German Evangelical Church Congress (1848–1872)

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The German Evangelical Church Congress was created in response to the revolution of 1848 .

Because the upheavals of the revolution made the future of the Protestant regional churches, which were closely linked to the territories, uncertain, the Prussian lawyer and politician Moritz August von Bethmann-Hollweg called for a meeting in April 1848 to discuss a reorganization of the church system. Theology professor Isaak August Dorner linked this initiative with a call for the formation of a German Protestant national church. For example, from September 21 to 23, 1848, in the castle church in Wittenberg, a "meeting for the establishment of a German Protestant Church Federation" took place, in which around 500 Protestant men took part, mostly from Prussia. It was decided to negotiate an amalgamation with the regional churches. If no success is achieved within a year, the continuation committee should convene a new meeting.

The second meeting also took place in Wittenberg in 1849, the third in Stuttgart in 1850. The name "Kirchentag", which was naturalized in 1849, was not officially adopted until the fourth Kirchentag in 1851 in Elberfeld. Up to the year 1872, 15 more such church days were held, initially annually, after 1858 every two or three years. The goal of founding a federation of churches gradually faded into the background, especially after the German Evangelical Church Conference was founded in 1852 . Instead, topics were dealt with that were viewed as special challenges to Protestantism, such as the relationship between church and state or relationships with other denominations. The most important topic was the social question and the inner mission . Johann Hinrich Wichern had already given a seminal speech on September 22, 1848, which led to the establishment of the “Central Committee for the Inner Mission of the German Evangelical Church” (from which the Diakonisches Werk was later to emerge). From 1849 the congresses for the internal mission took place directly after the Kirchentag; from 1853 they were also documented together with the negotiations of the Kirchentag.

Bethmann-Hollweg and the lawyer Friedrich Julius Stahl acted as presidents since 1848 . After Stahl retired in 1857, Karl Immanuel Nitzsch joined the Presidium. Emil Herrmann was president from 1864 to 1872 . Other members of the select committee were Friedrich Wilhelm Krummacher , Julius Müller , Karl Heinrich Sack , Wilhelm Hoffmann and others.

The end in 1872 was mainly determined by the incompatibility of Lutheranism and the Prussian Union at the time .

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literature

  • Werner Kreft: The Church Days from 1848–1872 . Peter Lang, Frankfurt a. M. u. a. 1994, ISBN 3631474385 .
  • Margot Käßmann : On the history of the German Evangelical Church Congress . Hanover 2005 (lecture in the Lower Saxony state parliament, May 17, 2005, PDF ).

Web links