D. H. Lawrence - "Fantasia of the Unconscious"

John Wood Campbell - "Invaders from the Infinite"

Various - "Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882"

William Stearns Davis - "A Day In Old Athens"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

Deaconesses in Europe

J >> Jane M. Bancroft >> Deaconesses in Europe




The rules for probationers are full of practical suggestions touching
the details of daily life. There is not space to transcribe them here,
but those who have charge of training schools will find them valuable
reading. Every kind of house and hospital service is clearly defined.
The deaconesses are instructed what duties are theirs in hospitals for
women and in hospitals for men. In the latter the sister undertakes only
such nursing as is suited to her sex, and for that reason she has a male
assistant. She must follow strictly the doctor's orders in all matters
pertaining to diet, medicine, and ventilation, and must inform him daily
of the patient's state. She also assists the clergyman, if desired, in
ministering to spiritual needs. But she must not obtrude her religion,
when it is distasteful to her patients; rather manifest it in her deeds
and manner of life.

Every portion of the day has definite duties assigned to it. On reading
them over you say, Can much be accomplished when the hours are
subdivided into so many portions, and given over to so many objects? But
the unvarying testimony is that no nurses accomplish more than the
German deaconesses. No matter how busy they may be, the effort is made
for each to have a quiet half hour for meditation and private devotion.
Every afternoon the chapel is opened for this purpose, and all the
sisters who can be spared meet here. A hymn is sung, and afterward each
spends the time as she will in meditation, reading the Bible or silent
prayer, the quietness and stillness being unbroken by words. The "Stille
halbe Stunde," as it is called, is greatly prized by the sisters, and is
observed by them in all their institutions, and in all lands. There are
Bible-classes and prayer-meetings for the deaconesses during the week,
and the first Sunday of every month there is a special service of prayer
and thanksgiving for all sisters, all the affiliated houses, and similar
homes wherever they exist. Fliedner prepared a book of daily Bible
readings for the use of the sisters, and a hymn-book, used in all the
Kaiserswerth institutions at home and abroad. "We have no vows," he
said, "and I will have no vows, but a bond of union we must have, and
the best bond is the word of God, and our second bond is singing."[37]
The sisters of each house meet together to give their votes for the
admission of new deaconesses and the election of the superintendents.
Each deaconess is expected to obey those who are placed over her, and to
accept the kind of work assigned her, except in the case of contagious
diseases, when her permission is asked. What a tribute it is to these
women that such a refusal has never yet been known! Every effort is made
to harmonize the right of the individual with the needs of the whole
body, a marked characteristic of the Protestant sisters of charity.

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:

Singing. Address commending the deaconesses for acceptance. Address to
the deaconesses, recalling the ever-repeated thought, "You are servants
in a threefold sense: servants of the Lord Jesus; servants of the needy
for Jesus' sake; servants one of another." Then, having answered the
question, "Are you determined to fulfill these duties truly in the fear
of the Lord, and according to his holy will?" the candidate kneels and
receives the benediction: "May the Triune God, God the Father, Son, and
Holy Ghost, bless you; may he give you fidelity unto death, and then the
crown of life." After this is repeated the prayer of the _Apostolical
Constitutions_, that beautiful prayer which has been said on similar
occasions in many lands and in many tongues.[38] The service ends with
the communion.

A similar consecration service is used by nearly all the German
deaconess houses. The features of those that meet together in the
triennial Conferences at Kaiserswerth are strikingly similar; the spirit
of the original founder pervades them all.

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.

Just before it convened, as is the custom, statistics were obtained from
the different mother-houses represented in the association, and pains
were taken to verify their correctness. The results so obtained are
given in the following table:[39]

Mother- Fields of
Conferences. houses. Sisters. Work.
1861 27 1,197 ?
1864 30 1,592 386
1868 40 2,106 526
1872 48 2,657 648
1875 50 3,239 866
1878 51 3,901 1,093
1881 53 4,748 1,436
1884 54 5,653 1,742
1888 57 7,129 2,263

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.

