They held a birthday party for Louis Edward Nollau in November. The great preacher, servant to the needy in St. Louis, and a key figure in the history of the United Church of Christ didn’t attend. It was, after all, his 200th birthday.
But the spirit of the minister who came to the U.S. from Germany presided at the two-day event at Eden Theological Seminary in St. Louis. And, thanks to a renewed and wider appreciation of Nollau’s legacy, that spirit is more energized than ever.
CHHSM and other organizations sponsored the weekend gathering on Nov. 5 and 6 to give thanks for Nollau’s acts of charity and leadership in the mid-19th century and to mark his rebirth in the 21st century. The event included presentations on Nollau’s life and teachings, first-time meetings of his descendants from Iowa and Illinois, and even an impersonation of the man complete with period clothing.
Marilyn Stavenger, an Eden Seminary professor emeritus who coordinated the event, said it cast light on a figure whose accomplishments were not as well known as they should be.
“People now know a lot more about Louis Edward Nollau,” she said. “Certainly the name is not unknown now because of the event.”
Nancy Nollau Mack, Nollau’s great-granddaughter and Eden Seminary graduate, preached at a special worship service. Her subject was Christ’s injunction: “If you love me, feed my sheep.”
Mack, 64, grew up Catholic and joined the United Church of Christ “just accidentally without ever knowing it was the church of my heritage.” A social worker before entering the seminary, she was impressed to learn how her great-grandfather reached out to people, seeing only their need.
Mack noted that he founded a St. Louis hospital that accepted people without regard to race or creed. “I thought that was pretty amazing for 1857 in a slave state,” she said.
Nollau came to America intending to go to the Oregon Territory as a missionary to the Indians, but he never made it to the Great Northwest. He was delayed in St. Louis by a traveling companion’s fatal illness and decided to settle there.
He preached to German immigrants, founded churches, an orphanage, Evangelical Children’s Home (known today as Every Child’s Hope), Good Samaritan Hospital, and Eden Seminary.
In 1840, he called together five other Evangelical pastors from the area to form The German Evangelical “Church Society of the West” (the Kirchenverein). It later became the Evangelical Synod of North America, one of the elements of what would become the United Church of Christ.
After his death, Nollau faded into history and relative obscurity until Christoph Ernst, a German researcher poring through the archives at Eden Seminary in 1997 marveled at the man, his works and a detail — both he and Nollau came from the same small town in Germany: Reichenbach. Ernst brought the news back to his hometown that their native son had become a great man in America.
The German town, where the church of Nollau’s baptism still stands, responded by restoring Nollau’s home into a museum. A delegation from Wisconsin and Eden Seminary went to Reichenbach in July for an initial birthday celebration, which included a ribbon-cutting by Mack and the village mayor to open the museum.
For the St. Louis event, Reichenbach sent a delegation of 12. The Germans visited Nollau’s gravesite and three churches he founded or pastored. They examined his writings and belongings in the Eden Seminary archives, including his desk and Bible, which contains his personal notes in the margins.
The Germans also added to the Nollau legacy. They presented the seminary with a specially commissioned carved angel based on a figure that appears on the baptismal font where Nollau was baptized.
Bryan Sickbert, CHHSM’s president and CEO, and Mike Brennan, CHHSM board member and executive director of Every Child’s Hope, represented the association at the event.
Click on the links below to read presentations from the event:
- “Historical Perspectives on Diaconal Ministry" (PDF) by Richard P. Ellerbrake
- “Diakonia for the 21st Century” (PDF) by Gary Gunderson
- “The Life of Edward Louis Nollau: A Family Story” (PDF) by Nancy Nollau Mack
- “Louis Edward Nollau and the ‘Evangelical Catechism’” (PDF) by Frederick R. Trost
