Peter Martin Metzler

Metzler at a young age, family archive

Peter Martin Metzler (born March 1, 1824 in Judenbach ; † December 8, 1907 in Stuttgart ) was a German missionary.

Peter Martin Metzler was born in Judenbach near Sonneberg in Thuringia as the sixth child and second son of his parents Georg Friedrich Metzler (1778–1840) and Elisabethe Jacobine Metzler, née. Hammerschmidt (1790–1827), born. He was baptized ten days later, on March 11, 1824. Coming from a poor background, he received only a poor education and after his confirmation he worked as a cattle herder. At the age of sixteen he left Judenbach, went on a hike and during these years learned the trade of a blacksmith .

He came to Munich in 1846 , where he attended the missionary lessons of Dean Christian Friedrich Böckh (1795–1875). Here he became critically ill. After his recovery, he devoted his life to mission . In 1847 he met Christian Friedrich Spittler (1782–1867), who had founded the St. Chrischona pilgrimage mission near Basel a few years earlier and was now able to fulfill his wish to become a missionary . On January 15, 1851, Metzler and two other missionaries left the port of Trieste by ship for East Africa , where they finally arrived in Mombasa on April 3, 1851 . There Metzler fell ill again very seriously and was sent back to Germany at the end of 1851. In St. Chrischona he again worked as a blacksmith and did paperwork.

In August 1853, Peter Martin Metzler and his brother Christoph Schäfer traveled from St. Chrischona to Marseilles and from there on September 3rd they set off for Jerusalem . On behalf of the mission, Metzler moved to Nazareth in 1854 . There he opened a blacksmith's workshop and earned his living through manual work.

At the beginning of 1858 the pilgrim mission decided to send Metzler to Jaffa to run the branch of a commercial shop where European goods could be bought at fixed prices. On October 5, 1859, Peter Martin Metzler and Dorothea Bauer (1831-1870) from Heubach in Jerusalem were married in the Christ Church on Mount Zion .

The Metzler couple soon began to take responsibility for their own economic ventures in addition to the trading post in Jaffa . Dorothea Metzler ran a small hostel for pilgrims passing through in her house . Metzler set up a steam mill himself in 1865. In addition, the Metzler couple pursued plans to set up Christian social works, such as a girls' school and an infirmary.

For these projects they were able to win one of their hostel guests, the Russian nobleman Platon Grigorjewitsch Ustinov ( Russian Платон Григорьевич Устинов , 1840–1918; grandfather Peter Ustinov ), who was a financier of his lung disease with the Metzlers from mid-1861 to early 1862. Ustinov gave them a considerable amount of money so that the Metzler couple could fulfill their dream of building a mission school and an infirmary in Jaffa.

In May 1862, Metzler reported to St. Chrischona that they had opened an infirmary, and in view of this positive progress the pilgrim mission announced that it would send two deaconesses from the deaconess house in Riehen as nurses. In 1866 Metzler got into a dispute with the Protestant bishop of Jerusalem , Samuel Gobat , because the latter had subordinated the mission in Jaffa to Pastor Johannes Gruhler, who was the Anglican pastor in Ramle . But Metzler, who had set up the Jaffa Mission, had been a pastor there himself until then. Most of the parishioners disliked the Anglican rite and preferred to attend Metzler's sermons.

Metzler was not only the founder of social institutions in Jaffa in the 1860s , he also played an active role in preparing for the modern colonization of Palestine by supporting a group of 156 colonizers from Maine . Led by George Jones Adams (1811-1880) and Abraham McKenzie, they arrived in Jaffa on September 22, 1866 and established a colony in the citrus orchards off Jaffa.

Illness, the climate and the arbitrariness of the Ottoman authorities induced many colonists to remigrate to Maine. For example, Metzler bought their settler sites from five colonists in order to provide them with the means to migrate back. One of the houses acquired in this way Metzler later sold to the Anglican missionary society London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews .

A new group of Christian settlers, the Temple Society headed by Christoph Hoffmann and Georg David Hardegg , had meanwhile also immigrated to the Holy Land . In April 1869, Metzler drove with his entire family, wife and four children, to Ustinovka (Устиновка) , today in Saratov Oblast , where a new chapter in his life began. Before leaving Jaffa, Metzler, who knew Christoph Hoffmann well from their time together as missionaries to St. Chrischonas, sold most of his real estate and companies in Jaffa to the new colonists on March 5, 1869.

