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

by Stephan, Philip

  4 Wiest, “Why We Are Scared to Confess,” 153–54.

  5 Vehse, The Stephanite Emigration to America, 19–23, 142–51. Vehse documents the arrival of two steamboats from St. Louis bringing part of the St. Louis congregation on board. One boat lands in the morning and one in the early evening.

  6 William Koepchen, “Martin Stephan and the Saxon Emigration of 1838” (unpublished ms., Stephan Family Archives and Concordia Historical Institute, 1935), 157–58.

  7 Koepchen, “Martin Stephan and the Saxon Emigration of 1838,” 158–59.

  8 Ernst Moritz Buerger, “Memoirs of Ernst Moritz Buerger, Part Three” Concordia Historical Institute Quarterly (Spring 2004): 3–4. Ernst Buerger and Bishop Stephan had clashed earlier in their ministry. Stephan had reprimanded Buerger for a sermon in which had slurred the faith of the apostles in their doubt about Christ’s resurrection. Buerger was sent by Stephan to minister to the Society’s woodcutter. Buerger admits he tried hard to forget his antipathy toward the bishop but was unable, when Walther revealed that something “terrible” was about to happen in the community without saying exactly what it was. However, Pastor Loeber finally made everything clear to him. Buerger reports that instead of being terrified at this news about the bishop as others were, he “felt a strange sense of joy in my soul.”

  9 Forster, Zion on the Mississippi, 420–21.

  10 There are conflicting accounts from Forster, Vehse, and Koepchen about how Stephan was taken across the river. It’s hard to imagine a rowboat filled with three men, with some of Stephan’s belongings, a few clothes, blankets, and a shovel and ax rowing in the flood-gorged river filled with driftwood. It is highly more likely that they used the ferry which stopped at Wittenberg.

  24

  The Deposition Process

  On June 4, 1839, four days after Stephan had been taken across the Mississippi, Louise Guenther was interrogated by Attorney Marbach. The attorney’s only witness was Gustav Jaeckel, a formally designated secretary for many official Society transactions. He served as secretary for this procedure, also. Apparently the purpose of this interrogation was to get Louise Guenther’s confession in writing and, at the same time to charge both Stephan and Guenther with other improprieties. They were still at the Perry County site, because the final document recorded the signatures at that location.

  Marbach was in control. Although a leader of the Society, Marbach was not a clergyman, nor was he licensed to practice law in Missouri. He acted as leader of the ad hoc council that called itself an investigative and fact-finding commission; it had been hurriedly created at the Perry County camp expressly to depose and excommunicate the bishop. According to the Guenther document, he introduced himself as the stated attorney for the local evangelical Lutheran congregation of “Brasso,” referring to the location near the Brazeau River.

  With no judge or defense attorney, his inquisition was a solo performance. He cajoled, baited, pried, parried her responses, plumbed her memory for information incriminating other people, and threatened her with excommunication as well as God’s displeasure. He drew heavily on his intimate knowledge of the Dresden trials and rehashed many events and charges of which Stephan had already been exonerated. Interrogating Louise Guenther in this manner, especially about material in her sacramental confession, is quite extraordinary. The written statement indicated that the questioning continued all of June 4 and into the morning of June 5, 1839.

  Marbach led off the interrogation with accusations against Guenther. Based on the hearsay “evidence,” a private confession made to Pastor Loeber a month earlier, the allegations are remarkable. Not only had the confessional seal been broken, but she was charged with three primary offenses, two of which were not even part of her sacramental confession. Marbach accused her of slandering Society members who opposed Stephan and of pandering by facilitating meetings between females and Stephan resulting in sexual activity. The third charge was harlotry, conducting an adulterous relationship with Stephan.

  Reading the transcript, Louise’s replies seem frank, informative, and quite detailed. She sounds evenhanded, unemotional, and although she must have resented the process, she seems willing to cooperate. Much of the material reiterated her testimony at the trials in Dresden. In fact, the only new information that came out in this questioning was what she had withheld at Dresden: the adulterous nature of their relationship.

