Friederike Fliedner

Friederike Fliedner or Frederike Münster Fliedner (January 25, 1800 – April 22, 1842) was a German nurse and teacher. She, her husband and Caroline Bertheau, are regarded as the renewers of the apostolic deaconess ministry. Their work in nursing created pioneers including Florence Nightingale.

Life Fliedner was born in 1800 in Braunfels. After initially allowing others she assumed the role of superior in 1837 at the newly founded (1836) Deaconess House in Kaiserswerth.

Fliedner and her husband developed the concept of the Deaconess Motherhouse. She was responsible for training the deaconesses as nurses at the motherhouse. From Kaiserswerth, they spread the idea of the deaconess and the trained nurse throughout Germany. Fliedner believed that the spiritual aspect should be completely separated from the nursing duties and that the nurses should be exclusively physical caregivers. However, she was unable to persuade her husband. Theodor founded the first deaconess house of the modern era in Kaiserswerth, the Kaiserswerth Deaconess Institute . Friederike became the first superior. The newly established training for Protestant nurses was based on the programmatic writings of the Rhenish theologian Friedrich Klönne. The new institution offered unmarried women nursing training recognized as a church office, as assistants to a male physician or pastor.

Fliedner died in Kaiserswerth on 22 April 1842 while giving birth to her eleventh child. She and the child were buried together.