August Crull

August Crull

August Johann Friedrich Crull (born January 27, 1845 in Rostock , † February 17, 1923 in Milwaukee ) was a German-American Lutheran theologian, educator and writer.

Live and act

August Crull came from a Mecklenburg academic family. He was the son of the lawyer and Mecklenburg-Schwerin court counselor (Georg Christian) Friedrich Crull (born August 5, 1786 in Alt Karin , † December 4, 1849 in Rostock), grandson of the pastor in Alt-Karin Heinrich Georg Friedrich Crull (1755-1819 ) and great-great-grandson of Georg Christoph Detharding . The Wismar doctor and historian Friedrich Crull was his cousin. His father had passed away from his first wife Christine Marie Juliane, geb. Calsow (1787–1856) divorced, around 1839 the actress Katharine Hubertine, b. To marry Braun.

After his father's sudden death from a stroke , his mother married the theologian Albert Friedrich Hoppe . Crull began his school days at the high school in Rostock; in 1855 the family emigrated to the USA. While the family initially found a new home in New Orleans , August Crull went to St. Louis , Missouri to attend the Concordia College of the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod . He moved to Fort Wayne , Indiana when it moved there and graduated here in 1862. He then studied theology at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, passed the candidate exam in 1865 and was ordained in the same year . After only one year as an assistant pastor in Milwaukee, he contracted a sore throat and went to Dresden for a year to cure . In 1868 he returned to the USA and initially worked as a local editor for a German newspaper in St. Louis.

From 1869 to 1871 he was the head of a Lutheran high school, and from 1871 to 1873 he was pastor of a large Lutheran congregation in Grand Rapids, Michigan . In 1873 he was appointed professor of German and French at Concordia College in Fort Wayne. He taught there for 42 years until 1915. He retired in Milwaukee. His last years were overshadowed by psychological problems that made him temporarily admitted to a sanatorium.

His first wife Sophie, b. Viewend († 1884), the daughter of a professor in St. Louis, and three of his four children from this marriage died before him. In his second marriage he was married to Katharina, geb. John, from Milwaukee.

August Crull is best known as a hymnologist. He published three English hymn books, some with his own translations of German chorales. Some of them can still be found today in English language hymn books. The bilingual anthologies published by him such as God bless you! were very successful as gift books , for example for confirmation , and saw several editions. In addition, he wrote educational works and was editor of Concordianer , the German-language magazine for graduates of Concordia College , for several years .

Fonts

• Short gesture theory. 1880 [2. Edition: 1900; 3rd edition: 1908]

( Digitized version of the 2nd edition)

• God bless you! A selection of stem book verses, New Year's, birthday, godparent, wedding and other blessings. Concordia Publishing House, St. Louis 1884, 1885
• God comfort you! 1889
• Lord God! A manual for daily house devotion from the sermons of blessed Prof. Dr. CFW Walther. Concordia Publishing House, St. Louis 1893 ( digitized )
• Textbook of the German language. 1893, 1905
• Hymn Book for the use of Evangelical Lutheran schools and congregations. Decorah 1877, 1884 ( digitized from the 1884 edition)
• Hymns of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. For the use of English Lutheran Missions. Concordia Publishing House, St. Louis 1886
• Evangelical Lutheran Hymn Book. 1889, 1892

literature

• W. H. Kruse: † Professor August Crull. †. In: Der Concordianer 15 (1923), pp. 8-12.
• Albert J. Crull: Dr. Amandus Crull of Jefferson County, Missouri: His Ancestors, Life and Times, and Descendants. Gateway Press, Baltimore 1992.

Web links

• Entry in Christian Cycopedia online