  Louise answered her inquisitor about the first charge saying she had not slandered anyone. Stephan had ordered her to tell him everything, but she confessed she had withheld some information to protect the people involved. Marbach retorted that her reply was an excuse and not a valid answer. When he accused her of evading questions and exaggerating, she explained she had listened to Stephan and followed his orders. When asked about the intention of her relationship with Stephan, she asserted she was unaware of any manipulation of him for her own gain.

  When he asked about the old charges and the tired stories of “match making,” Louise found no truth in the charge of procuring lovers for Stephan. Her answers were the same as she had made at court in Dresden, and she stated emphatically that she never provided any women for Stephan. He dredged up the tale of Caroline Dittrich’s accusations against Stephan in the letter that Dittrich had written to Marbach before the emigration. Louise stated she knew nothing of the story, although court records indicate she did. He asked if Stephan had other relationships in St. Louis, and she said she knew absolutely nothing of any other relationships.

  Marbach insinuated that Louise was jealous of Stephan’s attention to other women. She deflected the question, offering that it was Louise Voelker who complained about the amount of time Mrs. Hoehne spent with Stephan. Housemother Schneider thought Hoehne “quite a pursuer of men” and rather naive. Louise thought that Stephan did little to stop pushy women because he said he wanted an “insight into the minds of such people.” Louise told Marbach how she related to Stephan that Mrs. Hoehne wanted to make an indecent proposal to Stephan. Stephan responded to her story with anger, insisting that Mrs. Hoehne sought him for counsel only. Louise acknowledged bad feelings between herself and Voelker from that time on, even though she had tried to restore their relationship.

  Regarding the charges of fornication and adultery, Marbach’s notes read “Louise Guenther considered herself guilty.” Upon this admission she was asked how the fornication happened. She replied, “I fought many years against this, but I finally thought that Stephan knew best, better than myself. After all, he had to know what was right. He said it was right. His wife trampled his heart, and therefore he turned his heart away from her. Herein he [Stephan] referred to ... the Earl of Hessia who, with Martin Luther’s permission had two wives.” Marbach claimed this case did not apply as Stephan did not intend to have children by Louise. She countered that Stephan presented their relationship as her duty since it would benefit his health. Although she vehemently denied slander and pandering, she admitted she perjured herself in Dresden because Stephan had “ordered her to lie to the court.” He likened it to David deceiving Ashish, a false oath necessary according to God’s Word, and he emphasized “the importance of taking my knowledge of this to my grave.”1

  Marbach continued to quiz her. Had he ever asked her for an oath? She said Stephan asked her, “Will you be faithful to me until death?” She promised, but she never claimed God to witness her promise. Had he misused God’s name? No, she noticed no such misuse. Marbach wanted to know when their physical relationship started. Louise said the physical part of the relationship began at the Radeberg Spa where Dr. Schnabel ordered Stephan to go for treatment of his extreme case of eczema.

  When Marbach asked her to give information about other women in illicit relationships with Stephan for the “sake of the congregation,” she said, “I know nothing about anyone who may have been involved in an illicit relationship with Stephan. I have no knowledge of Louise Voelker, of Wilhelmine Hahn, of Pauline Weidlich, or anyone else that might have been in Stephan’s hou
se either recently or some time ago. Auguste Poetsch was certainly very close to Stephan” because she was his housekeeper. Auguste had worried about appearances but felt nothing wrong about her relationship with him. When Sophie Hoeschel had come often to “talk with him at great length and always very softly,” Louise worried that he preferred Sophie to her. She asked Stephan if he were dissatisfied with her and preferred another woman. “I certainly had the idea that Ms. Hoeschel was about to take my place with Stephan,” a situation she had interpreted as punishment from God for her worthlessness. She said nobody in her family had any suspicion about their relationship; they all thought her very fortunate.2

  Louise Guenther signed the document, as did Jaeckel in the capacity of witness and secretary, on June 4, 1839. This written “confession” had several addenda Jaeckel noted that Guenther assured them she would make the same remarks under oath at any time. However, another postscript states she made these statements under oath. A further addendum recorded more testimony Guenther gave the following day, June 5. In it she testified that when Stephan was sent to Illinois, she did not plan to stay behind in order to gather up his money and other valuables, nor to spy for him to learn who among the colony was for or who was against him.

