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

by Stephan, Philip

  The story of the farewells at Stephan’s household seems to describe a warm and festive event. In addition to the friendly gathering, there must have been a real sense of sadness on the part of the family remaining in Dresden. Julia had made it very clear she was not sailing to America. Although Julia and Stephan had agreed about providing for the children’s care, Julia was left with the enormous job of managing her large family. Of her remaining seven children, three needed special care. Daughters Anna and Friedericke would be institutionalized in April 1839. Celestine would live with her godmother and sister for a time, and then she was placed in a deaf institute. Julia lost the help of her only son Martin who was leaving with his father. Her oldest daughter, Julia, was no longer with her because she had died two years earlier. Julia would look to her own birth family for emotional and financial assistance. These were the ages of their daughters at the time Stephan and his son left: Celestine, twenty-four; Adelheid, twenty-two; Marie, twenty; Concordia, eighteen; Anna, sixteen; Margareta, twelve; and Fredricke, ten.

  Although Stephan left a large family and a grandchild behind, he did not lose hope that the family would be reunited. He still planned to bring them to America in the spring of 1839. However, given the estrangement between him and Julia, parting was hard for Julia and Stephan, and sad for the children as evidenced by the accounts of friends of the family. Earlier in the day Martin, Julia, and Celestine, now the oldest daughter, had said goodbye to each other. The children gathered around their father in an emotional way suggestive of some tears. Hugging and holding, they said their goodbyes.

  In all the accounts of his departure written by historians of the Saxon Emigration, there is not one mention of Martin Stephan bidding farewell to his congregation of St. John’s. Since many of the emigrants were from Dresden and surrounding villages, it is possible that 150–200 members of St. John’s were to accompany him to America. But St. John’s congregation had over a thousand members; there were still over eight hundred people in the congregation he was leaving behind. There was no farewell sermon or goodbyes to the congregation until Pastor Stephan wrote them a farewell letter that was printed in the Bremen newspaper just before he sailed.

  Although he had said his “goodbyes” to many of his personal friends in the congregation and Dresden on the eve of his departure, it seems strange that Stephan left without some kind of farewell worship with his entire congregation. There is no report that the congregation had offered a goodbye gesture, either. Many of his friends were going with him to America, and those who stayed behind gathered that evening to bid farewell at is house and at the Steubel residence.

  His controversial conventicles, some very moving sermons, his reputedly compassionate counseling and even his controversial evening walks bore witness to his strong engagement with his parishioners. He was suspended for a year and another minister had taken his place at the church, probably creating some separation between pastor and parishioners already. Some members in St. John’s were angry and accused him of embezzlement. That issue had not been resolved before he left Dresden. It would be hard to determine how broadly that attitude spread in the congregation. Ironically, the charges would be resolved in his favor five years later. What makes Stephan’s departure without a more formal congregational farewell reasonable is uncertainty of his going at all. He was not released from house arrest until after his charges were dismissed, only a couple of days before he left for Bremerhaven. He was already late for the sailing of the first three ships. It was time to go to America. Pastor Stephan had to leave Dresden and his ministry of over thirty years in a hurry.

  Stephan’s departure aroused Saxons in towns and cities other than Dresden. The Leipzig newspaper, at one time publishing acrid editorials against the “Old Lutherans,” managed once again to condemn him with faint praise. Koepchen notes that on October 31, 1838, the Leipziger Allegemeine Zeitung wrote some strong parting words. The editor blasted the Stephanites for their tenacity in adhering to the Lutheran Confessions but managed to acknowledge that, according to the German Constitution, they had the right to leave the country if and when they desired without giving good reason for doing so. The editor reasoned that Stephan and his followers had not used their constitutional right nor had they used persecution they had experienced as an excuse for leaving Germany. They did not use their right to leave because Stephan was under arrest and it was important to leave with the legal charges lifted. The editor agreed that for a long time the consistory and others had created suspicions about Pastor Stephan’s ministry and his followers. In spite of his confusing logic, the “Stephanites” did exercise their right to leave. However unreasoned, the editor did a surprising turn about and continued his editorial with positive remarks calling for an end to the hostilities toward the Stephanites.

