Careers of Service: The Norwegian Lutheran Deaconesses Laurann Gilbertson, Textile Curator
During the last quarter of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century, a group of dedicated Norwegian-American women organized to further the work of the Lutheran church. They were part of a larger, international Protestant movement, and they called themselves deaconesses. The office of deaconess, a life of service, was called the diaconate. A Deaconess is a Christian woman who … has a call to devote herself to works of charity and spread the Gospel in words and deeds. For her work she is properly trained and tested as to ability, knowledge and Christian character by the church through a Motherhouse.1 — Sister Lena Nelson Deaconesses have worked for the church from Biblical times to the Middle Ages. The work was revived in 1836 in Kaiserswerth, Germany, by Rev. Theodor Fliedner and his wife Friedericke. From Germany the “modern” diaconate quickly spread through Europe and Scandinavia. Sister Cathinka Guldberg trained at Kaiserswerth and was called as the first Sister Superior at a new motherhouse and hospital in Oslo. The diaconate spread more slowly to America via Fliedner and German-American minister William A. Passavant. Here several Protestant denominations, including Lutheran and Methodist, took part in the deaconess movement. Nine Lutheran motherhouses were established in the United States to train deaconesses. Norwegian motherhouses were established first in Brooklyn, then in Minneapolis and Chicago. 42
Anna Børs, wife of the Norwegian consul, and the pastors of the Norwegian Seamen’s Church in Brooklyn, invited a deaconess from Norway to work with the growing numbers of Norwegian immigrants in their Bay Ridge neighborhood. Sister Elizabeth Fedde arrived in 1883 and began work through The Voluntary Relief Society, headquartered near the Seamen’s Church. She collected and distributed food and clothing, helped immigrants find employment, placed orphaned children, nursed people in their homes, and visited them in local hospitals. She had some help from deaconesses
The Norwegian Lutheran Deaconesses’ Home and Hospital at 4th Avenue and 46th Street in Brooklyn, New York. Shortly after this photo was taken, the Board of Managers turned over the hospital to the U. S. Army from November 1918 to July 1919 to treat wounded soldiers returning from overseas. Vesterheim Archives.
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