Title:

Predigt bey der Taufe eines Türcken, nach Anlaß Jes. 54, 2.3. Den 22. Novembr. 1746. in der Kirche zu St. Nicolai gehalten, nebst der Tauf-Rede, und der darzu gehörigen kurz gefaßten Nachricht

Short title

Predigt bey der Taufe eines Türcken

Title variations

Title in English

A sermon at the baptism of a Turk: following Isiah 54:2-3, 22 November 1746 at St Nicolai Church together with a baptismal address and a short account

Section

Language

German

Creation date

1746

Genre

Religious text

Content

Content table

Formal Expression

Prose

Qur'an quotations

Yes

Original

Source

Use (macro-category)

Polemical

Use (micro-category)

Polemics against Islam

Bibliographical references

Renate Dürr, “Inventing a Lutheran Ritual: Baptism of Muslims and Africans in Early Modern Germany”, in Ulinka Rublack (ed.), Protestant Empires: Globalizing the Reformations (Cambridge, 2020), pp. 196-227, here 223f.

Descriptive card

On 22 November 1746 a thirty-two-year-old Muslim named Wolko was baptized by the Lutheran pastor Christian Gotthold Wilisch (1696-1768) in the Saxon town of Freiberg. Wolko a "Turk", i.e. Sunnite Muslim was born is Sophia and had reportedly spent some years in Istanbul. He eventually ended up in Marseille and was then pressed by the Habsburgs. He was wounded in 1745 at the Battle of Kesselsdorff (between Prussia and the Habsburgs and their Saxon allies). He was treated in the Saxon town of Freiberg and baptized the following year taking the name Gottlieb Christian Friedrich Wohlfahrt. The sermon delivered by Wilisch argues for the necessity of Christians studying the Qur’an to convince Muslims to convert by Christianity by engaging them in a well-informed dispute. The sermon includes detailed summaries of Qur’anic arguments from suras 2, 5, 9, 15, 37 as well as a quote in German od Q 5:6 on ablution, taken from David Nerreter’s 1703 translation of Marracci’s Latin Qur’an translation.

Entry author

Asaph Ben Tov