Bruno Doehring

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Bruno Doehring in the 1920s

Bruno Doehring (born February 3, 1879 in Mohrungen , † April 16, 1961 in West Berlin ) was a German Evangelical Lutheran pastor . As a preacher at the Berlin Cathedral from 1914 to 1960, he became a popular figure in the Protestant Church of Berlin. Ecclesiastically, he took a strictly conservative position. He showed himself to be loyal to the emperor well into the Third Reich . In the Weimar Republic he was a co-founder and leader of the German Reformation Party . From September 1930 to June 1933 he sat for the DNVP in the Reichstag. At the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Berlin he was a lecturer in Protestant theology from 1923 to 1940 and professor of practical theology from 1946 to 1960 .

Live and act

Court and cathedral preacher until 1918

Doehring was born the son of an East Prussian farmer. After attending elementary school in Mohrungen and the royal high school in Elbing , he studied theology at the University of Halle-Wittenberg , the Friedrich-Wilhelms-University of Berlin and the University of Königsberg . During his studies he became a member of the Salia Halle choir in 1900 . In 1906 Doehring became a pastor in Tiefensee in East Prussia, where he founded a family and his son Johannes was born, and in 1908 he became a pastor in Fischau in West Prussia. After receiving his doctorate in 1911, Doehring gained the attention of Georg zu Dohna (1852–1912), who hired him as a pastor at his Finckenstein Castle , through his conflict with Arthur Drews . Doehrings Sprengel also owned the property of the conservative politician Elard von Oldenburg-Januschau , to whom he remained on friendly terms. After Dohna's death Doehring took over the leadership of the seminary in Wittenburg . For an unexplained reason, Kaiser Wilhelm II. Doehring ordered a trial sermon on April 1, 1914, in order to fill the vacant fourth position as court and cathedral preacher in the Berlin Cathedral . After the sermon, Wilhelm enthusiastically awarded the position to Doehring and thus waived the rehearsal of the rival candidate Otto Dibelius .

Doehring became known to the general public through an open-air service that he celebrated on the steps of the Reichstag building on August 2, 1914 on the occasion of the outbreak of the First World War in front of tens of thousands of believers. In it he unilaterally quoted Otto von Bismarck : “We Germans fear God, but nothing else in the world!” In fact, Bismarck had warned at the time that Germany, as a “saturated nation”, must avoid getting involved in dangerous coalitions and conflicts. Doehring, on the other hand, asserted that the German Emperor was called to crusade by God : “Yes, if we didn't have the law and a good conscience on our side, if we didn't - I would almost say palpably - feel the closeness of God, ours Unrolling the flags and handing the sword to our emperor for the crusade, for holy war, then we would have to tremble and quiver. ”Doehring often offered the text of his sermons as prints immediately after the service; this sermon found particularly wide circulation in print. Doehring thus joined the number of representatives of patriotic "war theologies" such as Reinhold Seeberg , Ludwig Wessel , Paul Althaus , Emanuel Hirsch and Otto Dibelius.

As a preacher, Doehring combined verbal violence with education and folklore, whereby he did not shy away from “sentimentality up to kitsch”. He saw his preaching mandate “always as a concrete, never as an abstract” and, like Martin Luther , never wanted to evade the public problems of his time.

Doehring, who had ignored the growing dissatisfaction and longing for peace during the war, was completely surprised by the revolutionary popular unrest of 1918; he condemned the January strike . Its leader he called "filthy and cowardly creatures, who assassinated the altar of the fatherland with brother's blood would have desecrated." The strikers were "given the murder weapon and let it fall in the back of the brothers who are still in front of the enemy." Doehring thereby anticipated the idea of ​​the stab-in- the-back legend , which had only been publicly propagated by the military since the end of the year, primarily through Erich Ludendorff and Paul von Hindenburg .

