Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography/Moldenke, Edward Frederick

MOLDENKE, Edward Frederick, theologian, b. in Insterburg, Prussia, 10 Aug., 1836. He was educated in the universities of Königsberg and Halle, studying specially theology and philosophy, and was successively principal of a parish school at Eckersberg, Prussia, and professor in the gymnasium of Lyck, which post he held until July, 1861. At this date he came as a travelling Lutheran missionary to Wisconsin and Minnesota, and in 1863 he was elected first professor of theology in the seminary of the synod of Wisconsin. He returned to Germany in 1866, and was pastor at Johannisburg until 1869, preaching in German and Polish. He returned to America in that year and became pastor of Zion's Lutheran church in New York city. At present (1888) he is pastor of St. Peter's German Lutheran church in that city. In 1865 he was editor of the “Gemeindeblatt” at Watertown, Wis. He wrote the doctrinal articles for the “Lutherische Herold,” New York, in 1869-'70, and was editor of the same paper in 1877-'9. With others he began the “Lutherisches Kirchenblatt” in Philadelphia in 1884, and has been editor of “Siloah,” a monthly paper of the general council in the interest of German home missions, since 1882. He received the degrees of M. A. and Ph. D. from the University of Rostock, Germany, in 1865, and that of D. D. from Muhlenberg college, Pa., in 1887. He has published series of articles in the Berlin “Evang. Kirchenzeitung” on “Fünf Jahre in Amerika” (1868-70) and “New Yorker Kirchenspiegel” (1870-'3), and, in book-form, “Luther-Büchlein,” a poem (Allentown, Pa., 1879). He has edited “Darstellung der modernen deutschen Theologie” (Watertown, Wis., 1865). — His son, Charles Edward, b. in Lyck, Prussia, 10 Oct., 1860, was graduated at Columbia in 1879, spent a year at the Lutheran theological seminary in Philadelphia, and studied in Halle and Strasburg, Germany, until 1884. In that year he received the degree of Ph. D. from Strasburg university. He published his inaugural dissertation, “Die altegyptischen Texten erwaehnten Baeume und deren Verwerthung” (Leipsic, 1886; American ed., 1887); the text of the New York obelisk, with explanations, the first print in hieroglyphic type ever issued in America (1887); and “The World's most Ancient Fairy-Tale, the Two Brothers,” in hieratic (1887).