Reverend Johann Erhard Fischer (24 January 1817 in Hof, Bavaria – 5 December 1884 in Theilenhofen, Bavaria) was a Lutheran pastor, who was a church historian, author, and editor, as well as a Neo-Lutheran activist and co-founder with Wilhelm Löhe of the Society of Inner Mission (der Gesellschaft für innere Mission) based in Neuendettelsau.

Under the direction of Löhe, the Society later became an influential force in American Lutheranism helping to found the Missouri and Iowa Synods along with numerous orphanages and educational institutions such as Wartburg College.

Borrowing from the position of the freechurch in Breslau (Breslauer Freikirche, later known as the Lutheran Church in Prussia (lutherische Kirche in Preußen)), this view was challenged by Rev.

Fischer and Löhe were both signatories of a response consisting of six sentences that was signed in Schwabach on 9 Oct 1851 and published as Erklärung mehrerer Geistlichen über ihr Verhältniß zur bayerisch-protestantischen Landeskirche.

Also coming to live with him part-time in his later days was his granddaughter Frieda (Keyser) Strehlow who also became a missionary to Australia and helped lower infant mortality and preserve aboriginal history and culture there.

The first work which he published in 1853 was a study of the missionary strategies of evangelization of the early Germanic tribes found in Swabia, Bavaria and Franconia.

This work was entitled: Die Kraft des Evangeliums: mittheilungen aus der alteren Missionsgeschichte von Schwaben, Bayern und Franken.

[6] The next year (1854) Fischer published a local history related to his parish in Artelshofen and Altfalter which was a collection of cemetery records and old documents entitled: Die Kirchhöfe zu Artelshofen und Altfalter: geschichtliche Nachrichten nebst einer Einweihungsrede aus dem Jahre 1754, zunächst den beiden Gemeinden zur Erinnerung mitgetheilt; zum Besten bedrängter und verfolgter Lutheraner (1854).

This book was published in 1863 as Die Einführung des Christenthums im jetzigen Königreiche Bayern : ein geschichtlicher Versuch zunächst für Missionsfreunde.

[11] He is the grandfather of the Australian missionary and humanitarian Frieda (Keyser) Strehlow who lived part-time with the Fischer's in Theilenhofen when her father died in 1879.