Stationen des Lebens und Wirkens von A. H. Francke in der Herrnhuter Brüdergemeine

Abstract

This article describes the life of August Hermann Francke as a member of the Moravian Church and in its service: his birth on 5 November 1870 in Gnadenfrei as the son of a dyer, attendance at the Moravian boys’ school (1886–1991) and at the teacher training college in Niesky (1891–1895), as a teacher at the mission boys’ school in Kleinwelka (1895), guest at the College in Fairfield in preparation for missionary service, ordination to the diaconate and travel to Leh, North India (1896), marriage with Dora (Theodora) Weiz (1897), service in the newly-established mission station Khalatse (1905–1906) and in Kyelang (1906–1908). He translated the Gospels into West Tibetan dialects. His wife was unable to bear the climate and had to recuperate in Germany (Kleinwelka) in 1904, 1907 and 1908. In 1909 he travelled out alone in the service of the British-Indian Archaeological Institute and to continue his Bible translation. From 1910 to 1914 he worked in Niesky on the Bible translation and on a chronicle of the West Tibetan Kingdom for India. In May 1914 he travelled to Leh once more by land. Following the outbreak of the First World War he was interned that October in the Ahmadnagar camp, which he was able to leave only in March 1916. Back at home in Gnadenberg (near Bunzlau), where the family had been able to buy a house in 1914, he was called up for military service, trained as a medical orderly, and deployed as an interpreter in Romania. In November 1918 he was made a prisoner of war in Romania, subsequently in Serbia, and was able to go home to his family only on 24 July 1919. He worked in the Moravian Church’s travelling ministry, and on translation of the main Scripture of the Bon Religion and of the gZermyg manuscripts in the Berlin State Library. In 1922 he qualified as a professor and became an associate professor in Berlin. The family moved to Berlin, where he died in 1930 following a stroke. Some letters to Francke from Prof. Rudolf Otto and Mission Director Prof. Julius Richter are appended, as are Francke’s letters to his wife from his personal file.