Georg M. Grossman

Inspector (German: Herr Inspektor) Georg Martin Grossman (18 October 1823 in Groß-Bieberau, Grand Duchy of Hesse - 24 August 1897 in Waverly, Iowa) was a German-American Lutheran pastor, academic, missionary, and church leader who founded the Iowa Synod, Wartburg College, and Wartburg Theological Seminary.

Background in Germany Georg Martin Grossmann was born in Groß-Bieberau, a town in the Grand Duchy of Hesse, Germany to the teacher Ludwig Großmann and his wife Maria Margaretha née Rotenhaeuser. He initially studied in Friedberg in order to become a teacher like his father and was a teacher in Friedberg, Rodheim (near Rosbach vor der Höhe), and Lollar.

Grossman became strongly influenced by the mission-minded pastor Johann Konrad Wilhelm Löhe of Neuendettelsau, Bavaria, and then began a study of theology at Erlangen and later at Nürnberg. Grossman was convinced he should use his teaching skills in the mission field of the United States and emigrated in 1852 under Löhe's sponsorship. While en route, he was ordained a Lutheran pastor and boarded his ship in Hamburg as the ship chaplain.

Career in the US Michigan Grossmann arrived with his family in Saginaw, Michigan, in July 1852. He rented a storefront in Saginaw to house a school that enrolled five students and would eventually become Wartburg Theological Seminary, the first German-Lutheran teacher training seminary in North America. Grossmann would serve as the president of the seminary from 1852 to 1868 and again from 1878 to 1894.

Their stay in Saginaw was short-lived however as Grossmann found himself caught up in old arguments that had been developing between the Buffalo Synod and the Missouri Synod about ecclesiology. Löhe had been trying to mediate between the two synods, which ended up causing both sides to mistrust Löhe. Due to Grossmann's loyalty to Löhe, he soon became a target of mistrust as well and was even threatened with church discipline by his pastor, Ottomar Cloeter, at Holy Cross, who himself had been a missionary sent by Löhe.

At a conference in Saginaw, both Grossman and another Löhe missionary, Johannes Diendoerfer of the nearby Frankenhilf colony (today called Richville in Denmark Township), were made to understand that their views were creating divisions. Attempting first to move out of the nearby region, the Missouri Synod asserted that in states where it had congregations, no other Lutherans had a right to do missionary work.

Grossmann established synod headquarters in Dubuque and quickly backed the work of establishing congregations for the newly arriving German immigrants to Iowa. He was instrumental in the founding of St. John's Lutheran in Dubuque. Another early enterprise was in Sherrill, Iowa, where he purchased of land with Bavarian immigrants Georg and Heinrich Vogel from Hof, Bavaria, in 1855 in order to establish a school and church. This became St. Matthew's Lutheran, where the original Wartburg Seminary bell sent by Löhe from Germany and first used in Saginaw has been housed since Easter 1869.