Luther's Catechism Research Articles

Urchin at War: The Tale of a Leipzig Rascal and his Lutheran Granny under Bombs in Nazi Germany by Uwe Siemon-Netto

Reviewed by: Urchin at War: The Tale of a Leipzig Rascal and his Lutheran Granny under Bombs in Nazi Germany by Uwe Siemon-Netto Robert Benne Urchin at War: The Tale of a Leipzig Rascal and his Lutheran Granny under Bombs in Nazi Germany. By Uwe Siemon-Netto. Irvine, California: 1517 Publishing, 2021. 286 pp. This remarkable memoir covers only the first eleven years of Uwe Siemon-Netto's life. Many Lutherans are aware of Siemon-Netto's work, The Fabricated Luther (1995), where he dispels the claims that Luther was to blame for the rise of Nazism. In that book he gave a few vignettes of his life as a child growing up in the war years. Happily, this engaging book, one of three planned, covers in colorful detail his early years in war-torn Leipzig. Given the daily bombing, it is a wonder that he lived to tell his story. The main story involves a rather distinguished anti-Nazi Lutheran family's struggle to survive the World War II years in Leipzig in the midst of daily bombings by the Allies, on the one hand, and intense Nazi pressures to conform, on the other. One word in the title—urchin—does indicate one truth illustrated richly: Uwe was a member of a kids' gang that did lots of rascally things, such as derailing trolleys. But there is quite another set of ingredients in his growing up. His father was a highly educated lawyer who was blinded in WWI. His mother was a budding concert singer. His grandmother, the central character in the book (besides the author), was a strong, well-educated, devout Lutheran, whose steady strength carried the whole family though those harrowing days. She was a real Mensch who calmly taught Luther's Catechism to Uwe as they took cover in the bomb shelters during the daily bombings. Uwe was brought up to appreciate Bach's music and Lutheran theology. Fine literature and art were part of the family's heritage. Uwe was hardly an ignorant street urchin, though he did have enough freedom to act like a naughty little boy. In their desire to protect Uwe from the bombs, his parents sent him to a country town to live with a Lutheran pastor and his family. What seemed like a good prospect turned out to be a nightmare of abuse and heresy. The pastor was an ardent Nazi who preached Nazi propaganda from the pulpit. He and his family ostracized and humiliated Uwe because he used French words and spoke high German. The memoir does depict vicious Nazis who affected their [End Page 243] lives, but spends more time on the many Germans—ordinary and extraordinary—who despised and resisted the Nazis in their own quiet yet dangerous ways. His experience of the war years is narrated by Siemon-Netto as he returns to visit and walk around his beloved Leipzig, now rebuilt and thriving. What is striking is his amazing recall of so many details of his early life. Certainly the dramatic—and frightening—experiences he had account for some of that recall. It is more likely, however, that he already possessed some of the gifts he needed to become the accomplished journalist that he became later in life. The book is a handsome and substantial one, replete with many pictures from that time. I found the book both edifying and entertaining. I eagerly await the sequels to his remarkable story. I recommend the book to all readers, but especially to Lutherans. Robert Benne Institute of Lutheran Theology Brookings, South Dakota Copyright © 2022 Johns Hopkins University Press and Lutheran Quarterly, Inc.

