Katharina Lohrenz Schellenberg (1870 – January 1, 1945) was an American Mennonite medical missionary of Russian birth.

Schellenberg was born in a colony of Tiegerweide, at the time in South Russia, today village Mostove, Tokmak Raion in Ukraine; it was part of the Molotschna Mennonite colony. Her parents were Abraham and Katharina Lohrenz Schellenberg, with whom she immigrated to the United States in 1879, settling in Kansas.[1] When she was fourteen, her mother died. At nineteen, she made her first commitment to Christ, joining the Mennonite congregation in Buhler, Kansas.[2] Schellenberg studied medicine at the Deaconess Hospital in Cleveland, an undertook further study at the Medical Institute of Homeopathic Medicine in Kansas City, Kansas; she was the first woman among North American Mennonites to become a doctor, and became the denomination's first medical missionary in India when she traveled to that country in 1907.[1] She learned to speak Telugu as part of her preparations. Early in her career she worked in various locations, from Hughestown as far south as the Tungabhadra River; the mission built a hospital at Nagarkurnool in 1912.[3] The 1928 completion of another hospital, in Shamshabad, meant that city became her home base. Many of her patients were Muslim women who could not be seen by a male doctor. Schellenberg died suddenly in India, and is buried in the St. George Cemetery in Hyderabad.[2] An archive of photographs related to her career in India is held at the Mennonite Library & Archives at Fresno Pacific University.[4]

References

  1. 1 2 Susan Hill Lindley; Eleanor J. Stebner (2008). The Westminster Handbook to Women in American Religious History. Westminster John Knox Press. p. 193. ISBN 978-0-664-22454-7.
  2. 1 2 "MBHC: Profiles: Katharina Schellenberg". www.mbhistory.org. Retrieved 25 August 2018.
  3. ↑ Gerald H. Anderson (1999). Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. pp. 596–. ISBN 978-0-8028-4680-8.
  4. ↑ "Katharina Schellenberg Collection - Mennonite Archival Image Database". archives.mhsc.ca. Retrieved 25 August 2018.


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