Introduction

Biography

Volbrecht was the son of Hein­rich Pe­ter Na­gel and Eli­sa­beth May.

After re­ceiv­ing Christ at age 18, Na­gel want­ed to be­come a mis­sion­ary, so he moved to Ba­sel, Swit­zer­land, and en­tered the Ba­sel Mis­sion Train­ing In­sti­tute in 1886. In 1893, he gra­du­at­ed and be­came a min­is­ter in the Ev­an­ge­li­cal Lu­ther­an Mis­sion.

Nagel went to Kan­nur, on In­dia’s Ma­la­bar Coast, in De­cem­ber 1893, and be­came head of the Ba­sel Mis­sion center in Va­ni­an­ku­lam, Ta­mil Na­du. The bur­den of run­ning the schools, and the small scale in­dus­tries of the Ba­sel Miss­ion in Va­ni­an­ku­lam, be­came a stum­bling block for his goal of in­de­pen­dent min­is­try.

In 1896, he left the Lu­ther­an Church and Va­ni­an­ku­lam and went south with­out def­in­ite plans. On his trip, he saw a pray­er cen­ter in Kun­nam­ku­lam and met Pa­ra­mel Itoop, a new be­liev­er. He de­cid­ed to start his work at Kun­nam­ku­lam, an an­cient bas­ti­on of Chris­ti­an­ity in In­dia.

To be part of the lo­cal com­mu­ni­ty, he learned Mal­ay­al­am. The Kun­nam­ku­lam com­mu­ni­ty re­ceived him as one of its own, as he wrote and spoke in Mal­ay­al­am.

In Ap­ril 1897, Na­gel mar­ried Har­ri­et Mitch­ell, an An­glo-In­dian teacher in Kun­nam­ku­lam. A few months later, they went to Nil­gi­ris and met the Eng­lish Breth­ren mis­sion­ary, Hand­ley Bird. The fol­lowing June, Bird bap­tized Na­gel by im­mer­sion at Co­im­ba­tore.

In 1906, Na­gel start­ed an or­phan­age and a home for wi­dows at Nel­li­ku­nnu, near Tri­chur, Ke­ra­la; the in­sti­tu­tion, named Re­ho­both, still stands to­day.

In 1914, Na­gel re­turned to Ger­ma­ny, plan­ning to send his old­er child­ren to school in Eng­land and re­turn to In­dia in six months, but the start of World War I pre­vent­ed his re­turn. As a Ger­man na­tion­al, he could not en­ter Brit­ish ad­min­is­tered Ma­la­bar.

In 1914, he moved to Swit­zer­land. Har­ri­et and three of their child­ren were back on the Ma­la­bar Coast, while the two old­er child­ren were in Eng­land.

The let­ter he sent to the as­sem­bly fel­lows­hip in Pa­ra­vur four years be­fore his death re­flects the hun­ger in his heart for souls in Ma­la­bar: My sweet­est trea­sures are in In­dia. My heart be­longs here.

Later, Na­gel be­came bed­rid­den with pal­sy; he even­tu­al­ly died of a stroke while still teach­ing.

Works

• Christian Bap­tism, 1898