First German Lutheran Missionaries in South India

Dr.Santha Varikoti-Jetty

The Lutheran Foreign Missionary enterprise had historical beginnings

since the time of the beginning of Lutheranism. According to the Herzog's

Encyclopedia, Martin Luther always reminded his hearers of the distress of

the heathens and Turks and urged them to pray on their behalf and send

a missionary for them.1 The foundation for the Lutheran Evangelical work

in South India was laid down under the auspices of King Frederick IV of

Denmark and by two Protestant missionaries Bartholomew Ziegenbalg

and Henry Pluetschau of the Danish Mission who had sailed to Tranquebar

on 9th July 1706. 2 During the initial years of the mission work at

Tranquebar, it was hard for these two missionaries to impress upon the

minds of the natives due to the corrupted lives of the Christians lived there

1 L. B. Wolf., Lutheran Missions and Missionaries before Carey: From 1555 to 1800 in

Wolf L. B. (ed) Missionary Heroes of the Lutheran Church, (Philadelphia: The Lutheran
Publication Society, 1911), 3.
2 John Rutherford., Missionary Pioneers in India, (Edinburgh: Andrew Elliot Press, 1896),

5.
and the idolatrous worship of the natives. 3 Rev. Ziegenbalg and Rev.

Plutscho learned the Portuguese and Malabarick languages to preach the

Gospel and to translate the Scriptures. They were much helped by the

Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge with a supply of a

printing press, six hundred weights of Roman and Italic type, one hundred

reams of paper and a printer man. 4 The work of Ziegenbalg from 1706 to

1719 could be assessed in terms of his accomplishments such as 355

converts and numerous catechumens, a native church, a complete New

Testament in Tamil, a dictionary, a mission seminary and schools. He was

termed by Dr. Alexander Duff, the pioneer Scottish missionary that

"Ziegenbalg was a great missionary, considering that he was the first,

inferior to none, scarcely second to any that followed him." 5

It was not until the year 1728, that the Society for the Propagation

of Christian Knowledge had formally began its Indian mission under Rev.

Benjamin Schultze. 6 Rev. Schultze had a pioneering experience in the

3 Ibid, In Ziegenbalgs own words.

4 Ibid, 15.

5 Ibid, 32.

6 Eugene Stock., The Romance of Missions: Beginnings in India, (London: The Society for

Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1917), 6.

printing field and he was responsible for the printing of the Tamil

Scriptures at the Francke's Orphan House. 7 The beginning of the German

Lutheran missionaries from Halle began with the arrival in India of Rev.

Christian Frederick Schwartz (1726- 1798) to Tanjore. He had a pioneering

missionary work to his credit for forty-eight years and having not visited

Europe during his time at Tanjore. 8 He was appointed as the

superintendent for the Christian schools and churches south of the river

Cauvery.9 He was also credited for the conversion of the Pariahs and the

Sdras as it was said that his garden was filled from morning till late in

the evening with natives of every rank who come to him to have their

differences settled.. and the number of those who came to him to be

instructed in Christianity was great. Every day individuals attended and

requested him to establish a Christian congregation in their part of the

country."10 A monument which was erected in his honor in 1807 read as:

He, during a period of fifty years went about doing good, manifesting in

7 Fleming Stevenson., The Dawn of the Modern Mission, (Edinburgh: A.C. Armstrong,

1888), 153.
8 John Rutherford., Missionary Pioneers, Op cit, 34.

9 Fleming Stevenson., The Dawn of the Modern Mission, Op cit, 38.

10 Ibid, 52.
respect to himself, the most entire abstraction from temporal views, but

embracing every opportunity of promoting both the temporal and eternal

welfare of others. 11

The History of the American Lutheran missionaries in India was

unique in the history of Indian Christianity as it is the only one body which

had enlisted the close cooperation and active participation of European

missionary bodies such as the North German Missionary Society of

Hamburg, the Leipzig Society of Dresden, the Lutheran Augustana Synod

and the Augustana Women's Missionary Society. The Hagerstown meeting

of 1837 urged for an establishment of the German Foreign Missionary

Society for enthusiastic Germans living in America. At the Baltimore

meeting of the General Synod in 1841, the Telugu field was chosen under

the societys new name "The Foreign Missionary Society of the Evangelical

Lutheran Church in the United States." Upon the request of the missionary

C.T.E Rhenius of the CMS Tinnevelly mission,12 the Foreign Missionary

Society decided to send Rev. John Christian Frederick Heyer to India in

11 James Hough., The History of Christianity in India: From the Commencement of the

Christian Era, 1706-1816, Vol. I, (London: Seeley Burnside, 1845), 644.

W. G. Polack.,In to All the World: The Story of Lutheran Foreign Missions, (St. Louis,
12

Missouri: Concordia Seminary, 1930), 109.

1841. Rev. Heyer served in the American Lutheran mission fields of Guntur

and Rajahmundry between the years 1841-1871.13

For a comprehensive account of the American Lutheran missionaries

in Colonial Coastal Andhra (1850-1950) see my recently published article

in the Indian Church History Review, Golden Jubilee Volume, July 2016.

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13 Ibid, 111.