CHAPTER VII.
OTHER ESTABLISHMENTS ON THE CONTINENT.
In a book of these dimensions no exhaustive historical account can be given of all the developments of the deaconess movement in the various countries on the Continent. Only a few of the leading houses can be spoken of, but through a knowledge of these we can gain an insight into the life and characteristics of the movement as a whole.
The mother-house at Strasburg is one of the oldest ones, dating from 1842. It owes its origin to the holy enthusiasm and life experiences of Pastor Härter, who exercised a deep religious influence in the city where he lived. In 1817, when he was a young man of twenty, the great Strasburg hospital was re-organized. The six to eight hundred patients were divided according to their religious faith. To the Catholics were assigned as nurses Sisters of Charity. For the Protestants there were paid women nurses.
The magistrates appealed to the pastors to find098/94 at least two Protestant women of experience and ability to oversee the nurses, but the most persistent search in the various churches of Strasburg failed to procure suitable candidates. Years afterward, when death entered Härter’s family circle, and his life became clouded and darkened, he was called as a pastor to the largest church in Strasburg. He entered upon his new pastorate with a heart heavy and sad, and not until after ten months of struggle, in which the depths of his soul were stirred, did he come forth strong, confident, and positive as never before that “Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief.” Henceforth there was force to his life, conviction in his words, and never-ceasing energy in good works.
When he heard of Fliedner’s new undertaking below him on the Rhine he remembered the difficulty in finding Protestant nurses for the hospital, and declared that Strasburg must have a similar institution. He won the support of a number of Christian men and women, and the house was opened in October, 1842. From its beginning many branches of charitable and religious work were undertaken. Especial attention was at first given to preparing Christian teachers, and the schools in connection with the deaconess house were filled with pupils. The099/95 success in this particular aroused apprehension lest the deaconesses should be diverted from their legitimate duties in caring for outside interests, so for a time the schools were discontinued. They have been resumed, however, and are to-day prosperous as of old.[1] There are also a hospital, a home for aged women, a servants’ training-school and a foundling asylum under the charge of the deaconesses. They are, as a class, of higher social rank than these of Kaiserswerth, the preponderating number of whom are from the lower grade of social life. They are also better educated. This is partly a necessity, from the fact that the city is on the border-land between two great nations and if the deaconesses are to be effective they must be familiar with the spoken and written speech of both peoples. Strasburg continues to be a great and powerful center of deaconess activities, having a number of branch houses and various fields of work.
The affiliated house at Mülhausen has obtained an especially good report for its successful use of parish deaconesses. No other house has so systematized their labors or developed their possibilities as has the deaconess house at Mülhausen. All the authorities on deaconess work agree that the100/96 office of the parish deaconess is the crown and glory of the diaconate, and approaches most nearly the type of the deaconesses of the early Church.
The parish deaconess has occasion to use every gift which she can possibly acquire in the varied training of the deaconess school. She must know how to care for the poor, the weak, the sick, and those needing help for either body or soul, as she finds them in her visits from house to house. She must be able to pray at the bedside of the rich man, and to serve in the kitchen of the poor man; to be motherly to children, sympathetic with the sorrowing, and silent with the complaining. She must be an intelligent nurse, having some knowledge of medicine, able to faithfully carry out the instructions of the physician. She must be keen in detecting imposition, and wise in the administration of charity, knowing that “to deny is often to help, and to give is often to corrupt.” Truly, there is no gift of Christian womanhood which has not here its use.
For many reasons Mülhausen was well adapted for a field of labor for parish deaconesses. It is an old city, dating back to mediæval times, having a population of about sixty thousand inhabitants, half of whom are workmen. It has long been known for its noble and successful endeavors to promote101/97 the well-being of the working class. One of the first building and loan associations was started here to enable the operatives to earn their homes by gradual payments. Other organizations whose object is the moral elevation of the employees have united the different social circles by strong ties of sympathy. It was an easy matter, therefore, to raise a subscription of two hundred thousand francs to provide a home for the deaconesses who were invited here from Strasburg in 1861. There are now fourteen sisters in the deaconess house. Half of the number remain at the home to nurse the sick, and perform house duties. The remainder are parish deaconesses, who go forth early in the morning, each to her own quarter of the city, where she is busy at her labors during the day. In the evening she returns to the central home. In each of the seven districts into which the city is divided is located a district house; a pleasant, well-kept place. This contains a waiting-room for the deaconess and a consultation-room for the district physician, who comes at stated hours during the week. The poor who are recommended by the sister he treats gratuitously, and, so far as the physician directs, she furnishes food gratuitously. She keeps on hand a good stock of lint, bandages, and instruments. Each house has a kitchen and cellar. Every morning102/98 a woman comes in and prepares a large kettle of nourishing soup, and at 11 A. M. this is given out to the sick and poor.
