Theodore Fliedner

Theodor Fliedner (21 January 1800 - 4 October 1864) was a German Lutheran minister and founder of Lutheran deaconess training. In 1836, he founded Kaiserswerther Diakonie, a hospital and deaconess training center. He is commemorated as a renewer of society in the Calendar of Saints of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America on October 4 and by the Evangelical Church in Germany on October 5th.

Fliedner was born in Eppstein in the Hesse, Germany. He was the son of a Lutheran minister. Pastor Fliedner studied theology at University of Giessen and the University of Göttingen as well as at Herborn Academy, the theological seminary in Herborn. He was for a time, a house teacher. In 1821 he assumed the pastorate in the poor municipality of Kaiserswerth (now in Düsseldorf). When the town could no longer support church and ministry due to an economic crisis, he undertook journeys to collect donations. Beginning in Westphalia, he also went to the Netherlands and England.

In the Indies he became acquainted with the ancient church office of deaconess while spending time among the Mennonites, who had revived the institution in 1745. In England he met with English social reformer, Elizabeth Fry, who demonstrated her work among her nation's impoverished and imprisoned people. He returned home not only with a large financial collection for his municipality but also with new ideas about social work among the disadvantaged. He began by working among inmates at the Düsseldorf Prison, preaching the Gospel and ministering to spiritual and physical needs. He walked to and from Düsseldorf every other Sunday until a regular prison chaplain was appointed. The German prisons were then in a very bad state; but those interested in their improvement banded together, and in 1826, Fliedner created the Rhenish-Westphalian Prison Society (Rheinisch-Westfälische Gefängnisgesellschaft). Fliedner realized that the first step must be toward looking after the prisoners on their release, and accordingly, in 1833, he opened at Kaiserswerth a refuge for discharged female convicts. To better support and teach Kaiserwerth's children, he founded a school in 1835 which became the venue for a women teachers' seminar.

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