  She answered an accusation saying neither she nor Stephan had embezzled any Society money. When he was about to be sent across the river, she had told him not to go without money, whereupon he directed her to a pouch with perhaps several hundred gold Thaler. From it he gave her some money and told her to buy some things with it. He also retrieved a five-dollar bill from a folder and gave it to her to pay some small debts. She did not know what happened to the pouch or the folder or the money, and she did not see him again before he was exiled across the river. These addenda were read, approved, and signed, all written by the same G. Jaeckel.

  Shortly after her interrogation, Louise Guenther fled the encampment and took a ferry to Illinois in order to take care of Pastor Stephan. She escaped on June 16, or as Stephan says in his letter to Consul Fluegel, “After 16 days, Louise Guenther from Dresden arrived at my deportation” which had occurred on May 31, 1839.

  Besides the remarkable interrogation of Ms. Guenther, many irregularities appear in the process of deposing Bishop Stephan. First, Louise Guenther was quite familiar with the confessional process. In Germany, she had referred to Pastor Stephan as her confessor father, and she had been a “beicht kind,” or child of the confessional. For her this phrase carried deep respect and gratitude. She knew the sacrament of confession well and experienced its grace and forgiveness. It is no exaggeration to say that she understood the confession as very private and protected. As a seasoned pastor, G. H. Loeber, Louise’s confessor that fateful Sunday in May, also knew the boundaries of the confessional. No doubt her confession stunned him. However, the severity and implications of Guenther’s confession was neither premise nor excuse for him to break his oath and ethical pledge of privacy of the confessional.

  Perhaps Loeber worried about attacks on Stephan as he had suffered in Germany. Loeber appears to have been a competent man and could have sorted that out by himself. At most he could have confronted Stephan privately. Once Loeber involved Walther, Keyl, and Buerger, they all made a tragic rush to judgment and decided that Stephan was guilty. This violation and injustice to Guenther was compounded when Walther and Loeber revealed the private confession to two laymen, breaking the seal of the confessional yet again. Marbach and Vehse then consulted Dr. Lane, an attorney in St. Louis, who advised them to depose the bishop and send him to Illinois. Thus began the scandalous mismanagement of Guenther’s confession. They turned a sacramental confession into indictments as if they had been looking for an excuse to depose him.

  This breach of the confessional was compounded by C. F. W. Walther when he withheld the charges from his mentor, Martin Stephan, on his May 15 trip to Perry County. Walther not only concealed this information from Stephan, he told others in the congregation. Seizing the moment, Walther grasped the opportunity to take leadership of the congregation. He and the other pastors did not come out untarnished in this entire matter.

  The Society members failed miserably to protect Pastor Stephan’s rights as a person and a member of the community. In their panic, the pastors seem to have forgotten what the Christian life is all about: grace, compassion, and forgiveness. Acting only on hearsay, the pastors dealt with Stephan legalistically, violating God’s law of justice and mercy. They cast out their leader rather than offer him an opportunity for redemption. Although they did not talk to him one-on-one as the church requires, they charged him with “not listening to the Church” because he rejected the kangaroo court they convened.

