Theophil Waldmeier

Theophil Waldmeier was born in Suisse in 1832 and deceased in 1915 with Beirut. It was missionary Laïc in Ethiopia then with the Lebanon. It is the first Suisse known member of the religious Société of the Friends (Quakers).

“No Quaker of its time left such a heritage to humanity” (OJ Greenwood, 1978)

Biography

Youth

Blasius Waldmeier was born on February 3rd, 1832 with Möhlin (canton of Argovie), in a family Catholique with the strict rules. It will choose later the first name of Theophilus , in German Theophil , “friend of God”. When his/her grandmother obliges it to recite rosaries of the whole hours, he objects that God will not listen to Prière S said under the constraint, which is worth blows to him. His/her mother is widowed and when she remarie, he flees in her uncle with Lörrach. His/her uncle and his aunt, who do not have a child, will adopt it after the death of his parents. It goes to the Catholic school downtown this German near to Basle.

The Waldmeier young person is very influenced for the example of J.G. Deimler, future missionary in India, which studies with the college evangelic missionary (Piétiste, Protesting) of St Chrischona with Bettingen close to Basle. Theophil Waldmeier feels called, but it must wait three years before having the necessary age to return with St Chrischona. In the interval he studies French with Geneva, where he meets Pasteur Merle of Aubigné and attends the Vault of the Oratory and the evangelic Église of Pélisserie. He studies as of September 1856 with St Chrischona. At the request of the protesting bishop of Jerusalem Samuel Gobat, it leaves as missionary in Abyssinie in 1858 (today in Ethiopia).

Ethiopia

Only the laic missionaries were then tolerated in Abyssinie, is thus with an small group of craftsmen that Theophil Waldmeier arrives at Magdala. He marries Susan Bell (princess Sarah Yubdar) in December 1859. It is a girl of the Prime Minister John Bell (to advise of the king, of Irish origin, killed at the end of 1860) and belongs to the Téwodros dynasty by her mother. It is 27 years old and she only 12 years, the marriage joins together a thousand of guests.

One of the members of the missionary group is Karl Saalmüller, he will be a collaborator of Waldmeier throughout their African adventures and will marry the sister of Susan Bell. Then they will still collaborate in Brummana in Lebanon.

In 1860, he asks and obtains from the king the authorization to create a mission with Gaffat (near to Debra Tabor, district of Bégemeder). They are nine Europeans who build themselves to begin twelve huts. Waldmeier opens a school for poor children, young people learn how to read and write and oldest one craft industry. The mission diffuses the Bible in Amharique.

The emperor Théodoros {{II}} imprisons in 1864 the English consul Cameron and his relations with Europeans enveniment. It orders massacres which in its anger save neither to its own subjects nor Europeans. Theophil Waldmeier and the personnel of the mission is stopped the April 13rd 1866, they attend atrocities and Waldmeier escapes from little from death. Waldmeier profits however from the confidence of the emperor, whom he knows very well. Théodoros is overcome by an important forwarding of the English army in 1868. Waldmeier then withdraws on Jerusalem then Beirut with his wife and their Rosa daughter. He leaves then to Europe, only, in the idea to find the means of restoring the mission in Abyssinie.

Lebanon: Brummana

Theophil Waldmeier initially accepts the idea of a work with Geneva, then one proposes to him the post of inspector of the schools of the British mission with Damas and the Mount-Lebanon ( British Syrian Schools , founded in 1860). After a ten months absence in Europe, it turns over to Beirut in May 1869 and studies Arab .

In 1869 and 1871, Waldmeier becomes acquainted with Quakers come to visit the British Syrian Schools . It is touched by the religious principles to which they testify: “I had never my life intended to preach a mortal thus. All this (that Sybil Jones) says seizes my heart and left there no place for other thoughts”. He becomes member of the religious Société of the Friends (Quakers) in 1874, at the time of its second voyage in England. The Amis support several schools in the Middle East since the years 1830, their interest is more philanthropic than missionary. In Lebanon, Élias Saleeby, which profited from an education in England, is occupied into 1875 of thirteen schools. That of Brummana is named Darlington Station , because the funds came Quakers from Darlington.