In the store-room are rice, sugar, coffee, meal, and similar articles of food. From here she sends out at noon such portions as are needed for the most destitute of the district. In winter she also sells from her stores to the poor. Then there is a closet amply provided with sewing materials, and when the deaconess obtains work for seamstresses she furnishes them at a small price the necessary outfit to begin sewing. At two o’clock the deaconess ends her duties at the district house, and spends the remainder of the day in making visits in her quarter. To provide means to support the constant expenditure, there is in each quarter of the city a committee of fifteen ladies and three gentlemen, being in all more than one hundred ladies and twenty gentlemen, who are responsible for the administration of the charity. Each committee has a yearly collection in its district, and in this way about forty thousand francs are gathered annually. In each quarter nine hundred francs (one hundred and eighty dollars) is set apart for the maintenance of the sister and the rent of the district house. The remaining sum is expended by the deaconesses in their several districts in caring for the sick and103/99 destitute. Every month each one receives the sum allotted her from the treasurer, and in return reports her expenditure. The ladies on the committee often give personal assistance to the deaconess, and sometimes assume responsibility for individual cases, or for an entire street. The arrangements are constantly being improved upon as knowledge is gained by practice. The experience that has been gathered at Mülhausen is very practical, and therefore very valuable. Similar work could be undertaken in any of our large American cities, with the anticipation of like beneficent results. For that reason the above detailed description has been ventured upon, with the hope that the Old World example will find imitators in the New.[2] Similar institutions, although not so carefully perfected, are found in Gorlitz and Magdeburg.
In Berlin are a good many deaconess institutions. Among them is the Marthashof, a training-school for servants, and a home for those out of employment.
The first impulse to care for the girls who come to large cities to obtain work, and to provide them a home where they can have respectable surroundings,104/100 came from Pastor Vermeil, the founder of the deaconess house at Paris. When Fliedner visited the Paris house his heart was touched by what he saw. He thought of the thousands of girls coming annually to Berlin from the provinces, and of the exposures and temptations to which they were subjected. He knew that many of them in their ignorance and inexperience were ruined body and soul in the lodging-houses to which they resorted, and drifted away on the streets of the city, only to find a place eventually in the hopeless wards of the great hospital, La Charité.
He determined to do what he could to provide a remedy, and, as was his wont, “without money and without noise” he set to work. In the north of Berlin, at quite a distance from the railroad stations, he hired a small house on a street then called “The Lost Way”—a street well named, as it was unlighted and unpaved, and so poorly kept that when the queen came to visit the home, shortly after it was opened, her carriage, in spite of the strong horses, got stuck in the mud.
By the aid of some ladies in the city the home was furnished with twelve beds; three deaconesses were put in charge, and after perplexing difficulties the authorization to open a registry for servants was obtained. The idea at first met with105/101 derision. It was said that such an institution was rightly located on “The Lost Way,” for no one would ever come to it. But they came. In two years the number of beds increased to twenty, and the same year Fliedner purchased the entire court in which the house stood, containing five houses and a fine garden. Queen Elizabeth of Prussia became the patroness of the institution, and it grew in favor with the people. A training-school was added in which the girls were taught to wash, iron, cook, and sew, and also to work in the garden and to care for cows, the last two branches of domestic service being required of servant-girls in Germany. Later an infant school was added in which nursery girls were practiced in taking charge of children, a pleasant, helpful demeanor being made one of the requisites. Over two hundred children, mostly coming from the poorest and gloomiest homes, are in daily attendance. About three hundred and fifty more attend the girls’ school for children of the working classes. In the home and training-school for servants about eight hundred girls are received annually, and sixteen thousand have been sheltered and taught during the years it has been open. They readily secure situations, over two thousand applications being annually received for the servants of the Marthashof. They remain in106/102 friendly relation to the home, receive good counsel and advice, and are encouraged to spend their free Sundays there.
