The Shining Star of Materialism

Thursdays at Bad Boll · Aug 20, 2026 · 19m

He was born in Minnesota, raised in China, trained at a St. Louis seminary, and spent his life writing the history of Württembergers who left. Then he came back with an American army.

Karl John Richard Arndt is the man who secured Bad Boll. He is also the man in a photograph a reader in Württemberg sent me last week — the only likeness of him I have, captioned by his office and silent about everything else.

This episode is the rest of it. The boy who learned Mandarin in Hankow because his father had founded the Missouri Synod's mission there and would not come home. The seminary graduate who…