One reports in Waldmeier the expulsion of the American missionaries northern with Brummana in 1831. It feels called by God: “Go up to those mountains off Brummana”. In July 1873, he moves in Brummana with his wife and their children. They live some time of their economies. Élias Saleeby transmits to him the school of Brummana with its local teachers, an aspect which overlooked in the autobiography of Waldmeier. Its departure of British Syrian Schools , its personal ambition, cause the anger of the Gobat bishop and the refusal of a help of the American Mission. The first supports come from Bern, Lausanne and Neuchâtel to create schools for girls and boys.

At the time of its last voyage in Europe, Waldmeier had on the occasion to present its project of mission in Suisse, England and Sweden. It is with the assistance of Hannah Stafford Allen, an English Quaker, which the Friends' Syrian Mission is founded. The mission that Waldmeier had started only, then with the assistance of relations into Swiss, becomes a project supported by the Quakers of England and the United States. It acquires ground in October 1874 in Brummana, to build a Training Home , in a place which will be famous Ain Salaam (the fountain of peace). A Assemblée of the religious Société of the Friends (Quakers) in Brummana is officially recognized in December 1875. Waldmeier specifies the objective: it will be “neither an orphanage, nor a asyle, but a home in which we wish to form a good number of poor but talented boys (...) not only for their own temporal and spiritual wellbeing, but still - guided by Our celestial Father - for social and religious rise their compatriots”.

He reports to the end of 1874 that the mission directs four schools bringing together 110 children. Other schools are created in the surrounding villages, the Training Home ( Training center ) for boys is built. A house is bought in Brummana in 1879 for a new school, the meetings of the mothers and like place of worship. Then a training center for young girls, a Hôpital and a dispensary are added which occupy an old silk factory.

The mission comprises part of the family close to Waldmeier. His/her brother-in-law and former colleague in Abyssinie, Karl Saalmüller, are the architect and the project superintendent. Rosa Waldmeier, the oldest daughter survivor of Ethiopia, marries in 1883 the doctor of the mission Bessarah Manasseh, in Brummana since 1877. Wega Saalmüller, girl of Karl, marry Thomas Little (1857-1908), in Brummana since 1887, the Main thing of the House of the boys of 1895 with his death.

In 1883, a committee is indicated to control the mission of Brummana, Waldmeier is named director ( superintendent ). It obtains that a house is built for its family, in a splendid place. Then it Marie one of her daughters with an Ethiopian ostentation: this posted richness contrast painfully with the poverty of the local employees of the mission. His Susane wife dies a little later in July 1893. Theophil Waldmeier for some time had a secret love for Farida Saleem, teaching of the mission. He is convened in London to be explained. A little later its position of director is removed, it leaves the mission and Marie with Farida, twenty years its junior. These events are described differently in a book of 1916: Waldmeier would have left the mission to answer a new interior call.

In 1903, Brummana counts 13 local missionaries and 47 employees. The school goes perdurer under the name of Brummana High School , and will accueillira the children of easy families more and more.

Lebanon: Asfuriya

Theophil Waldmeier , 64 years, launches out immediately in a new challenge: the creation of a hospital for the mentally ills. The mental specialist Thomas Smith Clouston of passage to Beirut support the project with enthusiasm. Waldmeier travels again to Europe and to the United States during two years, and manages to join together the required funds. A committee is created and a public meeting announces in April 1896 the project of foundation of the first hearth for the biblical ground mentally ills . The project is placed under the authority of the London General Committee (LGC) which meets for the first time on March 11th, 1897 with for president Doctor Percy Smith, medical director of the Bethlem Royal Asylum .

