Friedrich Fabri
1824-1891. German mission executive. A pastor in Bavaria, he was appointed inspector of the Rhine Mission in 1857, largely because he occupied a neutral position in the confessional struggle of the time. Although he did little to change the internal structure of the mission, he did stress better training of candidates and some expansion of the work in South Africa. On his initiative the highly successful Sumatra field was opened in 1860. As an apologist he published tracts against materialism and Darwinism, and during the Kulturkampf supported the concept of a church free from state control. Fabri also fostered German imperialism in a popular book, Bedarf Deutschland der Kolonien (1879), and founded the West German Association for Colonization and Export in 1880 to pressure for a colonial policy. In 1884 he retired from the Rhine Mission, accepted an honorary professorship at Bonn, and spent his last years in colonial agitation.