Over sixty mother-houses now belong to the association, and
notwithstanding the necessary loss of deaconesses from death or removal
from work since the preceding Conference, there are 1,476 more in number
now than then. Surely the deaconess cause is striking deep root in the
religious life of Protestant Europe. During Fliedner's life-time
occasions arose which called the deaconesses outside their accustomed
fields of work, and proved their value in the exceptional emergencies
that so often arise. Here is an instance that occurred during the early
days of the establishment:[40]

"An epidemic of nervous fever was raging in two communes of the circle
of Duisburg, Gartrop, and Gahlen. Its first and most virulent outbreak
took place at Gartrop, a small, poor, secluded village of scarcely one
hundred and thirty souls, without a doctor, without an apothecary in the
neighborhood, while the clergyman was upon the point of leaving for
another parish, and his successor had not yet been appointed. Four
deaconesses, including the superior, Pastor Fliedner's wife, and a maid,
hastened to this scene of wretchedness, and found from twenty to
twenty-five fever patients in the most alarming condition, a mother and
four children in one hovel, four other patients in another, and so on,
all lying on foul straw, or on bed-clothes that had not been washed for
weeks, almost without food, utterly without help. Many had died already;
the healthy had fled; the parish doctor lived four German leagues off,
and could not come every day. The first care of the sisters, who would
have found no lodging but for the then vacancy of the parsonage, was to
introduce cleanliness and ventilation into the narrow cabins of the
peasants; they washed and cooked for the sick, they watched every night
by turns at their bed-side, and tended them with such success that only
four died after their arrival, and the rest were only convalescent after
four weeks' stay. The same epidemic having broken out in the neighboring
commune of Gahlen, in two families, of whom eight members lay ill at
once, a single deaconess was able, in three weeks, to restore every
patient to health, and to prevent the further spread of the disease.
What would not our doctors give for a few dozen of such hard-working,
zealous, intelligent ministers in the field of sanitary reform?"

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.

In the Austrian war of 1866 two hundred and eighty-two deaconesses were
in the hospitals and on the battle-fields, fifty-eight of whom were from
Kaiserswerth. The Franco-Prussian war of 1870 was on a greater scale,
and afforded wider opportunities for the unselfish, priceless labors of
these Christian nurses. Neatly eight hundred deaconesses, sent from more
than thirty mother-houses, cared for the sick and wounded in the camp
hospitals or on the field. The willingness of a number of boards of
administration to release sisters who were in their service, and the
voluntary offers of other women to take their places, enabled
Kaiserswerth to send two hundred and twenty of the number. Their
experience in improvising hospitals, in aiding the surgeon in his
amputations, and in ministering to the wounded and dying, throws a
tender glow of compassionate sympathy over the terrible scenes of
war.[41]

The importance of trained deaconesses in times of war is now well
understood by the military authorities at Berlin. In the winter of 1887,
when war seemed imminent, the directors of the German deaconess houses
were summoned by the government to a conference at the German capital to
take measures for supplying nurses in case war should be declared.

Deaconesses are now thoroughly incorporated into the religious and
social features of the German national life, as must be admitted by any
one who has weighed the facts that have been given.

The example of Kaiserswerth has been far-reaching; the mission of
Fliedner, that simple-hearted, true-souled, practical, energetic pastor,
has been wonderfully successful.

In this rapid sketch I have said but little of the hinderances he met,
nothing of the ridicule which at first attacked him unsparingly. He paid
no heed to these obstacles, and why should we waste time in detailing
them? Steadfastly and undeviatingly he went forward toward the end he
had in view; that is, to restore in all its aspects the devoted
disciplined services of Christian women to the Church. He passed away
from life October 5, 1864, leaving the great establishment that he had
watched over in the charge of his son-in-law, Pastor Disselhoff, and
other members of his family.

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.


