Eduard Georg Schröter

Eduard Georg Schröter (born July 4, 1811 in Lengede , † April 22, 1888 in Sauk City , Wisconsin ) was a German Protestant theologian and co-founder of the Free Congregation in the USA.

Life

Schröter enjoyed his lessons from private tutors. At the age of 14 he attended the scholarly school in Wolfenbüttel and later switched to the Andreanum grammar school in Hildesheim . He finished school at the Collegium Carolinum in Braunschweig . As a schoolboy, he joined a forbidden fraternity.

From the summer of 1833 Schröter studied theology, philosophy and history in Jena . In 1834 he moved to the University of Göttingen and completed his studies two years later. At the university he also belonged to a student association that was forbidden.

As a lecturer and pastor, he was expelled from the Protestant regional church of the Kingdom of Hanover in 1845 because of his revolutionary views . In the same year, Schröter joined the German Catholic movement . In November of that year he went to Worms and founded a branch of the German Catholic Association there.

At the turn of the year 1845/46 he married. He had two children with his wife. Because of his work as a preacher for the German Catholic Association, he was threatened with expulsion from the Grand Duchy of Hesse from 1848 . As a writer, too, he became increasingly suspicious of the authorities.

On May 23, 1850, he and his family were expelled and he emigrated to the USA . They reached New York on July 11, 1850 . The family was actually planning to continue their journey, but when his wife died on January 1, 1851, Schröter stayed in town.

There in New York Schröter founded the Free Church of New York City. With various lecture tours he brought about similar foundations in Boston , Mass., Norwich , Conn., Hartwich , New Haven , Conn. and Bridgeport , Conn. The German Free Church of Milwaukee , Wisc. Schröter appointed its spokesman at the end of 1851.

Between September 21, 1851 and October 16, 1853, Schröter was the editor of the journal Humanist . Due to illness, he left the city of Milwaukee and settled in Sauk City. There he married Elise Cunradi Graepel in 1853. On May 27, 1853, the Sauk County Free Church appointed him its spokesman.

With his work, Schröter ensured that over time Wisconsin became a center of German-American free thinkers . In 1882 Schröter resigned all offices due to illness and died in the same year at the age of 77.

Works

• The old Christmas faith and the free spirit of the new time (1871)
• It is your father's pleasure to give you the kingdom (1845)
• The right position of the thirst for the soul (1843)
• The world and its judgment on the signs of the times (1845)

literature

• Bettina Goldberg: German-American Freethinkers in Milwaukee 1877–1890 . Bochum: Univ., 1982
• Adolf E. Zucker: The Forty-Eighters: Political Refugees of the German Revolution of 1848. New York: Columbia Univ. Pr., 1950