The first Lutherans to immigrate to the United States faced many uphill battles, even in their own home country. Yet, they held fast to the Gospel and knew that in order to continue their worship they had to settle somewhere new, no matter the cost. See how these first immigrants brought Lutheran music and instruments to the Americas below.
This blog post is adapted from Portraits in American Lutheran Sacred Music, 1847–1947, by Benjamin Kolodziej.
Much of the impetus for the Saxon Immigration resulted from the decree of King Frederick William III of Prussia in 1817 that churches in his domain, whether Lutheran or Reformed, were now subject to a union of doctrine and practice:
This salutary union, which has been so loudly desired for so long and always attempted in vain, whereby the Reformed Church does not become Lutheran, and the Lutheran does not become Reformed, but both become one new, living, evangelical Christian Church in the spirit of its founder. Nothing by nature may stand in the way of this effort if both parties earnestly and honestly want it in a Christian sense.1
Difficulties that Pushed Lutherans to America
The Saxons, while not encumbered in the same way as the Prussians, dealt with similar constraints on their spiritual liberty. While this sad history has been narrated elsewhere, one of the immigrants, Rev. G. A. Schieferdecker, then a candidate for ordination and an eventual settler in Perry County, Missouri, recalled further the reasons for the Lutheran exodus:
There was nothing typical about this emigration. The majority of people, who composed this group, were not going to America to find their fortune. Many of them were quite wealthy. The greater portion of these people were landowners and trademen [sic] along with merchants, artists and civil servants. Many gave up distinct advantages which they could never hope to find again and many dissolved familial ties with people who were dear to their hearts. Most left with the intention of finding something higher and greater than all the advantages their fatherland, their wealth and their families could offer them if they stayed. Most of these people had not only been thoroughly convinced by God’s word but had been made to see through repentance and faith just how empty and hopeless their lives in this world had become. They had suffered emnity [sic] and persecution because of their faith and had hoped to find refuge in America so they could live quiet and peaceful lives in accordance with God’s word and they could cultivate the precious gem of pure teaching for their children and grandchildren.2
Schieferdecker’s account reiterates the importance of orthodoxy to these immigrants who were seeking a place to “cultivate” the teaching of the Gospel to their families, arguably the main priority of those who would form the Missouri Synod.
Starting Their Immigration by Sea
Thus in late 1838, an Auswanderungs Gesellschaft, or immigration corporation, led by pastors including Martin Stephan, G. H. Loeber, E. G. W. Keyl, C. F. W. Walther, and his older brother, Otto Hermann Walther, chartered five ships—the Olbers, Johann Georg, Copernicus, Republic, and the smallest vessel, the Amalia—to transport some seven hundred immigrants to the United States, all leaving at various times throughout November 1838.3 Proper worship, as an adjunct of orthodoxy, held prime importance to these immigrants, and musical instruments were among those implements of culture they brought with them, including a music library, a pipe organ, church bells, tools, and general household goods.4 Theodore Graebner claimed with further detail in 1919 the following:
The Gesellschaft had purchased a great church library and had printed and bound 900 copies of Luther’s catechism. A large collection of printed sheet music for church was acquired, including a complete organ, which was purchased for 350 Thalers in Dresden. Even a Church orchestra had been provided with a full set of instruments—the records, still extant, report the purchase of a bass viol, a cello, seven violins, two flutes, two oboes, two French horns, two trumpets, and one trombone. They were lovers of music, that company of Lutheran Saxons! Several pianos were shipped as freight. Pastor Keyl even took with him his grand piano, on which he later, in a log cabin built in the Missouri wilderness, played Beethoven and Haydn while the natives stood in open-mouthed wonder at the doors and windows, listening to the unaccustomed sounds. For the ocean journey, a special collection of songs had been printed for which the elder Walther (Otto Hermann) had composed a number of poems. The collection bore the title, “Songs of the Exiles upon the Sea.”5
These immigrants to the New World considered musical instruments culturally important for both their sacred and their secular functions, enough so to secure their passage along with the colonists. Sadly, the Amalia, which carried immigrants and so many of their musical accoutrements, including the pipe organ, sank in a storm off the French coast. This incident seared itself into the collective memory of the Lutheran colonists, with subsequent generations occasionally reporting, without evidence but with wistful contemplation, that the pipe organ had indeed survived and had been installed at the original Trinity, St. Louis, and later moved to St. Salvator’s at Venedy, Illinois. The intentions of the leaders of the Gesellschaft were plain: They had intended that their new settlement, from its very inception, benefit from a pipe organ.
1. Friedrich Wilhelm III, “Der Wortlaut der Unionsurkunde der 27.9.1817,” Urtext at the Historische Kommission zu Berlin, https://www.hiko-berlin.de/fileadmin/redakteur /02_Mediathek/100Quellen/8-04_Kirchenunion-1817/Kirchenunion-1817.pdf, (accessed January 21, 2025), trans. by author.
2. G. A. Schieferdecker, Geschichte der ersten deutschen lutherischen Ansiedlung in Altenburg, Perry Co., Mo. (Clayton Co., IA: Seminars Wartburg, 1865), 5. Trans. from https://www.archivaria.com/Altenburg/Altenburg2.html.
3. Walter O. Forster, Zion on the Mississippi (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1953), 148.
4. J. F. Koestering, The Emigration of the Saxon Lutherans in the Year 1838 (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2022), 26.
5. Theodore Graebner, Unsere Pilgerväter: Geschichte der sächsischen Auswanderung vom Jahre 1838 (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1919), 9, trans. by author.
Blog post adapted from Portraits in American Lutheran Sacred Music, 1847–1947 © 2025 Benjamin Kolodziej, published by Concordia Publishing House. All rights reserved.
Learn more about the history of Lutheran music in America by ordering Portraits in American Lutheran Sacred Music.
