Christian Stein (pastor)

Johann Daniel Christian Stein (born December 14, 1809 in Dessau ; † September 16, 1887 there ) was a German pastor and member of the state parliament.

Life

Christian Stein was the son of master blacksmith Christian Stein (* 1766 in Radegast) and his wife Johanne Juliane, née Kitzing. In 1809 the von Radegast family moved to Dessau and bought the house at Muldstrasse 2, which had been used as a forge since the 16th century. In addition to Christian, there were four older siblings. The mother died on January 19, 1814 when Christian Stein was four years old. His older brother Karl Stein (* 1801) continued to run the smithy, Christian attended secondary school (the predecessor of grammar school) in Dessau, where he obtained his university entrance qualification and studied theology at the University of Jena from 1830 to 1834 . During his studies he became a member of the Jenaische Burschenschaft / Germania in 1831 .

Stein was already noticed as a liberal during his student days. In 1833 he appeared as a speaker at a meeting of fraternity members on the occasion of the Frankfurt Wachensturm . Accordingly, he was monitored by the police. After completing his studies, he became an educator (3rd inspector) at the Francisceum Zerbst in 1835 . In 1838 he became a regular teacher and taught the quarters as a full professor. The school director, Heinrich Ritter , assessed his teaching positively. It is "alive and stimulating".

As a teacher, he had also received the license to marry. He married Jenny Kitzinger (born July 30, 1822 in Zerbst), the daughter of Major Friedrich Kitzinger. The marriage produced three sons. The eldest son Paul (born April 2, 1848) died after two months, the other sons were Moritz Heinrich Gustav Hermann Hans (born June 15, 1850) and Bernhard Paul (born May 24, 1855).

Church in Scheuder

In January 1846 he applied for a parish office. On August 29, 1846, he was then appointed pastor in Scheuder . He was close to the Friends of Light and particularly criticized the interweaving of state and church.

In the March Revolution he did not initially belong to the cellar circle, the organization of the liberals. Over the next two years, however, he intensified his work for the revolution. From the beginning of 1849 the Anhaltische Volkszeitung appeared in Köthen . The editors were Christian Stein and Alfred von Behr . In 1849 he began with his work The History of the German Peasant Wars for the People . It was a short version of Wilhelm Zimmermann's standard work on the Peasants' War and was sold to the population cheaply in the form of several booklets.

After the constituent state parliament of Anhalt-Dessau-Köthen had passed the constitution on October 29, 1848, the first election to the ordinary state parliament of Anhalt-Dessau according to this constitution took place in April 1849. Stein ran in the constituency of Quellendorf and won the election with 349 of 393 votes against the well-known ornithologist Eduard Baldamus . The state parliament met for the first time on August 15, 1849. In the state parliament he joined the left democrats. On November 12, 1849, the duke dissolved the state parliament, which did not have any great effect. On November 10, 1850, as in other places, the Volksverein was founded in Scheuder, of which Stein was a member.

With his liberal attitude, Stein soon stood in opposition to the rest of the clergy. The pastors were united in the pastoral society. Pastor Lippold from neighboring Reupzig put together an indictment against Stein, which was accepted by the 48 pastors present at the meeting of the Pastoral Society on July 10, 1850 and passed on to the Duke as regional bishop. The political work of Stein was rated as "political rooting in a preacher's unworthy manner". The ducal consistory tightened this again. Stein is "anti-church and through and through socialist, even revolutionary". The consortium's indictment was presented to the ministry on September 3, 1850, and Stein was first summoned for questioning on November 5, 1850. It was determined that Stein was the leader of the Democrats in Quellendorf, Scheuder and Rosefeld, but that he had always fulfilled his duties as a pastor. The ducal chief public prosecutor saw "preparation for high treason".

Even if the indictment against Stein was not pursued, Stein realized in the course of the growing reaction that he would lose his pastor if he continued to promote his opinion in public. He therefore revoked his position vis-à-vis the Pastoral Society and on February 19, 1852, addressed a petition for clemency to the Duke. As a sign of visible repentance, he donated a bell for the church, the atonement bell that still exists today. The case against Stein was not discontinued, however, but rather dragged on. On May 5, 1853, a house search was carried out, during which a libelous poem Stein against the Prussian king was seized.

With the victory of the reaction, Stein's hopes fell. He therefore applied for the position of pastor and teacher in the Anhaltinian colony of Ascania Nova in today's Ukraine . This was also approved on February 12, 1856, and Stein and his family relocated on a grueling six week long journey. The duke lost interest in the colony and sold it to Friedrich Fein. Stein had to return. The ducal government withheld the compensation of 1,600 rubles. In the meantime, Heinrich Voigt had been appointed pastor in Scheuder. Stein could therefore not return to his old position. From 1858 he was pastor in Horstdorf and from 1864 in Freckleben . He retired at the age of 75.

On April 26, 2012, a memorial plaque for Christian Stein was attached to the church.

literature

• Helge Dvorak: Biographical Lexicon of the German Burschenschaft. Volume I: Politicians. Volume 8: Supplement L – Z. Winter, Heidelberg 2014, ISBN 978-3-8253-6051-1 , pp. 306-307.
• Werner Grossert: The democratic pastor Christian Stein: a contribution to the history of the revolution in 1848/49 in Anhalt-Dessau-Köthen, 2012, ISBN 978-3-939197-80-5