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

by Stephan, Philip

  That a complete and accurate accounting of the property of the congregation is rendered, and that the possessions, still on hand are safeguarded for its members.

  That all those who now desire to sever their connection with this congregation receive prompt repayment of all their invested money after all legally justified expenses have been deducted.6

  What damage control the pastors thought they had gained by striking first did not work. The paper had delivered blows of lethal force indicting the other pastors along with Stephan charging they should not have followed the bishop so blindly. The first document given to the paper by the pastors was titled “Protestation” and was printed on May 4, 1839. Their retraction was printed on May 27, 1839.

  It was not until one day later, on May 28, when a large delegation arrived at the Perry County site, that Martin Stephan indicated any awareness of a problem. It seems rather incredible that even this man, who was often naive and caught up in his own business, who relied on close associates to relay to him the latest gossip in the community, could be so out of touch as to be ignorant of all the rumors. But, a little later in this four-day purge, Stephan did some investigation of his own in that he found one of the women who had allegedly confessed and she wrote a letter of retraction which he later tried to present.

  NOTES

  1 Carl Eduard Vehse, The Stephanite Emigration to America: With Documentation, trans. Rudolph Fiehler (1840; Tuscon: M. R. Winkler,1975), 11. Vehse also thought that all the robes and bishop’s staff and cross were not only that of the Catholic Church but were extravagant. According to Vehse these trappings were just another sign that Stephan was power hungry.

  2 Walter O. Forster, Zion on the Mississippi (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1953), 392.

  Forster, Koepchen, and Vehse cite only two women who confessed sexual improprieties to Pastor Loeber. There are other reports of other women who confessed improper sexual activities including those G. H Loeber spoke about from the pulpit during the announcements portion of the service. Loeber announced that Louise Voelker, Wilhelmine Hahn, and Sophie Hoeschel had also confessed to sexual misconduct. Records of this second confession and the woman’s identity have either been lost or never existed.

  3 William Koepchen, “Martin Stephan and the Saxon Emigration of 1838” (unpublished ms., Stephan Family Archives and Concordia Historical Institute, 1935), 152–53.

  4 Koepchen, “Martin Stephan and the Saxon Emigration of 1838,” 154–55.

  5 Forster, Zion on the Mississippi, 409.

  6 Koepchen, “Martin Stephan and the Saxon Emigration of 1838,” 156–57.

  23

  Pastors Plan and Execute the Deposition

  The events leading up to the May 30, 1839, confrontation with Martin Stephan show that the pastors in St. Louis were eager to rid themselves of their bishop just as outside secular legal counsel sought by Marbach and Vehse had advised. Vehse reports in his memoirs the following search for legal advice outside their community:

  For a week the clergy kept these awful discoveries secret, but then divulged them to Stephan’s secretary and to me. At first we intended to transport him to St. Louis and to let the secular authorities take over. But three prominent residents of St. Louis, among them the principal magistrate of the city, Dr. Lane, with whom I discussed the matter, advised that we avoid the scandal that would ensue, which would inevitably result in a lynching of the abandoned man (his execution by the people without judicial process) and that we instead convey him out of our colony to Illinois or to some other place.1

  Vehse continues saying that the youngest of the clergy, C. F. W. Walther, was sent to Perry County to tell Stephan that the whole community wanted to come to their new land, and they were not willing to wait as Stephan wished. However, Walther was secretly carrying out other plans.

  On May 15, Pastor Walther left St. Louis, per the steamboat United States, for the proposed settlement. He had no difficulty in obtaining the desired promise from his brother Otto Hermann Walther, and his three associates Gube, Palisch and Teacher Schlimpert. As an excuse for coming to the settlement, he [C . F. W. Walther] told Stephan that the congregation would like to come to Perry County as soon as possible. This request must have seemed like irony to Stephan for on May 18 a group of 95 persons, commonly called the “Berliner” arrived at the settlement and more than filled the log cabins which had been built until then. These “Berliner” were a group of Protestants, who, at Pastor Stephan’s advice, immigrated to New York and later joined the Saxons in their settlement.... Among those who came with the “Berliner” were the ministerial candidate F. Buenger, his two sisters and their mother, who had not been permitted to sail with the Saxons, as she had been under suspicion of having aided C. F. W. Walther in the abduction of the Schubert children from their guardian’s custody to come to America.2

  While the remainder of the Emigration Society worked in cramped quarters at odd jobs in St. Louis, the Berliners, now known as the New York group, were among the first to move to the newly purchased land. The only buildings were a few old log cabins, a few new ones for the workers, and a new one under construction for the bishop. The New York group bought into the Credit Fund in Germany and signed the Regulations and Codes; they were an essential part of the Emigration Society. They quickly put up lean-tos for shelter and joined in the construction. Stephan had convinced the council to invite this group from New York, and now they were viewed as prime targets by Walther. The New York group consisted of ardent followers of Stephan and needed to be converted to support Walther’s plan to oust him from leadership.

