Arnold Wehrenfennig

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Pastor Arnold Wehrenfennig on the right of Superintendent Jakob Ernst Koch III. (Center) at the dedication of the Christ Church
Evangelical Christ Church in the residential area; contemporary recording
Theresian normal school with chapel, in which the Protestant services were held until 1906 (as seen from Schlossergasse)

Arnold Wehrenfennig , also Wehrenpfennig (born November 20, 1867 in Gosau , Upper Austria, † August 5, 1937 in Innsbruck ), was a Protestant pastor in Innsbruck. During his term of office, he built the Christ Church in Innsbruck , which until 1954 was the only Protestant church in North Tyrol.

The baroque interior of the chapel and the sober room of the Christ Church, which was restored in 2006

Life

Origin and education

He came from an old Austrian Protestant family of theologians whose name is closely associated with the Protestant Church in Austria . His father Adolf Wilhelm (1819–1882) was a pastor in Gosau. Arnold was the youngest of eight children and spent his first youth in his hometown. After attending elementary school, he left home to attend the knighthood high school in Fellin in Livonia , the home of his mother Elise (a née Specht) . After an unspecified number of years, he returned to Upper Austria, where he passed the school leaving examination at the State High School in Linz. He then studied Protestant theology at the universities in Vienna, Erlangen and Leipzig .

In the autumn of 1890, he and his brother Wilhelm (1864–1945) successfully took the examen pro ministerio and was included in the ranks of candidates for theology who were eligible for the Protestant pastoral office. On November 15 of the same year he was in Wallern an der Trattnach by his future father-in-law, Superintendent Jakob Ernst Koch III. , ordained with the assistance of the pastors von Eferding and Scharten and installed as superintendent vicar.

On the occasion of the upcoming pastor election in Innsbruck, he and other candidates were invited by the local evangelical congregation to prove his biblical firmness and eloquence in a trial sermon. Wehrenfennig was able to win this competition and was introduced to his office on Palm Sunday, April 7, 1895, as the new evangelical pastor of the evangelical community of Innsbruck. His uncle, Senior Moritz Wehrenfennig from Goisern, gave the installation speech.

Pastor of Innsbruck

When Wehrenfennig took office, a few hundred professing Protestants were registered in the registers of the Innsbruck Protestant community. Since he was the only Protestant pastor in North Tyrol, he also had to look after those who lived in the country.

He was supported by vicars . The following are mentioned in the literature: Friedrich Schwarze from Anhalt (1901–1903), Georg Schrecker (1903–1906), Ewald Uhlig from Saxony (1906–1910), Robert Jakober from Württemberg (1909–1910) and Ernst Pauli from Bavaria (1910 -1914). In 1906 Ewald Uhlig was elected second pastor. In addition, Ulrich von Füssen (1901) and the later Bishop Hans Eder (1916/17) worked as spiritual assistants in Innsbruck for a short time . In his memoirs, Eder reported that he did not like going to Innsbruck because the last vicars were divorced from Innsbruck because of Pastor Wehrenfennig's intolerance. He later revised this statement, however, by stating that the latter was a loyal and conscientious worker who gave his assistants a tremendous amount of independence (perhaps sometimes more than was good). Ultimately, a friendship developed between Wehrenfennig and Eder, which lasted until his death in autumn 1937.

During Wehrenfennig's term of office, the number of Evangelicals living in North Tyrol rose to almost 4,000, which is remarkable in view of the reserved to hostile attitude of the population, who viewed Protestantism as alien. This increase, which cannot be explained solely by a high birth rate and immigration, was mainly due to the propaganda of the German national party Schönerer , which openly called on its members to convert from Catholic to Protestant faith with the slogan “Los von Rom” . Although the conversion movement was politically motivated and mainly supported by organizations from Germany such as the Gustav-Adolf-Verein and the Evangelical Federation , the anger of the Catholic Church hit all beneficiaries of the German national propaganda campaign. Wehrenfennig was also unable to completely escape the hostility from the Catholic side.

Interdenominational disputes

A stumbling block that repeatedly gave rise to conflict was the funeral of Protestants in Catholic cemeteries. According to Article 12 of the law of May 25, 1868, which regulates the interdenominational relationships of citizens in the relationships specified therein, RGBl. No. 46/1868, not to be denied a decent burial in a denominational cemetery; But what was to be understood by the term “decent”, opinions differed. At the beginning of 1902 in Imst, when a Protestant woman was to be buried in a new place specially created for people of different faiths, Pastor Wehrenpfennig found this location, which was not intended exclusively for people of different faiths, but for Catholic suicides, unbaptized children and people exposed to excommunication , unacceptable. After his proposals to the district administration and the Lieutenancy had been unsuccessful, he turned to the Ministry of Culture and Education , which, however, rejected his appeal by resolution of September 12, 1902, No. 28235, and stated that it was for the funeral the deceased's particular burial site complied with the law on interdenominational relationships. Wehrenfennig later complained about the malice that was poured out on him by the Catholic-conservative-minded press because of this decision.

Years before, Wehrenfennig had been left behind in a legal dispute with the Catholic Church: in the summer of 1898, a Protestant fellow believer had declared his resignation at the Protestant pastoral office and at the same time announced that he had joined the Catholic Church. The special thing about this process was that this process had not been reported to the political authority, which would have been the prerequisite for its legal validity (law of May 25, 1868 RGBl. No. 13). With that, Wehrenfennig could actually have let the matter rest. Since the Lieutenancy had expressed in the handling of Wehrenfennig's complaint that a late registration could transform the legal process into a legally binding and valid one at any time without the Protestant pastoral office having to deal with this matter, the latter turned to the Administrative Court. In support of the appeal, he stated that the admission of the transgressor to the Catholic Church as a worship function would have required the approval of the Protestant pastor. Since the Lieutenancy did not intervene against the violation of the right of the Evangelical Church to obey the interdenominational laws by other religious communities, it violated the duties incumbent on it.

However, the court did not agree with this legal opinion, but rejected the appeal of the Protestant pastoral office on the grounds that this interpretation was not compatible with the constitutional right to full freedom of belief and conscience.

Special parish acts

Wehrenfennig donated the baptism on August 18, 1908 in the Christ Church (Innsbruck) to the resistance fighter Robert Bernardis , who was punished with death for participating in the assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler on August 8, 1944 .

After the exhumation of the poet Georg Trakl, who died in Krakow in 1914, and the transfer of the remains to Tyrol, he carried out the blessing on October 7, 1925 at the Mühlauer Friedhof .

Construction of the Christ Church

When Wehrenfennig arrived in Innsbruck, the services were still held in the chapel of the former Theresian normal school building in Innsbruck's old town, which the evangelical community had bought from the city in 1878. As the number of Protestants in the state capital was constantly increasing due to immigration, births and converts, the prayer room at Kiebachgasse 10 soon proved to be too small, which is why the presbytery was considering building a new church at the turn of the century.

With the support of the mayor Wilhelm Greil, who was free from Germany, Wehrenfennig was able to persuade the Innsbruck municipal council in 1901 to give the evangelical community a suitable plot of land in Saggen (Richard-Wagner-Straße) for a low interest rate; however, it took another four years before construction could begin. After the property was made available, Wehrenfennig called on his co-religionists in the German Empire in June 1901 to support the Protestant cause in Tyrol financially with donations. After the Gustav-Adolf-Werk also agreed to support, on June 4, 1905, numerous participants attended the ceremonial laying of the foundation stone for the construction of the Evangelical Christ Church. The plans for this church building were drawn up by the architects Klemens Kattner and Gustav Knell in Vienna, to whom the construction management was also entrusted.

In October 1905, the bells from the prayer house in Kiebachgasse were transferred to the new church and placed in the tower that was nearing completion. Finally, on May 20, 1906, the Christ Church was solemnly inaugurated. The consecration speech was given by Wehrenfennig's father-in-law, Superintendent Jakob Ernst Koch, who had traveled from Wallern.

Teaching

In 1896, Pastor Wehrenfennig first considered building a new Protestant school, but had to postpone his project for the time being because of the planned church building. After moving into the new church, he founded the Innsbruck branch of the Luther Association for the Maintenance of Protestant Schools in Austria and set up a school fund. But the new school building project never really got off the ground.

When Wehrenfennig took up his plan again in autumn 1913 - at that time there were 195 school-age children in Innsbruck who professed the Protestant faith - this was interpreted by the Catholic press as "Protestant pastor". The First World War finally brought the project to a complete standstill.

Wehrenfennig worked as a religion teacher at the State High School and State Realschule in Innsbruck. For his work as a teacher, he was awarded the title of professor in 1920 . However, his applications for acceptance into the federal service and the award of a benefit were rejected by the Federal Ministry of Education with the decrees of November 23, 1922 and October 1, 1923. A complaint lodged a year later was rejected by the Constitutional Court on the grounds of a decided matter.

Sickness and death

The grueling work of looking after a steadily growing parish with an oversized parish area took its toll: In 1921, Arnold Wehrenfennig collapsed under the burden of the work of the last few decades and did not fully recover. In 1924 he retired.

In the last years of his life he suffered from a weak heart. He died at the age of 70 and was buried in the Protestant section of Innsbruck's Westfriedhof . His friend Hans Eder, who was pastor of Gosau at the time, carried out the blessing of the corpse. Wehrenfennig last lived at Wilhelm Greil Strasse 2.

