# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1853 09 13_S12
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

12

ill, was lying sick; I arranged that I should receive news at once of the further course of the illness.

Early in the morning on the second festival day I traveled by way of Freiburg to Basel, where a small number of Lutherans desired a divine service. On the Sunday after Christmas some people from Baden also attended it. A farther-reaching fruit for our Lutheran Church might develop from this.

On Sunday evening I was again in the neighborhood of Ihringen. The news was brought me that the severely sick child of our congregation at Ihringen had already died the day before, that the mother was in deep affliction and the congregation in great embarrassment, because the united pastor of the place wished to seize the burial of the child by force. My visit in the place was therefore necessary in several respects, and in the night I went into it without hesitation, although the catchpoles in expectation of my arrival had been on their feet the whole night. At the wish of the parents I blessed in the stillness of midnight the body of the child for burial, which was to be performed the next morning by the local clergyman, in company with police officers, spoke comfort to the mourning mother, and toward morning wished to leave the place again, when I, hardly out of the house, was attacked by two catchpoles and, together with two heads of families of our congregation, arrested. After I had arrived, accompanied by two gendarmes, at the district prison in the old imperial fortress of Breisach, I was first strictly searched; everything was taken from me, and a little writing which I happened to have with me became especially dangerous: "Wahrung der Rechte der lutherischen Kirche in Preußen" (Petitions to the Prussian Ministry of State and to the Chambers), Breslau 1848, discovered by the brigadier, which, however, was returned to me after the second hearing. At my special request my New Testament with the Psalms was left to me. I was first put into a cell with six other prisoners, where I remained a day and a night without light and without any real daylight. In my fellow prisoners the power of the Word of God proved itself in a wonderful way. I was not allowed to cease reciting Psalms and prayers to them, and at their discharge they thanked me with hand and mouth. That was for me truly an uplifting and blessed beginning.

After 26 hours I came to the first hearing. The record was sent to the superior court-martial at Karlsruhe, and by this court I was after 10 days declared a prisoner of war for four weeks. (Since the revolution in the year 1849 a state of war has existed in the land.) My offense was: transgression of the police order of expulsion from Ihringen. Through the kindly disposed chief official some alleviation fell to my lot in the course of time. I was put alone into a cell, received light in the evening hours, was allowed to receive visits from my family, who came to me from far away, and in the last 14 days I was allowed to take a walk daily for an hour in the open air, for which the chief official granted me his own garden, on an old fortress terrace. I was also allowed to write and to have various books sent me, and daily to speak a few moments with my fellow-prisoners and fellow believers from Ihringen, who received the same punishment.

I have lived through blessed hours within the narrow walls of my prison cell; the Word of God afforded me inexhaustible comfort, and with special exaltation I celebrated the feast of the Circumcision of Christ, as well as the Epiphany and the Sundays. And so I have also been able to comfort my dear fellow members, who were with me in all manner of tribulation, with the comfort wherewith I was comforted of God (2 Cor. 1, 3. 6.). From the same God of all comfort my wife also received a quite special strengthening and power.

On the 26 January 1852 the hour of my deliverance struck. On that same day in the evening my dear children received me with the 126th Psalm and with the hymn: "Fear not, thou little flock, though the enemies be minded to destroy thee utterly."

But the doors of my prison seemed to open only to let me go forth to new sufferings and persecutions. In the first days after my arrest there was delivered at my dwelling in Durlach the above-mentioned decree of the Ministry of the Interior, according to which I was, within three days, on pain of coercive measures, to betake myself to my birthplace Kembach near Werthheim on the Main, from which I had become estranged, in order to be there under police watch, so that the journeys to my congregations, which, so long as the sheep are shepherdless, I might not leave undone, as I had at all times declared, should be made quite impossible. This severe decree had been issued before my arrest, and would long since have been carried out, if it and my imprisonment had not intervened. Now, however, it seems to be suspended for a time, and so I could take a clear view into the Lord's leadings, whose unsearchable hand and counsel permitted what was heavy, that the heaviest, which in its depth we often do not perceive, might be averted. For: "In the time of trouble he shall hide me in his pavilion: in the secret of his tabernacle shall he hide me; he shall set me up upon a rock. And now shall mine head be lifted up above mine enemies round about me: therefore will I offer in his tabernacle sacrifices of joy; I will sing, yea, I will sing praises unto the LORD." Ps. 2, 5. 6.

A thief may keep his booty, if he is shameless enough to assume the mien of a lawful owner

K. R.

(Contributed by A. H.)

World Affairs.

For several months now the people in Europe, and even here, have been looking toward Turkey and have feared that a war would break out there and then spread over the whole of Europe. For since the Turks were raging in the most shameful manner against the Christians in Montenegro, a land in revolt against the Turkish pasha, a former Christian, the emperors of Russia and Austria had induced the Sultan to set bounds to that devastation. Thereupon the Emperor of Russia, Nicholas, demanded that the Turkish Sultan, Abdul Meschid, should regard him as the protector of the Greek Christians in Turkey. As such Nicholas demanded that for patriarch (chief bishop) only such a man should always be chosen with whom he was satisfied, and that at all times beside this patriarch a Russian clergyman should stand in Constantinople and be recognized by the Turkish government. In this way Nicholas wished to provide that the Greek Church should have such patriarchs as, independent of the Turkish government, could also resist the ill-treatment of the Greek Christians; in particular the Russian clergyman in Constantinople was to serve to protect the Greek Christians, even if the patriarch should perhaps be in the pay of the Sultan and strive to govern his church according to the will of the same. These demands, however, the Turkish Sultan flatly rejected, and now there arose among the Turks on the one hand, and among the Russians on the other, a great bitterness and violent desire for war, while the Greek Christians in Turkey, to whom Abdul Meschid gave the best promises, declared that they did not desire the protection of Nicholas at all. Great preparations were made on both sides. Nicholas gathered a considerable naval force in the Black Sea and let a mighty land army advance upon Turkey and occupy two principalities, Moldavia and Wallachia, which stood under Russian protection but had to pay yearly tribute or scot to the Turk. Meanwhile France and England had united their fleets and placed them close to the strait of the Dardanelles, which leads from the Mediterranean into the Sea of Marmora and so to Constantinople, with the instruction, as soon as Abdul Meschid should desire it, to sail to Constantinople and to strike against the Russians. The Emperor of Austria, to be sure, interposed and asserted that he wished to mediate peace. But soon it appeared that he was standing by the Russian and sending troops to the Turkish frontier, in order to obtain some fine territories if Russia should conquer Turkey. Already people believed they would soon receive news of a bloody naval battle between the Russians on the one side and the Turks, English and French on the other. But the Emperor of the French, Louis Napoleon, succeeded in making a proposal which is to restore peace between Russia and Turkey and has also been accepted by both. Yet both parties still stand against each other in great bitterness.