Though several generations removed from Luther’s generation, Francke came of age right on time for a new wave of spirituality to collide with the Reformation in the movement known as Pietism.
As a term, “Pietism” carries enough baggage to require a $50 surcharge, and you can find “Lutheran Pietism” in the Oversized section. Since its inception, Pietism has been an unwieldy source of contention among the descendants of the Protestant Reformation. Among the figures who comprised the Pietist movement, none did more for the movement institutionally than August Hermann Francke, who died on June 8, 1727.
August Hermann Francke was born in 1663 in Lübeck, Germany, to a well-to-do family. His father was a lawyer, and his mother came from a political family. Removed from the menial labor for which most were destined, the young Francke received a fine education, starting at the "gymnasium" at Gotha.
Though several generations removed from Luther’s generation, Francke came of age right on time for a new wave of spirituality to collide with the Reformation in the movement known as Pietism. Pietists resisted what they saw as nominal Christianity, which was draining the spiritual lifeblood that the Reformation had reinfused into the church. To combat this spiritual anemia, they emphasized “the new birth, conventical gatherings for Bible study and mutual encouragement, [and] an emphasis on practical Christianity and social activism and millennialism.” [1]
During Francke’s formative years, Philipp Jakob Spener, the “father of Lutheran Pietism in the seventeenth century,” was furiously publishing the foundational texts of Lutheran Pietism. In 1674, Johann Arndt’s True Christianity regained popularity in Spener’s annotated edition, eventually becoming the most popular book in Western Europe, only surpassed by the Bible everyone should have been reading. A year later, Spener’s Pia Desideria (“pious desires”) exploded on the scene, which laid out Spener’s vision for how the church can shape more active, engaged members. [2]
With these texts in mind, Francke pursued his university studies, first at Erfurt, then Hamburg, before finally graduating with a Master's in Theology from Leipzig. During this time in Leipzig, Francke met Spener, with whom he would carry on a long friendship until Spener died in 1705. Inspired by his friend and mentor's call for a life deeply rooted in the Scriptures, he founded the Collegium Philobiblicum, which gathered theological students to study the Bible’s languages and moral truths. He briefly joined Spener in Dresden before taking a teaching post in Leipzig, where his Collegium met until officials banned it for fears it was straying from Lutheran orthodoxy. Undeterred, Francke accepted a pastoral role in Erfurt—only to be expelled again.
It would not be shocking if parallels to Luther did not cross Francke’s mind as he fled from city to city on account of his beliefs. The parallels continued as he found his own powerful patron, an elector, also named Frederick. In Francke’s case, he found a benefactor in Elector Frederick III of Brandenburg in late 1691, whom he met after accepting two positions in his province – a pastorate and professorship for a university the elector was setting up in Halle.
What Wittenberg was to the Reformation, Halle would become for Pietism.
The significance of the move to Halle is massive, for it was there that Francke gave Pietism its most significant institutional expression. The collegia were, of course, a tangible expression of this pursuit of renewal, but what Francke would go on to build at Halle would explode and carry Lutheran Pietism beyond the German lands. What Wittenberg was to the Reformation, Halle would become for Pietism.
Francke’s early days in Halle were filled with personal and professional development. He married a woman named Anna, with whom he had three children. He also taught languages at the university and ministered to those under his care. In Francke’s work among the people of Halle, he discovered a community dealing with devastating poverty and insufficient education – both religious and practical. To respond to these needs, Francke established an orphanage in 1695 that would be “for the use of Christendom and the entire world.” [3]
The impetus for “Francke’s Foundations,” as they came to be called, was that everyone needed to be able to read the Bible and possess a useful skill, so this pious endeavor evolved into an entire complex. Over the next decade, one might find on its grounds a pharmacy, a printing press, an infirmary, a school for girls, a divinity school, a public auditorium, and a school for studying foreign languages. Staffed by university students and funded by sales of the books and cures they produced, the Foundations really were self-sufficient, but they were by no means isolationist.
The early success of the Foundations invited attention on its own, but Francke was also known to broadcast this through letters and students sent abroad. His efforts succeeded as the fame and influence of his “Foundations” captured pious-minded Christians the world over. Religious societies in England cited Halle as inspiration in the explosion of charity schools in the early eighteenth century. Across the Atlantic, the Puritan Cotton Mather pointed to Halle as the leading exemplar of Christian activity, where “still Piety is the main Concern.” [4] Most ambitiously, in 1706, two of Francke’s students, in conjunction with the British Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge, brought one of the first Protestant missionary efforts to South India.
As his students traversed the globe, spreading the gospel through service and education, Francke remained in Halle, preaching, teaching, and promoting the work of the orphanage until his death.
In subsequent years, the Foundations became a center for Romanticists and Rationalists before turning to Evangelicalism in the nineteenth century. They’ve endured to this day, serving as a hub of “cultural, scientific, social, and educational activities.” [5] Francke’s global influence has also endured, particularly in India, where the Tamil Evangelical Lutheran Church serves half a million members.
While Pietism can be an overloaded word sometimes, it’s hard to deny the sincere commitment to Christ and neighbor that shaped Francke’s work in Halle. Some questioned whether such zeal risked drifting from confessional clarity, but the fruit of his ministry—orphans cared for, students trained, missionaries sent—offers a compelling testimony to an enlivened faith. What started as a response to the needs of his own community would become a model for Christian mission and education for the next century and beyond, and so we remember August Hermann Francke, who died on June 8, 1727.
[1] Douglas H. Shantz, introduction to A Companion to German Pietism, 1600-1800, ed. Douglas H. Shantz (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 1.
[2] Daniel van Voorhis, Johann Arndt: A Prophet of Lutheran Pietism, (Irvine, CA: New Reformation Publications, 2018), xxii-xxiii.
[3] Kelly Joan Whitmer, The Halle Orphanage as Scientific Community: Observation, Eclecticism, and Pietism in the Early Eighteenth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), 3, ProQuest Ebook Central.
[4] Richard Lovelace, The American Pietism of Cotton Mather: Origins of American Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids, MI: Christian University Press, 1979), 227-8.
[5] Thomas Meinicke, “The Francke Foundations,” Franckesche Stiftungen, accessed June 4, 2025, https://www.francke-halle.de/en/about-us/selbstverstaendnis.
