In Pursuit of Religious Freedom: Bishop Martin Stephan's Journey

by Stephan, Philip

1

  Landing in the New World

  When Bishop Martin Stephan stepped from a Mississippi stern-wheeler steamboat onto swampy Brazeau riverbank on April 29, 1839, he planted his feet in the land of his hopes and dreams. His treacherous passage was his first ocean voyage and a successful journey up to this point. Stephan headed the Emigration Society of Saxony from Dresden, Germany. After years of volunteer planning by friends and society members who researched relocation possibilities and made enormous financial sacrifices, they finally arrived in the New World. Their six-week mid-winter voyage across the stormy Atlantic was an enormous physical challenge for all five shiploads of people. Now they faced the huge task of clearing forests and building homes.

  Bishop Stephan felt equally challenged as he sought to provide leadership in a new and formidable country. His values, beliefs, dreams, and faith were tested often, beginning very early in his life. But he demonstrated a confidence in his principles and spiritual convictions. He had survived many crises, and now this leadership test would be the most crucial of all.1

  Photos reveal Stephan as a tall, slightly built man. He moved with an awkward gait as he stepped over the swampy terrain. He used a cane and leaned on it heavily when his arthritis flared up. The gray in his thinning hair signaled his age, sixty-two years filled with success, joy, loss, pain, and conflict. Yet, his stride was confident if not a little proud. He was well tailored, as a Dresden gentleman should be. Though his German speech was acceptable, he spoke it with a marked Czech accent, the language of his birth country.

  The turbulent voyage lasted an interminable sixty-four days to New Orleans plus two-and-a-half weeks up the Mississippi by steamboat. Stephan was accompanied by one of his twelve children, his sixteen-year-old only son. He had hoped his wife and seven surviving daughters would join him after Easter, but now he doubted they would come at all.

  After stepping from the steamboat gangplank onto the spongy bank that spring day, Martin stared at the face of tall clay cliffs guarding the river. Above these cliffs lay the wooded acres that the Society had just purchased. He had to climb to the top to find the forested land where laborers were building the first structures for their homes. It was not this landscape that thrilled him so much as the idea that here he and his community could be free of all the criticism they had experienced the last ten years in Dresden.

  Stephan’s thirty years of ministry in Dresden were good years; however, recently his life and ministry were filled with conflict. He battled against the German Lutheran Church and sometimes the local courts. He was charged with financial mismanagement and breaking the state law governing church services. No doubt he was pleased to accept this second opportunity to conduct a peaceful ministry.

  Only three months earlier Pastor Stephan and his son had sailed into New Orleans to meet the Emigration Society’s other ships. Happiness prevailed among the Society members, says Saxon Emigration historian Pastor William Koepchen.2 More than likely they were just relieved to be safely on ground after their long confinement aboard ship.

  Still anchored in the bay just before they reached the city of New Orleans, the nascent spiritual community elected Pastor Martin Stephan their bishop, the first Lutheran bishop in America. The Emigration Society (Gesellschaft in German, meaning “economic partnership”) then traveled to St. Louis for a temporary settlement. Here they rested and prepared to settle the community: purchase land; build homes, schools, and churches; and above all develop their spiritual community. Their dream of freedom from the state-run church and the negative press was coming to pass. The press would find them soon enough, but their struggle for community would not be deterred.

  Stephan was tired and worried that his physical condition might limit his ability to lead, that maybe he should not accept the office of bishop because of his age. He might have chosen differently if he could have foreseen that the fight that was to come over them would be like the rumbling waters of a Mississippi flood.

  The place where Bishop Stephan and the Society disembarked is now designated a historical landing at Wittenberg, Missouri. A bronze plaque attached to a rock in the riverbank identifies the place where the newly elected bishop and his parishioners first stepped ashore in 1839. The old landing marker at the confluence of the Brazeau and Mississippi rivers was washed away by raging Mississippi flood waters in the early 1990s.

