Lutheran Romance. Missionaries of Tranquenar in Search for Life Companions

Abstract

The Danish East India Company (Dansk Østindisk Kompagni) was established in Europe at the beginning of the 17th century. Its stronghold in India was the city of Trankebar (Dansborg Fortress), located 250 km from Madras. In the early years of the 18th century, the first Lutheran missionaries, Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg and Heinrich Plütschau, appeared on the Coromandel Coast. It was at this time that the Danish Royal Mission, financed by King Frederick IV, was established in the Indian South. It consisted mainly of Germans, graduates of the University of Halle in Saxony, a bastion of pietism in Germany. As time passed, the number of European clergymen working in the Tranquebar grew, as did the number of local converts. Working in a large Christian community required a great deal of time and energy on the part of the missionaries. At some point, they began to use the Tranquebar neophytes for this work as well. But this did not solve all problems. Three years after their arrival in Tranquebar, the missionaries decided that some of them, Ziegenbalg himself, Plütschau, and Johann Ernst Gründler, who had just arrived in India, should marry women from Germany who would be reliable assistants in their difficult work. The prospective brides had to conform to the pietist concept of piety and devotion to the Lord. The article relates the missionaries’ search for brides in Europe and the two partnerships that resulted: Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg married Maria Dorothea Salzmann after a trip to Europe from 1714 to 1716, while his friend ohann Ernst Gründler married at Tranquebar without waiting for a bride from far away from Europe. His bride of choice was Utilia Elisabeth. These matrimonial histories provide a clearer picture of what “pietism in action” looked like in the history of the missionary movement while enlivening the history of the Christianization of the East with personal details and adding human traits to the founders of Orientalism-as Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg certainly is for Tamilism.