Then in Russia Metzler became the administrator of the entire property of Baron Plato d'Ustinov. Metzler's sixth child, Paul Gerhardt, was born there on March 20, 1870; “One month later, on April 23, 1870, Dorothea Metzler died of the consequences of this birth. Before she died, she had d'Ustinov come to her deathbed to ask him to grant one last wish. She wanted him to marry her eldest daughter Marie after her 16th birthday ... "

In 1875, Baron Plato d'Ustinov decided that he wanted to quit the Russian Orthodox Church in order to accept the Protestant faith. D'Ustinov was able to sell his goods. The family decided to move to Württemberg. The Württemberg Queen Olga from Russia resided there . From her, d'Ustinov received a German nobility title: As Baron Plato von Ustinov, he became German. On October 4, 1876, Ustinov married in Korntal - as promised - Metzler's daughter Marie. Both moved to Jaffa in 1878, but the marriage was unhappy and divorced in 1889.

Between 1876 and 1881 Metzler lived with his four younger children in Stuttgart at Langestrasse 20, then they moved to Hohenheimer Strasse 74. On July 18, 1898, Metzler transferred his last property in Jaffa to the Protestant community there, which was founded in 1889/90 then the Immanuelkirche , completed in 1904, was built. Metzler's friend and divorced son-in-law Ustinov, who had lived in Jaffa since 1878, paid Metzler 10,000 francs to the Latin Monetary Union , which was two-thirds of the estimated price of the property. Metzler died in Stuttgart on December 8, 1907.

children

• Marie Hermine Thusnelda (born August 6, 1860)
• Hans (* 1862; † 1863)
• Tabitha Blondina (born June 11, 1864)
• Gotthold Nathan (born April 18, 1866)
• Peter Martin (born April 24, 1868)
• Paul Gerhardt (born March 20, 1870)

literature

• Eisler, Ejal Jakob (איל יעקב איזלר): Peter Martin Metzler (1824–1907): A Christian missionary in the Holy Land [פטר מרטין מצלר (1907–1824): סיפורו של מיסיונר נוצרי שרץל-ירי בארץל; German], Haifa: אוניברסיטת חיפה / המכון ע"ש גוטליב שומכר לחקר פעילות העולם הנוצרי בארץ -ישראל במאה ה -19, 1999 (פרסומי המכון ע"ש גוטליב שומכר לחקר פעילות העולם הנוצרי בארץ -ישראל במאה ה -19 / Memoirs of Gottlieb Schumacher Institute for Research into the Christian Contribution to the Reconstruction of Palestine in the 19th Century; vol. 2), ISBN 965-7109-03-5
• 300 years of St. Nikolaus Judenbach , Festschrift of the Evangelical Lutheran Church Community Judenbach 2005, publisher: Pastor Thomas Freytag, Judenbach (ViSdP)