[36] _Haus Ordnung und Dienst-Anweisung fuer die Diakonissen und
Probeschwestern des Diakonissen Mutterhauses zu Kaiserswerth._
[37] _Deaconesses_, Rev. J. S. Howson, D.D., p. 81.
[38] Refer back to page 23, chapter ii, where it can be found.
[39] _Der Armen und Kranken Freund_, August Heft, 1888.
[40] _Woman's Work in the Church_, p. 273, J. M. Ludlow. A. Strahan,
London, 1866.
[41] _Denkschrift zur Jubelfeier_, p. 215.




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 Haerter, 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 magistrates appealed to the pastors to find at least two Protestant
women of experience and ability to oversee the nurses, but the most
persistent search in the various churches of Strasburg failed to procure
suitable candidates. Years afterward, when death entered Haerter's family
circle, and his life became clouded and darkened, he was called as a
pastor to the largest church in Strasburg. He entered upon his new
pastorate with a heart heavy and sad, and not until after ten months of
struggle, in which the depths of his soul were stirred, did he come
forth strong, confident, and positive as never before that "Jesus Christ
came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief." Henceforth
there was force to his life, conviction in his words, and never-ceasing
energy in good works.

When he heard of Fliedner's new undertaking below him on the Rhine he
remembered the difficulty in finding Protestant nurses for the hospital,
and declared that Strasburg must have a similar institution. He won the
support of a number of Christian men and women, and the house was opened
in October, 1842. From its beginning many branches of charitable and
religious work were undertaken. Especial attention was at first given to
preparing Christian teachers, and the schools in connection with the
deaconess house were filled with pupils. The success in this particular
aroused apprehension lest the deaconesses should be diverted from their
legitimate duties in caring for outside interests, so for a time the
schools were discontinued. They have been resumed, however, and are
to-day prosperous as of old.[42] There are also a hospital, a home for
aged women, a servants' training-school and a foundling asylum under the
charge of the deaconesses. They are, as a class, of higher social rank
than these of Kaiserswerth, the preponderating number of whom are from
the lower grade of social life. They are also better educated. This is
partly a necessity, from the fact that the city is on the border-land
between two great nations and if the deaconesses are to be effective
they must be familiar with the spoken and written speech of both
peoples. Strasburg continues to be a great and powerful center of
deaconess activities, having a number of branch houses and various
fields of work.

The affiliated house at Muelhausen has obtained an especially good report
for its successful use of parish deaconesses. No other house has so
systematized their labors or developed their possibilities as has the
deaconess house at Muelhausen. All the authorities on deaconess work
agree that the office of the parish deaconess is the crown and glory of
the diaconate, and approaches most nearly the type of the deaconesses of
the early Church.

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.

For many reasons Muelhausen was well adapted for a field of labor for
parish deaconesses. It is an old city, dating back to mediaeval times,
having a population of about sixty thousand inhabitants, half of whom
are workmen. It has long been known for its noble and successful
endeavors to promote the well-being of the working class. One of the
first building and loan associations was started here to enable the
operatives to earn their homes by gradual payments. Other organizations
whose object is the moral elevation of the employees have united the
different social circles by strong ties of sympathy. It was an easy
matter, therefore, to raise a subscription of two hundred thousand
francs to provide a home for the deaconesses who were invited here from
Strasburg in 1861. There are now fourteen sisters in the deaconess
house. Half of the number remain at the home to nurse the sick, and
perform house duties. The remainder are parish deaconesses, who go forth
early in the morning, each to her own quarter of the city, where she is
busy at her labors during the day. In the evening she returns to the
central home. In each of the seven districts into which the city is
divided is located a district house; a pleasant, well-kept place. This
contains a waiting-room for the deaconess and a consultation-room for
the district physician, who comes at stated hours during the week. The
poor who are recommended by the sister he treats gratuitously, and, so
far as the physician directs, she furnishes food gratuitously. She keeps
on hand a good stock of lint, bandages, and instruments. Each house has
a kitchen and cellar. Every morning a woman comes in and prepares a
large kettle of nourishing soup, and at 11 A. M. this is given out to
the sick and poor.

