A PRAYER AGAINST CHOLERA
[CHOLERA.]
Bitte wegen der Cholera, welche bei den Gottesdiensten in das Schluβ-Gebet aufzunehmen ist.
[Württemberg: s.n., 11 October 1831].
Bifolium (207 x 130mm), pp. [1-3], [1 (blank)]; gothic type; lightly creased and foxed, light offsetting from other sheets at top of [1] and [4], small, marginal wormholes on second l., nevertheless very good, fresh example.
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Bitte wegen der Cholera, welche bei den Gottesdiensten in das Schluβ-Gebet aufzunehmen ist.
Cholera, the ‘plague’ of the nineteenth century, affected large parts of populations across Eurasia and can be counted as one of the most devastating types of epidemics until today. The second pandemic of c. 1826 to 1841 swept from Mecca via Egypt to Europe, and reached Central Europe, and thence Germany, France, England and also the United States of America in the early 1830s.
This prayer appears to have been sent by the church authorities (Kirchenleitung) to all deaneries in the Württemberg area, in lieu of the pastoral letter called for by pietist theologians in order to prepare congregations for the approaching apocalypse, as indicated by the spread of the cholera to southern Germany (see Kannenberg, Verschleierte Uhrtafeln: Endzeiterwartungen im württembergischen Pietismus zwischen 1818 und 1848 (2007), p. 148). The prayer, which was to be included with the final prayer of service, appeals to God’s kind judgement in times of cholera: for salvation from the disease; should that fail, for support and healing, ideally of the body, and certainly of the soul. Especially interesting is the appeal to God as the physician of mankind: ‘sey der Arzt der Kranken’ (p. [2]).
OCLC finds a single copy, at the Landeskirchliche Zentralbibliothek in Stuttgart.