Franz Gerhard Wegeler

Franz Gerhard Wegeler was a German medical doctor from Bonn, born in 1765 and dead in 1848, who in his youth was a close friend of the composer Ludwig van Beethoven. He studied medicine at the universities of Bonn and Vienna and in 1789 became a tenured professor of legal medicine and obstetrics at Bonn. In 1794 he fled Bonn during the French Revolutionary Wars and spent two years in Vienna, where he renewed his friendship with Beethoven, before returning to Bonn as an instructor and general practitioner. In 1802 he married Eleonore von Breuning, and in 1807 he moved to Koblenz and joined the Prussian civil service, receiving several prestigious awards. He is remembered for the 1838 biography Biographische Notizen uber Ludwig van Beethoven, written with Ferdinand Ries, which historians regard as an important and reliable source on the composer early life. He was the father of the historian Julius Stephan Wegeler.