GERMANY by John Norton Loughborough

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 13, 1900

GERMANY.

By John Norton Loughborough

FRIEDENSAU.—After the forenoon service, First day, January 7, in company with Brother H. Schuberth, I left Berlin. We traveled ninety miles by train to Magdeburg. At 7 P. M. I spoke to our people in their meeting-room, which was well filled with attentive hearers. Brother Schuberth was interpreter for me.

The next morning we took the train for Burg, fifteen miles East. There we met Brother Conradi, and we all went ten miles, by a narrow-gauge road, to Pabstorf, a station a short distance from Friedensau. That is the name of the beautiful spot selected for the German school, food factory, and sanitarium. The word “Friedensau,” in English, is “meadow of peace.” It is a farm of fifty-five acres, mostly meadow land and grain fields. A beautiful stream of pure, soft spring-water runs through the place. There is a mill on the farm, run by water, which has two sets of stones, and one set of rollers for the “roller process” of grinding. A three-story brick food factory has been erected. Already a business has been started in the manufacture and sale of nut foods. On the ground floor of this building is a two-story oven, with a capacity for baking two hundred and twenty three-pound loaves; that is, three barrels of flour at one baking.

About one mile from this place is another tract of land belonging to the school. It consists of thirty-five acres; making, in all, ninety acres of good farming land worked by the students. In the large stone barn on the home place is a stationary thrashing machine. A wire rope band, running from the mill to the barn, supplies power for doing the thrashing. While at Friedensau, I saw the students thrash grain. The first baking of fifty loaves was done in the new oven, and it was my privilege to eat the first bread cut from a loaf of the oven’s first batch of bread.

The school opened November 19, with seven students. There are eighteen now—all that can be accommodated at present. They represent seven nationalities—German, Dutch, Russian, Rumanian, Schleswig-Danish, French, and English. There are about fifty applications to attend the school as soon as room can be provided. Brother Lüpke is teacher in the school. During the two days I was there, plans were made for the erection of a large two-story brick structure for a sanitarium. A part of this building will be used for the school until a suitable building can be erected. Material for the sanitarium is being hauled to the grounds, and the work of building is to begin the last of March.

While at Friedensau, I spoke twice to the students and family—a congregation of about thirty. The Lord’s blessing is with the workers and the work there, and his providence is clearly seen in providing money to erect the buildings. May heaven’s blessing rest upon this effort so to instruct persons of mature years that they will go forth as laborers to give this present truth to the millions of Europe, who shall through them hear the glad tidings of the soon-coming kingdom.

J. N. LOUGHBOROUGH.