent of the elite Princely Gymnasium in Oleśnica.

• Education: he studied theology at Viadrina University in Frankfurt an der Oder, where he enrolled on 28 October 1807.

Clerical career and work in Boguszyce

• 1814: he began working in Oleśnica as a catechist.

• 1821: he was promoted to deacon in Oleśnica.

• February 1824: he officially took charge of the independent Evangelical parish in Boguszyce, succeeding Pastor Vetter, who had died in 1823.

• Ministry: he led a large community that was almost entirely Evangelical. Surviving statistics from the period of his ministry state that in Boguszyce itself and the surrounding villages — Sokołowice and Nowica — he cared for more than 1,500 parishioners.

Private life

A record of his marriage has survived in the archives. On 4 July 1815 in Oleśnica he married Renate Christiane Weißig, who also came from a clerical family. She was the daughter of a pastor from the nearby village of Żelazna / German: Eisenberg.

Everyday life at Pastor Leehr's rectory

From a social and historical perspective, it can be assumed with a high degree of probability that Pastor Carl Wilhelm Leehr employed domestic servants. We do not know the names of the specific people who worked at the rectory, because detailed household registers have not survived in generally accessible chronicles. However, the realities of nineteenth-century Prussia, to which Silesia and Boguszyce then belonged, make it possible to reconstruct this picture fairly clearly.

At that time, an Evangelical pastor employing servants was not a sign of luxury, but rather a consequence of his social position, professional duties and the way the parish functioned. The rectory was not only the clergyman's home, but also a workplace, a place for managing the estate and for receiving important guests.

Running the rectory household An Evangelical pastor was not only a preacher and spiritual shepherd. In practice, he also acted as the head of the household and manager of the land belonging to the rectory. The rectory in Boguszyce included a farmstead, gardens and arable land. Such a large holding required daily physical labour that the pastor and his wife, Renate Christiane, would not have been able to perform on their own.

Households of this kind routinely employed farmhands to work in the fields and with animals, as well as maids responsible for cooking, laundry, cleaning and helping to run the household.

The pastor's social status In the nineteenth century, the pastor was one of the most important people in a rural community. Together with the teacher, landowner and officials, he formed part of the local elite. In Boguszyce, the von Randow family, associated with the local estate, was also particularly important.

The pastor's position required maintaining the household at an appropriate standard. The rectory was a place for meetings, visitations and official discussions. Church visitors, councillors from Oleśnica, representatives of the local nobility and people connected with parish life were received there. Maintaining such a household required the help of at least one domestic servant, who served at table, cleaned and assisted the pastor's wife with her daily duties.

A large parish and official duties Carl Wilhelm Leehr was responsible for a very large Evangelical community. Boguszyce and the surrounding localities formed a parish of more than 1,500 faithful. The pastor was not only a spiritual shepherd, but also a person performing important administrative and social functions.

Zajmował się nauczaniem religii, prowadzeniem spraw parafialnych, opieką nad wiernymi oraz obowiązkami zbliżonymi do urzędowych. Tak szeroki zakres zadań sprawiał, że codzienne prace domowe i gospodarskie musiały być w znacznej części powierzane opłacanym pracownikom.

Monument to Carl Wilhelm Leehr

The monument to Carl Wilhelm Leehr is one of the few pre-war monuments to have survived to the present day.

The archives of the Roman Catholic Church, which took over the building after 1945, mention that the original Evangelical rectory and the entire old archive of Boguszyce burned down completely in 1945 when the Red Army entered the village. Almost the entire cemetery was also destroyed.

Pastor Leehr's monument probably survived because it is permanently integrated with the outer wall of the church or stands directly beside it. It became an architectural part of the church rather than a freestanding grave monument, which would have been more vulnerable to destruction during the post-war clearances.