Henriette Bitzius-Zeender

Henriette Bitzius-Zeender (1805-1872) was a Swiss homemaker, wife of the pastor and writer Jeremias Gotthelf, whose works she proofread and transcribed. She was born on in Bern and died on in the same city.

Biography

Early life Henriette Bitzius-Zeender was born on 8 August 1805 in Bern, under the name Heinrica Elisabetha Zeender. She was the youngest of three children of Emanuel Jakob Zeender, a theology professor at the Academy of Bern, and Marianne Zeender-Fasnacht.

After losing her parents at the age of two, she was raised with her brother Samuel Albrecht and her sister Maria Anna Katharina by her maternal grandparents, Jakob Albrecht Fasnacht and Katharina Fasnacht née Lüthi, in the parsonage of Lützelflüh. Her grandfather, appointed pastor in that commune in 1808, and her grandmother, from a farming family, looked after them. She spent her childhood and youth in the Emmental and made frequent stays in Jegenstorf, where her uncle Johann Ludwig Fasnacht became a pastor in 1812.

At school age, their brother took them to the orphanage in Bern, in accordance with the customs of the time. Later, the two girls were placed under the care of Miss Feuerstein in Burgdorf. The second daughter, Cécile, married the pastor .