Sample Chapters

Introduction

“Come and see the works of God; He is awesome in His doing toward the sons of men.” (Psalm 66:5)

Stirred by reports about religious revivals breaking out in Bavaria and desiring to see a similar move of God in their midst, several young men gathered in Berlin on the last day of 1816 to bring in the new year by singing and reading the Bible. During their meeting, Johann Georg Seegemund, who later became a pastor, suggested that they all kneel together and pray for the “outpouring of His Spirit.” One of the participants, Moritz August von Bethmann-Hollweg, who was later a law professor and politician (and grandfather of a German chancellor), reported that as they prayed on their knees, “the Lord appeared living and personally to me in my soul as never before and never again. With deepest emotion within me and a hot stream of tears I recognized my sin, which stood before my eyes as a mountain.” Bethmann-Hollweg considered this his conversion experience, where Christ brought him to repentance and showed him his grace.[1] A year later another participant in that meeting, the young aristocrat Adolf von Thadden, confessed that he could not think of anything more wonderful than the fellowship that these young men shared that night as they sang and read the Bible together. That New Years’ Eve was, he stated, “the most beautiful day that I can remember in a long time; I received great blessing from it.”[2]

About a year after that memorable fellowship meeting, a student at the University of Berlin, August Tholuck, had a powerful conversion experience. A few years later, on April 9, 1822, Tholuck, by then an adjunct professor (Privatdozent) of theology at the University of Berlin, wrote in his diary: “O burning in me is an unquenchable, blazing fire to be in Christ himself and to lead millions of souls with me into him.”[3] Tholuck’s fiery zeal to know Christ and to convert multitudes epitomizes the Awakening Movement, an exciting period of revival in early nineteenth-century Germany. It is not likely that Tholuck personally converted millions, but his zeal was contagious and his influence was considerable. Just a few days after penning this entry, he reported in his diary that he had already helped in the conversions of twenty-five people.[4]

Though Tholuck is almost unknown to Americans today, in early nineteenth-century Germany his impact was enormous. In 1826 he was appointed professor of theology at the University of Halle, giving him a platform to spread the Awakening to a wider audience. Indeed, Tholuck attracted many American theology students, including the famous Princeton theologian Charles Hodge, to study under him. Before immigrating to the United States, the prominent church historian Phillip Schaff also studied under Tholuck and later called him “a man of genius, extensive learning and fervent piety.”[5] Tholuck was also instrumental in helping George Müller, the legendary Bristol preacher and orphanage director, launch his ministry. When Müller stopped receiving financial support from his father, because Müller wanted to become a missionary, Tholuck found work for Müller teaching German to Tholuck’s American students (including Charles Hodge). Later Tholuck connected Müller with a missionary society in London that evangelized Jews, leading Müller to move to England. In 1836 Müller wrote to Tholuck, “Take encouragement from my case. For without boasting I can say it, that God has led me forward since the year 1826, when first you began to take me by the hand. . . . I shall have reason to praise God for ever [sic], that you were instrumental in bringing me to England.”[6]

Tholuck was just one among myriads of Germans touched by the Awakening Movement, from the orphans and prisoners these Awakened Christians loved and helped, to the highest aristocrats, including the Prussian Crown Prince Frederick William (who later became King Frederick William IV). Other participants included Princess Marianne, sister-in-law of the Prussian King Frederick William III; Marie Hegel, wife of the most prominent German philosopher of the early nineteenth century; Heinrich von Puttkammer, the father-in-law of Otto von Bismarck; and Heinrich Ranke, brother of the most famous German historian in the early nineteenth century. Motivated by the Awakening, Johann Hinrich Wichern founded an orphanage in Hamburg where he not only cared for orphans, but also trained young men to engage in Christian charitable work. He later founded the Inner Mission, a network of charitable organizations throughout Germany that still exists. A leading German historian at Yale once called Wichern “the greatest preacher and public figure whom German Protestantism had produced since Luther.”[7] In Kaiserswerth near Düsseldorf the Awakened pastor Theodor Fliedner founded a prison ministry, school, and hospital, where he trained young women to be Christian deaconesses. Under his direction the deaconess institution (which still operates today) trained hundreds of women, most of whom were sent out to other cities and even other countries. The most famous woman to train under Fliedner at Kaiserwerth was Florence Nightingale, who returned to England and tirelessly labored to improve the nursing profession there.

In some cases the Awakening Movement spawned a backlash by those who rejected its message. Karl Marx’s colleague and benefactor Friedrich Engels hailed from a family that participated zealously in the Awakening Movement in the Wuppertal region. As a young man, Engels lived in the household of a pastor in Bremen who embraced the Awakening Movement. However, Engels, of course, became an atheist and staunch critic of the Awakening Movement (and of Christianity in general). Another leading atheist of the nineteenth century, Friedrich Nietzsche, also came from a family involved in the Awakening Movement. His father, Carl Ludwig Nietzsche, had studied theology at the University of Halle from 1833 to 1837, taking courses from Tholuck. After graduating and becoming a pastor, Carl Ludwig still found spiritual pleasure from reading Tholuck’s sermons.[8] He was not converted by Tholuck, however. He came to reject rationalist theology through studying the writings and sermons of a pastor in the Berlin Awakening, Christian Ludwig Couard.[9] Though his father died when he was five years old, Friedrich Nietzsche’s mother tried to raise him in a Christian atmosphere in line with the Awakening Movement.

 

What Was the Awakening Movement?

The term “Awakening Movement” (Erweckungsbewegung) was rarely used in the early nineteenth century. The earliest usage of the term “Awakening Movement” that I have found was in 1837, when the Awakened aristocrat, Ludwig von Gerlach, used the term in his diary to refer to the early nineteenth-century revivals in Germany.[10] However, the term did not come into widespread use in publications until after 1886, when a book used the term in its title: Erweckungsbewegung in Rheydt im Jahre 1750 (Awakening Movement in Rheydt in the Year 1750).[11] As the title suggests, this did not refer to the early nineteenth-century revivals, but to a local revival in the Rhineland region in the eighteenth century. After this book came out, the term was used more widely, not only to refer to this local revival, but also to denote major revivals in Britain and North America. The first published use of the term “Awakening Movement” to describe the early nineteenth-century revivals in Germany that I have been able to find is in an 1887 journal article.[12] Ten years later Rudolf Bendiren wrote a book about the early nineteenth-century revivals in Germany, Bilder aus der letzten religiösen Erweckung in Deutschland (Portraits from the Last Religious Awakening in Germany), and he used the term “Awakening Movement,” but only once in his entire book.[13] However, in 1901 Ludwig Tiesmeyer published the first volume of his massive, four-volume work about these early nineteenth-century German revivals. His title used the term “Awakening Movement,” and after this time, it became the primary descriptor.[14]

However, participants and publications in the early nineteenth century regularly used the terms “Erweckung” (Awakening), “erwecken” (awaken), “Erweckte” (a person who is awakened), and other forms of these words to refer either to individuals or congregations that were catching fire religiously. In 1845 the pastor Johann Christoph Blumhardt referred to the revival that broke out in his congregation as an Awakening (Erweckung), as well as a religious movement (Bewegung), though he never put the terms together as Awakening Movement (and he was describing a revival in one locale, not throughout Germany).[15]

Those experiencing the Awakening in early nineteenth-century Germany clearly believed they were part of a significant religious movement, even if they did not often explicitly call it a “movement.” For instance, in 1820 Christian Heinrich Zeller, an influential Christian pedagogue who directed a school for poor children in Beuggen, Baden (near Basel), and trained teachers there, lamented that during the Enlightenment, “A so-called Christianity without Christ, without faith, without love, without comfort, and without vitality spread like a flood” and brought about moral degeneration. However, he exulted that “Unexpectedly a new spirit of life awoke in this sick Christianity,” and he explicitly called this renewal an “Awakening” (Erweckung).[16]

Was the Awakening Movement coherent enough to constitute a real movement? Undoubtedly so. To be sure, the impact of these religious revivals was uneven across Germany, having its greatest effects in Basel, Berlin, Halle, the Wuppertal region, Pomerania, Silesia, Württemberg, Nuremberg, Erlangen, and to some extent in the northern port cities of Hamburg, Bremen, and Kiel. Some other parts of Germany were only touched minimally by the Awakening Movement. Even in the places of its greatest influence, it had many strong competitors, including rationalist theology (i.e., a theology that embraced Enlightenment ideas), the beginnings of liberal theology, out-and-out infidelity, and religious apathy. While extremely influential, it did not dominate the Protestant churches in Germany.

The leading figures in the Awakening Movement constituted a veritable network. They forged relationships through correspondence, conferences, mission festivals, and travel. They contributed to periodicals that reached other participants in the Awakening. One among many examples of this networking was the six-month tour that the young Awakened pastor Christian Gottlob Barth took in 1824. Barth set forth from his native Württemberg and first travelled to Nuremberg and Erlangen, where he met with Ranke and other leaders of the Awakening there. Then he proceeded to Herrnhut, the headquarters of the Moravian Brethren. After staying in Berlin for a month, he went to the Wuppertal region and then finally to Basel. During this trip Barth became personally acquainted with many leaders of the Awakening Movement, and he soon became one of the leading lights of the Awakening Movement himself.[17]

 

The Status of the Protestant Churches in Early Nineteenth-Century Germany

Before the Awakening Movement broke out in the early nineteenth century, Enlightenment rationalism dominated the German Protestant churches. The Swiss theology student, Jean Henri Merle d’Aubigné, recalled that when he came to study in Leipzig and Berlin in 1817, “I was stunned—almost overwhelmed, by the tempest of rationalism and infidelity which was then raging. . . . Every theological journal I read, every book I looked into, almost every one, both ministers and laymen, whom I met, were affected with Rationalism, so that the poison of infidelity was presented to me on all sides.”[18] Most of the Protestant theology professors and clergy placed more confidence in the powers of human reason than in divine revelation, so they considered many of the biblical stories mythical. They dismissed accounts of miracles as remnants of primitive ignorance that their more Enlightened culture had transcended. They still believed in the existence of God, but they had discarded Luther’s beliefs about sin and the need for redemption through Jesus. Thus, their sermons tended to focus primarily on moral exhortations.

At the opening of the nineteenth century the German Protestant churches were either Lutheran or Reformed (Calvinist). They were state churches, so generally the denomination depended on which state they were in. Germany was not unified in the early nineteenth century, but it was consolidated into 39 separate political units in 1815 after the close of the Napoleonic Wars. (Before 1800 Germany had consisted of over 300 political units). In addition, some northern Swiss cantons were German-speaking and Protestant and would be influenced by the Awakening Movement. Some German states were largely Catholic, but most were Protestant, and even some Catholic states, such as Bavaria, had pockets of Protestantism in them.

The largest Protestant German state was Prussia, which was mostly Lutheran, but after 1815 they also had a significant Catholic population, both in the Rhineland region as well as in the eastern province of Silesia. They also had some areas with Reformed congregations, mostly in the Rhineland region (but also in the capital of Berlin). One odd thing about Prussia’s religious situation was that the ruling family, the Hohenzollerns, embraced the Reformed faith, even though most of their subjects were Lutherans. This helps explain why the religiously pious Frederick William III, king of Prussia from 1797 to 1840, wanted to unite the Lutheran and Reformed churches in his realm. In 1817 he decreed that the Lutheran and Reformed churches should unite organizationally (though individual congregations could still be distinct). Then in 1822 he issued a common liturgy that he wanted both denominations to use. Both these moves stirred up controversy. Some, to be sure, welcomed these measures, but others staunchly opposed what they saw as the king’s meddling in church affairs.

 

Napoleonic Wars and Subsequent Economic Distress

Though most historians consider 1816, the year after the close of the Napoleonic Wars, the beginning of the Awakening Movement (and I concur), the Napoleonic Wars did provide religious stimulus. Indeed, during that time some Christians warned that Napoleon was the anti-Christ, and his early triumphs over Germany nourished apocalyptic expectations. Germany’s defeat also caused many Germans to seek God and to pray for God’s intervention to save them from Napoleon’s depredations. In the midst of the Napoleonic Wars the religious writer Heinrich Jung-Stilling informed Christian Friedrich Spittler, a leading figure in the Christian Society, that a Christian association in the Wuppertal region was calling on all Christians to pray at 7 pm every evening for protection, for unity among Christians, and for the spread of the Christian message.[19] Toward the end of the Napoleonic Wars Jung-Stilling exulted that the Prussian (and Russian) armies were recognizing Jesus as their leader. One of the adjutants of the Prussian king, Count Konstantin von Stolberg-Wernigerode, told Jung-Stilling that among the troops, “Faith in Jesus Christ and prayer to him is almost universal!”[20]

The upsurge in religiosity during the German Wars of Liberation (the campaign that freed Germany from Napoleonic control in 1813-14) was so pronounced that in 1864-66 Wilhelm Baur published a two-volume work, Geschichte und Lebensbilder aus der Erneuerung des religiösen Lebens in den deutschen Befreiungskriegen (History and Biographies from the Renewal of Religious Life in the German Wars of Liberation). Baur provides evidence that the Prussian king and queen both became more devout religiously because of Prussia’s humiliating defeat by Napoleon.[21] He also argues that many of those participating in the subsequent Awakening Movement became more interested in spiritual affairs while fighting in the Wars of Liberation. For instance, Ferdinand Karl Bülow, who fought in the Wars of Liberation, purchased a New Testament in 1813 and read it during the war. Later Bülow would become a zealous participant in the Awakening Movement.[22] Many other young aristocrats who joined the military during the German Wars of Liberation became more religious and began attending church regularly. Then, when the Awakening Movement broke out, many of them had conversion experiences and became enthusiastic supporters of the Awakening. In his autobiography a leading pastor of the Awakening, Friedrich Wilhelm Krummacher, reported that during the German Wars of Liberation the churches were filled far more than they had been before, and people had a greater awareness of God.[23] In 1855, reflecting back on the religious revivals after the Napoleonic Wars, the Awakened theologian Tholuck attributed the increase in religious devotion to the affliction that Prussia endured during the Napoleonic Wars.[24]

One witness who described the religious transformation wrought by the Napoleonic Wars was Gerhard Bernhard van Haar, who visited Berlin in the fall of 1814, after Napoleon’s first fall from power and before his resurgence and ultimate defeat in 1815. Van Haar claimed that in 1814, unlike ten years earlier, there was a “hunger and thirst for knowledge of the truth,ˮ that churches were filled, and people were speaking freely about religion. He also noted that “people generally recognize that the stern punishment visited upon their country [i.e., the earlier defeats in the Napoleonic Wars] was deserved.ˮ[25]

Immediately after the close of the Napoleonic Wars, Germany (and Europe in general) experienced a serious food shortage caused by cooler temperatures, which reduced crop yields considerably. The historian John Post has called this The Last Great Subsistence Crisis in the Western World.[26] This calamity engendered greater interest in religion in two ways. First, many believed they needed to draw closer to God in prayer to be delivered from the famine. Second, many Christians, especially those who embraced the Awakening Movement at the time, began distributing food and other resources to those in need. This helped them gain a hearing for their message of love for God and for other people.

Another economic development that negatively impacted some workers was the growth of industrialization. Factories, especially in Britain but also on the Continent, were producing low-cost textiles, which was a boon to the entrepreneurs and to those buying the less expensive textiles. However, many spinners and weavers in Germany could not compete with factory-produced cloth and thus were thrown out of work. The numbers of unemployed workers in German cities increased in the early nineteenth century, and their conditions were often miserable. As with the subsistence crisis, Awakened Christians sought to ameliorate the conditions of the unemployed and won many converts through their acts of love and self-denial.

 

Characteristics and Impact of the Awakening Movement

The Awakening Movement was a time of religious revival in many parts of Germany. One leading figure in the Awakening Movement, Merle d’Aubigné, who studied theology in Germany during the opening years of the Awakening Movement and then pastored a French-speaking church in Hamburg for several years, called this period after 1817 the advent of a third Reformation. The first, of course, had been led by Luther and Calvin, and the second Reformation, he thought, was the Pietist movement led by Philip Jakob Spener.[27] Just as the earlier Reformation and Pietist movement, the Awakening Movement would have profound effects on countless individuals and on the religious culture of German-speaking lands.

One of the central features of the Awakening Movement was its emphasis on the need for a conversion experience accompanied by repentance from one’s sins. Converts’ lives were radically transformed. First and foremost, they were filled with a zealous love for God that permeated every facet of their lives. In addition, they exuded love and compassion for other people. The number and intensity of conversions was especially great from 1816 to 1830, but it continued thereafter in many places, too. The preachers of the Awakening called people to a heart-felt faith in Christ alone for salvation. They were not content with merely an intellectual knowledge about God, but insisted on a vibrant faith that would produce works reflecting the love of God.

Scripture was central to the Awakening Movement. Though disagreements persisted or arose about the interpretation of scriptures (e.g., between Lutherans and Reformed Christians), they agreed that scripture is authoritative. They also generally considered the scriptures historically accurate, including all the prophecies and miracles.[28] Scripture, however, was not just a source for doctrine. Most participants in the Awakening Movement read the Bible daily for edification. Not only did they diligently read and study the Bible, but the Moravian Brethren’s Watchword (Losungen), which contained a brief scripture reading, was a regular feature of their spiritual diet. Because of their focus on the Bible, they yearned for a return to the simplicity and spirituality of the apostles and the early church. In church history they also esteemed the Reformation and the Pietist movements, because they viewed them as attempts to regain a more pure, original form of Christianity.[29]

Awakened converts zealously attended Sunday morning church services, especially when they could hear the preaching of an Awakened pastor. Sometimes they would travel for hours on foot or on wagon to attend the services of the nearest pastor they considered spiritually edifying. However, Sunday morning services were not enough for them. Many participated in smaller home fellowship meetings during the week. In these meetings they would read the scriptures, pray, and sing hymns. Sometimes they would read a sermon, or someone at the meeting would give a teaching or exhortation. In some cases these meetings were led by pastors. However, this was not the case, of course, in towns where the pastor was a rationalist and opposed to the Awakening Movement. However, whether led by pastors or not, these home meetings were places where participants could practice the priesthood of all believers, since it gave many laypeople the opportunity to speak, pray, and encourage each other.

Another central feature of the Awakening Movement was a zeal to engage in charitable activities. This led many participants to help the poor, visit the sick, and visit prisons. They founded many charitable organizations, including orphanages, hospitals, schools for indigent children, organizations to visit and help the sick, and institutions for disabled people. These institutions were largely funded by contributions from people in the Awakening Movement.

Participants in the Awakening Movement also fervently desired that others would come to know the joy and love that they had found through their conversion and subsequent religious experience. Thus they eagerly and enthusiastically shared their faith with family, friends, and colleagues. The charitable institutions they created were one avenue for spreading their faith within their society. This is why when Wichern helped organize a network of Protestant charitable organizations in Germany in 1848, he called it the “Inner Mission.” However, the Awakening Movement also led to a dramatic upsurge in foreign missions. Only a small number of Germans were involved in foreign missions before 1816. However, once the Awakening Movement began, many more missionaries were sent out, many local mission societies were founded to support mission work, and regular mission meetings and annual mission festivals became widespread in Germany.

The Awakening Movement crossed denominational lines, and most of the participants downplayed denominational differences among them. Lutheran and Reformed participants in the Awakening Movement enjoyed fellowship with each other and considered each other brethren. However, this did not make the Awakening Movement ecumenical in the modern sense of the term, for they staunchly opposed the rationalist theologians and clergy that dominated the German Protestant churches.[30] The Awakening Movement accepted the traditional, orthodox Protestant teaching that the scriptures are historically accurate, including accounts of miraculous events. They vigorously rejected Enlightenment rationalism with its anti-supernaturalist bias. The rationalist clergy was generally hostile to the Awakening Movement (though some converted during the Awakening Movement and came to oppose their previously-held rationalist theology). The tensions between these conflicting theological positions led to deep divisions in the Protestant Church in Germany. This opposition led many in the Awakening Movement to avoid churches pastored by rationalist clergy. In many major cities participants in the Awakening Movement could find a like-minded pastor. However, in smaller towns and villages, some Awakened Christians travelled for hours to other towns to attend church. Despite these tensions and the many disputes that arose from them, most participants in the Awakening Movement stayed within the state churches and tried to reform them and breathe spiritual vitality into them.

Only in a few instances did participants of the Awakening Movement break away from the state churches. In Pomerania in the 1820s the Below brothers led a separatist movement, but it remained fairly isolated and localized. Later Johann Gerhard Oncken spearheaded the formation of Baptist churches that separated from the state churches. Quite a few Baptist churches formed throughout Germany, but they were generally small congregations, so the number of Baptists was small in the larger scheme of things. Finally, in the 1830s some Lutheran pastors and theologians rebelled against the Prussian king’s attempts to unite the Protestant churches in his realm and broke with the state church. They were generally known as Old Lutherans. Unlike the Baptists, the Old Lutherans were not opposed to the state church in principle. They would likely have remained in the state church if the king had not tried to unify the Lutheran and Reformed churches in Prussia.

Finally, the Awakening Movement was international. Contemporaneous (or sometimes a little previous) Christian revivals broke out in Britain, the United States, Netherlands, Geneva and elsewhere in Switzerland. Reports about these revivals, as well as visits from participants, helped fan the flames of revival in Germany. British Bible societies sent representatives to Germany, encouraged the formation of local Bible societies throughout Germany, and sometimes even provided funds to get the German societies on their feet. British mission societies sent out German missionaries. Many theology students from the United States studied under the Awakened theologians in Germany, especially Tholuck in Halle and August Neander in Berlin. They then returned to the US and became prominent theologians or pastors. Florence Nightingale studied nursing at an institution set up during the Awakening Movement and then powerfully influenced her native Britain.

German missionaries who were part of the Awakening Movement also went to many places in the world, including Britain, the United States, Africa, and Asia. The famous Bristol preacher George Müller originally went from Germany to London to become a missionary to the Jews. August Rauschenbusch, a theologian and father to the even more famous American theologian Walter Rauschenbusch, was converted in 1836 in Germany and a decade later was sent to the US by a German mission society. The Awakening Movement produced numerous less well-known missionaries, who won converts and established churches in Africa, India, and China, among other places.

 

Was the Awakening Movement a Form of Pietism?

People in the Awakening Movement, as well as historians analyzing it, have noticed its affinity to the late seventeenth and early eighteenth-century Pietist movement. Many participants even referred to themselves and their movement as Pietist. In February 1819 Ludwig von Gerlach, along with several other early leaders in the Berlin Awakening, held the first meeting of what they called the “Pietist Club.” Thadden led that meeting and even read aloud some poems by Nicholaus von Zinzendorf, one of the leading Pietists of the early to mid-eighteenth century.[31] Three years later the Awakened theologian Hermann Olshausen wrote to his close friend and fellow theologian Tholuck, to whom he owed his own conversion. In that letter he referred to Tholuck’s religious stance as Pietism.[32] In the Pietist strongholds that remained in Germany in the early nineteenth century, such as Württemberg and the Wuppertal region, most participants saw the Awakening as a resurgence of the earlier Pietist movement.

This should not be all that surprising, since many of the key characteristics of the Awakening Movement that I have sketched out—stress on conversions, personal scripture reading, home fellowship meetings, charitable activities, and missions—were important features of the Pietist movement, too.[33] In addition, many participants of the Awakening Movement highly esteemed the leading lights of Pietism—Spener, August Hermann Francke, and Zinzendorf. They read biographies about them, as well as writings by these and other Pietist leaders.

Historians have often followed suit, identifying the Awakening Movement as a revivification of Pietism. Many simply call the early nineteenth-century revivals “Pietism,” as does Hartmut Lehmann in Pietismus und weltliche Ordnung in Württemberg vom 17. bis zum 20. Jahrhundert (Pietism and Worldly Order in Württemberg from the 17th to the 20th Centuries) or more recently Ulrich Gäbler and his collaborators in Der Pietismus im neunzehnten und zwanzigsten Jahrhundert (Pietism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries). However, some historians have pointed out that, despite the many commonalities with Pietism, the Awakening Movement had a couple of significant differences. First, it arose from a different context. While Pietism was a reaction against what Spener and others considered a lifeless orthodoxy that gripped the Protestant churches, the Awakening Movement was largely a reaction against theological rationalism. Both, however, challenged the status quo in the churches.[34] Second, the Awakening Movement—or at least some segments of the Awakening Movement—was more politically engaged than the earlier Pietists. Pietists were often nicknamed “die Stillen im Lande” (quiet ones in the land). However, especially in the Berlin and Pomeranian Awakenings, many participants were aristocrats and government officials (including the Crown Prince).[35] However, many—probably most—of the participants in the Awakening Movement were not any more politically engaged than earlier Pietists.

