FLIEDNER, THEODOR (180o-1864), German Protestant divine and philanthropist, was born on Jan. 21, 1800, at Epstein (near Wiesbaden), and studied at Giessen, Gottingen and Herborn. In 1821 he became pastor of the Protestant church at Kaisers werth, on the Rhine. During a visit to England in 1823 he made the acquaintance of Elizabeth Fry. The German prisons were then in a very bad state. The prisoners were huddled together in dirty rooms, badly fed, and left in complete idleness. Fliedner applied for permission to be imprisoned for some time, in order to see prison life from the inside. This petition was refused, but he was allowed to hold fortnightly services in the Dusseldorf prison, and to visit the inmates individually. On June 18, 1826, the first Prison Society of Germany (Rheinisch-West f alischer Ge f dngnisverein ) was founded. In 1833 Fliedner opened in his own parsonage garden at Kaiserswerth a refuge for discharged female convicts. He then turned to the care of the sick poor, and he began a scheme for securing proper training for nurses. In 1836 he began the first deaconess house, and the hospital at Kaiserswerth, the institution which gave Florence Nightingale fruitful ideas on the provision of nursing. By their ordination vows the deaconesses devoted themselves to the care of the poor, the sick and the young; but their engagements were not final—they might leave their work and return to ordinary life if they chose. Fliedner also founded (183 5) an infant school, then a normal school for infant school mistresses (1836), an orphanage for orphan girls of the middle class (1842), and an asylum for female lunatics (1847) . He assisted at the foundation and in the management of similar institutions, not only in Germany, but in various parts of Europe.
In 1849 he resigned his pastoral charge, and till 1851 travelled over a large part of Europe, America and the East—the object of his journeys being to found "mother houses," which were to be not merely training schools for deaconesses, but also centres whence other training establishments might arise. He established a deaconess house in Jerusalem, and after his return assisted by counsel and money in the erection of establishments at Constanti nople, Smyrna, Alexandria and Bucharest. He founded the Chris tian house of refuge for female servants in Berlin (connected with which other institutions soon arose) and the "house of evening rest" for retired deaconesses at Kaiserswerth. Fliedner died on Oct. 4, 1864, leaving behind him over I oo stations.
His son FRITZ FLIEDNER (1845-1901), after studying in Halle and Tubingen, became in 1870 chaplain to the embassy in Madrid and founded several philanthropic institutions in Spain. He was also the author of a number of books, among which was an auto biography, Aus meinem Le ben, Erinnerungen and Er f ahrungen (1901).
See G. Fliedner, Theodor Fliedner, kurzer Abriss seines Lebens and Wirkens (3rd ed., 1892) . See also on Fliedner and his work Kaisers werth Deaconesses (185 7) ; J . S. Howson, Deaconesses (1862) ; E. C. Stephen, The Service of the Poor (1871) ; W. F. Stevenson, Praying and Working (1865) .