Author: Alexandra Comus
“The German hospital suffered the most. The broad Hamalbaşı Street was so full of smoke that it was impossible to see ten steps ahead. The new hospital, which only stood for a year, was burned to the ground, and the tender-hearted sisters who served here lacked enough hands to help. The fatally ill could hardly be saved in the last minutes. Sister Josephine Kürth perished in the flames.”1 Thus reads an eyewitness account following the Great Fire of Pera on June 5th, 1870. This story is evidence of the great personal sacrifice a few women undertook to serve the ill and the afflicted in a land entirely foreign to them. But who were these women?
Within the Feriköy Protestant Cemetery (founded in 1859)2 in the Şișli district of Istanbul lie their mostly-forgotten graves. Without exception, all were women who labored to support the physical well-being and education of the young in the Ottoman capital. Although their efforts are virtually unknown, these women brought aspects of modern medical care and a kindergarten to Istanbul, Izmir, Jerusalem, and other cities of the Ottoman Empire. Hardly any of today’s residents of modern-day Istanbul will have ever heard of the Kaiserswerth Sisters, yet the Protestant deaconesses’ desire to spread the Christian faith, which led them to found a hospital and a kindergarten in 1864, is the reason why Istanbul had access to Western European standards of healthcare and education starting in the mid 19th century.
Although the humanitarian work of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (many prominent members are buried within the same cemetery) is well-documented, much less is said of the self-sacrificial work and indispensable aid that the Kaiserswerth Sisters brought to the Near East in the middle of the 19th century, and the role of German deaconries in the region.
Founded in Düsseldorf in 1836 by Lutheran pastor Theodor Fliedner and his wife Friederike, the Kaiserswerther deaconry gave young women the education necessary to serve as nurses, at the same time providing them with theological training. Since the foundation of the first deaconry in Kaiserswerth, a total of 26 Kaiserswerther sisterhoods were opened throughout Europe by 1861.3 The state-of-the-art education the Kaiserswerth Sisters received set them apart from other medical providers when it came to the quality of medical care they were able to provide.
The Kaiserswerth Sisters began some of their early humanitarian projects in Jerusalem. In 1844, the Prussian ambassador to England, Carl Josias Freiherr von Bunsen, established contact between Fliedner and Samuel Gobat, a missionary and later bishop of the Anglo-Prussian diocese. The purpose of this meeting was to create a basis for Protestant representations in Jerusalem with the diocese. With the support that came from this contact, the Protestant Jerusalem Foundation was created, a cooperation which led later to the dispatch of some Kaiserswerther deaconesses to Jerusalem.4
In 1847, the German Protestant Charitable Association (Deutscher Evangelischer Wohltätigkeitsverein) attempted to bring deaconesses from Kaiserswerth in Düsseldorf to Istanbul, in order to bring higher standards of nursing care to the region. First such plans did not bear fruit, but after passing through Istanbul on the way back from Jerusalem, Flieder was appalled by the state of the Turkish pharmacies. He attended a meeting of the Istanbul Protestant community in June and was convinced that a German hospital was urgently needed in the region.
The first three Kaiserswerth deaconesses were dispatched to Istanbul and began their work in 1852.
At the same time as they used more modern methods of care than were yet standard practice in the city, the deaconesses would attend to the sick with the context of the biblical stories of the sick in their minds, and they would often take the chance to pray with their patients.5
The medical aid of the Kaiserswerth Sisters was not limited to the administration of the proper medications for various ailments, as the deaconesses regularly put themselves in danger to provide more involved care to the diseased. Over the period when the deaconesses were active in
the region, outbreaks of cholera swept over Istanbul. For instance, there was a wave of cholera from 1853 to 1855 due to the Crimean War, and another horrible outbreak in 1865, which became known as “The Great Cholera Epidemic,” and which killed about thirty thousand people in three months.6 Among these deaths was Margarethe Steenhusen, a Kaiserswerth Sister who worked at the hospital. Additionally, cases of typhus, smallpox, and malaria were all but uncommon. Indeed, many of the Kaiserswerth Sisters succumbed to the illnesses of their patients and were buried within the Feriköy Protestant Cemetery. One deaconess named Luisa Fulda died of diphtheria in 1891 after caring for a child who suffered from the same illness, while Clara Ohlischläger died of typhus in 1902, to name only a few.
The work of the deaconesses expanded from mere medical attention to care for the soul. There was a dearth of education when it came to the learning of languages and moral and religious formation, and the migrant children of those with many different backgrounds were left without options for advancement within their conditions.