Another problem arises when trying to determine if the Awakening Movement was a form of Pietism: the term “Pietism” has often been used (from the seventeenth century onward) as a term of reproach. It sometimes carries with it the connotation of a person or movement exhibiting haughtiness, legalism, and bigotry. Critics of the Awakening Movement, both from outside the church and from within the church, often hurled the term “Pietism” at them as an insult, as when Friedrich Engels criticized a preacher in the Awakening Movement for inspiring “that spiritual pride which is so repellent in pietism.”[36] Many participants in the Awakening Movement were sensitive to the negative connotations of the term “Pietism.” The historian Jan Carsten Schnurr has pointed out that even though Christians in the Awakening Movement recognized their affinity with the earlier Pietist movement, many refused to apply the term “Pietism” to themselves, because of the negative images the term conjured up in many people’s minds.[37] Reflecting back on his experiences in the Awakening Movement, one leading figure, Bethmann-Hollweg, admitted that some of the circles he frequented during the Berlin Awakening were characterized by legalism. However, Bethmann-Hollweg claimed that the Berlin preacher Gerhard Friedrich Abraham Strauss freed him and others from the bonds of legalistic Pietism.[38] The historian Robert Bigler, on the other hand, claimed that Strauss, who was a leading pastor and theology professor of the Awakening Movement, was “the main pillar of Pietist influence at the University of Berlin.”[39] Thus, the term Pietism can have different meanings and connotations, depending on who is using it.

Another connotation that Pietism sometimes carries with it is the idea of inwardness and subjectivity. In reflecting back on his own Christian experience, Ludwig von Gerlach claimed that in the 1820s he and his comrades in the Awakening Movement pursued Christianity in a pietistic way by concentrating on their own inner spiritual condition. They focused on becoming conscious of their sins, repentance, brotherly love, and the desire to convert others. According to Gerlach, they wrongly neglected doctrine, theology as a scholarly discipline, the church as part of God’s kingdom, liturgy, Christian art, and politics. Gerlach admitted that he had been pietistic in the 1820s, but afterwards he broadened his experience and no longer considered himself pietistic.[40]

All in all, it seems appropriate to label the Awakening Movement as a form of Pietism, even though some of its adherents later distanced themselves from this appellation. Both movements shared many important features, and people in the Awakening Movement esteemed the earlier Pietists. Otto Dibelius, a German theologian writing in 1917, called the early nineteenth-century revivals “Pietism” and characterized the Awakening Movement in this way: “It is the spirit of living, strictly Bible-believing Christianity, that deliberately separates itself from the ‘world’ and rigidly distinguishes between believers and unbelievers, between converted and unconverted. Bearing witness to their faith and winning souls for the Lord is a duty and necessity for the Pietists [of the nineteenth century].”[41]

 

Conclusion

In sum, the German Awakening Movement was a powerful revival of Christian love for God and people that transformed the lives of multitudes. Its converts were zealous and joyful in their newfound commitment to Jesus Christ, and they sought to help others—both at home and abroad—find the love and joy they had experienced. This resulted in many evangelistic enterprises, such as mission and Bible societies. Their hearts were so filled with love for other people that they established many charitable organizations to help the poor and sick.

 

[1] Moritz August von Bethmann-Hollweg, Familien-Nachricht, Erster Theil (Bonn: Universitäts-Buchdruckerei von Carl Georgi, 1876), 248.

[2] Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, Diary, January 2, 1818,. in Aufzeichnungen aus meinem Leben und Wirken 1795-1877, vol. 1: 1795-1848, ed. Jakob von Gerlach (Schwerin: Verlag von Franz Bahn, 1903), 111.

[3] August Tholuck, Tagebuch, 1821-22, Franckesche Stiftungen Archiv, at:

https://digital.francke-halle.de/fsha/content/pageview/578418. For more on Tholuck’s role in the Awakening Movement, see Richard Weikart, “A Theologian Who Fanned the Flames of Revival: August Tholuck and the German Awakening Movement,” Southern Baptist Journal of Theology 28, 3 (2024): 36-58; on-line at: https://cf.sbts.edu/equip/uploads/2025/06/SBJT-28.3-August-Tholuck-and-German-Awakening-Weikart.pdf.

[4] August Tholuck, April 16, 1821 [actually 1822], Tagebuch, 1821-22.

[5] David S. Schaff, The Life of Philip Schaff (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1897), 29.

[6] George Müller to August Tholuck, December 26, 1836, in August Tholuck Papers, Franckesche Stiftungen Archiv, Halle.

[7] Hajo Holborn, A History of Modern Germany, vol. 1: 1648-1840 (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1966), 495.

[8] Carl Ludwig Nietzsche, Emil Julius Schenk, Briefwechsel, ed. Martin Pernet (Berlin: J. B. Metzler, 2020), xvii-xviii; and Carl Ludwig Nietzsche to Emil Julius Schenk, October 17, 1846, in Carl Ludwig Nietzsche, Emil Julius Schenk, Briefwechsel, 167.

[9] Martin Pernet, Das Christentum im Leben des jungen Friedrich Nietzsche (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1989), 19.

[10] Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, Diary entry, January 28, 1837, in Aufzeichnungen aus meinem Leben und Wirken 1:235.

[11] D. L. Müller, Erweckungsbewegung in Rheydt im Jahre 1750 (Bremen: C. Ed. Müller’s Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1886).

[12] Joh. Chr. Reimpell, “Aus der Anfangszeit der inneren Mission in Deutschland,” Monatsschrift für Innere Mission, 7 (1887): 204.

[13] Rudolf Bendiren, Bilder aus der letzten religiösen Erweckung in Deutschland (Leipzig: Dörffling & Franke, 1897), 75.

[14] Ludwig Tiesmeyer, Die Erweckungsbewegung in Deutschland während des XIX. Jahrhunderts, 4 vols. (Kassel: Verlag von Ernst Röttger, 1901-12).

[15] Johann Christoph Blumhardt, “Mitteilung in Evangelisches Kirchenblatt,” 1845, in Gesammelte Werke: Schriften, Verkündigung, Briefe, Reihe 1: Schriften, Volume 1: Der Kampf in Möttlingen, Texte, eds. Gerhard Schäfer et al (Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 1979), 99, 107, 108, 111, 112.

[16] Die freywillige Armen-Schullehrer-Anstalt zu Beuggen und ihre Einweihungs-Feyer den 22. Juny 1820 (Basel: Felix Schneider, n.d. [presumably 1820]), 35-36; further discussion of the history of these terms is in Andrew Kloes, The German Awakening: Protestant Renewal after the Enlightenment, 1815-1848 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), ch. 1.

[17] Karl Werner, Christian Gottlob Barth, Doktor der Theologie, nach seinem Leben und Wirken, vol. 1 (Calw: Vereinsbuchhandlung, 1865), 296-410.

[18] J. H. Merle d’Aubigné, Germany, England, and Scotland, or, Recollections of a Swiss Minister (New York: Robert Carter, 1848), 17.

[19] Christian Friedrich Spittler, Christian Friedrich Spittler im Rahmen seiner Zeit, ed. A. Sarasin, vol. 1 (Basel: C. F. Spittler, n.d. [1876]), 260.

[20] Johannes Kober, Christian Friedrich Spittler’s Leben (Basel: Verlag von C. F. Spittler, 1887), 50.

[21] Wilhelm Baur, Geschichte und Lebensbilder aus der Erneuerung des religiösen Lebens in den deutschen Befreiungskriegen, vol. 1 (Hamburg: Agentur des Rauhen Hauses, 1864), ch. 5.

[22] Wilhelm Baur, Geschichte und Lebensbilder aus der Erneuerung des religiösen Lebens in den deutschen Befreiungskriegen, vol. 2, 2nd ed. (Hamburg: Agentur des Rauhen Hauses, 1866), 579-80.

[23] Friedrich Wilhelm Krummacher, Eine Selbstbiographie (Berlin: Verlag von Wiegandt und Grieben, 1869), 33; see also Andrew Kloes, German Awakening, 1-2.

[24] August Tholuck, “The Theological Students of Germany,” in The Religious Condition of Christendom, ed. Edward Steane, vol. 2 (London: Evangelical Alliance, 1857), 283.

[25] Gerhard Bernhard van Haar to Johann Caspar Engels, October 23, 1814, at https://familie-engels-briefe.de/briefe/D5F038#normalisiert.

[26] John Post, The Last Great Subsistence Crisis in the Western World (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977), xi-xii.

[27] Merle d’Aubigné, Germany, England, and Scotland, 27-28.

[28] Jan Carsten Schnurr, “Biblische Historie und historische Bibelkritik im Denken der Erweckungsbewegung zur Zeit des Vormärz,” Theologische Beiträge 46 (2015): 346–363.

[29] Jan Carsten Schnurr, “Historische Bezugsgrößen der Erweckungsbewegung in der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts,” Freikirchenforschung 26 (2017): 125-26, 131.

[30] Kloes in German Awakening argues that a key feature of the Awakening Movement was that it was ecumenical; this is only true in a very limited sense of the term.

[31] Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, February 27, 1819, in Tagebuch Ernst Ludwig von Gerlachs, 16 Sept. 1815-Jan. 1832; Gerlach Archiv, University of Erlangen.

[32] Hermann Olshausen to August Tholuck, May 11, 1822, in August Tholuck Papers, Franckesche Stiftungen Archiv, Halle.

[33] Douglas H. Shantz, An Introduction to German Pietism: Protestant Renewal at the Dawn of Modern Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013).

[34] Friedrich Wilhelm Kantzenbach, Die Erweckungsbewegung: Studien zur Geschichte ihrer Entstehung und ersten Ausbreitung in Deutschland (Neuendettelsau: Freimund-Verlag, 1957); Gunther Wenz, “Erweckte Theologie: Friedrich August Gottreu Tholuck (1799-1877),” in Profile des neuzeitlichen Protestantismus, vol. 1: Aufklärung, Idealismus, Vormärz, ed. Friedrich Wilhelm Graf (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus Gerd Mohn, 1990), 252.

[35] David Ellis, Politics and Piety: The Protestant Awakening in Prussia, 1816-1856 (Leiden: Brill, 2017); Robert M. Bigler, The Politics of German Protestantism: The Rise of the Protestant Church Elite in Prussia, 1815-1848 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972).

[36] Frederick Engels, “Two Sermons by F. W. Krummacher,” in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Collected Works, vol. 2: Frederick Engels: 1838-42 (New York: International Publishers, 1975), 121.

[37] Jan Carsten Schnurr, “Geschichtsdeutung im Zeichen des Reiches Gottes Historiographie- und begriffsgeschichtliche Anmerkungen zur Geschichtsliteratur der protestantischen Erweckungsbewegung im Vormärz,” Historische Zeitschrift 291 (2010): 374-75; Schnurr, “Historische Bezugsgrößen der Erweckungsbewegung,” 129.

[38] Bethmann-Hollweg, Familien-Nachricht, Erster Theil, 254, 325, 382.

[39] Bigler, Politics of German Protestantism, 42.

[40] Gerlach, Aufzeichnungen aus meinem Leben und Wirken, 1: 117, 337; 2: 239.

[41] Otto Dibelius, Das Königliche Predigerseminar zu Wittenberg, 1817-1917 (Berlin-Lichterfelde: Verlag von Edwin Runge, n.d. [1917], 67-68.

 

Chapter 3

The Revival Fire Breaks Out in Berlin

“O Lord, revive Your work in the midst of the years! In the midst of the years make it known; In wrath remember mercy.” (Habakkuk 3:2)

On May 28, 1816, a physician in Bavaria, Johann Nepomuk Ringseis, wrote an explosive letter to his friend, the University of Berlin law professor Friedrich Carl von Savigny, about the religious revivals that were occurring in his Catholic homeland. Ringseis reported that in Munich the kingdom of God was advancing, largely through the Catholic priest Johannes Gossner’s ministry, which was producing a growing love and zeal among believers. However, hearing reports of revivals brought about by Ignaz Lindl, another Catholic priest, Ringseis visited Lindl’s parish of Baindlkirch (west of Munich) and was completely amazed and exhilarated by what he experienced there. Ringseis testified, “The times of the first apostolic church have returned; whores, drunks, gamblers, and liars have become pious and spiritual, full of faith and love. Maids and servants have completely radiant, ennobled faces and show an insight into the holy scriptures, before which I must bow with shame and deep emotion.” Ringseis claimed that he had never heard a preacher like Lindl, who in his extemporaneous sermons “spoke with tremendous power,” so intense that it went “like lightning through all the members of my body” and brought many congregants to tears. Lindl’s message, according to Ringseis, was that all people are sinners, and that salvation does not come through works or rites, nor can Mary or the saints help us, but only Jesus can save us by grace through faith. According to Ringseis, Lindl often brought his audience to tears, and they would go home—sometimes a ten-hour walk away—transformed.[1]

Savigny’s brother-in-law, Clemens Brentano, who was living with him at the time, was so captivated by the letter that he copied it out and shared it with his friends in Berlin, most of whom were Protestant (though Brentano was Catholic). One of Brentano’s friends, Adolf von Thadden, was so impressed by the report that he decided to go to Bavaria to experience it for himself. He and his friend Carl Wilhelm von Lancizolle, a law student who later became a professor of law at the University of Berlin, set out for Bavaria in August 1816. On the way they stopped to visit some Christians in Nuremberg. While there Lancizolle was so impressed with the spiritual life of the linguist and teacher Johann Arnold Kanne that he claimed that Kanne was the first real Christian he had ever met.[2] Thadden and Lancizolle were awestruck by the revival they saw in Bavaria. From Bavaria Lancizolle sent a friend in Berlin, Carl von Rappard, a copy of Martin Boos’s book, Christus, das Ende der Gesetz zur Gerechtigkeit (Christ, the End of the Law for Righteousness).  Rappard passed the book on to Ludwig von Gerlach, who quickly read it and expressed appreciation for it.[3]

After Thadden and Lancizolle arrived back in Berlin on November 10, 1816, they excitedly shared the news about the Catholic Awakening in Bavaria and effectively launched the Berlin Awakening. According to their friend, Moritz August von Bethmann-Hollweg, when they returned to Berlin they were “deeply gripped by what they had seen and heard [in Bavaria], yet stunned by the newness of it,” and “their reports kindled a fire among their close circle of friends, as well as in their own hearts.”[4] In another venue Bethmann-Hollweg remarked that after witnessing the great joy of the Bavarian revival, Thadden and Lancizolle were able “to bring back into the circle of their friends the fire that had fallen there [in Bavaria] from heaven, and it ignited mightily [in Berlin].”[5]

Lancizolle experienced a conversion on November 30, when he, Thadden, and a few friends met with Johann Daniel Anders, pastor of the Moravian Brethren congregation in Berlin, to prepare their hearts for a communion service at Justus Gottfried Hermes’s church the following day.[6] At that meeting with Anders, Lancizolle wept and confessed his sins openly. He was so excited about his conversion that he hurried to his friend Bethmann-Hollweg, who had not been present at that meeting. According to Bethmann-Hollweg, Lancizolle “spoke the unforgettable words: Christ lives; he is truly risen; I have experienced him in my heart.”[7] Anders would be one of the favorite preachers of the Berlin Awakening until he transferred to the United States in 1827.

Within the next year or two, most of Thadden’s and Lancizolle’s friends had conversion experiences and embraced the Awakening. On December 7 they began holding regular fellowship meetings at the home of Johann Georg Seegemund, a theology student who later became a pastor.[8] When they met together at Seegemund’s home on New Years’ Eve of 1816, Seegemund read a sermon and prayer, and they all sang together.[9] Then, when midnight came, Seegemund remarked that they had never really prayed together yet, and he suggested that they kneel together and pray for the “outpouring of the Holy Spirit.” Upon doing so Bethmann-Hollweg experienced God’s presence in such a powerful way that, he explained, “with the deepest shaking of my entire inner being and with a hot stream of tears I recognized my sin, which stood before my eyes like a mountain.” Bethmann-Hollweg was so profoundly touched that he regarded this as his spiritual awakening or conversion experience. He later remarked that this “Pentecost” experience bound him and his friends together with an even stronger bond of love.[10] Thadden reminisced that this meeting was such a blessing that it was one of the most beautiful days he could remember.[11]

Years later Bethmann-Hollweg described his experience that night: “. . . it pleased the Lord, in a small circle of young men, whom he granted a Pentecost on New Years’ night 1816-17, among them my dear Thadden, also to appear living to my soul [that night] and to share with me something of his Spirit.”[12] In the summer of 1817 Bethmann-Hollweg visited the Nuremberg Circle, including Kanne and Johann Tobias Kiessling, before proceeding to Bavaria to witness the revival inspired by Gossner, Boos, and Lindl. He was quite impressed with Gossner and wrote to Lancizolle that at Gossner’s meetings people’s faces radiated joy; he stated, “I have never seen anything so simple, so heartfelt, and so alive.”[13] When Gossner came through Berlin on his way to St. Petersburg in 1820, Bethmann-Hollweg invited him to preach at his home.[14]

Bethmann-Hollweg later recognized that in the zeal of their new spiritual experiences, he and his newly awakened Christian friends tended toward subjectivity that flowed from Pietistic influences. They also faced temptations toward legalism and exclusivism, as they emphasized the differences between those who were awakened and those who were not. However, Bethmann-Hollweg claimed that his circle of friends did not reject nature or the arts, as some Pietists did.[15]  In any case, their lives were filled with love for God, love for fellow Christians, love for those who were less fortunate than themselves, and a zeal to spread the good news that had changed their lives so dramatically.

After playing a key role in initiating the Berlin Awakening, both Bethmann-Hollweg and Lancizolle continued to promote the Awakening after joining the law faculty at the University of Berlin in the early 1820s. Lancizolle held Friday evening meetings at his home for Christian edification and fellowship. Bethmann-Hollweg attended these meetings and participated in numerous other Christian activities, such as helping found the Berlin Mission Society.[16]

 

The Gerlach Brothers Catch the Revival Fire

Another of Thadden’s friends who would become a leading figure in the Awakening Movement, both in Berlin and elsewhere in Prussia, was Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach (usually known as Ludwig von Gerlach), who later served in the Prussian judiciary and the German parliament. Despite the influences of his friends and churches and fellowship meetings he attended in 1816-17, he didn’t have a conversion experience until May 1818. Gerlach met Thadden, who, he later stated, “so decisively influenced my entire life,” in January 1815.[17] However, when the Berlin Awakening broke out among Thadden, Lancizolle, and their friends, Gerlach did not immediately jump on board, despite many of his friends converting. He was in a seeking mode from 1816 to 1818. In his September 29, 1816, diary entry, for instance, he stated, “I am not firm in the faith; nonetheless I will not fear the light, for only the way of light can lead into the firm fortress of faith.”[18] This attitude seems to have characterized his life for the next couple of years. He was interested in religious matters and would talk about Christianity with his newly converted friends. In December 1816 he was reading the Swiss pastor Johann Kaspar Lavater’s Diary, which was impacting him significantly.[19]

Though Gerlach seemed to be religious before 1818, he experienced a profound spiritual change in 1818. He placed two crosses in his diary in May 1818 to signify the beginning of a new era in his life—his heartfelt commitment to Jesus Christ. Interestingly, in a passage of his diary in October 1818, where he discussed this transformation that occurred in May, he also suggested that conversions do not have to be instantaneous, so it seems that he may have regarded his own transformation as being more gradual.[20] However, he certainly did experience a significant change in his life in 1818. In an autobiographical account he reminisced that for him 1819 was “a springtime in contrast to the confusion of light and darkness, cold and warmth in the years 1810 to 1818.”[21] His diary plainly reveals his newfound zeal for the things of God. In July 1819, for instance, he wrote, “O dear God, . . . make me firm in the bands of humility and faith, that I don’t stray from you. . . . Let me take my cross upon myself and never seek after pleasure, except in you.”[22]

It seems likely that Gerlach’s transformation in May 1818 was at least in part precipitated by a letter that Thadden had written to him in March. In that letter Thadden wrote that he thought Gerlach “viewed Christianity much too objectively.” Thadden admitted that Gerlach had knowledge about God, his own sinfulness, grace, and other Christian doctrines, and he was thankful that Gerlach had abandoned Schleiermacher’s theology. However, Thadden stated, God “wants our heart and indeed all of it.” Thadden continued: “He [God] asks above all, whether we have died so much to sin and ourselves, that we really live the hidden life with Christ in God, whether we really stand in blessed fellowship of the heart with the bridegroom of our soul, who tirelessly draws us to himself with an immense love, who unceasingly asks us in words and deeds (both his and ours): ‘Do you love me?’”[23] When Gerlach wrote Thadden a week later, he humbly acknowledged that Thadden was right: “What you wrote about me is only too true, and perhaps even more than you wrote.”[24]

A friend of Thadden who had a profound impact on Gerlach during the early phases of the Berlin Awakening was Ernst Senfft von Pilsach, who many years later became the president of Pomerania. Gerlach noted that Senfft was very earnest about his Christian faith. He was, according to Gerlach, “an extremely lively and energetically effective member of this entire circle” who in many respects exercised an even more powerful influence over him than Thadden.[25]

When Gerlach later in life described the early years of the Berlin Awakening, he noted that its central features were repentance, a living, heartfelt faith, brotherly love, the duty to confess one’s faith and to proselytize, and a moral earnestness. These new converts, however, were not very concerned, he explained, about dogmas, academic theology, liturgy, or religious art. They also were not very interested in how God’s kingdom manifested itself in the church or in politics.[26] The moral earnestness that Gerlach mentioned made some—but not all—of the German Awakening Movement’s participants wary of the theater and dancing and similar activities they considered worldly. Gerlach, for instance, went to the theater for the last time in June 1818, and several months later he recorded in his diary that the Oertzen sisters, one of whom he later married, did not believe in dancing.[27] Whatever they believed about the theater and dancing—and not everyone in the Awakening agreed that these were forbidden—for Gerlach, Thadden, and their circle of friends, the primary focus was on developing a loving relationship with God. Gerlach wrote to Thadden in August 1819:

Thus I thank God, that I now experience in a living and practical way, how the true and living faith exists only in the surrender of the heart—which, if it truly stands in grace, not solely in the sweet fellowship with the children of God, but rather always and in all places united with Christ and receiving power from him, in order to endure everything and hope everything for his sake, in order to love your neighbor as yourself.[28]

Gerlach also confessed to Thadden in that letter that he was weak spiritually, thus acknowledging his need to grow and change.

Ludwig von Gerlach’s older brother, Leopold, who later became a Prussian general and adjutant of the crown prince, likewise embraced the Awakening Movement in its early phases in Berlin. In his last year at the University of Heidelberg in 1810-11 he came to know the theology student August Neander, and together they read church history, Neander’s field of study. His relationship with Neander led Leopold, he later confessed, to “an awakened interest in Christianity and the church [and] clarity about the necessity for a new decisive opposition toward rationalism.”[29] However, Leopold admitted that his new interest in Christianity and the church was at that time solely head knowledge and did not yet grip his heart. Only later, with the advent of the Berlin Awakening, did he come to a heartfelt faith. I do not know exactly when Leopold experienced his conversion, but in September 1817 he wrote to his older brother Wilhelm that he had been reading a “wonderful and entirely unique book,” a biography of Count Nikolaus von Zinzendorf, that he found very edifying.[30]

Ludwig von Gerlach’s younger brother, Otto, was also powerfully impacted by the Awakening Movement, in large part through the influence of Ludwig. When, as a sixteen-year-old, he read the March 1818 letter from Thadden to Ludwig, he wrote, “Thadden’s wonderful letter to Ludwig has made a deep impression on me. What a man! I don’t know, whether I should revere and admire him or rather love him with my entire soul. He is a true Israelite, in whom is no deceit.”[31] (This last sentence is an allusion to Jesus’s disciple Nathanael in John 1:47). However, when Otto left Berlin and was studying law at the University of Heidelberg in 1819-20, he—by his own admission—was living in a “state of half-heartedness and distance from God.” However, in May 1820 he wrote to Ludwig, telling him that an earlier letter from Ludwig had opened his eyes and “wakened me out of a deep sleep.” It seems clear from Otto’s letter that this marked his conversion experience, and from this point on his Christian life was characterized by a new-found zeal.[32] A couple of months later Otto reported to Ludwig that he had gone to Wernigerode to hear Seegemund’s inaugural sermon, which was full of living faith and “awakening power” (Erweckungskraft).[33] In March 1821 Otto described the transformation in his life to his older brother, Wilhelm, stating, “Since last summer [probably actually May] I was awakened out of my sins and death, in that previously I only knew about the gospel as an empty shell. Indeed I lived very nicely with my correct beliefs, but I was full of pure abomination in my heart, full of outrageous vanity, horrible fleshly lust, spiritual lethargy, and everything that can awfully darken the image of God in one’s heart.”[34] In 1821 Otto decided to abandon the study of law for theology, so he could engage in full-time Christian service.

