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Der Lutheraner: highlights and oddities
A curated sample of what full-text search surfaces in the archive — church history intertwined with the history of the country. Pages marked EN have a side-by-side English translation; the rest are searchable in German and awaiting translation.
Entwurf der Synodal-Verfassung — the draft constitution of the Missouri Synod
Der Lutheraner, Jahrgang 3, 1846-09-05, p. 2 EN
Nine months before the Synod was founded in Chicago in April 1847, Der Lutheraner printed the draft synodical constitution for public discussion — introduction and paragraphs in full, with the editors' supplementary explanations following in the next issue. The founding document of the LCMS, in the form its first readers saw, searchable in English.
How the constitution came to be: the conference report
Der Lutheraner, Jahrgang 3, 1846-09-19, p. 11 EN
The same September 1846 number reports the deliberations — congregations and pastors proceeding toward a constitution binding them to all the symbolical books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church.
The first issue: Walther launches Der Lutheraner (September 1844)
Der Lutheraner, Jahrgang 1, 1844-09-01, p. 1 EN
The opening number, with the masthead motto that would stand for a century: Gottes Wort und Luthers Lehr' vergehet nun und nimmermehr.
A typesetter's slip: Gnade printed as Guade (1845)
Der Lutheraner, Jahrgang 1, 1845-04-19, p. 68 EN
The compositor set the n of Gnade (grace) upside down, making it Guade — a classic turned-letter error of hand-set type, confirmed by the same word set correctly one line below. Found by the AI correction pass, and preserved exactly as printed: the archive records what the page says. Read the full story of this find — and how pages were set in 1845 — on the blog.
Wilhelm Löhe, "Registering for Confession" — First Dialogue (December 1846)
Der Lutheraner, Jahrgang 3, 1846-12-08, p. 43 EN
Löhe's pastoral dialogues on private confession, serialized for German readers in America — with its footnote on the "sketch from life" method.
The Baltimore congregation vindicates Pastor Wyneken
Der Lutheraner, Jahrgang 3, 1846-11-17, p. 32 EN
A congregational resolution defending F. C. D. Wyneken — missionary organizer and later the Synod's second president — against his critics.
Into the woods of Michigan: the Chippewa mission (September 1847)
Der Lutheraner, Jahrgang 4, 1847-09-20, p. 14 EN
A missionary's report from the mission to the Chippewa in northern Michigan — after months without an interpreter, "we hurried into the woods."
The Methodists and slavery (January 1848)
Der Lutheraner, Jahrgang 4, 1848-01-25, p. 82 EN
A survey of American church bodies notes which Methodists rejected slaveholding outright — the slavery debate as German immigrant readers encountered it, thirteen years before the war.
Cholera crosses the Atlantic (February 1849)
Der Lutheraner, Jahrgang 5, 1849-02-02, p. 88 EN
A ship from Le Havre lands cholera cases in New York harbor — the paper tracks the epidemic's approach issue by issue, from London in November to the American coast in winter. By summer it would devastate St. Louis.
The Great Fire of St. Louis (May 17, 1849)
Der Lutheraner, Jahrgang 5, 1849-05-29, p. 157 EN
The Ascension Day fire that destroyed the riverfront, reported amid the cholera epidemic that killed nearly a tenth of the city — "Irret euch nicht, Gott läßt sich nicht spotten" — with the congregations' common day of repentance, and the newspapers that mocked it, at the center of the story.
The revolutions of 1848–49, reported (May 1849)
Der Lutheraner, Jahrgang 5, 1849-05-11, p. 124 EN
Robert Blum executed, "fire at all ends of Germany," the pope driven from Rome, Tuscany declared a republic — the European revolutions as German immigrant readers in Missouri followed them, in the same columns as their church news.
The Prussian Lutherans' cry for help (December 1849)
Der Lutheraner, Jahrgang 6, 1850-01-08, p. 73 EN
The "Nothruf" of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Prussia — the appeal of the Old Lutherans under the Prussian Union, printed for the American congregations that had left for the same reason.
A congregation fights over private confession (Wapakonetta, Ohio)
Der Lutheraner, Jahrgang 6, 1850-01-08, p. 78 EN
Parish-level controversy in full view: a dispute over auricular confession and interdict in one Ohio congregation — the young synod's discipline working itself out on the ground.
Before the Roman Inquisition: Reising's own account (1700, reprinted 1848)
Der Lutheraner, Jahrgang 4, 1848-05-24, p. 172 EN
Franz Leopold von Reising read Chemnitz's forbidden Examen of the Council of Trent, disputed with a Jesuit, and was excommunicated, confined, and sent to Rome for trial — his first-person narrative of the Inquisition, serialized for German readers in Missouri a century and a half later.
August Crämer, "A Conversation about California" (January 1850)
Der Lutheraner, Jahrgang 6, 1850-01-08, p. 152 EN
A dialogue on the gold rush: may a Christian join it? "What is not of faith is sin" — the forty-niners examined from a Missouri pulpit.
Albert Friedrich Hoppe (1828–1911): the man who finished the St. Louis Luther
Der Lutheraner, Jahrgang 67, 1911-06-13, p. 190 EN
Der Lutheraner's two-part obituary of A. F. Hoppe, editor of the St. Louis Edition of Luther's works from 1886 until its index appeared in 1910. Most of it is Hoppe's own memoir, written for his only daughter. He was a surgeon's son from Rostock and a student of Delitzsch. He spent thirty years in New Orleans, first as a pastor, then as a schoolmaster, through the yellow-fever years. From 1886 he carried the edition to its end, and for its index he read “the entire Luther once more, the large, thick 22 volumes, carefully, pen in hand.” The obituary is signed L. F. (Ludwig Fuerbringer). Pages 196–200 and 213–216 of these two issues are missing from the only available scan; the obituary itself is complete. Read the essay: The Luther Missouri Read →
- 13 June 1911, p. 190 · the death notice, and the memoir begins: “Ich bin am 24. Juli 1828 in Rostock geboren.”
- 27 June 1911, p. 206 · the call to the Luther edition, 1885–86.
- 27 June 1911, p. 207 · “Hoppes Lebenswerk war nun vollendet”: the index, and the unfinished life of Luther.