Carl Schwartz

This article is about the Christian minister. For the hardcore punk musician, see First Blood (band).

August Ferdinand Carl Schwartz DD (1817–1870) was a Hebrew Christian clergyman and minister of the Free Church of Scotland serving in Amsterdam and London.^[1]

Life

Letter by Carl Schwartz (1851)

He was born on 20 January 1817 in Meseritz in Prussia, now Międzyrzec Podlaski in Poland, the son of Isaac Levin Schwartz and Bertha Wollstein. He studied at the universities of Berlin and Halle.^[2]

Carl Schwartz converted to Christianity while at University in Prussia.^[3] He appears to have moved to London in the 1840s and was representative of the London Jews Society in Constantinople in 1842. While there he met Rev Robert Walter Stewart of the Leghorn mission.^[4] The Society abandoned their mission there in 1843 and by some mechanism he transferred to the mission linked to the newly created Free Church of Scotland (possibly the latter took over his existing mission building). In 1844 he took on the role of Free Church of Scotland missionary to the Jews in Berlin, staying in this position until 1849. He then served a similar role for the Free Church of Scotland in Amsterdam from 1849 to 1864.^[2]

From 1864 Schwartz was minister of Trinity Chapel, in Newnham Street (earlier John Street) off the Edgware Road in London. There he succeeded the previous minister, Ridley Herschell, himself also a Polish-born Jew who had been converted to evangelical Christianity. Schwartz in 1865 sent letters to many Christians of Jewish origin known to him, calling for a united Hebrew Christian congregation.^[5] In 1867 he became minister of Harrow Road Presbyterian Church, also continuing on his work of converting Jews, now in London.

He died on 24 August 1870 in Kensington in London.

Family

Schwartz married twice; first, in 1843, Maria Dorothea Saphir of Budapest, the sister of Adolph Saphir, another Jewish-convert Protestant minister.^[6] She died in 1850; he then, in 1851, married Cornelia van Vollenhoven of Rotterdam.^[2] Among his children was Jozua Marius Willem Schwartz (known under his pen-name as novelist Maarten Maartens).^[7]

Publications

• The Scattered Nation in 3 volumes (Vol. 1, Vol. 2, Vol. 3)

References

1. The Free Church of Scotland Monthly Record - Page 684 1863 "The Rev. Dr. Schwartz, our late missionary to the Jews in Amsterdam, has now been formally appointed agent in London for the Free Church Mission to the Jews. He is now minister of Trinity Chapel, Newnham Street, Edgware Road."
2. Ewing, William Annals of the Free Church
3. "The inheritance of J.M.W. van der Poorten Schwartz was partly Jewish, which may account in a measure for the passionate intensity of his beliefs. His father, Dr Carl Schwartz, was born in Germany of Hebrew parents, but, during his university days, he became a Christian. Though it had been his intention to devote himself to an academic career, he grew to realise the spiritual needs of his own race, and he gave up every other prospect in life in order to be an evangelist to the Jews." (Norreys Jephson O'Conor, 'A Memoir', in: Ada van der Poorten Schwartz (ed.), The Letters of Maarten Maartens, Constable & Co., London, 1930, Page xxviii)
4. Annals of the Disruption
5. Dan Cohn-Sherbok, The image of the Judaeo-Christians in ancient Jewish and Christian ... ed. Peter J. Tomson, Doris Lambers-Petry, 2003, Page 287 "In 1865 an attempt was made by Dr. C. Schwartz, minister of Trinity Chapel, Edgware Road, London to unite all Jewish Christians" (reprinted/revised from chapter in Messianic Judaism 2000, Page 16)
6. Westerbeke, Willem (2011). Messiasbelijdende Joden in Nederland, Europa en Israël (in Dutch). Middelburg: Stichting de Gihonbron. p. 81. ISBN 978-1470932541.
7. Licht, Agnes (2017-06-30). "geboren worden in Amsterdam". Maarten Maartens Lezen (in Dutch). Archived from the original on 2020-05-05. Retrieved 2020-05-05.