Such are the main features of the great establishment that year by year grew up in this village on the Rhine. But from this as a center had gradually branched off manifold lines of service, and many daughter-houses both in Germany and foreign lands. It was only a year and a half after the home was opened that the first appointment of deaconesses to work outside of Kaiserswerth was made.
This was an important victory for the new institution. It took place January 21, 1838, on Fliedner’s birthday, when he and his wife escorted two of the sisters to Elberfeld, where they were to act as trained nurses in the city hospital. From that time to the present the hospital has continued under the management of the Kaiserswerth deaconesses.
Soon afterward sisters were sent out to nurse in private families, and in 1839 two more were sent to superintend the workhouse in Frankfort. As the institution became known there was a constant demand for superintendents, and matrons for public reformatories, prisons, and charitable establishments. Between 1846 and 1850 more than sixty deaconesses were at work at twenty-five different stations outside of the mother-house. About the same time deaconesses began to work in connection with special churches which called for their services, having the duties which in England are assigned to those called “parish deaconesses.”
King Frederick William IV., from the beginning Fliedner’s faithful friend and supporter, had long desired a deaconess home in Berlin. This was finally obtained, and set apart under the name “Bethanien Haus,” or Bethany House, October 10, 1847, at a special dedicatory service, at which the king, with his court, was present. It was while seeking a superintendent for this home in Berlin that Fliedner learned to know Caroline Bertheau, of Hamburg, a descendant of an old Huguenot family that was driven from France by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. He led her home as his wife in May, 1843, and she became to him a true helpmeet for his children, his home, and his077/73 institution. She is still living, having survived her husband over twenty-five years, and in an advanced age still retains a place on the Board of Direction at Kaiserswerth.
In one place after another deaconess homes arose, sometimes simply through Fliedner’s advice, more often by his direct co-operation. From 1849 to 1851 he was chiefly engaged in traveling from one land to another, occupied in kindling the zeal of Christian women to devotion to the sick and sorrowing, and finding fields of service for their priceless ministrations. He visited the United States, England, France, and Switzerland, as well as various cities of the East, including Jerusalem and Constantinople.
The work in our own land was begun at Pittsburg, where Fliedner came with four sisters in the summer of 1849, at the invitation of Pastor Passavant, of the German Lutheran Church.
The deaconesses at once entered upon hospital work, and their care of the sick met with warm appreciation, but their numbers did not increase. An orphanage was afterward started at Rochester, and hospitals under the same auspices exist at Milwaukee, Jacksonville, Ill., and Chicago. Still the work has not grown, and it has proved the least successful of any initiated by Fliedner. Upon his078/74 return he aided in opening mother-houses in Breslau, Königsberg, Dantzic, Stettin, and Carlsruhe.
We have now come to the period when Kaiserswerth institutions met with a notable extension. Fliedner had long been looking toward Jerusalem, hoping to found a deaconess home there. “Who would not gladly render service on the spot where the feet of the Saviour once brought help and healing to the sick?” he had said.
Now, through Dr. Gobat, the Bishop of Jerusalem, the opportunity was given. The king offered two small houses in Jerusalem that were his private property, and volunteered to pay the expenses of the journey. Associations were formed in all parts of Germany to provide an outfit for the mission. Gifts flowed in rapidly, and March 17, 1851, Fliedner, accompanied by four deaconesses, two of them being teachers, set out on this new and peaceful crusade to the holy city. From that beginning has resulted a net-work of stations throughout the East.
There is at Jerusalem a hospital[4] where, during 1887, four hundred and ninety-three patients were given medical aid and nursing, and seven thousand seven hundred and two patients were treated in the079/75 dispensary. No woman in the city is better known or more justly honored than Sister Charlotte, the head-deaconess.