At first Otto pursued a career in academic theology, and he began lecturing at the University of Berlin in 1828. However, over the course of the next several years he decided that his real passion was pastoral ministry rather than lecturing to university students. He sought and received an appointment in 1835 as pastor at St. Elizabeth Church in Berlin, a newly founded church in a working-class neighborhood. Otto wrote to his brother Ludwig in April 1841 that his congregation was experiencing blessing, in part through his introduction of voluntary auricular confession before communion.[35] In addition to organizing charitable activities to meet the needs of his impoverished congregants, he also began training young pastoral candidates. In 1836 and thereafter he stirred some controversy, however, by refusing to marry divorced persons, since he believed that Jesus had forbidden divorce and remarriage. The Prussian king and many church officials were angry with Otto for this, and they threatened him with suspension from his pastorate. However, he also had supporters in high places, including the crown prince, and this apparently protected him from any adverse repercussions, even though he continued to refuse to marry divorced persons.[36] After the crown prince ascended the throne as King Frederick William IV (in 1840), he appointed Otto in 1847 as the court preacher at the Berlin Cathedral.

 

Pastor Hermes’s Role in the Berlin Awakening

Even before the Berlin Awakening broke out in 1816, Hermes, pastor of the Gertrude Church (Gertraudkirche, often nicknamed the Spittelkirche) since 1797, was preparing the soil for it. Several of Thadden’s close friends began attending Hermes’s church in late 1815 and early 1816. At the repeated encouragement of his law professor Savigny, Bethmann-Hollweg, together with his close friend Lancizolle, went to hear Hermes for the first time on November 26, 1815. Bethmann-Hollweg was gripped by the truth and love flowing from Hermes’s sermon, which exposed his spiritual lack. He explained, “It was as if this man with his childlike, simple speech spoke only to me, as though he knew what was in my breast and wanted to help me.” The next Sunday Bethmann-Hollweg returned to Schleiermacher’s church, where he had earlier hoped to find fulfillment for his spiritual quest. However, he was sorely disappointed this time in Schleiermacher and determined: “I will return to my old pious Hermes, in his small church, where one can forget about the large city and the false education and all the distorted things and can feel elevated and strengthened in a childlike and pious manner.”[37] Though Bethmann-Hollweg’s conversion did not happen until later and was not directly tied to Hermes’s preaching, it seems that Hermes’s sermons helped prepare Bethmann-Hollweg’s heart for a deeper experience with God.

Ludwig von Gerlach also began attending Hermes’s church in early 1816.[38] However, even though Gerlach called Hermes’s church the “spiritual center” for him and his friends by 1816, he admitted that at that time he and his friends were “on the whole not completely serious about Christianity.”[39] Despite the many positive comments in his diary about the messages he heard Hermes and other Christian pastors preach, he also acknowledged in the summer of 1816 that his own relationship to Christianity was problematic, because he was still entertaining pantheistic ideas.[40] In January 1818, just a few months before his own conversion experience, Gerlach reported that the young man next to him began weeping after Hermes’s sermon.[41]

Hermes also had a powerful influence over the three Oertzen sisters: Ida, Henriette, and Auguste. They were not raised with any Christian instruction, but Ida, the eldest, first learned about redemption through Jesus when Hermes gave her confirmation instruction.[42] Subsequently the Oertzen sisters became well-known for their piety and religious zeal, as they associated with churches and fellowships connected to the Awakening. Ultimately they married three key figures in the Berlin Awakening: Senfft von Pilsach, Thadden, and Ludwig von Gerlach.

In any case, Hermes was one of the favorite pastors of the Berlin Awakening from 1816 until his death in late 1818. Thadden esteemed him so highly that he always kept a portrait of Hermes hanging in his home.[43]

 

Kottwitz Becomes the Spiritual Father of the Berlin Awakening

Though Kottwitz did not initiate the Berlin Awakening, it did not take long for Thadden and his friends to become acquainted with him. Kottwitz was already moving in the circles that Thadden and his friends would frequent. He often attended Hermes’s church, and he was also a close friend of Pastor Johann Jänicke, another favorite of Thadden and his friends. Bethmann-Hollweg mentioned that before he left Berlin to go to Italy in June 1817, Kottwitz blessed his travels, so he—and presumably others among his friends—already had contact with Kottwitz less than six months after his conversion.[44] According the Bethmann-Hollweg, Kottwitz’s influence on him and his fellow Christians was profound. When Thadden and Lancizolle returned to Berlin from Bavaria in November 1816, they ignited a fire in the hearts of their friends. “At the same time that they brought back in holy vessels the fire that fell from heaven in Bavaria,” Bethmann-Hollweg explained, “the same was fanned into flames for them and all of us in the brotherly fellowship of the venerable Baron von Kottwitz, who with inner joy in the young life and with wise counsel came to our assistance.”[45] Ludwig von Gerlach concurred about Kottwitz’s influence. He later wrote that Kottwitz “around 1819 [became] also for me and the Thadden circle of friends a Christian centerpoint in his poorhouse, in which he lived, and with his evening prayer meetings.”[46]

Thadden, the Gerlach brothers, and many of their friends began attending Kottwitz’s Christian fellowship meetings held at his Voluntary Employment Institution at the Alexanderplatz in Berlin. Two of the more influential of these who attended his meetings and befriended Kottwitz in the early phases of the Awakening Movement were the judges Friedrich Focke and Adolf Le Coq. Kottwitz held his assemblies on Sunday and Wednesday evenings for teaching, prayer, and singing. He did not preach or teach at these meetings himself, but he would often recruit like-minded clergy, such as Jänicke or Anders, or later Otto von Gerlach, to bring a message. Sometimes he would find theology students to lead the meetings.[47] Occasionally if no clergyman was available, Kottwitz would read a published sermon to edify those at his gathering.

Kottwitz was renowned for his spirituality and left a deep impression on his fellow Christians. When one of the leading pastors of the Awakening Movement in the Wuppertal region, Karl August Döring, visited Berlin in 1840 for the coronation of King Frederick William IV, he remarked that of the many men he met there, one of the most significant was Kottwitz. The newly-crowned monarch honored Kottwitz, Döring noted, by having long conversations with him. Döring continued, “And in fact—one can scarcely think of anything more stirring or more noble, than this old man who is still filled with youthful vigor, this pure spirit, this truly pious, sincere Christian.”[48]

Many theology students at the University of Berlin found Kottwitz’s spirituality attractive. According to Friedrich Wilhelm Kantzenbach, one of the foremost historians to study the Awakening Movement, “Kottwitz shaped an entire generation of Awakened theologians.”[49] Some of this happened even before the outbreak of the Awakening Movement. In June 1816 Kottwitz wrote his friend, the theologian Heinrich Leonhard Heubner, “For a long time the Lord has ordained it, that I have always had several theologians [i.e., students] under my roof, who through their upright seeking for truth and light have been very edifying to me and now are employed in very good positions.”[50]

No theology student at the University of Berlin was more enamoroured with Kottwitz than August Tholuck, who later became professor of theology at the University of Halle. Tholuck arrived in Berlin in early 1817 to study Oriental langauges at the University of Berlin. He contacted a famous philologist, Heinrich Friedrich von Diez, who was so impressed with Tholuck’s knowledge that he invited Tholuck to live with him

After his conversion in 1817 or early 1818, Tholuck considered Kottwitz his spiritual mentor. Tholuck wrote to a friend in 1821 that Kottwitz “is surely the greatest among all living disciples [of Jesus],“ and was “my heavenly leader, my teacher, my father, my Kottwitz.”[51]

Indeed, in Tholuck’s popular 1823 book, Die Lehre von der Sünde, und vom Versöhner, oder Die Wahre Weihe des Zweiflers (The Doctrine of Sin and the Reconciler, or The True Consecration of the Doubter), he painted a portrait of Kottwitz in a character he called Father Abraham. Guido, one of the fictional characters in Tholuck’s book, described Father Abraham as a patriarch who “has also become the guiding star of my life.” After describing Abraham’s many charitable activities, Guido expressed admiration for his inner spiritual life, which radiated heavenly beams to earth. In this patriarch’s circle “I always felt the presence of the Lord,” he remarked. When Guido asked him if this was a time of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the patriarch answered, “Yes, a great resurrection morning is breaking. Hundreds of young people in all places are awakening through the Spirit of God. In all places the converted are forming closer relationships. Even the scholarly world is becoming the servant and friend of the crucified one.”[52] Tholuck’s book became a favorite of the Awakening Movement.

Not only did Tholuck call Kottwitz his father in Christ, but in late July 1823—after spending time with Kottwitz that day—he wrote in his diary, “O you most holy Kottwitz! You immortal star of my life. So long as you remain happy and love me, my life is also bearable.”[53] Soon after Kottwitz’s eightieth birthday (in 1837) Tholuck paid tribute to him: “If I ask myself, what is the pulse that flows through all my work for God—it is Father Kottwitz. He is my apologetics, which keeps me safe from [D. F.] Strauss [a liberal theologian] and everything else.”[54] Tholuck not only attended Kottwitz’s meetings regularly, but as he matured as a theology student, he even occasionally preached at them.[55]

Of course, Tholuck directed other theology students to Kottwitz, too. After converting to Christ in 1820 through Tholuck’s influence, Hermann Olshausen, later professor of theology at the University of Königsberg (and later yet at the University of Erlangen), associated with Kottwitz’s circle and fondly recalled the power in those meetings.[56] Rudolf Stier, another friend of Tholuck’s who converted in 1820, likewise came to love Kottwitz’s fellowship meetings. Early in their relationship Kottwitz once introduced Stier to another person, stating, “In this disciple the Lord has rescued from Satan a writer, who will now only serve Him with his gifts.” Stier was surprised by Kottwitz’s claim that up to now he had been serving Satan with his writing; later, however, he came to understand and agree with Kottwitz’s perspective.[57] On June 11, 1820, Stier expressed his admiration for Kottwitz in his diary, writing, “If the Lord is like this in his disciples, how must he himself be!”[58] A couple of months later Stier wrote to his father about the profound impact of the Berlin Awakening on his life:

Since I have been in Berlin again, the greatest spiritual change has occurred in my soul; through God’s eternally wonderful grace I have been brought to the insight—oh, if only I could tell of all the miracles that God has manifested!—about what true, living, saving Christianity, and more exactly, before God’s judgment throne, what saving faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God and the Savior of the world, is. I have been awakened out of a terrible, deep, blind, sinful sleep, out of the condition that the holy scriptures call spiritual death, which I was in, despite all my knowledge and writing.[59]

Tholuck and Kottwitz together helped Stier change the direction of his life, bringing him to a zealous, heartfelt faith in Jesus that would shape his future ministry.

Another young theologian, Adolph Zahn, met Kottwitz in 1820 in Ratzeburg and from that time on considered him his friend and leader. In the spring of 1821 he visited Kottwitz for three weeks and stayed in his institution, which he called both a refuge for tax collectors and sinners, as well as a gathering place for young theologians and pastors. According to Zahn, “Truly hundreds went through this school [i.e., Kottwitz’s fellowship meetings] and still today bless the hour in which they came into his [Kottwitz’s] presence.” Zahn testified that Kottwitz exuded humility, however, and often said, “The Lord does not have pleasure in the strength of the steed nor in anyone’s body. A broken heart and a contrite spirit are the offerings that please Him.” In summing up this brief time with Kottwitz and his circle, Zahn stated, “What a profit for my entire life!”[60]

Another theology student who studied in Berlin in 1838-39, Johann Heinrich August Ebrard, considered Kottwitz one of the greatest instruments that God used to minister to his inner man.[61] He called Kottwitz a man “of apostolic form” and described him thus: “Never have I had the impression to this degree of a heavenly beauty. It was the beauty of the resurrected body, which broke forth from the decaying features of his worldly body. . . . [he had] a quiet, soft, serious manner, full of kindness and yet full of inner conviction, but entirely saturated with an inner, pure humility.”[62]

Toward the end of Kottwitz’s life, in 1840 and 1842, the young Swiss-born German theologian (and later prominent American church historian) Philip Schaff met Kottwitz and later wrote an amazing tribute to him:

I never met a man who seemed so nearly to approach the ideal of an evangelical saint.  He lived in very plain style on the Alexander Platz in Berlin, in an orphan asylum which he founded, or superintended, and took special delight in the company of young divines.  He pointed them to the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world, and to His everlasting Gospel as the only source of true theology and usefulness in the Church. Not only Tholuck, but also Neander, Olshausen, Rothe, Müller, Hengstenberg, and many others were edified and encouraged by his word and example, and he may be regarded as one of the lay-fathers of the modern evangelical theology in Germany. It was impossible to resist the influence of the purity and simplicity of his character, and his ardent love to God and man. He combined in a rare degree the finest culture of a noble man with childlike faith, true dignity with unaffected humility. He seemed to be transformed into the holy image of Jesus. His whole life was a course of unostentatious, disinterested benevolence, an imitation of Him who went about doing good and sacrificed himself for the salvation of the world.[63]

Schaff, like many others, had been directed to Kottwitz by Tholuck, one of his theology professors.

Tholuck also steered his American theology students to Kottwitz if they went to Berlin. While studying in Berlin in 1827-28 the Princeton theologian Charles Hodge attended Kottwitz’s gatherings. After meeting Kottwitz in October 1827, Hodge was not surprised that so many regarded Kottwitz as a patriarch, for, in Hodge’s view, “he looks and speaks like Christian love personified.”[64] Another American theology student studying in Berlin, Elisha Ballantine, who later taught at Indiana University, reported that “the impression wh.[ich] one receives in the company of such a man [Kottwitz] is of no ordinary character. He lives almost in heaven, his words are full of the unction of the spirit and of the Bible.” Ballantine not only found his time with Kottwitz “very refreshing and quickening and instructive,” but Kottwitz also arranged for Ballantine to come with him to spend an evening with the Prussian crown prince and his family.[65] Another American theologian, Benjamin Mosby Smith, who later taught at Union Seminary in Virginia, consorted with Kottwitz in early 1837 when he visited Berlin for several weeks. Smith recorded in his diary that when he was ready to depart from Berlin, Kottwitz “almost made me cry as he gave me his parting blessing and 3 kisses.”[66]

Another influential figure who admired Kottwitz was Hans Hugo von Kleist-Retzow, who studied law at the University of Berlin in the 1830s and later became president of the Rhineland province. Kleist-Retzow was pious religiously from his youth, since his parents embraced the Awakening Movement. For a time he wanted to be a missionary, and while studying in Berlin he would begin each day by reading the New Testament in Greek. Around 1838 he came into contact with Kottwitz, and on February 8, 1839, he wrote to a friend this glowing tribute to Kottwitz: “What an honorable figure. Even at such an advanced age and with the obvious physical weaknesses accompanying it, such spiritual freshness and power. . . . Everything that he thinks or does is yielded to God. In all human relationships he has a clear and deeply Christian view.” While Kleist-Retzow lived in Berlin, he enjoyed Otto von Gerlach’s preaching. Nonetheless, at that time he was still struggling spiritually and did not seem able to get full victory over his sinful inclinations. In 1841, however, after moving to Frankfurt an der Oder to work with Ludwig von Gerlach, he did achieve spiritual victory, in part through Gerlach’s influence.[67]

Kottwitz enjoyed connections with the highest government officials in Prussia, including the king and the crown prince. He used these relationships first and foremost to solicit help for his Voluntary Employment Institution, which provided work and housing for poor people.[68] However, he also used whatever sway he had to try to influence government policies toward the churches, especially appointments of pastors and theology professors at the Prussian universities. He enjoyed some success in this regard, largely because both the king and the crown prince favored the appointments of more orthodox theologians.[69] In an 1837 letter Kottwitz expressed delight that by that time the Prussian universities had a large contingent of theologians who were true disciples of the Lord.[70] He was not always successful, however. In December 1834 he wrote to the king to protest against the appointment of the Hegelian philosopher Georg Andreas Gabler, but Gabler received the post anyway.[71] He was more successful, however, in convincing the king in the mid-1830s to establish four new churches in working-class neighborhoods of Berlin to accommodate the growing population. One of these new churches was the Elizabeth Church, where Kottwitz’s friend Otto von Gerlach was appointed pastor.[72]

Kottwitz was one of the central figures of the Berlin Awakening. He was the friend and/or mentor of just about all the leading figures in the Berlin Awakening, and he had connections with many leaders of the Awakening elsewhere in Germany, too. He not only founded a major charitable institution, the Voluntary Employment Institution, that served as an example for others to follow, but he also promoted prison reform and prison ministry.

 

Pastors in Berlin Promoting the Awakening

Jänicke, like Kottwitz, was both a forerunner and participant in the Berlin Awakening. Thadden and many of his friends who helped spawn the Berlin Awakening attended Jänicke’s services at the Bethlehem Church. Ludwig von Gerlach’s first exposure to Jänicke was at a Saturday evening prayer meeting at Jänicke’s home on October 5, 1816, which was before Thadden and Lancizolle returned to Berlin from the Bavarian revivals. Gerlach reported that at that meeting, “I have never heard such wonderful preaching about the transformation of people through faith.”[73] Gerlach occasionally attended Jänicke’s church after that time, but in January 1819, after Hermes died, Thadden convinced him to become a regular member of Jänicke’s congregation. Thadden insisted that Jänicke’s preaching was even better than Hermes’s had been.[74] From 1819 until Jänicke’s death in 1827 he would be one of the favorite preachers for many of the participants of the Awakening Movement, even though his German-language service was at 7 AM on Sunday morning.[75] (Because of the different times of the various services in Berlin, many in the Awakening attended two or more services each Sunday).

Interestingly, in 1816 and thereafter, about the same time that the Awakening Movement broke out among Thadden and his circle, Jänicke’s ministry once a month at the Moravian congregation in Rixdorf, a suburb of Berlin, began bearing fruit. It began with the conversion of six women, after which Jänicke prayed that God would expand it to sixty. Indeed, by the end of the year, sixty were attending the church there.[76]

In October 1822 Gerhard Friedrich Abraham Strauss (not to be confused with the notorious Hegelian theologian, David Friedrich Strauss) infused new life into the Berlin Awakening. Strauss had been a Lutheran pastor in Elberfeld, where revival had broken out in his congregation in 1816. He arrived in Berlin in October 1822 as the court preacher, so he held services at the Berlin Cathedral, and he also taught courses in practical theology at the University of Berlin. His church services were so packed that people had to come early to find a seat. Regular attendees included the crown prince and others in the royal court, Senfft von Pilsach, Bethmann-Hollweg, Lancizolle, and Focke. Sometimes King Frederick William III attended, too.[77]

Friedrich Arndt, a pastor who had studied under Strauss at the university, paid this tribute to Strauss’s preaching:

Everyone had the impression: We have never heard anything like this; . . . great awakenings occurred; for uncounted numbers these were the days of their first love; still today those who were gripped and converted cannot extol the blessing enough, which they received and which continues to live and affect them in unforgettable and lasting ways. Before the throne of grace they will thank this man for eternity, who God used as the tool for the salvation of their soul.[78]

Strauss’s preaching helped reinvigorate the Awakening in Berlin. When the theology student (and later pastor) Wilhelm Löhe heard Strauss preach in June 1828, he considered Strauss’s one-and-a-half hour long sermon excellent.[79] One aristocratic lady in Berlin, Elise von Bernstorff, was initially suspicious of Strauss’s popularity, but after hearing him preach, she became one of his most zealous auditors. Strangely, however, she remarked that she thought he emphasized “sudden awakenings and conversions” too much.[80] Likely most of his congregation did not have such reservations about his preaching, especially those who owed their conversion to his sermons.

In addition to his preaching, under Strauss’s ministry home fellowships flourished, where love and joy predominated and denominational differences were downplayed.[81] Strauss attended some home fellowship meetings, such as one at Lancizolle’s home on Friday evenings, where Ludwig von Gerlach also attended.[82] Strauss also began holding a Tuesday evening meeting at his home. Initially this was for his university students, but soon his home meeting expanded to eighty people, including quite a few army officers, including generals. At these meetings they would read sermons from the church fathers and discuss them. After awhile Strauss had to halt these meetings, because the large attendance put too much strain on his wife.[83]

Bethmann-Hollweg claimed that Strauss’s ministry in Berlin was a great blessing to himself and his circle of friends. Strauss would give weekly talks at a home meeting that alternated between the homes of Bethmann-Hollweg, Moritz and Luise von Schönberg, the geography professor Carl Ritter, and elsewhere. What Bethmann-Hollweg especially appreaciated about Strauss was that, while promoting the Awakening and upholding more traditional Protestant theology, he opposed the legalism that was creeping into some circles in the Awakening.[84]

Several other pastors in Berlin were favorites of participants in the Awakening Movement. Franz Theremin became pastor of the French Reformed congregation at the Friedrichswerder Church in Berlin in 1810, and his church services were packed.[85] Then in 1814 he was appointed court preacher at the Berlin Cathedral, where he attracted crowds. In 1820 Karl Löffler succeeded Hermes at the Gertrude Church. According to Ludwig von Gerlach, Löffler “preached repentance powerfully and stirred the young people powerfully.”[86] Many in the circles of the Awakening went to Löffler’s services, including Princess Marianne and the Oertzen sisters.[87] The theology student Richard Rothe wrote to his parents that Löffler was the “very best preacher in all Berlin.”[88] Unfortunately, Löffler had family problems that forced him to leave Berlin in 1824.[89] After Löffler departed, Friedrich Gustav Lisco succeeded him at the St. Gertrude Church. Lisco’s preaching also resonated with the Awakening. When Charles Hodge attended Lisco’s service in March 1828 the crowd was so large it was impossible to find a seat. A friend of Hodge told him that the previous week it was not even possible to find a place to stand.[90] Another Berlin pastor who preached to large crowds during the Awakening was Christian Ludwig Couard, who began ministering at St. George’s Church in 1819.[91] Friedrich Nietzsche’s father abandoned his rationalist theology and embraced a more orthodox supernaturalist position after studying Couard’s sermons.[92]

 

Gossner’s Contribution to the Berlin Awakening

As we have already seen, Gossner played a leading role in the Catholic Awakening in Bavaria, and Thadden and Lancizolle’s visit to him and his colleagues there was a crucial stimulus to the Berlin Awakening in 1816. Gossner’s writings also had a powerful effect in promoting the Awakening Movement throughout Germany—and indeed elsewhere, too, as some of them were translated into other languages. The eighteen-year-old Johann Hinrich Wichern, who later became famous for establishing an orphanage in Hamburg and for founding the Inner Mission, wrote in his diary in 1826 that the past eight months had been for him a time of much prayer, “especially for the Holy Spirit.” He mentioned that Gossner’s book, Weg zur Seligkeit (Way of Salvation) “helped me a lot” during that time. Wichern described his spiritual life at that time: “It became ever clearer. The Spirit of God came ever more upon me.”[93] Later, when Wichern lived in Berlin, he would attend Gossner’s services.[94]

The future chancellor of Germany, Otto von Bismarck, related to his wife a rather humorous anecdote in 1849 illustrating the influence of Gossner’s writings. Bismarck was in Berlin staying at a hotel, and he was irked that his relative Kleist-Retzow, a devotee of the Awakening Movement, “waked me every morning, before I wanted to get up . . . and suddenly pulled Gossner’s Schatzkästlein (Little Treasure Chest) out of his pocket and then forced me [to join him] in a morning devotion along with a song.”[95] Bismarck must not have held this against Gossner, however, for about six months later he asked Gossner to baptize his son, Herbert.[96]

After being expelled from Russia in 1824, Gossner lived in Leipzig for a couple of years. During that time, in August and September 1825 he visited Count Heinrich XXXVIII Reuss in Stonsdorf in Silesia. On July 23, 1826, Gossner officially joined the Protestant Church in Königshain, not far from one of Reuss’s estates at Jänkendorf, where Gossner had been staying.[97] Kottwitz, who was originally from Silesia and often travelled there, and who was a good friend of Reuss, accompanied Gossner from Silesia back to Berlin in October.[98] Kottwitz quickly put Gossner to work preaching at the fellowship meetings at his institution and wrote to a friend that Gossner’s messages were “awakening.”[99]

In a letter to Protestant church officials on January 12, 1827, Gossner sought a pastoral appointment. He enclosed documentation showing that he had recently joined the Protestant Church. Because of persecution from the Catholic Church, he explained, he had become a “sower without land, a shepherd without a flock.” Nonetheless, he believed that God was still calling him to preach publicly. He confessed that he had already been preaching the Protestant message for thirty years, even though he had not been in the Protestant Church. Now he hoped to serve a congregation in the Protestant Church.[100]

It took some time before Gossner would land a pastoral position, but in the intervening time he was not idle. In 1827-28 he remained in Berlin and preached in numerous home fellowship meetings. During that time he often taught at the Monday evening meetings at the Schönberg home, as well as speaking weekly at a Thursday morning women’s meeting.[101] Bethmann-Hollweg, who attended the Schönberg meetings and thus heard Gossner, later reminisced that Gossner’s arrival in Berlin in 1826 was a blessing to him.[102] Charles Hodge was favorably impressed when he heard Gossner at the Schönbergs, and Ludwig von Gerlach and occasionally Princess Marianne also came to the Schönbergs to hear Gossner teach.[103] Gossner also preached in the Berlin city jail on occasion in 1828.[104] In addition to the many small groups he addressed, in 1827-28 he also had some opportunities to preach in churches in Berlin. An article in the Evangelische Kirchen-Zeitung reported that on December 16, 1827, he preached an “anointed sermon” that was fresh and living to a large crowd at the Cloister Church (Klosterkirche).[105] In the spring of 1828 he preached for at least six weeks in a row to a large audience at the Luise Church.[106]

Finally, in 1829 Gossner was appointed the successor of Jänicke at the Bethlehem Church, where he became one of the favorite preachers in Berlin among the Awakened crowd, which included Marie Hegel, the wife and later widow of the most famous philosopher in early nineteenth-century Germany. Marie Hegel tried in vain to get her husband to go hear Gossner.[107] Otto von Gerlach wrote to Charles Hodge in February 1834 that Gossner, whom they had both met at the Schönbergs, was preaching to an overflowing church. Gossner was working especially well with the lower classes in Berlin, and “again and again I meet people,” Gerlach continued, “who have been awakened by him in the church.”[108] Among the many who were converted through Gossner’s ministry at the Bethlehem Church was Elise von Bernstorff, who wanted to take communion during the Holy Week of 1830. She could not find anywhere to do this, except at Gossner’s church. Before this she had been avoiding Gossner, because when she had heard him previously at the Luise Church, something he had said offended her. However, this communion service led by Gossner on Maundy Thursday 1830 changed her life. She stated, “This holy communion was a turning point in my life; it was for me a pledge of the reconciliation of life, of peace after my soul’s fear that had tortured me for months.” She then began attending Gossner’s church regularly.[109]

 

The Berlin Awakening at the Prussian Court

            Leading figures in the Prussian court—including the Crown Prince Frederick William (later King Frederick William IV) and Princess Marianne, wife of Prince William, the brother of King Frederick William III—embraced the Awakening Movement. They eagerly attended the church services of Hermes, Jänicke, Strauss, Gossner, or other preachers in the Awakening. They not only developed personal relationships with some of these preachers, but they also forged connections with many other aristocrats who shared their religious zeal.