Luther's Works in Ethiopian Languages

Luther's Works in Ethiopian Languages Samuel Deressa Christianity was introduced to Ethiopia in the fourth century. Lutheran missions started in the late 1860s when the Swedish Evangelical Mission (SEM) planted a mission station in Imkulu, in present day Eritrea. From there they trained and sent missionaries into Ethiopia, a few freed slaves both men and women and former Orthodox priests, to spread the gospel throughout the country. Today, the Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus (EECMY) is the largest and the fastest-growing Lutheran church in the world with over ten million members. From the very beginning, the EECMY's identity was shaped by Luther's writings, especially the Small Catechism. Initial Mission Efforts and Translations The translation and distribution of Luther's works started in Ethiopia with the arrival of the Swedish missionaries in the late 1860s. The SEM initially intended to spread the gospel to the Oromo, inhabitants of the southern part of Ethiopia and followers of Islam and traditional beliefs.1 When the Swedes arrived in Eritrea, however, the Ethiopian king Tewodros II stopped them from going to the southern part. Therefore, the SEM decided to plant a mission station at Imkulu and evangelize the people living in Eritrea while waiting for a favorable time to reach the Oromo. Eritrea during this time, a part of Ethiopia, was controlled partly by Italians. At the mission station in Imkulu, the Swedish Evangelical Mission established a school named "School for Freed Men" in 1870 where they began educating and evangelizing liberated slaves. Six years later in 1876, they expanded their vision and started a training center for freed slave women on the same campus.2 The SEM wanted to educate freed men and women and send them back to their people as missionaries. The Swedish Evangelical Mission and Italian soldiers who controlled the area were the primary liberators [End Page 61] of the slaves who became enrolled at this school. The SEM missionaries also educated some exiled priests of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. According to Gustav Arén, the students were mainly composed of "liberated slaves, poor fugitives, and exiled reformers."3 In addition to academic lessons, the school offered training in carpentry and metalwork. Arabic and Amharic were the languages of instruction. These languages, however, were not intelligible to most of the liberated slaves, since they were Oromo. So Bengt Peter Lundahl, one of the SEM missionaries, suggested translating and printing selected works. In order to accomplish this, he bought a manual printing press in 1882. The first translation printed at Imkulu was an Oromo hymnbook with a title Galata Waaqayoo Gofta Maccaa. This hymnbook was published in 1886, and contained some of Luther's hymns, such as "A Mighty Fortress" and "Dear Christians, One and All, Rejoice," translated from Swedish into Oromo.4 The hymnbook also contained a liturgy, and was used for over one hundred years by Oromo-speaking Lutheran congregations in Ethiopia. The second book printed in Imkulu was a revised version of Ludwig Krapf's Amharic translation of Luther's Small Catechism. Krapf, a German Lutheran missionary who in 1866 had translated Luther's catechism into Amharic, the official language of Ethiopia, was never able to use it or distribute it among Ethiopians.5 His version was revised by the SEM missionary Anders Svensson and was printed in Imkulu in 1888.6 The schools for freed men and women in Imkulu used this Amharic translation as a main text for instruction. But only a few freed slaves who spoke Amharic, some converts from in and around Imkulu, and reformed Orthodox priests, could use this translation. For Oromo-speaking freed slaves, the Amharic translation was difficult to comprehend, but better than other European language translations. As the Lutheran confession also expanded to other parts of Ethiopia, particularly among the Amharic-speaking community, this translation was mainly used to instruct newly catechized believers before baptism. It was also used as a resource for youth instruction. In 1899, Onesimos Nesib (1856–1931) translated Luther's Small Catechism from Swedish into Oromo. When translating, Onesimos used Krapf's Amharic translation to help support his work. His [End Page 62] translation was then printed in Chrischona, Switzerland, with the...

En upåagtet dimension i Grundtvigs tanker om “Anskuelsen”

En upåagtet dimension i Grundtvigs tanker om “Anskuelsen ”[An unnoted dimension in Grundtvig’s deliberations on “lifephilosophy”]By K. E. BuggeIn the introduction to his Northern Mythology (1832) Grundtvig outlines an ideological platform as a basis for rapport and cooperation with his contemporaries. Grundtvig suggests that a broad agreement should be possible on those elements of a life-philosophy, which in theological language are usually termed creation and fall. As far as the ideas of salvation are concerned, however, no unanimity is possible.The following study focuses on the basic assumptions of Grundtvig's argumentation. How could he be absolutely certain that his readers would readily accept his contention that every one of them, believers and non-believers alike, would agree that the ideas of the divine creation and the fall of man are basic realities of human existence? Such a presumption would certainly not be valid in the secularized cultural context of the following century. In order to answer this question attention is here directed towards the teaching aids used in Danish schools in the subject of Christian Education, especially those, which we know have been used in Grundtvig's own schooling, and which he later comments upon.The first of these books was published by Grundtvig's father, Johan Grundtvig under the title Catechismi Forklaring (1779), i.e. a thorough elucidation of Luther's catechism. Quite a number of such explanatory teaching aids were published during the centuries of Lutheran orthodoxy. Usually they were much too voluminous to be directly used by children. On this background Grundtvig's uncle, the prominent bishop N. E. Balle in 1791 published a new Lærebog i den evangelisk-christelige Religion, i.e. A textbook of evangelicalchristian religion, a booklet of 104 pages. As this book was officially authorized, it was widely distributed. By 1830 it had been reprinted ten times.In order to make the ideas of God's creation of the world evident to the children, both these books present the same argument: That just as a house is unable to build itself, in the same manner the world as such must have been built by a creator. Noteworthy is here that the argument in both cases is not rooted in holy scripture but in common sense and everyday experience.Also the argument in support of the idea of the fall of man is notable. Johan Grundtvig in his book combines biblical narrative with common sense. He raises the question, whether the sinfulness of Adam and Eve was inherited by their descendants. His answer is affirmative.Because they were unable to procreate children that were better than themselves, then, of course, their sinfulness was also inherited by their present day descendants. Balle goes directly into an argumentation based on experience and common sense: “Experience makes it clear that men are not as good, as they ought to be. All have some error.”Because of the authorization of the book, Balle's formulation gained a wide influence during the first half of the century. In the grammar schools preparing the young for university studies the dominating teaching aids in the subject were compendia of two extensive dogmatic expositions published by Ove Hoegh-Guldberg. A compendium by Mathias Galthen (1784, 2nd ed., 1793) was used at the grammar school in Aarhus, which Grundtvig attended during the years 1798-1800. Concerning creation Galthen underscores that the world cannot have created itself, and that “sound reason” convinces us that the world cannot have emerged by coincidence. On the theme of the fall of man he first reiterates the argument forwarded by Johan Grundtvig: That Adam and Eve could not have procreated children that were less sinful than themselves. He then continues: “Experience and Holy Scripture confirms that all men are imperfect”. Notable are here not only the smooth continuation from reason to scripture, but also the order of priority. Everyday experience and “sound reason” provide the intellectual basis necessary for understanding the biblical message.Arguments such as these were inculcated by merciless rote and were, therefore, firmly lodged in the minds of Grundtvig's readers. On this background he could safely assume that the ideas of creation and fall were readily at hand as preconditions for an understanding of what he had to say. The ideas were imprinted in the minds of his readers as self-evident truths based on experience and common sense and were, therefore, independent of any particular religious conviction. In this way a study of the books used in the Christian Education of his time provide a useful and hitherto unheeded tool for understanding Grundtvig's argumentation.

