There was soon arranged a series of house regulations and instructions for work which became the basis for after regulations in nearly all existing institutions.
Almost contemporary with the mother-house arose the normal school for infant-school teachers. It had first started as a child’s school, and afterward young women who had taste for the care of children were received to be taught their duties. Fliedner took great interest in the instruction of children. He devised little games for them, and arranged stories to be told. His simplicity and his child-like nature led him to disregard formalities, and069/65 to think solely of the end he had in view. On one occasion, when picturing the combat of David and Goliath, reaching that point in the narrative when the young shepherd lad slings the stone that brings the giant to the ground, he cast himself headlong, to the great delight and amazement of his little audience, who enjoyed to the full this object-lesson that made the story so vivid to them.
Then he took special pains that his teachers should learn to tell the stories of the Bible so as to make them clear and interesting to the youngest child. Every day a story was told in school, and each evening the teacher whose turn it was to relate the story the following day came to Fliedner and rehearsed it to him as though he were a child, afterward receiving his suggestions as to how the narrative could be improved. The work went along quietly, ever growing, ever advancing. “Among all others, and more than all others, was Fliedner’s wife his best help. Her keen glance, made pure and holy by her Christian faith, preserved him from mistakes. With the household virtues of cleanliness, order, simplicity, and economy she united large-hearted compassion toward those needing help of any kind, yet knowing withal how, with virile sense and energy, to prevent the misuse of ministering love. She became a model for the070/66 deaconesses, as well as a mother to them, and her name deserves to be mentioned with honor, as one who had an important part in the Protestant renewal of the diaconate of women.”[1]
In 1842 a new building was erected for the normal school for infant-school teachers. The publishing house of the institution was also started, which issues religious books and tracts. The first work sent forth was a volume of sermons, presented to the new enterprise by the late Professor Lange, which went through several editions.
The same year the Kaiserswerth Almanac appeared and a large picture Bible for schools was published. In 1848 the magazine Der Armen und Kranken Freund was sent forth as an organ for the deaconess cause, not only for Kaiserswerth, but for all the institutions that are represented at the triennial Conferences. The publishing house is an important source of income, as the institution has little in the way of endowment beside the produce of the garden land attached to it. At present about three fourths of the expense are met by the sale of publications and the fees of patients; the remaining sum is given by friends.
The financial story of Fliedner’s life could form a tale of thrilling interest, if it were separated from071/67 other facts and told by itself. He constantly went forward, purchased houses, added lands, and erected new homes when he had no money in reserve, but unfailingly when the time came for payments to be made the sum was obtained in some way or other to meet them. “We have no endowment,” he once said, “but the Lord is our endowment.”
The same year, 1842, the orphan asylum was opened. For a very moderate sum this receives children who are both fatherless and motherless, and who belong to the educated middle class, having fathers who were pastors or professors, or the like. Fliedner hoped not only to provide a home for these girls befitting their station in life, but to develop among them those who should make a vocation of the care of children and the sick, and in this hope he was not disappointed.
In the midst of these successes the hand of God often lay heavily on Fliedner’s family. Brethren and children passed away, and, sorest affliction of all to him, his wife, who had so closely and sympathetically shared all his labors, died April 22, 1842. “She was the first of the deaconesses to die,” writes Fliedner. “As she, their mother, had always led the way for her spiritual daughters in life, so she was their leader into the valley of the shadow of072/68 death.”[2] Not long after this a normal school for female teachers in the public schools was started, for this practical believer in woman’s work was one of the first to advocate the introduction of women teachers in the public schools of Germany, against which there then existed a strong prejudice. The Board of Education looked favorably on his project, and afterward sent a government commissioner to attend the examinations and award the certificates at Kaiserswerth. At a later period provision was made for teachers of girls’ high schools, as also for those who desired to become teachers but were too young to enter the normal school. Over two thousand teachers have gone forth from these schools, carrying with them a love for the institution which has brought back to it many returns in money and service. Fliedner well called them his “light skirmishing troops.”
In 1849 he resigned his pastorate, and henceforth, with singleness of purpose, devoted himself to his one calling. From time to time new buildings were added to meet new needs. In 1852 an insane asylum for Protestant women was founded, as sisters were often called upon to nurse patients of this class. The building set apart for the purpose was073/69 formerly used as military barracks and was given to Fliedner by King Frederick William IV. In 1881 this, as with so many others of the original buildings at Kaiserswerth, became too small for the increase in numbers, and a new building took its place. It stands on an eminence just outside of the village, and is provided with every modern appliance. Fliedner’s practical good sense and administrative ability led him to care for all the minor details that were needed for the success of so great an undertaking. He added a dispensary to the hospital, where a sister who had passed a regular examination before the government medical board made up the medicines required for the hospital. Many deaconesses have been trained to the same knowledge, which has been an especially valuable acquisition in the hospitals situated in Eastern countries. Little by little he secured land for farming operations, until there were one hundred and eighty acres in garden and meadow land, generally lying close about the various buildings, and affording means of recreation as well to the inmates. Nearly all of the vegetable and dairy products that are needed are so provided. A bakery, bath-houses, homes for laborers and officials, were added, and bakers, shoemakers, carpenters, and blacksmiths formed part of the staff of the great establishment.
Gradually every variety of institution that could furnish active practice to the deaconesses took its place here, and the whole might be denominated a great normal training-school for Christian women. The refuge for discharged female convicts, which was the starting-point of the movement, still continued its good work during all these years. The last report[3] states that nine hundred and nineteen women of different ages and different degrees of wrong-doing have been its inmates. Parents send insubordinate girls; societies forward those who profess penitence; magistrates sentence degraded creatures often too late for any reasonable hope to reform them. The old experience of the refuge is repeated in this last report: one third are saved, one third are irredeemable, and the judgment as to the remaining third, doubtful. There were two buildings erected during the later years of Fliedner’s life in which he took great interest. One of these was a cottage among the neighboring hills, where deaconesses who had become exhausted by long days in the sick-room, or whose health was suffering from over-toil, could retire for a few weeks of mountain air and quiet rest during the summer months. This pleasant retreat was well named Salem. Soon afterward was075/71 laid the corner-stone of the second building, regarded with peculiar favor not only by the good pastor, but by all friends of the institution. This was the “Feierabend Haus,” the House of Evening Rest, where, somewhat apart from the busy activity of the great household, those deaconesses whose best strength had been given to faithful labor in the service could pass the evening hours of life in quiet waiting for the last great change, while using the experience they had gathered and the strength still remaining in behalf of the cause they had faithfully served.