Der Lutheraner, "Post-Walther Years", in English (Part 1 of ?)

[2022-07-18: The download for vol. 54 (1898) PDF has been corrected to English.]

      This blog post is a sequel to last year's post that published "The Walther Years" of Der Lutheraner. I wanted to see how the Missouri Synod transitioned from Walther's spiritual leadership in its primary publication to the congregations and members.  Although the early years of this second period continued in Walther's footsteps, at the turn of the century I detected a gradual change to less polemics.  And although Prof. Ludwig Fuerbringer provided much useful reporting in the later years up to 1934, he is distinctly milder in this respect. In all of my reading of Missouri Synod history, I don't recall a single instance of his involvement in negotiations with other erring Lutheran synods, American or abroad. Unfortunately this paved the way for the unionism that history shows in the years up to the 1974 Walkout. — In this period, one meets with, along with Fuerbringer, editors Martin Guenther, A. L. Graebner, Edward Pardieck, Theodore Graebner, J. T. Mueller and others.

      Without delaying further, I present the following downloads for the 47 years after Walther's passing:

- - - - - - -  Der Lutheraner, "The Post Walther Years", 1888–1934, in English  - - - - - - - -

Vol.

Year

DOCX 2-col.

DOCX 1-col.

PDF (EN)

Vol.

Year

DOCX 2-col.

DOCX 1-col.

PDF (EN)

Vol.

Year

DOCX2-col.

DOCX 1-col.

PDF (EN)

44

1888

*

*

*

60

1904

*

*

*

76

1920

*

*

*

45

1889

*

*

*

61

1905

*

*

*

77

1921

*

*

*

46

1890

*

*

*

62

1906

*

*

*

78

1922

*

*

*

47

1891

*

*

*

63

1907

*

*

*

79

1923

*

*

*

48

1892

*

*

*

64

1908

*

*

*

80

1924

*

*

*

49

1893

*

*

*

65

1909

*

*

*

81

1925

*

*

*

50

1894

*

*

*

66

1910

*

*

*

82

1926

*

*

*

51

1895

*

*

*

67

1911

*

*

*

83

1927

*

*

*

52

1896

*

*

*

68

1912

*

*

*

84

1928

*

*

*

53

1897

*

*

*

69

1913

*

*

*

85

1929

*

*

*

54

1898

*

*

*

70

1914

*

*

*

86

1930

*

*

*

55

1899

*

*

*

71

1915

*

*

*

87

1931

*

*

*

56

1900

*

*

*

72

1916

*

*

*

88

1932

*

*

*

57

1901

*

*

*

73

1917

*

*

*

89

1933

*

*

*

58

1902

*

*

*

74

1918

*

*

*

90

1934

*

*

*

59

1903

*

*

*

75

1919

*

*

*

The DOCX links are direct links to my Google Drive while the PDF links point to uploads on Archive.org and may be downloaded from there.  Also one will find on Archive that I have updated all the uploads of the original German publication which are now text searchable in the original German (available here). — The German text files (DOCX) can be downloaded in 1 Zip file: (1) exact format, (text boxes, 190MB) and (2) plain format (no text boxes, 140MB). These are suitable, after splitting into files no larger than 1 million characters, to send to DeepL for translations into languages other than English.

     

 Notable things to look for during the "Post-Walther" period:

• Dr./Prof./President Franz Pieper: His writings were more prominent in the earlier years of this period but sadly quite sparse in the later years.  
• Carl Manthey Zorn (C. M. Z.) stands out as the most prolific orthodox writer for this second period.  The history of his leaving the Leipzig-East India Mission to flee to the orthodoxy of Walther and the Missouri Synod was just the beginning of an amazing career with the Old Missouri Synod and I plan to publish more of his works.  Franz Pieper recommended a writing of Manthey-Zorn defending the contentious doctrine of the Election of Grace, a major signal that Manthey-Zorn clung to the orthodox doctrine for his entire life.  Look for his many writings among the essays, but not in the news blurbs.  He and Prof. Friedrich Bente stand the closest to Pieper.  Although not a teacher, he was prolific in authoring orthodox and interesting books published by CPH, Northwestern, and Heermann in Zwickau, Germany.
• President Friedrich Pfotenhauer (F. Pf.) also stands out as a contributor during his years of presidency (1911–1935).  I quit scanning Der Lutheraner after the 1934 volume because Pfotenhauer would soon be replaced by the disastrous presidency of Pastor J. W. Behnken, and because English became the dominant language in the Synod.
• World War I: This period contains the war years, July 1914—November, 1918, against Germany.  I have yet to read much of this material to be able to comment on it, but I plan to study it.
• Missions news: Most, if not all of these, were scanned.  Especially the "Negro" and China Missions were of interest to me, so these should be complete in the volumes above. Forget practically all LC-MS historical reports on early mission activities, like F. Dean Lueking's heterodox Mission in the Making (1964) [2024-11-23 updated link] and  Wm. Danker's comments in Moving Frontiers [2024-11-23 updated link] – just read the Der Lutheraner reports. (A wonderful  exception to this is Hermann Koppelmann's 1951 essay)
• Church news: I believe this was covered better in Lehre und Wehre where the pure doctrine was stoutly defended and erring statements of opponents were pointed out.  Still the news items are of great interest, including items on the anti-Christian lodges and the Ku Klux Klan.
• Book reviews: These were helpful in assessing the value of the publications during this period whether from CPH, Northwestern Publishing, or others. These book reviews were always scanned.

