Hallesche Pastoren in Pennsylvania, 1743–1825

Hallesche Pastoren in Pennsylvania, 1743–1825. Eine kritische Quellenedition zu ihrer Amtstätigkeit in Nordamerika. Ed. by Mark Häberlein, Thomas Müller-Bahlke and Hermann Wellenreuther.
Part 3: Briefe und andere Amtsdokumente der Pastoren Peter Brunnholtz (1716–1757) und Johann Friedrich Handschuch (1714–1764). Ed. by Wolfgang Splitter, Markus Berger and Jan-Hendrik Evers in collaboration with Lara Grünberg and Nikolas K. Schröder

At the center of this eight-volume edition are 13 Lutheran clergymen who were sent to Pennsylvania between 1744 and 1786 by the Glaucha Institutions (today's Francke Foundations in Halle) to provide pastoral care to German Lutherans. There, and soon also in neighboring regions of British North America, they served as parish pastors from 1745 to 1825. They were preceded by Heinrich Melchior Mühlenberg (1711–1787), whom the director of this institution, Gotthilf August Francke (1696–1769), had offered an overseas assignment in early September 1741. With Mühlenberg's arrival in Philadelphia at the end of November 1742, the institutions, a royal Prussian privileged association of educational, charitable, missionary, and commercial enterprises, assumed a mission that would not end until shortly after the First World War.
The third volume comprises 120 letters from pastors Peter Brunnholtz and Johann Friedrich Handschuch, who were sent from Halle to Pennsylvania in the 1740s. In their letters to Gotthilf August Francke, the director of the Glaucha Institutes in Halle, the Lutheran court preacher Friedrich Michael Ziegenhagen in London, as well as to colleagues and congregations in North America, the two clergymen recount the difficulties of establishing a Lutheran church in a pluralistic religious environment and their conflicts with self-confident laypeople who were unwilling to submit to the leadership demands of European pastors. They also address financial issues, health and illness, arduous journeys, and encounters with people of different backgrounds and denominations. The letters edited here thus represent important sources on the church and everyday history of the North American colonies in the 18th century.