page_title: F. C. D. Wyneken
section_title: Early life and family and education
hierarchical_section_title: F. C. D. Wyneken / Early life and family and education
context_page_description: Friedrich Conrad Dietrich Wyneken was a missionary pastor in the United States. He also served for fourteen years as the second president of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod, and helped found and was the first president of Concordia Theological Seminary.
  One hundred years after fellow Hanoverian Henry Muhlenberg brought together the pastors and congregations of colonial America, Wyneken worked with C. F. W. Walther to gather scattered German Protestants into confessional Lutheran congregations and forge them into a closely knit family of churches. Wyneken's missionary experience, method, and plan influenced American Lutheran missions for many years to come. His appeals to Wilhelm Loehe and other German friends brought many German pastors including Wilhelm Sihler from Germany to America. He has been called the "thunder after the lightning." He is commemorated on the Calendar of Saints of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod on May 4.
  Considered a "tireless" church worker by others, Wyneken confessed, rather, that he "suffered horribly from melancholy".
context_section_description: Wyneken was born to Pastor Heinrich Christoph Wyneken (1766-1815) and Anne Catherine Louise Wyneken nee Meyer (1773-1863) on May 13, 1810 in Verden an der Aller in the Kingdom of Westphalia. Some of the earlier Wynekens and their relatives were minor government officials in the Duchy of Bremen-Verden when it was under Swedish control. The Wyneken family had an established Lutheran heritage long before Friedrich arrived in America. Heinrich Wyneken's father, grandfather, and one brother were pastors in Hanover. Two of Friedrich Wyneken's older brothers also became pastors. Significant numbers of more distant relatives and in-laws were also Lutheran clergy members, such as Superintendent Hans Heinrich Justus Phillip Ruperti, (1833-1899) who was Friedrich's nephew.
  Other Wyneken relatives had military careers in the Electorate of Hanover and others would serve in army of the Kingdom of Hanover. Friedrich Wyneken's maternal grandfather was a Rittmeister stationed in Verden. Wyneken's second cousin Christian Wilhelm August Johann Ernst Wyneken (1783- 1853) fought in the King's German Legion in Spain and at the Battle of Waterloo and later became a Lieutenant General in the Hanoverian Army and led a German contingent in the First Schleswig War. Much later a third cousin, Hans Kannengiesser (1880-1970), would fight at Gallipoli and later become a generalleutnant.
  Wyneken was baptized on May 22, 1810, by his father at St. Andreas Church in Verden. Heinrich Wyneken died five years later, leaving eleven children and a widow behind. Friedrich attended the Gymnasium in Verden. At the age of seventeen he went to the University of Göttingen but soon enrolled at the University of Halle. Neither of these institutions had a reputation for the dogmatic Lutheran orthodoxy which Wyneken was later to embrace; rather they both promoted strong rationalistic viewpoints. At Halle Wyneken became a student of August Tholuck, a skilled linguist and a believer in the personal religious experience.
  After graduation Wyneken worked as a private instructor in Lesum (now a locality of Bremen) at the home of Consistorial Counsellor Georg von Henfstengel, himself an "Awakened" pastor. During this time Wyneken came more influenced by the Erweckungsbewegung ("Awakening" movement) led by Tholuck. He was ordained in Stade along with his fellow theology student E.W. Wolff on May 8, 1837, and soon the pair secured free passage to America from an "Awakened" sea-captain, Stuerge, and the blessing of the Stade Bible and Mission Society.
caption: The University of Halle in 1836
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