Background
Georg Martin Grossmann was born Groß-Bieberau, Grand Duchy of Hesse (nowadays Groß-Bieberau, Darmstadt-Dieburg, Hesse, Germany), on October 18, 1823, he was the son of Ludwig and Maria Margarete (Rotenhäuser) Grossmann.
Georg Martin Grossmann was born Groß-Bieberau, Grand Duchy of Hesse (nowadays Groß-Bieberau, Darmstadt-Dieburg, Hesse, Germany), on October 18, 1823, he was the son of Ludwig and Maria Margarete (Rotenhäuser) Grossmann.
After attending the normal school at Friedberg, Grossmann engaged for some years in teaching. Becoming interested in missionary work in America that was being directed by William Löhe of Neuendettelsau, he studied theology under Friedrich Bauer at Nürnberg and at the University of Erlangen.
Grossmann was offered his services to Löhe, who recognized his pedagogical skill and chose him to conduct a training school for parochial teachers at Saginaw, Michigan. He was ordained at Hamburg by the Rev. J. Meinel and, with his family and some young men who were to be his pupils, reached Saginaw in July 1852 and opened his school. The Lutheran ministers of Saginaw County were members of the Missouri Synod, and Grossmann before long found himself unpleasantly concerned in a controversy between Löhe and the Missouri Synod over the nature of the ministerial office and its relation to the priesthood of believers.
He sided with Löhe against the extreme Congregationalism of the Missourians, who proceeded to make things so uncomfortable for him that he was compelled to move to a part of the country unoccupied by pastors of that synod. Accordingly, late in October 1853, he and his friend Johannes Deindörfer went to Iowa, where they proposed to found a synod that would remain loyal to Löhe and to Löhe’s principles.
Grossmann settled at Dubuque, reopened his school, and gathered together a Lutheran congregation, while Deindörfer went some sixty miles northwestward into Gayton County. For the next few years both men had to contend with dire poverty.
On August 24, 1854, Grossmann, Deindörfer, and two young clergymen recently sent over by Löhe met in Deindörfer’s cabin at St Sebald in Clayton County and organized the German Lutheran Synod of Iowa. Unpromising as was its beginning, the synod grew, although for a generation it was handicapped by the polemical onslaughts of the Missouri Synod, by some dissension and intrigue within its own ranks, and by the straitened circumstances of its members.
Löhe continued to send men and money for its work, however, and as German immigrants poured into the West and Northwest the synod extended its activities east to Lake Erie and west to the Rocky Mountains. Grossmann was its president from 1854 to 1893.
He soon transformed his school into a theological seminary, of which he was president until 1874. The brothers Conrad Sigmund and Gottfried Leonhard Wilhelm Fritschel were the other permanent members of the faculty.
In 1878, in vacant rooms in an orphanage at Andrew, Jackson County, Iowa, he resumed his training of parochial teachers; two years later the Wartburg Normal College moved into its own quarters at Waverly, where, on a salary of $600 a year and a house, he continued to direct the work until 1894, when the infirmities of old age made it necessary for him to retire.
In 1895 he published a small book on Die Christliche Gemeindeschule.
He died at Waverly after a long illness.
Georg Martin Grossmann was Lutheran.
Georg Martin Grossmann was married to Nannie Steppes.