A tale of two loves for Elisabeth Fedde, pioneer of the deaconness movement and foremother of the modern nursing profession. Proposed date of commemoration: February 25.
On Christmas Day 1850 Elisabeth Fedde was born on the south coast of Norway, and on Christmas Day 1873 she was reborn a deaconess at the Lovisenberg motherhouse under the leadership of Mother Katinka Guldberg, who herself had been trained at Theodor Fliedner’s motherhouse in Kaiserswerth, Germany.
Although Elisabeth was an orphaned servant girl without prospects, her destiny as a deaconess was by no means inevitable. The first time a wellwisher suggested she join the ranks of these proto-nurses, her disdainful response was, “What is that? Do you mean those women we see on the streets wearing the peculiar dress? No, thank you, I shall not join them.” And in any event, she had a sweetheart, Ole Slettebø. But despite her initial resistance, there was something about the strangely dressed women devoted to the sick and suffering that drew her.
They also brought out the best in her. Elisabeth proved herself to be extremely adept at medical care and knowledge at a time when nursing did not exist as a distinct profession and assistants to doctors, women especially, were not expected to know anything about health and hygiene. She was additionally gifted with a blessed persistence. Putting the needs of her patients first, Elisabeth would do whatever was necessary—even to the point of setting fire to lice-infested mattresses so that the hospital had no choice but to replace them—to get the sick what they needed.
Mother Katinka, much impressed, sent Elisabeth first to a nearby state hospital and eventually to a four-year stint north of the Arctic Circle in Tromsø where, besides the predictably wretched weather, supplies and accommodations were less than basic and the religious devotion of deaconesses all but unknown.
Christmas Day again, this time in 1882, brought another life-changer in the form of a letter from her brother-in-law Gabriel Fedde, surnamed for the same farming valley Elisabeth herself came from. An accomplished sea captain, he had firsthand knowledge of the miserable situation of the countless Norwegian sailors who passed through New York in the course of their duties, not to mention the two thousand or so immigrants—starving, unemployed, and ignorant of English—sickening and dying in the city. The wife of the Norwegian consul, Anna Børs, was willing to back a $150 a year stipend for a deaconess. “If you dare, can, and will undertake this work,” wrote Gabriel, then join us here in America; we need you.
Elisabeth believed the call came ultimately not from Gabriel but from her Lord Jesus Christ, and so did Mother Katinka. Officially, however, the motherhouse would not recognize the call because it was a personal invitation, not an institutional one, and later it even refused to send more deaconesses at Elisabeth’s request.
The initial slight proved to be, however, a blessing in disguise. Others had already been cultivating a distinctly American order of deaconesses, most notably William Passavant in Pennsylvania. He “encouraged me greatly,” Elisabeth reported of her first meeting with him. Though she was the first Norwegian deaconess in America, Passavant believed that her task was to develop a Norwegian-American diaconate.
And so she did: Elisabeth eventually opened deaconess homes in both New York and Minneapolis, staffed by women from the new Norwegian populations in America, whose motto was “to help poor and suffering countrymen in their spiritual and bodily needs.” In time Passavant was so impressed with Elisabeth that he invited her to head up his new hospital in Pittsburgh, but she declined in order to stay with the institutions she had started herself.
Elisabeth arrived in New York on April 8, 1883. Nine days later, with the help of eight pastors and laymen, she established The Voluntary Relief Society for the Sick and Poor among the Norwegians in New York and Brooklyn. Shortly to follow was the Norwegian Lutheran Deaconesses’ Home and Hospital in America, which many years later was incorporated into what is today called the Lutheran Medical Center. Her initial task was “outdoor relief”: seeking out destitute Norwegians (or other Scandinavians) and helping them through nursing care, the distribution of food and clothing, and cash.
Such work exposed Elisabeth to every kind of human misery. She cared for beggars, alcoholics, and the homeless. She stayed with children whose parents left them alone for hours at a stretch; she found homes for children that had been abandoned entirely. She found jobs for the unemployed. She sat with the dying and prepared their bodies for burial. Everywhere she went, she brought her faith and testimony to the mercy of Christ.
While outdoor relief kept her plenty busy, it soon became overwhelmingly clear that a hospital was needed, too. Many of the immigrants were worsening on account of their inability to communicate in English. Elisabeth immediately set herself the task of mastering the new language but also getting the hospital she wanted, and two years after her arrival in New York it opened, a tiny nine-bed affair on the edge of Bedford-Stuyvesant. When all the beds were filled, she put patients in her own bed. She even set up one of the first ambulance services in New York to bring them there.
And every spare minute not spent with the sick was spent in fundraising, sometimes little different from outright begging, on behalf of the poor. A decade after her arrival in New York, Elisabeth traveled to Albany to argue for the right of her hospital to receive the annual stipend of $4000 granted to other state hospitals. Her English, her persistence, and her remarkable nursing skills paid off: the request was granted.
It was not all joy and success. Seeing the limitless need, Elisabeth ran herself to the point of exhaustion. Her diary from her Brooklyn years records, along with her labors, how tired she was and the degradation of her own health; at one point she needed surgery and a lengthy recuperation. Though gradually other young women joined the deaconess home, expansion was slow, some of the women were unfit for the work, and some left after only a short time. Money, of course, was an endless struggle. A particularly ugly argument erupted over raising money for the hospital via lottery tickets. The disagreement led to the departure of long-time supporters from the hospital board.
Altogether Elisabeth spent twelve years in America, most of them in Brooklyn, two of them in Minneapolis. Even her indefatigable toughness had its limits, though. Her health finally gave out on her and she had no choice but to return to Norway. She rejoined her old motherhouse and spent another three years there.
But it turned out that her old sweetheart had never given up on her. In 1898, at the age of forty-eight, Elisabeth married Ole at last. In 1915, Elisabeth sailed back to New York to pay one last visit to her old haunts, where she received a silver bowl as a tribute from the hospital in honor of her hard work. She gave it in turn to Ole, saying, “You are the one who shall have this, because you accepted me when I was worn out and gave me a good home.” They enjoyed twenty-three years together before Elisabeth’s death in 1921.
Elisabeth’s is a great Lutheran love story, a story of both-and winning out over either-or: both faith in Christ and service to neighbor, both work and family, both celibate devotion to God alone and nuptial devotion to God and spouse.
For Further Reading
Gracia Grindal, To Do the Lord’s Will: Elizabeth Fedde and the Deaconess Movement Among the Norwegians in America (Minneapolis: Lutheran University Press, 2014).
Kelly-Ray Meritt, “St. Elisabeth Fedde,” Lutheran Forum 47/2 (2013): 38–41.
“Sister Elisabeth Fedde: A Light of Hope to Sick and Needy Immigrants in New York City,” in Norwegian-American Essays 2008: “Migration and Memory,” ed. Øyvind T. Gulliksen (Oslo: naha-Norway, 2008), 59–83.
Portions of Elisabeth’s diary have been translated into English and are available online through the Norwegian-American Historical Association.