Johann Heinrich Carl Christian Weichardt

Carl Weichardt

Johann Heinrich Carl Christian Weichardt , or Carl Weichardt for short (born April 1, 1804 in Oldenburg , † January 23, 1866 there ), was a master glassmaker , pioneer of the Baptist movement in the Grand Duchy of Oldenburg and the first elder of the Oldenburg Baptist community .

Life

Carl Weichardt came from an established Oldenburg family of craftsmen. He must have lost his birth father at an early age, because he completed his apprenticeship with his stepfather, the court glazier of the Oldenburg Grand Duke. After his apprenticeship, he went on the usual wanderings that took him to Naples and Bern . During his stay in Switzerland for several years , he met Hermann Lange, an Oldenburg compatriot whom Weichardt knew from his youth. Lange had experienced a so-called conversion in circles of the Swiss revival movement and reported about it, but with his experience met with stark rejection from Weichardt.

Weichardt returned to his homeland around 1830 and took over his parents' glass shop, which was located at the traffic jam - near the old Oldenburg Huntehaven. Hermann Lange, who in the meantime had become a missionary of the Lausanne baptismal congregation , traveled to his native Oldenburg in 1836 to take care of family affairs, and during this stay he stayed with his childhood friend. During the visit, Weichardt witnessed a religious conversation that Lange had with his Jewish business partner. The discussion concerned the question of whether Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah promised by the prophets of Tanakh . Thereupon Weichardt asked the Jewish trader to get a Bible, after receiving it he began to research it and in the process experienced an inner conversion to the Christian faith. He exchanged information about the newly gained knowledge with the grand ducal gardener Knickmann. Reading the New Testament together , especially the sections on baptism , raised doubts in both of them about the validity of infant baptism and ultimately led them to want to be baptized as believers . With their request they turned to the Reformed revival preacher Friedrich Ludwig Mallet , pastor at the St. Stephen's Church in Bremen . Mallet referred the two Oldenburgers with their baptismal request to Johann Gerhard Oncken , with whom he worked in the dissemination of tracts and the Bible and who had founded the first German Baptist congregation in Hamburg in 1834. In a letter written by Oncken in 1836 it says: “I am about to go on a trip to East Frisia and various parts of Hanover. [...] On the way back I intend to spend a few days in Oldenburg, where two people [meaning Weichardt and Knickmann] were converted last winter. I have corresponded with them and am happy to say that they have studied the Scriptures with great attention and have left the Lutheran Church. ”During the stay announced here, Johann Gerhard Oncken baptized both Weichardt and Knickmann and two on June 7, 1836 more men in the Hunte near Oldenburg.

Weichardts et al. a. because of unauthorized religious assembly (last page), with written comments by Carl Weichardt

Immediately after his baptism, Carl Weichardt began holding religious service meetings in his home. The Evangelical Lutheran church councilor Hermann Gerhard Ibbeken found out about these "religious lectures", at which "religious songs, but not from the Oldenburg hymn book" had been sung, and filed a complaint with the municipal magistrate. With the first summons for interrogation began a long series of punitive measures ordered by the police and court against Weichardt and the baptismal group, which was constituted on September 10, 1837 after further baptisms under the chairmanship of Johann Gerhard Oncken as the third German Baptist congregation. It called itself the Apostolic Congregation of Baptized Christians . Carl Weichardt was called to be its first elder.

→ Main article : Oldenburg Baptist Congregation

In the period that followed, the Oldenburg church authorities repeatedly ordered the forced baptism of babies from Baptist families. In his memoirs, an Oldenburg pastor of the regional church described the baptism of a six-month-old baby in Carl Weichardt's house: “In such a case, Pastor Claußen let him know that he would come to his house at one hour or so to carry out the baptism. Then the parents left the house, ignoring the whole procedure as much as possible. Pastor Claussen came with the sexton and some witnesses, and the baptism was performed in the absence of the parents. "

Rolf Schäfer commented on this and other events as follows: “[... It] the struggle over the doctrine of baptism did not take place with the help of arguments - especially since the Baptists were not taken seriously theologically - but with the instruments of power of the bourgeois order. Therefore, the newborns were forcibly baptized before 1848. "

In 1862 Carl Weichardt witnessed the 25th anniversary of the Oldenburg Baptist Congregation, in which Johann Gerhard Oncken also took part as a preacher. He died in the early morning hours of January 23, 1865. He found his grave in the Oldenburg Gertrudenfriedhof . The resting place at which a wreath was laid in 1937 on the occasion of the centenary of the community no longer exists today.

literature

• Evangelical Free Church Community Oldenburg (Hrsg.): Mission and way. 1837-1987. 150 Years of the Evangelical Free Church Community of Oldenburg , Oldenburg (Oldenburg) 1987, pp. 5–23

• Margarete Jelten: Under God's roof tiles. Beginnings of Baptism in Northwest Germany , Bremerhaven 1984, pp. 33–38; 121-135
• Margarete Jelten: From Hamburg to Oldenburg. Keywords from Oldenburg 1836 as keywords for Oldenburg 1986. On the Federal Council meeting May 7-10, 1986 , Bremerhaven 1986

• Rudolf Donat: How the work began. Origin of the German Baptist Congregations , Kassel 1958, p. 98ff

• Joseph Lehmann: History of the German Baptists ; first part: Education, expansion and persecution of the communities until the dawn of real religious freedom in 1848 , Hamburg 1896, pp. 98-103

Web links

• Baptist Missionary Magazine (Ed. Baptist General Convention), Vol. XVII, Boston 1837, pp. 66f ; Here you can find Johann Gerhard Oncken's report, written in 1837, about his first meeting with Carl Weichardt.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Evangelical Free Church in Oldenburg (ed.): Sendung und Weg. 1837-1987. 150 years of the Evangelical Free Church in Oldenburg , Oldenburg (Oldenburg) 1987, p. 5.
2. ^ Rudolf Donat: The growing work. Expansion of the German Baptist congregations over 60 years (1849–1909) , Kassel 1960, p. 24
3. ↑ Margarete Jelten: From Hamburg to Oldenburg. Keywords from Oldenburg 1836 as keywords for Oldenburg 1986. On the Federal Council meeting May 7-10 , 1986 , Bremerhaven 1986, p. 7.
4. ↑ Rudolf Donat: How the work began. Origin of the German Baptist Congregations , Kassel 1958, p. 98.
5. ^ Josef Lehmann: History of the German Baptists , Hamburg 1896, p. 99.
6. ↑ Evangelical Free Church Community Oldenburg (ed.): Tradition and Weite. 125 years of the Baptist Congregation in Oldenburg , p. 214f.
7. ↑ Quoted from the Evangelical Free Church of Oldenburg (ed.): Tradition und Weite. 125 years of the Baptist Congregation in Oldenburg , p. 218.
8. ↑ Johannes Ramsauer: From the memories of church life in the Duchy of Oldenburg in the 19th century , in: Oldenburgisches Kirchenblatt , No. 37/1932, p. 24.
9. ^ Rolf Schäfer u. a. (Ed.): Oldenburgische Kirchengeschichte , Oldenburg 1999, p. 405.
10. ↑ Evangelical Free Church Community Oldenburg (ed.): Tradition and Weite. 125 years of the Baptist Church in Oldenburg , p. 250.