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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.
THREINEN: FRIEDRICH MICHAEL ZIEGENHAGEN 83 translated into English, and on 22 February 1732 he brought the matter to the SPCK. The Society quickly picked up on the cause. It first ordered that 3 000 copies of An Account of the Suffering of Persecuted Protestants in the Archbishopric of Salzburg be printed and distributed. It then also had 2 000 copies of Urlsperger’s letter about the Salzburg refugees printed. Finally it had printed A Further Account of the Sufferings of the Persecuted Protestants, which contained testimonies of individual Salzburgers of their faith. The plight of the Salzburg refugees, dramatically related by Urlsperger, sparked interest and sympathy not only among individual members of the SPCK but also within the British Royal family and the British population in general. 89 As a member of the SPCK who was close to the king, Ziegenhagen was approved to receive funds for the help of the Salzburgers. Through him, financial contributions soon began to flow to Urlsperger. On 14 April 1732, Urlsperger acknowledged the first gift—125 pounds sterling, perhaps donated by George II 90 or another member of the royal family. Before long, more than 1 000 pounds had been collected. From a 23 May 1732 letter from Ziegenhagen to Henry Newman, it is clear that by the middle of 1732, the SPCK had assumed responsibility for assisting the Salzburgers. 91 To direct the SPCK involvement in the Salzburg refugee problem, the Society set up an “Extraordinary Committee for Salzburgers”, one of whose members was Ziegenhagen. 92 The initial concern was for the immediate care of the Salzburgers in Germany; funds were sent to Urlsperger in Augsburg for this purpose. Coincidentally, however, a charter had been granted by the British crown in 1732 to twenty-one trustees to establish a new colony in Georgia. The plan soon developed that perhaps some of the persecuted Salzburgers could be settled in the new colony as a long-term solution to their difficulties. With the approval of the trustees, Urlsperger was therefore directed to recruit about 300 people for Georgia. Emigrants were promised 50 acres of land per family at no cost, a German Lutheran pastor, free passage, and financial support in Georgia, along with all the rights and privileges enjoyed by 89 Brunner 167. 90 If it was from the king, it probably came through the influence of his wife, Caroline, who had the practice of guiding her husband’s decisions in such a way that he ended up thinking her decision was his own. Basil Williams, The Whig Supremacy, 1714-1760, in The Oxford History of England (Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1962) 354. Queen Caroline, who originated in Ansbach, Germany, was in her own right an active patron of the German Lutheran Chapel in the Savoy, providing 400 pounds on one occasion for a small house for the education of German-speaking children. Brunner 58. 91 George Fenwick Jones, ed., Henry Newman’s Salzburger Letterbooks (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1966) 1:2. 92 Brunner 168.
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