Introduction

Biography

Federico was the son of Theo­dor Flied­ner, foun­der of the Kaisers­werth Dea­con­ess In­sti­tute.

He was edu­cat­ed at the Gym­na­si­um in Güt­er­sloh, stu­died theo­lo­gy at Hal­le (1864–46) and earned his PhD at Tüb­ing­en (1867).

He served as a nurse in the Aus­tro-Pruss­ian war of 1866, and taught school for a year in rur­al Hil­den.

After or­din­a­tion in 1870, he left Ger­ma­ny to be a mis­sion­ary to Spain, set­tling in Ma­drid and be­com­ing a chap­lain at the Ger­man em­bas­sy.

He learned Span­ish, at­tend­ed a Span­ish high school, and stu­died me­di­cine at the Un­i­ver­si­dad Cen­tral.

Fliedner was in­stru­ment­al in cre­at­ing what is now known as the Igle­sia Ev­an­gél­i­ca Es­pa­ño­la.

In 1873, he found­ed the Li­bre­ría Na­ci­o­nal y Ex­tran­je­ra, an ex­ten­sive col­lect­ion of text books and pe­ri­od­i­cals. Among these was The Child­ren’s Friend, pub­lished 1874–1939.

Works

Fliedner wrote bi­o­gra­phies of John How­ard, Eli­za­beth Fry, mis­sion­ary-ex­plor­er Da­vid Liv­ing­stone, Mar­tin Lu­ther (1878), and his own par­ents, Theo­dore Flied­ner of Kai­sers­werth (1883) and Ca­ro­line Flied­ner of Kai­sers­werth (1883).

He al­so wrote an au­to­bio­gra­phy, pub­lished first in Ger­man in two vol­umes (Aus mein­em Le­ben, 1901–03), then trans­lat­ed in­to Span­ish and pub­lished post­hu­mous­ly in the Chris­tian Ma­ga­zine (Nos. 513–553).

He started a Span­ish trans­la­tion of the New Tes­ta­ment with notes from French­man Ed­ouard Faivre.