1919 to 1933

Berlin, December 12, 1933. Bruno Doehring in his gown to the right of President Hindenburg when leaving the cathedral after the service for the opening of the Reichstag; Left Reich Bishop Ludwig Müller .

The cathedral parish, made up to a large extent of members of the Prussian civil service and circles close to the court, offered the cathedral preacher Doehring, combined with the function of the Berlin cathedral as a representative celebration place of the state, the opportunity to assert his ideas in the middle of the German capital bring to. Doehring had already supported the German National People's Party (DNVP) politically in December 1918 by calling for elections.

Doehring explained the defeat in World War I and the November Revolution that followed, with the German people falling away from the right Christian faith. “It was not God who abandoned our people, but our people abandoned him.” He saw the Catholic Church , liberalism , the socialist labor movement and communism as the main culprits . A resurrection of the Germans can only happen through reference to innermost values, to the roots of "true Germanness". He saw salvation in a contemporary Reformation modeled on Luther.

He criticized the consequences of the November Revolution as "de-Christianization" and thus as "de-soul" of the political system. He made it clear in speeches to parliamentarians that he rejected democracy. In it "one is pushed onto the equally endless and hopeless path of compromise", the "satanic grimace of the random majority [rise] sneeringly over far-reaching decisions." His sermons, which are updated daily, therefore repeatedly called criticism in the democratic press and public expressions of displeasure more prominently Personalities. Gustav Stresemann noted in them "not ... an expression of Christian love for your neighbor, but ... an aversion to those who think differently increased to ecstasy" and Karl Barth called Doehring in 1924 a "wretched cream puff" and "theological buffoon".

In 1923, Doehring received his qualification to teach Protestant theology after his habilitation at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Berlin. Then he was there from 1923 to 1940 in addition to Office Associate Professor of Protestant theology, then to 1946 a lecturer.

In 1924 Doehring took over the chairmanship of the Evangelical Union for the Protection of German Protestant Interests (EB). He saw the task of this anti-Catholic and anti-Semitic alliance in “liberating” the “ German people's soul, which is under Jewish- Ultramontan compulsory guardianship ”. Doehring's commitment did not meet with the unanimous approval of the friars. The uncritical solidarity he propagated with the abdicated imperial family, his rigid hostility to the Catholic Church and anti-Semitic undertones contributed to the increasing isolation of the Evangelical Church in German society, especially from the working class and the bourgeois camp of democracy. Doehring refused to allow interdenominational cooperation with state-sustaining Catholic forces, which became apparent in the rapprochement between the center and the DNVP since the turn of the year 1926/27 , which became politically more urgent . In this respect he was even in contradiction to Kaiser Wilhelm II, who asked him through third parties to "curb his anti-Roman policy" in favor of the fight "against Yehuda". After the resignation of Adolf von Harnack and Otto Baumgarten , the disputes over the course of the EB culminated with Doehring's resignation in February 1927.

Thereupon Doehring founded the Lutherring for active Christianity based on the Reformation . The German Reformation Party emerged from him in January 1928 under his leadership , in order, in his words, to "put a stop to the hopeless fragmentation of national forces". The consistently anti-modern, monarchist and German-national party program met with little response even in the Protestant camp. In the Reichstag election in 1928 , the Reformation Party and the German National Freedom Movement (DVFB) took part in the Völkisch-National Block , which with 266,000 votes (0.87%) was denied entry into the Reichstag. In the same year, based on Doehring's idea and screenplay, the feature film Luther - A Film of the German Reformation was made . On the occasion of the Reichstag election in 1930 , Doehring joined the DNVP in his capacity as chairman of the Lutherring and won a mandate in the Chemnitz-Zwickau constituency, which he held during the four legislative periods from September 1930 to June 1933. When the Harzburg Front met on October 11, 1931, Doehring celebrated a field service .

