HISTORY OF THE SCHWENKFELDER LIBRARY AND HERITAGE CENTER
The Corpus Schwenkfeldianorum
Friedrich Schneider
Oswald Kadelbach
A year prior to the 1885 General Conference decree, in a circular letter and at the sesquicentennial Schwenkfelder Memorial Day service, Dr. Chester David Hartranft, a professor of ecclesiastical history at Hartford Theological Seminary, made an impassioned appeal to the Schwenkfelder community for a need to publish a comprehensive, scholarly “encyclopedic critical edition” of the works of Caspar Schwenckfeld in order to secure his “rightful but long-denied place in Reformation scholarship.” The appeal was accepted most positively and the fall 1884 General Conference appointed a committee to consider Hartranft’s call to produce a sixteen volume corpus of the works of Caspar Schwenckfeld von Ossig.
Dr. Hartranft’s Corpus Schwenckfeldianorum project itself was influenced and inspired by the preceding work of men like Friedrich Schneider and Oswald Kadelbach. These men, in the early-to-mid 19th century had each contributed to the modern era of Schwenckfelder scholarship and Schwenkfelder history. Friedrich Schneider, after reading the work of Reformation historian Gottfried Arnold became deeply interested in Schwenkfelder history and, in his study, accumulated an unrivaled knowledge and manuscript collection of Schwenkfelder history up to that time. Kadelbach’s 1860 Ausführlich Geschichte Kaspar v. Schwenkfelds und der Schwenkfelder in Schlesien was an additional step in the path towards recognition of the need for a comprehensive and scholarly edition of Schwenckfeld’s work.
Dr. Hartranft set sail for Germany in May 1885 where he began a preliminary search of libraries and archives for Schwenckfeld’s writings, and soon produced a bibliography of over 900 documents. As his research continued over the next few years more and more documents were uncovered. Yet, during the 1880s and 1890s the Corpus project, despite its intensive research, massive accumulation of copied documents and enthusiastic financial backing, failed to see a single volume published. Chester Hartranft’s other duties at Hartford, his health problems, plus his insistence on thorough scholarship in the German tradition, caused delay after delay in publication.
Dr. Chester Hartranft
and Elmer E.S. Johnson
Selina G. Schultz,
Rolland Johnson,
Mrs. Elmer E.S. Johnson and O.S. Kriebel
However, by 1903 Dr. Hartranft had retired from Hartford so that he could focus all of his time on the Corpus. He moved with his family to Wolfenbüttel, Germany whose holdings contained the largest collection of Schwenckfeldian documents in all of Europe. The documents collected by Howard Kriebel traveled with Dr. Hartranft to Germany as well. Still the project was bogged down by Hartranft’s administrative duties and his insistence on thorough scholarship. In 1904 Elmer E.S. Johnson was appointed assistant editor and sent to Germany to speed up work on volume I which still did not appear for another three years. After that time, and with the addition of Selina Gerhard Schultz, first as secretary, then as editor the project’s work proceeded much more smoothly but still slowly.