Halle pastors, German settlers and Lutheran congregations in North America: Critical edition and historical exploration of letters and official diaries, 1740-1820

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Thomas Müller-Bahlke
• Subject Area: Early Modern History
• Term: from 2013 to 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 237223806

Whereas research on the history of the Lutheran Church in North America during the decades before and after the founding of the United States of America has so far concentrated on the journals and correspondence of Heinrich Melchior Mühlenberg (1711-1787), the present project aims to transcribe and edit all existing letters and journals of Heinrich Melchior Mühlenberg's pastoral colleagues (i.e., of those Lutheran pastors who were sent from Halle, Germany, to Pennsylvania between 1745 and 1786). This substantial expansion of the documentary basis will lead to fundamentally new insights into the spread and development of Lutheran congregations in North America, into the role and significance of these congregations for German-speaking immigrants, into the place of the Lutheran Church with the multi-confessional mid-Atlantic region (Pennsylvania and neighboring colonies or states), into the history of Pietism in the Atlantic world, and into the mutual perceptions of German Protestantism in the Old World and the New. This project has to main goals. The first is a critical edition of hitherto unpublished and little-studied correspondences and journals of Lutheran pastors in the archives of the Francke Foundations in Halle and in the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia (USA). Secondly, the relations between the pastors whom the Glauchasche Anstalten, founded by August Hermann Francke (1663-1727), sent to colonies in North America and the United States and German-speaking settlers, as well as the development of Lutheran congregations in the mid-Atlantic region will be researched on the basis of these newly edited sources. The renewal of application aims make sure that the prospective eight volumes of the edition (two volumes of journals, five volumes of letters, one index volume) can be made ready for printing and be published. After completion of the two volumes of journals and one volume of letters in the first period of the project, the extension is to be used for getting the remaining four volumes of letters and the index volume finished.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigators: Professor Dr. Mark Häberlein; Professor Dr. Hermann Wellenreuther (†)