Remarks

1. ↑ cf. Ejal Jakob Eisler (איל יעקב איזלר), Peter Martin Metzler (1824–1907): A Christian missionary in the Holy Land [פטר מרטין מצלר (1907–1824): סיפורו של מיסיונר נוצרי בארץ-ישרי בארץ-ישרי רץל; German], Haifa: אוניברסיטת חיפה / המכון ע"ש גוטליב שומכר לחקר פעילות העולם הנוצרי בארץ -ישראל במאה ה -19, 1999 (פרסומי המכון ע"ש גוטליב שומכר לחקר פעילות העולם הנוצרי בארץ -ישראל במאה ה -19 / Memoirs of Gottlieb Schumacher Institute for Research into the Christian Contribution to the Reconstruction of Palestine in the 19th Century; Vol. 2), pp. 34 and כט. ISBN 965-7109-03-5
2. ↑ cf. Ejal Jakob Eisler (איל יעקב איזלר), Peter Martin Metzler (1824–1907): A Christian missionary in the Holy Land [פטר מרטין מצלר (1907–1824): סיפורו של מיסיונר נוצרי בארץ-ישרי בארץ-ישרי רץל; German], Haifa: אוניברסיטת חיפה / המכון ע"ש גוטליב שומכר לחקר פעילות העולם הנוצרי בארץ -ישראל במאה ה -19, 1999 (פרסומי המכון ע"ש גוטליב שומכר לחקר פעילות העולם הנוצרי בארץ -ישראל במאה ה -19 / Memoirs of Gottlieb Schumacher Institute for Research into the Christian Contribution to the Reconstruction of Palestine in the 19th Century; Vol. 2), pp. 35 and ל. ISBN 965-7109-03-5
3. ↑ cf. Ejal Jakob Eisler (איל יעקב איזלר), Peter Martin Metzler (1824–1907): A Christian missionary in the Holy Land [פטר מרטין מצלר (1907–1824): סיפורו של מיסיונר נוצרי בארץ-ישרי בארץ-ישרי רץל; German], Haifa: אוניברסיטת חיפה / המכון ע"ש גוטליב שומכר לחקר פעילות העולם הנוצרי בארץ -ישראל במאה ה -19, 1999 (פרסומי המכון ע"ש גוטליב שומכר לחקר פעילות העולם הנוצרי בארץ -ישראל במאה ה -19 / Memoirs of Gottlieb Schumacher Institute for Research into the Christian Contribution to the Reconstruction of Palestine in the 19th Century; Vol. 2), pp. 39 and לג. ISBN 965-7109-03-5
4. ↑ The typical American wooden houses today form the American Colony ( Hebrew מושאבה האמריקאית, transliterated: haMoschavah haAmerika'it , Arabic امليكان, DMG Amelīkān , at that time: English Adams City ) between today's streets Rechov Eilat (רחוב אילת) and Rechov haRabbi mi- Bacharach ( Hebrew רחוב הרבי מבכרך) in Tel Aviv-Jaffa .
5. ↑ cf. Ejal Jakob Eisler (איל יעקב איזלר), Peter Martin Metzler (1824–1907): A Christian missionary in the Holy Land [פטר מרטין מצלר (1907–1824): סיפורו של מיסיונר נוצרי בארץ-ישרי בארץ-ישרי רץל; German], Haifa: אוניברסיטת חיפה / המכון ע"ש גוטליב שומכר לחקר פעילות העולם הנוצרי בארץ -ישראל במאה ה -19, 1999 (פרסומי המכון ע"ש גוטליב שומכר לחקר פעילות העולם הנוצרי בארץ -ישראל במאה ה -19 / Memoirs of Gottlieb Schumacher Institute for Research into the Christian Contribution to the Reconstruction of Palestine in the 19th Century; Vol. 2), pp. 44 and לו. ISBN 965-7109-03-5
6. ↑ cf. Ejal Jakob Eisler (איל יעקב איזלר), Peter Martin Metzler (1824–1907): A Christian missionary in the Holy Land [פטר מרטין מצלר (1907–1824): סיפורו של מיסיונר נוצרי בארץ-ישרי בארץ-ישרי בארץ-ישרי German], Haifa: אוניברסיטת חיפה / המכון ע"ש גוטליב שומכר לחקר פעילות העולם הנוצרי בארץ -ישראל במאה ה -19, 1999 (פרסומי המכון ע"ש גוטליב שומכר לחקר פעילות העולם הנוצרי בארץ -ישראל במאה ה -19 / Memoirs of Gottlieb Schumacher Institute for Research into the Christian Contribution to the Reconstruction of Palestine in the 19th Century; Vol. 2), p. 47. ISBN 965-7109-03-5
7. ↑ cf. Ejal Jakob Eisler (איל יעקב איזלר), Peter Martin Metzler (1824–1907): A Christian missionary in the Holy Land [פטר מרטין מצלר (1907–1824): סיפורו של מיסיונר נוצרי בארץ-ישרי בארץ-ישרי רץל; German], Haifa: אוניברסיטת חיפה / המכון ע"ש גוטליב שומכר לחקר פעילות העולם הנוצרי בארץ -ישראל במאה ה -19, 1999 (פרסומי המכון ע"ש גוטליב שומכר לחקר פעילות העולם הנוצרי בארץ -ישראל במאה ה -19 / Memoirs of Gottlieb Schumacher Institute for Research into the Christian Contribution to the Reconstruction of Palestine in the 19th Century; Vol. 2), pp. 49 and מא. ISBN 965-7109-03-5
8. ↑ Ejal Jakob Eisler (איל יעקב איזלר), The German Contribution to the Rise of Jaffa 1850-1914: On the History of Palestine in the 19th Century , Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1997, (Treatises of the German Palestine Association; Vol. 22), p. 130. ISBN 3-447-03928-0 .