Adeline von Schimmelmann

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Adeline Countess Schimmelmann
Adeline Countess Schimmelmann as a young woman
Newspaper advertisement - invitation to lectures by A. von Schimmelmann

Adeline Karoline Luise Countess von Schimmelmann (born July 19, 1854 in Ahrensburg , † November 18, 1913 in Hamburg ) was a German evangelist and the founder of a seaman's mission .

Life

Adeline Countess Schimmelmann was the daughter of Ernst Graf von Schimmelmann and Adelaide Countess von Schimmelmann, nee. von Lützerode (1823–1890). Olga von Lützerode was her aunt. She grew up in Ahrensburg Castle . Her older sister Fanny (1846-1918) was married to the Count and Prussian Lieutenant General August zu Solms-Wildenfels (1823-1918).

From 1872 to 1890 Schimmelmann was the court lady of the Empress Augusta and in this function mainly performed representative duties. In February 1886 in Berlin she heard a lecture by the well-known pastor and folk writer Otto Funcke , to whom she ascribed her conversion in retrospect . When she was staying on the island of Rügen in the town of Göhren to relax in August 1886 , she got to know the misery of the fishermen who worked there, who saw themselves robbed of their livelihood after the advent of tourism.

Schimmelmann then designed a seaman's home at the Göhrener salt storage area ( Solthus ) . It offered space for 50 people and was inaugurated in 1887. Later she also bought land on the island of Oie and other places along the coast to set up more homes there. In particular, she tried to combat alcoholism, which was widespread among fishermen . For this she also preached on the beaches of Rügen and - contrary to the zeitgeist - also advocated women's suffrage . When her activity as a lady-in-waiting ended with the death of the Empress in 1890, she was able to devote herself entirely to her charitable projects.

The Countess's siblings, who lived in Copenhagen , did not agree with this expenditure of money, summoned them to Copenhagen in 1893 on pretended grounds and admitted them to a psychiatric institution with a wrong diagnosis. In April 1894, friends obtained the release. In her "Streiflichter" she describes how parts of her relatives devastated her villa, destroyed or robbed her property and how her followers were criminalized on flimsy grounds.

From 1894 Schimmelmann worked in Germany, soon also in other European countries, as a free evangelist. She toured Scandinavia, England and Italy with her yacht, where she was also committed to a better life for seamen. From 1898 to 1900 she toured the United States and Canada, where she gave well-attended lectures. Here, too, she organized the care of seafarers.

Schimmelmann wrote numerous tracts , but was not supported by the church. Male pastors often saw the so-called Pietist as competition, especially since she also criticized parts of the established church and the deaconesses . According to the Hamburg professor and researcher Ruth Albrecht, however, she was only moderately talented as a writer.

With the support of her adoptive son Paul and from the nobility, she founded an international mission in 1906 and published the magazine “Leuchtfeuer”.

In the last years of her life, she converted an old farm near Bischofsheim ad Rhön (today “Schloss Holzberghof”) into a castle that her adoptive son, Paul Frederik Graf Schimmelmann, lived in until 1919.

However, her commitment to the needy soon pushed her to her physical limits and into financial ruin. In 1913 she died impoverished in Hamburg. She was buried in Ahrensburg. Pastor Funcke wrote the obituary.

See also

Works

  • From the diary of Countess Adeline Schimmelmann , Rostock 1896.
  • Highlights from my life at the German court, among Baltic fishermen and Berlin socialists and in prison . Berlin 1898 (reprint, edited by Jörg Ohlemacher, Leipzig 2008).
English edition: Glimpses of my life at the German Court, among Baltic fishermen and Berlin Socialists and in prison including 'A home abroad', by Pastor Otto Funcke. Edited by W. Smith Foggett, Pastor of the English Reformed Church, Hamburg. London: Hodder & Stoughton 1896 ( digitized ).
  • Six lectures . Self-published, Stuttgart 1901.

literature

  • Johannes Witte: Short report on the life, testimony and death of Countess Adeline Schimmelmann. Kiel 1913.
  • Emil Richard Wettstein: Life picture of Countess Adeline Schimmelmann. Berlin 1914.
  • Ruth Albrecht : Adeline Countess Schimmelmann. German evangelist based on the American model? In: Hartmut Lehmann (Ed.), Transatlantic Religious History, 18th to 20th Centuries, Göttingen 2006, pp. 72-108 google books .
  • Jörg Ohlemacher: Adeline Countess Schimmelmann (1854-1913) . In: Adelheid M. von Hauff (ed.): Women shape diakonia. Vol. 2: From the 18th to the 20th century , Stuttgart 2006, pp. 392-406.
  • Ruth Albrecht, Martin Rosenkranz, Kristina Rousseau, Regina Wetjen, Martina Wüstefeld: Adeline Countess von Schimmelmann. Noble. Religious. Eccentric. Wachholtz Verlag, Neumünster 2011.
  • Ruth Albrecht:  Schimmelmann, Adeline Countess of. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 32, Bautz, Nordhausen 2011, ISBN 978-3-88309-615-5 , Sp. 122-1230.
  • Ruth Albrecht, Regina Wetjen: “An imposing, winning appearance”. The evangelist Adeline Countess von Schimmelmann (1854–1913). In: The 19th Century. Hamburg Church History in Articles. (Part 4), Volume 27 in the series of works on the history of the Church in Hamburg (Ed. Inge Mager ), Hamburg 2013, ISBN 978-3-943423-02-0 , pp. 377-417 ( PDF-online ).
  • Ruth Albrecht: Blood theology and blood mysticism with Charles Haddon Spurgeon , Elias Schrenk and Adeline Countess Schimmelmann , pp. 341–371, in: Hans-Jürgen Schrader, Irmtraut Sahmland: Medical and cultural-historical connexes of Pietism: healing art and ethics, arcane traditions, music, literature and language , Volume 61 of works on the history of Pietism, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht , Göttingen 2016
  • Dorothee Dziewas: The Countess and the House by the Sea . Brunnen Verlag, Giessen 2013, ISBN 978-3-7655-1586-6

Web links

Commons : Adeline von Schimmelmann  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Danmarks nobility Aarbog 1906, S. 388 et seq.
personal data
SURNAME Schimmelmann, Adeline von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schimmelmann, Adelaide; Schimmelmann, Adele; Schimmelmann, Adeline Karoline Luise Countess von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Founder of the first seaman's mission
DATE OF BIRTH July 19, 1854
PLACE OF BIRTH Ahrensburg
DATE OF DEATH November 18, 1913
Place of death Hamburg