Understanding mass allegations of satanist child abuse in early modern Sweden: demographic data relevant to the Rättvik outbreak of 1670-1671.

Demographic characteristics of 79 women who were accused of satanist child abductions in the parish of Rättvik, Sweden, in 1670-1671; 53 adults who promoted such accusations by bringing children to interrogations; and samples from the general population of Rättvik were compared. Results indicate that men were more likely to promote allegations of satanism than women and that these men were more likely to be married than the average Rättvik male. Promoters of allegations were older than average parishioners, and land-owning people who were involved in the panic owned more land than landowners who were not involved. People who were involved in the panic knew less about Luther's catechism than members of the general population. It is suggested that most of these findings may reflect a tendency of people who lived in the proximity of children to become involved in the panic.

The catechism effect: Child testimonies during a 17th-century witch panic as related to educational achievement

Testimonies from 488 children given to the priests of the parish of Rättvik during a preliminary investigation of a Swedish witch panic in 1670-71 are examined in relation to records from parish catechetical meetings held in 1671. The result implies that children who knew and understood at least parts of Luther's catechism were less liable to have falsely alleged that they had been kidnapped by female satanists during the witch panic of the previous year. It is suggested that these effects were caused by differences in cognitive, social, and emotional resources among these children as compared to those who were unable to learn and understand any parts of Luther's catechism.

Luther's Catechism Comes to America: Theological Effects on the Issues of the Small Catechism Prepared In or For America Prior to 1850. By Arthur C. Repp, Sr. Metuchen, New Jersey: Scarecrow Press, 1982. American Theological Library Association Monograph Series 18. xiv + 297 pp.

Luther's Catechism Comes to America: Theological Effects on the Issues of the Small Catechism Prepared In or For America Prior to 1850. By Arthur C. Repp, Sr. Metuchen, New Jersey: Scarecrow Press, 1982. American Theological Library Association Monograph Series 18. xiv + 297 pp.

An Old Prussian grammar: the phonology and morphology of the three Catechisms By William R. Schmalstieg, and: Studies in Old Prussian: a critical review of the relevant literature in the field since 1945 By William R. Schmalstieg (review)

