Keller, Friedrich "Heinrich" Wilhelm

[There are two Lutheran pastors with the name Friedrich Heinrich Wilhelm Keller. This one went by the name "Heinrich." Some documents erroneously refer to this Pastor Keller as Ferdinand Heinrich Wilhelm Keller.]

Friedrich Heinrich Wilhelm Keller, son of Heinrich Wilhelm Adolf Keller, was born 10 December 1850 in Hapsal, Estonia. He went by Heinrich Keller. He died in 19 July 1926 in the Lichterfelde neighborhood of Berlin, Germany. He was married to Martha Schück (1846-1917).

Pastor Keller was ordained 30 April 1889 in Katharinenfeld (Caucasus).

He served the Lutheran parish in Katharinenfeld (Caucasus) from 1889-1892 and the parish in Sarepta in 1892-1894. He was then sent to the troubled parish in Riebensdorf where he served from 1894-1897.

While in Riebensdorf, a local leader named Dederer leveled 40 accusations against Pastor Keller. The Moscow Consistory sent a 3-man panel (Superintendent Evert, a lawyer, and a protocol officer) to review the accusations. All accusations were found to be groundless, but Pastor Keller retired nevertheless.

Following is a timeline of Pastor Keller written by his daughter Magdalene "Echi" Krüger and translated from the German and summarized by his great-grandson Peter Schidlowsky in 2020.

TIMELINE for Friedrich Heinrich Wilhelm Keller II

b. 22 December 1850  [10 December 1850 in the old Julian calendar of the Russian Empire], in Hapsal, Estonia; d. 19 July 1926, in Berlin.

1859     Heinrich is 9 and is educated by his father, at home.

1860     Heinrich is enrolled in the Gymnasium [High School].

1868     Heinrich is 18 and begins to study Law at the university in St.Petersburg, Russia.  There, his sister,16-year-old Lydia, is staying with her grandmother’s sister, Baroness Korff, the widow of His Excellency Anatol Pólovzov. Heinrich is good friends with Alfred von Schwanebach, who has many sisters. 

1870     After two years of studying Law, he switches and goes to Dorpat (Estonia) to study Lutheran Theology at the university there.  This took him some time, during which he also tutored to help defray costs of his education.

1876     Heinrich is close to writing his final exams in Theology.   Lydia asks him to take her home from St.Petersburg, where she’s been for 8 years now. Heinrich meets Therese “Tia” von Schwanebach and falls for her.  He soon proposes marriage but she proposes letters and friendship instead.  He is completely shattered and fails to write his final exams.  His cousin, Pastor Wilhelm Keller from Riga, suggests he obtain his High School teaching certificate in Languages, then comes to teach at the school he runs. Heinrich gets his certificate and takes the job.  A number of happy years in Riga (Latvia) ensue.

1882     Heinrich leaves Riga for a vacation in Germany.  He sees Berlin and Dresden, then spends the remainder of his holidays in Bad Salzbrunn in Silesia, where he is to transmit greetings from Pastor Wilhelm to the Schück family. He falls for Martha Schück and soon, engaged, they continue to Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland) together, whereupon Heinrich returns to Riga. Later that year, he marries Martha in Breslau on 18 Dec. 1882.  After the New Year celebrations, the couple leaves for Riga.

1883     October: birth of the first daughter, Thea [Amalie Therese  Elisabeth], in Riga, but she dies of dysentery 11 months later.

1884     Heinrich is offended by the small raise he gets, after his wife had gone to his employer (Pastor Wilhelm) to plead for an increase. He resigns and takes the job of provincial bureaucrat. December: birth of 2^nd daughter, Therese Anna Magdalene, in Riga.

1886     March: birth of 3^rd daughter, Magdalene “Echi”, in Riga. Heinrich gets a bursary to study Theology for two semesters at Dorpat University.

1887     Move to Dorpat (now Tartu, Estonia), where Heinrich (Papa) now teaches Theology at the university.  The family lives with Papa’s parents.

1888     May: birth of 4^th daughter, Sofia, in Dorpat. Papa, now 38, passes his examinations and starts his practical year as assistant pastor.

