The Beginning
At the beginning of our Order's history is a letter written on March 31, 1857 by the parish priest Father Gerhard Dall of St. George's parish in Thuine in Emsland, north of Osnabrück, to Soeur Madame Adele de Glaubitz, the superior of the Sisters of the Holy Cross in Strasbourg. During his travels, he had met sisters of this young community and asked for sisters to care for the residents of his village Thuine, who were often ill with typhoid fever.
His request was fulfilled: On May 25, 1857, the 22-year-old Sister M. Anselma and the somewhat older Sister Marianne came to Thuine. They found their first accommodation in the small Brockmöller house, where they lived in abject poverty for several years. As typhoid fever broke out again and again among the needy population, the concern for the sick in the families was soon joined by the concern for the children orphaned by the death of their parents.
About this initial time in Thuine, Sister M. Anselma said: "In those early days, well-meaning people urged both of us to refrain from this seemingly hopeless undertaking, not to waste our energies on a beginning that was doomed from the start to disappear again... We both knew that these reproaches were true, and yet we stayed. When I ask myself today why we stayed, then I must honestly say that I don't know. There was certainly nothing pleasant for us to expect here... Nevertheless, I recognize today quite clearly that our perseverance at that time was already the beginning of God's intervention, who simply took the Thuine matter into His hands and has directed it up to this point."
Sister M. Anselma understood the needs of the sick, the poor and the orphans in Thuine as a call from God, which she did not want to evade.
