ABSTRACT
The time of Johann Friedrich Oberlin's life was the golden age of letter writing. But for two small exceptions, Oberlin spent every day of his life in his native Alsace. Leaving aside his occasional preaching in Strasbourg in his student days, he is not known to have appeared anywhere save in his own three churches either as a preacher or lecturer. He never wrote anything for publication. In the face of such parochialism, his fame is nothing less than astonishing, both in the earliness of its emergence and the eventual wideness of its spread. The friendship also contributed much to Oberlin's increasing renown, for through Jung-Stilling's many publications and his countless private letters, Oberlin's name became widely known in the many and varied circles of common folk and aristocrats, of savants and publicists to which Jung-Stilling had access, both in person and through his writings.
