Henry Wirz place of birth Zürich
Henry Wirz (born Hartmann Heinrich Wirz, November 25, 1823 – November 10, 1865) was a Swiss-born American military officer and convicted war criminal who served in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War.He was the commandant of Andersonville Prison, a Confederate prisoner-of-war camp near Andersonville, Georgia where nearly 13,000 Union Army prisoners of war died as result of inhumane conditions. After the war, Wirz was tried and executed for conspiracy and murder relating to his command of the camp. Since his execution, Wirz has become a controversial figure due to debate about his guilt and reputation, including criticism over his personal responsibility for Andersonville Prison's conditions and the quality of his post-war trial.Early life and career
Wirz was born Hartmann Heinrich Wirz on November 25, 1823, in Zürich, Switzerland, to Johann Caspar Wirz, a master tailor and member of Zürich's city council, and Sophie Barbara Philipp. Wirz received elementary and secondary education, and he aspired to become a physician but his family did not possess funds to pay for his medical education. Instead, he was educated as a merchant in Zürich and Turin from 1840 until 1842, when he began working at the department store of Zürich. He married Emilie Oschwald in 1845 and had two children.
In 1847, Wirz was sentenced to four years in prison on charges of embezzlement and fraud. He was released the next year and his sentence was commuted to 12 years of exile from the canton of Zürich, but his wife refused to emigrate and obtained a divorce in 1853. Wirz first went to Moscow, in 1848, and the next year to the United States, where he found employment in a factory in Lawrence, Massachusetts. After five years, he moved to Hopkinsville, Kentucky, and worked as a doctor's assistant. There, he learned to perform small surgeries and cast fractures. He tried to establish his own homeopathic medicine practice in Cadiz, Kentucky, and also worked as superintendent of a water cure clinic in Northampton, Massachusetts.In 1854, Wirz married the Methodist widow Elizabeth Wolfe (née Savells). Along with her two daughters, they moved to Louisiana, where Wolfe gave birth to their daughter. In 1856 Wirz made the acquaintance of Levin R. Marshall, the owner of the plantation Cabin Teele, who employed him as its overseer and where he set up a practice for homeopathic medicine.
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