For this reason, the Kaiserswerth Sisters played an indispensable role by providing not only medical care, but much-needed pedagogy to Istanbul. In 1864, following the concept of early childhood training developed by their founder, Theodor Fliedner, and that of the German Lutheran school founded in 1850, they opened the “small childrens’ school” (Kleinkinderschule), which predated by two decades a kindergarten that employed the instructional methods of Friedrich Fröbel, founded in Izmir by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions.
Although the Kleinkinderschule had started as a resource for German-speaking families in Istanbul, it soon became a means of support for the children of many different ethnic and denominational backgrounds within the city. At the same time, the main purpose of the institution was for the sake of the childrens’ upbringing in the Lutheran church, while the teaching of the German language was only of secondary importance.7
In 1852, the conditions in Izmir were similar to those in the capital. There was only a small, informal Protestant congregation. According to Christin Pschichholz, the Prussian consul noticed the same lack of confessional education for the German-speaking children in the region, so he contacted Fliedner. He requested the dispatch of some of the deaconesses to Izmir, as well. Two deaconesses were sent the following year, and they opened a teaching house of deaconesses in In 1866, the deaconesses opened an orphanage, to which they added an Armenian-language orphanage a year later.
Back in Istanbul, the kindergarten opened by the Kaiserswerth Sisters was expanded into an orphanage in 1868 because many of the children who needed education in the kindergarten had been orphaned and were without aid.
What had started as a center for the support of Germans in Istanbul soon became an invaluable resource for modern medical care for the general public. According to Günther Jantzen, the proportion of Turkish patients in this hospital had risen from 8 to 90 percent in the century since its founding.
As if constant outbreaks of disease and a lack of educational or medical resources in the region did not make the Sisters’ work difficult enough, disaster struck in June of 1870.
Flames enveloped Pera (modern-day Beyoğlu), destroying most of the buildings. According to an article published in the Queanbeyan Age, a weekly Australian newspaper, “This quarter, which was about one square mile in extent, contained nearly 20,000 houses, one-tenth of which were built of stone, the rest being of wood and plaster. About 50 stone houses leading from the High Street, Pera, to the left were burnt, the spread of flames being facilitated by the strong north wind.8
One deaconess related her experience of the fire as she and another deaconess went to have coffee. She remembered that
On the main street the firemen were already running toward Taxim. From the church steps we watched as the houses were burning all the way to the ends of Pera. The winds were so strong that the flames overtook them quickly. We hurried home, and Sister Sophie had gathered the children on the floor below and was trying to comfort them. Since the fire appeared to have already approached us, one sister led the frightened group [of children] to the German elementary school and we began to pack up the most valuable things. In haste, we pumped the cistern dry and filled it with the childrens’ clothing […]. After a few trips back and forth, it was impossible to stay in the house. Tongues of flame were beating at the doors and windows, and when I came down last, the downstairs hallway was already ablaze. We had only three-quarters of an hour to clear everything out. Because of the school’s proximity to the fire we couldn’t stay there, so we sought refuge for the night in the hospital, where we were taken in lovingly. The next day, we were given linens and clothing.9
In the aftermath of the fire, the deaconesses and the children took shelter in the Prussian legation building on Rue Yazıcı (now Doğan Apartmanı on Serdarı Ekrem Sokağı), and before long they began teaching kindergarten classes again. In the autumn of 1871, they were forced to relocate again because this embassy was razed to the ground to make room for another embassy, an intention that would prove to be futile in later years, as the place was decided to be unfit for an embassy.10
In November of 1871, they moved into a rental property the Protestant Charitable Association had found for them, and by the end of the year, eighteen children from the ages of three to fourteen years old were being cared for in the facility. The children had a variety of cultural backgrounds, including Italian, French, Armenian, English, and Jewish heritage, in addition to the German population the deaconesses served.11
The kindergarten closed in 1875 and was reopened again as the “Teutonia-Kindergarten” in 1882 not by the deaconnesses, but by members of the German community. Despite their withdrawal and return to missions within the broader Kaiserswerth Sisters network, the institutions they left behind made it possible for others to continue their work in Istanbul. The German hospital was rebuilt in stone and continued to serve the sick up until 2014. After their temporary expulsion in 1919, the last Kaiserswerth deaconesses left Istanbul in 1973.
Many of the Kaiserswerth Sisters who founded the hospital and the kindergarten now lie under crumbling headstones in the Feriköy Protestant Cemetery, which has been the last resting place for foreign Protestants since its opening in 1859. There they are forgotten to virtually all in Istanbul and abroad, despite their heroic and unmercenary services.