  Meanwhile, C. F. W. Walther faithfully and vigorously carried out his mission. Forster believed that Walther did not just go to change the deeds of land in Stephan’s name; Walther’s primary goal was to win support for a change in leadership. Walther deliberately ignored Stephan on this occasion. He was also spreading the “news” of Stephan’s misdeeds and building support for deposing Stephan. Soon to marry into the Buenger family, Walther stayed with them while in the Perry County settlement. He told them and other Society members to keep the secret of Louise Guenther’s confession and of their plan to depose him, so that Stephan would not be warned in advance. Walther said nothing to Stephan on this trip, nor did he speak to him privately. He had already determined that the bishop was guilty of the charges he had deduced from Guenther’s private confession.3

  He then proceeded back to St. Louis.

  After spending four days in the company of the Buengers [Walther’s future in-laws], Walther returned to St. Louis, where the secret of Stephan’s alleged misconduct was being circulated. Fearing that the “Anzeiger Des Westens” might succeed in disrupting the congregation by enticing its members to sever their connection with the organization, the pastors (Loeber and Walther) proposed to hurry to the settlement to depose their Bishop and eject him from the colony.4

  Meanwhile, Louise Guenther, who confessed to Pastor Loeber on May 5,1839, was not aware of what the clergy were planning. Even though her confession was made public, apparently she did not hear about it. She reportedly arrived in Perry County sometime between her confession date of May 5 and May 30, when the bishop was confronted. If she had heard about the clergy’s plans to remove the bishop, she probably would have gone to warn him earlier. More than likely, she traveled with the three hundred people from St. Louis that Walther brought with him to depose the bishop. They landed in Perry County on May 28. Her written statement on June 4, 1839, confirms her presence in Perry County during his deposition. Louise acknowledged her presence in Bishop Stephan’s cabin when he was first confronted by Marbach and Vehse. The crowd roared off the steamship and surrounded the bishop’s home at Wittenberg. In light of the gossip and resulting furor against Stephan circulating among the Society members in St. Louis, it is incredible that the tight-lipped group kept this secret so well.

  On his first trip to Perry County, Walther was to block Stephan’s title to Society land before he was deposed. Walthe
r was able to block only the forty acres that the Society had given him, not the eighty Stephan had purchased. On his second trip Walther brought along the pastors and other leaders. They arrived May 28 and spent the rest of the day trying to form an advisory group to try Stephan. This hastily assembled group could not even decide its own authority or whether it was purely advisory. Incredibly, a competent administrative council already existed; it had planned the Atlantic voyage, written the regulations for the governance of the group, and purchased the Perry County land. This council had the support and approval of all the people. It is not clear why they made no effort to use this properly authorized group to hear the charges.

  The pastors’ next action on May 29 was to draft a deposition of the bishop with the accusations written in clear language. Stephan was told he must have a hearing with the newly formed advisory group. Stephan refused the authority of this concocted “jury” and asked for a hearing before the Planning Commission and the entire congregation. He was denied this request. The new advisory group then added Stephan’s refusal to the list of charges for which he was to be excommunicated, implying that he failed to listen to the church as advised in holy scripture. The pastors became the judges; they held the trial on May 30 and told Stephan he must leave the community. The deposition was read by their real estate agent Bimpage, not a leader of the Society but an outsider.

  William Koepchen vividly paints the verbal picture of what happened the day the bishop was defrocked and excommunicated:

  After publicly declaring their bishop, who had been kept in complete ignorance of what was going on in St. Louis, guilty of all charges ever brought against him and thus exposing him and themselves to the ridicule and contempt of the editor of the Anzeiger Des Westens, the leaders rushed some 300 members of their party who were willing to say “Amen” to the clergy’s condemnation and deposition of their Bishop Stephan to Perry County. Those who refused to condemn Bishop Stephan before he had a hearing were left in St. Louis. These were people like the Guenthers, the Esterls, the Tiemen-steins, Haenschens and others. The first division of these “Amen shouters” arrived at the settlement on the steamboat Prairie at 4 a.m. the morning of May 28,1839. The second division arrived at 5 p.m. on the steamboat Toledo.5

  Instead of thinking how these many newcomers could find lodging for the oncoming night in the virgin forest of Perry County, the clergy spent the day [May 29] in quibbling about the makeup of a self-appointed council and trying to determine the council’s authority. They asked themselves would they have voting power or were they advisory? Were there to be clerical members and were the clergy to hold the majority votes on the council or not?

  Toward evening, Pastor Loeber and Keyl went to the cabin of Bishop Stephan and ordered him to appear before this council on the following day [May 30]. Bishop Stephan naturally refused to acknowledge the legality of such a self-constituted council and demanded a hearing and trial before the congregation which had elected him to be their leader. He also produced a letter from one of the two girls who had made charges against him, revoking her accusations as false and pleading for his forgiveness.

  The following morning [May 30] the clergy continued their arguments concerning the membership of their council still claiming that the lay members could only appear as deputies and in less numbers than the pastors. Dr. Vehse continued his eavesdropping at the only window of Bishop Stephan’s cabin—a characteristic of his in producing pungent and spicy writings later. Although Vehse publicly declared that Stephan was fully justified in ignoring the order of this council of pastors who were no longer pastors since they had resigned their pastorates in Germany, yet he voted for Stephan’s deposition for the reason “that he had rejected the council.”

