Home » Articles » The Delegate to Berlin

Amongst the pages of the documents I found handwritten notes, snippets of newspaper or other documentation. Below, an extract from an extensive newspaper article of the Queensland Times, September 26, 1932.

The article details the visit of Dr Rushbrooke to join the Jubilee celebrations at Blenheim. By this time John has retired and the new Pastor was Rev Holmans, hence the references to Mr Heinrich who presided over what appears to be a grand occasion attended by representatives of all the Baptist churches in the district as well as other denominations.

Anyway, this snippet:

The World Congress was held in Berlin in 1934. Martin Luther King attended according to this information below:

“In 1934 he (Martin Luther King) was able to join ten other Baptist ministers for a trip to the Holy Land and Europe, which included a visit to Berlin, Germany, where the Fifth Baptist World Alliance Congress (Kongress des Baptistischen Weltbundes) was being held in August at the Sportpalast [see note below] on Potsdamer Straße in Berlin-Schöneberg. (1934 was the 100th anniversary of the first Baptist congregation in Germany, founded in April 1834 by Johann Gerhard Oncken in Hamburg with just seven members.)”

Did John ever go? I wonder.

More on MLK here: http://www.german-way.com/famous-mlk-german.html, interesting for a view of the Germany of the day prior to WWII.