1933 to 1945

In the emerging National Socialism , Doehring saw the reprehensible attempt to create a "new religion". In his 1932 published work The misdirection of the national movement by Adolf Hitler , he rejected it "because of the idolization of the racial, anti-Semitism, and the manipulation of the masses." Doehring voted in the cathedral council with a minority against holding a memorial service for the SA in the cathedral for SA leader Hans Maikowski and a police officer, who were both victims of a street battle after the torchlight procession on the occasion of Hitler's seizure of power . The National Socialist German Christians were denied the desired church services in the cathedral by his vote. Nevertheless, Doehring stayed away from the Confessing Church to preach in "solitude".

Doehring's sermons were under observation by the Gestapo , which interrogated him several times because of his dissident behavior. Doehring remained loyal to the emperor, visited him in Doorn and preached there, most recently in 1939 on his eightieth birthday. He refrained from including Hitler in the prayer and on the occasion of a prescribed "victory thanksgiving service" he gave a penitential sermon in May 1940 . Doehring led the funeral ceremony for Wilhelm II on June 9, 1941 in Doorn ; there was no sermon according to the wishes of the deceased.

"Comforter of Berlin"

Doehring's sermons took on more and more of a comforting character during the war, combined with criticism and accusations against Hitler and his party comrades that were hardly veiled in the biblical sense. In 1940/41, the state stopped the publication and Doehring lost his teaching position. He interpreted the war with its sufferings as a result of the November Revolution, which in turn created the conditions for the rule of Hitler, who was sitting "on the chair of Satan".

The cathedral without emergency roofs in October 1945

When the sermon church of the cathedral was no longer usable for church services after a bomb attack on May 24, 1944, Doehring preached to the prophet Amos 5 in the basement of the cathedral on Sunday . He asked how God could have allowed this destruction. Like the prophet Amos, Doehring suspected in his sermon that God could no longer endure the services of his community if the community lived in an injustice state as if nothing had happened. He now preached in the Sophienkirche until the cathedral parish had created the catacomb-like cathedral crypt with around 1,200 seats under the tomb church . After an interruption due to the war, Doehring opened it on September 2, 1945 with a sermon on the subject of "The World Savior and World Peace". A reconstruction of the cathedral did not take place; instead, following the urban planning of the GDR, the cathedral was in danger of being torn down several times. Doehring preached tirelessly every Sunday in his catacomb, which had received a Schuke organ in 1946 , always to over a thousand worshipers. He had earned his reputation as a comforter of Berlin during the bombing war and retained it during the years of division in the city until he left the office in 1960. Afterwards, attendance at cathedral services decreased.

After 1945

Doehring was passed over three times during the Weimar and Nazi era because of his anti-government behavior when elections to the Upper Cathedral preacher were due. This changed in the four-sector city of Berlin . He held this position in Berlin's eastern sector from 1945 until his retirement in 1960. The title of Upper Cathedral Preacher only had formal meaning within the church because Dibelius had acquired the title of Bishop of Berlin-Brandenburg and rededicated the Church of Saint Mary to his episcopal church. After 1945, however, the Berlin Cathedral was no longer the central location of the Protestant Church in Germany, nor was it the scene of representative events. The holding of festival services was alien to the occupying powers and later to the government of the GDR.

Due to the Prussian State Church Treaty of 1931, the Office of the Upper Cathedral was connected with a professorship. The GDR kept this contract until Doehring's retirement, so that from 1946 he was professor of practical theology at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität (from 1949 Humboldt-Universität) in Berlin . In exercising this office, he followed his confession: "We base our position on the living God not on a theological knowledge but on a religious experience."

Memorial stone on the Berlin Cathedral Cemetery II

Honors, death and remembrance

Doehring was, in the words of Wilhelm Hüffmeier, “all his life really an individualist, a loner, someone who could not be classified”, but with his sermons he reached more believers than any other pastor in Berlin. On the occasion of his eightieth birthday, Doehring had received a statistic as a gift showing that he had preached to over four million people in his life.

Doehring was an honorary doctor (D. theol. Hc) from the University of Königsberg and an honorary citizen of his hometown Mohrungen. Doehring died less than a year after he retired while he was in West Berlin. His grave is located in Domfriedhof II on Müllerstrasse in Berlin-Wedding . Four months after his death, the construction of the Berlin Wall split the cathedral community. In 1975, as a result of the tomb church being torn down, the cathedral crypt church was also removed.

Fonts

  • God, life and death , Berlin 1914.
  • A permanent castle , Berlin 1914–1915.
  • The religion of the battlefield , Berlin 1916.
  • And if the world were full of the devil , Berlin 1918.
  • The German Volkskirche , Leipzig 1920.
  • Ernst von Dryander in memory , Berlin 1922.
  • On life, death and unity , Berlin 1924.
  • Decision battle , Berlin 1927.
  • Luther today , Dom Verlag, Berlin 1928.
  • Christ with the Germans , Berlin 1934.
  • Woe to man! Thoughts on the present based on Matth. 26, 24. , Berlin undated [1935].
  • God with us! Thoughts on the reintroduction of general conscription on the basis of Isaiah 36, 7th , Berlin undated [1935].
  • My path in life , Gütersloh 1952.
  • The Cathedral Candidate Foundation in Berlin. A historical look back at the centenary. With a contribution by Ulrich Seeger: The tasks of the preacher's seminary today , Verlag Die Kirche, Berlin 1954.

literature

  • Evangelisches Konsistorium (Ed.), Parish manac for the ecclesiastical province of Mark Brandenburg . (Status January 1, 1937), Berlin: Trowitzsch, 1937, p. 33 (biographical information)
  • Julius Schneider: Bruno Doehring and his sermon . Evangelische Versandbuchhandlung Ekelmann, Berlin 1965
  • Wolfgang Schulz, Gisela Höhle u. a. (Ed.): Big Berliners from the East , Stiftung Deutschlandhaus Berlin, Berlin 1987, p. 51
  • Martin Schumacher (Hrsg.): MdR The Reichstag members of the Weimar Republic in the time of National Socialism. Political persecution, emigration and expatriation, 1933–1945. A biographical documentation . 3rd, considerably expanded and revised edition. Droste, Düsseldorf 1994, ISBN 3-7700-5183-1 .
  • Christoph Weiling: The “Christian-German Movement”. A study on conservative Protestantism in the Weimar Republic (work on contemporary church history, series B, vol. 28) , Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1998, ISBN 3-525-55728-0 , pp. 45–52
  • Detlef Plöse (Red.): The Berlin Cathedral. Past and present of the Oberpfarr- und Domkirche zu Berlin , Jovis, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-931321-67-3

