Hedwig Büll

Hedwig Büll (also: Anna Hedvig Büll , nee Anna Hedwig Bühl ; * 23 January ^July / 4 February  1887 ^greg. In Haapsalu , Estonia Governorate ; † October 1, 1981 in Waldwimmersbach near Heidelberg ) was an Estonian missionary to the German-Baltic region Origin who was involved in the rescue of several thousand Armenian orphans during the Armenian genocide .

life and work

Anna Hedvig Büll as a teenager

Anna Hedwig Büll was born into a Protestant family in Haapsalu in 1887 . Her father was the wealthy businessman Ernst Gottlieb Theodor Bühl, who ran a spa facility for mud applications in Haapsalu , her mother was Alma Louise Wilhelmine Stürmer. Anna Hedwig was the sixth of eight siblings and attended a state school until the age of 15. After that, she was sent to Saint Petersburg to continue her education at the Saint Anne Parish High School . During a family visit in Haapsalu in 1903, she was inspired by several readings by the famous preacher Johann Kargel in her father's house and decided to devote her life to humanitarian missionary work.

After graduating from high school in the same year, Anna Hedwig Bühl spent some time in the Malche Mission House in Bad Freienwalde (Oder) , where she heard about the fate of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire . In order to help them, she continued her training at an evangelical school of the “German Aid Association for Christian Love in the Orient” in Frankfurt am Main . She received an invitation to work for this organization in an Armenian mission house in Marasch , but because of her youth she was first used to care for women and children in German villages and then to care for the poor in Saint Petersburg.

In 1909 Bühl tried to get to Armenia again. This time their trip failed because of massacres in and around Adana . Instead, Bühl attended a teaching seminar for missionaries for two years. It was not until 1911 that she came to Cilicia , where she worked as a teacher in an Armenian orphanage in Marasch until 1916. In 1915, Bühl was an eyewitness to the genocide of the Armenians in Cilicia and was involved in the rescue of two thousand Armenian women and children when Marasch was declared a “city of orphans”. In 1916 Bühl was recalled from Marasch. Via Constantinople and Graz , where she stayed for a year and a half because of the revolutionary and post-war turmoil, she returned to Estonia in 1921 . She took citizenship of the newly established Estonian Republic and Estonized her name.

In 1921 Anna Hedvig Büll went to Aleppo in Syria for the newly founded Action Chrétienne en Orient , where she set up a refugee camp for the survivors of the genocide. She organized medical aid for victims of the plague and had two hospitals built. She organized the establishment of weaving shops, handicraft workshops, gardens and an Armenian school and other facilities to improve the situation of the refugees. Together with Anne-Marie Tartar from Alsace, she built the mission houses Elim and Sichar into a regionally important evangelization center for Arab and Armenian Christians.

In 1951, most of the refugees under the care of the missionaries were brought to the Armenian SSR ; Hedwig Büll was refused entry by the Soviet authorities. She therefore returned to Europe, where she continued to campaign for the interests of the Armenians. She wrote a memory book about her fellow missionary Nurzia (Marie) Levonjan and called for donations. In 1981 Hedwig Büll died in a nursing home for missionaries in Waldwimmersbach near Heidelberg.

Publications

• Years of distress and revival times in the Orient: From the blessed life of the Armenian evangelist Nurzia Levonian . Lahr-Dinglingen, Verlag der Johannis-Druckerei C. Schweickhardt 1957.

Honors

Memorial plaque for Hedwig Büll in Estonian and Armenian: “Hedwig Büll. 1887-1981. Estonian missionary who dedicated her life to saving the Armenians from the Turkish genocide in the countries of the Middle East. "

On April 29, 1989, the Armenian-Estonian Cultural Society put a plaque on the house where she was born at 5 Kooli Street in Haapsalu. The memory of Hedwig Büll is also kept alive by a memorial in Armenia , her name can be found among those honored by a plaque in the Zizernakaberd genocide museum in Yerevan . In 2015, a memorial stone, a khachkar, d. H. an Armenian stone cross, erected.

Web links

Commons : Hedwig Büll  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Ene Pajula: Haapsalu tüdrukust armeenia emaks (Õpetajate Leht, May 11, 2007, Estonian, accessed November 27, 2011)
• Gallery: Hedwig Büllile püstitatakse Haapsalu promenaadile mäletussammas

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Õde Hedwig Büll ( Memento of the original from July 20, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . (CV with picture, Estonian, originally Le Levant, No. 4, 1931, viewed November 26, 2011)  
2. ^ Marshall, Annie C. 1919. Through Darkness to Dawn. The New Armenia , Vol. 11-12, p. 118.
3. ^ Bagdikian, Ben H. 1997. Double Vision: Reflections on My Heritage, Life, and Profession . 88. Beacon Press. ( ISBN 978-0-8070-7067-3 )
4. ↑ Talita: A life testimony to Jesus Christ: On the death of Anne-Marie Tartar (1909–2003) ( Memento of the original from August 6, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (accessed November 26, 2011) 
5. ↑ Anna Hedvig Büll - 120 ( Memento of the original from July 20, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Estonian, accessed November 26, 2011)