King Frederick William III, who ruled Prussia from 1797 to 1840, was pious religiously, but he never fully embraced the Awakening Movement. In vain the crown prince tried to steer him in this direction, as did Princess Marianne, who became the leading woman at court after the king’s wife died in 1810.[110] However, though not a full-fledged part of the Awakening, the king was an ally in some ways, because he was not a fan of the rationalist theology that dominated the German Protestant Church in the early nineteenth century. Thus he often supported the appointments of pastors and theology professors who were part of the Awakening, because they also opposed rationalist theology. From 1823 to 1826 he entrusted his son Albrecht’s confirmation instruction to Strauss.[111] In 1836 he appointed Strauss to a position in the Prussian ministry in charge of church affairs.[112] The king also apparently liked hearing Gossner’s sermons in the mid-1830s.[113] He was also a fervent supporter of Kottwitz’s institution for the unemployed. Thus the king in many ways aided the Awakening.

The Crown Prince Frederick William was a zealous participant in the Awakening Movement. Even before the Awakening, he was filled with religious piety. As a teenager in 1813 he wrote, “Perhaps with no one is the religious faith better protected and secured as with me; for I have felt the working of the Spirit of God mightily in me; I have experienced the value of fervent prayer; and I know what it means to need and believe in redemption and sanctification; and I know what unending comfort and what true, holy, blessed joy this faith brings.”[114] As an adult he studied the Bible and regularly read the Moravian Watchword.[115] Many evenings he spent with the court preacher Strauss discussing church history, the liturgy, or theology.[116] When he visited Countess von Reden in Silesia in August 1831, he stayed for the evening devotions and was so moved by it that he cried.[117] He also surrounded himself with advisors and military adjutants who shared his religious passion, such as Karl von Röder, Karl von der Gröben, Anton von Stolberg-Wernigerode, and Leopold von Gerlach.[118]

Röder and Gröben were devoted Christians who often attended the fellowship meetings at Luise von Schönberg’s home. Charles Hodge observed them there one evening in late 1827 and was quite impressed by their loving relationship. He stated, “There is something delightful in the exhibition of t[he] Gospel in these military men—such a warmth and openness of feeling—such an entire want of stiffness or presumption—the whole company seemed as if they were of one heart.”[119] When Röder wrote to Countess von Bernstorff asking for her daughter’s hand in marriage, he explained that his commitment to Jesus was more important to him than anything. He wrote, “I have experienced in my heart the power of faith in Christ and would not want to deny him for all the treasures of the world, nor for the sake of love for her [i.e., Bernstorff’s daughter]. Rather I want to confess him faithfully until the end, and I also love her precisely because I know that her heart is also filled with this love for Christ.”[120] In 1826 Röder had his son Anton, who was named after Stolberg-Wernigerode, baptized. The crown prince was the godfather, and those attending included Kottwitz, Lancizolle, and other participants in the Awakening Movement.[121]

In 1826 Leopold von Gerlach became adjutant of Prince William, and by 1830 he was part of the crown prince’s entourage. He enjoyed Christian fellowship with them and sometimes spoke with the crown prince about spiritual things. He wrote in 1830, “When I am in the larger world, I long to meet a Christian there, who without being ensnared by the world, moves freely in it and takes up the fight wherever it presents itself, in the right place, perhaps like John the Baptist at the court of King Herod, until his head was cut off at the request of a dancer. O, how far we are from all this.”[122] One outsider to the Awakening Movement, Karoline von Rochow, a lady in waiting for Princess Marianne, criticized what she called the “pietistic party” at the court, which included the Gerlach brothers, Gröben, Röder, Stolberg-Wernigerode, and General Ludwig Gustav von Thile, who was sometimes nicknamed “Bibel-Thile” (Bible Thile). However, even though she considered them narrow-minded, she admitted that they contributed to charitable works. Leopold von Gerlach, she reported, was not addicted to the comforts of this life, but lived by the principle: “Every person who has more money than he needs has the duty to give a tenth of his income to the poor.”[123]

Leopold’s brother Ludwig also had several audiences with the crown prince in the 1830s, where they would discuss church-state relations. One issue they discussed extensively was Otto von Gerlach’s refusal to remarry divorced persons.[124] The crown prince protected Otto from his opponents in this dispute.[125]

After King Frederick William IV ascended the throne in 1840, some members of the Awakening Movement received influential appointments, such as Thile and Stolberg-Wernigerode, who were on his cabinet. However, these were the only two cabinet members from the Awakening Movement, so most of his advisors were not from the Awakening. He also appointed Leopold von Gerlach as his adjutant in 1850, and Senfft von Pilsach was also a trusted advisor whom he made president of Pomerania in 1852. As king he also furthered the appointment of Awakened pastors and theologians.

On November 29, 1823, the crown prince married Princess Elisabeth from Bavaria. In the negotiations leading up to this marriage, the Prussian king—through intermediaries—had tried to convince Elisabeth to convert from Catholicism to Protestantism as a condition for the marriage. She adamantly refused, insisting that she would only convert if she could be convinced that Protestantism was superior to Catholicism. Ultimately Frederick William III relented. Soon after they were married the king arranged for the court preacher Strauss to hold religious conversations with the crown princess. Strauss quickly discovered that, even though her mother had been a Protestant, she knew very little about Protestantism. Over the next few years Strauss continued meeting with her to instruct her about the doctrines and practices of Protestantism. Finally, in the spring of 1830 she decided that she was going to convert to Protestantism and stopped going to Catholic mass. When she informed Strauss about her decision, he asked if she had any doubts or questions. She answered, “No! Nothing! It was the deepest and innermost urge of my heart!” The following day she received communion and thus officially joined the Protestant Church.[126] Years later, when she was queen of Prussia, she and her husband visited Rome. When they met with the pope, he asked her why she had converted to Protestantism. She replied, “Having such a king as a spouse, who lives out the gospel in front of me, made me become a Protestant with all my heart.”[127] After her conversion to Protestantism she met often with the Countess von der Gröben for religious edification.[128]

Frederick William III’s sister-in-law, Marianne, who took the crown prince under her wing after his mother died in 1810, was a zealous participant in the Berlin Awakening. She attended the services of Hermes, Theremin, Strauss, Lisco, Gossner, and other Awakening preachers.[129] It is unclear to me when and where she came to embrace the Awakening, but in 1822 she indicated that “three years ago I had no conception of what is higher,” so it was likely sometime between 1819 and 1821. At that time she also credited Stolberg-Wernigerode, a close friend of her husband’s, for helping teach her the ways of God.[130] From 1827 to 1832 she attended the confirmation instruction that Strauss gave her daughter Elisabeth.[131] She excitedly wrote a friend in 1829 about Strauss’s lessons: “Glorious hours they are!—And I can truly say: The Lord has worked much in me in these last times through all this.”[132] Later Strauss would prepare William and Marianne’s second daughter Marie for confirmation, too.[133] Marianne had a close relationship with Luise von Schönberg (sister of Stolberg-Wernigerode), who gave her a Moravian songbook and other Christian literature. Sometimes Marianne would ask her for advice about Christian reading material. She attended the meeting at the Schönberg’s home for the first time in May 1825, when Strauss gave the message.[134] Her lady-in-waiting reported that every time she would take a walk it would cost her money, because her religious convictions always motivated her to give to those in need.[135] On her deathbed she called for Gossner, who was one of her favorite pastors.[136]

 

Moravian Influences on the Berlin Awakening

The Moravian Brethren influenced the Berlin Awakening in multiple ways. Some of the forerunners and participants, such as Kottwitz and Jänicke, were converted and/or spiritually shaped by the Moravian Brethren.  Also, the Moravian Brethren pastor in Berlin from 1816 to 1827, Anders, was involved in the Awakening from the start, and he was one of the favorite preachers in the Awakening, so many attended the Moravian Brethren church in Berlin. Some participants in the Berlin Awakening also visited Moravian Brethren communities. Also, the Moravian Brethren’s Watchword, a devotional scripture passage for each day, was standard reading for many of those in the Berlin Awakening. Finally, many in the Berlin Awakening read works by and about Zinzendorf and Spangenberg, the two most prominent leaders of the Moravian Brethren in the eighteenth century.[137]

In 1827, when Anders moved from Berlin to the United States, Ludwig von Gerlach mentioned that he and his friends had attended Anders’s services frequently since 1818.[138] Indeed, on October 12, 1817, Gerlach had gone to the Moravian Brethren church, and he found Anders’s sermon edifying. Thadden and the three Oertzen sisters were also at that service, though Gerlach did not meet the Oertzen sisters personally until later.[139] On the day after Christmas 1818 Gerlach also attended a Moravian Brethren service with some friends and went to Anders’s home afterwards.[140] In June 1823 his brother Otto von Gerlach preached his first sermon at the Moravian Brethren church in Berlin.[141] When Ludwig von Gerlach reflected back on his and his friends’ spiritual life in the early days of the Berlin Awakening, he claimed that “We concentrated very energetically on the Christian faith and the Christian life, as it presented itself to us in the Awakened Christians of that time and in the Moravian Brethren.”[142] As Gerlach recognized, the influence of the Moravian Brethren always loomed large in the Berlin Awakening.

Anders’s influence also spilled over into other centers of the Awakening Movement. He often spoke at the fellowship meetings at Kottwitz’s institution, which drew many of the leading young men of the Awakening. Shortly before he left for the United States, he gave a farewell address at Kottwitz’s institution, where Charles Hodge heard him.[143]

Thadden was so impressed with the Moravian Brethren that he visited their community of Gnadenfeld in Silesia three times by August 1819. However, he was disappointed with the current state of spirituality in Gnadenfeld. He was convinced that in Zinzendorf’s time it was different: “At that time [Zinzendorf’s time] it was surely a true fellowship of true believers and a society of children of God who came together solely to serve the Lord.”[144] Many others in the Awakening Movement would visit Herrnhut or other Moravian Brethren communities, too.

Like many others in the Awakening Movement, Ludwig von Gerlach considered August Spangenberg’s biography of Zinzendorf spiritually enlightening. In August 1819 Gerlach wrote to Thadden that he was currently reading it and found it encouraging. He explained, “It is especially instructive to see in it how practical his faith was in his heart and in his entire life.” Gerlach also mentioned to Thadden that Ida von Oertzen once said, “No edifying book is dearer to her than the writings of Count Zinzendorf.”[145] Thadden was already well aware of Zinzendorf’s writings, for in February 1819, when holding what Ludwig von Gerlach called the first meeting of the “Pietist Club,” Thadden read some of Zinzendorf’s poems to his friends there, which included Ludwig and Otto von Gerlach, Le Coq, Senfft, and others.[146]

Tholuck was also enthusiastic about the Moravian Brethren leaders Zinzendorf and Spangenberg. In his diary on December 9, 1821, Tholuck praised God for the fellowship he was enjoying at that time: “It is certainly also a special grace to live together with so many believers as I do here in Berlin. It is like the earliest times of Christianity.” Then he thanked God for those who had influenced him spiritually: “O you faithful Lord of glory! Thank you that you have given me such examples as Spangenberg, Zinzendorf, and Kottwitz.”[147] In February 1823 he went to a friends’ home, “where we read wonderful passages from Zinzendorf’s writings.”[148] In October 1824 Tholuck was reading Zinzendorf’s biography, and a little more than a year later he was reading a biography of Spangenberg.[149] Many other people involved in the Awakening Movement—Seegemund, Bethmann-Hollweg, Otto von Gerlach, and others—read Zinzendorf’s and Spangenberg’s writings, too.

 

Conclusion

From 1816 until the early 1830s the Berlin Awakening was a dynamic movement that produced many religious conversions. Many who were steeped in Enlightenment rationalism, skepticism, and/or nominal Christianity embraced a new, life-transforming, zealous form of Christianity that affirmed the traditional doctrines of the atoning death of Jesus and his resurrection. The first five years were probably the most intense phase of the Awakening. However, in January 1825 Otto von Gerlach reported that the previous summer had seen a great advance in the kingdom of God. Many young men, he stated, had come to a genuine Christian faith.[150] In the late 1820s the Awakening was still going strong. In March 1827 Tholuck told Charles Hodge that true religion in Berlin was “very flourishing.”[151] Indeed Hodge reveled in the vibrant Christian fellowship that he found there in 1827-28. Benjamin Kurtz, an American pastor of German descent who visited Germany in 1828, declared, “In Germany the religion of the Redeemer is gaining ground.” He spent seven weeks in Berlin, where, he affirmed, “the cause of Christ is triumphant.” According to Kurtz, “In no city [other than Berlin] have I met with so many humble and cordial followers of the Lamb.”[152]

By the 1830s the revival was slowing down and changing shape. In August 1839 Otto von Gerlach informed Charles Hodge that the religious conditions in Berlin and Germany were declining. For one thing, he scarcely heard any more about revivals or conversions.[153] Ludwig von Gerlach, though remaining intensely committed to Christ his entire life, experienced a shift in his religious life in the 1830s. In 1835 he wrote in his diary, “1819 and the following years we wanted to have our Christianity in the style of Herrnhut [i.e., the Moravian Brethren], in the quiet chamber, unconcerned about those who were outside. Now our Christian consciousness encompasses church and state! What a task! Seemingly contradictory; because the more we go forth outwardly, the more the inwardness retreats.”[154] In 1856 Ludwig von Gerlach explained some of the features of this shift in his thinking. In the early days of the Awakening he and his friends stressed the priesthood of all believers and minimized the distinctions between clergy and laity. They frowned on the liturgy as being too mechanical and preferred extemporaneous sermons preached from the heart. Now, in 1856, he preferred liturgical forms and well-prepared sermons. Though Gerlach acknowledged that the earlier times had been characterized by “the energy of love,” he still considered the less individualistic, more church-oriented version of Christianity he currently embraced a higher form than he had known in the early days of the Awakening.[155]

Not everyone agreed with Gerlach that these changes constituted progress. As we have already seen, his brother Otto expressed concern about the decline in the state of religion in the 1830s. Bethmann-Hollweg, who also thought the early phases of the Awakening had some problems, such as legalism, nonetheless did not share Ludwig von Gerlach’s opinion about the early years of the Awakening. He thought that in the 1830s the “inner Christian life grew colder.”[156] In 1857, in a talk probably aimed at least in part at Ludwig von Gerlach’s critique of the early Awakening Movement a year earlier, Bethmann-Hollweg asserted,

Now one speaks disparagingly of that time as being subjectivist; but it was a time like that when an Andrew sought out Peter, a Phillip sought out Nathanael, in order to bring him loving news about the salvation they had personally found; a time of first love, to which the great Christian charitable works in the German Protestant Church owe most of their origins. Presently the Christian world view surely reigns to a much greater extent, but the personal life and love has not keep pace with this advance.[157]

Ludwig von Gerlach had indeed used the term “subjectivity” negatively when describing the early Awakening Movement, and even Bethmann-Hollweg had earlier suggested that this was a problem. However, in his 1857 speech Bethmann-Hollweg indicated that it was not completely problematic. He reminded his contemporaries that this subjectivity gave the movement considerable dynamism. Far from leading people to withdraw from society, it actually led them to engage in a variety of good works to ameliorate the conditions of those in need.

 

[1] Johann Nepomuk Ringseis, Erlebnisse aus der bayrischen Erweckungsbewegung. hrg. von Herbert Kadel (Marburg: Universitätsbibliothek Marburg, 1981), 1-2.

[2] Walter Wendland, “Studien zur Erweckungsbewegung in Berlin (1810-1830),” Jahrbuch für Brandenburgische Kirchengeschichte 19 (1924): 38.

[3] Ludwig von Gerlach, “Tagebücher,” November 7, 1816, in Aus den Jahren Preussischer Not und Erneuerung:  Tagebücher und Briefe der Gebrüder Gerlach und ihres Kreises 1805-1820, ed. Hans Joachim Schoeps (Berlin: Haude und Spenersche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1963), 204.

[4] Moritz August von Bethmann-Hollweg, Familien-Nachricht, Erster Theil (Bonn: Universitäts-Buchdruckerei von Carl Georgi, 1876), 246.

[5] Moritz August von Bethmann-Hollweg, “Verhandlungen über evangelische Katholicität,” in Die Verhandlungen des neunten deutschen evangelischen Kirchentages zu Stuttgart im September 1857 (Berlin: Wilhelm Hertz, 1857), 33-34.

[6] Eleonore Fürstin Reuss, Adolf von Thadden-Trieglaff: Ein Lebensbild gezeichnet nach Erinnerungen seiner Kinder und Freunde, 2^nd edition (Berlin: Verlag von Wilhelm Hertz, 1894), 15-16; Peter Maser, Hans Ernst von Kottwitz: Studien zur Erweckungsbewegung des frühen 19. Jahrhunderts in Schlesien und Berlin (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1990), 147.

[7] Fritz Fischer, Moritz August von Bethmann-Hollweg und der Protestantismus (Berlin: Verlag Dr. Emil Ebering, 1937; rprt. Vaduz: Kraus Reprint, 1965), 609.

[8] Bethmann-Hollweg, Familien-Nachricht, Erster Theil, 247.

[9] Maser, Hans Ernst von Kottwitz, 148.

[10] Bethmann-Hollweg, Familien-Nachricht, Erster Theil, 248-49.

[11] Wendland, “Studien zur Erweckungsbewegung in Berlin,” 38; Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, Diary, January 2, 1818, in Aufzeichnungen aus meinem Leben und Wirken 1795-1877, ed. Jakob von Gerlach, Vol. 1: 1795-1848 (Schwerin: Verlag von Franz Bahn, 1903), 111.

[12] A. Andrae-Roman, Aus längst vergangenen Tagen: Erinnerungen eines alten Mannes (Bielefeld: Velhagen & Klasing, 1899), 268.

[13] Fischer, Moritz August von Bethmann-Hollweg, 75-77.

[14] Wendland, “Studien zur Erweckungsbewegung in Berlin,” 27, 39.

[15] Bethmann-Hollweg, Familien-Nachricht, Erster Theil, 254, 314.

[16] Bethmann-Hollweg, Familien-Nachricht, Erster Theil, 382.

[17] “Aus Ludwigs Fortsetzung der Familiengeschichte,” 1869, in Aus den Jahren Preussischer Not und Erneuerung, 111-12.

[18] Ludwig von Gerlach, “Tagebücher,” September 29, 1816, Aus den Jahren Preussischer Not und Erneuerung, 202.

[19] Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, Tagebuch, December 10 and 13, 1816, in Tagebuch Ernst Ludwig von Gerlachs, Juni 1815-September 1817, in Gerlach Archiv, University of Erlangen.

[20] Ludwig von Gerlach, “Tagebücher,” October 25, 1818, in Aus den Jahren Preussischer Not und Erneuerung, 294.

[21] Aus den Jahren Preussischer Not und Erneuerung, 299.

[22] Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, Tagebuch, July 9, 1819, in Tagebuch Ernst Ludwig von Gerlachs, 16 September 1815-January 1832, in Gerlach Archiv, University of Erlangen.

[23] Adolf von Thadden to Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, Thursday evening and Good Friday morning [March 19-20], 1818, in Gerlach Archiv, University of Erlangen; also in Aus den Jahren Preussischer Not und Erneuerung, 593-94.

[24] Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach to Adolf von Thadden, March 28, 1818, in Gerlach Archiv, University of Erlangen; also in Aus den Jahren Preussischer Not und Erneuerung, 596.

[25] Gerlach, Aufzeichnungen aus meinem Leben und Wirken, 1: 118-19.

[26] Gerlach, Aufzeichnungen aus meinem Leben und Wirken, 1: 117.

[27] Aus den Jahren Preussischer Not und Erneuerung, 266, 295.

[28] Ludwig von Gerlach to Adolf von Thadden, August 4, 1819, in Aus den Jahren Preussischer Not und Erneuerung, 599-600.

[29] “Aus der Familiengeschichte Leopold von Gerlach” (1857), in Aus den Jahren Preussischer Not und Erneuerung, 81.

[30] Leopold von Gerlach to Wilhelm von Gerlach, September 7, 1817, in Aus den Jahren Preussischer Not und Erneuerung, 584.

[31] Reuss, Adolf von Thadden-Trieglaff, 25.

[32] Otto von Gerlach to Ludwig von Gerlach, May 29, 1820, in Aus den Jahren Preussischer Not und Erneuerung, 610-13.

[33] Otto von Gerlach to Ludwig von Gerlach, August 13, 1820, in Aus den Jahren Preussischer Not und Erneuerung, 616-17.

[34] Otto von Gerlach to Wilhelm von Gerlach, March 18, 1821, in Gerlach Archiv, University of Erlangen.

[35] Gerlach, Aufzeichnungen aus meinem Leben und Wirken, 1: 286-87.

[36] Otto von Gerlach to Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, January 8, 1837, in Gerlach Archiv, University of Erlangen; Gerlach, Aufzeichnungen aus meinem Leben und Wirken, 1: 232-34, 251-52.

[37] Bethmann-Hollweg, Familien-Nachricht, Erster Theil, 232-35.

[38] Ludwig von Gerlach, “Tagebücher,” March 24, 1816, May 8, 1816, May 26, 1816, August 4, 1816,  in Aus den Jahren Preussischer Not und Erneuerung, 181, 187, 189, 195.

[39] Gerlach, Aufzeichnungen aus meinem Leben und Wirken, 1: 95.

[40] Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, “Tagebücher,” August 5, 1816, in Aus den Jahren Preussischer Not und Erneuerung, 196.

[41] Aus den Jahren Preussischer Not und Erneuerung, 270.

[42] Gerlach, Aufzeichnungen aus meinem Leben und Wirken, 1: 145.

[43] Reuss, Adolf von Thadden-Trieglaff, 16.

[44] Bethmann-Hollweg, Familien-Nachricht, Erster Theil, 263.

[45] Bethmann-Hollweg, Familien-Nachricht, Erster Theil, 246.

[46] Ludwig von Gerlach, “Familiengeschichte,” in Aus den Jahren Preussischer Not und Erneuerung, 300.

[47] Leonie von Keyserling, Studien zu den Entwicklungsjahren der Brüder Gerlach (Heidelberg: Carl Winter’s Universitätsbuchhandlung, 1913), 82-84; Karl Friedrich Ledderhose, Johann Jänicke, der evangelisch-lutherische Prediger an der böhmischen- oder Bethlehems-Kirche zu Berlin nach seinem Leben und Wirken (Berlin: G. Knak, 1863), 228.

