August Kruse

This article deals with Bishop August Kruse. For the general see August von Kruse .

August Kruse (Cyrillic Август Генрихович Крузе ; * 1941 in Saratow on the Volga , USSR ) is a Russian-German Lutheran clergyman. He was bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of the Urals, Siberia and the Far East (ELKUSFO) based in Omsk and Archbishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Russia (ELCR).

Live and act

August Kruse spent his early childhood in the area of Abakan in Siberia , where his Volga-German family had been forcibly relocated. In 1949 he came to Krasnoturyinsk , where his family made a new home. Kruse served in the army for three years and then took up a job in the aluminum plant in Krasnoturyinsk. He worked in this plant for 28 years and then retired at the age of 50 due to the work that was harmful to health.

Since the end of his army service, August Kruse had close contact with the Lutheran community in Krasnoturjinsk, which at the time was still working underground. Only in 1990 was it possible for all of the city's Lutheran congregations to celebrate Christmas together. August Kruse became the responsible leader of this community. His knowledge of German, which he had acquired himself with the help of his family, was very beneficial for this, even if the Siberian Church is now in an irreversible transition from German to Russian.

Kruse was ordained a preacher by the then Bishop Nikolaus Schneider (1920–1996) , with all the powers of a pastor. In 1993 he became provost in the Urals and deputy bishop. Until his election as Archbishop in 2009, he held the office of bishop of his Siberian home church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of the Urals, Siberia and the Far East .

In September 2009, Kruse was elected Archbishop of the ELKRAS to succeed Edmund Ratz and was introduced to his office. This made him its fourth senior bishop since the re-establishment of this church. His successor in the ELKUSFO bishopric was Otto Schaude from October 2010 until his death in September 2016 . In 2012 he resigned from his position; he was succeeded (initially provisionally until 2014) by Dietrich Brauer .

Kruse rejects the ordination of women and blames liberal tendencies that have penetrated his church from Germany for the destruction of his church.

literature

• Lutheran ministry. Vol. 42, issue 4, 2006, ISSN  2196-5978 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Russia: 3rd General Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church . Press release of the Gustav-Adolf-Werk , September 18, 2012.
2. ↑ Evangelical Lutheran Archbishop seeks emancipation from ... . Volksstimme, November 29, 2010.