Gustav Warneck

Gustav Warneck's (1834–1910) name is tied to the beginning of an academic discipline. In 1896, he took up the professorship of missiology at the University of Halle — the world's first chair of Protestant missiology — and later generations came to call him “the father of Protestant missiology.” From then on, mission was no longer only the church's work; it became a subject that could be taught and studied at a university.

That this chair was established in Halle was no accident. In 1706, the first organized Protestant overseas mission drew its personnel and its theology from this city, and Ziegenbalg set out from here for India; in 1710, August Hermann Francke compiled the Halle Reports in the orphanage — the first Protestant mission periodical in history; in 1715, Ziegenbalg's Tamil New Testament was printed, the first complete printed New Testament in an Indian language. In the eighteenth century, at least sixty students from the University of Halle went overseas as missionaries; the most celebrated of them, Christian Friedrich Schwartz, remained in India for forty-eight years, until his death. Mission set out from Halle, and a hundred and ninety years later, in Halle, it became a field of scholarship.

Missiology studies one thing: how the gospel crosses languages and borders to reach every people. This field of study was born in Halle, and the very road it studies now runs through us — a group of Christians who worship in Chinese in Halle are ourselves the fruit of a gospel that crossed a border. A city of books and missions, and we stand on its extension.