[48] Karl August Döring [published anonymously], Huldigungsreise eines Rheinländers (Magdeburg: Wilhelm Heinrichshofen, 1841), 77.

[49] Friedrich Wilhelm Kantzenbach, Die Erweckungsbewegung: Studien zur Geschichte ihrer Entstehung und ersten Ausbreitung in Deutschland (Neuendettelsau: Freimund-Verlag, 1957), 88.

[50] Adolf Hausrath, Richard Rothe und seine Freunde, 2 vols. (Berlin: G. Grotesche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1902-6), 1:142.

[51] August Tholuck to Radecke, April 20, 1821, in G. Nathanael Bonwetsch, ed., Aus A. Tholucks Anfängen: Briefe an und von Tholuck: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der religiösen Erneuerung im neunzehnten Jahrhundert (Gütersloh: C. Bertelsmann, 1922), 49-50.

[52] August Tholuck [but published anonymously], Die Lehre von der Sünde, und vom Versöhner, oder Die Wahre Weihe des Zweiflers (Hamburg: Perthes und Besser, 1823), 190-209; quotes at 190-91, 200-201, 209.

[53] August Tholuck, July 29, 1823, in August Tholuck, Tagebuch, 1822-23, Franckesche Stiftungen Archiv, at: https://digital.francke-halle.de/fsha/content/titleinfo/577817.

[54] Hausrath, Richard Rothe, 1:139.

[55] August Tholuck, August 6, 1823, in August Tholuck, Tagebuch, 1822-23, Franckesche Stiftungen Archiv, at: https://digital.francke-halle.de/fsha/content/titleinfo/577817.

[56] Hermann Olshausen to August Tholuck, August 5, 1821, in August Tholuck Papers, Franckesche Stiftungen Archiv, Halle.

[57] G. Stier and F. Stier, D. Ewald Rudolf Stier: Versuch einer Darstellung seines Lebens und Wirkens, vol. 1: Die Zeit von 1800 bis 1825 umfassend (Wittenberg: Hermann Kölling, 1867), 137-42; quote at 140.

[58] Maser, Hans Ernst von Kottwitz, 82.

[59] Stier and Stier, D. Ewald Rudolf Stier, 1: 151-52.

[60] Adolph Zahn, Meine Jugendzeit, ed. Adolf Zahn [his son] (Hagen: Hermann Risel, 1882), 59-62.

[61] A. [August] Ebrard, Review of J. L. Jacobi, Erinnerungen an den Baron Ernst von Kottwitz, in Konservative Monatsschrift fur Politik, Literatur und Kunst, 39 (1882): 232.

[62] Johann Heinrich August Ebrard, Lebensführungen: In jungen Jahren (Gütersloh: C. Bertelsmann, 1888)m 398-99.

[63] Philip Schaff, Germany: Its Universities, Theology, and Religion (Philadelphia: Lindsay and Blakiston, 1857), 280-81.

[64] Charles Hodge to Sarah Hodge, October 19, 1827, in Charles Hodge Papers, Princeton University Archives.

[65] Elisha Ballantine to Jacob Morton, March 29, 1835, in Elisha Ballantine Letters, in William Gay Ballantine Presidential Papers, Oberlin College Archives.

[66] Benjamin Mosby Smith, “Diary,” 1836-1837, vol. 3, February 1, 8, 23, and March 8, 1837, pp. 80-83, 101-103, 148, 212-12, held at Union Presbyterian Seminary Library, Special Collections, Richmond VA.

[67] Herman v. Petersdorff, Kleist-Retzow: Ein Lebensbild (Stuttgart: J. G. Cotta’sche Buchhandlung Nachfolger, 1907), 20, 43, 58-62, quote at 56.

[68] Kottwitz’s proposal to found his institution, as well as many letters from Kottwitz to King Frederick William III are at: Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz, I. HA Rep. 77, Tit. 227 b Nr. 1 Bd. 1.

[69] Walter Wendland, Die Religiosität und die kichenpolitischen Grundsätze Friedrich Wilhelms III in ihrer Bedeutung für die Geschichte der kirchlichen Restauration (Giessen: Alfred Töpelmann, 1909), 140-41.

[70] Kottwitz to Johannes Schnell, January 22, 1837, in Hans Ernst von Kottwitz, Baron H. E. von Kottwitz und die Erweckungsbewegung in Schlesien, Berlin und Pommern. Briefwechsel, ed. Friedrich Wilhelm Kantzenbach (Ulm: Verlag “Unser Weg,” 1963), 55.

[71] Maser, Hans Ernst von Kottwitz, 182-84.

[72] Otto von Gerlach to Charles Hodge [wrongly placed in the Ludwig von Gerlach file], February 28, 1834, in Charles Hodge Papers, Princeton University Archives.

[73] Gerlach, Aufzeichnungen aus meinem Leben und Wirken, 1: 97-98.

[74] Ludwig von Gerlach, “Tagebuch,” January 31, 1819, in Aus den Jahren Preussischer Not und Erneuerung, 303.

[75] M. Kulke, Gnadenführungen Gottes in dem Leben des Schulvorsteher Friedrich Samuel Dreger: Zugleich ein Blick in das kirchliche Leben und die kirchlichen Verhältnisse Berlins am Ende des vorigen und am Anfange dieses Jahrhunderts (Berlin: Martin Berendt, 1860), 15.

[76] Ledderhose, Johann Jänicke, 61.

[77] Prediger Dr. Arndt, “Nachwort,” in [Gerhard] Friedrich [Abraham] Strauss, Abend-Glocken-Töne: Erinnerungen eines alten Geistlichen aus seinem Leben (Berlin: Hauptverein für christliche Erbauungsschriften, 1868), 405-406.

[78] Arndt, “Nachwort,” 406.

[79] Wilhelm Löhe to Dorothea und Erhard Schröder, June 14, 1828, in Wilhelm Löhe, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 1: Briefe 1815-1847 (Neuendettelsau: Freimund-Verlag, 1986), 267-68.

[80] Elise von Bernstorff, Gräfin Elise von Bernstorff geborene Gräfin von Dernath: Ein Bild aus der Zeit von 1789 bis 1835, Vol. 2: 1823 bis 1835 (Berlin: Ernst Siegfried Mittler und Sohn, 1896), 9-10.

[81] Arndt, “Nachwort,” 406-7.

[82] Gerlach, Aufzeichnungen aus meinem Leben und Wirken, 1: 139.

[83] Strauss, Abend-Glocken-Töne, 304-305.

[84] Bethmann-Hollweg, Familien-Nachricht, Erster Theil, 325-27, 382.

[85] Bernstorff, Gräfin Elise von Bernstorff, 1: 225-26.

[86] Ludwig von Gerlach, “Familiengeschichte,” in Aus den Jahren Preussischer Not und Erneuerung, 314.

[87] Wendland, “Studien zur Erweckungsbewegung in Berlin,” 53.

[88] Hausrath, Richard Rothe, 1: 145.

[89] Aus den Jahren Preussischer Not und Erneuerung, 314, n. 223-224.

[90] Charles Hodge, “Journal of European Travels,” March 23, 1828, in Princeton University Library Special Collections; at: https://commons.ptsem.edu/id/notesonlecturesp00hodg_11.

[91] Ludwig Tiesmeyer, Die Erweckungsbewegung in Deutschland während des XIX. Jahrhunderts Vol. 3, part 4: Berlin und die Provinz Brandenburg (Kassel: Verlag von Ernst Röttger, 1909), 341.

[92] Martin Pernet, “Friedrich Nietzsche and Pietism,” German Life and Letters 48,4 (1995): 475.

[93] Johann Hinrich Wichern, Diary, September 23, 1826, in Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. 1: Briefe und Tagebuchblätter des Johann Hinrich Wicherns 1826-1848 (Hamburg: Agentur des Rauhen Hauses, 1901), 8.

[94] Friedrich Oldenberg, Johann Hinrich Wichern: Sein Leben und Wirken, vol. 1: Die ersten vierzig Lebensjahren (Hamburg: Agentur des Rauhen Hauses, 1884), 226.

[95] Otto von Bismarck to his wife, Berlin, August 8, 1849, in Otto von Bismarck, Bismarck: Die Gesammelten Werke, ed. Wolfgang Windelband and Werner Frauendienst, vol. 14: Briefe, part 1: 1822-1861 (Berlin: Deutsche Verlags-Gesellschaft, 1933), 131; see also Hermann Witte, Die pommerschen Konservativen: Männer und Ideen 1810-1860 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1936), 78.

[96] Bismarck to Pastor [Johannes] Gossner, February 11, 1850, in Bismarck, Bismarck: Die Gesammelten Werke, vol. 14, part 1: 153; see also Otto Baumgarten, Bismarcks Stellung zu Religion und Kirche (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1900), 13.

[97] Hermann Dalton, Johannes Gossner: Ein Lebensbild aus der Kirche des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts (Berlin: Verlag des Gossnerischen Missionsvereins, 1874), 305.

[98] Friedrich Focke to August Tholuck, October 20, 1826, in August Tholuck Nachlass, Franckesche Stiftungen Archive, Halle.

[99] Hans Ernt von Kottwitz to Franz Zahn, November 16, 1826, in Kottwitz, Baron H. E. von Kottwitz und die Erweckungsbewegung, 47-48.

[100] Johannes Gossner to Consistorium, January 12, 1827, in Sammlung Darmstaedter, Staatsbibliothek Berlin.

[101] Erinnerungen aus dem Leben der Gräfin Mathilde von der Recke-Volmerstein (Breslau: Carl Dülfer, 1873), 103.

[102] Bethmann-Hollweg, Familien-Nachricht, Erster Theil, 366-67.

[103] Charles Hodge, December 30, 1827; January 13, 1828; February 17, 1828; March 9, 30, 1828; in “Journal of European Travels,” Princeton University Library Special Collections, at: https://commons.ptsem.edu/id/notesonlecturesp00hodg_11.

[104] Gerlach, Aufzeichnungen aus meinem Leben und Wirken, 1: 172.

[105] “Nachrichten,” Evangelische Kirchen-Zeitung 2, 1 (January 2, 1828): 6.

[106] Otto von Gerlach to August Tholuck, June 14, 1828, in Bonwetsch, ed., Aus A. Tholucks Anfängen, 132-33.

[107] David S. Schaff, The Life of Philip Schaff (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1897), 30-31.

[108] Otto von Gerlach to Charles Hodge [wrongly in Ludwig von Gerlach file], February 28, 1834, in Charles Hodge Papers, Princeton University Archives.

[109] Bernstorff, Gräfin Elise von Bernstorff, 2: 162-64.

[110] Wendland, Religiosität und die kichenpolitischen Grundsätze Friedrich Wilhelms III, 33-34, 94-95.

[111] Strauss, Abend-Glocken-Töne, 285-86.

[112] Strauss, Abend-Glocken-Töne, 307-8.

[113] Wilhelm Baur, Prinzess Wilhelm von Preussen, geborene Prinzess Marianne von Hessen-Homburg: Ein Lebensbild aus den Tagebüchern und Briefen der Prinzess (Hamburg: Agentur des Rauhen Hauses, 1886), 309.

[114] Wendland, “Studien zur Erweckungsbewegung in Berlin,” 60.

[115] Walter Bussmann, Zwischen Preussen und Deutschland: Friedrich Wilhelm IV: Eine Biographie (Berlin: Siedler Verlag, 1990), 120.

[116] Prediger Dr. Arndt, “Nachwort,” in Strauss, Abend-Glocken-Töne, 411.

[117] Eleonore Fürstin Reuss, Friedericke Gräfin von Reden geb. Freiin Riedesel zu Eisenbach, 2 vols. (Berlin: Wilhelm Hertz, 1888), 1:497.

[118] Hans-Christof Kraus, “Friedrich Wilhelm IV. (1795-1861): Christliches Königtum im Schatten der Revolution,” in Protestantismus in Preussen: Lebensbilder aus seiner Geschichte ed. Rudolf Mau, vol. 2: Vom Unionsaufruf 1817 bis zur Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts (Frankfurt a.M.: Edition Chrismon, 2009), 253-54.

[119] Charles Hodge, “Journal of European Travels,” December 30, 1827, Princeton University Library Special Collections, at: https://commons.ptsem.edu/id/notesonlecturesp00hodg_11.

[120] Bernstorff, Gräfin Elise von Bernstorff, 1: 329-30.

[121] Bernstorff, Gräfin Elise von Bernstorff, 2: 57-58.

[122] Leopold von Gerlach, Denkwürdigkeiten aus dem Leben Leopold von Gerlachs Generals der Infanterie und General-Adjutanten Friedrich Wilhelms IV., 2 vols. (Berlin: Verlag von Wilhelm Hertz, 1891), 1:52.

[123] Karoline v. Rochow, “Erinnerungen,” in Vom Leben am preussischen Hofe, 1815-1852: Aufzeichnungen von Caroline v. Rochow und Marie de la Motte-Fouqué, ed. Luise v. d. Marwitz (Berlin: Ernst Siegfried Mittler und Sohn, 1908), 190, 219-20.

[124] Gerlach, Aufzeichnungen aus meinem Leben und Wirken, 1: 209-10, 236.

[125] Otto von Gerlach to Charles Hodge [wrongly in Ludwig von Gerlach file], August 17, 1839, Charles Hodge Papers, Princeton University Archives.

[126] Strauss, Abend-Glocken-Töne, 298-99; Dorothea Minkels, Elisabeth von Preussen: Königin in der Zeit des AusMÄRZens (Norderstedt, Germany: Books on Demand, 2007), 183-88.

[127] A. Koch, D. Heinrich Leonhard Heubner in Wittenberg: Züge und Zeugnisse aus und zu seinem Leben und Wirken (Wittenberg: P. Wunschmann, 1885), 58.

[128] Stephen Grellet, Memoirs of the Life and Gospel Labours of Stephen Grellet, ed. Benjamin Seebohm, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Henry Longstreth, 1860), 2:268.

[129] Rochow, “Erinnerungen,” in Vom Leben am preussischen Hofe, 96.

[130] Marianne von Preussen, March 27, 1822, in Tagebuch der Prinzessin Marianne von Preußen, ed. Horst Häker (Heilbronn: Kleist-Archiv Sembdner, 2006), 87.

[131] Strauss, Abend-Glocken-Töne, 287-88.

[132] Baur, Prinzess Wilhelm von Preussen, 261-63.

[133] Strauss, Abend-Glocken-Töne, 290.

[134] Baur, Prinzess Wilhelm von Preussen, 301-303, 306-307.

[135] Rochow, “Erinnerungen,” in Vom Leben am preussischen Hofe, 65.

[136] Dalton, Johannes Gossner, 344.

[137] For more on the Moravian Brethren influence on the Awakening Movement, see Richard Weikart, “The Moravians’ Influence on the German Awakening Movement, 1816-1840,” Journal of Moravian History 25, 2 (2025): 81–108.

[138] Gerlach, Aufzeichnungen aus meinem Leben und Wirken, 1: 162.

[139] Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, Diary, October 13, 1817, in Aufzeichnungen aus meinem Leben und Wirken, 1: 104.

[140] Ludwig von Gerlach, Tagebuch, in Aus den Jahren Preussischer Not und Erneuerung, 297.

[141] Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, Diary, June 28, 1823, in Aufzeichnungen aus meinem Leben und Wirken, 1: 139.

[142] Gerlach, Aufzeichnungen aus meinem Leben und Wirken, 1: 117.

[143] Charles Hodge to Sarah Hodge, October 19, 1827, in Charles Hodge Papers, Princeton University Archives.

[144] Adolf von Thadden to Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, August 15, 1819, in Gerlach Archiv, University of Erlangen.

[145] Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach to Adolf von Thadden, August 4, 1819, in Gerlach Archiv, University of Erlangen; also in Aus den Jahren Preussischer Not und Erneuerung, 599-600.

[146] Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, Tagebuch, February 27, 1819, in Tagebuch Ernst Ludwig von Gerlachs, 16 Sept. 1815-Jan. 1832, in Gerlach Archiv, University of Erlangen; Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, Tagebuch, February 1819, in Aus den Jahren Preussischer Not und Erneuerung, 305.

[147] August Tholuck, December 9, 1821, in August Tholuck, Tagebuch, 1821-22, Franckesche Stiftungen Archiv, at: https://digital.francke-halle.de/fsha/content/pageview/578418.

[148] August Tholuck, February 27, 1823, in Tagebuch, 1822-23, Franckesche Stiftungen Archiv, at: https://digital.francke-halle.de/fsha/content/titleinfo/577817.

[149] August Tholuck, October 12, 1824, December 9 & 14, 1825, in Tagebuch und Reisetagebuch, 1823-1825, Franckesche Stiftungen Archiv, on-line at: https://digital.francke-halle.de/fsha/content/pageview/579918.

[150] Otto von Gerlach to Jasper von Oertzen, January 22, 1825, in Hellmuth von Oertzen, Das Leben und Wirken des Staatsministers Jasper von Oertzen (Schwerin: Fr. Bahn, 1905), 40.

[151] Charles Hodge, “Journal of European Travels,” March 4, 1827, Princeton University Library Special Collections, at: https://commons.ptsem.edu/id/notesonlecturesp00hodg_11.

[152] Benjamin Kurtz, “Interesting Letter from Germany,” Literary and Evangelical Magazine 11, 2 (February 1828): 109.

[153] Otto von Gerlach to Charles Hodge [wrongly in Ludwig von Gerlach file], August 17, 1839, Charles Hodge Papers, Princeton University Archives.

[154] Gerlach, Aufzeichnungen aus meinem Leben und Wirken, 1: 226.

[155] Friedrich Wilhelm Kantzenbach, “Einleitung,” in Kottwitz, Baron H. E. von Kottwitz, 22-23.

[156] Bethmann-Hollweg, Familien-Nachricht, Zweiter Teil, 58-59.

[157] Wendland, “Studien zur Erweckungsbewegung in Berlin,” 40-41.

 

Chapter 11

A Zeal for Missions

“Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.” (Mark 16:15)

 

One of the most renowned missionaries sent out from the German Awakening Movement was George Müller, the famous pastor and orphanage director in Bristol, England. Most people who know about Müller do not think of him as a missionary. However, he originally moved from Halle, Germany, to London to train as a missionary to Jews. After moving to England, Müller withdrew from his missionary training program and became a Plymouth Brethren pastor. However, he continued supporting missions and even helped his British colleagues recruit and send out missionaries from Germany.

Before his conversion in November 1825 Müller was a worldly fellow who did not read the Bible and rarely attended church. He was studying theology at the University of Halle in order to become a Lutheran pastor. Like many other theology students at that time, he was not motivated by spiritual devotion, but by the pursuit of social respectability and a comfortable living. One Saturday afternoon in mid-November 1825 one of his friends, Friedrich Beta, who was also a theology student in Halle, told him that he had been attending a Saturday evening Christian fellowship meeting. These weekly meetings were held at the home of Johann Veit Wagner, who was a member of the Moravian Brethren diaspora. Müller went with Beta that evening and it dramatically changed his life. He was especially impressed when Friedrich Gottlob Kayser, who later served as a missionary to South Africa, kneeled down to pray, because Müller had never seen anyone kneel in prayer before. In his autobiography Müller testified, “That evening was the turning point in my life.” He returned to Wagner’s home several times that week and faithfully attended the Saturday evening meetings thereafter. Soon he also started meeting with five other students for Christian fellowship; by the time he left Halle in 1828 this meeting was being held in his home and had grown to twenty students.[1] Through Wagner’s fellowship meetings Müller learned the importance of the priesthood of all believers and the priority of biblical exposition that would characterize his later ministry.[2]

In January 1826, after reading some mission magazines, Müller decided to pursue a career as a missionary. After wrestling with this decision for a couple of months, he reaffirmed it in the early spring of 1826. August Tholuck arrived in Halle in April 1826 as a theology professor, and Müller spent much time with him. Tholuck encouraged Müller to become a missionary. When Müller decided to stop accepting funds from his father, who did not approve of his plans to become a missionary, Tholuck arranged for Müller to tutor some of his American students in German. Thus Müller taught German to Charles Hodge and Edward Robinson—who later became leading American theologians at Princeton Theological Seminary and Union Theological Seminary respectively. Tholuck then helped Müller get a position as a missionary to Bucharest, but a war intervened and scuttled these plans. After that, Müller became interested in mission work with Jews, and Tholuck helped him connect with the London Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews, an organization Tholuck had earlier served as an agent. Müller began their six-month training program in London in 1829, but he soon left to minister in Plymouth Brethren churches.[3]

In December 1836 Müller reported to Tholuck that since March 1834 he had established schools for poor people, including six weekday schools, one Sunday school, and one adult school, as well as two orphan houses with 66 children. He confessed that the Pietist leader August Hermann Francke’s “faith has been instrumental in strengthening me for this work.” Müller was well acquainted with Francke’s orphanage from his time in Halle, and in the early 1830s he read a biography of Francke, too. Müller also told Tholuck, “Take encouragement from my case. For without boasting I can say it, that God has led me forward since the year 1826, when first you began to take me by the hand. . . . I shall have reason to praise God for ever [sic], that you were instrumental in bringing me to England.”[4]

After moving to England, Müller continued to support missions in any way he could. In 1834 he founded the Scriptural Knowledge Institution, an organization that funded foreign missionaries, distributed Bibles (over 1.7 million by Müller’s death in 1898), and supported Christian schools and Sunday Schools in Britain and various other countries.[5] In early 1835 he was praying earnestly that God would show him whether he should go to India as a missionary. Though he ultimately determined that it was not God’s will for him to go to a foreign mission field, in March 1835 he travelled to Germany with his brother-in-law, the British missionary Anthony Norris Groves, to help Groves find missionaries to go with him to India. During that trip Müller helped forge an agreement with the Basel Pilgrim Mission organization (founded and led by Christian Friedrich Spittler), which pledged to supply Groves with missionaries, if possible. On the same trip Müller travelled to Tübingen to recruit the theology student Hermann Gundert, who joined Groves in India in 1836 (though he later left Groves and joined the Basel Mission).[6] In May 1838 Müller travelled to Germany to recruit missionaries from Johannes Gossner’s mission school in Berlin to serve in India with the British missionary William Start. As a result, twelve of Gossner’s students moved to eastern India in July 1838.[7] In February 1840 Müller travelled again to Germany to support and encourage missionary work.[8]

Though his fame came from the work he did in Bristol, the theologian Stephan Holthaus has argued convincingly that Müller was already primed for all the major features of his ministry by his experiences in Halle. Holthaus stated that “Müller’s convictions about faith, which made him known worldwide, were already present during his student years in Halle (1825-29) and later in England they were only deepened and developed further.” Holthaus concludes that “Müller himself is a classic example of a leader of social missions of the Awakening Movement in the early nineteenth century.”[9]

 

The Basel Mission Society and School

In May 1815 Nikolaus von Brunn, pastor of St. Martin’s Church in Basel since 1810, led a monthly missions meeting. After the meeting a young man told Brunn that he felt God’s call to the mission field and asked Brunn for advice. Soon thereafter Brunn approached Spittler, the secretary of the Christian Society, asking him if it would be possible to set up a school in Basel to train missionaries. Spittler was excited about this possibility and presented it to the Christian Society’s governing committee. The Christian Society balked at taking on this new responsibility but suggested that Spittler should establish and oversee a separate missions organization. In July 1815 Spittler requested and received permission from the city of Basel to open a school for missionaries. Then he formed a committee that included himself, Brunn, and several other leading Christians in Basel to help him establish and supervise the mission school. In the fall of 1815 this newly formed Basel Mission Society decided to call Christian Gottlieb Blumhardt, a pastor in Württemberg, as the first superintendent of the mission school, and he accepted.[10]

Blumhardt arrived in Basel in April 1816, and even before the mission school opened, he began editing a new missions journal, Magazin für die neueste Geschichte der protestantischen Missions- und Bibelgesellschaften (Magazine for the Recent History of Protestant Missions and Bible Societies). This magazine appeared four times per year with each issue featuring extensive stories about Protestant missions in a pariticular geographic region. Of course, it also provided news about the Basel Mission Society and its missionaries.[11] To reach a broader audience the Basel Mission Society also began publishing in 1828 an eight-page newspaper-style publication that came out every two weeks. This publication aimed at encouraging Christians in their faith by sharing news about missionaries sent out from Basel, though it also included stories about Moravian Brethren missionaries.[12]

The Basel Mission School officially opened on August 26, 1816, with seven students—four from Württemberg and two from Switzerland. Blumhardt and the students lived together and held classes in a house bought by the mission society. Initially they intended to have about ten students at a time completing a two or three-year program studying the Bible, church history, and languages.[13] In 1818 they sent out their first two students to the Netherlands Missionary Society for further training. Later that year the Church Mission Society in London accepted two mission students from Basel, who became the first of the Basel mission students actually sent to the mission field. They departed England in 1819 for eastern India.[14] One of these two, Wilhelm Dürr, led an awakening in the Bengal region of India and baptized 3000 converts between 1831 and 1844.[15]