  NOTES

  1 William Koepchen, “Pastor Martin Stephan and the Saxon Emigration of 1838,” (unpublished ms., St. Louis: Concordia Historical Institute; New York: Stephan Family Archives, 1935), 1–3. Pastor Fredrick Will Koepchen, known as William or Bill, was a pastor at St. Luke’s Lutheran Church in New York City for thirty-six years. It was during his pastorate there that he met fellow pastor Theodore M. Stephan, son of Martin Stephan Jr. and my granduncle. In spite of his many duties on church boards, a nursing home, and a college, he managed to write a manuscript for publication celebrating the centennial anniversary of the Saxon Emigration in 1938. His collaborator and editor was Theodore Stephan, who released to him many records and research he had gathered in Germany and the Czech Republic, including letters of Pastor Martin Stephan and his son. Pastor William Koepchen had completed most of the manuscript when he died in 1935.

  2 Koepchen, “Pastor Martin Stephan and the Saxon Emigration of 1838,” 111, 142.

  2

  Saxon Emigration Society Origins

  For almost all of his thirty years in Dresden, Martin Stephan struggled against the tightening noose of theological restriction and harassment that the German state placed around the neck of these orthodox Lutherans. Over the years he became a leader of the opposition to the state-run church. His influence was felt in Dresden and surrounding towns. For at least twelve years he actively explored emigration options.

  As early as 1827, Stephan began to dream of emigrating. An influential member of his church, Graf Detlev von Einsiedel, was prime minister of the Saxon government and a supporter of his effort in dealing with the deteriorating conditions of the German Lutheran Church. Von Einsiedel introduced him to an American minister, Dr. Benjamin Kurtz, who had spent two years in Germany collecting money and books on behalf of a proposed Lutheran Seminary in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Von Einsiedel introduced Kurtz to Stephan at the close of a Sunday service. Stephan and Kurtz learned they shared similar concerns about the condition of the German Church. They made a friendly connection and kept in touch periodically by mail. Kurtz stimulated Stephan’s interest in America.

  In March 1833, Stephan wrote Kurtz for advice as to where a group might settle in America. Kurtz advised against places like Maryland and Pennsylvania that were too costly; Virginia was unacceptable because of the plantation system and its embedded slavery. He recommended the riverbanks of the Missouri where other German immigrants had settled earlier.1 Kurtz reported on his trips and research to Stephan and added new information about several sites, but he urged Stephan’s consideration of the Missouri location. Kurtz reported on this correspondence in the Lutheran Observer of March 8, 1839:

  Mr. Stephan made many inquiries as to the best mode of arranging the great work of emigration, the relative price of land, the climate, healthfulness, etc., of several States.

  We then advised Mr. Stephan to send a delegation of two or three sensible members of his church to the country “to spy out the land,” select a location, etc., or if this should not be approved of, to embark at Bremen or Amsterdam in the Autumn, sail for New Orleans, then up the Mississippi and settle in the Spring.2

  In 1829 a German physician and attorney, Dr. Gottfried Duden, wrote his Report on a Journey to the Western States of America and a Stay of Several Years along the Missouri. His report influenced a large German migration to America. Duden was able to communicate Missouri’s Garden of Eden charm, which many Germans sought.3 No doubt the word had reached Dresden, a cultural center of Europe at the time. In preparation for the emigration, Stephan and the Saxon leaders read Duden’s Report with enthusiasm.

  Duden�
��s described this newly acquired part of the Louisiana Purchase by the United States as more favorable for a large company of emigrants. He had settled in 1824 on a wooded highland on the north shore of the Missouri River at Marthasville, Warren County, Missouri, in the Femme Osage district, about eighty miles west of St. Louis. He had made extensive explorations there under the guidance of Daniel Boone and others, whom he paid liberally for their services. Upon his return to Germany he had written a 350-page book giving a complete history of American laws and form of government, as well as a thorough description of that portion of the country that he had visited. In it he described the romance of hunting in the wilds “which was teeming with deer, buffalo, rabbits, and prairie chickens all longing to be shot.” In a few years the effect of his writing became evident by the arrival of German immigrants. The Americans rejoiced at their coming and extended them a hearty welcome.4

  America beckoned. The Emigration Society was formed from a desire by many Saxon Lutherans to leave Germany. The General Planning Committee—a group of ten men elected by the Emigration Society—had already worked for three years on organizational plans; they knew where in America they would go.

