Johannes Avetaranian

Johannes Avetaranian or Johannes Awetaranian (born June 30, 1861 in Erzurum as Muhammad Shukri ; † December 11, 1919 in Wiesbaden ) was a Protestant missionary .

Born into a Muslim family (his father was a dervish ), Muhammad Shukri first became a mullah , but converted from Islam to Christianity after reading the New Testament and was baptized in Tbilisi on February 28, 1885 , using the Armenian name John Avetaranian ("Son of the Gospel") accepted. He joined the missionary work of the Swedish Missionary Union , was trained at the mission school in Kristinehamn and, after a brief assignment in Tbilisi and the surrounding area, came to Kashgar ( Xinjiang , then East Turkestan) in 1892 , where he worked as a missionary until 1897 and the new one Testament translated into Uyghur . From 1899 he worked for Johannes Lepsius ' German Orient Mission (DOM) and accompanied him on a nine-month trip to the Orient, in order to then work as a missionary in Bulgaria and later also in Persia . In 1909 he fled to Germany and was supposed to be employed at a planned "Mohammedan seminar" of the DOM in Groß-Lichterfelde , but returned to Plovdiv in 1910 after tensions with the board of the DOM . When Lepsius resigned from the DOM in 1918, Avetaranian joined him, but could no longer take on work due to his tense health and died while taking a spa stay.

Since 1900 he had been married to the German noblewoman Helene von Osteroth, who followed him to the mission field.

Johannes Lepsius and Johannes Awetaranian

Fonts (selection)

From Bulgaria to Persia . German Orient Mission, Berlin 1902.
The story of the martyr Mirsa Ibrahim as well as some reports from the life of Christian Muslims . German Orient Mission, Berlin 1903.
Story of a Muslim who became a Christian . German Orient Mission, Großlichterfelde-West 1905.
- Story of a Muslim who became a Christian . After his death received by Richard Schäfer. Missionshandlung und Verlag, Potsdam 1930 e-book ( Memento from March 24, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
The Muslim press and Islamic propaganda today . German Orient Mission, Potsdam 1910.
The story of a Mohammedan the Christian was edited by Johannes Awetaranian, Brosamen Verlag Albstadt 2014

Web links

English translation of Schäfer's book online (selection).
Atanas Damianov: The work of the German Orient Mission among the Turkish Muslims in Bulgaria from the beginning of the 20th century to World War II Halle 2002, ISBN 3-8258-6311-5 .
Literature by and about Johannes Avetaranian in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

↑ John Hultvall: Mission and Revolution in Central Asia. The MCCS Mission Work in Eastern Turkestan 1892–1938 . PDF , pp. 7-9.

personal data
SURNAME	Avetaranian, Johannes
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Shukri, Muhammad (birth name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	evangelical missionary in China and Bulgaria
DATE OF BIRTH	June 30, 1861
PLACE OF BIRTH	Erzurum
DATE OF DEATH	December 11, 1919
Place of death	Wiesbaden

[1] John Hultvall: Mission and Revolution in Central Asia. The MCCS Mission Work in Eastern Turkestan 1892–1938 . PDF , pp. 7-9.