Adalbert Paulsen

Adalbert Paulsen (born May 5, 1889 in Kropp ; † January 9, 1974 in Hamburg ) was a German theologian who belonged to the German Christians . From 1933 to 1945 he was regional bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Schleswig-Holstein , member of the NSDAP and employee of the anti-Semitic institute for researching and eliminating the Jewish influence on German church life .

Life

After studying theology , Paulsen became a pastor in Krummendiek in 1917 . From 1923 he was pastor of the Luther congregation in Kiel . Here he was considered a “gifted preacher” who “gathered a large audience under his pulpit”.

Paulsen joined the German Christian faith and joined the NSDAP in 1932 . At the so-called Brown Synod of the Schleswig-Holstein regional church on September 12, 1933 in Rendsburg , the German Christians, who had the majority, forced the bishops Eduard Völkel (Schleswig) and Adolf Mordhorst (Holstein) to resign and made Paulsen the sole regional bishop of Evangelicals -Lutherische Landeskirche Schleswig-Holstein. In his speech on the occasion of the inauguration on October 1, 1933, printed in the magazine Junge Kirche, issue 17, he said: “At the turn of our history we see the gracious guidance of God, which ... through Adolf Hitler's mission to a new one Life and calls to a new future ”. After the November pogroms of 1938 , he saw the riots as god-given, as his Advent circular to the pastors shows: “ But we, as holders of the clerical office, cannot take this seriously enough that a strict decision on the question of the Jewish people God has fallen ”.

In 1939 he became an employee at the Institute for Research into and Elimination of Jewish Influence on German Church Life . "From here came the other key words about the radicalization of the church up to the exclusion of" non-Aryan "Christians from the Protestant church, which the regional church office president Christian Kinder decreed for the regional church on February 10, 1942. This happened in knowledge of and also as a reaction to the deportations of German Jews who had started in autumn 1941 and which also affected Protestant Christians of Jewish origin. One of the deportees was Dr. Arthur Goldschmidt from Reinbek in Stormarn , who founded a Protestant community in the Theresienstadt ghetto in the summer of 1942. "

Despite growing resistance, Paulsen was able to hold onto the office of bishop until his resignation in 1945. From 1948 to 1959 he was pastor in Hamburg.

Criticism and debate

In a historical and political lecture Blankenese in the 3rd Reich - fates, clubs, schools, church, music, projects on May 12, 2007, available on the speaker Marion Rollin from a Church Congress of the provost Pinneberg on January 31, 1934 u. a .: 

“Regional Bishop Paulsen says in his speech: 'The Church must conquer the people ...' And further: 'The core of National Socialism lies in the so-called Aryan paragraph, in the commitment to race. God did not create classes, classes, but races. We must acknowledge this idea of ​​creation. ' [...] The contempt of the Jews is becoming more and more shameless. "

Individual evidence

1. ^ History of the Luther Church ( Memento from March 4, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
2. ^ Quotation from Ernst Klee : Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, second updated edition, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 , pp. 451–452.
3. ^ Quoted from Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Fischer Taschenbuch 2005, p. 452.
4. ↑ cf. see: http://www.geschichte-sh.de/christen-und-juden-1933-1945/
5. ↑ Marion Rollin: "God created no classes, no classes, but races" - insights into the Blankenese parish during the time of National Socialism

Web links

• Literature by and about Adalbert Paulsen in the catalog of the German National Library

predecessor	Office	successor
Bishop Adolf Mordhorst (Holstein) and Bishop Eduard Völkel (Schleswig)	Bishop of Schleswig-Holstein 1933 - 1945	Bishop Wilhelm Halfmann (Holstein) and Bishop Reinhard Wester (Schleswig)