About Der Lutheraner

Der Lutheraner

Der Lutheraner was a German-language Lutheran newspaper published in St. Louis, Missouri. Its first issue appeared on September 7, 1844, under the editorship of C. F. W. Walther, pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church in St. Louis. The title meant simply The Lutheran, and the paper carried a confessional motto proclaiming that God's word and Luther's teaching would endure. At a time when German immigrants were the largest immigrant group arriving in the United States and were settling heavily in the Midwest, Der Lutheraner gave scattered German-speaking Lutherans a common printed voice. It rallied readers who held to the historic Lutheran confessions, helped them find one another across great distances, and led directly to the founding of a new church body in 1847. The paper then continued for well over a century, serving as an official publication of that church body until its final issue in late 1974.

Founding in St. Louis in 1844

Walther began publishing Der Lutheraner on September 7, 1844, at considerable financial sacrifice on the part of his Trinity congregation in St. Louis. His stated hope was to explain Lutheran theology to German American immigrants in the United States. Many of those immigrants were, in the paper's own early assessment, in an orphaned condition: they still called themselves Lutheran, but they were scattered, often poor, and in many places unable to organize congregations or call pastors of their own confession. Der Lutheraner was created to answer that need. It taught, it connected, and it argued that confessional Lutherans in America were not alone. The response exceeded the founders' expectations, and readers in other German Lutheran settlements recognized in the St. Louis paper a standard around which they could gather.

C. F. W. Walther and the Saxon Background

Carl Ferdinand Wilhelm Walther (1811–1887) had come to Missouri with the Saxon Lutheran immigration. He left Germany in 1838 with a group of Saxons seeking religious freedom in America, and the immigrants settled in St. Louis and in Perry County, Missouri. After the removal of their leader, Martin Stephan, following a scandal, the colonists were deeply shaken and unsure whether they could still consider themselves a church. In the Altenburg Debate of April 1841, Walther persuaded the lay leader Marbach and most of the colonists that they could validly regard themselves as a church, that the local congregation possessed the Office of the Keys, and that it had authority to call and, when necessary, to discharge its pastors. Walther then accepted a call to Trinity congregation in St. Louis, the congregation his late brother had served, and remained its pastor from May 1841 until his death on May 7, 1887. He also helped found the log-cabin college of 1839 that became Concordia Seminary in St. Louis. Der Lutheraner grew directly out of this history: the principles worked out in the Saxon settlements were the principles the paper carried to the wider German Lutheran world.

A Paper That Built a Synod

The most consequential chapter in the paper's history came within three years of its founding. Der Lutheraner helped scattered confessional Lutherans organize a new fellowship of churches. Wilhelm Löhe in Germany and his men, and pastors such as Friedrich Wyneken, responded warmly to what they read in the paper; readers later recalled that it gave them courage to approach the Saxons about a closer union. A tentative constitution for a new synod was worked out in meetings in St. Louis and printed in Der Lutheraner. On April 26, 1847, twelve pastors representing sixteen German Lutheran congregations met at First St. Paul's Lutheran Church in Chicago and formed the German Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States — the body later known as The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod. Walther was elected its first president, and Der Lutheraner was formally made the official publication of the young synod. At the founding, the church body included only a small company of pastors and congregations; by Walther's death forty years later it had grown to hundreds of congregations and hundreds of thousands of baptized members, a growth in which its founding newspaper had played a central organizing role.

Confessional Purpose and Content

Der Lutheraner was unapologetically confessional. It opposed what Walther regarded as the faulty thinking of American Lutheranism of the day — movements that wanted Lutherans to adopt the practices of other Protestant groups, such as camp meetings, non-liturgical worship and revival methods. Against those pressures, the paper defended the Lutheran confessions contained in the Book of Concord and argued for unity and purity of doctrine. At the same time, it was written for laypeople as well as pastors. It explained theology in the language its immigrant readers spoke at home, reported on the life of congregations, and strengthened the ties among confessional Lutherans across the United States. That combination of doctrinal argument and practical church news is what made it more than a theological journal: it was the family paper of a forming church body.

Printers, Publishers and a Sister Journal

The paper's production history traces the institutional growth of its church. Walther began publication in September 1844 using the St. Louis printing firm of Weber and Olhausen, which also printed the German newspaper Anzeiger des Westens; that arrangement ended in 1850 because of differences in outlook. Moritz Niedner printed the paper from 1850 to 1857, and the firm of Wiebusch printed it from 1857 until 1869, when Concordia Publishing House was established and took over the synod's publishing work. In 1853 the synod established Lehre und Wehre as a theological journal for the clergy, which allowed Der Lutheraner to be aimed more directly at the laity. The two periodicals together — one scholarly, one popular — formed the twin pillars of Missouri Synod publishing in German, and Walther led the publication of both traditions.

Frequency, Circulation and Language Change

For most of its life Der Lutheraner was published semi-monthly. Its circulation rose with the synod it served, reaching its largest figure of 40,000 copies in 1922. Even then, however, the balance of languages in the synod was shifting. The English-language Lutheran Witness, begun in 1882, had already drawn level with Der Lutheraner in circulation by 1916 and overtook it after the First World War; by 1922 the Witness counted a circulation in the hundreds of thousands. The Missouri Synod had begun as an exclusively German-language church body, but English ultimately became predominant within it. Der Lutheraner therefore settled into the role of a cherished but shrinking German-language voice, published for the diminishing number of members who still read their church paper in German.

The Final Decades and the Last Issue

After the Second World War, Der Lutheraner appeared only bimonthly, as the number of German speakers in the synod declined. German-language works continued to be published by Concordia Publishing House into the 1970s, and Der Lutheraner was the most venerable of them. Its final issue was the November–December 1974 number. The last run was small — reported at roughly 2,400 to 2,700 copies — and many of those copies went abroad: to members of the Independent Evangelical-Lutheran Church (SELK) in Germany, the synod's German sister church, and to subscribers in countries including Brazil, Finland and Canada. A paper founded to gather German Lutherans in America thus ended its 130-year run still serving German-speaking Lutherans, many of them now outside the United States.

Legacy

Der Lutheraner holds a distinctive place in American religious journalism because it did not merely report on a church — it helped create one. Histories of the Missouri Synod consistently treat the paper and its founder as key components in introducing the idea of an umbrella church for Lutherans in America and the Midwest. Its pages carried the draft constitution of the synod, articulated the congregational principles that still shape Missouri Synod polity, and gave isolated immigrants the confidence that, in Wyneken's grateful response to reading it, there were still true Lutherans in America. For researchers, its long run from 1844 to 1974 is a primary record of German American Lutheran life: sermons, doctrinal debates, congregational news and the long transition from German to English inside one of America's largest Lutheran bodies. Few American church papers can claim a founding role so direct, or a lifespan so long.

At a Glance

Der Lutheraner was founded in St. Louis, Missouri, on September 7, 1844, by C. F. W. Walther. It was published in German, was made the official publication of the German Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States — now The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod — at that body's founding in 1847, and was printed successively by Weber and Olhausen, by Moritz Niedner, by Wiebusch, and from 1869 by Concordia Publishing House. Semi-monthly for most of its life and bimonthly after the Second World War, it reached a peak circulation of 40,000 in 1922 and ceased with its November–December 1974 issue.