CHAPTER VI.

THE REGULATIONS AT KAISERSWERTH, AND THE DUTIES AND SERVICES OF THE DEACONESSES.

Special stress is given to the importance of cultivating unity, love, and forbearance in the relations of daily life, and the deaconesses are enjoined “to protect and further the honor of other sisters,” “to form one family living unitedly as sisters, through the tie of a heartfelt love for the one great object that brings them to this place.”

There are two classes of deaconesses formally recognized, nurses and teachers; although there is another, deaconess whose work is year by year becoming more important, and that is the deaconess who is attached to a church in the capacity of a home missionary. She is designated by the term “commune-deaconess,” or, as the English translate it, “parish-deaconess.”

While probationers, they receive, free of charge, board and instruction, and the caps, collars, and aprons that are their distinctive badges. Their remaining expenses they provide for themselves. Those who have completed the full term of probation, and have proved their fitness for the office, must pledge themselves to a service of at least five years. At the end of the time they may renew the engagement or not, as they wish. Should a deaconess be needed at home by aged parents, or should she desire to marry, she is free to leave her duties, but is expected to give three months’ notice of her intention to do so.

When a probationer becomes a deaconess she is consecrated to her work by a service the main features of which it may be well to indicate. They are as follows:

The first of the Conferences was held in 1861, just twenty-five years after the founding of the first deaconess house at Kaiserswerth. It was celebrated as a Thanksgiving festival for the restoration of the diaconate of women to the Church. The representatives of twenty-seven distinct mother-houses met together to exchange their experiences, and to deliberate on matters touching the further usefulness of the order.

Since then the Conferences have been continued at intervals of three and four years. The last General Conference assembled at Fliedner’s old home in September, 1888.

Five additional houses had made application for entrance at the time the table was made, and were received at the ensuing Conference, among which was the Philadelphia mother-house of deaconesses in connection with the Mary J. Drexel Home.

The Schleswig-Holstein war of 1864 was the first in which Protestant deaconesses were active as nurses. Already in the Crimean war the Greek Sisters of Charity among the Russians, the Sisters of Mercy among the French, and Florence Nightingale and Miss Stanley among the English, had wakened the liveliest gratitude on the part of the soldiers, and secured the respect and approbation of the surgeons.

The institution has become an imposing mass of building, forming an almost absurd contrast to the little garden house, the cradle of the whole establishment, which is still standing in the parsonage garden.

When the fiftieth anniversary of the rise of the deaconess cause was celebrated in 1886 the Kaiserswerth sisterhood put their mites together and purchased the little house, to hold it in perpetuity as a monument of God’s providence.

The symbol of Kaiserswerth is a white dove, carrying an olive branch, resting against a blue ground. The blue flag floats from the old windmill tower on the river-bank, attracting the attention of the traveler as he floats up the Rhine.

Other flags bear messages of conquest, of victory, of battles fought and won, of storm and stress and endeavor in the conflict of man against his fellow-man. But only peace and good-will, the victory of goodness and of love—these alone are the messages that are waved forth to the wind by the blue flag of Kaiserswerth.

CHAPTER VII.

OTHER ESTABLISHMENTS ON THE CONTINENT.

In a book of these dimensions no exhaustive historical account can be given of all the developments of the deaconess movement in the various countries on the Continent. Only a few of the leading houses can be spoken of, but through a knowledge of these we can gain an insight into the life and characteristics of the movement as a whole.

The mother-house at Strasburg is one of the oldest ones, dating from 1842. It owes its origin to the holy enthusiasm and life experiences of Pastor Härter, who exercised a deep religious influence in the city where he lived. In 1817, when he was a young man of twenty, the great Strasburg hospital was re-organized. The six to eight hundred patients were divided according to their religious faith. To the Catholics were assigned as nurses Sisters of Charity. For the Protestants there were paid women nurses.

The parish deaconess has occasion to use every gift which she can possibly acquire in the varied training of the deaconess school. She must know how to care for the poor, the weak, the sick, and those needing help for either body or soul, as she finds them in her visits from house to house. She must be able to pray at the bedside of the rich man, and to serve in the kitchen of the poor man; to be motherly to children, sympathetic with the sorrowing, and silent with the complaining. She must be an intelligent nurse, having some knowledge of medicine, able to faithfully carry out the instructions of the physician. She must be keen in detecting imposition, and wise in the administration of charity, knowing that “to deny is often to help, and to give is often to corrupt.” Truly, there is no gift of Christian womanhood which has not here its use.

He determined to do what he could to provide a remedy, and, as was his wont, “without money and without noise” he set to work. In the north of Berlin, at quite a distance from the railroad stations, he hired a small house on a street then called “The Lost Way”—a street well named, as it was unlighted and unpaved, and so poorly kept that when the queen came to visit the home, shortly after it was opened, her carriage, in spite of the strong horses, got stuck in the mud.

The Marthashof has had a beneficent influence over the moral and spiritual welfare of servants throughout Germany. In nearly all the cities similar homes are now established, while in the larger cities Sunday associations are formed to provide suitable places of meeting for the entertainment and instruction of those who are free Sunday afternoons and evenings. So far as I am aware, no similar work has been attempted for servant-girls in the United States. It is true that training-schools exist, but not with religious supervision, and with the moral and religious instruction of the inmates made a prominent feature. The Marthashof offers us a lesson well worth our learning.