  The members of the General Planning Committee included prominent professional citizens as well as farmers and laborers. Two attorneys who would play important leadership roles were Franz Adolf Marbach and Carl Eduard Vehse, often known as Eduard, the curator of the Saxon Archives in Dresden and brother-in-law of Marbach; Vehse did not join the committee until 1838. Other committee members were two theological candidates, Theodore Brohm and Karl Wilhelm Welzel; two farmers, Johann Georg Gube and Johann Gottlieb Palisch; a businessman, Heinrich Ferdinand Fischer; a smith; and three men of unknown occupation, Johann August Stoerzel, August Friedrich Haecker, and Gustav Jaeckel. This committee became the backbone of the Emigration Society leadership. Stephan was an ex officio member.

  The Society members understood very well the difficulties of conducting their worship, education, and spiritual practices due to deteriorating conditions in the German Church for the last twenty-five years. They complained that a very worldly civil government managed the state church and had effectively secularized it; the state not only failed to promote real religious training, it discouraged or discounted the Lutheran confessions, it attempted to eliminate the historic Lutheran liturgy and sacrament of confession and absolution, and it prevented Lutheran clergy from freely exercising their pastoral responsibilities.

  The Planning Committee and their land subcommittee prepared for their voyage to America by creating rules and regulations governing their finances and the conduct of their community affairs. These codes, as they called them, specified how they would purchase and divide the land according to the amount of money individuals and families had put into the Credit Fund. Titled “Emigration Code,” its actual authors are unknown, but due to the legal language used in some of the documents, one of the key writers is presumed to be the Dresden attorney Marbach. Stephan had a large influence on the theological content and articles of faith. The codes also contained financial, travel, and civil directives, presumably agreed to by all those who signed on for the trip.

  The Code is organized into numbered paragraphs. It begins with a section titled “A Brief Outline of the Emigration Code” introduced by a statement of faith:

  Par. 1. Confession of Faith

  All the undersigned accept with upright hearts the tenets of the Lutheran faith, as contained in God’s Word of the Old and New Testaments, and set forth and confessed in the Symbolical Writings of the Lutheran Church. They therefore accept these writings in their entirety and without any addition. They accept these writings according to the simple sense of their wording, as they have, since their origin, been unanimously and uniformly understood and applied—during the 16th, 17th, and the first part of the 18th century by the entire Lutheran Church, and from that time on by all who have not departed from the old, pure Lutheran faith.5

  The remainder of the outline states in broad summary the purpose of emigration, the itinerary, the place of settlement, and how the land, church, and travel expenses would be paid. It closes with a paragraph on the freedom of participation of each member to either “go along or stay at home.”

  The Credit Fund was one of the most carefully crafted sections of the overall regulations. The opening paragraphs clearly describe how capital for the travel expense and the land would be raised. Certain limits of the fund are set forth and the division of interest and profits of the fund defined. (See Appendixes A–D for the full Code.)

  Par. 1. Capital of the Credit Fund

  The capital of the Credit Fund shall be raised by voluntary contributions of the members of the Gesellschaft, which contributions are to be administered, bear interest, and be repaid according to the stipulations of this Code.

  Par. 2. Purposes of the Credit Fund

  The Credit Fund is intended

  To make cash advances on collateral for the following purposes: For the needs of church and school.

  For the needs of the civil community.

  For indigent emigrants belonging to the Gesellschaft ...