The Marthashof has had a beneficent influence over the moral and spiritual welfare of servants throughout Germany. In nearly all the cities similar homes are now established, while in the larger cities Sunday associations are formed to provide suitable places of meeting for the entertainment and instruction of those who are free Sunday afternoons and evenings. So far as I am aware, no similar work has been attempted for servant-girls in the United States. It is true that training-schools exist, but not with religious supervision, and with the moral and religious instruction of the inmates made a prominent feature. The Marthashof offers us a lesson well worth our learning.
The deaconess house, “Bethanien,” in Berlin, was founded by King Frederick William IV., who as the Crown Prince took a warm interest in Fliedner’s undertakings.[3] It still remains under the protection107/103 of the emperor, and is one of the most important mother-houses. Over three thousand patients are annually admitted to the hospital connected with the house, and five hundred children are treated at a dispensary devoted solely to cases of diphtheria. Outside of the city it has thirty-three stations. There are also the Lazarus Hospital and Deaconess Home, the Paul Gerhardt Deaconess Home, provided for parish deaconesses, and the Elizabeth Hospital and Home, which started independently but is now allied to Kaiserswerth.
The deaconess house in Neudettelsau stands in closest union with the Lutheran Church. The sisters are mostly from the higher ranks of society, and intellectual training is made prominent. Certain liturgical forms are used, and in the main deaconesses are employed in preparing ecclesiastical vestments and embroideries for church adornment.
In marked contrast to Dettelsau is the deaconess house at Berne. It is almost a private institution, having only slight connection with the State Church. It owes its origin to Sophie Wurdemberger, a member of one of the old patrician families of Berne. A visit to England made her acquainted with Elizabeth Fry, with the usual beneficent result of increased interest and activity108/104 in good works. On her return to Berne she gained the support of a society of women, and through their aid secured a hospital and deaconess home. It is now fourth in number among the largest mother-houses, has two hundred and ninety-seven deaconesses, five affiliated houses, and forty-five different fields of work.
The oldest mother-house in Switzerland is at St. Loup, not far from Lausanne, standing on one of the beautiful heights of that picturesque region. It was founded by Pastor Germond in 1841, through the direct influence of the work at Kaiserswerth. There are now seventy-three deaconesses, mostly acting as nurses either in private homes or public institutions.[4]
There is also a large institution at Riehen near Basel, which sends out two hundred deaconesses. The greater number are of the peasant class, and are nearly all employed as nurses. The home at Zürich was at first a daughter-house of Riehen, but is now an independent institution with twenty-seven stations. In Austria there is a mother-house at Gallneukirchen from which sisters are sent forth, four of them working in as many Vienna parishes. The story of deaconess work in Austria is an interesting one, and is told by Miss Williams in a recent109/105 number of The Churchman, from which the following extracts are taken:
“The Protestants of Gallneukirchen were first formed into an independent parish in the year 1872, and it is the only one lying between the Danube and the Bohemian frontier. It is very widely extended, but numbers only three hundred and eighteen souls, and is so poor that with the greatest effort it can raise only four hundred florins a year (about one hundred and sixty dollars) for church and school. With the aid of those interested in the work a parish-house has been secured, where the pastor and his wife reside, and in which is the deaconess asylum for the aged, infirm, and insane of all classes. It has not as yet been possible to clear off the debt on the purchase. Still the sisters strive in every way to enlarge their usefulness, so that they now possess extensive buildings and farms—only partly paid for, it is true—wherein to house the many afflicted who apply to them for aid. In one building, standing alone on a hill, they purpose to collect the insane patients, and suitable additions are now being made to insure their safety and comfort. In another village, two hours’ drive from here, is their school, where more than sixty boys and girls are taught, fed, and clothed, in most cases gratuitously, at worst at a nominal charge.”