In 1818 the Basel Mission School increased to 20 students, so they needed a larger house, which opened in 1820.[16] They also extended their training period to four years to better prepare the missionary candidates. The Basel Mission School decided to expand yet again in 1821. They began admitting twelve to fifteen students per year, so that by 1824 they could send out about twelve missionaries per year. By 1828 they had forty-two students, five from Switzerland, fifteen from northern Germany, seventeen from Württemberg, one from Sweden, and four from other parts of Germany. In addition to Blumhardt as director, they had three teachers. In 1821 they also began sending out some missionaries directly, rather than channeling all of them through Dutch or British mission societies. The first two they sent out, Felician Zaremba and August Heinrich Dittrich, gained permission from the Russian government to minister in the Caucasus region to German settlers there.[17]

Zaremba had grown up in Russia and after earning a doctorate, he took a position in the Russian diplomatic corps. In late 1817 his spiritual hunger drove the 23-year-old Zaremba to read Heinrich Jung-Stilling’s autobiography. The book transformed his life, bringing him to understand that Jesus is the path to eternal life. On December 7, 1817, he completely dedicated his life to the Lord Jesus, because, as he explained in an autobiographical sketch, “If I wanted to devote myself to God, all my own activities had to cease. I must no longer seek nor strive for anything in the world but rather let God make me what He will.” That same day Zaremba also sensed God’s leading to leave his government position and travel outside Russia. In his quest to find authentic Christians who lived according to the Bible, he travelled to Baden, where he met the grandson of Jung-Stilling. When Jung-Stilling’s grandson suggested he go to the Basel Mission School, Zaremba felt “as if an arrow had plunged in my heart.” He recognized this as God’s leading, and when he arrived at the Basel Mission School in August 1818, he experienced the love of God and the warm Christian fellowship that he was seeking.[18]

In 1821 the Basel Mission Society began holding an annual missions festival in the summer that typically drew several hundred people, including some pastors, mostly from Württemberg and Switzerland. This missions festival lasted from Monday to Friday, because it also included the annual meeting of the Basel Bible Society, a day in Heinrich Zeller’s institution in nearby Beuggen, as well as other meetings of Christian organizations. Meetings for the Basel Mission Society and school were held on Wednesday and Thursday. Blumhardt would share news about the Basel Mission Society and school, and sometimes foreign missionaries were present to speak about their experiences on the mission field. Pastors, such as Christian Gottlob Barth from Württemberg and David Spleiss from Switzerland, often preached at the Basel Mission Festival about evangelism and foreign missions. On Thursday afternoon they would send out missionaries who had completed their training.[19]

One of the more famous missionaries to attend the Basel Mission School in the early 1820s was Samuel Gobat, who in 1846 became bishop of Jerusalem. Gobat hailed from a French-speaking village in Switzerland. As a young child he loved Jesus, but by age nine he was skeptical about Christianity, and he later confessed that in his teenage years, “My heart was full of the love of the vanities of the world.”[20] One Sunday in October 1818 he went to church in the morning to please his parents, but then went dancing in the afternoon. That evening he came under conviction, read his Bible, and cried out to God for salvation. He felt despair for several hours, but at 3 AM a light burst into the room. Gobat testified,

On a sudden I felt as if the burden of my sins was taken away, and I experienced unutterable delight. I felt the Lord Jesus near me in all the fulness of His love. I felt His assurance, not in words, for I heard no sound, but by a kind of divine power, of my reconciliation with God and of His favour. . . . The remaining hours of that night were the most blissful of my life.[21]

After this experience Gobat’s life was filled with exuberant joy, and his attitudes changed dramatically. He claimed that earlier he had abhorred work, but now he found it fulfilling. Further, in this time of first love for Jesus, Gobat remembered, “I . . . used to spend half or two-thirds of the night in prayer and praise, counting as lost the time which I must spend in sleep.” He began praying earnestly for revival in his region, and as he read mission literature, his desire to become a missionary grew. One Sunday in 1819 after he had been praying about whether to pursue missionary work, a woman asked him if he wanted to become a missionary. With his assent she wrote to the Basel Mission Society, who summoned him to come to Basel in late 1819 to learn German, the language of instruction at the mission school. On a two-week break in spring of 1820 he held a Sunday afternoon meeting at his parents’ home. The twenty people attending asked him to hold meetings daily, which he did for the next two weeks. The meetings grew and soon a revival broke out there that he would join during his school breaks. In early 1821 he began his training at the Basel Mission School, and in 1823-24 he spent almost a year in Paris studying Arabic. The British Church Mission Society sent him out in 1825 to serve in Malta, Egypt, and Ethiopia. He was later named Bishop of Jerusalem by Prussian King Frederick William IV in 1846.[22]

By 1839 Wilhelm Hoffmann, son of the founder of Korntal, succeeded Blumhardt, who passed away in late 1838. Wilhelm’s father had cultivated his interest in missions from his childhood. Before founding Korntal, his father had helped found a mission society in Leonberg, and this was the first society in Württemberg formed to channel funds to the Basel Mission School. His father also often spoke at the annual Basel Mission Festival. Wilhelm had grown up reading mission magazines and met many missionaries who came to Korntal before leaving Europe or during furloughs from the foreign mission field.[23]

Altogether by 1840 the Basel Mission School had trained 152 missionaries, many of whom were sent out by the Netherlands Missionary Society and the Church Mission Society. The Basel Mission Society had sent 43 of their 152 missionaries (without the help of other mission agencies) to the Caucasus region in Russia, Persia, West Africa, and India. The mission stations in Russia and Persia had to close in the 1830s because of political pressures, and twelve of the thirteen missionaries they sent to West Africa soon died. However, by 1840 they had five mission stations in India, so their efforts there were bearing greater fruit.[24]

In addition to the Basel Mission School, Spittler also created a training school for young men who wanted to be missionaries, but did not have the educational background or aptitude to be accepted by the Basel Mission School or by most mission societies. This Pilgrim Mission School opened in late 1833 in Riehen (near Basel) under the leadership of the physician Ernst Joseph Gustav de Valenti, who had earlier taught Christian principles to Jewish converts at Düsselthal. They especially recruited young men with skilled trades, so they could support themselves financially on the mission field. In 1836 a disagreement between Valenti and Spittler caused Valenti to move to Bern with his three students. In Bern he set up a School for Evangelism, which later expanded to twelve students. Spittler reopened the Pilgrim Mission School in 1840 at the St. Chrischona Church in Bettingen (near Basel), which he had rented for a small annual sum.[25]

 

Wuppertal and the Rhine Mission Society

On June 3, 1799, before the Awakening Movement began, the leather merchant Johann Ball met with nine other men at his home to form the Elberfeld Mission Society, the first mission society in Germany. Ball had learned about Christian organizations in London that were sending out missionaries, and he wanted to support them financially. The Elberfeld Mission Society met monthly, prayed and listened to reports about missions, and collected funds. In addition to supporting British mission societies, they soon began supporting Johann Jänicke’s mission school in Berlin. In its early years the Elberfeld Mission Society also published and distributed tracts, as well as distributing New Testaments and songbooks (at that time there were no tract and Bible societies, as would later emerge to take over these tasks). In 1816, the year the Awakening broke out in the Wuppertal region (which included Elberfeld and Barmen), two new pastors in Elberfeld joined the Elberfeld Mission Society. Both of them—the Reformed pastor Gottfried Daniel Krummacher and the Lutheran pastor Karl August Döring, who became president of the mission society by 1818—were leaders of the Wuppertal Awakening.[26]

In 1818 the newly-appointed pastor in Wichlinghausen, Wilhelm Leipoldt, helped organize the Barmen Mission Society. Blumhardt, the director of the Basel Mission School, visited Wuppertal that year and encouraged Leipoldt and others to support the ministry he led. Thus the Barmen Mission Society initially sent funds primarily to the Basel Mission School, though they also supported other mission organizations. Within a year the Barmen Mission Society was sponsoring three mission students in Basel. Before Blumhardt’s visit, Leipoldt had already been zealous for missions and had joined the Elberfeld Mission Society two years earlier. He would become the secretary and the leading figure in the Barmen Mission Society. He continued playing a leading role in it after transferring to nearby Unterbarmen in 1822.[27] Leipoldt often preached about missions. In September 1835 he expressed delight that mission societies were forming, telling his audience in Düsseldorf that “it is certainly the most noble, most blessed work of Christian compassion to bring the treasure of the light and comfort that we have in Christ to the people who are without God and without hope in the world.”[28]

After Leipoldt transferred away from Wichlinghausen in 1822, Immanuel Friedrich Sander became the new pastor there, and he was a fervent supporter of missions, too. Just a few months after arriving in Wichlinghausen, Sander wrote to August Tholuck that he was encouraged by reports about foreign missions, which made him want to participate in some way. He hoped to arouse more interest in foreign missions by preaching on it more often, and he also stated, “I am determined to hold a missions prayer meeting here with several preachers.”[29] During the early years of his ministry, he seriously considered becoming a foreign missionary, but the need to care for his widowed mother, together with the effectiveness of his ministry in Wichlinghausen, convinced him that he should stay in Germany. Sander became president of the Barmen Mission Society in 1823, and he remained a leading figure in that organization until 1838, when he transferred to a pastorate in Elberfeld. Then he became president of the Elberfeld Mission Society. Sander also helped organize the first missions festival in the Wuppertal region, which met at his church in 1824.[30]

In 1825 the Barmen Mission Society decided to publish a periodical to stimulate interest in missions. Ernst Friedrich Ball, son of Johann Ball and pastor in Hörstgen, became the first editor and continued in that position until his death in 1885.[31] This Missions-Blatt (Missions Newspaper) was a small four-page newspaper that appeared every two weeks with articles about foreign missions. The first issue on January 2, 1826, had two articles. The first one provided a brief history of missions since the early church and closed by stating, “O, that this newspaper will proclaim to everyone who reads it: Cursed is he who is lazy in performing the work of the Lord! (Jeremiah 48:10) Therefore pray and give and go out, that the Word of the Lord may be praised, and all lands may become full of his glory, and may his kingdom come to us and through us and in us! Amen.”[32] The second article explained how the Moravian Brethren became involved in foreign missions.[33] By the end of the first year the Missions-Blatt had 7000 subscribers, and by the end of 1833 it had 15,000 subscribers. In its first eight years of operation it distributed over 2.6 million single copies.[34]

Sander gathered with other members of the Elberfeld Mission Society in 1825 at the home of Friedrich Wilhelm Krummacher, a Reformed pastor in Barmen, to discuss opening a training school for young men wanting to become missionaries. Several young men had expressed their desire to engage in foreign missions, but they lacked the requisite education to be admitted to the Basel Mission School. Thus, on July 11, 1825, the Barmen Mission Society opened a school with five students to prepare them to go to the Basel Mission School. As the first teacher they recruited Ignaz Lindl, who earlier had been a leading figure in the Catholic Awakening, but who had converted to Protestantism. Students at the school would take classes three days a week and work three days a week. Because the Barmen mission school had more applicants than they could handle, as well as ample funds flowing in, they decided to expand in 1827 to become a full-fledged school for missionaries like the one in Basel. Heinrich Richter took over as its first director, and Lindl resigned.[35]

Barmen Mission Society’s new task of sending out missionaries from their mission school was rather daunting, so they sought help from other mission societies in the Rhineland. In September 1828 representatives from the mission societies in Barmen, Elberfeld, and Cologne (which had formed in 1823) met and formed the Rhine Mission Society, whose official name was the “Rhine Mission Society for Training and Sending Out Christian Missionaries among Non-Christian Peoples.”[36] It was an umbrella organization that oversaw the sending out of missionaries and the establishment of mission stations in foreign countries. The Wesel Mission Society, which had formed in 1822, joined the Rhine Mission Society in 1829. All these local mission societies continued to operate in their own cities.[37]

In March 1828, shortly before the Rhine Mission Society formed, the Barmen Mission School sent out its first two missionaries. They did not go to a foreign country, however, but moved to Thuringia, Germany, to minister to Gypsies. The Rhine Mission Society sent out its first foreign missionaries from the Barmen Mission School in 1829. They ordained four missionaries to serve with the London Missionary Society in the Cape of South Africa. They arrived in South Africa in late 1829, and on June 6, 1830, they baptized their first African convert.[38] By 1836 the Rhine Mission Society had sixteen missionaries at five locations in South Africa. They had also sent two missionaries to Java and Borneo, as well as two missionaries to Native Americans.[39] They had around sixteen students by that time, most of whom had trained to be craftsmen of various sorts before coming to the mission school.[40]

The Barmen mission students also contributed to the Awakening Movement in Germany before they departed for their foreign destinations. At the instigation of Emil Wilhelm Krummacher, pastor in Langenberg, in June 1831 some of the mission students began holding Bible studies on Sunday afternoons in Dönberg, a town without a church. The people there flocked to the meetings and soon outgrew the school building where they met, so they built a church building there in 1832. Krummacher wrote to the Rhine Mission Society explaining the impact this revival had:

Many souls have been thoroughly awakened . . . It is like a miracle before our eyes. A few years ago Dönberg was avoided and feared as a wilderness of depravity. No one dared travel through it at night, because they feared the residents, who had descended to the level of beasts of prey. And see, the Lord, who chooses the despised and sends his servants on the highways and byways to invite people, has had mercy on this desert, and it is beginning to blossom like the lilies.

Now people in Dönberg were reading the Bible, and an alcohol distributor was only selling about a fourth as much alcohol in Dönberg as he had sold previously.[41]

Many pastors and others in the Awakening Movement began supporting the Rhine Mission Society’s school. By 1832 fifteen mission societies had formed in cities and towns—mostly in the Rhineland region—to discuss and pray for missions, as well as to send funds to the mission school. In addition, many Christian organizations in their region that arose during the Awakening Movement, such as those for young men or young women, helped support the mission school.[42] It was not unusual for various Christian women’s organizations to sew or knit or produce some other handiwork to benefit missions. For instance, in 1833 Theodor Fliedner, a pastor in Kaiserswerth who preached a sermon about missions every Advent season, sent various kinds of handiwork, including socks, that his church’s women’s organization had made, to the Rhine Mission Society.[43]

The Rhine Mission Society’s school soon garnered support from other parts of Germany. By the mid-1830s the Calw Mission Society in Württemberg under the leadership of Christian Gottlob Barth began to send some of their funds to the Rhine Mission Society, though earlier they had sent all the money they collected to the Basel Mission School.[44] In the early 1830s mission societies in Königsberg, Bremen, Hamburg, and Berlin sent mission candidates and provided funds to the Rhine Mission Society’s school.[45] In 1833 the Prussian crown prince visited the Rhine Mission Society’s school and talked with the teachers and students.[46]

Many young people were converted in the Wuppertal Awakening, so this stirred their interest in missions. This led two young men in the Wuppertal region to form organizations for young men to promote missions. On January 1, 1823, sixteen-year-old Carl Wilhelm Isenberg founded the Young Men’s Mission Society in Barmen, which was the first of its kind in Germany. Isenberg later trained at the Basel Mission School and joined the British Church Mission Society, which sent him to Ethiopia and later India. In 1824 Döring encouraged his twenty-two-year-old friend Anton Haasen to establish a Young Men’s Mission Society in Elberfeld, which grew even larger than the society in Barmen. At one time they had about a hundred members. Haasen would meet with them once a month on Sunday afternoon in Döring’s catechism room. Haasen hoped that his organization would not only help provide support for missionaries, but would also result in the conversion and edification of those who participated. He, like many others in the Awakening Movement, believed that missions would hasten the coming of the Lord, which he believed was near.[47]

 

The Berlin Awakening’s Support for Foreign Missions

The Berlin pastor Johann Jänicke founded his mission school before the Awakening Movement began, but it continued operating until he passed away in 1827. Participants of the Awakening Movement considered Jänicke one of their favorite pastors in Berlin, and his mission school received financial support from many Christians in the Awakening Movement. The number of students in his mission school fluctuated a little; in 1805 he had twelve students, and in 1822 there were nine.[48] Most of them were sent out by other mission societies, especially the London Missionary Society. By 1820 he had sent out ten missionaries to Asia, twenty to Africa, and others as missionaries to Jews in Poland.[49] By the time he died in 1827 he had trained eighty missionaries.[50]

One of Jänicke’s missionary candidates was Georg Friedrich Händes, who later became a missionary to Jews in eastern Germany. In 1820-21 Händes was struggling spiritually, but then he experienced a vision where he saw the cross of Christ and a drop of blood that fell on his heart. Then the thought came to him: If you want forgiveness, you must become a missionary. However, despite his desire to become a missionary, his parents were determined that he should become a printer, so in 1821 they sent him to a city north of Berlin to receive training. On his way there, he stopped in Berlin to visit his friend, Adolph Zahn, who later was a leading pastor in the Awakening Movement. Zahn introduced him to Hans Ernst von Kottwitz, a spiritual father to many in the Berlin Awakening. When Händes told Kottwitz that he was about to begin training as a printer, Kottwitz told him, “No, my son Händes, You should not become a printer. Do you want to become a missionary?” Kottwitz was a good friend of Jänicke’s, and within a few days, Händes was enrolled in Jänicke’s mission school.[51]

One of the most famous missionaries Jänicke trained was Karl Gützlaff, who later became an independent missionary working in China. He came to Janicke’s school in 1821 through the intervention of the Prussian King Frederick William III, who not only asked Jänicke to train him, but provided funding for it. When Gützlaff arrived, he was not yet converted. However, through the influence of his roommate, in July 1821 he had a salvation experience that transformed his life and would animate his missionary endeavors. In 1823 Gützlaff moved to Rotterdam to receive additional training with the Netherlands Missionary Society, before he was sent out to the Dutch East Indies in 1826. After a few years he went independent and moved to China to evangelize there.[52]

Jänicke’s vision for foreign missions would catch on among participants of the Berlin Awakening, leading to the formation of other organizations devoted to the evangelization of the world. The first was the Berlin Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews, which was established in 1822 at the instigation of a representative of the London society with the same name. One of the leading figures in the Berlin Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews (until he moved to Halle in 1826) was the theologian August Tholuck, who attended the founding meeting of the society. In the early 1820s Tholuck considered becoming a missionary, but ultimately decided that was not his calling.[53]  Tholuck was an expert in foreign languages, so he helped some of Jänicke’s students learn languages, such as Arabic and Persian.[54] Tholuck become one of three secretaries for the Berlin Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews, and in 1823 his offer to become a paid representative of the London Society was accepted. His duties included not only corresponding on behalf of the society, but also translating tracts for Jews into German, as well as editing a periodical, Der Freund Israels (The Friend of Israel), which discussed missions to the Jews.[55] Tholuck was so excited about reaching the Jews with the Christian message that he wrote in his diary in May 1824 that he and some friends “spoke with delight about the awakening of Israel. I recognize it as grace that the Lord has awakened me for this or rather assigned me to this.”[56] Apparently the Berlin Society had some success, for Tholuck reported in 1824 that they had already baptized fifty Jews and the following year they baptized another hundred.[57] By 1827 they were supporting two missionaries to the Jews: Händes and Hermann Ball.[58]

In 1823 the University of Berlin church history professor August Neander issued an appeal to raise support for missions. His appeal brought in considerable funds, which were divided between four mission organizations: the Moravian Brethren missions, the Basel Mission Society, the Halle missionaries, and Jänicke’s missionary school. The appeal also stimulated young men in the Awakening Movement to form the Society for Promoting Protestant Missions among the Heathen (usually called the Berlin Mission Society). Neander met with nine other men on February 29, 1824, at the home of the law professor Moritz August von Bethmann-Hollweg to form this organization. The only pastor at that meeting was Gerhard Friedrich Abraham Strauss, but Neander and Tholuck were also present. Five of the founding members were jurists, including Friedrich Focke, Adolf Le Coq, and the law professor Carl Wilhelm von Lancizolle. Two were military officers: Karl von Röder, an adjutant to the Crown Prince, and Leopold von Gerlach, both of whom later became generals. Gerlach served as the president of the Berlin Mission Society from 1833 to 1838.[59] In the first year of the Berlin Mission Society several pastors in the Awakening Movement joined the committee, including Christian Ludwig Couard, Friedrich Gustav Lisco, and Franz Theremin. Other prominent figures in the Berlin Awakening joined the mission society, too, such as Samuel Elsner, Karl von der Gröben, and General Ludwig Gustav von Thile.[60]

In the first several years of its existence, the Berlin Mission Society collected funds for other mission societies, but then in 1828, after Jänicke died, they decided to establish their own mission school and send out their own missionaries. On January 5, 1829, the school opened with three students, and by 1831 it had expanded to seven.[61] When the Berlin Mission Society decided to hold a mission festival in Berlin, many rationalist clergy not only opposed it, but they got the church leadership in Berlin to ban churches from participating. Finally, the Berlin Mission Society was able to hold their first mission festival on October 19, 1831, but only because the Prussian king, who contributed money himself to the mission society, issued a cabinet order granting them permission.[62] In February 1834 the pastor Otto von Gerlach reported to the American theologian Charles Hodge, “Our mission society has blossomed wonderfully.” Its income had tripled in the previous six years, and they now had thirty mission societies in other communities that were supporting them. In 1833 they sent out their first five missionaries to southern Africa.[63]

After becoming pastor of the Bethlehem Church in 1829, Gossner zealously supported the Berlin Mission Society. He spoke at their mission festivals, and in 1834 he began publishing a magazine, Biene auf dem Missionsfeld (Bee on the Mission Field), to arouse support for foreign missions. In 1836, however, Gossner broke away from the Berlin Mission Society to form his own mission society, because he thought they laid too much stress on formal education, which hindered many eager candidates from attending their school and becoming missionaries. Soon Gossner set up his own missionary training school, and in 1837 he sent out eleven missionaries to Australia. The following year he sent out another twelve to East India to work with a Baptist missionary and then sent five more missionaries to India in 1839. During the two decades after setting up his mission school he sent out 140 missionaries to foreign countries.[64]

 

The Awakening Movement’s Support for Foreign Missions Elsewhere in Germany

Mission societies sprang up throughout Germany in the first few decades of the nineteenth century. Most of them were established by pastors and other leading figures in the Awakening Movement, who were following the lead of mission societies in Britain, Basel, Wuppertal, and elsewhere. Unlike the mission societies in Basel, Wuppertal, and Berlin, which had mission schools and sent out missionaries, most of these were considered “helping societies.” They held mission meetings, where they learned about missionaries and prayed for missions, and they collected funds that went to mission schools and/or missionaries. Sometimes they would send mission candidates to the Basel or Wuppertal or Berlin mission schools, and they would sponsor them financially. By the 1830s many mission societies were hosting annual mission festivals, often a day-long event with speakers and reports about missions.

