thumb|Theodor Fliedner
Theodor Fliedner (21 January 18004 October 1864 He was, for a time, a house teacher. In 1821 he assumed the pastorate in the poor municipality of Kaiserswerth (now in Düsseldorf). When the town could no longer support church and ministry due to an economic crisis, he undertook journeys to collect donations. Beginning in Westphalia, these travels also took him to the Netherlands and England.
Career
In the Netherlands he became acquainted with the ancient church office of deaconess while spending time among the Moravian Church, which had revived the institution in 1745. and in 1826, Fliedner created the Rhenish-Westphalian Prison Society (Rheinisch-Westfälische Gefängnisgesellschaft). Fliedner realized that the first step must be toward looking after the prisoners on their release, and accordingly, in 1833, he opened at Kaiserswerth a refuge for discharged female convicts.
Deaconess Training
right|thumb|200px|Pastor Theodor Fliedner. German social welfare stamp. 1952
In many cities, there were no hospitals at that time. Following somewhat the model of the early Christian Church's diaconate, incorporating ideas learned from Fry and the Mennonites, and applying his own thoughts, Fliedner developed a plan whereby young women would find and care for the needy sick. For this, he needed to create Kaiserswerther Diakonie, an institute where women could learn both theology and nursing skills. He opened the hospital and deaconess training center in Kaiserswerth on 13 October 1836. Deaconesses took vows to care for their poor and sick charges, but they could leave their work and return to outside life if they so chose. and Louise Conring, the first Danish deaconess and founder of Diakonissestiftelsen.
After his wife, Friederike, died in 1842, he found a new life companion (and important employee) in Caroline Bertheau. They opened institutes for the diaconate in 1844 in Dortmund and in 1847 in Berlin with the support of King Frederick William IV of Prussia, and his wife Queen Elizabeth. In 1855 Fliedner received the degree of Doctor of Theology from the University of Bonn, in recognition of his practical activities.
A sign of the international respect Fliedner garnered is that his most famous pupil came from outside Germany. English nursing reformer Florence Nightingale first visited in 1841. She was impressed by the religious devotion and noted most of the deaconesses were of peasant origin. She graduated from the facility in 1851. Today, one of Düsseldorf's hospitals (Florence-Nightingale-Krankenhaus) bears her name.
He is commemorated as a renewer of society in the Calendar of Saints of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America on 4 October and by the Evangelical Church in Germany on 5 October.
Selected works
Fliedner's writings were almost all of a practical, rather than theological nature. Included were: