author
George Unangst Wenner
1844–1934
A longtime Lutheran pastor in New York, he wrote with the perspective of someone who had helped build the community he described. His best-known book traces the history, struggles, and growth of Lutheran life in the city.
1 Audiobook
The Lutherans of New York, Their Story and Their Problems
by George Unangst Wenner
About the author
Born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in 1844, George Unangst Wenner studied at Pennsylvania College, later graduated from Yale in 1865, and continued at Union Theological Seminary in New York. He was ordained in 1868 and soon took up mission work among German Protestants on New York’s East Side.
That work led to the founding of Christ Lutheran Church in Manhattan, where he remained pastor for decades. Contemporary accounts describe him as a remarkably long-serving minister, and by 1929 he had completed 61 years in the same parish.
Wenner is remembered as both a clergyman and a chronicler of his community. His best-known work, The Lutherans of New York: Their Story and Their Problems (1918), draws on firsthand knowledge as well as historical research to tell the story of Lutheran churches in the city and the immigrant communities around them.