Emil Frauchiger was a pioneer, colporteur, pastor, missionary, and administrator in Europe and the Middle East for 44 years. Read the entire articles about Emil Frauchiger and others in the Encyclopedia of Seventh-day Adventists at encyclopedia.adventist.org.
Emil Frauchiger [frao-shigger] was a pioneer, colporteur, pastor, missionary, and administrator in Europe and the Middle East for 44 years.
Frauchiger played a crucial role in the early years of Adventist mission work in Switzerland and Germany. He later was a major force in establishing and strengthening churches in the Middle East and other regions under his leadership.
As a young adult in Switzerland, Emil attended a series of lectures held by Seventh-day Adventists, including Ellen White, who had come from America.
Emil Frauchiger, together with 23 others, were inspired by the message and joined the new Adventist movement in 1886.
Frauchiger pioneered colporteuring in Switzerland and Germany. God blessed him with a loving partner in life and ministry. His wife, Marie Borle [borl], joined him on the frontlines of mission. He was ordained as a pastor in 1893.
After serving in Switzerland and Germany for some 23 years, Frauchiger felt God's calling to be a missionary in Turkey. Together with seven of their children, they arrived in Turkey in 1909, where Emil took over the leadership of the Turkish Mission. The following year, they took on the Levant [le-vont] Union Mission, a vast territory with a very small Adventist presence.
He supervised the organization of four churches where he baptized new converts in the Bosphorus near Istanbul, then known as Constantinople. Frauchiger and a few Adventist workers labored in challenging circumstances, facing imprisonment and continual persecution.
Nevertheless, they did mission work with untiring devotion. In 1911, together with another German missionary leader, Frauchiger held the first Adventist evangelistic meetings in Haifa in today's Israel. It was also in Haifa, where they planned a Bible workers institute for those in that region.
The first evangelistic tent was pitched in Turkey with government permission in 1914. In addition to holding evangelistic meetings, Frauchiger established a training school in Constantinople and held lectures for Armenians and Greeks.
The school served as a missionary training venue for workers in Turkey. Adventist workers in Constantinople were taught three languages—Turkish, Armenian, and Greek—to prepare them for mission.
During the First World War, Frauchiger continued to oversee the work in the Levant field, even though communication and movement became extremely difficult.
Frauchiger’s next destination was the newly organized Czechoslovakian Union Conference where he served as president. The means were so scarce there that workers hardly had the money for food to survive. Frauchiger began canvassing and eventually managed to establish a printing house to sell Adventist literature. However, he quickly became burned out. Decades of hard work and sacrifice had taken a severe toll on his health. As a result, he decided to return to his home country of Switzerland.
From 1924 onwards, he worked as a pastor in the German Swiss Conference and retired a few years later in 1930. Even after retirement, Frauchiger continued to be active in ministry, engaging in activities such as documenting the beginnings of Adventists in Switzerland and Germany in the official church magazine Advent Echo.
Emil Frauchiger died on January 8, 1947. He was 82 years old. His legacy can still be discerned in many of the countries where he worked.
Read the entire articles about Emil Frauchiger and others in the Encyclopedia of Seventh-day Adventists at encyclopedia.adventist.org.
