Daniel Haase

Daniel Haase (born September 11, 1877 in Alt-Elft , Russian Empire ; † May 23, 1939 in Tarutino , Bessarabia ) was a Bessarabian German clergyman. At times he was the highest representative of his ethnic group in Bessarabia in both the spiritual and secular areas. As senior pastor, he was the supreme pastor of the Evangelical Church in Bessarabia and was a member of the Romanian parliament as a member of the German party in Romania . As a representative of clericalism , he stood against the National Socialist renewal movement .

Life

Daniel Haase was born as the son of Johann Georg Haase and his wife Rosine. Born rich. His parents were farmers of German origin in Bessarabia , which at that time belonged to the Russian Empire. He was born in the village of Alt-Elft, where around 1,500 people of German descent lived in 1940. The village was founded by German emigrants in 1816. Haase attended the Werner School in Sarata . In 1895 he went to the Estonian Dorpat , which at that time also belonged to Russia. There he studied medicine and theology from 1898 onwards, and later also history. In 1905 he finished his studies as a theologian and returned to Bessarabia where he was employed as a pastor candidate in Sarata. In 1909 he married Charlotte Lilli Tannbaum from Riga , who was the head of the girls' high school in Tarutino .

Offices

In 1908 Daniel Haase was ordained as a Protestant pastor in Tarutino. At the same time he was from 1908 to 1926 religion teacher at the German boys' grammar school in Tarutino. After Bessarabia came from Russia to Romania in 1918, the church system was reorganized. As a result, Haase received the post of senior pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran regional church in Bessarabia in 1920, making him the supreme pastor of the Bessarabian Germans .

Between 1926 and 1934 Haase was President of the German People's Council in Bessarabia , an association of Romanian citizens of German ethnicity. Haase was a co-founder and member of the editorial team of the Deutsche Zeitung in Bessarabia . He was a member of the Romanian Parliament four times for the German Party in Romania between 1926 and 1934, and was temporarily a senator. After a flood in Bessarabia in 1926 and due to the global economic crisis in 1929, Haase obtained a loan of 1.5 million Reichsmarks from a bank in the German Reich . For this he received the Red Cross Order from Reich President Paul von Hindenburg .

Impeachment

When rumors arose that Daniel Haase had embezzled church funds, a financial audit was carried out in 1935. At the same time he filed for disciplinary proceedings against himself. In 1936 he was removed from office by a church court in Sibiu . He was convicted of violating official duties for not handling the funds entrusted to him carefully enough without suspicion of personal gain. In 1938 he retired .

The cause for the inadequate administration in the financial area was probably due to Haase's many ecclesiastical and secular offices. It is believed that his autocracy was the background of efforts to remove him from the office of senior pastor. Haase had opponents among Bessarabian German intellectuals as early as the early 1930s because of his many functions. After Hitler came to power in 1933, they formed the renewal movement with National Socialist ideas. This group strived for power in all areas of society and was contrary to the camp of church supporters. After a dispute with supporters of this group, Haase resigned as chairman of the People's Council for Bessarabia in 1934 .

literature

• Horst Eckert: Rise, Work and Fall of the Senior Pastor Daniel Haase - A biographical attempt , Stuttgart 2012, distributed by the Bessarabiendeutschen Verein
• Christian Kalmbach: Senior Pastor Daniel Haase in: Bessarabischer Heimatkalender, Hannover 1951
• Richard Heer: The old and the new homeland of the Bessarabia Germans - a documentation 1920-1980 , Bietigheim-Bissingen, 1980, ISBN 3-922942-00-8
• Cornelia Schlarb: Tradition in Transition - The Evangelical Lutheran Congregations in Bessarabia 1814-1940 , Cologne 2007, ISBN 978-3-412-18206-9

Web links

• Photo by Daniel Haase
• Photo by Daniel Haase , taken in Tartu