This exhibit…
presents facets of the Lutheran World Federation Service to Refugees (LWF-SR) in Europe following World War II, with special focus on the roles of St. Olaf College faculty, staff and students who helped to deliver the LWF’s promise to assist Lutheran Displaced Persons (DPs) in their time of great need.
Pictured (left to right): Howard Hong (St. Olaf class of 1931, Professor Philosophy and Senior Field Representative for the LWF-SR in Germany, 1947-1949), James V. Anderson (St. Olaf class of 1951 and LWF-SR Director for the British Zone, 1947-1949) and Sylvester Michelfelder (first Executive Secretary of the Lutheran World Federation) at the LWF Headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, ca. 1948
In June 1947…
the newly established Lutheran World Federation assembled in Lund, Sweden, to define its purposes, among them: “to support Lutheran groups in need of spiritual or material aid.”(1) That same month, St. Olaf Professor of Philosophy Howard Hong, his family and three young volunteers arrived in occupied Germany to begin the work of supporting Lutherans in DP camps – the so-called Churches in Exile” – with material and spiritual resources. A number of St. Olaf graduates soon followed to share in the service, and later some of those assisted by the LWF-SR made their way to Northfield, Minnesota and to St. Olaf College.
Pictured (foreground): Alice Erlander, St. Olaf class of 1947, matching family registrations to assurances at the LWF Resettlement office in Frankfurt, Germany, ca. 1949.
Lutherans…
were not the only religious group assisting refugees in postwar Europe. Historian of Christianity Mark Granquist, St. Olaf class of 1979, notes, “All of the major American religious groups were developing aid plans at the time…and the Lutherans considered themselves a major church.”(2) Jewish, as well as Catholic, Orthodox and other Christian groups organized impressive aid initiatives for their fellows in faith, in coordination with national and international governmental entities. A spirit of Christian ecumenism was growing, as was a desire among Lutheran churches worldwide to join together in global community and action.
Pictured (foreground, left to right): Howard Hong, Dean J. Kullitis, and Latvian Lutheran Archbishop Teodors Grīnbergs in a procession from the Berchtesgaden DP camp church, American Occupied Zone, Germany, ca. 1949; Lutheran World Federation Service to Refugees 1947-1949 Photographic Section, used with permission of the Lutheran World Federation and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
This project…
began in 2019 with a meeting between St. Olaf Professor of German Amanda Randall and St. Olaf alumnus James (Jim) V. Anderson. Inspired by the story and photos of Jim’s work with Howard Hong and Lutheran World Federation Service to Refugees, Randall began recruiting St. Olaf students to join in a long-term research initiative to study the history of the LWF-SR, trace its connections to the college, and create this online exhibit to show and tell the story to a broad audience. The exhibit covers LWF Service to Refugees activity in the American and British Zones of Occupied Germany, and resettlement of Lutheran DPs in Minnesota, Northfield in particular. Ongoing research will continue to expand the exhibit’s geographic and thematic scope.
Pictured: Members of the 2023 summer CURI team and John Plume (second to right), former Displaced Person (DP) at Berchtesgaden (American Occupied Zone, Germany) and co-author of “Insula-Island of Hope”, a collection of stories from Latvian DPs who had lived in that camp.
In addition…
to the narratives in the “Legacies” and “History” sections of the exhibit, archival, interview, and bibliographic research yielded a variety of media and study resources gathered here for visitors to explore in the “Media Gallery” and “Resources” sections.
The aim of this exhibit is not to present the definitive story of the Lutheran World Federation Service to Refugees. Rather, its purpose is to introduce the history in multimedial format, illuminating the contexts and networks that shaped the initiative and the legacies that followed from it, in order to open a space for ongoing inquiry and enduring memory.
Image: Film still from “Answer for Anne” (1949), with LWF-SR Director of the American Zone, Kenneth Senft pictured left.
Sources
- Constitution of the Lutheran World Federation, 1947.
- Mark Granquist, interview with Anneke Shiller and Natalie Wilson, recorded by Xiaoyang Hu and Amanda Randall, June 6, 2023, St. Olaf College, Northfield, MN.
Images
Header. Watercolor painting of a Bavarian house, dated 1947 by Valdis Lauva, resident of Displaced Persons Camp “Insula” (Berchtesgaden, Germany); painting donated by John Plume, used with permission of Velta Zadins.
Hong, Anderson and Michelfelder: photo donated by John Plume, used with permission of the LWF.
Erlander: Lutheran World Federation Service to Refugees 1947-1949 Photographic Section, used with permission of the LWF and the ELCA.
Hong, Kullitis and Grīnbergs: Lutheran World Federation Service to Refugees 1947-1949 Photographic Section, used with permission of the LWF and the ELCA.
2023 CURI: photo by Amanda Randall, used with permission.
“Answer for Anne”: courtesy of and used with permission of the ELCA.