Michael Wohlfahrt (; 1687–1741), also known as Michael Welfare, and Brother Agonius, was a Prussian-American christian religious leader who assisted Conrad Beissel in leading the Ephrata Community in Pennsylvania.
Biography Wohlfahrt was born in Memel in the Duchy of Prussia (now Klaipėda in Lithuania), but emigrated to North America.
In 1725, he was baptised by Conrad Beissel, and when the Conestoga Brethren congregation suffered a schism, he strongly supported Beissel. After the foundation of the Ephrata Community in 1732, Wohlfahrt took the name "Brother Agonius" and assisted Beissel in running the community.
Welfare was an acquaintance of Benjamin Franklin who, in his autobiography, recounted that "the Dunkers" had been "calumniated by the zealots of other persuasions". Franklin suggested publishing articles about their beliefs, to which Welfare had responded:
Franklin commented on this:
In 1985 Neil Postman drew another parallel by referring to a quote by Plato:
References (2006). Retrieved 28 August 2019. Neil Postman. Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985) p 12, pp 31-32.
External links Message from the MENNO-ROOTS-L archives, largely about Wohlfahrt "Brethern, Schwenkfelders and Other Plain People", an article which quotes some correspondence between Wohlfahrt and Benjamin Franklin An extended quote with commentary from the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin