_FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE’S ALMA MATER AND ITS FOUNDER_
Enrolled a Deaconess at Kaiserswerth--Paster Fliedner--His Early
Life--Becomes Pastor at Kaiserswerth--Interest in Prison
Reform--Starts a Small Penitentiary for Discharged Female
Prisoners--Founds a School and the Deaconess Hospital--Rules for
Deaconesses--Marvellous Extension of his Work--His Death--Miss
Nightingale’s Tribute.
Just precepts thus from great examples given,
She drew from them what they derived from Heaven.
POPE.
The year 1849 proved a memorable one in the career of Florence
Nightingale, for it was then that she enrolled herself as a voluntary
nurse in the Deaconess Institution at Kaiserswerth on the Rhine, which
may be described as her Alma Mater. It was the first training school
for sick nurses established in modern times, and it seems a happy
conjunction of circumstances that she who was destined to hold the
blue riband of the nursing sisterhood of the world should have studied
within its walls.
[Illustration: PASTOR FLIEDNER, FOUNDER OF KAISERSWERTH.]
Although she had already gained valuable insight into hospital work and
management during her visits to various hospitals at home and abroad,
it was not until she came to Kaiserswerth that she found her ideals
realised. Here was a Protestant institution which had all the good
points of the Roman Catholic sisterhoods without their restrictions.
It further commended itself as being under the guidance of Pastor
Fliedner, a man of simple and devoted piety and a born philanthropist.
He had had the perspicacity to see that the world needed the services
of trained women to grapple with the evils of vice and disease, and to
this end he revived the office of deaconess which had been instituted
by the early Christian Church. The idea of training women to minister
to the sick and the poor seems natural enough to-day, but in Miss
Nightingale’s young womanhood it was entirely novel. The district nurse
had not then been invented. The Kaiserswerth institution combined
hospital routine and instruction with beneficent work among the poor
and the outcast.
Pastor Fliedner, the founder, was indeed a kindred spirit, and it
seems fitting to give a little account of the man who exercised such
a remarkable influence over our heroine in the days of her probation.
Theodore Fliedner was just twenty years her senior, having been born
in 1800 at Eppstein, a small village near the Rhine. He was “a son
of the manse,” both his father and grandfather having been Lutheran
clergymen. At an early age he showed a desire to become a power for
good in the world, and his sensitive feelings were much hurt when a
child, by his father playfully calling him “the little beer-brewer” on
account of his plump round figure. The jest caused little Theodore much
heart-searching and made him feel that his nature must be very carnal
and in need of great discipline. In these days he would probably have
resorted to Sandow’s exercises or a bicycle.
Of course Theodore was poor and had to work his way from school to
college. He studied at the Universities of Giessen and Göttingen,
giving instruction in return for food and lodging, and was not above
doing manual labour also. He sawed wood, blacked boots, and did other
odd jobs. He also mended his own clothes, but in a somewhat primitive
fashion, for in a letter to his mother he says that he sewed up the
holes in his trousers with white thread which he afterwards inked over.
His vacations were spent in tramping long distances and subsisting on
the barest necessaries of life, in order to gain an acquaintance with
the world. He studied foreign languages, read widely, and as a college
student showed the after bent of his mind by collecting songs and
games for children which later were used in his own kindergarten, and
have spread throughout the world. He also learned the use of herbs and
acquired much homely knowledge on the treatment of disease.
After leaving college he became tutor in a private family at Cologne,
and the mother of his pupils took his deportment in hand. Possibly
this lady had physical culture views about the rotundity of his figure.
However, Theodore in speaking of the benefit derived from lessons in
deportment quaintly confesses that “gentle ways and polite manners help
greatly to further the kingdom of God.” While at Cologne he assisted
a clergyman of the place in parish work, and occasionally preached
in the prison, thus gaining an insight into the unhappy condition of
discharged prisoners which inspired his later beneficent work on their
behalf.
When he had reached the age of twenty-two, Theodore Fliedner received a
call to become the pastor of a struggling Protestant community at the
little town of Kaiserswerth on the Rhine, near Düsseldorf, which he
accepted. At Eppstein, his native village, he was ordained, surrounded
by a delighted family circle. It is characteristic that the young
pastor set out on foot for Kaiserswerth, and arrived before he was
expected in order to save his parishioners the expense of giving him a
reception.
His position was humbler even than Goldsmith’s Vicar, for he received
the modest yearly stipend of 180 thaler (£27), and had to share the
parsonage with the mother of his predecessor, while in order to relieve
his own widowed mother he took two younger brothers and a sister to
live with him. Hardly was his modest household arranged, than a
velvet-factory upon which the Protestant population of Kaiserswerth
depended failed, and the young pastor found himself with a destitute
flock. He received two other calls, but his heart was fixed at
Kaiserswerth, and he determined to set forth staff in hand like the
Apostles, and tramp through the Protestant countries seeking aid for
his people. He visited Germany, Holland, and England, and received help
and encouragement.
The most important friendship which the young Lutheran pastor made in
London was with Elizabeth Fry. The work of this noble philanthropist
amongst the prisoners of Newgate was a revelation to him, and he
returned to his parish of Kaiserswerth burning with zeal to do
something for the prisoners of his own land. He began work in the
neighbouring prison of Düsseldorf, where he became a regular visitor
and started services. On June 26th, 1826, he was instrumental in
founding at Düsseldorf the first German society for improving prison
discipline.
The great problem which confronted him was how to protect the
discharged female prisoners from the life of evil to which their
unhappy circumstances drove them when the term of their imprisonment
ended. They had as a rule neither home nor protector, and were cast
upon the world with the prisoner’s brand upon them. He determined to
devote himself to the rescue and protection of these unfortunate women.
In September of 1833 he began his experiment by preparing with his own
hands an old summer-house, some twelve feet square, which stood in a
retired part of his garden as a refuge for discharged female prisoners.
He protected it from wind and rain, made it clean and habitable, and
placing there a bed, a table, and a chair, prayed that God would direct
some outcast wanderer to its shelter. One night a poor forlorn woman
presented herself, and the pastor and his good wife led her to the
room prepared. This destitute creature housed in the old summer-house
was practically the inauguration of the now famous Kaiserswerth
institution. In the course of the winter nine other women voluntarily
sought the refuge, and the work went forward until a new separate
building was erected near the pastor’s house, having its own garden and
field and affording accommodation for twenty women. Madame Fliedner,
the founder’s wife, and Mademoiselle Göbel, a voluntary helper, had
charge of the penitentiary.
Some of the women had children, and Pastor Fliedner’s next step was
to start an infant school on very much the same lines as a modern
kindergarten. Now it was that the children’s games and songs which
it had been his hobby to collect during his tramps abroad when a
college student became of use. Teachers were needed for the increasing
school, and in course of time a Normal school for the training of
infant-school mistresses was started.
[Illustration: MISS NIGHTINGALE.
(_From the bust at Claydon._)
This bust was presented to Miss Nightingale by the soldiers after the
Crimean War, and was executed by the late Sir John Steele.
[_To face p. 61._
]
However, the idea which most actively dominated the pastor’s mind was
the training of women in hospital work and to tend the poor. In his
parish of Kaiserswerth there was much poverty and incompetence amongst
the people and no provision for dealing with disease. Three years after
he had founded the penitentiary for discharged female prisoners, as
already described, he started his more important venture of founding
a hospital for the reception of poor patients and for the training of
nurses or deaconesses.
On October 13th, 1836, the “Deaconess Hospital, Kaiserswerth,” was
opened, practically without patients and without deaconesses. For
his hospital the pastor had secured a part of the deserted factory,
the stopping of which had plunged his people into destitution in the
first year of his pastorate--a singular example of the realisation of
poetic justice. He fitted the “wards” with mended furniture, cracked
earthenware, and such utensils as he could beg. His stock of linen
embraced only six sheets. But cleanliness cost nothing, and the
hospital certainly had that. On the Sunday morning after the opening
the first patient, a poor suffering servant girl, knocked at the door
for admittance. Four other sick persons came during the month, and in
the course of a year sixty patients had been received in the primitive
hospital, and funds were coming in for the support of the work.
Almost simultaneously with the patients came the nurses. First a
solitary candidate presented herself for training as a deaconess and
several probationers followed. In the course of a year seven nurses
had entered the institution. There was nothing haphazard about their
admission, for the pastor, when he instituted his order of Protestant
deaconesses, made a simple code of rules. No deaconess was to be under
twenty-five years of age, and although she was engaged for a term of
five years, she was free to leave at any moment. The candidates were
solemnly received into the community and consecrated to their work by
the laying on of hands by the pastor, who invoked a final blessing in
the words: “May God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, three
Persons in one God, bless you; may He stablish you in the Truth until
death, and give you hereafter the Crown of Life. Amen.”
The dress of the deaconesses is very quaint and simple, but not
unbecoming. It consists of a plain blue cotton gown, a white apron,
large white turned-down collar, and a white muslin cap surrounding the
face in the old style and tied under the chin with a large bow. The
young girl probationers look very sweet and attractive in the cap,
which has a tendency to heighten the beauty of a fresh young face while
it seems singularly appropriate to the elderly women who have passed
from active service to the Home of Rest, later provided.
Unlike their Roman Catholic sisters, the Kaiserswerth deaconesses were
not fettered by a vow. Their vocation was to be the servants of Christ
and the servants of the sick and poor. They could at any time return
to their families if their services were needed, and were at liberty
to marry, but not to remain in the hospital afterwards, as it was
considered that the new ties would interfere with entire devotion to
their work.
Pastor Fliedner was a man of social instincts and had himself married
twice. His first wife lived only a short time, and the story of his
second wooing is quaintly told in his journal. He went to Hamburg
to ask Amalia Sieveking to take charge of a deaconess home. She was
unable to comply with the request, but recommended in her place a
young friend and pupil, Caroline Bertheau, who had been nursing in the
Hamburg Hospital. The pastor was so pleased with the substitute that
he offered her the choice of either taking charge of a deaconess home
or becoming his wife. Caroline demurely elected to do both. They were
married at once, and spent their honeymoon in Berlin for the purpose
of establishing the first five deaconesses in the Charité Hospital,
returning in due course to Kaiserswerth, where the young wife became
the Deaconess Mother of the institution and the devoted helpmeet of her
husband in all his after-work.
But to return to the training of the deaconesses. After the institution
had become established in all its branches, a candidate decided on
entering whether she wished to train as a teacher or as a nurse, and
was enrolled in the _Krankenschwestern_ or _Lehrschwestern_ according
to her choice. Each probationer goes through a course of practical
housework. She learns to cook, sew, iron, and scrub by taking a share
in the menial work of the hospital, and this fits her to be of real
help when she comes to enter the homes of the poor. The probationer
also has instruction in simple book-keeping, letter-writing, and
reading aloud. After she has gone through the general course, she
goes into particular training according to her choice. If she desires
to become a nurse, she enters the surgical and medical wards of the
hospital; and if a teacher, she trains in the kindergarten and the
other schools.
The Kaiserswerth deaconesses receive no salaries, the primary idea
being that they should give themselves to the work. They have free
board and are supplied each year with two blue cotton gowns and two
aprons, and every five years with a new blue woollen gown and a black
alpaca apron for best wear. They receive at intervals new outdoor
dress, which consists of long black cloaks and black bonnets which fit
closely over the white cap. If a deaconess has private property, she
retains the full control of it, and on her death it reverts to her
nearest of kin unless she has otherwise disposed of it by will. Each
deaconess is allowed a small sum for pocket money.
During the first ten years of the founding of Kaiserswerth Pastor
Fliedner spread his system of deaconesses until he had established
sixty nurses in twenty-five different centres, and calls were coming
from all sides. In 1849 he resigned his pastorate in order to journey
about establishing branch houses in different parts of the world. His
first long journey was to the United States, to conduct deaconesses
to Dr. Passavant’s German parish at Pittsburg; and the second was to
Jerusalem, where he founded a “mother house” with four deaconesses on
Mount Zion in a building given by the King of Prussia. This branch
undertakes to nurse all sick persons irrespective of creed, and forms a
training school for nurses in the East.
From Jerusalem he proceeded to Constantinople, established a branch
there, and then proceeded to Alexandria, Beyrout, Smyrna, Bucharest,
and other places. He had already started a deaconess home in London.
The institutions spread rapidly through Germany, and to-day there
is scarcely a town of any size in the Fatherland which has not its
deaconess home which sends nurses to the poor without charge and
supplies middle-class families at moderate fees. The last years of the
pastor’s life were passed in bodily suffering, but he still kept his
hand on the helm. His last work was to found at Kaiserswerth a Home
of Rest for retired deaconesses. The good man was much cheered not
only by the marvellous extension of his work--he left behind him a
hundred houses attended by four hundred and thirty deaconesses--but at
the fruit which seeds of his sowing had produced in the heart of the
English lady who became the heroine of the Crimean War. It was with
peculiar interest that he followed the work of Florence Nightingale in
that campaign, for her deeds shed a reflected lustre on her Alma Mater.
On October 4th, 1864, Pastor Fliedner, to use Miss Nightingale’s words,
“passed to his _glorious_ rest.” Almost his last words were: “As I
look back upon my life, I appreciate how full it has been of blessings;
every heart-beat should have been gratitude and every breath praise.”
Commenting upon his work, Miss Nightingale made this characteristic
summary: “Pastor Fliedner began his work with two beds under a roof,
not with a castle in the air, and Kaiserswerth is now diffusing its
blessings and its deaconesses over almost every Protestant land.”