The pastors and participants in the Awakening Movement in northern Germany formed mission societies and enthusiastically promoted missions. In 1819 Friedrich Mallet, a Reformed pastor with a church in the Bremen suburbs, spearheaded the formation of the Bremen Mission Society, the first mission society in northern Germany. Initially it sent most of the funds it collected to the Basel Mission Society.[65] Later Mallet would often preach in missions festivals in various cities. In Lübeck the Reformed pastor Johannes Geibel, who was the only pastor in Lübeck to embrace the Awakening Movement, founded the Society for Promoting Christianity among the Heathen in 1820.[66] In Hamburg the pastor of the French Reformed Church, Henri Merle d’Aubigné, took the initiative in 1821 of promoting the formation of a mission society. In 1822 this organization was officially established, and it would include Lutherans, Reformed, Mennonites, and Moravian Brethren. The Hamburg Mission Society contributed funds to the Basel Mission Society, but also to the Moravian Brethren missions and to Jänicke’s mission school in Berlin. The Hamburg Mission Society sent missionary candidates to the Basel Mission School, to Jänicke’s missionary school in Berlin, and later to the mission school in Barmen.[67]

In northern Germany the Awakening Movement stimulated such enthusiasm for missions that the northern German mission societies decided in 1836 to band together, so they could begin training and sending out missionaries. The North German Mission Society had its seat in Hamburg, but it also included the Bremen Mission Society, as well as missions organizations from four other smaller cities. They opened a missionary school in 1837 and sent out their first five missionaries in 1842. However, this missionary school was never as successful as the ones in Basel, Barmen, and Berlin, partly because denominational squabbles led to its decline in the 1840s.[68]

In Königsberg in 1821 the theology professor Hermann Olshausen, who had been converted through Tholuck in Berlin, met the two Basel missionaries to Russia, Zaremba and Dittrich, when they were on their way to the mission field. They stirred up in him a desire to promote missions, so he began working to organize a mission society there. He faced considerable opposition, including from leading clergy, who claimed that the mission society would divert funds from helping the poor. Nonetheless by early 1822 Olshausen had founded a local mission society, which held monthly meetings to discuss missions and sent funds to the Basel Mission Society.[69]

In October 1836 the revival preacher Gustav Knak celebrated the first mission festival in Pomerania at his church in Wusterwitz. Even before taking up the pastorate in Wusterwitz in 1834, Knak had been zealous for missions. In 1832 he teamed up with a friend in Mittenwalde to start holding mission meetings there. Then, when he lived in Berlin from 1832 to 1834, he attended a student mission society and also held weekly mission meetings in his home, where they would pray for non-Christian peoples and collect funds for missions. After moving to Wusterwitz, he held a church service in October 1835 devoted to missions, and then later that month formed a mission society that collected funds for the Berlin Mission Society. After the first mission festival in 1836, Knak held annual missions festivals in Wusterwitz. The first six years they met at his church, but by 1842 they had to move it to a special location, because it had grown to 1200 people. Knak convinced a pastor friend in Zarbe to hold a missions festival in June 1839. Despite meeting on a weekday, the church was full, and later the missions festival in Zarbe drew up to 5000 people. The mission festivals in Wusterwitz and Zarbe and elsewhere in Pomerania not only stimulated support for foreign missions, but also resulted in many conversions. Thus, while the mission festivals began as an outgrowth of the Awakening Movement, they also helped spread the revival further.[70]

In October 1829, soon after he had moved to Halle, Ludwig von Gerlach, who had been converted through the Berlin Awakening, helped form the Halle Mission Society as a helping society for the Berlin Mission Society. They met for monthly meetings at Gerlach’s home, where they learned about and prayed for missions. Gerlach’s brother Leopoold had been a founding member—and later became president—of the Berlin Mission Society. While Ludwig lived in Berlin from 1826 to 1829, missions was a key preoccupation for him and his Christian friends.[71] In the first annual report of the Halle Mission Society, they rejected rationalism, but expressed admiration for the early church, the Protestant Reformers, and Francke and the Halle Pietists. They further stated that “the desire to bring salvation in Christ through the Word of God to all men flows from itself out of living faith.”[72]

Tholuck became a leading figure in the Halle Mission Society, and after Gerlach moved away from Halle in 1834, Tholuck spoke at most of the monthly mission meetings. Rudolf Stier, a pastor in Frankleben, over 20 km away from Halle, also came occasionally to speak at the mission meetings, though he could not come very often. Stier had earlier taught at the Basel Mission School from 1824 to 1828, and he began holding monthly missions meetings in his church in Frankleben after taking over as pastor there in 1829.[73] When Tholuck took the American theology student Benjamin Mosby Smith to visit Stier in October 1836, Smith was impressed by Stier’s zeal for missions. He noted that missions publications covered some tables in Stier’s study.[74]

When the Halle Mission Society held its first two annual missions festivals in 1833 and 1834, Stier delivered the annual reports. At the 1834 festival Tholuck preached a fiery sermon based on the first five verses of Romans 9. At the close of that sermon he remarked that many people say they believe, but they are cold and indifferent about missions. He continued, “From the heart in which such coldness lives, from the heart that knows nothing about the blessed joy when a soul awakens from the dead at Christ’s call, let no one say to me, that it is truly in the faith! You cold souls, you are yourselves still in death!” Then he tried to prick their souls by setting forth the question that so powerfully impacted the Moravian Brethren leader Nicholaus von Zinzendorf a century earlier. Tholuck exhorted, “Today before you all the Son of Man is coming once again with the crown of thorns on his royal brow and asking you: ‘This I did for you; what are you doing for me?’”[75] This 1834 festival was held was in a large church, which was full, and it lasted about three hours.[76]

David Spleiss, whose preaching in Buch, Switzerland, produced a powerful revival in 1818-19, became a fervent supporter of missions. Before the revival Spleiss had not placed much emphasis on foreign missions. However, after the revival began, some of his parishioners began giving him money for missions without being asked. Also, a young man from Schaffhausen (where Spleiss taught science in a school in addition to pastoring in nearby Buch), Jacob Lang, who had a conversion experience in 1819, decided to become a missionary and asked Spleiss for advice. Spleiss wrote to the Basel Mission School, and Lang became a student there. Spleiss then visited the Basel Mission School with some friends in 1820, and Spleiss shared a testimony about his conversion and his new spiritual life with the missionary candidates.[77] Lang would often come to Buch and Schaafhausen with his friends, including Zaremba, so Spleiss developed a close relationship with the Basel Mission School. Spleiss attended the Basel Mission Festival in 1823, when Lang was sent out to the Caucasus region of Russia, and continued going almost annually thereafter. Often he preached at the festival. In 1820 Spleiss also joined the Schaafhausen Mission Society, which had already formed independently of him, and he began holding monthly mission meetings in Schaafhausen.[78] By 1832 these mission meetings were so large that they had to transfer them from a private home to a church building.[79]

A leading pastor in the Württemberg Awakening, Christian Gottlob Barth, was a passionate supporter of missions. While he was a student at the University of Tübingen in 1819, he helped form a mission society there.  Two years later he visited the first Basel Mission Festival, and thereafter he attended almost every year. Over the years he preached at more than forty of the Basel Mission Festivals.[80] When he was pastoring in the town of Möttlingen (west of Stuttgart) from 1824 to 1838, he held mission meetings at his church. At first he was holding them every other Sunday evening, but by 1832 they were meeting one Sunday evening per month.[81] Barth founded the Calw Mission Society in 1825 in a small city close to Möttlingen. He served as the corresponding secretary of this society, which initially sent all its contributions to the Basel Mission School. Later they also sent funds to other places, such as the Rhine Mission Society.[82] The Calw Mission Society began holding an annual missions festival in 1832.[83] To stir up interest in missions to a wider audience in 1828 Barth began editing and publishing a missions periodical, Calwer Missionsblatt (Calw Mission Newspaper), which appeared twice per month in a newspaper format. By the end of 1828 the Calwer Missionsblatt had 3000 subscribers, but it grew to 7000 subscribers ten years later.[84] In 1839 Barth founded a monthly periodical, Monatsblätter für öffentliche Missionsstunden (Monthly Journal for Public Missions Meetings, that provided more detailed information about missions. For fourteen years it was edited by his friend, Johann Christoph Blumhardt, and as the title suggested, it told stories about missionaries that were intended to be read at mission meetings.[85]

From 1830 to 1837 Johann Christoph Blumhardt taught at the Basel Mission School, where his father’s cousin was the director. He met Barth at the Basel Mission Festival in the early 1830s, and they became close friends. After moving away from Basel, he attended the Basel Mission Festival eleven times, sometimes as a speaker. At the 1844 Basel Mission Festival, he told his audience, “I have learned to dare to pray for a new outpouring of the Holy Spirit. This is the prayer of all my congregation members every evening. We all must join in such prayers.” In 1844 Barth published Blumhardt’s book, Handbuch der Missionsgeschichte und Missionsgeographie (Handbook of Mission History and Geography).[86] In May 1838, while he was pastoring in Iptingen, Blumhardt visited the Calw Mission Festival, where many people, including a Moravian Brethren missionary, spoke. About 3500 people, including twenty pastors, attended the festival, some coming from over 25 km away.[87] Later that year Blumhardt would be appointed pastor in Möttlingen, since Barth had vacated that position to start a Christian publishing ministry in Calw. Throughout the rest of his life Blumhardt would zealously continue to promote missions wherever he could. He regularly spoke at mission festivals in many different cities and towns; in 1849, for example, he spoke at over a dozen missions festivals, mostly in Württemberg and Baden.[88]

 

Bible and Tract Societies Sprang Up throughout Germany

Many Christians throughout Germany began organizing Bible and tract societies in the first three decades of the nineteenth century. Indeed, many of these came into existence before the Awakening Movement, so they were not really a product of the Awakening Movement. The Bible and tract societies probably contributed to the Awakening Movement, because their activities promoted conversions and religious edification. Many of the people involved in establishing these organizations became zealous participants of the Awakening Movement once it emerged, and many converts of the Awakening Movement got involved in the Bible and tract societies in their communities. To be sure, in some cities there were a few rationalist pastors who participated in the Bible societies, but they were outnumbered by far by the proponents of the Awakening Movement.

The first Bible society in Germany was the Canstein Bible Institute in Halle, formed in 1710 during the Pietist revival at August Hermann Francke’s institution. They printed and distributed Bibles, mostly by selling them, throughout Germany. By 1812 it had distributed 1,950,000 Bibles, 950,000 New Testaments, and other portions of scripture. During the time of the Awakening, its activities would expand, so between 1812 and 1827 it produced over 400,000 Bibles. Even with this increased production, they were not able to keep up with demand for Bibles, because many participants in the Awakening Movement were not only buying Bibles for themselves, but also giving them away to family and friends.[89]

Through the influence of the British and Foreign Bible Society (BFBS), several Bible societies formed before 1815 in German cities, including Nuremberg, Basel, Berlin, Elberfeld, Hannover, Dresden, and elsewhere. In 1819, when the Basel Bible Society was still operating as the German Bible Society, they delivered over 9000 Bibles and 6000 New Testaments to Bible societies in Germany, as well as over 2300 French Bibles to Swiss and French Bible societies. That year they also gave away 375 Bibles and over 3500 New Testaments.[90] By 1821 they had produced and distributed over 100,000 Bibles.[91] By 1824-25 the Basel Bible Society was no longer calling itself the German Bible Society, and it was publishing and distributing fewer Bibles, because Bible societies in other cities had proliferated and were getting Bibles from other sources or printing them themselves. In their fiscal year 1824-25 the Basel Bible Society sold over 2700 Bibles and 2300 New Testaments. During the same year they also gave away 395 Bibles and 1780 New Testaments. Bible distribution in Germany was still climbing, despite the decline in Basel’s numbers.[92] In 1832 Christians in Basel formed the Bible Colportage Society to distribute Bibles in areas that seemed spiritually needy. They sent out agents primarily to nearby Alsace.[93]

By the time Robert Pinkerton (an agent of the BFBS) visited Germany again in September and October 1816, the Saxon Bible Society in Dresden had numerous helping societies, including one at Herrnhut and two at other Moravian Brethren communities. During its first three years the Saxon Bible Society distributed 5372 Bibles and 14,173 New Testaments.[94] When Pinkerton visited Breslau on that trip, he learned that the Silesian Bible Society had distributed 1300 Bibles. Pinkerton encouraged them to publish 5000 more Bibles and 5000 New Testaments, and he promised to ask the BFBS for some funds, because they only had about a third of the funds required to do this.[95] In 1830 Pinkerton would move to Frankfurt to serve as the BFBS agent for Germany. By that time few German Bible societies received any funding from the BFBS, and by 1832 no German Bible societies were receiving financial support from the BFBS.[96] By 1837 Pinkerton had distributed over 249,000 copies of the Bible or New Testament in Germany and surrounding places.[97] Presumably most of these went to Bible societies throughout Germany, who distributed them in their own cities and regions.

The Prussian Bible Society in Berlin became one of the largest and most influential Bible societies in Germany, since it was situated in the capital city of the largest Protestant German state. Its anniversary festivals in August 1815 and 1816 drew 3000 people, including many government officials and some members of the royal court.[98] Many Bible societies in other Prussian cities affiliated with it, and by 1816 it had over twenty auxiliary societies in other cities in Prussia.[99] In its first year it distributed 4751 Bibles and 1056 New Testaments.[100] In its first three years it distributed 17,643 Bibles and 3485 NT.[101]

The Württemberg Bible Institute in Stuttgart not only distributed Bibles, but also printed some of its own supply. Their first press run in 1815 came out with 10,000 Bibles and 2000 New Testaments. By 1819 they had to commission a second press run of 10,000 Bibles and 18,000 New Testaments. One of the purposes of this and other Bible societies was to provide Bibles to poor people who could not afford to buy one. Thus by 1819, after only seven years of operation, the Stuttgart society had given away 13,514 Bibles or New Testaments, sold another 18,060 at a reduced price, and only sold 6546 at the full price.[102] The Stuttgart society continued with its Bible distribution at full throttle in the 1830s, for Pinkerton reported in 1837 that in the past year it had distributed 13,000 Bibles and 5000 New Testaments.[103]

One of the most dynamic promoters of Bible distribution and Bible societies in Germany was Countess Friederike von Reden. She and her husband formed a Bible society at their Silesian estate in Buchwald in June 1815. Reden’s husband was initially the president of the Buchwald Bible Society, but he died the same year it was founded, so Friedericke took over as president from 1815 until her death in 1854.[104] Reden wrote to her sister-in-law in March 1819 that the Bible society had grown to 49 members. She also mentioned that in the past three months she had distributed 361 New Testaments to Catholics (presumably in her region, since Silesia had a significant Catholic population).[105] In 1837 she reported that her Bible society had grown to 258 members in over 120 communities in that region. By that time they had distibuted 40,000 copies of scripture.[106]

The growth of the Bible societies in Germany—and worldwide—was a great encouragement to Christians in the Awakening Movement. In 1816 the lawyer Martin Hieronymus Hudtwalcker, who was converted a few years before the Awakening Movement, attended a meeting of the Hamburg-Altona Bible Society. Afterwards he wrote in his diary, “The successes of the great English Bible society are extraordinary. It surely shows that Christianity is eternal, and rises again like a phoenix from the ashes. The small beginnings with these great successes are reminiscent of the earliest expansion of Christianity.”[107]

Many members and officers of the Bible societies also belonged to the local mission and tract societies, and many supported Christian charitable organizations, too. For example, the Hamburg pastor Johann Wilhelm Rautenberg supported the Hamburg-Altona Bible Society, as well as the North German Mission Society, the Lower Saxon Tract Society, and numerous charitable organizations. He also founded the first Sunday School in Germany.[108]

In addition to the many Bible societies formed in the early nineteenth century, religious tract societies also emerged and flourished. On their trips to Germany Carl Friedrich Adolf Steinkopf, pastor of a German congregation in London, and Pinkerton represented the Religious Tract Society in London, as well as the BFBS. Many tract societies formed in Germany through their encouragement, and sometimes they received funding from London.[109] In Hamburg an English Reformed church, along with the French Reformed pastor Henri Merle d’Aubigné, spearheaded the formation of the Lower Saxon Society for the Distribution of Christian Literature in 1820. The Hamburg society published five or six tracts per year, most of them translated from English. By 1823 they were distributing 13,000 tracts annually, but this increased to 260,000 annually by 1829. In 1836 the Hamburg society began publishing longer works, too, such as John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress.[110] Many other German cities, such as Berlin, Stuttgart, and Wuppertal, had similar societies to try to spread the gospel through tracts.

 

Christian Gottlob Barth’s Publishing Ministry

While he was pastor in Möttlingen, Württemberg, from 1824 to 1838, Barth zealously promoted evangelism, both within Germany and in foreign countries. He often spoke at mission festivals. He also spearheaded the formation of a tract society in 1829 in the nearby city of Calw, which sold evangelistic tracts to interested Christians. Barth was an avid writer with a keen interest in appealing to young people. Thus in 1832 the Calw Tract Society helped Barth publish his most widely-read book, Zweymal zwey und fünfzig biblischen Geschichten für Schulen und Familien (Fifty-Two Times Two Biblical Stories for School and Family). The book contained one New Testament story written by Barth and one Old Testament story written by another pastor, Gottlob Ludwig Hochstetter, for each week of the year. They stayed close to the biblical wording in order to appeal to as wide a slice of Christendom as possible. The first edition of 10,000 was sold out before the end of 1832.[111] By 1854 it reached its hundredth German edition and had sold over 500,000 copies. In addition, by that time it had been translated into over fifty languages.[112]

This book also altered Barth’s ministry, because he was able to convince his colleagues to transform the Calw Tract Society into the Calw Publishing Society in 1833. This organization continued publishing tracts, but henceforth it would focus much of its attention and funds on publishing school books for children.[113] Barth also convinced the London-based Religious Tract Society to help fund many of his school book publishing projects, especially the translations into foreign languages.[114] The first book that the Calw Publishing Society issued was Barth’s Christliche Kirchengeschichte (Christian Church History), which ultimately appeared in 24 German editions and was translated into 37 languages.[115] Then, two years later, Barth published Allgemeine Weltgeschichte, nach biblischen Grundsätzen bearbeitet (World History, Explained according to Biblical Principles). In the introduction to this book, Barth stated, “Christ is the centerpoint of all of history, without whom its significance cannot be understood.” Thus, he insisted, “The key to understanding world history lies solely in the Word of God.”[116] Barth’s world history book went through six German editions and ten translations.[117]

In 1838 Barth resigned his pastorate and moved to Calw to devote his time and energy full-time to publishing school books and tracts. By 1843, ten years after its founding, the Calw Publishing Society had produced 700,000 tracts and 432,500 school books.[118] By the time Barth died in 1862, the Calw Publishing Society had published thirty books and had distributed 1.5 million tracts and almost that many books.[119]

Barth recruited other leading figures in the Awakening Movement to write school books for the Calw Publishing Society. Gotthilf Heinrich Schubert, a science professor who wrote Christian books widely read by Christians in the Awakening Movement, wrote a science textbook.[120] Barth also convinced his friend and successor at Möttlingen, Johann Christoph Blumhardt, who had earlier taught at the Basel Mission School, to contribute a book on the history of missions. Blumhardt also wrote a general history text, Handbüchlein der Weltgeschichte für Schulen und Familien (Handbook of World History for Schools and Families), which came out with the Calw Publishing Society in 1843. Blumhardt’s world history text, like most of the books of the Calw Publishing Society, reflected three major themes that pervaded the Awakening Movement in Württemberg: 1) that they were living in special, dramatic times; 2) that the Second Coming of Jesus was very near; and 3) that world missions was vitally important.[121] Blumhardt opened his world history by tracing all humanity back to Adam and Eve, and he stressed the equality of all humans, regardless of race. Thus, Blumhardt stated, all humans can receive “the grace of God in Christ and new birth through the Holy Spirit. Thus our Savior sends his disciples into all the world to preach to every creature.” In a two-page section on Jesus he affirmed Jesus’s miracles and resurrection. Then he closed his discussion of world history with a chapter on the history of Christian missions, which he portrayed as a sign of the imminent return of Jesus.[122]

 

Conclusion

The Awakening Movement aroused a great outpouring of support for missions, as Christians in the Awakening Movement sought to share their newfound faith with people all over the world, including their neighbors in Germany. Many Bible societies formed in Germany just before the Awakening Movement, largely through the influence of British Bible societies. These organizations were thus not spawned by the Awakening Movement, but they did give impetus to the Awakening Movement, as they helped stimulate conversions and edification of Christians. Also, once the Awakening Movement began, participants in the Awakening Movement became some of the leading figures in the Bible societies throughout Germany. The establishment of mission societies was also influenced by the British example, but in this case, Christians in the Awakening Movement often played a more direct role in their origin. Most cities and even many smaller cities and towns not only had mission societies that met monthly and sent funds to foreign missions, but many, especially those influenced by the Awakening Movement, also began holding annual mission festivals, which sometimes were just a few hours, but sometimes lasted an entire day or even longer. In Berlin, Basel, Barmen (Wuppertal), and Hamburg mission schools trained missionaries to go to foreign lands. Most of the supporters, teachers, and missionaries were connected to the Awakening Movement. The German historian Jan Carsten Schnurr is certainly correct when he explains that many Christians in the Awakening Movement wrote many works (and published magazines) about the history of missions, for “Many Awakened Ones, such as the father of the southern German orphanage movement, Christian Heinrich Zeller, saw church history as ‘a great story of missions.’”[123]

 

[1] George Müller, Autobiography, ed. G. Fred. Bergin, 4^th ed. (London: Pickering and Inglis, 1929), 9-10, 19; O. Steinecke, Die Diaspora der Brüdergemeine: Ein Beitrag zu der Geschichte der evangelischen Kirche Deutschlands, (Halle a. S.: Richard Mühlmann’s Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1905), 53, 146-47.

[2] Stephan Holthaus, “Kein Bristol ohne Halle. Georg Müllers frühe Jahre in Deutschland (1805–1829),” Jahrbuch für evangelikale Theologie 24 (2010): 71.

[3] Müller, Autobiography, 11, 19, 23-25; Arthur T. Pierson, George Müller of Bristol (London: James Nisbet, 1899), 38-39, 52-53; Edward Robinson, April 12, 1827, in Robinson’s Letter-Journal (1826-1829): Written from Europe by Edward Robinson to His Sister, Elisabeth, ed. Hermine Weigel Williams (New York: iUniverse, 2009), 128.

[4] George Müller to August Tholuck, December 26, 1836, in August Tholuck Papers, Franckesche Stiftungen Archiv, Halle; for Francke’s influence on Müller, see also Pierson, George Müller, 46.

[5] Neil Summerton, ‘I Thanked the Lord, and Asked for More’: George Müller’s Life and Work (Glasgow: Brethren Archivists and Historians Network, 2022), 26-27, 248-50.

[6] George Müller, A Narrative of Some of the Lord’s Dealings with George Müller, 1^st part, 5^th ed. (London: J. S. Nisbet & Co., 1855), 122-29; “Aus der ‘Brüderlichen Übereinkunft zwischen der Pilger-Mission in Basel und Herrn Doctor [Anthony Norris] Groves in London,” March 21, 1835, in Die Christentumsgesellschaft in der Zeit von der Erweckung bis zur Gegenwart. Texte aus Briefen, Protokollen und Publikationen, ed. Ernst Staehelin (Basel: Friedrich Reinhardt Verlag, 1974), 506-7; J. Hesse, Aus Dr. Hermann Gunderts Leben (Calw: Verein der Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1894), 53-57.

[7] Georg Müller to August Tholuck, May 1, 1838, in August Tholuck Papers, Franckesche Stiftungen Archiv, Halle; Joh. Dettloff Prochnow, Johannes Evangelist Gossner: Eine biographische Skizze (Berlin: Verlag des evang. Missions- und Frauen-Kranken-Vereins, 1859), 40-42.

[8] Pierson, George Müller, 164-66.

[9] Stephan Holthaus, “Kein Bristol ohne Halle. Georg Müllers frühe Jahre in Deutschland (1805–1829),” Jahrbuch für evangelikale Theologie 24 (2010): 67.

[10] Christian Friedrich Spittler to government official in Basel, July 18, 1815; “Historische Darstellung dessen, was zur Gründung einer Missions-Anstalt in Basel geschah,” mid-September 1815; “Aus dem Protokoll der ersten Sitzung der Kommittee der Basler Missionsgesellschaft,” September 25, 1815; “Aus dem Protokoll der zweiten Sitzung der Kommittee der Basler Missionsgesellschaft,” October 3, 1815, in Christentumsgesellschaft in der Zeit von der Erweckung bis zur Gegenwart, ed. Staehelin, 295, 299-302, 303-4, 307-8; Albert Ostertag, Entstehungsgeschichte der evangelischen Missionsgesellschaft zu Basel (Basel: Verlag des Missionshauses, 1865), 283-85, 297, 323-25.

[11] Christian Gottlieb Blumhardt, “Vorrede,” (written July 9, 1816), Magazin für die neueste Geschichte der protestantischen Missions- und Bibelgesellschaften: Eine Zeitschrift für Freunde des Christenthums und der Menschheit 1 (1816): before p. 1.

[12] “Einleitung,” Der Evangelische Heidenbote, No. 1 (April 1, 1828): 1-3.

[13] “Einweihung des Missions-Seminars in Basel,” Sammlungen für Liebhaber christlicher Wahrheit und Gottseligkeit No. 10 (1816): 289; Paul Eppler, Geschichte der Basler Mission (Basel: Verlag der Missionsbuchhandlung, 1900), 11; Ostertag, Entstehungsgeschichte der evangelischen Missionsgesellschaft zu Basel, 356-57.

[14] “Miszellen,” Magazin für die neueste Geschichte der evangelischen Missions- und Bibelgesellschaften 4 (1819): 311; Eppler, Geschichte der Basler Mission, 20-21.

[15] Ostertag, Entstehungsgeschichte der evangelischen Missionsgesellschaft zu Basel, 354-56.

[16] “Die evangelische Missionsschule in Basel,” and “Die Einweihungs-Feyer des neuen Missions-Hauses in Basel,” Magazin für die neueste Geschichte der evangelischen Missions- und Bibelgesellschaften 3 (1818): 625-632; and 5 (1820): 581.

[17] Christian Gottlieb Blumhardt to Georg Christian Knapp, November 25, 1821, in August Tholuck Papers, Franckesche Stiftungen Archiv, Halle; “Das Missionsfest in Basel,” Calwer Missionsblatt, number 14 (July 1828): 58.

