Theophilus Waldmeier

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Theophilus Waldmeier (1832 in Basel – 1915) was a Swiss

Quaker
.

Theophilus Waldmeier

Waldmeier was born in the Canton of

King Theodore and joined four other missionaries already there. Nine months after his arrival he married Susan Bell, the eldest daughter of Theodore’s Anglo-Irish Prime Minister, John Bell. She was around twelve years old. Her mother was a member of the royal family.[1]
[2]

The Europeans were allowed to establish a boarding school which included an artisan training program. During this period Susan gave birth to five children, four of them, all boys, died in infancy. Only their daughter Rosa survived. Waldmeier became one of the King Theodore’s favourites. Things changed as Theodore’s character became more volatile and cruel.

Magdala. Special roads had to be made for the Sebastopol which at times needed eight hundred men to move. The 200 mile journey took six months. Meanwhile the British sent an Anglo-Indian army to rescue the hostages. In 1868 following the defeat of his army at Magdala the king released his fifty-seven European prisoners before killing himself. During their two years as captives the fifth of Waldmeier’s sons died.[4]

He went to Beirut with the British Syrian Mission (which was founded in 1860). He started the Friends' Syrian Mission in 1873, founded Brummana High School[5] in 1873 and the ‘Aṣfūriyyeh Mental Hospital, an influential psychiatric hospital which lasted from 1896 until 1982. [6] In 1874, he traveled to Europe to seek financial backing from the Society of Friends. British and American Quakers provided support for the Brummana School.[7]

Notes

  1. ^ Ten Years in Abyssinia and Sixteen Years in Syria being the Autobiography of Theophilus Waldmeier pp.1-12
  2. ISBN 0-900657-42-1
    p.89
  3. ^ Waldmeier pp.66,78,79,92
  4. ^ Waldmeier pp.93-116
  5. ^ Welcome Archived 2007-10-09 at archive.today at www.brummana.org.lb
  6. ISBN 9780262044745
  7. ^ fr:Theophil Waldmeier


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