The Glaucha Institutions as a centre of global relations

Early on, August Hermann Francke established relationships all over the world and developed the Halle Orphanage into a centre of worldwide communication. In this way, it was from Halle that Lutheranism was systematically spread beyond Europe. Through the distribution of printed materials from the orphanage publishing house, which were also translated into other languages, he spread his ideas, drew attention to his work and gained support from home and abroad. Conversely, he was supplied with news from all parts of the world and was well informed about all new events and developments, which he in turn utilised for his own institutional purposes and passed on in his schools but also in one of the first daily newspapers in Brandenburg-Prussia.

Pupils and students from many parts of Europe were sent to Halle for education. Francke’s institutions became the model for numerous educational and social institutions within and outside of Germany, for example in Scandinavia, Russia, India and North America.

Already at the end of the 17th century, Francke was sending teachers, doctors and pastors to Russia. On the initiative of the Danish king, theologians trained by Francke founded the first Protestant mission in 1706, which led to the founding of a Lutheran church in southern India. A few decades later, the Lutheran Church of North America was founded by pastors from Halle. Evidence of their presence can still be found there today. In the Francke Foundations, library holdings, objects in the Cabinet of Artefacts and Natural Curiosities, as well as a collection of 300 South Indian palm leaf manuscripts and a large mission archive with reports and correspondence of the missionaries bear witness to these contacts.