LUTHERAN THEOLOGICAL REVIEW - Concordia Lutheran Seminary

82 LUTHERAN THEOLOGICAL REVIEW XII
As background for this new challenge, it should be noted that the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries still saw some German lands governed
by bishops. One such land encompassed Salzburg and its surrounding
territory. In spite of repeated efforts over the years by the archbishops who
ruled Salzburg to rid their territory of non-Catholics, the Protestant
population continued to grow, particularly in the mountains around the city.
One of the reasons was the natural alienation which developed between the
mountain people and the urbanites in Salzburg. Another was the annual treks
of rural people seeking seasonal work in the Lutheran territories to the north.
When these migrants returned to their homes for the winter, they brought
with them books to sell or to keep which invariably had a Protestant content.
Reading these books occupied their time through the winter months. 88
When Leopold Anton von Firmian became Archbishop of Salzburg in
1727, he decided to take drastic action to address the issue once and for all.
He had a strong Jesuit connection and so he sent Jesuits into the mountain
villages around Salzburg as missionaries to reclaim Lutherans and other
Protestants for Roman Catholicism. He backed up their efforts by issuing
threats and fines. When these proved ineffective, he issued an immigration
edict on 31 October 1731 giving Protestants the choice of renouncing their
faith or leaving the country. Those who did not own property had to leave
within eight days. Almost a quarter of the population chose to leave rather
than give up their faith. Many died along the way as they were caught in the
mountains by the onslaught of winter.
The cruel expulsion of these Salzburgers for their faith soon became
known throughout Protestant Germany. Prussia was looking for people to
resettle an area of East Prussia and Lithuania which had been decimated by a
plague at the beginning of the century. So Frederick William I (1688-1740),
who saw himself as the remaining champion of Protestantism after August of
Saxony had turned Catholic in 1697, welcomed most of the Salzburgers into
his domain. Of the estimated 21 000 people who left Salzburg, about 18 000
went to Prussia. As the Salzburg exiles were marched from city to city en
route to their new home, they became a symbol of Protestant resistance to
Catholic oppression.
One of the cities through which the Salzburg refugees came as they fled
their homeland was Augsburg. There Samuel Urlsperger, a corresponding
member of the SPCK who had assisted the German Lutheran pastors in
London to care for the German Palatines en route to New York earlier in the
century, was the Senior Pastor of St Anne Lutheran Church. Early in 1732,
Urlsperger sent a report to the SPCK through Ziegenhagen on the sorry state
of these persecuted Protestants. Ziegenhagen had Urlsperger’s account
88 Mack Walker, The Salzburg Transaction (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press,
1992) 12.