August Weenaas

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August Weenaas
August Weenaas.jpg
Born1834
Norway
Died1924
Norway
Occupation(s)Pastor, college president

August Weenaas (1835–1924) was a Norwegian American Lutheran minister and educator. He was the founding president of Augsburg University. [1]

Contents

Biography

August Weenaas was born in Norway and educated in the ministry at the University of Christiania, where he learned from the famed theologian and revivalist Gisle Johnson. He was ordained as a minister in the Church of Norway. He served as a pastor there for several years at Loppen prior to immigrating to the United States in 1868. Weenaas resigned his pastorate in the beginning of February 1868 and became a professor in Paxton, Illinois, at the Scandinavian Augustana Synod Seminary (now Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois). In 1869, he was named president of Augsburg Seminary, a position he held from 1869 until 1876. Weenaas recruited two professors from Norway, Sven Oftedal and Georg Sverdrup. Together these three men would serve as the first three presidents of Augsburg Seminary, covering the period 1868 through 1911. [2] [3]

Weenaas took active part in the movement which resulted in the friendly separation of the Norwegians from the Scandinavian Augustana Synod at the meeting held at Andover, Illinois, in June 1870. He was one of the organizers of the Conference of the Norwegian-Danish Evangelical Lutheran Church of America at the following meeting held at St. Ansgar, Iowa, in August of the same year. From January 1870 until June 1876 he edited the official paper of the Conference called Lutheraneren og Missionsbladet.

His wife, Valborg, died in September 1873 and subsequently his two young daughters also died. In 1876, Weenaas returned to Norway. In 1882, he returned to the United States with his second wife, Marie, and several of their children. The family lived in Red Wing, Minnesota, where Weenaas taught theology at the Red Wing Seminary from 1882 to 1885 before returning to Norway. Upon his return to Norway he received an appointment as pastor at Søndmøre in Ålesund, More og Romsdal. [4]

Selected works

References

  1. ↑ "Luther Seminary - Historical Timeline". www.luthersem.edu. Archived from the original on August 3, 2010. Retrieved June 27, 2025.
  2. ↑ "Augsburg College: About Augsburg - History". www.augsburg.edu. Archived from the original on September 30, 2012. Retrieved June 27, 2025.
  3. ↑ Hamre, James S. (January 2022). "Georg Sverdrup and the Augsburg Plan of Education". Norwegian-American Historical Association . 26: 160. Retrieved June 27, 2025.
  4. ↑ Roseland, Jens Christian (1890). American Lutheran Biographies: Or, Historical Notices of Over Three Hundred and Fifty Leading Men of the American Lutheran Church, from Its Establishment to the Year 1890 ; with a Historical Introduction and Numerous Portrait Engravings. Press of A. Houtkamp & Son. pp. 846–848. Retrieved June 27, 2025.

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