1889     Papa absolves his practical year successfully and begins fulfilling the conditions of his bursary: 5 years of ministering, wherever he is needed.  In the fall, the family pays a farewell visit to Dr Ottow & family. They then leave Dorpat for Katharinenfeld, one of a number of German villages in Imperial Russia, near Tiflis (Tbilisi, Georgia), where Papa has been sent by his church’s Konsistorium in Moscow, to be pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Mission there.  They travel by way of Lake Peipus (Lake Ladoga), Pleskau (Pskov), Riga (stopping to visit the grave of their 1^st child), Odessa on the the Black Sea and Tbilisi.  The family’s household help is Justine.

1890     June: birth of 5^th daughter, Hildegard  “Hilla”, in Katharinenfeld.

1892     Cholera epidemic, followed by typhoid fever (which Echi catches but survives).

1893     Right after X-mas 1892, the family leaves Katharinenfeld. Papa has been posted to Sarepta, south of Tsaritsyn (Stalingrad, now Volgograd), in Russia.  They travel north through the mountains, by horse-drawn coach and sled, guarded by local tribal guides (Lesghians), along the Georgian Military Road [through Daghestan?], to Tbilisi.   From there, by train to Grjasi and on to Sarepta (where there are camels).  Papa is now pastor at the last “Herrnhuter Brüdergemeine” in Russia, all the other such congregations having already joined the Evangelical Lutheran Church.  Echi and Hilla have a bout of diptheria.

1894     After Papa reports to his church’s Konsistorium  that Sarepta is now well-acquainted with Martin Luther’s interpretation of Christianity, he is sent to Rybensdorf  [Voronezh/Volga region, near Ostrogozhsk], a problem parish which had been turned down by all other pastors in the last 3 years.  It is a malaria-infested, backward place, run by the village tyrant, a Mr. Dederer, with only a primitive school.  At regular intervals, a pastor would come from Voronezh or Kharkov or Kursk, to perform weddings, baptisms, etc.

1895     In Spring, Mama undergoes surgery in St.Petersburg

1896     In Summer, via Voronezh, Moscow and St.Petersburg, the family visits the grandparents in Dorpat (i.e. Wilhelm and Lila, as well as Aunt Ago, who lives with her parents).  Grandma Lila is now quite elderly and is very ill with tuberculosis.   The whole family, young and old, then leaves for Kamby, in the country, where Papa has rented a house at the edge of a forest.  We travel along a very dusty road, in three horse-drawn wagons, the third being for bedding, household stuff and the grandparents’ maid.  When we visit the grandparents a little distance from “our” house, past a lake, Grandma Lila  entertains everyone with stories from her youth. On August  22^nd, we celebrate Grandma’s 77^th birthday. Then, the family returns to Rybensdorf, stopping first in Dorpat. On September 19^th, Lila dies. When Papa tells Aunt Ago, she reportedly says: “Oh? Who’ll look after me now?”.  In Rybensdorf, two factions had developed over the years:  those who held with Papa, and those who sided with Dederer, who had a lot of power in the area.  Dederer, among other things,  was supposed to teach school but preferred to play cards with his cronies;  he wanted to get rid of Papa so that he could continue his many crooked ways. This tyrant, whom many people feared, resorted to all kinds of nasty means, including false accusations, witholding funds & firewood, firing guns during noisy demonstrations.  All this to make our life unbearable so that Papa would leave as had the others before him.  But Papa & Mama hold on, helped by the third of parishioners who have the courage to stand against Dederer openly, or secretly supply firewood or food to us.  Some of the  church-goers even come from Ostrogozhsk, or from Neudorf. To get to Neudorf, one has to cross the Volga river, which at this   place is very wide and slow.  From each shore, a causeway made of large rocks ran to the middle where a wooden bridge connects the gap.  After the spring floods, the rocks were again made ready for traffic by filling in with gravel, refuse and....  manure. Mama, Anna, Hilla & I, all suffer from malaria and must take quinine, which is also provided to the locals.

 1897   The family leaves Rybensdorf after Christmas 1896  and moves to St.Petersburg.

 1917   Martha dies Nov. 9^th. She could not be operated on because of the revolutionary activity.

 1923   Heinrich moves to Berlin.