De Wette, WILHELM MARTIN LEBERECHT, biblical critic, was born at Ulla, near Weimar, on the 12th January 1780. He studied from 1799 at Jena, under Griesbach and Paulus, and early attached himself to the philosophy of Fries. He became extraordinary professor of Exegesis at Heidelberg in 1807, and ordinary professor in 1809, and in 1810 was called to the newly-founded university of Berlin. For a letter which he had sent on the 31st March 1819 to his friend, the mother of Sand, the assassin of Kotzebue, he was deprived of his professorship; and retiring to his native place, he completed his Christliche Sittenlehre (3 vols. 1819-21), his edition of the Briefe, Sendschreiben und Bedenken Luthers (5 vols. 1825-28), and the religious novel Theodor, oder des Zweiflers Weihe (1822; Eng. trans. 1849). A call to be preacher at Brunswick was vetoed by the Hanoverian government, and in 1822 he was appointed professor of Theology at Basel, where, in 1829, he was honoured with a seat in the Council of Education, and died 16th June 1849. His great reputation as a biblical scholar rests on his Beiträge zur Einleitung in das Alte Testament (2 vols. 1806-7), his Lehrbuch der hebräisch-jüdischen Archäologie (1814; 4th ed. 1864), and especially his very useful Lehrbuch der Historisch-kritischen Einleitung in die Bibel (1817 and 1826), of which the Old Testament part had in 1869 reached its 8th (Eng. trans. by Theodore Parker, 1843), and the New Testament in 1860 its 6th edition (Eng. trans. 1858). His translation of the Scriptures, undertaken in conjunction with Augusti (6 vols. 1809-12; 4th ed. 1858); Commentar über die Psalmen (1829; 5th ed. 1856); and Kurzgefasstes Exegetisches Handbuch zum Neuen Testament (3 vols. 1836-48), have been extensively used by students, and the separate parts of the last-named work, as revised repeatedly by later scholars, have held their ground ever since. 'He possesses soul enough,' says Tholuck, 'to distinguish between the spiritual kernel and its husk in the language of the Bible; interest, besides, in its ideas and doctrines; and, finally, a sound exegetical tact, equally removed from exegetical coxcombry and from arbitrariness and inexactitude.' His works on dogmatic theology, Ueber die Religion (1827), and Das Wesen des Christlichen Glaubens (1846), are of less importance.
See the estimates of De Wette's merits by Schenkel (1849), Lücke (1850), Hagenbach (1850), Wiegand (1879), and Stähelin (1880).