H6a: Missouri pastor, a "Salzburger": F. E. Pasche's personal account

Pastor F. E. Pasche

      This continues from Part 5 (Table of Contents in Part 1) in a series that began with Walther's 1871 announcement of the republished "little book" by Matthias Hoe von Hoenegg, a book that gave instruction to south German Lutherans oppressed by Roman Catholics. — For this concluding segment, we come to the 20th century, to a pastor of the Old Missouri Synod, Pastor Frederick Emil Pasche (1872-1954). Regular readers may remember his name from my Copernicanism series as he was the most prominent pastor of the 20th century defending against Copernicanism. I learned from a library holding that Pastor Pasche had written a "Pasche Family Record" (WorldCat), and so obtained it.  It was initially written in 1947. In the first section, he goes over the history of his ancestors, an ancestry going back to the Salzburgers in East Prussia.

      There are a number of helpful histories available on the South German Lutherans and the Salzbergers. But the following is one Missouri Synod pastor’s history which was written for his own descendants, not for the benefit of a wider audience. It was written 7 years before his passing, in 1947. I am certain that he draws on other histories, but he gives them a personal touch. And it is “biased”, as the “objectivists” would call it, biased as a true Lutheran would be. — The following brief excerpts from the "Pasche Family Record" have left out much of the “Family Record”, but have retained the material of interest to, and comfort for, all true Lutherans. Excerpts from He Leadeth Me, or, The Wonderful Ways of God: the Life Story of a Lutheran Pastor:

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CHAPTER 1: My forefathers' first country.

At the time of the Lutheran Church Reformation my forefathers lived in the Austrian crownland of Salzburg, on the Eastern slopes of the Alps …

God also had blessed them quite abundantly in spiritual and heavenly things. Here the doctrines of Luther were introduced at an early period. Here Staupitz, the friend of Luther, spent the last years of his life; here Paul Speratus, Urban Rhegius, and others, spread the Gospel during the Reformation; here George Sharer [Georg Scherer, no English Wikipedia] was beheaded in 1528 for his Lutheran witness. Here Luther's Bible translation and Catechism and the Augsburg Confession were cherished and, despite all attempts of the Salzburg archbishops to extirpate Lutheranism, remained in the mountains and valleys and mines of the Alpine country.

It remained in the mountains long after the pastors were banished, through the Bible and the Lutheran writings. The miners sang the hymns of Luther and Speratus. The Lutheran books, for which the archbishops hunted, were hid in cellars and secret places in walls. …

The last edict of yet more cruel banishment was issued in 1731. Frederick William I of Prussia received twenty thousand fugitives in his kingdom, while a small number found refuge in the state of Georgia in America.

CHAPTER 2: How they were ousted from their country.

Firmian, the archbishop of Salzburg, had the most splendid palaces and gardens. He loved riches, was stingy, but given to drunkenness and wild life. When in the heat of much drink he was told that there were yet many secret heretics in his beautiful land he swore to exterminate all heretics from his land … He launched a harder persecution than ever before.

Then the Lutherans united in a firm covenant. August 5, 1731, more than a hundred of their representatives descended from the surrounding mountains to an inn at Schwarzach, were seated around a table, took salt, and made an oath never to deny the true evangelical faith, but rather be steadfast in it in life and death. …

But then and there these Lutherans also resolved to send spokesmen to all the Protestant rulers in Germany with the request to do something for them. This was emphatically done by the Prussian king who spoke for them before the Emperor and realm. The infamous archbishop Firmian … treated them as rebels who stirred up sedition and disorder, and he asked the papistic Emperor to help him subdue them. The Emperor acted as if he believed the rebellion fiction and sent six thousand soldiers "to quench the rebellion". … now they could not get away as all passes were guarded and emigration was stamped a crime which sharpened the punishment. But two men managed to slip by the guards that watched the border and got through to Berlin. Here Frederick William I received them friendly and promised them to do all he could for them on the day when they would be driven from their native country.

That day was soon to come. In November 1731, the decree of emigration was issued: All those that owned no immovable property were to leave within eight days and all owners of such property must leave within three months. This decree, too, was a shameless breach of the Westphalian Treaty of Peace according to which all were guaranteed a full three years of time before their free and unmolested departure. But this intolerant archbishop claimed that the Westphalian Treaty of 1648 was not binding in this case because, he said, these people were not mere religious renegades but rebels. How hard the lot of these poor people now became. Winter set in, but leave they must. … They were promised to be set free if they would swear off the Lutheran faith within fifteen days and again become Roman Catholic which, however, very few did.

Thus these suffering persecuted fugitives left their beloved Southern homes and wandered through foreign lands in a cold world. In several troops and at different times, from November 1731 until November 1732, thirty thousand of these people thus emigrated.

… [God] directed all these things for their best. He already had prepared a new and good place for them afar North. … Then their mouth was filled with laughter and their tongue with singing. 

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      It was good for Pasche to scoff at the false charges by Catholic leaders that the Lutherans were "rebels", calling this a "rebellion fiction". Even today's modern Salzburgers in East Prussia may be falling for this fiction. While Salzburg, Austria, may claim that it is tolerant towards Evangelicals, yet its website visit-Salzburg.net, although hosted by local people and not the government, states the following:

“Before we sound all too critical about the expulsion of Protestants: Lutheran theology was only one side of the medal; for centuries, religious conflicts were only one aspect of social and political warfare. In a Catholic state with a Bishop as the landlord, a Protestant denomination was automatically a subversive if not hostile political statement.”

Without clarification, this leaves the impression of placating its Catholic citizenry, and allowing that the Evangelicals, as Christians, were "subversive" under Catholic rule. The editors of this website may want to learn more about the "Peace of Westphalia, 1648" and why Firmian's ruling was illegal in that it did not allow the proper period of time for the emigrants to prepare. (This reasoning will likely be the reasoning used by the opponents of Christianity here in America in the future.) — In the next Part 6b, we conclude these excerpts, and this series, on South German Lutherans.