A similar consecration service is used by nearly all the German deaconess houses. The features of090/86 those that meet together in the triennial Conferences at Kaiserswerth are strikingly similar; the spirit of the original founder pervades them all.
The first of the Conferences was held in 1861, just twenty-five years after the founding of the first deaconess house at Kaiserswerth. It was celebrated as a Thanksgiving festival for the restoration of the diaconate of women to the Church. The representatives of twenty-seven distinct mother-houses met together to exchange their experiences, and to deliberate on matters touching the further usefulness of the order.
Since then the Conferences have been continued at intervals of three and four years. The last General Conference assembled at Fliedner’s old home in September, 1888.
Just before it convened, as is the custom, statistics were obtained from the different mother-houses represented in the association, and pains were taken to verify their correctness. The results so obtained are given in the following table:[4]
| Conferences. | Mother-houses. | Sisters. | Fields of Work. |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1861 | 27 | 1,197 | ? |
| 1864 | 30 | 1,592 | 386 |
| 1868 | 40 | 2,106 | 526 |
| 1872 | 48 | 2,657 | 648 |
| 1875 | 50 | 3,239 | 866 |
| 1878 | 51 | 3,901 | 1,093 |
| 1881 | 53 | 4,748 | 1,436 |
| 1884 | 54 | 5,653 | 1,742 |
| 1888 | 57 | 7,129 | 2,263 |
Five additional houses had made application for entrance at the time the table was made, and were received at the ensuing Conference, among which was the Philadelphia mother-house of deaconesses in connection with the Mary J. Drexel Home.
Over sixty mother-houses now belong to the association, and notwithstanding the necessary loss of deaconesses from death or removal from work since the preceding Conference, there are 1,476 more in number now than then. Surely the deaconess cause is striking deep root in the religious life of Protestant Europe. During Fliedner’s life-time occasions arose which called the deaconesses outside their accustomed fields of work, and proved their value in the exceptional emergencies that so often arise. Here is an instance that occurred during the early days of the establishment:[5]
“An epidemic of nervous fever was raging in two communes of the circle of Duisburg, Gartrop, and092/88 Gahlen. Its first and most virulent outbreak took place at Gartrop, a small, poor, secluded village of scarcely one hundred and thirty souls, without a doctor, without an apothecary in the neighborhood, while the clergyman was upon the point of leaving for another parish, and his successor had not yet been appointed. Four deaconesses, including the superior, Pastor Fliedner’s wife, and a maid, hastened to this scene of wretchedness, and found from twenty to twenty-five fever patients in the most alarming condition, a mother and four children in one hovel, four other patients in another, and so on, all lying on foul straw, or on bed-clothes that had not been washed for weeks, almost without food, utterly without help. Many had died already; the healthy had fled; the parish doctor lived four German leagues off, and could not come every day. The first care of the sisters, who would have found no lodging but for the then vacancy of the parsonage, was to introduce cleanliness and ventilation into the narrow cabins of the peasants; they washed and cooked for the sick, they watched every night by turns at their bed-side, and tended them with such success that only four died after their arrival, and the rest were only convalescent after four weeks’ stay. The same epidemic having broken out in the neighboring commune of Gahlen,093/89 in two families, of whom eight members lay ill at once, a single deaconess was able, in three weeks, to restore every patient to health, and to prevent the further spread of the disease. What would not our doctors give for a few dozen of such hard-working, zealous, intelligent ministers in the field of sanitary reform?”
The Schleswig-Holstein war of 1864 was the first in which Protestant deaconesses were active as nurses. Already in the Crimean war the Greek Sisters of Charity among the Russians, the Sisters of Mercy among the French, and Florence Nightingale and Miss Stanley among the English, had wakened the liveliest gratitude on the part of the soldiers, and secured the respect and approbation of the surgeons.
In the Austrian war of 1866 two hundred and eighty-two deaconesses were in the hospitals and on the battle-fields, fifty-eight of whom were from Kaiserswerth. The Franco-Prussian war of 1870 was on a greater scale, and afforded wider opportunities for the unselfish, priceless labors of these Christian nurses. Neatly eight hundred deaconesses, sent from more than thirty mother-houses, cared for the sick and wounded in the camp hospitals or on the field. The willingness of a number of boards of administration to release sisters who were in their094/90 service, and the voluntary offers of other women to take their places, enabled Kaiserswerth to send two hundred and twenty of the number. Their experience in improvising hospitals, in aiding the surgeon in his amputations, and in ministering to the wounded and dying, throws a tender glow of compassionate sympathy over the terrible scenes of war.[6]