  We must, however, brand as utterly false the charge, that Pastor Stephan has continued to hold even his unobjectionable meetings after they had once been restricted, or that he has published his intention to emigrate secretly. In the general attention in which he now finds himself, it would be ridiculous; but the charge is proven groundless by the fact that the most determined and strenuous efforts have been made for more than half a year to end by a formal and decisive ruling the official investigation, because Pastor Stephan is determined not to leave the country before he is fully and formally exonerated.—We would hope and wish that all criticism of these emigrants would cease; that the ill will against what our king himself has sanctioned might stop and finally that every Saxon might see in these intending to leave, only brothers and not the worst ones at that.2

  Although this editorial was printed several days after Stephan departed Dresden, no doubt it was brought to Stephan’s attention later. After eighteen years of intense public criticism by the press and the state church authorities, this farewell attempted to soothe some of the wounds, but it was too little, too late.

  Louise Guenther accompanied Stephan along with his servant, Mr. Klemm, when they left for Bremen. In spite of the fact that Louise Guenther said she was not a servant and was never in Stephan’s employ, she was his volunteer assistant and his sometime nurse. Stephan had encouraged this relationship ever since Louise had attended to his eczema sores at the Radeberg baths. Either Stephan did not care about public opinion anymore, or he was terribly naïve, or he blatantly continued to play with fire. However, according to Koepchen, the presence of these two persons, particularly Louise Guenther, was viewed by the emigrant community as appropriate because both people were personal assistants for Stephan who, at the age of sixty-two, had several health problems and needed their help. On the surface of things it appears no one wanted to look at or examine what was really going on with their leader.

  Of the five ships chartered by the Society the first to leave was the Copernicus, a light three-mast frigate built in 1835 in Vegesack, a shipyard of Bremerhaven. The Copernicus was 132 feet long and had a cargo capacity of 500 tons. Her captain was H. Haesloop. The ship left on November 3, 1838, with 177 members of the Saxon Emigration Party. Pastor Ernst Buerger acted as the clergy representative and a general manager of the Emigration Society of that ship while at sea. There was a physician on board, Dr. Friedrich Schneider, who attended the sick. Four people died during the voyage, two children and two adults. One child was born during the trip. The ship and her people cargo arrived in New Orleans on New Year’s Eve 1838.

  The second ship to leave Bremerhaven was the Johann Georg, a barque capable of 340 tons of cargo. Pastor G. W. Keyl was the designated clergyman for the 140 passengers of the emigration party. Theological candidates aboard both the Copernicus and the Johann Georg provided instruction for the children. November 1 was the target date for the Johann Georg to set sail; however, C. F. W. Walther’s brush with the law delayed the sailing until November 3. Captain of the Georg’s three-masted ship was Captain Hohorst. He piloted his ship out of the Bremerhaven harbor right after the Copernicus sailed on November 3, yet he arrived in New Orleans five days later than the
Copernicus on January 5, 1839. One small child died on this ship during the voyage.

  The Republik was the third ship to sail, a barque of 320 tons cargo capacity. It was commanded by Captain D. Steenken. They sailed on November 12, 1838, with 111 passengers, and Pastor G. H. Loeber as the ship’s pastor and manager. Theological candidate Otto Fuerbringer and teacher Frederick Winter attended to the instruction of the children. They arrived in New Orleans on January 12,1838. One passenger died at sea after the ship arrived in the Gulf of Mexico. Like the others who died, he was buried at sea.