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Christoph Weiling: The "Christian-German Movement": a study on conservative Protestantism in the Weimar Republic. , Vol. 28 of works on contemporary church history , Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998, ISBN 978-3-525-55728-0
  2. ^ A b c Wilhelm Heinz Schröder : Bruno Doehring . In: Biographies of German parliamentarians from 1848 to today (BIOPARL); Member of the National Assembly and the German Reichstag 1919–1933 (BIORAB – WEIMAR) , Center for Historical Social Research (ZHSF), Cologne, online 2006 Archived copy ( memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link became automatic used and not yet tested. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / zhsf.gesis.org
  3. ↑ Paul Meißner (Ed.): Alt-Herren-Directory of the German Singers. Leipzig 1934, p. 67.
  4. ↑ Bismarck's warning from 1888 not to allow himself to be drawn into conflicts. Speech to the Reichstag on February 6, 1888
  5. ↑ Printed and commented by Hans-Joachim Schwager : 1789–1813–1914–1939 . In: Correspondence sheet of Protestant schools and homes, March / April 2, 1989 . Bielefeld 1989, pp. 29-33.
  6. ↑ Manfred Gailus : Protestantism and National Socialism in the war and interim period 1914–1945 . In: Berndt Hamm, Harry Oelke, Gury Schneider-Ludorff (Ed.): Scope of action and memory: The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria and National Socialism . Volume 50 of works on contemporary church history . Row B: representations. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2010, ISBN 978-3-647-55768-7 , p. 19 ff.
  7. ↑ a b c d e Wilhelm Hüffmeier: The court and cathedral preachers as theologians. In: Plöse (see list of references), pp. 139–154
  8. ↑ Lebensweg, p. 143ff.
  9. ↑ Jonathan Richard Cassé Wright: "About the parties": the political attitude of the Protestant church leaders 1918-1933. In: Works on contemporary church history, Series B, Volume 2, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1977, ISBN 978-3-525-55702-0
  10. ↑ Stresemann quote from Gerhard Besier : The cathedral without the emperor. The cathedral in the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich. In: Pöse, pp. 197–209, here p. 200
  11. ↑ Quoted from Hans-Joachim Schwager: 1789–1813–1914–1939 . In: Correspondence sheet of Protestant schools and homes, March / April 2, 1989 . Bielefeld 1989, p. 30
  12. ↑ Quotation and more from Herbert Gottwald: German Reformation Party (DReP) 1928 In: Dieter Fricke in collaboration with Manfred Weißbecker, Siegfried Schmidt, Herbert Gottwald and Werner Fritsch (ed.): Lexicon for the history of parties. The bourgeois and petty bourgeois parties and associations in Germany (1789–1945). In four volumes , VEB Bibliographisches Institut Leipzig, Leipzig 1984, Volume 2, German League for the League of Nations - General Association of Christian Trade Unions in Germany, pp. 60–62, here p. 61
  13. ^ Image in the Federal Archives with attribution
  14. ↑ On Doering during the Nazi era, with several contemporary witness reports: Hans-Rainer Sandvoss: Resistance in Mitte and Tiergarten, 2nd, modified and expanded edition (= Volume 8 of the series of publications on the resistance in Berlin from 1933 to 1945), German Memorial Resistance, Berlin 1999, pp. 212–214 and 300, on the political reasons for his resignation as a university lecturer, p. 238
  15. ↑ wilhelm-der-zweite.de
  16. ↑ In Lebensweg on the meaning of the November Revolution p. 94ff., On the “ruler of the world” on the “chair of Satan” see his Christmas sermon 1936, p. 160–171, here p. 169
  17. ^ Text in standard translation on Bibleserver.com
  18. ↑ see also: Love life and see good days (Berlin sermons). Texts for the soul , Frankfurt / Main 2009, p. 94f., Sermon on Sunday Estomihi, February 26, 2006 by Christoph Markschies
  19. ↑ On the origin of the cathedral crypt church and on Doering's sermons therein, see Julius Schneider: The history of the Berlin Cathedral since its destruction in World War II seen from the cathedral pulpit , Domkirchenamt, Berlin 1986, pp. 7-12
  20. ↑ Manfred Stolpe : The Evangelical Church in the GDR and the reconstruction of the cathedral. In: Pöse, pp. 211–219, here p. 211
  21. ↑ Christian Halbrock: Evangelical Pastors of the Church Berlin-Brandenburg 1945–1961: Official Autonomy in the Guardian State? . Lukas Verlag, 2004, ISBN 978-3-936872-18-7
  22. ↑ Humboldt University of Berlin (ed.): Scientific journal of the Humboldt University of Berlin, Volume 34, Verlag Die Universität, 1985
  23. ^ According to the entry in Friedrich Wilhelm Bautz (arrangement and ed.): Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon. Continued by Traugott Bautz , Volume 1, Verlag Traugott Bautz, Hamm 1975, Sp. 1334

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personal data
SURNAME Doehring, Bruno
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Protestant theologian and politician (DNVP), MdR
DATE OF BIRTH February 3, 1879
PLACE OF BIRTH Moors
DATE OF DEATH April 16, 1961
Place of death Berlin