Plath, Karl Heinrich Christian

PLATH, plāt, KARL HEINRICH CHRISTIAN: Lutheran promoter of foreign missions; b. at Bamberg (69 m. n.e. of Posen) Sept. 8, 1829; d. at Berlin July 10, 1901. He was educated at Halle and Bonn (1849–53), and at Wittenberg Theological Seminary (1854–56); was preacher and religious instructor at Halle (1856–63); third secretary of the Society for Foreign Missions, Berlin (1863–71) and also instructor at the mission seminary, field-lecturer and author of missionary literature; first secretary of Gossner's Mission, after 1871; lecturer at the University of Berlin on missionary and religious history after 1867; and full professor after 1882. He visited India in 1877–78 on behalf of Gossner's Mission and twice afterward. He was author of Leben des Freiherrn von Canstein (Halle, 1861); Sieben Zeugen des Herrn aus allerlei Volk (Berlin, 1867) ; Die Erwählung der Völker im Lichte der Missionsgeschichte (1867); Drei neue Missionsfragen (1868; Eng. transl., The Subject of Missions Considered under Three New Aspects, Edinburgh, 1873); Die Missionsgedanken des Freiherrn von Leibnitz (1869); Missions-Studien (1870); and Fünfzig Jahre Gossnerscher Mission (1886).

Bibliography: G. Plath, Karl Plath, lnspektor der Gossnerschen Mission Schwerin, 1904.