  If the Stephan party traveled from Dresden to Hamburg by horse and wagon, they must have left on the morning of October 28 in order to make it to Bremen by November 4, the reported date they arrived in that city. They probably took a barge to Hamburg and then a steamer to Bremen, where Stephan waited for his fifteen-year-old son, Martin, who would arrive by steamboat a few days later from Hamburg. From Bremen they traveled by boat to Bremerhaven, a distance of about twenty-five miles. Stephan’s little entourage arrived at Bremerhaven on November 14,1838, in the evening.

  When Stephan arrived in Bremen he brought with him his most important testimonial from the Saxon minister of justice, namely, vindication from all charges by the king (as noted earlier in the October 25 order). They were ordered dismissed by the king of Saxony after the king’s own three day personal review of the charges. Some historians have written that these charges were simply dropped and that Stephan was never cleared of the charges. This is not accurate. The German text of the court record shows that the king personally found there were no grounds on which to convict Stephan. The king indicated that he had been falsely accused by church and state and ordered an end to it, granting him a visa and peaceful release. If there was any doubt of his guilt whatsoever, Stephan would never have been released. The other emigrants from all over southeast Germany were glad to see Pastor Stephan at long last. No doubt he showed them the king’s ruling.

  By the time Stephan arrived on the evening of November 14, 1838, he had missed the sailing of the first three ships of the Emigration Society’s chartered fleet. Rumors arose that during that time Stephan also purchased for himself a new, heavier carriage to use in America. This issue, among others, would later draw the fire and ire of Vehse and others.

  The emigrants’ enthusiasm for embarking for America was dampened somewhat by the revelation that now Pastor C. F. W. Walther, with his brother O. H. Walther’s help, were in trouble with the law. C. F. W. Walther had kidnapped Theodor and Maria Schubert, his sister’s children who had been orphaned by their mother’s death. C. F. W. Walther took the children from his father and mother’s legal guardianship at the parsonage where the children’s grandfather was recovering from an illness. C. F. W. placed the children with attorneys Vehse and Marbach for temporary hiding, knowing they could figure a way to get past the law and work it out for the ten- and fourteen-year-old to go with him. The attorneys placed the children in the care of Mrs. Buenger and her son, theological candidate J. F. Buenger.

  Pastor C. F. W. Walther was the assigned pastor for the ship Amalia. However, when he arrived in Bremerhaven from Bremen, he discovered that warrants were issued for his arrest on kidnapping charges. So he quickly changed ships by switching passage with a young man, E. F. Froehlich, and he boarded the Johann Georg, which was ready to depart immediately.

  After C. F. W. Walther sailed, the police arrested Mrs. Buenger, his future mother-in-law, as an accomplice in the kidnapping. She hid the Schubert children and was jailed until she told her story about the kidnapping. Mrs. Buenger and her son Frederick and daughter Agnes Ernestine, were urged by Stephan to cancel their passage to America on the Olbers. They later sailed to New York with another emigration group aboard the ship Constitution on December 21, 1838. The Buengers finally joined the Society in Perry County, Missouri, in May of 1839. The Schubert children, however, sailed on the ship Olbers with O. H. Walther.

  The whole affair involved dodging the authorities and eluding police for two weeks, plus several legal maneuvers to prevent the police finding the Schubert children. The police detained the Olbers from the 15th to the 18th of November causing an additional 136 Thaler of charges by the shipping company for delay of sail. Stephan was somewhat sympathetic to the cause, but when Mrs. Buenger was released from custody and the children successfully hidden on the Olbers, he refused to let her come aboard. Pastor Stephan told theological candidate Buenger to come to America with Mrs. Schubert later, which he did.3 Evidently, Walther was not too worried about being arrested because he ordered a suit of clothes tailored for him in Bremen.

