FLIEDNER, THEODOR. - Founder of the Work of Deaconesses in the Evangelical Churches, b. at Eppscia (Nassau) on 21 Jan. 1800, d. at Kaiserswerth on 4 Oct. 1864. Lutheran pastor at Kaiserswerth, during a fund-raising journey undertaken to collect money for his extremely poor parish, he had occasion to study in Holland (1823) and in England (1824) the social works existing there, especially those concerned with prisoners released from jail and with fallen and repentant young women.
Having returned to his homeland, on 18 June 1826 he organized in Düsseldorf a “Society for the Visitation of Prisons.” In 1833, in a garden pavilion of his own, he began, amid general hostility, a shelter for released and reformed prisoners. In the same pavilion, three years later, he opened a kindergarten and then a school to train its teachers. In 1836, restoring to Lutheran Protestantism the ancient female diaconate, he founded the House of Deaconesses at Kaiserswerth. Their task was to assist the sick, care for orphans, and educate the young.