  Having finally come to an agreement how Stephan was to be notified of his deposition from office, the council dispatched their real estate agent again to Stephan’s cabin to read him the following result of the ad hoc council’s vote.6

  What follows is the decree read by the outsider Mr. Bimpage:

  The Decree of Deposition

  Whereas you, Martin Stephan heretofore bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Congregation of Saxons, emigrated from Saxony and settled in North America, have been charged before the undersigned Council with the sins of fornication and adultery which you have repeatedly committed, also with having wantanously misappropriated trust fund;

  Whereas you have become guilty of teaching false doctrine and have refused to recognize the Council properly appointed over you, and have thus not only evaded the investigation of the charges brought against you and forfeited the right of defending yourself, but have also, by rejecting the Council rejected the Word of God, the Church, the ministry and every divine ordinance;

  Therefore, we declare that you are hereby divested of your Episcopal dignity, your “Consecration” for the office of the ministry and that you have forfeited the right and advantages of a member of the Christian Church, “by virtue of your office” in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen

  Done in Perry County, at the mouth of the Brazo [Brazeau], May 30,1839.

  The Council of the Evangelical Lutheran Congregation settled at the afore-mentioned place:

  Gotthold Heinrich Loeber, pastor

  Ernst Gerhard Wilhelm Keyl, pastor

  Ernst Moritz Buerger, pastor

  Carl Ferdinand Wilhelm Walther, pastor

  Joh. Jacob Maximillian Oertel

  Dr. Carl Edward Vehse

  Johann Georg Gube

  Christian Gottlieb Schlimpert

  Johann Gottlieb Palisch

  Johann Friedrich Sproede

  Read before the section of the congregation assembled at the Brazo [Brazeau], and formally and solemnly approved by them for themselves and for the absent members of the Congregation.

  Done as afore stated,

  Hyl. Bimpage, requisitioned Secretary

  Witnesses: Edward Thierry

  John Friedr(ich) Gruenhagen.

  Immediately after the reading of this deposition, Vehse told Stephan that he would be obliged to leave the settlement at once. When Stephan did not make the least move to obey this order of the blustering Vehse, the mob outside the cabin rushed in to use force, having until then only used their whips to lash outside of the cabin.7,8 Stephan was forced by the rage of the crowd and the danger he felt to his life to renounce all claims against the Society and to never return to the community. This document was called the cession bonorum.9

  Stephan was bodily searched for money on his person and in his luggage. What they found was taken from him, and he was readied for a trip across the Mississippi into Illinois. This voyage was delayed until the next morning because large amounts of driftwood from the spring runoff filled the river and prevented safe passage in a boat. Martin slept that night in a tent at the river’s edge. Next morning, May 31, 1839, he was either rowed across the river or accompanied on a ferryboat to Illinois by two men, one of whom held a gun on him while they crossed the river.10

  Using a real estate agent from outside the community in the delicate process of defrocking their bishop illustrates the inhuman and disrespectful procedures. This entire action is another example that when an emigrating community turns into a mob and reacts in pain and anger, almost any disagreement or personal snub can be added to the list of accusations. Such was the case in this deposition.

  A surprising political ploy was evident in that the signature of Attorney Marbach, who battled with Martin Stephan so fiercely on other issues, was missing from the deposition. As would be expected, missing, too, were the signatures of many other prominent laymen who defended Martin Stephan only weeks earlier in the Anzeiger des Westens paper, names like J. F. Winter, a teacher; Stoertzell, a physician; Nitzschke; H. F. Fischer, and others who signed the declaration published in the newspaper. Among the missing clergy the most prominent name was Otto Hermann Walther, brother of the C. F. W. Walther who led the delegation to expel Bishop Stephan. Neither did any of the ten
theological and ministerial candidates sign this deposition document.

  These charges must have hit Stephan as a stunning blow. He was no doubt blindsided, not only by the charges but by the intensity of the crowd’s reaction. He had little time and no opportunity to address what was happening. He was swept away by the flood of anger and revenge fueled by members’ feelings of betrayal. There was no time or opportunity to sort out the moment of truth. Stephan’s pleas for a just hearing were flatly denied.

  NOTES

  1 Carl Eduard Vehse, The Stephanite Emigration to America, trans. Rudolph Fiehler, (1840; Tuscon: M. R. Winkler,1977),18.

  2 Walter O. Forster, Zion on the Mississippi (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1953), 153–54. J. F. Buenger’s mother had been arrested for harboring these children. She was unable to sail with the Society. Pastor Stephan urged J. F. Buenger to stay behind with his mother and sail at a later date, thus his arrival with the people from Berlin. The trip to Perry County had been arranged previously by the Society.

  3 Stephan Wiest, “Why We Are Scared to Confess: The Use and Abuse of Private Confession among Our Saxon Fathers” (audiotape: conference paper delivered to a pastoral conference in Michigan, 2000). This tape is a copy of one given to Rev. Luke Stephan of Ann Arbor, Michigan. It is reproduced by Concordia Catechetical Academy, Catalog CSTS 00–5.