Felician Martin of Zaremba

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Count Felician Martin von Zaremba , occasionally Felizian Martin von Zaremba , (born March 15, 1794 in Zaroy near Grodno, Poland (today Hrodna , Belarus); † May 31, 1874 in Basel ) was a Russian diplomat, preacher and missionary of Polish origin.

Life

Zaremba was the son of a Russian officer of Polish origin. At the age of nine, Zaremba became an orphan in 1803. An uncle adopted him and brought him up well. In 1811, at the age of 17, Zaremba began studying politics and history at the University of Dorpat . He later moved to Moscow University .

Five years later, Zaremba completed his studies with a doctorate. At the end of November 1816, his dissertation, an investigation into the Russian guild system, was recognized.

The Russian Chancellor Karl Robert von Nesselrode became aware of Zaremba and got him a position at the Imperial Court of Justice for Foreign Affairs. There Zaremba made the acquaintance of the diplomat Ioannis Kapodistrias who also promoted him.

Zaremba had already come into contact with pietism during his studies. Johann Heinrich Jung-Stilling and his work preoccupied him so much that after some deliberation he gave up his diplomatic career and traveled to Germany. In Weinheim (Baden) he met a grandson of Jung-Stillings who drew his attention to the Basel Mission .

In Basel , Zaremba made friends with Spittler, with whom he also lived, and enrolled at the Mission School of the Basel Mission in 1818. So far missionaries have only been trained there for other societies. Zaremba was now one of the first to work as Basel missionaries. In July 1821 he was sent to the south of the tsarist empire.

Zaremba traveled to Saint Petersburg with August Heinrich Dittrich in order to personally collect permission to perform missions at the Tsar's court. Since the evangelical minister of culture, Alexander N. Golitsyn, was very open to this project , Tsar Alexander I had nothing against it.

From 1822 to 1838 Zaremba worked in the Caucasus . He founded an Armenian school in Shusha , near the Ararat . This was later expanded to include a college of education and a printing shop. In the fight against Islam , Zaremba tried to involve the Armenian Church in his evangelical missionary work. A quote from Zaremba reads: The Orient can only be evangelized through the Orient .

The Armenian official church saw this somewhat differently and intervened with Tsar Nicholas I. As a result, with a decree of the Tsar in 1835, the entire Basel mission in the Tsarist Empire was forbidden with immediate effect. Zaremba was still allowed to liquidate the mission station and then he too was expelled from the country.

In 1838 he returned to his parent company in Basel. but in the following year he went back to the Caucasus and worked as a traveling preacher in the Caucasus until 1859. In August 1859 he returned to Switzerland forever . There he became a very committed employee of the mission newspaper Der Heidenbote .

Over the next several years, Zaremba suffered several strokes from which he was unable to recover. He lost his language and on May 31, 1874 Count Felician Martin von Zaremba died at the age of 80 in Basel. The mission inspector J. Josenhans held a highly acclaimed funeral oration on the occasion of the funeral on June 3, 1874.

Zaremba is the lyricist of the third stanza of the hymn EG 593 (The thing is yours, Lord Jesus Christ):

You yourself died as a grain of wheat and sank into the grave;
enliven then, oh life-born, the world that God gave you.
Send messengers to every country so that your name will soon be known,
your name full of bliss.
We too are ready to serve you;
ready for service; ready for you to serve.

Works

  • Youth life . - Basel: Mission bookshop, 1858
  • A Russian nobleman as a missionary  : from life. - Basel: Mission bookshop, 1890
  • As God leads me, I want to go  : something about the mission story. - Reval: sn, 1857

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Zaremba, Felician Martin of
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Russian diplomat, preacher and missionary of Polish origin
DATE OF BIRTH March 15, 1794
PLACE OF BIRTH Zaroy near Grodno
DATE OF DEATH May 31, 1874
Place of death Basel