Page of the baptismal register in which Wehrenfennig entered the baptism of his children Werner and Ingeborg

Familiar

Arnold Wehrenfennig was married to Maria Sophia Koch (1866-1848), a daughter of the superintendent Jakob Ernst Koch III. The children Gertrud, Walter, Gerhard, Grethe (who died after giving birth), Hans, and Werner and Ingeborg (twins, born in 1905) were born from the marriage. Werner had a fatal accident on September 12, 1920 in Bälinge near Uppsala in Sweden. He was buried on October 3 in the cemetery in Bälinge by Archbishop Nathan Söderblom . The pastor of the same name in the market town of Reutte from 1961 to 1980 was a grandchild of the couple.

Varia

He already experienced the celebrations on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the evangelical community Innsbruck as an emeritus . On this occasion he wrote a short history of Protestantism in Tyrol since the tolerance patent of Emperor Joseph II.

In 1917 he was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Franz Joseph Order .

The grave of the Wehrenfennig family (grave field 57) was abandoned in 1988.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Innsbrucker Nachrichten, August 7, 1937, p. 4 with a photograph by Wehrenfennig [1]
  2. ↑ Evangelische Kirchen-Zeitung for Austria October 1, 1890, p. 8
  3. ↑ Evangelische Kirchen-Zeitung for Austria December 1, 1890, p. 10
  4. ^ Evangelische Kirchen-Zeitung für Österreich February 15, 1895, p. 10
  5. ↑ Rudolf Leeb gives in his article Protestantism and Evangelical Church in Tyrol , Yearbook of the Society for the History of Protestantism in Austria, p. 63, the number of members for the year 1890 with 665 people.
  6. ↑ Although Reutte was the first preaching station of the Innsbruck Evangelical Congregation in 1884, Pastor Wehrenfennig never came to Ausserfern because of the poor transport connections. The district was looked after exclusively by the neighboring municipality of Füssen. [2]
  7. ↑ The life story of Bishop Dr. Hans Eder, told by himself First part: Childhood and youth. Edited by Grete Mecenseffy .
  8. ↑ Entire legal regulation for the regulation of the interdenominational relations of the citizens . Federal Ministry for Digitization and Business Location. Retrieved March 25, 2019.
  9. ^ Reichspost, November 23, 1902, pp. 9 and 10; Linzer Volksblatt January 24, 1896, p. 1 f.
  10. ↑ Innsbrucker Nachrichten October 26, 1904, p. 4 and October 27, p. 5
  11. ↑ Findings from June 27, 1901, Zl. 5127, No. 432 (A) Collection of the findings of the Administrative Court 1876-2010, book page 844, on the portal ALEX page 838. [3] with more detailed reasons
  12. ^ Karl-Reinhart Trauner: Lieutenant Colonel i. G. Robert Bernardis and his time. In: Yearbook of the Society for the History of Protestantism in Austria 2008, p. 197.
  13. ↑ Innsbrucker Nachrichten, October 8, 1925, p. 3
  14. ↑ In 1926 the building site was finally transferred to the parish on the occasion of the anniversary. Source: Karl-Reinhart Trauner. “Lot of Rome! but not to the gospel ”. In: Yearbook of the Society for the History of Protestantism in Austria, 2007, p. 156
  15. ^ Ostdeutsche Rundschau, June 3, 1901, p. 4
  16. ↑ Innsbruck Informed - May 2006 p. 21
  17. ↑ Innsbrucker Nachrichten, October 19, 1905, p. 3
  18. ↑ Innsbrucker Nachrichten, May 21, 1906, p. 5 Report on the celebrations [4]
  19. ↑ Karl-Reinhart Trauner. “Lot of Rome! but not to the gospel ”. In: Yearbook of the Society for the History of Protestantism in Austria, 2007, p. 156
  20. ↑ Evangelical Church Newspaper for Austria, December 15, 1909, p. 8
  21. ^ Vorarlberger Volksblatt, October 10, 1913, p. 1
  22. ↑ Innsbrucker Nachrichten, June 16, 1917, p. 5
  23. ^ Wiener Zeitung February 4, 1920, p. 3
  24. ↑ Knowledge of March 20, 1928, Zl. From 1529/28
  25. ↑ Karl-Reinhart Trauner. “Lot of Rome! but not to the gospel ”. In: Yearbook of the Society for the History of Protestantism in Austria, 2007, p. 168
  26. ↑ Book of the Dead of the Protestant Church, page 146 serial no.27
  27. ^ Parish registers Tirol, Innsbruck-Christuskirche, baptismal register 01 with index, 1876-1905
  28. ↑ Innsbrucker Nachrichten, October 9, 1920, p. 14
  29. ↑ Innsbrucker Nachrichten, December 21, 1925, p. 7 [5]
  30. ^ Evangelical Church Newspaper for Austria September 1, 1917, p. 3
  31. ^ Information from the cemetery administration
personal data
SURNAME Wehrenfennig, Arnold
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wehrpfennig, Arnold
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Protestant pastor in Innsbruck
DATE OF BIRTH November 20, 1867
PLACE OF BIRTH Gosau
DATE OF DEATH August 5, 1937
Place of death innsbruck