Karl Maeser: Let the wise man within you be your ideal

Karl G. Maeser embraced the gospel in Germany, came to Zion, suffered and served and stood as a pillar to the entire church as he was the second principal of Brigham Young Academy and raised a standard of integrity and love of God that blessed thousands.

Maeser was born Jan. 16, 1828, in Meissen, Germany. He graduated with high honors from a teacher training college, then in 1855 married Anna Mieth, daughter of the director of the academy in Dresden, where he obtained a teaching position the following year.

An anti-Mormon pamphlet, of all things, initiated his interest in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. For a period of time Maeser, his curiosity stirred, began to question and read, until William Budge, who spoke English, was sent from mission headquarters in Liverpool, England, to personally instruct the Maeser family — for there was no freedom of religion in Saxony at that time.

In October 1855, Maeser was one of eight converts baptized in the River Elbe. Shortly after, he was sustained as the presiding elder of the little group.

On the day of his baptism he prayed that the Lord would confirm his faith by some manifestation from the heavens. That manifestation came in a powerful way: the young professor was able to understand President Franklin D. Richards as they walked and talked together — President Richards in English, which Maeser had never before understood.

Maeser learned quickly and thoroughly the voice of the Spirit and the correct patterns of truth. Once, while guiding a group of missionaries over the Alps, the men noticed poles set in the snow to mark a safe way across the glacier.

“'Brethren, there stands the Priesthood,'" Maeser remarked, according to Alma P. Burton in "Karl G. Maeser, Mormon Educator." "'They are just common sticks like the rest of us . . . but the position they hold makes them what they are to us. If we step aside from the path they mark, we are lost.'”

Thus, the stream of his life was diverted, and the waters flowed away from his homeland to a faraway desert where the Lord had work for him to do.

He followed the counsel of that inspired priesthood, taking up missionary labors in England and Scotland, then again in Virginia, while teaching music students so he could earn the money he needed to set foot at last in the Great Salt Lake Valley in 1860, four years after he left Germany.