From 1693 to 1698 the hospital's chief minister was the Pietist theologian, Samuel Heinrich König.
He also published several volumes of poetry, as well as a volume entitled Écrivains nationaux (1874, republished 1889), and biographies of the pietist Alexandre Vinet (1875), of the poet Juste Olivier (1879) and of the artist Alexandre Calame (1883).
The Synod was named in memory of the Pietist leader of the Foundation at the University of Halle, August Hermann Francke.
Old German Baptist Brethren (OGBB) descend from a pietist movement in Schwarzenau, Germany, in 1708, when Alexander Mack founded a fellowship with seven other believers.
The neighboring parish center, built in the 1980s is named after the pietist preacher and famous 19th-century labour delegate Christoph Blumhardt.