Search results
Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg (24 June 1683 – 23 February 1719) was a member of the Lutheran clergy and the first Pietist missionary to India. Early life. Ziegenbalg was born in Pulsnitz, Saxony, on 24 July 1683 in a devout Christian family.
Pioneer German missionary in South India. Ziegenbalg, the prototype of German pietist Lutheran missionaries, was born in Pulsnitz, Saxony. He had a conversion experience while in high-school, after the early loss of his parents. Repeated illness and inner conflicts interrupted his studies at Berlin and Halle.
Jun 19, 2024 · It is set up to commemorate the first German missionary to India, Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg, sent by courtesy of the Danish King over 300 years ago to found the Tranquebar Mission. Behind the statue there are two large though unusual plaques for this mostly conservative Hindu town which surprisingly commemorate a foreign Christian missionary.
…discovered two young Halle-trained Pietists, Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg (1683–1719) and Heinrich Plütschau (1678–1747). Ordained at Copenhagen in 1705, they became the founders of the famous Tamil mission at Tranquebar, India, in 1706.
An 18th-century German Lutheran Pietist whose missionary career lasted only 13 years before his untimely death, Ziegenbalg’s unprecedented approach to the Great Commission caused him to become “the father of modern Protestant mission,” in the words of Tamil church historian Daniel Jeyaraj.
When he died on 23 February 1719, he left a Tamil translation of the New Testament and of Genesis through Ruth, many brief writings in Tamil, two church buildings, the seminary, and 250 baptized Christians.
Ziegenbalg taught German language to the mission school children among whom, he selected a clever and obedient native Tamil boy as his disciple. After nearly eight years of missionary tenure in Tranquebar, Ziegenbalg left Madras for Germany with this disciple.
