Halle Pastors, German Bettlers, and Lutheran Congregations in North America. Critical Edition und Scholarly Exploration of Letters and Journals, 1740-1820

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Thomas Müller-Bahlke
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: from 2018 to 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 417949350

Volumes 3 and 4, which are to be published next, result from a DFG-funded project entitled "Halle Pastors, German Settlers, and Lutheran Congregations in North America: Critical Edition and Scholarly Exploration of Letters and Journals, 1740–1820". Both volumes contain letters and other official documents of two pastors each: 120 items dating from 1744 to 1763 (Vol. 3) and 137 items dating from 1751 to 1824 (Vol. 4). Some extracts from letters and documents, if heavily edited, appeared in contemporary missionary and edifying literature, but most of these sources have never been published before. Up to now, there does not exist any thoroughly annotated and commented edition of this material, providing detailed indices and faithfully rendering the original wording of the sources.The two volumes are of particular value to scholarship in several respects:1. Supplementing the travel accounts in volumes 1 and 2, these issues provide impressive descriptions of the conditions and difficulties travelers had to cope with prior to the age of railroads and steamboats. In addition to observations of country and people, of nature and the environment, they reveal the diligent planning, coordination and logistics needed for dispaching pastors overseas, and the dangers the preachers were exposed to on their way to America.2. Many letters permit intriguing insights into the writers’ religious beliefs, innermost feelings, and personal thoughts, into their self-perception, and into their way of handling personal shortcomings and a struggle between the certainties of faith and religious doubts.3. The documents allow multi-facetted insights not only into congregational issues but also into daily life in eighteenth-century North America, as they are contrasted with conditions in Germany and Europe being entirely different.4. Whereas Henry Melchior Muhlenberg (1711–1787), Halle’s first pastor in Pennsylvania, rarely hesitated to criticize his colleagues bluntly, his peers used to be more cautious in addressing other Hallensians’ mistakes or shortcomings. Pastors Handschuch and Helmuth were particularly eager to report successes of their ministry or of promoting schooling and higher education. Hence, extracts from such narratives frequently appeared in the Halle Reports.5. Readers familiar with Muhlenberg’s correspondence will notice in Volumes 3 and 4 that his peers widely spare any contouring of this leading Halle cleric’s personality. Though Muhlenberg is omnipresent in their writings, his colleagues largely abstain from revealing their views of his generalship and accomplishments as the chief organizer of churched Lutheranism in North America.

• DFG Programme: Publication Grants