The deaconess house in Neudettelsau stands in closest union with the Lutheran Church. The sisters are mostly from the higher ranks of society, and intellectual training is made prominent. Certain liturgical forms are used, and in the main deaconesses are employed in preparing ecclesiastical vestments and embroideries for church adornment.

There are a few institutions that exist independently of those represented at the Kaiserswerth General Conference. They stand alone for various reasons; perhaps they have not met the conditions required of those which belong to the association. Any house whose administration rests exclusively either in the hands of a man or a woman is excluded from the Conference. In every mother-house there represented the administrative head is twofold, consisting of a gentleman, who, with rare exceptions, is a clergyman, and a lady who is a deaconess. The Kaiserswerth authorities regard this joint management as an indispensable condition.

The rector, as he is usually called, cares for the intellectual and spiritual instruction of the probationers, conducts public services in the chapel, and issues the publications and reports of the house.

Then, too, the influence of environment is to be reckoned with. The house may be located in a large city or in a small one; in the country or in towns. It may be under the influence of a State Church, as in Germany, or of Christians of all Churches, as at Mildmay. It will share the characteristics of the race of people from which come its workers. Doubtless in the Methodist Episcopal Church in America the deaconesses that eventually become recognized as set apart to special Christian service, through the training that is provided for them, will be women who are peculiarly adapted to the needs of that Church, with all the distinguishing American traits that will prepare them to understand the people whom they are to serve, and that will give them access to the hearts of this people.

Deaconess institutions now exist in Switzerland, France, Holland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Russia, Austria, England, and Germany, while the countries in which these homes have stations are literally too numerous to mention. Spain, Italy, Greece, Turkey, the countries of Northern Africa, and of Asia Minor, as well as isolated mission stations throughout the entire world are now served by deaconesses.

A similar call came from Shanghai, but as it was impossible to return a favorable answer, although the hospital was a Protestant institution, the Sisters of Mercy were invited in, and given control. From 1870 up to 1886 over two hundred and twenty-seven places at widely remote distances, such as Madras, New Orleans, Port Said, Rio de Janeiro, and elsewhere, sent most urgent appeals for Kaiserswerth deaconesses to be assigned them, but invariably the same answer must be returned: “There are none to send.” Disselhoff closes by saying, “How many open doors has God given! Whose fault is it that they remain closed?”

CHAPTER VIII.

DEACONESSES IN GERMAN METHODISM.

The good results of the work of deaconesses in the other Protestant bodies of Germany doubtless had their influence upon German Methodism. As far back as 1868 in Wurtemberg, and later in Frankfort, some preachers introduced parish deaconesses for the care of the sick; but well-directed efforts, and unity in management, were lacking.

Nearly all the Methodist German deaconesses are engaged in caring for the sick; it is only recently that attempts have been made in some other directions of charitable endeavor. In the last report we are told that at Frankfort steps have been taken to reform fallen women. One of the sisters seems to be especially endowed with tact and ability for this difficult work. She has already induced twenty-two of these girls to enter the asylum at Sachsenhausen. The police authorities and city magistrates have given this same sister access to the women prisoners, which is a decided favor, coming from German officials. Besides her work in this particular, she has devoted her remaining time to the care of the poor and the sick.

The house at Frankfort is too small for its increasing needs, and a permanent home of more ample dimensions is greatly to be desired.

In Hamburg the house has been enlarged, and there is now room for thirty-five sisters; yet still there are more demands made than can be met. In one month ninety requests were handed in for the aid of the deaconesses. The city authorities offered them a large lot of land at a very moderate sum, which is at present used as a garden, and adds much to the enjoyment of the home.

On the 4th of March, 1888, occurred the anniversary of the founding of the Hamburg house, at which time six sisters were set apart to their life calling by a service of consecration. As in all places where our deaconesses are employed, so also in Hamburg their influence is felt in the increase of religious life among the families they serve.

St. Gall is one of the newer stations, but from the beginning it has been a work of promise. In this old center of missionary operations, where Irish missionaries founded one of the most famous monasteries of mediæval times, is now to be erected a hospital under the care of Methodist deaconesses, who have already begun to collect means for this purpose. In Scheffel’s famous story of Ekkehard the only way in which the Duchess Hadwig could enter the monastery of St. Gall (as there was a law that no woman should set her foot upon the threshold) was by the ingenious device of a young monk, who lifted her over in his arms. These peaceful women of Methodism are finding no obstacle now as did Hadwig of old; they do not need even figuratively to be lifted over the entering threshold; they are gladly welcomed, and are introducing a new element into the life of the old city.

The regulations touching the training and duties of the sisters are similar to those of Kaiserswerth. Two years of probation are required, part of which is devoted to practical work under the superintendence of an older deaconess. The rules of daily life are much the same; a quiet half hour of prayer and meditation is strongly urged, and the same freedom in control of personal property and withdrawal from the office exists. It is pleasant to record that our deaconesses have secured to themselves such good report for their usefulness that the city officials in Germany accord to them the free use of steamboats and street-cars; and the Prussian government does the same for roads that are under State control.

The German Methodist Church, the daughter of American Methodism, anticipated the parent Church in utilizing the womanly gifts and services of deaconesses as members of her aggressive forces, and furnished it a very helpful and stimulating example.