Alexandre Freytag

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Alexandre Freytag, detail of the tomb in Cartigny

Frédéric-Louis-Alexandre Freytag (born October 18, 1870 in Baden , † January 31, 1947 in Cartigny GE ) was a Swiss Bible scholar and founder of the religious community Church of the Kingdom of God ( philanthropic assembly ).

Live and act

origin

His parents were the hairdresser Louis and Maria-Hélène, b. White bread. After the death of his father in 1888, Freytag began a spiritual search that initially led him to the seven-day Adventists . Early on, his thoughts revolved around the question of how death could be conquered. The sentence “Death is the wages of sin” Rom. 6.23 EU he interpreted as meaning that God no longer has any reason to punish a person who lives completely without sin with death. From then on he endeavored to lead a life in the utmost obedience to God.

Work for the Watchtower Society

In 1898 he joined the Bible Students. In 1912 an office of the Watchtower Society for French-speaking Switzerland was founded in Geneva, headed by Emil Lanz. Freytag, who spoke German, English and French, translated Charles Taze Russell's magazine Zion's Wacht-Turm into French. When Lanz broke with the Watchtower Society after Russell's death in 1916, Freytag became head of the Watchtower Society's Geneva office .

Break with the Watchtower Society

In 1917 Freytag began to make changes to the content of the French version of the Watchtower and to criticize the Watchtower Society. Since the French edition of the Watchtower, which was translated or edited by Freytag, corresponded less and less to the English original, other Bible Students, among them Adolphe Weber, began to publish a French translation of the English Watchtower parallel to Freytag's French Watchtower. In January 1919, Bible Students loyal to Rutherford founded their own French office in Paris because they no longer trusted Freytag's Geneva office. In the summer of 1919 Freytag moved the Watchtower Society's property from the Geneva office to his private address, whereupon Joseph Franklin Rutherford dismissed Freytag, dissolved the Geneva office, and hired Conrad C. Binkele to work from the Zurich office of the Watchtower Society to conduct Bible Students throughout Switzerland to supervise. Against Freytag, who refused to return property he had taken to the Watchtower Society, several legal proceedings were initiated by the Watchtower Society, which Freytag lost.

Church of the Kingdom of God

After the break with the Bible Students, Freytag founded the Church of the Kingdom of God (also: Philanthropisches Werk , Menschenfreundliches Werk or Amis de l'homme , Association of the Angels of the Lord ), about four-fifths of the French-speaking Bible Students at the time joined him. Freytag describes itself and its publishing house as "Angel of Jehovah", later as "Angel of the Lord". Freytag's teaching combined Russell's chiliastic considerations with the view that human friends could help build the kingdom of God on earth by fulfilling the law of the universe (that is, by living an altruistic way of life). His community expanded to Germany, Austria and France and ran several farms in Switzerland (Cartigny, Marnand and Wart near Neftenbach), in France, Austria, Germany ( Sternberg Castle , which was acquired by Freytag in 1933), Belgium and Mexico. In Austria, weekly church services are still held in Graz, Salzburg, Traun and Vienna.

Spin-offs

After Freytag's death, a group in France under Bernard Sayerce split off from the Church of the Kingdom of God in 1947 and continued to use the name Amis de l'homme.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Paul Ranc: Alexandre Freytag. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . July 19, 2005 , accessed July 2, 2019 .
  2. ↑ Handbook of Religious Communities for d. VELKDE working group on behalf of d. Luth. Church Office ed. by Horst Reller, Gütersloher Verlagshaus Gerd Mohn, Gütersloh 1978, 2nd edition 1979, p. 373
  3. ↑ a b c Dietrich Hellmund: History of Jehovah's Witnesses (in the period from 1870 to 1920). Dissertation, Hamburg 1972.
  4. ^ Esther Martinet: Jehovah's Witnesses in Switzerland and in the Principality of Liechtenstein. in: Gerhard Besier, Katarzyna Stokłosa (Ed.): Jehovah's Witnesses in Europe - Past and Present , Volume 3. LIT Verlag Dr. W. Hopf, Berlin 2018. p. 582.
  5. ^ Esther Martinet: Jehovah's Witnesses in Switzerland and in the Principality of Liechtenstein. in: Gerhard Besier, Katarzyna Stokłosa (Ed.): Jehovah's Witnesses in Europe - Past and Present , Volume 3. LIT Verlag Dr. W. Hopf, Berlin 2018. p. 589.
  6. ↑ a b Detlef Garbe: Between Resistance and Martyrdom: The Jehovah's Witnesses in the “Third Reich”. Oldenburg, Munich, 4th edition 1999, p. 58.
  7. ^ Esther Martinet: Jehovah's Witnesses in Switzerland and in the Principality of Liechtenstein. in: Gerhard Besier, Katarzyna Stokłosa (Ed.): Jehovah's Witnesses in Europe - Past and Present , Volume 3. LIT Verlag Dr. W. Hopf, Berlin 2018. p. 590.
  8. ↑ Georg Schmid, Georg Otto Schmid (ed.): Churches sects religions. Religious communities, ideological groups and psycho-organizations in the German-speaking area. 7th edition. Theological Publishing House Zurich, 2003. p. 171.
personal data
SURNAME Freytag, Alexandre
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Freytag, Frédéric-Louis-Alexandre (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss biblical scholar and founder of the religious community "Church of the Kingdom of God"
DATE OF BIRTH October 18, 1870
PLACE OF BIRTH Baden AG
DATE OF DEATH January 31, 1947
Place of death Cartigny GE