ken the Christian
Church to an enlightened conscience in this matter, the last of which
obtained a wide and an enduring success. The first was made by Johann
Adolph Franz Kloenne, pastor of the church at Bislich, near Wesel.
Stirred to admiration by the activity that the women's societies had
shown in the Napoleonic wars, he lamented the fact that the
associations had dissolved, and complained that they had not taken a
permanent form, in which the members might have performed the duties for
the Church that deaconesses had done in the early years of Christianity.
In 1820 he published a pamphlet entitled _The Revival of the Deaconesses
of the Primitive Church in our Women's Associations_. This he sent to
many persons of influence, trying to win their co-operation for the
cause. He received a great many answers in reply, among them one from
the Crown Princess Marianne. But while in a general way his project met
with approval, no one could suggest a practical method by which his
thought could be realized.

A distinguished woman, Amalie Sieveking, attempted the same task of
utilizing the labor of Christian women as deaconesses in the Church. She
belonged to a well-known patrician family in the old free city of
Hamburg, and was well known for her philanthropic views and her generous
deeds. "When I was eighteen years old," she relates, "I first learned
about the charitable sisterhoods in Catholic lands, and the knowledge
seized upon me with almost irresistible power. Like a lightning's flash
came the thought, What if you were appointed to found a similar
institution for our Protestant Church?"[25] The thought stayed by her,
and disposed her to receive willingly a similar suggestion coming from
the great Prussian minister Von Stein, the Bismarck of Germany during
the first quarter of this century. He had been favorably impressed by
what he had seen of the Sisters of Mercy in the camp and in hospitals.
He consulted with one of his councilors about increasing their number,
so that they could be employed in all the Hospitals, Insane Asylums, and
Penitentiaries which had women inmates. To another minister he
complained with warmth that the Protestant Church had no such
sisterhoods by which the beneficent stream of activities among women
could be directed into well-regulated channels. "The religious life of
Protestantism suffers from the want of them," he said. These words were
repeated to Amalie Sieveking and stirred her to make th