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58 LUTHERAN THEOLOGICAL REVIEW XII It is also not that there is a lack of information on Ziegenhagen. The hundreds of hand-written letters in the archives of the Francke Foundations in Halle, which originated from the pen of Ziegenhagen and were sent to a variety of individuals, have been used selectively by almost everyone who has written about Halle Pietism. The trouble is that, while many of these letters have been used by researchers, no one has bothered to systematically bring together the information which these letters contain about the man and his work. The interest of this writer in Ziegenhagen was sparked by Ziegenhagen’s role in the history of Lutheranism in Canada. When the earliest Lutheran congregations in Canada—in Halifax, Nova Scotia—tried to find a pastor to serve them, they looked first to Ziegenhagen and the other German Lutheran pastors in London, their immediate place of origin in the old world. Later when Germans also came from Germany and settled in Lunenburg, they continued to look to Ziegenhagen to be their connection with Halle, Germany. As Muhlenberg was attempting to satisfy the need for pastors among the German Lutherans in America, he also looked to Ziegenhagen to be the middleman in providing such manpower support. And there were any number of other situations in which Ziegenhagen, strategically situated in London, England, played a significant role. Thus, this writer spent a four and a half month sabbatical leave in Halle in the fall of 1999 researching Pietism with the person and work of Ziegenhagen as the focus. While a great wealth of secondary background material, an overview of the Ziegenhagen correspondence, and a detailed examination of the letters which he wrote from Hanover prior to coming to England was gained, the project is still not complete. A carefully examination of the more than three hundred letters which he wrote from London, as well as the archives of the SPCK in England, still need to be made to see what they will add to what can be known of the life and work of Ziegenhagen. This paper represents a report of the study thus far. I The one big problem in preparing a study of Ziegenhagen’s life and work is that there appears on the surface to be very little concrete information about his parental family and early life. This is a problem which was already recognized by those who knew him during his lifetime. Gottlieb Anastasius Freylinghausen, who prepared a brief biography on “the life and character” of Ziegenhagen for the readers of the Halle mission publication immediately after Ziegenhagen’s death, bemoaned the fact that he was unable to find any
THREINEN: FRIEDRICH MICHAEL ZIEGENHAGEN 59 information about the early life of the deceased Ziegenhagen. 6 He was never married. He did not write a Lebenslauf (biography) of himself. He appears to have spoken very little about his parental family and early childhood even to his closest friends and associates. Yet a careful study of the early Ziegenhagen’s letters and other contemporary sources has already yielded information about Ziegenhagen’s early life and one can confidently anticipate that more is to be found. What information about the parental family and origin of Ziegenhagen has surfaced so far from the study of this writer? In his death notice sketch of Ziegenhagen, Freylinghausen indicated that he thought the deceased came from Pomerania. This statement is supported by contemporary records. 7 In the early eighteenth century, there were three areas loosely designated as Pomerania in Northern Germany by the Baltic Sea. Of these areas, there is strong evidence to support the fact that Ziegenhagen was born and raised somewhere in central Pomerania, the former Duchy of Stettin, also known as “Hinterpommern”. It is an area which is bordered on the west by the Oder River which today forms the boundary between Germany in Poland. Thus, Hinterpommern today is located in Poland. 8 While western and central Pomerania were ruled by Polish dukes until the seventeenth century, many Germans emigrated into the region beginning as early as the twelfth century. In 1637 when the ruling Polish ducal families died out from lack of male heirs, these two regions became the possession of the Elector of Brandenburg. This brought the German population in Pomerania under a German government which encouraged cultural links with its historic homeland. When the Peace of Westphalia ended the Thirty Years War in 1648, however, the region came under Swedish control, a state of affairs which continued until 1720 when Brandenburg-Prussia again acquired it. Born in 1694, Ziegenhagen was therefore raised in Hinterpommern, an area heavily populated by Germans, while it was politically controlled by Sweden. 6 Gottlieb Anastasius Freylinghausen, “Kurzer Abriss des Lebens und Characters Herrn Friedrich Michael Ziegenhagen”, in Neuere Geschichte der Evangelischen Missions-Anstalten zu Bekehrung der Heiden in Ostindien (Halle: In Verlegung des Waisenhauses, 1783) 2:xixxii. 7 Ward, 307, refers to Ziegenhagen as “a Hanovarian by origin”. This is clearly in error since the matriculation records of the University of Halle indicate his place of origin to be “Neogarensis Pomeranus”. See Fritz Junke, editor, Matrikel der Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg (1690-1730) (Halle: Universitäts- und Landesbibliotek, 1960) 496. 8 The name “Ziegenhagen” was the name of a village in the duchy of Stettin and appears also as the family name of two clergymen who served in Pomerania around this time. See Hans Moderow, editor, Die Evangelischen Geistlichen Pommers von der Reformation zur Gegenwart (Stettin: Verlag von Paul Niekommer, 1903) 1:262. We also know that Ziegenhagen’s step-father and nephew both served as government officials in Stettin.
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