Johann Andreas Gülzau

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Johann (es) Andreas Gülzau , also called Andreas-Johannes Gülzau (born March 16, 1817 in Stade , † March 2, 1891 in Memel ), was a Baptist clergyman and a pioneer of the Baptist movement. Among other things, he worked in Bremen , Stettin , Hamburg , Königsberg , Volmarstein and Memel .

Life

Johann Andreas Gülzau (right) with Heinrich Cramme

Johann Andreas Gülzau was the son of an estate owner in Stad and initially completed a teacher training course at the educational seminar. Impressed by the piety of a school inspector and his speeches at the daily morning devotions, he was converted in the early 1840s. In the following years he met the then young Hamburg Baptist Church know and was on March 4, 1842 by Johann Gerhard Oncken , founder of the German Baptist movement in the Alster baptized . In his life review, Gülzau writes about his baptism: On March 4, 1842, the dear Br. JG Oncken and his mission assistant Lange, Br. Hüttner, now moved to Midlum near Dorum , through whom I had been introduced to the congregation, and four new converts to [note: Hamburg- ] St. Georg, where we boarded a boat and drove to the Outer Alster. It was a dark evening, but it was light in our souls, for the sun of grace sent its bright rays into it. We had to change clothes in the boat. A short, strong prayer was said by the Baptist, then it went overboard into the flood. The Baptist was of course the first. Then I heard my name calling. I followed, and after the words of institution were spoken, I was sunk into the death of my guarantor [Note: = Jesus Christ ] . The other three, including A. Meyer, followed. This evening remains unforgettable for me.

As a member of a free church congregation, access to the teaching profession was now closed to him, he earned his living as a businessman and in this context moved to Ludwigsburg , where he was missionary alongside his professional work.

Bremen

In 1845 Johann Andreas Gülzau was appointed to Bremen. Oncken had numerous contacts there due to his evangelistic trips in the 20s of the 19th century, which Gülzau was to build on. Upon his arrival on October 30, he met already at a small free church home group , which was created by the initiative of a Baptist Oldenburg 1844th Two members of the house group had already been baptized before his arrival and belonged to the Baptist congregation in Oldenburg founded in 1837 . Just a few weeks after Gülzau took up his duties, another seven people reported for the baptism, which Johann Gerhard Oncken then carried out on November 10, 1845 in the Weser . The following day he established the Bremen community in the house of the carpenter Daniel Zincke. In this context, Gülzau was ordained an elder at the suggestion of the small community of Oncken and commissioned with the management of the young community. Two years later he was ordained as a preacher for the community. In 1848 he gave up his business and from that time worked full-time.

Szczecin

In 1849 Gülzau moved to the Baptist mission area in and around Stettin as Julius Köbner's successor . Here he experienced a series of persecutions by state and church authorities, as a result of which he was sentenced to 14 days in prison in May 1852. The reason for this were the baptisms of believers carried out by him in Schwägerau (today: Saowraschnoje) .

Hamburg, Koenigsberg, Poland

Königsberg around 1850

In 1855 we find him at Oncken's side in Hamburg. During this time he was particularly committed to Sunday school work within the Baptist movement, but was also on the road on behalf of Oncken in the travel service. In this context he also came to Königsberg , collected the scattered Baptists there and combined them into a congregation. The constituent meeting was chaired by Gülzau on November 8th, 1857 at the gates of Königsberg on the Aweiden estate . Gülzau was appointed provisional elder and the next day reported to the Königsberg police headquarters that the church had been established. On November 15th, the young congregation celebrated their first service in a rented apartment at "Sackheimer rechts Strasse No. 77/78", to which they had invited through a newspaper advertisement. In addition to many guests, a police commissioner was also present. In the following week, the community received a police warning, according to which it was allowed to "hold meetings", but not at the hour on Sunday when the Protestant and Catholic parishes were celebrating their services. In response to their objection to this condition, the parish received the following response from the police authorities: [The order was issued] to allow the police officers monitoring the dissenters' meetings to attend the services of the Evangelical or Catholic regional church. In the years that followed, the Königsberg congregation developed into the center of missionary work in East Prussia , from which a considerable number of Baptist congregations and branch congregations with several thousand members emerged. Almost 50 years later, the Baptist East Prussian Association had 40 independent congregations with 174 branch congregations and a total of 9,285 members. Another travel service took Gülzau to Poland in the summer of 1861 to found the first Baptist congregation in Poland with 25 people of Polish origin who were baptized in 1858 by the elementary school teacher Gottfried Alf and the Baptist missionary Wilhelm Weist . The constitution took place on August 4, 1861 in Adamow near Warsaw . Gottfried Alf was ordained by Gülzau as the first church elder.