Technical notes on the scanning, OCRing, proofing, formatting, and machine translation:

Years 1900-1934 did not have split page scans due to smaller page size, so each original page is intact. However as the years progressed, pages were omitted from scanning due to decreasing interest. And computer storage was more expensive at the time of scanning, and the interest in later years, especially 1900-1930, was not as high as in the 19th century.  ● OCR notes: All Latin and English fonts had to be manually inserted due to a limitation of the OCR software. Also emphasized words of some writing were manually underlined. ● Proofing notes: In each issue, the proofing was largely done on the main content and not on treasury reports and business matters.  In the case of essays by Franz Pieper, the emphasized words in spaced lettering ("Sperrdruck") were manually underlined to follow the original emphasis, since Fraktur printing did not have underlining. This was generally only done on the essays by Franz Pieper; PDF download files may not show all of the text due to text overrun in text boxes, whereas the DOCX files will include all of the text that was OCR'd and translated. ● Pictures were scanned in 1-bit mode, not "gray scale" so they are not very good, but yielded a compact file size.  Exceptions to this of the more notable pictures were taken from the Google Books scans, especially the pictures of the Missouri Synod fathers and those of the "Negro Mission".

DeepL Translator mistranslations that were not always corrected (this listing is not exhaustive):

"Father" (or "priest" sometimes) should be "Pastor" (DeepL follows Roman Catholic practice)  ●  "JEsu" should be "Jesus"  ●  "communities" or "municipality" or "church" should be "congregations / congregation" much of the time, but not always.  ●  "beatifying" or "beatific" should be "saving"; "beatification" should be "salvation"  ●  "Praese" should be "President"; "Praeses" - "presidents"  ●  "D." should be "Dr." if used as a prefix to a name.  ●  "synodal" should be either "synodical" or "synod's"  ●  "Regiment" or "regimental" should be "government" or "governmental"  ●  "Speech" should be "address"  ●  "justice" should be mostly "righteousness"  ● "communion" should sometimes be "fellowship"  ●  "2c." should be "etc."  ●  Page/column/paragraph breaks and even misspellings are handled admirably by the DeepL Translator, but not perfectly.  Sometimes mistranslations or loss of content happens at these points.  Happily these are less than one might expect.  ●  The DeepL translator attempted to leave proper names untranslated, but not always successfully. To search for these, it may be better to search the German text in case the translator attempted to translate the proper name into an English word, e.g. "sugar" should be left "Zucker" in some cases.

- - - - - - - - - - - -  Table of Contents  - - - - - - - - - - - - 

Intro 1: Pfotenhauer's essay on Der Lutheraner's service to the Missouri Synod

Intro 2: What if… all of Der Lutheraner was in English?

Part 1: This introduction with downloads

Part 2a: Fuerbringer's external history of Der Lutheraner

       2b: Walther, then Guenther

       2c: List of Editors: A. L. Graebner, L. Fuerbringer, E. Pardieck, Theo. Graebner

Part 3a: The first 3 editors of Der Lutheraner, by "J. S.": first Walther, 

       3b: …then Martin Guenther ("guarded pure doctrine"),

            Excursus: Guenther's book Dr. C. F. W. Walther, A Life Portrait, now in English

       3c: then A. L. Graebner

            Excursus: Walther reviews Gräbner's 1883 book on Martin Luther.

Part 4a: DL (1933) Book Review of CPH posthumous book of Pieper's great convention essays

       4b: German man: "we are to be mourned, not he" — on Pieper’s passing

Part 5: How can one become a Lutheran? (Der Lutheraner 1917)

Part 6a: Bente on a hot topic, “No Men in the Church.”, (Der Lutheraner, 1899)

       6b: “No Men” – Methodist vs Lutheran preaching & practice

Part 7a: Lochner defends Luther's “Pope and Turk" hymn (against LC-MS); Der Lutheraner 1894

       7b: “few believe Pope is Antichrist”; Catholics stifle; Lutheran strength, weakness

            Excursus: "Carl Vehse": LC-MS change on Antichrist doctrine, with documentation

            Excursus II: "Carl Vehse" Part II: LC-MS change on Antichrist doctrine

       7c: Spangenberg; Schaff: "no longer appropriate"; Lochner: "Pope and Turk remain"

       7d: Harrison vs. Lochner - a comparison; another question for Carver

Part 8: Der Lutheraner, Walther Years: multi-column format (downloads)

Part 9: