# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_April 1861_S103
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Dr. Rudelbach's Childhood Years. 103

-sent day to become of no small importance, and at the same time a key to much that was experienced with this powerful man, but not understood. We shall for now single out only the following notices: "I am a Copenhagener, yet originally and essentially, in my innermost disposition, in my deepest character, a German. I was born, namely, at Copenhagen on the 29th of September, on St. Michael's day, 1792; my origin, however, lay pretty much in the middle and heart of Germany. There, namely, my father, Johann Heinrich Gottlob Rudelbach, was born at Nauewalde, in the Duchy of Saxony, in what was then the Electoral-Saxon district of Liebenwerda, in 1748. My father moved early to the town of Lausig; after completing his schooling he "labored for the nine years of farm-work, until he had learned it thoroughly." So a testimonial reports. From Nauewalde he moved on to Torgau, where he wished to learn the tailor's trade. He learned it, and in 1787 or 1788 emigrated to Copenhagen. Here he found work and bread. My father spoke very little of himself, but much of his own country. Thus my father, too, kindled in me an unquenchable longing for this land of wonders. I became a German before I had ever seen Germany. I left, in my heart, the clod of earth where I was born, in order the better to gain heaven. I became a "cosmopolitan," yet in such a way that the German land and people always lay nearest to my earthly heart. For this I was later called a traitor to my country, from whom nothing pious or good was to be expected — whether rightly so, the sequel will show. German and Danish, however, were joined in me in a very happy way, if it is otherwise true that German and Danish may rightly, indeed must, be comprised under the common name of the Germanic. On my mother's side I descended, as one is accustomed to say, from the far North. On that side the family was an old Swedish one. My mother was the daughter of a sexton in the hamlet of Herlöv, on Zealand. She was, like my father, grounded in the old order of quiet piety. My father's heartfelt wish was to bring his children up in German; but this succeeded fully only with me. German became so bound to my soul, to my heart. We had, meanwhile, only few books; nor was there a complete Bible in the house; and yet, through God's goodness, there was enough to plant the first godly impressions for time and for eternity. I mean an unassuming devotional book (even its title page was torn off), brought by my father from Germany, Schmolck's book of Communion and Prayer. The "Morning and Evening Devotions" in this book I learned entirely by heart; they were to me, in the highest degree, awakening; but above all I can say of the Saturday-evening meditation that it rendered me the same service in life that the old rags, with which the Moor Ebed-Melech rescued the prophet Jeremiah from the deep pit (Jer. 38), rendered to Hamann. Much of it, no doubt, scattered and was trodden underfoot along the way, pushed aside through sinful inattentiveness; yet the seed that could bear fruit