Alex Funke (pastor)

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Alex Funke (born March 10, 1914 in Lomé , Togo ; † August 12, 2003 in Bielefeld ) was a German Protestant clergyman and author .

Life

Funke was a son of the missionary Emil (August) Funke (1873–1923) from Lüdenscheid and his wife Doro nee. Tegtmeyer (born in Bückeburg in 1878 ). The father was active in the service of the North German Mission in Togo and had his second assignment from 1906 to 1910 in Amedzofe , where Alex's older brothers Albert (1907–1988, later missionary in Westtogo , then pastor of the professing church in Grieben and finally superintendent in Ermsleben ) and Emil (1908–1947, later pastor in Tecklenburg ) were born. Emil Funke tried very hard to research the numerous languages ​​of Togo and was in lively exchange with Professor Carl Meinhof . The father's brother Alexander Funke (1887–1963) became a missionary in Lomé in Togo, where Emil worked with him on his third assignment (1911–1917), among others, among the Hausa , before both were interned due to the war. Alex was born in Lomé (after his sister Margarete in Emden in 1910) as the fourth of six children to his parents.

After the death of his father, who had meanwhile been a pastor in Canhusen and most recently a travel preacher residing in Lüdenscheid, Alex grew up in the house of his uncle Alexander in Bremen . He had been President of the Ewe Church in Togo, but then became a pastor in Rinteln for health reasons and now worked in the travel service of the Hanover Community Association. Alex returned to Lüdenscheid at the end of 1924 and passed his Abitur in 1934 at the Zeppelin grammar school there. He studied Protestant theology in Bethel , Halle , Berlin , Tübingen and Jena . He passed his exam in 1940 at the Brotherhood Council of the Confessing Church . After a short period as vicariate in Witten with Johannes Busch , he was drafted into military service in 1941, was taken prisoner of war in Tunisia in 1943 and worked as a pastor in a POW camp in the USA until 1946. At Easter 1946 he continued his vicariate and married in March 1947.

He then worked in the travel service of the Evangelical Student Community in Germany until he returned to Witten as a parish priest in 1950. In 1955 he took over the leadership of the People's Missionary Office of the Evangelical Church of Westphalia in Witten. From 1965 to 1968 Ephorus was at the Westphalian seminary in Soest . Eventually he became head of the v. Bodelschwinghschen Anstalten Bethel in Bielefeld. In the years leading up to his retirement in 1979, he thoroughly modernized the institutions.

Funke was also active as a journalist. He not only wrote numerous sermon meditations and articles on church work and diakonia, but also biographies of pioneers in diakonia and weekly contributions for the Westphalian church journal Our Church , which were also published in books.

In 1981 he was made an honorary citizen of Bielefeld.

Fonts (selection)

  • Getting older - but how? Luther-Verlag, Bielefeld 2002.
  • Living with someone with Alzheimer's disease. An experience report . Luther-Verlag, Bielefeld 1998.
  • Thought through. Diaconal contemporaneity . Luther-Verlag, Bielefeld 1994 (autobiography).
  • Eva von Tiele-Winckler . "Mother Eva" . Wittig, Hamburg 1981.
  • Friedrich von Bodelschwingh . The father . Wittig, Hamburg 1980.
  • Strictly speaking . Schriftenmissions-Verlag, Gladbeck 1974.
  • Bethel between yesterday and tomorrow . Publishing house of the Anst. Bethel, Bethel near Bielefeld 1973.
  • Come here, you're invited. The direction of the Arnoldshain theses for understanding the Lord's Supper . Schriftenmissions-Verlag, Gladbeck 1966.
  • The community that works . Gütersloh publishing house G. Mohn, Gütersloh 1959, 3 1962.
  • We have as much as we believe . Schriftenmissions-Verlag, Gladbeck 1959.
  • The community, how it comes into being, how it lives, how it works . Schriftenmissions-Verlag, Gladbeck 1958.

literature

  • The V. Bodelschwingh Institutions in the Time of Change (1968–1979) . In: Matthias Benad (ed.): Friedrich v. Bodelschwingh d. J. and the Bethel Institutions: Piety and World Shaping . Kohlhammer, Mainz 1997, pp. 258-273.
  • Hartmut Waldminghaus: "A lovable and capable friend of Africa and the Africans" The Lüdenscheid missionary Emil Funke (1873-1923) and his family. In: Geschichts- und Heimatverein Lüdenscheid e. V. (Ed.): The Reidemeister. History sheets for Lüdenscheid city and country, No. 171, August 14, 2007, p. 1381 ff.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Hartmut Waldminghaus: "A lovable and capable friend of Africa and the Africans" The Lüdenscheid missionary Emil Funke (1873-1923) and his family . In: Geschichts- und Heimatverein Lüdenscheid e. V. (Ed.): The Reidemeister . No. 171 , August 14, 2007, p. 1381 ff .
personal data
SURNAME Spark, Alex
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Protestant clergyman
DATE OF BIRTH March 10, 1914
PLACE OF BIRTH Lomé (Togo)
DATE OF DEATH August 12, 2003
Place of death Bielefeld