In the store-room are rice, sugar, coffee, meal, and similar articles of
food. From here she sends out at noon such portions as are needed for
the most destitute of the district. In winter she also sells from her
stores to the poor. Then there is a closet amply provided with sewing
materials, and when the deaconess obtains work for seamstresses she
furnishes them at a small price the necessary outfit to begin sewing. At
two o'clock the deaconess ends her duties at the district house, and
spends the remainder of the day in making visits in her quarter. To
provide means to support the constant expenditure, there is in each
quarter of the city a committee of fifteen ladies and three gentlemen,
being in all more than one hundred ladies and twenty gentlemen, who are
responsible for the administration of the charity. Each committee has a
yearly collection in its district, and in this way about forty thousand
francs are gathered annually. In each quarter nine hundred francs (one
hundred and eighty dollars) is set apart for the maintenance of the
sister and the rent of the district house. The remaining sum is expended
by the deaconesses in their several districts in caring for the sick and
destitute. Every month each one receives the sum allotted her from the
treasurer, and in return reports her expenditure. The ladies on the
committee often give personal assistance to the deaconess, and sometimes
assume responsibility for individual cases, or for an entire street. The
arrangements are constantly being improved upon as knowledge is gained
by practice. The experience that has been gathered at Muelhausen is very
practical, and therefore very valuable. Similar work could be undertaken
in any of our large American cities, with the anticipation of like
beneficent results. For that reason the above detailed description has
been ventured upon, with the hope that the Old World example will find
imitators in the New.[43] Similar institutions, although not so
carefully perfected, are found in Gorlitz and Magdeburg.

In Berlin are a good many deaconess institutions. Among them is the
Marthashof, a training-school for servants, and a home for those out of
employment.

The first impulse to care for the girls who come to large cities to
obtain work, and to provide them a home where they can have respectable
surroundings, came from Pastor Vermeil, the founder of the deaconess
house at Paris. When Fliedner visited the Paris house his heart was
touched by what he saw. He thought of the thousands of girls coming
annually to Berlin from the provinces, and of the exposures and
temptations to which they were subjected. He knew that many of them in
their ignorance and inexperience were ruined body and soul in the
lodging-houses to which they resorted, and drifted away on the streets
of the city, only to find a place eventually in the hopeless wards of
the great hospital, La Charite.

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.

By the aid of some ladies in the city the home was furnished with twelve
beds; three deaconesses were put in charge, and after perplexing
difficulties the authorization to open a registry for servants was
obtained. The idea at first met with derision. It was said that such an
institution was rightly located on "The Lost Way," for no one would ever
come to it. But they came. In two years the number of beds increased to
twenty, and the same year Fliedner purchased the entire court in which
the house stood, containing five houses and a fine garden. Queen
Elizabeth of Prussia became the patroness of the institution, and it
grew in favor with the people. A training-school was added in which the
girls were taught to wash, iron, cook, and sew, and also to work in the
garden and to care for cows, the last two branches of domestic service
being required of servant-girls in Germany. Later an infant school was
added in which nursery girls were practiced in taking charge of
children, a pleasant, helpful demeanor being made one of the requisites.
Over two hundred children, mostly coming from the poorest and gloomiest
homes, are in daily attendance. About three hundred and fifty more
attend the girls' school for children of the working classes. In the
home and training-school for servants about eight hundred girls are
received annually, and sixteen thousand have been sheltered and taught
during the years it has been open. They readily secure situations, over
two thousand applications being annually received for the servants of
the Marthashof. They remain in friendly relation to the home, receive
good counsel and advice, and are encouraged to spend their free Sundays
there.

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, "Bethanien," in Berlin, was founded by King
Frederick William IV., who as the Crown Prince took a warm interest in
Fliedner's undertakings.[44] It still remains under the protection of
the emperor, and is one of the most important mother-houses. Over three
thousand patients are annually admitted to the hospital connected with
the house, and five hundred children are treated at a dispensary devoted
solely to cases of diphtheria. Outside of the city it has thirty-three
stations. There are also the Lazarus Hospital and Deaconess Home, the
Paul Gerhardt Deaconess Home, provided for parish deaconesses, and the
Elizabeth Hospital and Home, which started independently but is now
allied to Kaiserswerth.

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.

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