  George Pleissner, the neighboring pastor of O. H. Walther, wrote his own judgments of this sad episode in his book, The Church Fanatics in the Valley of the Mulde:

  With warrants issued against him as a kidnapper, the last of the pious leaders has left our confines. While the disconsolate father of the Walther brothers slowly recovering from a deadly sickness, was slumbering and his wounds, caused by the dagger of ingratitude were still bleeding, his youngest son enters the home and robs him of the tender grand children, the last consolation of his now desolate evening of his life. What a faith, which can separate itself from his parental home with such devilish cunning and dark treason.4

  Eduard Vehse would also comment on this act saying that the “theft of the Schubert children had cast a dark shadow upon the emigrations and caused a great cry of indignation against the emigrants.”5 A century later, an afterglow was placed around this story. Some historians of the origins of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod praised God’s guidance by which Pastor Walther was saved from perishing at Sea on the Amalia by taking an earlier ship. Others historians make little of the kidnapping and appear to excuse it, because C. F. W. Walther’s life was spared when he changed passage from the Amalia to the Johann Georg.6

  Koepchen was one of the historians who told the story as he saw it. “I can see no profit to our Church in praising this manifest sin against the fourth commandment as an act of God to preserve unto His Church a man, who in later life became a great worker in the Church.” He went on to note that the whole incident did not reflect credit upon the managers. Walther’s fellow pastors were ships’ managers. They all made excuses for Walther’s behavior and for his jumping ship, stating that there was no room on the Amalia for him. In fact, the Society paid for ten passenger berths because C. F. W. Walther had jumped ship. In actuality, the Amalia had to be cleaned and refurbished before sailing, which was at least ten days away from a sail date. But Walther needed to get out of town and fast, for the sheriff was on his trail. This event subjected the entire Society to public derision and humiliation. The many events that were to follow this voyage would test the limits of how much more stress and humiliation they could take. What would these emigrants do when they had enough ridicule amid the difficulty of finding a new home and getting settled at last?

  After the delays, the emigrants boarded the ship named the Olbers, the fourth ship of the chartered fleet, which was a brand new three-masted schooner with 600 tons of cargo capacity. It was built in 1838 in the Bremen shipyard, Vegesack, and was captained by Henry Exter. The Olbers maiden voyage finally began fourteen days late, on November 18, at 10 a.m. Pastor Stephan and Pastor O. H. Walther plus attorneys Vehse and Marbach were on board, along with a number of theological candidates. The physician for the passengers was Dr. C. A. Schnabel. This sailing ship carried 181 passengers.7 The Emigrant Society was finally underway when the Amalia, the last of the fleet, left several hours after the Olbers. The departure drew public attention.

  Several public statements of farewell to the emigrants appeared. Pastor George Pleissner, colleague of O. H. Walther, continued his condemnation of this group. He ridiculed their utopian ideas of leaving Germany to find that perfect place of peace.8 The editor of the Bremer Zeitung was rather charitable toward the emigrants in his editorial of November 7, 1838. He believed these Saxons to be honorable in their intentions, law abiding and hi
ghly educated people with strong convictions, and that they should be relieved of the malicious attacks by others and allowed to go in peace. He noted that it just might give credit to the German name that these people were going to create a settlement in the state of Missouri in America.9

  On November 13, 1838, an ironic public statement was issued by Duke Frederick of Saxony, who previously denied a peaceful release to Pastors Keyl and G. H. Loeber. The duke’s edict was issued through the office of the consistory superintendent V. Wuestemann, G. H. Loeber’s supervisor. From that day forward all pastors and teachers in that consistory were ordered to preach the undivided Gospel of Christ and all the fundamental doctrines of the Christian Church. The edict stated in one part,

  We must ... for the future’s sake ... make it a moral duty for the clergy in their sermons to preach the entire, undivided gospel and to remain independent of the zeitgeist of any kind of personal opinion. The issue here is not that the intent of some human dogmatism, or the dialectical precision, with which some theological decisions and concepts are developed in our church’s creed, are present in popular sermons. Rather the issue is that among the actual fundamental teachings of Christianity ... [they] should be taught or imparted to the heart just as vigorously as these others like the qualities of God ... in public sermons.10

  When the rest of the state church read this edict after it was leaked to the press, the consistory received the same kind of venomous accusations that had previously been heaped on Pastor Stephan.