Volmarstein-Grundschöttel and Memel

Memel Baptist Church (today Klaipeda) around 1850

On April 1, 1863, he followed the call of the young Baptist congregation Volmarstein-Grundschöttel , whose first preacher he became and in which he remained until 1874. During his time in Grundschöttel, in addition to his pastoral work, he edited the monthly magazine Der Pilger unter den Kirchen der Kirchen, launched in 1864 . At the end of 1874 Gülzau traveled to the United States on behalf of the German Baptist Union to report on the work in Germany and to ask for financial support. After his return he was called to be a preacher in the Memel Baptist Church. At that time, the Memel congregation had a church which, with more than 2000 seats, was the largest Baptist church in continental Europe.

In 1888 Johann Andreas Gülzau resigned from his office due to increasing physical weakness and died almost three years later.

literature

  • Josef Lehmann: History of the German Baptists. Cassel 1922 (revised and expanded by FW Herrmann)
  • Rudolf Donat: How the work began. Formation of the German Baptist Churches. Kassel 1958
  • Gregor Helms, Karl Söhlke u. a .: 150 years of Baptists in Bremen and around. Festschrift for the 150th anniversary of the Bremen Baptist congregations. Bremen 1995

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Rudolf Donat: How the work began. Formation of the German Baptist Churches. Kassel 1958, p. 107f.
  2. ↑ Quoted from Josef Lehmann: History of the German Baptists. Cassel 1922 (revised and expanded by FW Herrmann), p. 168f. ( online ; accessed September 21, 2010)
  3. ↑ Rudolf Donat: How the work began. Formation of the German Baptist Churches. Kassel 1958, p. 107
  4. ^ Josef Lehmann: History of the German Baptists. Cassel 1922, p. 108
  5. ^ Karl Heinz Voigt: International Sunday School and German Children's Service. Volume 52 in the series Church - Denomination - Religion. Göttingen 2007, ISBN 978-3-89971-402-9 , p. 60
  6. ^ Josef Lehmann: History of the German Baptists. Cassel 1922, 206f; the quote can be found on p. 207
  7. ^ Josef Lehmann (Ed.): Statistics 1905 of the Federation of Baptist Congregations in Germany (incorporated in Hamburg) and in the appendix the statistics of Baptist congregations in the Balkan states, in Austria-Hungary, in the Netherlands, Switzerland and South Africa , Kassel 1905, p 9f
  8. ^ Robert L. Kluttig: The History of the German Baptists in Poland from 1858 to 1945 , Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada 1973, p. 31
  9. ^ Josef Lehmann: History of the German Baptists. Cassel 1922, p. 300
  10. ↑ Festival brochure of the Evangelical Free Church Community Wetter-Volmarstein (2004), p. 17 ( Memento of the original from September 20, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been 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 September 21, 2010  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.efg-grundschoettel.de
  11. ^ Josef Lehmann: History of the German Baptists. Cassel 1922, p. 287
  12. ^ Josef Lehmann: History of the German Baptists. Cassel 1922, p. 290
personal data
SURNAME Gülzau, Johann Andreas
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gülzau, Johannes Andreas; Gülzau, Andreas-Johannes
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Baptist pastor
DATE OF BIRTH March 16, 1817
PLACE OF BIRTH Stade
DATE OF DEATH March 2, 1891
Place of death Memel