[18] Felician Zaremba, Jugendleben Felician Zarembas (Basel: Missionshauses, 1858), 22-32; Gotthilf Heinrich von Schubert, Der Erwerb aus einem vergangenen und die Erwartungen aus einem ewigen Leben: Eine Selbstbiographie, 3 vols. (Erlangen: J. J. Palm und Ernst Henke, 1854-56). 3: 397-401.

[19] “Programm für die Festtage der christlichen Anstalten in Basel, 1827,” Basler Mission Festprogramme, in Basel Staatsarchiv; W. Hoffmann, Die evangelische Missionsgesellschaft zu Basel im Jahre 1842 (Basel: J. G. Neukirch, n. d.), 86-89.

[20] Samuel Gobat, Samuel Gobat, Bishop of Jerusalem (London: James Nisbet, 1884), 5, quote at 9-10.

[21] Gobat, Samuel Gobat, 13-14.

[22] Gobat, Samuel Gobat, 19-21, 26, 30-32, 44, 58, 69, 100; quote at 19.

[23] Carl Hoffmann, Leben und Wirken des Dr. Ludwig Friedrich Wilhelm Hoffmann, 2 vols. (Berlin: Verlag von Wiegandt und Greiben, 1878-80), 1:78; Walter Roth, Die evangelische Brüdergemeinde Korntal: Ein Gemeindemodell des Pietismus in Württemberg: Idee—Geschichte—Wirklichkeit (Neuhausen-Stuttgart: Hänssler, 1994), 102-3.

[24] Hoffmann, Leben und Wirken des Dr. Ludwig Friedrich Wilhelm Hoffmann, 1: 82, 93-98, 110, 116; “Fünfundzwanzigster Jahresbericht der evangelischen Missions-Gesellschaft zu Basel,” Magazin für die neueste Geschichte der evangelischen Missions- und Bibelgesellschaften 25,3 (1840): 5-6.

[25] Jochen Eber, “Spittlers Versuche, im Raum Basel eine Pilgermission zu gründen,” in Das Fromme Basel: Religion in einer Stadt des 19. Jahrhunderts, ed. Thomas Kuhn and Martin Sallmann (Basel: Schwabe, 2002), 43-48; Johannes Kober, Christian Friedrich Spittler’s Leben (Basel: Verlag von C. F. Spittler, 1887), 105-6; Rundschreiben des Dr. de Valenti an seine Freunde, seine ehelichen Verhältnisse betreffend,” n.d. [but it was at or after 1839], in Spittler Nachlass, Basel Staatsarchiv.

[26] “Sitzung von 3 Juny 1799,” “Am 1 April 1816,” “Zusammenkunft am 3 Juny 1816,” “Zusammenkunft am 5tn Januar 1818, and “Historische Bericht und Uebersicht von dem Entstehen u[nd]. Fortgang der Missions-Gesellschaft für die Ausbreitung des Reichs Jesu unter den Heiden zu Elberfeld” (June 3, 1816), in Sitzungsprotokolle der Elberfelder Gesellschaft 1799 bis 1824, Vereinigte Evangelische Mission Archiv, Wuppertal; L. v. Rohden, Geschichte der Rheinischen Misions-Gesellschaft, 2^nd ed. (Barmen: J. F. Steinhaus, 1871), 4.

[27] “Erste Sitzung, Barmen am 5. Oct. 1818,” in Protokollbuch der Barmer Missions-Gesellschaft, 1818-1831, and “Am 5 Febr 1816,” in Sitzungsprotokolle der Elberfelder Gesellschaft 1799 bis 1824, Vereinigte Evangelische Mission Archiv, Wuppertal; Rohden, Geschichte der Rheinischen Misions-Gesellschaft, 9; Wilhelm Schlatter, Geschichte der Basler Mission, 1815-1915, vol. 1: Die Heimatgeschichte der Basler Mission (Basel: Verlag der Basler Missionsbuchhandlung, 1916), 40.

[28] Wilhelm Leipoldt, “Missionsbericht und Predigt in Düsseldorf,” September 30, 1835, in Wilhelm Leipoldt, Missionsbericht und Predigten, 1835-1841, Vereinigte Evangelische Mission Archiv, Wuppertal.

[29] Friedrich Sander to August Tholuck, January 23, 1823, in August Tholuck Papers, Franckesche Stiftungen Archiv, Halle.

[30] Friedrich Wilhelm Krummacher, Immanuel Friedrich Sander: Eine Prophetengestalt aus der Gegenwart (Elberfeld: Wilhelm Hassel, 1860), 52-54, 139; “Sitzung von 15. April 1839,” in Wuppertal Sitzungsprotokolle der Elberfelder Gesellschaft 1799 bis 1824, Vereinigte Evangelische Mission Archiv, Wuppertal; Eduard Kriele, Aus der alten Barmer Missionsgesellschaft: Zur Erinnerung an ihr 100 jähriges Bestehen (Barmen: Missionshaus, 1918), 15.

[31] Kriele, Aus der alten Barmer Missionsgesellschaft, 19.

[32] “Was für das Reich Gottes gethan ist und noch zu thun ist,” Missions-Blatt, Nr. 1 (January 2, 1826): 4.

[33] “Wie die Brüdergemeinde zuerst darauf kam, den Heiden das Evangelium zu predigen,” Missions-Blatt, Nr. 1 (January 2, 1826): 4.

[34] “Schlusswort,” Missions-Blatt, Nr. 26 (December 18, 1826): 112; “Schlusswort. Geschichte des Missionsblattes,” Missions-Blatt, Nr. 26 (December 23, 1833).

[35] Die ersten 25 Jahre der Geschichte der Rhein. Missions-Ges. in Deutschland, Südafrika, Borneo und China, 1825-1854, p. 3, and Ignaz Lindl to Directors of the Barmen Mission Society, July 28, 1827, in Vereingte Evangelische Mission Archiv, Wuppertal; “Die Missionsschule zu Barmen,” Missions-Blatt [Barmen], Nr. 4 (February 23, 1829): 13-16.

[36] Rohden, Geschichte der Rheinischen Misions-Gesellschaft, 17.

[37] “Vorwort,” “Elberfeld, July 16, 1828,” “September 23, 1828,” “Statuten einer Deputation der Rheinischen Missions-Gesellschaften zu Cöln, Elberfeld und Barmen,” and “Sitzung der Deputation der Rheinischen Missions-Gesellschaft bon 22t. Juny 1829,” in Protokollbuch der Rhein. Miss.-Ges. 1828-1833, pp. 1-7, 14-15, Vereinigte Evangelische Mission Archiv, Wuppertal.

[38] Die ersten 25 Jahre der Geschichte der Rhein. Missions-Ges. in Deutschland, Südafrika, Borneo und China, 1825-1854, pp. 4-5, in Zur Geschichte der RM, 1828-1860, Vereinigte Evangelische Mission Archiv, Wuppertal; “Die Abordnung der ersten Heidenboten der Rheinischen Missionsgesellschaft,” Missions-Blatt, Nr. 14 (July 13, 1829): 53-56.

[39] Wilhelm Leipoldt, “Missionsbericht in Unterbarmen,” August 24, 1836, in “Missionsbericht und Predigten, 1835-1841,” in Vereinigte Evangelische Mission Archiv, Wupptertal; and “Die ersten 25 Jahre der Geschichte der Rhein. Missions-Ges. in Deutschland, Südafrika, Borneo und China, 1825-1854,” pp. 7-9, in “ Zur Geschichte der RM, 1828-1860,” Vereinigte Evangelische Mission Archiv, Wupptertal.

[40] “Chronik der Rheinischen Missionsgesellschaft,” Missions-Blatt [Barmen] Number 20 (October 5, 1835).

[41] “Chronik der Rheinischen Missionsgesellschaft,” Missions-Blatt, Number 23 (November 11, 1833); Emil Wilhelm Krummacher, Lebenserinnerungen eines geistlichen Veteranen, ed. Hermann Krummacher [a son] (Essen: G. D. Bädecker, 1889), 89-90.

[42] “Chronik der Rheinischen Missionsgesellschaft,” Missions-Blatt [Barmen], Number 24 (November 26, 1832).

[43] Theodor Fliedner to Abraham Siebel (treasurer of the Barmen Mission Society), December 6, 1833, and Theodor Fliedner to unknown brother in the Lord [presumably Barmen Mission Society], December 14, 1831, in “Missionshilfsverein Kaiserswerth, Korrespondenz, 1829-1845,” in Vereinigte Evengelische Mission Archiv, Wuppertal.

[44] Christian Gottlob Barth to the Rhine Mission Society in Barmen, November 3, 1834; February 29, 1836; and March 30, 1837, in “Missionshilfsverein Calw, Korrepondenz, 1829-1845,” in Vereinigte Evangelische Mission Archiv, Wuppertal.

[45] “Chronik der Rheinischen Missionsgesellschaft,” Missions-Blatt [Barmen], Number 17 (August 19, 1833).

[46] “Chronik der Rheinischen Missionsgesellschaft,” Missions-Blatt [Barmen], Number 23 (November 11, 1833).

[47] Jürgen Müller-Späth, Die Anfänge des CVJM in Rheinland und Westfalen: Ein Beitrag zur Sozial- und Kirchengeschichte im 19. Jahrhundert (Cologne: Dr. Rudolf Habelt, 1988), 75-79; Karl Krummacher, Die evangelischen Jünglingsvereine (christlichen Vereine junger Männer) und verwandte Bestrebungen nach ihrer Entstehung, Geschichte und Aufgabe für die Gegenwart dargestellt, 2^nd ed. (Elberfeld: Verlag des Westdeutschen Jünglingsbundes, 1895), 30.

[48] Johann Jänicke to Christian Adam Dann, March 30, 1805, in Württembergische Landesbibliothek, Handschriftenabteilung; Karl Friedrich Ledderhose, Johann Jänicke, der evangelisch-lutherische Prediger an der böhmischen- oder Bethlehems-Kirche zu Berlin nach seinem Leben und Wirken (Berlin: G. Knak, 1863), 205-6.

[49] “Nekrolog,” Evangelische Kirchen-Zeitung Number 23 (September 19, 1827): 184.

[50] Julius Richter, Geschichte der Berliner Missionsgesellschaft 1824-1924 (Berlin: Berliner evangelischer Missionsgesellschaft, 1924), 7.

[51] Adolph Zahn, Meine Jugendzeit, ed. Adolf Zahn [his son] (Hagen: Hermann Risel, 1882), 53-57.

[52] Jessie Gregory Lutz, Opening China: Karl F. A. Gützlaff and Sino-Western Relations, 1827-1852 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2008), 3, 21-26, 31, 35, 42; see also Herman Schlyter, Der China-Missionar Karl Gützlaff und seine Heimatbasis: Studien über das Interesse des Abendlandes an der Mission des China-Pioniers Karl Gützlaff und über seinen Einsatz als Missionserwecker (n.p.: CWK Gleerup, 1976).

[53] August Tholuck, April 28, 1821 and July 3, 1821, in Tagebuch, 1821-22, Franckesche Stiftungen Archiv, at:

https://digital.francke-halle.de/fsha/content/pageview/578418.; August Tholuck to Rudolf Stier, July 15, 1821, in Aus A. Tholucks Anfängen: Briefe an und von Tholuck: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der religiösen Erneuerung im neunzehnten Jahrhundert, ed. G. Nathanael Bonwetsch (Gütersloh: C. Bertelsmann, 1922), 85-86.

[54] Johann Jänicke to August Tholuck, August 15, 1820, in August Tholuck Papers, Franckesche Stiftungen Archiv, Halle.

[55] August Tholuck, entry before March 17, 1823, in Tagebuch, 1822-23, Franckesche Stiftungen Archiv, at: https://digital.francke-halle.de/fsha/content/titleinfo/577817; Ludwig Rott, Die englischen Beziehungen der Erweckungsbewegung und die Anfänge des Wesleyanischen Methodismus in Deutschland (Frankfurt a.M.: Studiengemeinschaft für Geschichte des Methodismus, 1968), 59; Christopher M. Clark, The Politics of Conversion: Missionary Protestantism and the Jews in Prussia, 1728-1941 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 125-27.

[56] August Tholuck, May 24, 1824, in Tagebuch und Reisetagebuch, 1823-1825, Franckesche Stiftungen Archiv, at: https://digital.francke-halle.de/fsha/content/pageview/579918.

[57] W. T. Gidney, The History of the London Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews, from 1809 to 1908 (London: London Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews, 1908), 125-26.

[58] “Nachrichten,” Evangelische Kirchen-Zeitung, Number 27 (October 3, 1827): 213-14.

[59] Hellmut Lehman, 150 Jahre Berliner Mission (Erlangen: Verlag der Ev.-Luth. Mission Erlangen, 1974), 9-11, 15, 53; Richter, Geschichte der Berliner Missionsgesellschaft, 9; Johannes Althausen, “Aus den Anfängen der Berliner Missionsgesellschaft,” Jahrbuch für Berlin-Brandenburgische Kirchengeschichte 43 (1968): 114-15.

[60] Richter, Geschichte der Berliner Missionsgesellschaft, 15, 23.

[61] “Berlin und die Mission unter den Heiden,” Evangelische Kirchen-Zeitung, Number 91 (November 12, 1831): 723-24.

[62] Lehman, 150 Jahre Berliner Mission, 21-22.

[63] Otto von Gerlach to Charles Hodge [wrongly filed in Ludwig von Gerlach file as no. 4 and 5], February 28, 1834, in Charles Hodge Papers, Princeton University Archives.

[64] Prochnow, Johannes Evangelist Gossner, 36-42, 51.

[65] C. A. Wilkens, Friedrich Mallet, der Zeuge der Wahrheit (Bremen: C. Ed. Müller, 1872), 293.

[66] Wilhelm Oehler, Geschichte der deutschen evangelischen Mission, vol. 1: Frühzeit und Blüte der deutschen evangelischen Mission 1706-1885 (Baden-Baden: Wilhelm Fehrholz, 1949), 211, 295.

[67] Hartwig Harms, Hamburg und die Mission zu Beginn des 19. Jahrhunderts: Kirchlich-missionarische Vereine 1814-1836 (Hamburg: Friedrich Wittig Verlag, 1973), 139-43, 170.

[68] Harms, Hamburg und die Mission, 180; Oehler, Geschichte der deutschen evangelischen Mission, 1: 210-12.

[69] Hermann Olshausen to August Tholuck, December 30, 1821, and February 8, 1822, in August Tholuck Papers, Franckesche Stiftungen Archiv, Halle; Schlatter, Geschichte der Basler Mission, 1: 47.

[70] Hermann Theodor Wangemann, Gustav Knak: Ein Prediger der Gerechtigkeit, die vor Gott gilt (Berlin: Selbstverlag des Verfassers, 1879), 22-23, 78-79, 154-61, 182.

[71] Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, Aufzeichnungen aus meinem Leben und Wirken 1795-1877, vol. 1: 1795-1848, ed. Jakob von Gerlach (Schwerin: Verlag von Franz Bahn, 1903), 161, 179.

[72] “Erster Jahresbericht des evangelischen Missions-Hülfsvereins für Halle und die Umgegend,” Halle (1831), pp. 5-7, 15, 17, in Gerlach Archiv, University of Erlangen.

[73] Rudolf Stier to Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, May 1, 1830, in Gerlach Archiv, University of Erlangen.

[74] Benjamin Mosby Smith, Diary, October 1, 1836, in Benjamin Mosby Smith, Diary, 1836-1837, vol. 2, pp. 59-62, in Union Presbyterian Seminary Library, Special Collections, Richmond, VA.

[75] August Tholuck, “Predigt an dem zweiten Jahresfeste des hallischen Missionsvereins,” in Rudolf Stier and August Tholuck, Weckstimmen für das evangelische Missionswerk (Halle: Eduard Anton, 1834), 52.

[76] Elisha Ballantine to Jacob Morton, August 12, 1834, in William Gay Ballantine Presidential Papers, Oberlin College Archives.

[77] Schubert, Erwerb, 3: 346-47, 390.

[78] C. Stokar, David Spleiss (Basel: Bahnmeier’s Buchhandlung, 1858), 216-20, 225-27.

[79] “Nachrichten,” Calwer Missionsblatt, number 3 (February 18, 1832): 12.

[80] Schlatter, Geschichte der Basler Mission, 1: 134.

[81] Christian Gottlob Barth, August 15, 1825 and April 16, 1832, in Pietistische Zirkularkorrespondenz, Book b, p. 42, and book c, p. 139, in Württembergische Landesbibliothek, Handschriftenabteilung.

[82] Christian Gottlob Barth [as secretary of the Missionsverein in Calw] to E. W. Müller and the Mission Society in Elberfeld and Barmen, July 2, 1829; Committee of the Rhine Mission Society in Barmen, November 3, 1834; February 29, 1836; and March 30, 1837; Barth  to Committee of the Barmen Mission Society, April 18, 1839; in Missionshilfsverein Calw, Korrepondenz, 1829-1845, in Vereinigte Evangelische Mission Archiv, Wuppertal.

[83] “Nachrichten,” Calwer Missionsblatt, number 7 (April 6, 1833): 32.

[84] “Schulusswort,” Calwer Missionsblatt, number 26 (December 1828): 111; “Schlusswort,” Calwer Missionsblatt, number 26 (December 23, 1837): 100.

[85] Wilhelm Kopp, Christian Gottlob Barths Leben und Wirken (Calw: Verlag der Vereinsbuchhandlung, 1886), 183.

[86] Dieter Ising, Johann Christoph Blumhardt, Life and Work: A New Biography, trans. Monty Ledford (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2009), 113-15; quote at 259.

[87] Johann Christoph Blumhardt to Doris Köllner, May 7, 1838, in Johann Christoph Blumhardt, Gesammelte Werke: Schriften, Verkündigung, Briefe, ed. Gerhard Schäfter, Reihe III: Briefe, Band 1: Frühe Briefe bis 1838: Texte, ed. Dieter Ising (Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 1993), 516.

[88] Ising, Johann Christoph Blumhardt, 258, 372.

[89] Wilhelm Gundert, Geschichte der deutschen Bibelgesellschaften im 19. Jahrhundert (Bielefeld: Luther-Verlag, 1987), 27, 33, 173.

[90] “Zwölfte Anzeige der Deutschen Bibelgesellschaft,” January 14, 1820, in Geschichte der Bibelgesellschaft: Akten aus der Gründerzeit, 1803-1859, in Basel Staatsarchiv.

[91] Thomas K. Kuhn, “’Wiederherstellung und Verbreitung ächt christlicher Religiosität’: Frommes Schrifttum aus dem Basel des frühen 19. Jahrhunderts,”in Werbung für das Reich Gottes: Medien in den Erweckungsbewegungen des 19. Jahrhunderts, ed. Veronika Albrecht-Birkner, et al (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2025), 48.

[92] Nachricht von der zehnten öffentlichen Versammlung der Bibel-Gesellschaft in Basel in der St. Martins-Kirche den 5. July 1825, pp. 7, 9, in Basel Staatsarchiv.

[93] Hauzenberger, Basel und die Bibel, 81.

[94] “Dritter Jahresbericht der Sächsischen Bibelgesellschaft im Jahre 1817,” Neueste Nachrichten aus dem Reiche Gottes 2 (1818): 65.

[95] Robert Pinkerton, Extracts of Letters from the Rev. Robert Pinkerton on His Late Tour in Russia, Poland, and Germany; To Promote the Object of the British and Foreign Bible Society (London: Tilling and Hughes, 1817), 43-45.

[96] Gundert, Geschichte der deutschen Bibelgesellschaften, 197.

[97] The Thirty-Third Report of the British and Foreign Bible Society: 1837 (London: R. Clay, 1837), xxviii.

[98] Gundert, Geschichte der deutschen Bibelgesellschaften, 181; Johann Jänicke to Bärenbruck, August 3, 1816, in Ledderhose, Johann Jänicke, 229.

[99] Pinkerton, Extracts of Letters, 48-49.

[100] “Aus dem ersten Bericht der preussichen Bibelgesellschaft zu Berlin,” August 2, 1815, Magazin für die neueste Geschichte der protestantischen Missions- und Bibelgesellschaften 2 (1817): 357-59.

[101] “Dritter Jahresbericht der Preussischen Hauptbibelgesellschaft  zu Berlin über den Zeitraum vom 2ten August 1816 bis dahin 1817,” Neueste Nachrichten aus dem Reiche Gottes 2 (1818): 108.

[102] Gundert, Geschichte der deutschen Bibelgesellschaften, 172-74.

[103] The Thirty-Third Report of the British and Foreign Bible Society: 1837 (London: R. Clay, 1837), xxxiv.

[104] Thilo, Geschichte der Preussischen Haupt-Bibelgesellschaft, 1256-27.

[105] Friederike von Reden to her sister-in-law, March 31, 1819, in Eleonore Fürstin Reuss, Friederike Gräfin von Reden geb. Freiin Riedesel zu Eisenbach, 2 vols. (Berlin: Wilhelm Hertz, 1888), 1:309-10.

[106] The Thirty-Third Report of the British and Foreign Bible Society, xxxv.

[107] Theodor Kuessner, Die Erweckungsbewegung in Hamburg im Spiegel der Briefe, Tagebücher und theologischen Schriften Amalie Sievekings (Hamburg: Friedrich Wittig Verlag, 1986), 37-38.

[108] Friedrich Anton Löwe, Denkwürdigkeiten aus dem Leben und Wirken des Johann Wilhelm Rautenberg, Pastoren zu St. Georg in Hamburg (Hamburg: Agentur des Rauhen Hauses, 1866), 194-95, 223.

[109] “Einladung zur Theilnahme an der im Wupperthale sich gebildeten Tractat-Gesellschaft,” Deutsche Bibelgesellschaften (ausser Stuttgart), in Basel Staatsarchiv; Jones, Jubilee Memorial, 86, 352.

[110] Harms, Hamburg und die Mission, 89, 92-102, 110.

[111] “Nachricht von der Calwer Traktatverein,” Calwer Missionsblatt, number 11 (June 2, 1832): 43-44; “Anzeigen,” Calwer Missionsblatt, number 22 (November 3, 1832): 92; Jan Carsten Schnurr, “Biblische Historie und historische Bibelkritik im Denken der Erweckungsbewegung zur Zeit des Vormärz,” Theologische Beiträge 46 (2015): 351.

[112] Martin Brecht, “Christian Gottlob Barths ‘Zweimal Zweiundfünfzig biblische Geschichten’—ein weltweiter Bestseller unter den Schulbüchern der Erweckungsbewegung,” Pietismus und Neuzeit 11 (1985): 133, 136.

[113] Kopp, Christian Gottlob Barths Leben, 141-42.

[114] Jones, Jubilee Memorial, 343-44; Christian Gottlob Barth to J. H. N. Felt, n.d. (appended to a letter to Rev. Hausmeister, July 27, 1832), in Württembergische Landesbibliothek, Handschriftenabteilung; Brecht, “Christian Gottlob Barths ‘Zweimal Zweiundfünfzig biblische Geschichten’,” 135.

[115] Wolfgang Schöllkopf, Tu der Völker Türen auf: Christian Gottlob Barth—Pfarrer, Pietist, Publizist (Stuttgart: Calwer Verlag, 2011), 119.

[116] Christian Gottlob Barth, Die allgememeine Weltgechichte nach biblischen Grundsätzen bearbeitet, 4th ed. (Calw: Calwer Verein, 1847), 3, 5.

[117] Schöllkopf, Tu der Völker Türen auf, 119.

[118] Kopp, Christian Gottlob Barths Leben, 191.

[119] Jan Carsten Schnurr, “Das Geschichtsbewusstsein der württembergischen Erweckungsbewegung im Vormärz,” Blätter für württembergische Kirchengeschichte 113 (2013): 316; Schöllkopf, Tu der Völker Türen auf, 102; see also Wolfgang Schöllkopf, “Menschen und Medien als Mittler der Mission: Die Anfänge des Calwer Verlagsvereins im frühen 19. Jahrhundert,” in Werbung für das Reich Gottes: Medien in den Erweckungsbewegungen des 19. Jahrhunderts, ed. Veronika Albrecht-Birkner, et al (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2025), 65-81.

[120] Brecht, “Christian Gottlob Barths ‘Zweimal Zweiundfünfzig biblische Geschichten’,” 135.

[121] Schnurr, “Geschichtsbewusstsein der württembergischen Erweckungsbewegung,” 318-22.

[122] Johann Christoph Blumhardt [but published anonymously in this edition; later editions gave his name], Handbüchlein der Weltgeschichte für Schulen und Familien (Calw: Calwer Verlagsverein, 1843), 20-21, 85-86, 321; quote at 21.

[123] Jan Carsten Schnurr, “Geschichtsdeutung im Zeichen des Reiches Gottes Historiographie- und begriffsgeschichtliche Anmerkungen zur Geschichtsliteratur der protestantischen Erweckungsbewegung im Vormärz,” Historische Zeitschrift 291 (2010): 361.