  To buy a tract of contiguous land, if possible a whole township, in its entirety and at one time, in order that the members of the Gesellschaft may live together in one place, separate from strangers. Separate plots from this entire tract are then to be sold to individual members. This land shall become the property of the Credit Fund, except for those parts of it which are transferred to church, school, and community for their needs, or sold to individual members of the community for their private use.

  The Credit Code section especially makes obvious the careful organization of the Society and planning of this trip. These Saxon Lutherans planned the many details of organizing a communal life that was only imagined and as yet unrealized. The Society members were characteristically German in their attention to detail for the necessities of body, mind, and spirit. However, as unforeseen events unfolded, the Credit Fund in particular would become the ground for severe conflicts that later affected the harmony of this small band of pilgrim settlers. Not surprisingly, money caused disputes over the fund, expenses, and interest that led to crises in the community. Although the Code included paragraphs for how to handle disagreements, there was no real group or person named to arbitrate these arguments.

  All their planning culminated in a meeting at Stephan’s home in May of 1836. On that day they voted unanimously to go to America. Their final resolution was to leave Germany in the fall of 1838, sail from Bremerhaven, Germany, to New Orleans and then take a steamboat to St. Louis, Missouri.

  This eventful meeting was a key turning point for the Society, and for Stephan it was a new direction in his life and ministry. Emigration to America now became the focal point of all his energy. He viewed this plan as the final solution to all the hassle of dealing with the German state-controlled consistories that oversaw the pastors and church practice.

  The people who joined the Emigration Society were an interesting mix of backgrounds and occupation. Many were blue-collar workers. Over the years Stephan had made a special effort to open parts of the church property and rent a hall for the working people to gather after work and find a social meeting place. Thirty-six weavers represented the largest single segment of skilled crafts people. Among the others were twenty shoemakers, four blacksmiths, and five each of carpenters, painters, and glaziers. There were two or three butchers, millers, bakers, cartwrights, coopers, joiners, and masons. Thirty farmers and laborers joined the Society, as did many single women who served as maids. The mix included professional people: besides the six pastors and six theological candidates, there were two or three teachers, two physicians, two attorneys, three merchants, and two lithographers. Most of the Planning Committee was composed of professionally educated people.6

  The five pastors—O. H. Walther, C. F. W. Walther, G. H. Loeber, Ernst Keyl, and Moritz Buerger—who accompanied Stephan on this journey had also participated in
his work against rationalistic trends in the church and in promoting orthodox Reformation principles. Even Dr. Kurtz, who was somewhat more liberal and a self-admitted rationalist, noted that the situation in the German Lutheran Church had been disintegrating due to rationalistic theology and preaching. Such theology was not nourishing the people in the traditional Lutheran ways. New Rationalistic teaching and preaching in the Lutheran Church focused on things like planting trees and other such practical skills for living. The five pastors who supported Stephan likewise opposed the union of all Protestant churches by the king of Prussia, who had enormous influence on the church polity in Saxony. The six theological candidates had attended his church and worked with him in Dresden.

  Almost everyone in the Society who emigrated had some direct connection to Stephan. They had attended his services, heard him preach, or were members of his congregation. Others, close members of his church, frequently attended the midweek study and prayer groups. Among these followers were some close friends who enjoyed Stephan’s company and joined him in evening walks.

  Over two hundred passengers came from Dresden, and many smaller groups came from the cities surrounding Dresden such as Halle and Leipzig. A number of people who joined the pilgrimage were members of the congregations of the five pastors from outlying towns near Dresden. Among these voyagers were families, some with small children and mothers who were pregnant—some would give birth during the voyage. There were wealthy people such as the farmer Georg Gube. Most of the lay professional people were also wealthy. Those who had the means had invested in the Credit Fund at the rate of 8 percent, and the money they invested was in addition to their travel fare. Those who did not have the money to purchase a passage at the time borrowed from the Credit Fund and were obliged to pay the fund 10 percent interest after the voyage was complete. Many of the single people, including the women working as maids, used the Credit Fund to finance their trip.