Founder Years

Abstract

Walther Hermann Nernst was born on the 25th June, 1864, in the little West Prussian town of Briesen where his father was a judge. The family traces its ancestry back to the time of the first king of Prussia, when a Master Christian Nernst was a cooper and citizen of the little Markish town of Prenzlau, where he died in 1721. His son Johannes Christian Nernst, a carpenter, lived in the same town and died in 1769. Ten years earlier this carpenter’s son, Johannes David, was born, the great-grandfather of Walther. Johannes David became a Lutheran pastor and married a pastor’s daughter, Luise Schramm. He, too, lived for a time in Prenzlau where he preached at St Mary’s Church. Of his six children the youngest Philipp, was Walther’s grandfather. Both he and his elder brother, Hermann, fought in the war against Napoleon, and Hermann achieved distinction by bringing the news of the victory at Waterloo to Berlin. The story is told in the Nernst family that in the evening after the battle the Prussian commander, Marshal Bluecher, looked around among his young officers and then decided: ‘Lieutenant Nernst, you have a young wife in Berlin, you will be our fastest courier’. With captured horses Hermann made the journey in five days and the Berlinische Nachrichten gave the news of his triumphal arrival: ‘At 1 p.m. the bringer of this great news was escorted into the city by 24 trumpeters amid the jubilation of the citizens. While the courier made his report to the king and queen a salvo of l00 shots was fired by the cannon in the Lustgarten.’