Carl Eichhorn

This article deals with Pastor Carl Eichhorn. For other people see Karl Eichhorn .

Portrait of Carl Eichhorn, painted by Theodor Rocholl

Carl Eichhorn (born July 11, 1810 in Kembach , † February 8, 1890 in Korbach ) was a Lutheran pastor in Baden and Hesse.

Life

Carl Eichhorn was born in the rectory in Kembach near Wertheim (Baden). He studied theology in Halle and Heidelberg . In Halle, August Tholuck awakened an understanding of the truth of the Holy Scriptures. His path led him first as an assistant preacher to Hilsbach, then to Bofsheim and in 1847 to Nussloch . These are all parishes of the Baden uniate regional church . The Grand Duchy of Baden had already introduced the Union of the Lutheran and Reformed Churches in 1821 . The church was called the "United Evangelical Protestant Church".

Encouraged by his friend Wilhelm Löhe , Eichhorn decided to separate from this church and announced this on November 3, 1850 during the Sunday service of his congregation. In the writing A Word of Understanding , which appeared in the same year, he showed the need to move away from the Union. In his troubled situation Eichhorn found help from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Prussia . In 1851 Eichhorn went to Steeden and took an orthodoxy with Pastor Friedrich Brunn. On April 20, 1851 Pastor Brunn ordained Pastor Eichhorn on all confessional documents for the Lutheran congregation in Ihringen .

Years of persecution followed for Eichhorn. Care of the Lutheran congregations should be made impossible. The services had to be celebrated at night and in the surrounding forests. He was arrested several times. Traveling for days, often in soaked clothes, was necessary to serve the newly formed Lutheran congregations with word and sacrament. And always on the lookout for his captors! Lutheran congregations gathered in Nussloch, Lindelbach , Söllingen, Lörrach , Durlach , Diedelsheim , Bretten , Ispringen and Ihringen am Kaiserstuhl, among others . The workload that was on Eichhorn is hard to imagine. Eichhorn received valuable help when Pastor August Wilhelm Ludwig, Lörrach, left the Union Church.

In 1856 the state government tolerated the Lutherans. But the following years were the most painful for the church in Baden and for Eichhorn. Pastor Georg Friedrich Haag returned from Pomerania to Baden and broke into the local churches and weakened the cohesion of the churches. Pastor Ludwig returned to the Union in the face of this confusion. Thanks to Max Frommel , pastor of the parish of Ispringen since 1858, the doctrinal disputes of the Prussian Lutherans also became the subject of the Baden Church. Frommels endeavor was to achieve a separation from the upper church college in Breslau. In a certain sense, this was incomprehensible to Eichhorn. But Frommel, a skilled and self-confident man, finally succeeded in attracting the vast majority of the Lutherans in Baden. Eichhorn's community, Ihringen, was weakened so much that Eichhorn had to leave the church in Baden.

In 1867 he accepted a call that led him to the Principality of Waldeck to look after the two municipalities of Korbach and Sachsenberg, which are part of the Breslau Association . Until 1890 he performed his ministry here with word and sacrament. At the beginning of his activity, the two churches numbered 200 souls. When he finished his service, there were 300. Church services were also celebrated regularly in Bergheim, a new congregation. As an 80-year-old on a trip to Züschen to offer Holy Communion to the elderly and the weak, he had a fatal accident.

His sons Wilhelm and Carl also became theologians.

literature

• Karl Wolfart: History of the Lutheran Movement in Baden. MS, Freiburg im Breisgau 1895.
• Friedrich Wilhelm Bautz :  EICHHORN, Karl. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 1, Bautz, Hamm 1975. 2nd, unchanged edition Hamm 1990, ISBN 3-88309-013-1 , Sp. 1478.
• Frank Martin Brunn: Carl Eichhorn (1810–1890) and the Lutheran separation in Baden. In: Johannes Ehmann (Ed.): Life pictures from the Baden Protestant Church in the 19th and 20th centuries. Volume 2: Church political directions. Karlsruhe 2010, pp. 139–167.
• Frank Martin Brunn: Carl Eichhorn (1810–1890): a pioneer of Lutheran free churches. In: Lutheran Theology and Church. 34, 2010, pp. 35-75.