“The sisters are bright and cheerful, and keep their various dwellings so exquisitely neat and clean, with their white-washed walls adorned with Scripture texts and pictures. No work, however menial, is beneath them. I have myself seen one scrubbing the stairs, and in turns they sleep on a hard straw bed on the floor, ready to rise in the night as often as a bell summons them to the aid of a suffering invalid or a refractory lunatic.”
There are a few institutions that exist independently of those represented at the Kaiserswerth General Conference. They stand alone for various reasons; perhaps they have not met the conditions required of those which belong to the association. Any house whose administration rests exclusively either in the hands of a man or a woman is excluded from the Conference. In every mother-house there represented the administrative head is twofold, consisting of a gentleman, who, with rare exceptions, is a clergyman, and a lady who is a deaconess. The Kaiserswerth authorities regard this joint management as an indispensable condition.
The rector, as he is usually called, cares for the intellectual and spiritual instruction of the probationers, conducts public services in the chapel, and issues the publications and reports of the house.
The oberin, or house-mother, is the direct head111/107 of the sisters. She is responsible for the interior management, regulates the duties of the sisters, and gives practical instruction. The two are jointly responsible for the acceptance and dismissal of probationers, for the assignment of the sisters to different fields of labor, and the kind of labor required. Every mother-house has its own peculiarities. The personal characteristics of those who conduct it are naturally impressed upon the house.
Then, too, the influence of environment is to be reckoned with. The house may be located in a large city or in a small one; in the country or in towns. It may be under the influence of a State Church, as in Germany, or of Christians of all Churches, as at Mildmay. It will share the characteristics of the race of people from which come its workers. Doubtless in the Methodist Episcopal Church in America the deaconesses that eventually become recognized as set apart to special Christian service, through the training that is provided for them, will be women who are peculiarly adapted to the needs of that Church, with all the distinguishing American traits that will prepare them to understand the people whom they are to serve, and that will give them access to the hearts of this people.
If the deaconess cause should gain favor with us as it has in Europe, and should the deaconesses112/108 become as established in the social life of the people as they are there, the effective agencies will be largely increased that are to deal with the questions that come to the front whenever, as in great cities, large numbers of people are massed together.
Deaconess institutions now exist in Switzerland, France, Holland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Russia, Austria, England, and Germany, while the countries in which these homes have stations are literally too numerous to mention. Spain, Italy, Greece, Turkey, the countries of Northern Africa, and of Asia Minor, as well as isolated mission stations throughout the entire world are now served by deaconesses.
If there were ten times the number of sisters, places could be at once found for them. It is instructive on this point to read what Pastor Disselhoff says[5] in the account he gives of the various demands made upon him, which he has been unable to meet. One of the letters he quotes was from an English missionary on the Cameron River. “Send us deaconesses for our hospital,” he says. “It was built for European sailors, especially Germans. We hope and trust to overcome the superstitions of the natives, and that they too, may come to be healed.” But there were no sisters to send.
A similar call came from Shanghai, but as it was impossible to return a favorable answer, although the hospital was a Protestant institution, the Sisters of Mercy were invited in, and given control. From 1870 up to 1886 over two hundred and twenty-seven places at widely remote distances, such as Madras, New Orleans, Port Said, Rio de Janeiro, and elsewhere, sent most urgent appeals for Kaiserswerth deaconesses to be assigned them, but invariably the same answer must be returned: “There are none to send.” Disselhoff closes by saying, “How many open doors has God given! Whose fault is it that they remain closed?”
[1] Schäfer, Die Weibliche Diakonie, vol. i, p. 21.
[2] The details of the deaconess work at Mülhausen are largely taken from Schäfer’s Die Weibliche Diakonie, vol. ii.
[3] Life of Pastor Fliedner, translated by C. Winckworth, London, 1867, p. 133. “The favor of the great, especially the condescending kindness of our late Sovereign, he took as a gift from the King of kings, who allowed his own work to be thus promoted. He strenuously avoided all personal distinction, and never wore the order which had been sent him; ‘for a servant of the Church,’ he said, ‘there should be but one order—the Cross of the Lord.’”
[4] Der Armen und Kranken Freund, August, 1888.
[5] Denkschrift zur Jubelfeier, pp. 248, 249.