A ground is bought in Asfuriya in April 1898 and in little time fourteen small buildings are built, bearing the names of the givers groups. The hospital is open on August 6th, 1900 with 10 patients. Its payment is adopted in 1907: the London General Committee preserves the higher authority on the hospital, managed by a local executive committee. The property becomes in 1912 a Wakf , a religious foundation, with the condition which the hospital remains international and interreligieux.

Collaboration with Waldmeier is however always also difficult. He is again convened in London in 1910, he is 78 years old: one asks him to give up the direction of the hospital. Living always on the spot, it continues to intervene. The committee requests it into 1914 to move with Beirut where he dies the March 10th 1915.

The hospital will be known under the name of Lebanon Hospital for the Insane , then since 1938 Lebanese Hospital for Mental and Nervous Disorders .

Family

Beautiful Susan and Theophil Waldmeier, married on December 4th, 1859 with Magdala, had at least 14 children of which at least 6 died in low age. Susan dies in July 1893. Waldmeier (64 years) wife in second weddings Farida Saleem (43 years) on April 17th, 1896 in Beirut, two days after having left Brummana. Farida dies in March 1943.

About the children of Susan and Theophil we know what follows. Four boys born in Ethiopia died in Gaffat before April 1866, a fifth dies in Debra Tabor in 1867 during the pédiode of detention. Rosa Waldmeier, survivor of Ethiopia, probably born in 1863, wife in 1883 Doctor Bessarah Manasseh (? - 1926), person in charge of the hospital of the mission.

July 3rd, 1873, when the family leaves for Brummana, Rosa remains in a school in Beirut, three other children whose baby make the voyage to back of mules, it probably acts of Theophil, Fritz and Augusta. Theophil was born during the voyage from Waldmeier in Europe fine 1868-beginning 1869, it died in 1917 of typhus and seems to have been the black sheep of the family, suffering of alcoholism. Fritz becomes doctor. Augusta Waldmeier marries in 1892 Rudolf Heer, originating in the canton of Glaris.

In Brummana are born still Hannah, Lily, Alfred and Edouard. Another Lily died in 1878. Hannah marries Mr. Newson (Irish), then Algernon Omar Holland (English) in 1915, she writes in 1936 a book on Hailé Selassié and dies in 1936.

According to Peter Ustinov, his Magdalena grandmother would be one of the girls of Susan Bell and Theophil Waldmeier, born “under a tent during the battle of Magdala”. However Theophil never mentions this first name, nor the existence of another child that Rosa on the way which led them to Jerusalem. Peter Ustinov writes that the origins of his/her grandmother remained “obstinately mysterious”.

Personality

Greenwood described Theophil Waldmeier like a leader, thanks to “his energy, its intelligence and its charm (but also its trick and its self-centredness, its absence of scruples, combined with its physical and moral courage)”. Greenwood affirms that without the persuasive language of Waldmeier, neither Brummana nor Asfuriya would have been built: it offered to its public (givers) what they wished, “not truth, goal drama” (not the truth, of the theater). It was in Lebanon a missionary de facto , without never to be sent by the Friends. It adhered sincerely to the principles Quakers, but lived forever in a community Quaker: “he did not know anything with the discipline the practice Quaker”.

Theophil Waldmeier was also a draftsman, with the Aquarelle and ink. Two notebooks of sketch of years 1875 and 1876 are preserved, album of family on the one hand, witness of the life of the villagers of Mount-Lebanon on the other hand. These drawings show its direction of humor, in particular when it represents itself.

Another aspect of its personality is its passion for the trees. As of the purchase of the grounds with Brummana, it made plant a great number of Sapin S, pines, Mûrier S and Figuier S. the French Friends forwarded to him 200 seedlings of fruit trees and of Australia have sent Eucalyptus to him. Waldmeier expressed his concern on the disappearance of the forest of cedars of Lebanon.

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