REVIEWS707 but Russ. kusat' obligatorily requires a direct-object NP node—which may, however , be empty, in which case its emptiness must be marked by -sja. In other words, a crucial role is played by the difference between an empty node and the absence of a node. However, Russ. pisat' 'to write' behaves like Ger. beissen, rather than like Russ. kusat'; cf. ¿enjapiset (*pisetsja) '2enja is writing.' Although all these patterns can be handled byad-hocemptynodes (e.g. forkusat' butnotforpisat')plus ageneral rule of marking derived intransitives, this seems no better, and considerably less direct, than saying that these languages all have a rule of (unspecified and/or recoverable) direct-object deletion, but that the languages (and often individual lexical items within the language) differ as to whether this derived intransitivity must be marked. Still, these reservations do not detract from the over-all positive impression made by Cranmer's study. REFERENCES Babby, L. H. 1975. A transformational analysis of transitive -sja verbs in Russian. Lingua 35.297-332. Bowers, J. ms. The theory of grammatical relations. To appear, Cornell University Press. RÛztCka, R. 1963. O transformacionnom opisanii tak nazyvaemyx bezlicnyx predlozenij ? sovremennom russkom jazyke. Voprosy Jazykoznanija 3.22-31. [Received 12 July 1977.] An Old Prussian grammar: the phonology and morphology of the three Catechisms. By William R. Schmalstieg. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1974. Pp. 385. $13.50. Studies in Old Prussian: a critical review of the relevant literature in the field since 1945. By William R. Schmalstieg. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1976. Pp. 420. $14.50. Reviewed by Lew R. Micklesen, University of Washington In these two companion volumes, Schmalstieg offers Balticists and IndoEuropeanists his own analysis of Old Prussian morphophonology and a forthright critical exposition of the state of the art in OP studies. The volume published first, Old Prussian grammar (OPG), represents a grammatical analysis of the only extensive connected texts in Old Prussian—the three translations of Luther's Catechism, all dating from the middle of the 16th century and comprising about 66 pages of OP text. OPG first tackles (rather briefly) the phonology, including the critical subheadings of orthography, vowels, stress, and consonants; it then proceeds to morphology, with more or less extensive subdivisions for nouns, adjectives, numerals, adverbs, pronouns, prefixes, prepositions, conjunctions, verbs, the non-finite forms of the verb, and the periphrastic tenses. The book concludes with an exhaustive word index, footnotes, and references. The section on morphology is really the heart of the book; it covers close to 200 pages, listing every grammatical form of every word recorded in the catechisms, both in Schmalstieg's 708LANGUAGE, VOLUME 54, NUMBER 3 (1978) phonemic transcription and in the original orthography, and it includes in most cases some basic etymological information. But why do we have no discussion (or even mention) of OP syntax, and no texts or samples of texts? Is the syntax too obvious, or too confusing, or are the extant texts too meager? Are there already sufficient editions of OP texts, or will another volume provide these ? The second book, Studies in Old Prussian (SOP), is exactly what its subtitle states. This study represents an enormous amount of work and careful thought : omitting only onomastics, it runs the gamut of main topics such as the OP people, the Sudovians or Jatvingians, the OP language, the OP texts, phonology, the morphology of various parts of speech, miscellanea, and recent etymologies. Each topic is embellished by numerous subdivisions. Both books were prepared from camera-ready typescript; and different type fonts could not be utilized for headings or emphasis. To offset this disadvantage, OPG uses some spacing and indentations ; but SOP has a particularly dense format, spacing between subsections only in the first two sections. After that point, there must have been a decision to reduce the size of the book, because the bulk of it has no spaces whatsoever between numbered subsections. This is also true in the morphological sections of OPG, but here a certain amount of indentation is helpful. The problem of course, is that a densely-printed page, plus the lack of distinctive fonts, necessarily prolongs the search for cross-references when a specific page...

Book Review: II. Historical Studies: Teaching Luther's Catechism

Book Review: II. Historical Studies: Teaching Luther's Catechism

The Genius of the Reformed Church in the United States: A Genetic Appraisal of Her Union with the Evangelical Synod of North America

TO WHAT extent does the organic union of the Evangelical Synod of North America with the Reformed Church in the United States, recently consummated, represent a merging of Lutheranism and Calvinism? The Evangelical Synod, which had its origin on American soil in 184o as the Kirchenverein des Westens (Evangelical Church Society of the West), was conceived in the spirit of the Evangelical Union of 1817 in Germany, which sought to bring the Reformed and Lutheran branches of German Protestantism together. The origin of the Reformed Church in the United States, on the other hand, is to be traced to the German immigration of the pre-colonial period which settled in the East long before the union issue had become acute in Germany. Although the Evangelical Synod sought to preserve both the Reformed and Lutheran witnesses side by side, as its subscription to the Augsburg Confession and the Heidelberg and Luther's Catechism indicates, careful observers have noted that the spirit of Luther, rather than that of Calvin, has dominated its religious temperament-to the extent, indeed, that a certain antagonism to Calvinistic viewpoints was at times apparent. The doctrinal heritage of the Reformed Church, on the other hand, was definitely Calvinistic, as its exclusive committal to the Heidelberg Catechism suggests. It would thus appear that, with the merging of these two denominations, there was consummated on American soil a union of two diverse ecclesiastical

Parochial Libraries in the Colonial Period

The Protestant colonists who first came to this continent possessed strong literary tastes. The Dutch were at first controlled largely by the purely commercial spirit, but in a short time a literary tendency developed itself decidedly among them, which was strengthened by a close communication with such literary centres in Holland as Leyden and other seats of learning. No portion of our colonists placed stronger emphasis on the requirements for a learned clergy than the Dutch. The Swedes, for the short time that they held a secure footing on the banks of the Delaware, gave most valuable literary treatment to their colonial home. Luther's Catechism was translated into the Virginian-Indian language, printed in Stockholm in 1696, and sent out under the patronage of King Carl XL, to do missionary work among the savages. Svedberg wrote “America Illuminata,” for the purpose of acquainting his countrymen in Sweden with the New World. Campanius and Acrelius wrote large and full descriptive works, which, for minute treatment, were not surpassed by any writers in the entire colonial period.