Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg

In 1705, King Frederik IV of Denmark resolved to send missionaries overseas, but no one in Denmark volunteered; the candidates were ultimately found in Halle, from the circle around August Hermann Francke (1663–1727) — Ziegenbalg, and his companion Plütschau. The two set sail on 29 November 1705 and reached Tranquebar, India, on 9 July 1706.

Protestants had not been entirely without precedent before this: the Dutch had chaplains attached to their forces, and New England had Eliot. But an organized mission, deliberately sent overseas for that purpose — this was the first. It was launched by the Danish king, but its people and its theology came from Halle, and it is known to history as the Danish-Halle Mission.

At Tranquebar, Ziegenbalg bent over his desk, working in Tamil. In 1711, he finished translating the New Testament; in 1712/13, the mission built India's first Protestant printing press, making Tamil the first Indian language to be set in movable type. The Gospels were printed in 1714, and the complete New Testament was published in 1715 — the first complete printed New Testament in an Indian language.

Letters from the front line went back to Halle one after another. From 1710, Francke had these dispatches edited and printed at the orphanage as the Hallesche Berichte — history's first Protestant mission periodical. From the very beginning, a paper lifeline ran between the mission field and its home base.

Ziegenbalg (1682–1719) died in India in 1719, not yet forty. The mission did not stop: over the next nearly 150 years, some 60 to 80 missionaries — most of them from Halle — went out to India one after another; in 1733, Aaron, India's first native Lutheran pastor, was ordained.

Once the door opened, it never closed again. More than three hundred years later, in Halle, the city where this mission began, a fellowship of Chinese Christians worships the same God in Chinese. Reading about Ziegenbalg feels like leafing through this city's family record — and we find ourselves on the very same line of descent.