The research of stories like that of the Kaiserswerth Sisters has been an ongoing effort through the Feriköy Protestant Cemetery Initiative. “A Brief Guide to Istanbul’s Protestant Cemetery”, a guidebook authored by Brian Johnson and Richard Wittmann offers an introduction to the history of the cemetery and some of its most notable residents. It is available online. The Feriköy Protestant Cemetery Initiative is exploring possibilities for securing support for the restoration of the grave monuments of the Kaiserswerth Deaconesses.
- Translated by Alexandra Comus. In Geser, Marcel: Zwischen Missionierung und „Stärkung des Deutschtums”, 39. (Zitat eines Zeitzeugen in: Caucig o.J.: 67). ↩︎
- Johnson, Brian & Wittmann, Richard: “Funerary Heritage of the Grand Champs des Morts: Evidence of Istanbul’s Communal Diversity in Feriköy,” in Constantinople through the Ages. The Visible City from Its Foundation to Contemporary Istanbul, ed. Diederik Burgersdijk et al., Leiden (2024), 297. ↩︎
- Herfarth, Margit: Leben in zwei Welten. 53. ↩︎
- Pschichholz, Christin: Zwischen Diaspora, Diakonie und deutscher Orientpolitik. 133. ↩︎
- Geser, Marcel: Zwischen Missionierung und „Stärkung des Deutschtums.”62. ↩︎
- “The Great Cholera Epidemic of Istanbul in 1865.” Ulman, Y.I., Yildirim, N. Istanbul University Cerrahpasa
Faculty of Medicine. <https://nek.istanbul.edu.tr/ekos/MAKALE/M4509.pdf> ↩︎ - Geser, Marcel: Zwischen Missionierung und „Stärkung des Deutschtums.” 16. ↩︎
- “The Great Fire of Pera in 1870.” Illustrated in London. Salt Research, Harika-Kemali Söylemezoğlu Archive. ↩︎
- Translated by Alexandra Comus. In Geser, Marcel: Zwischen Missionierung und „Stärkung des Deutschtums”,39.
(Kriebel o.J.: 157-158) ↩︎ - Geser, 40. ↩︎
- Geser, 41. ↩︎
Alexandra Comus, an intern at the Orient-Institut Istanbul in the summer of 2026, studied German and English at Hillsdale College in Michigan. Starting in the fall of 2026 she will be a master’s student in Germanic Studies and a Max Kade fellow at the University of Illinois, Chicago.
Citation:
Comus, Alexandra. “A Debt of Gratitude: Protestant Deaconesses and Their Devotion to Ottoman Istanbul,” Orient-Institut Istanbul Blog, 11 August 2026.
Keywords:
Ottoman Empire; Turkey; Istanbul; Kaiserswerth Sisters; German hospital; orphanage; kindergarten; Protestant presence in Istanbul; German-Ottoman relations; philanthropy; 19th-20th century; OII-Feriköy Protestant Cemetery
References:
Caucig, Franz von o.J. Von Constantinopel nach Istanbul. Herausgegeben und verlegt von Annemarie Hagen. Nürnberg: n.d.
Geser, Marcel: Zwischen Missionierung und „Stärkung des Deutschtums”: Der Deutsche Kindergarten in Konstantinopel von seinen Anfängen bis 1918. Orient-Institut Istanbul. Würzburg: 2010.
Herfarth, Margit: Leben in zwei Welten. Die amerikanische Diakonissenbewegung und ihre deutschen Wurzeln: Veröffentlichungen des diakoniewissenschaftlichen Instituts an der Universität Heidelberg. Leipzig: 2014.
Johnson, Brian & Wittmann, Richard: “Funerary Heritage of the Grand Champs des Morts: Evidence of Istanbul’s Communal Diversity in Feriköy,” in Constantinople through the Ages. The Visible City from Its Foundation to Contemporary Istanbul, ed. Diederik Burgersdijk et al., Leiden (2024), 297-320.
Kriebel, Martin. Die Anfänge der deutschen evangelischen Gemeinde in Konstantinopel-Istanbul von 1843 bis 1932. o.O. 1993.
Pschichholz, Christin: Zwischen Diaspora, Diakonie und deutscher Orientpolitik: Deutsche evangelische Gemeinden in Istanbul und Kleinasien in osmanischer Zeit. Verlag W. Kohlhammer. Stuttgart: 2011.
“The Great Cholera Epidemic of Istanbul in 1865.” Ulman, Y.I., Yildirim, N. Istanbul University Cerrahpasa Faculty of Medicine. <https://nek.istanbul.edu.tr/ekos/MAKALE/M4509.pdf>.
“The Great Fire of Pera in 1870.” Illustrated in London. Salt Research, Harika-Kemali Söylemezoğlu Archive. <https://cityofistanbul.net/the-great-fire-of-pera-in-1870/>.