„Kaiserswerth was entirely a Roman Catholic village until near the close of the last century, when certain velvet manufacturers brought over their work-people from Protestant Crefeld. The Protestant congregation was small enough,- two hundred in a population of eighteen hundred; and over it Candidat Theodore Fliedner was placed as village pastor in the year 1822. He was not there a month when the velvet manufacturers failed, and the congregation, mostly their own workmen, threatened to be broken up. Fliedner was offered another charge. He says he could not reconcile it with his duty to leave his flock when they most needed help; and as they were no longer capable of supporting a pastorate among them, he made a begging tour as far even as Holland and England, and returned with a sum sufficient to afford a moderate endowment. This, however, was by far the least result of his journey. His longing and aptitude for practical work, not as a philanthropist only, but as an earnest minister of Christ, had been greatly stimulated by what he saw. He had visited hospitals, workhouses, schools; in London he dwells simply on having „seen Newgate, and many other prisons:“ he regrets only missing Mrs. Fry. And when he came back he thought, with deep shame, that in faith and love Englishwomen far surpassed German men. It was not long till his thoughts found a practical outlet. The prison at Düsseldorf was no better than other prisons at this time. There was no classification of the prisoners, no schooling for the young, scarce any separation of the sexes. The filth was horrifying, the arrangements for sleeping and eating of the worst. The prisoners had no employment, and there was no effort to give them any spiritual instruction. Meanwhile the jailors grew rich, and the prison-boards fell asleep. Fliedner sought admission to the Düsseldorf prison, having more leisure, as he says, than his brethren, and obtained permission to preach in it every Sunday fortnight.“ Dazu paßt die höchst überlieferungstaugliche, symbolbehaftete Legende, daß Fliedner einst in einem Nachen in Kaiserswerth anlandete; um ernsthaft heilig gesprochen zu werden war er dennoch eine Spur zu protestantisch. Die grauen Diakonissen, zu Beginn aus Knästen und Armenfamilien rekrutiert, wandeln bis heute in zunehmend rarer Ausführung durch rheinische Landschaften und vermitteln dem unbedarften Beobachter das Gefühl, daß es hinter ihnen staubt. (O tempora, o mores!) Und London sollte stets als letzte und größte Stadt am Rhein gedacht werden, hier mal nebenbei.

Über den Gründer der Diakonie, Theodor Fliedner, schreibt Rev. William Fleming Stevenson in seinem Buch „Praying and Working“ (London 1862), das von Lebenswegen berühmter Christen erzählt, und nimmt dabei mit Thomas Hood (dessen Stil er mäßig kopiert) und Lord Byron einen langen rheinischen Anlauf, bevor er „The blue flag of Kaiserswerth“ sichtet: „Up the Rhine, has no more the meaning it bore in Thomas Hood`s exquisitely droll itinerary, – not so long ago, but for this railway and now telegraph speed at which the world is flying past us, – when it meant leisurely sailing for days together from the very Rhine mouth up to Basel, with nightly bivouacs at the villages on either side, and endless opportunity of observing the vicissitudes of social life from the crowded quarter-deck. For the first point of departure from Rotterdam is now the pretty station of the Dutch-Rhenish Railway, and along this railway you are whirled at a steady, comfortable pace, without so much as a peep at the rejoicing river, or at anything else, save a deep, full ditch, close to the rails, an occasional sand-hill, or flat colourless fields where the hard soil is bleached by the sun, until you see the towers of the great cathedral at Cologne, and there take the water for Coblenz and Bingen. But should any one be simple, quiet, and old-fashioned enough to embark at the Boompjes, in one of the fast Rhine steamers, and be content to look, for two days, at a row of bulrushes on the one side and poplar trees upon the other, or at poplar trees upon the one side and a row of bulrushes on the other, he will not only come upon the exquisite scenery higher up with all the advantage of contrast and relief, but will probably see, about an hour before reaching Düsseldorf, a strange flag floating from a tower upon the left. It is not time for the „Fruit, foliage, crags, wood, cornfield, mountain, vine / And chiefless castles breathing stern farewells, / From green, but leafy walls, where rain greenly dwells;“ the only rising ground in sight is on the horizon, and the tower is only the relic of a windmill. Neither does the flag suggest anything of battles passed below, but is simply a large blue flag, bearing in the centre a white dove with an olive branch. It is the signal that you are passing Kaiserswerth, a paltry, ordinary village, as you would presently say, looking at the houses that straggle down to the river; and is nothing more, notwithstanding its ruins of the eleventh century, and that St Suibert, the first evangelist of the district, is buried in the Pfarrkirche. Moreover, on nearer inspection it turns out to be dirty, as most Roman Catholic towns unfortunately are. And yet it is better worth stopping at than St Goar or Ehrenbreitstein. It is the seat of a movement which is exercising a profound influence on the German Church, and drawing no little attention from England, as well; where an unpretending German clergyman has been working out in his own way a problem which deeply concerns us all – the right relation of womanly gifts and service to the kingdom of God. (…)“