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Saturday, December 31, 2022

Denkstein, Memorial Stone: Old Missouri @ 75 years

Prof. George Mezger (1857–1931)
      In 1922, 100 years ago, the Old Missouri Synod celebrated its 75th anniversary — 1847 to 1922.  Prof. George Mezger edited the commemorative book of essays which carried the German title of Denkstein, or Memorial Stone. — This past year the LC-MS celebrated its 175th anniversary, implying that they are the rightful heir to the Old Missouri Synod's heritage from its beginning. Because Mezger's book is such a milestone in church history, I determined that it deserved to be translated into English so that English speakers could get a better history than those presented to them by the historians of the later LC-MS.  
 
Denkstein title page
Why read Memorial Stone (Denkstein)? 
One will find many topics covered that shed light on the transitioning of the Synod during the Twentieth Century. For example:
— Those interested in the language question for the Synod and especially the importance of German, will find answers on pages 192 f., and 200 ff. 
— Those interested in the relationship of the Old Missouri Synod with Pastor Wilhelm Loehe will find helpful information in chapters 2 and 3.
— Those who have purchased the new CPH/CHI book The Emigration of the Saxon Lutherans in the Year 1838, an English translation of Pastor Koestering's German original, will find the references to it interesting.
— This book complements the readings of the English translations of Der Lutheraner and Pastor Hochstetter's History.
— The planned Lutheran classical school in Wyoming would do well to study the chapter on "Our congregational school system" and others.
— The unknown LC-MS blogger who wrote a plea for a new "Walther League" and its "Short History" would benefit from the chapter "Our Synod's work with confirmed youth" of 100 years ago. 
— For those that don't believe the reports of racism in Old Missouri, the chapter "Our Negro Mission" will benefit.
— For those interested in a hearty laugh (I laughed outloud), will want to read the last sentences of page 204 to the top of page 205.
      There are many valuable pictures and images presented in this book but I chose to use my own scans of the book to OCR it and my scans did not do justice to the photos of people.  So to compensate for this, I hyperlinked the page numbers of pages with photos to their matching page in Google Books so that one could click on the page number to quickly view a much better image.
      Now I present an English translation by DeepL with some corrections and several hyperlinks added.  The translation is not perfect, especially at page breaks and paragraph breaks, yet it is quite understandable:
A better way to view this is to download the PDF file from the Internet Archive site HERE.  Also the DOCX file for the English translation is available HERE. The formatted German text is available HERE.
      May the work of the Lord who so richly blessed the Old Missouri Synod be praised and honored by the reading of this book by a much wider audience.  Soli Deo Gloria!

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