Theodor Schmalenbach

Theodor Schmalenbach (born September 10, 1831 in Herscheid ; † February 7, 1901 in Gadderbaum - Bethel , today Bielefeld ) was a German Lutheran pastor and famous revival preacher. He was married to Marie Schmalenbach (née Huhold).

Life

Superintendent Theodor Schmalenbach

Theodor Schmalenbach comes from a wealthy middle-class family. He was the son of the innkeeper and postman Peter Moritz Schmalenbach. He attended secondary school in the district town of Altena . During this time he stayed with his older brother, who was employed in the school service there. From 1848 he attended a grammar school in Dortmund, which he left in autumn 1850 with the Abitur certificate.

In the same year he began studying theology in Halle (Saale) . After three semesters he moved to Berlin , continued his studies there for a year and finally completed a sixth semester in Bonn . His formative teachers were August Tholuck and Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg . In 1853 he passed his first theological exam in Münster and then went to teach at a private school in Preußisch Oldendorf . Here he got his first direct contact with the Minden-Ravensberg Awakening Movement , which had increasingly shaped religious life in this region for about two decades, and also got to know his future wife, Marie Huhold, the daughter of the first superintendent of the church district Vlotho , Ferdinand Huhold . After the marriage on January 22, 1857, the young couple had five children in the first seven years of marriage, a boy who died just a few weeks after the birth, and four girls.

After eight years as assistant preacher at St. Simeonis in Minden , Schmalenbach was given a pastor's position in the village of Mennighüffen near Löhne in 1863 . Despite several appointments to larger communities, he stayed here until his retirement in 1899, and since 1885 as a part-time superintendent .

Unable to work due to a brain condition, he died in 1901 in the Bodelschwinghschen Anstalten Bethel . He was buried on February 11th at the Kreuzfriedhof in Mennighüffen.

Work and effect

As a preacher, Schmalenbach must have had a profound, lasting effect on his audience. Marie Huhold wrote in her diary in 1854 after hearing him for the first time: “He spoke powerfully, or rather: the word of God was powerful in his speech. ... The impression the sermon made on me was deep and powerful. I was completely bent over and yet lifted up again. ”In Mennighüffen, the number of people attending church services rose sharply after 1863, and the seats were soon no longer enough; The people stood tightly packed in the aisles and between the rows of benches. Schmalenbach said that this overcrowding also had its good side, because if someone in church passed out, at least he couldn't fall over.

As in his sermons, he tried on other occasions to address his parishioners personally for pastoral care. This mainly happened during hospital visits and other house calls, but also during chance encounters on the street. He liked to remind his interlocutors that one must recognize a change in their way of life and an improvement in their relationship with other people as the fruit of their faith. He often ended such conversations with an encouraging and at the same time admonishing "Better yourself!"

Schmalenbach was not only in demand as a preacher in the Minden-Ravensberg area. He received invitations from many places in North and West Germany. So he preaches z. B. on mission festivals in Bückeburg , in Altena, in Elberfeld and Barmen , headquarters of the Rhenish Mission in Warburg , Marburg , Wiesbaden , in several places in East Frisia, Schleswig-Holstein and Mecklenburg, Braunschweig, Magdeburg and the China Festival of Berlin Mission .

As an assistant preacher in Minden, Schmalenbach already published a Sunday paper . The content and structure of his little leaflet were very similar to the Evangelical Monthly Gazette for Westphalia , for which Schmalenbach also made contributions during his time in Minden. This monthly newspaper, also known as the “blue book” or “blue book” among readers because of the color of its cover, became the highest-circulation press product in the East Westphalian region, and in some rural communities there was hardly a house missing.

Evangelical monthly newspaper for Westphalia. Title page January 1896

In September 1856 the "Evangelical monthly paper" published a sermon by Schmalenbach for the first time. He then delivered more sermons year after year; until the end of his life about a hundred. In addition, in March 1860 he began a large series of articles on Luther's catechism . For almost five years - until December 1864 - he guided readers through the five main parts of the catechism, thus writing a kind of basic course in the Christian faith for his time. The following year the series of articles was published as a book.

In 1863 - the year he was called to Mennighüffen - Schmalenbach was accepted as one of the most capable and hard-working authors in the group of publishers and editors of the monthly newspaper and headed the magazine together with Johann Heinrich Volkening and Pastor Gottlieb Schroeder from Bünde .

From 1874 to 1881 Schmalenbach made edifying contributions to the monthly newspaper under the title “A silent half hour”. In 1885 Heinrich Bertelsmann published the collection of prayers under the title Silent Half Hours in two volumes. The work was reprinted several times.

At the instigation of his former teacher Hengstenberg, in collaboration with the Gütersloh pastor Theodor Braun and the pastor in Schildesche , Karl Siebold, he took over the editing of the "house book", a devotional book with daily devotions for the whole year. It was completed in November 1868 and was published by the Evangelical Book Association in Berlin. The book was a publishing success; in 1894 it saw its 13th edition.

In 1873 Schmalenbach's comprehensive report on the " Inner Mission in Westphalia" was published.

Finally he wrote the second part of the little prayer book Rogate , then a short biography of old Valentin, his friend from Todtenhausen . His last major journalistic work was his teacher Hengstenberg. Schmalenbach wrote the third volume of Hengstenberg's biography because the author of the first two parts, Johannes Bachmann , died after they were completed. In 1892 the work was ready.

After Schmalenbach's death, two collections of his sermons were published: the first by his widow in 1902, a second in 1939 by Arthur Dehmel , who later became superintendent of the Vlotho parish.

As a young pastor, Schmalenbach was a member of the Westphalian Provincial Synod and belonged to it until his retirement. In 1884 the Provincial Synod elected him to the General Synod of the Old Prussian Regional Church , where he had been elected to the Synodal Council from 1891, and from 1892 to 1894 also to the Agende Commission, which prepared the new Prussian Agende of 1894 and was later chaired by Schmalenbach has been.

After Volkening left the parish, Schmalenbach was not only the leading clergyman of the revival movement in Minden-Ravensberg, but also the chairman of a political party from 1872 to 1899, namely the Christian Conservative Party of Minden-Ravensberg .

On December 6, 1897, he and some other clergy were invited by the imperial couple to an evening party in Potsdam. His coverage of this extraordinary event was very brief: “I was very happy.” In January 1897 the Kaiser awarded him the Order of the Red Eagle .

Works

• Old and new from and after the little catechism Lutheri , Eisleben 1865 ( digitized version )
• The inner mission in Westphalia , Gütersloh 1873 ( digitized )
• Silent half hours , Gütersloh 1886 ( digitized version )
• Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg. His life and work illustrated according to printed and unprinted sources , third volume, Gütersloh 1892 ( digitized version )
• See, I bring you great joy. Selected Gospel Sermons , new ed. v. Artur Dehmel, Gütersloh 1940.

literature

• Wilmanns: Superintendent Schmalenbach . In: W. Heienbrok, witnesses and testimonials from Minden-Ravensberg , Bethel near Bielefeld, 1931, pp. 195–226
• Gerhard Rösche: Superintendent Theodor Schmalenbach. Preacher, pastor and politician in the later revival period . In: Contributions to the local history of the cities of Löhne and Bad Oeynhausen , Issue 12, Löhne 1987, pp. 44–84.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Quoted from Rösche, Schmalenbach, p. 55