Martin Stephan (clergyman)

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Martin Stephan (born August 13, 1777 in Stramberg near Neutitschein , Moravia ; † February 26, 1846 in Prairie , Randolph County , Illinois ) was a German-American clergyman. He was the charismatic leader of the Saxon emigration movement and thus had a direct influence on the establishment of the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod .

Martin Stephan

Life

Martin Stephan was born to Czech Roman Catholic parents who converted to the Protestant faith. They both died soon after he was born. He was initially excluded from any higher education for purely material reasons and hired himself as a linen weaver . In 1797 (according to other sources, 1799) he came to Breslau and joined a branch of the Pietist German Christianity Society. It was only with his support and the courtesy of the school principal Johann Ephraim Scheibel that he was able to enter the St. Elisabeth grammar school in Wroclaw in 1802 (according to other information 1803) . Johann Ephraim Scheibel, Rector from 1788 to 1809, was the father of Johann Gottfried Scheibel , who was six years younger than Stephan and went to the University of Halle in 1801 . It can be assumed, however, that Stephan already met the only son of his sponsor in Wroclaw. Martin Stephan and Johann Gottfried Scheibel both later worked in and near Dresden as leading representatives of the Upper Saxon awakening movement .

Stephan studied 1804-1809 in Halle (Saale) and Leipzig theology , held a pastorate in Bohemian Haber (Habřina) and became in 1810 a preacher of Bohemian exiles community in Dresden and thus to the local St. John's Church appointed.

Stephan married Juliane Adelheid Knöbel († 1844), a granddaughter of the Saxon royal architect and master builder Johann Friedrich Knöbel . The eldest, then 16-year-old son Martin Stephan (Knöbel's great-grandson) emigrated to Missouri in 1838 with what is probably the largest evangelical emigration movement of the 19th century, organized and led by the father of the same name (Pastor Martin Stephan) (there with 665 emigrants, the “ apostolic Lutheran Episcopal Church to Stephansburg ") returned in 1840 to Dresden, studied here until 1844 architecture until 1847 in Leipzig theology and returned in 1847 to the USA again to Missouri back.

In his sermons, Martin Stephan criticized both the modern, liberal theology of his time, which he described as unbelieving, and Pietism , which seemed too soft to him. His sermons mainly focused on the subjects of " original sin " and " Christ's atoning death ". In addition, Stephan represented an anti-ecumenical theology by emphasizing that there was no salvation outside the visible Lutheran Church .

At the same time he organized the congregation in a strictly hierarchical manner with the pastor at the head. He soon claimed a kind of infallibility for his beliefs . Some of his followers saw a kind of confessional document in the volume of sermons he published . During his time at the St. Johanniskirche in Dresden, he gathered a personal congregation of " awakened " people who were referred to as Stephanians in public and in literature . The Saxon State Minister Detlev von Einsiedel was one of the more than a thousand listeners who gathered for his services .

He proclaimed the visible Lutheran Church for the sole saving, apart from which there could be no salvation. He saw his ministerial office as a means of grace, without which there would be no faith and no bliss, and he alone was entitled to the church government. He put himself at the head of the community. He manipulated his followers in such a way that, as a self-contained personal community, they only had to follow his advice and should form closed societies, which also included wives and daughters. Increasingly, he began to hold meetings with his closest confidante for purposes of edification and devotion, no longer just in the church, but as private religious gatherings in various places. With this conventicle being, he evaded church control. He thus pursued the separation or separation from the church, which he no longer recognized as an institution. In order to evade control, the conventicles were also held outdoors in the evenings and well into the night. For the time being, his activities were observed by the secular and ecclesiastical authorities, but he was allowed to go. Only when his personal life came into the sights of his opponents, the newspapers published the rumors of strange hours of devotion, nightly meetings, parades and hikes and his "forest and garden brother lucubrations" (nocturnal studies), the secular authorities became aware and saw each other forced to intervene. In 1836, meetings of Stephen's supporters were banned. He himself was placed under police control.

Martin Stephan was also suspected of fornication . On November 8, 1837, the police arrested him during one of these meetings in a vineyard in the Welzig Mountains , which belonged to the Hoflößnitz state domain . Just one day later he was suspended by the church leadership in Saxony . Stephan was charged with misappropriating donations and fornication, but also because women were present and beds were set up at many of these gatherings, and placed under house arrest. The process was not crushed until October 25, 1838 by Royal Abolition (dismissal of the proceedings). At the same time he was allowed to leave the country. Stephan left Dresden on October 30, 1838 with his eldest son Martin and followed his followers who had previously traveled to Bremen . He left his wife and 7 other children in Dresden.

On November 18, 1838, Stephan traveled on the penultimate ship Olbers from Bremen to New Orleans . Among the emigrants were six pastors (including Ernst Keyl and Carl Ferdinand Wilhelm Walther ), four teachers and ten candidates for theology. The archivist Karl Eduard Vehse was among them.

During the crossing of the convoy consisting of a total of 5 ships, during which the last ship “Amalia” sank, Martin Stephan was proclaimed bishop of the “Apostolic-Lutheran Episcopal Church in Stephansburg” and demanded absolute obedience from his followers . After arriving in New Orleans and continuing to Perry County (Missouri) , about 100 km south of St. Louis , it turned out that Martin Stephan was said to have embezzled the donations and savings of the emigrants entrusted to him and to have abused women .

After a trial by a community meeting, Stephan was deposed and expelled from the community. The emigrants, deprived of their savings, sent him penniless across the Mississippi River and abandoned him on the east bank. In Red Bud, Illinois in Randolph County , he founded Trinity Church, where he served as a pastor until his death. In a retrial years later, none of the allegations could be confirmed, and the judgment of the dismissal of Stephen was declared invalid.

Pastor CFW Walther took over the leadership of the congregation during this crisis and was able to prevent the emigrant congregation from breaking up by emphasizing the infallibility of the Holy Scriptures , the focus of which is God's law and the gospel .

The Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod emerged from the congregation of Stephen's followers, and today has over two million members. Numerous sacred objects, including a silver chalice (allegedly from the hand of Elector Johann Georg I of Saxony ), are on display today in the Concordia Historical Institute of the Missouri Synod in St. Louis .

Works

  • The Christian faith in a full year. Sermons for the church year 1824, about the usual Sunday and holiday gospels. Held in the St. Johanniskirche in Dresden, 2 parts, Dresden 1825/26.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Tomb in Trinity Lutheran Church Cemetery, Red Bud, Randolph County, Illinois, USA
  2. ↑ Renate Schönfuß-Krause: Cross addiction became cross curse (t). The emigration of Saxon Old Lutherans - between utopia and reality. Part I . In: Altenburg History and House Calendar 2018 . E. Reinhold Verlag , Altenburg 2017, ISBN 978-3-95755-033-0 .
  3. ↑ Ludwig Fischer: The false martyrdom or the truth in the matter of the Stephanians . Leipzig. Verlag von Wilh. Alex. Kuenzel. 1839. OCLC 166016908
  4. ↑ ADB: Stephan, Martin article "Stephan, Martin" by Paul Tschackert in: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, published by the Historical Commission at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, Volume 36 (1893), pp. 85-87, digital full-text edition in Wikisource (Version of November 27, 2016, 12:48 p.m. UTC)
  5. ↑ Passenger List
personal data
SURNAME Stephan, Martin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American clergyman
DATE OF BIRTH August 13, 1777
PLACE OF BIRTH Stramberg near Neutitschein , Moravia
DATE OF DEATH February 26, 1846
Place of death Prairie, Randolph County , Illinois , USA