  Once the malicious gossip was unleashed by the pastors and kindled by Marbach, it spread rapidly among the Society, even the children. Although two hundred or so Society members did not agree with the procedure of boating to Perry County to oust Stephan and stayed in St. Louis, well over three hundred other Society members joined those in Perry County to expel their bishop. By the time they arrived at Stephan’s cabin near the Brazeau River, they had become an angry mob devoid of reason and almost ready to lynch Stephan. Instead of encouraging reason, attorney Marbach stayed in the background and urged them on. Their pain turned into physical violence as they beat their buggy whips along the walls of their pastor’s log cabin. The earlier complaining and dour mood of the community exploded into fury.

  Curiously, Marbach and Walther sent their real estate agent to read the proclamation against Stephan. Apparently none of the community leadership screwed up enough courage to face their founder and leader. As Stephan later wrote, the congregation-turned-mob shamed him with mocking words and forced him to undress under the pretense of looking for money. This was hardly the idealistic group of Christians who had left Germany. Not only had they lost all respect for their leader and for themselves, they failed miserably to treat him civilly, let alone deal with him in the manner Christ taught.

  The lawyers and pastors drew up charges starting with Louise Guenther’s private confession to pastor G. H. Loeber. They added other charges but had no hard evidence to substantiate any of them. For example, Stephan was one of many Society members who had borrowed money from the Credit Fund. Charging him with embezzlement, when he had no control of the treasury, was a frivolous accusation. This charge played well, though, with those unhappy about all the expenses and especially those associated with the office of bishop.

  Many people in that lynch-minded crowd had previous painful encounters with Stephan that led to their revengeful behavior. Marbach, Vehse, and several of the pastors such as Walther and Buenger had been reprimanded by Stephan or suspended or engaged in disputes with him. Above all, attorney Marbach used this moment to settle his power struggle with Stephan and to show the other laity that they could manage their own affairs. Marbach followed the legal advice he had received in St. Louis and saw to it that Stephan had no hearing or trial. The makeshift committee appointed to assess Stephan’s innocence or guilt did not work.

  Stephan would not accept this ploy, especially since one of the charges involved the civil offense of embezzlement. At this point he also knew there was no unbiased mind in the crowd and certainly no chance for a fair or impartial jury. The result was no conversation, no hearing, no justice, no grace. Even when Stephan handed to them a letter from a woman retracting her accusation of immoral behavior, they were so committed to ridding themselves of the bishop they ignored it. Clearly sexual misconduct was not the only issue here.

  When the community leaders exiled Stephan, they decided to keep all his belongings. It would seem just to ask Stephan to repay his debts, or to determine how much money was missing, if any, from the Credit Fund. However, they took everything he had including his land and the money he had saved to bring his family to America. In spite of the Society’s agreement to pay his salary and expenses, they never acknowledged his unpaid wages. They objected to what they considered his extravagant expenses, especia
lly those for his pastoral duties. Nothing justified their taking everything; they took more of Stephan’s possessions than they claimed he owed. This Emigration Society, formed in Dresden as a community of people who would care for each other, utterly fell apart in this moment of anger at their betrayal.

  To this act of theft, the Society added yet one more unchristian deed. They excommunicated Stephan without following their own time-honored practice rooted in scriptures. Christ taught, “If your brother sins, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone ... If he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, so that every fact may be established on the testimony of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell the church. If he refuses to listen even to the church, then treat him as you would a Gentile or a tax collector ... For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them” (Mt. 18:15–20).

  The Society leaders did not attempt a private conversation; they did not take a witness to confront him. They were not interested in what he had to say. To their own pastor, whose entire ministry had been to teach forgiveness, they offered no time for reflection or an opportunity for repentance or forgiveness.

  After Stephan’s expulsion from the community, Marbach and Jaeckel decided they needed more evidence. They wanted Louise Guenther’s private confession in writing. For more than a day they prodded her with questions. Most alarming about Marbach’s strong-arm interrogation of Guenther is his posture of authority, as if he were a prosecutor in a trial court extracting a confession from a criminal. He was not a pastor and did not represent the Church. He was not licensed to practice law in Missouri at the time, and he had no authority from a court, police department, or any other legal entity to interrogate Guenther.