German Evangelical Church Congress 1981

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Stamp on the occasion of the Kirchentag in 1981 by the German Post Office was issued

The 19th German Evangelical Church Congress in 1981 took place from June 17th to 21st, 1981 under the motto “Don't be afraid” in Hamburg . The host was the North Elbian regional church .

As President of the Kirchentag, Richard von Weizsäcker had prepared the Hamburg Kirchentag - in June 1981 he took up the post of the governing mayor of Berlin; Erhard Eppler , member of the Kirchentag presidium, took over the office of the Kirchentag president from him.

This Kirchentag was also a political event, marked by the retrofitting debate . It became one of the first culmination of the peace movement while negotiations in Geneva stalled. With almost 118,000 participants, the Protestant meeting that was in crisis in the 1970s in Hamburg became the major event it has been since then. The audience at this church convention was very young, mostly between 15 and 25 years of age.

Peace movement

The then ruling party, the SPD, was visibly present in various ways at the Hamburg Kirchentag - more than the CDU. Many members found in the Christian-motivated protest a "mental bowl" in which they could express their discomfort with the politics of their own party leadership. Eppler, a prominent opponent of retrofitting, had come to the Kirchentag "to make it clear that he would not leave these people alone."

But the advocates of retrofitting within the SPD also saw the Kirchentag as a forum to present their arguments. It was known in advance that Defense Minister Hans Apel would speak at the Kirchentag. Supporters of the peace movement mobilized against this performance weeks beforehand.

On June 16, 1981, the then bishop for the district of Hamburg, Hans-Otto Wölber , received a dossier from the President of the Hamburg State Office for the Protection of the Constitution , Christian Lochte . This authority had smuggled informers in preparatory meetings for the Kirchentag in order to determine details about planned "disturbance and protest actions" and other "activities". In one of the reports, the undercover agent listed the sixty or so participants in a preparatory meeting and noted the suggestions for actions to be taken in the Defense Minister's speech. In a letter to a fellow bishop, Wölber was dismayed at “how strongly our scene is entangled in one way or another with the entire left spectrum in the Federal Republic.” (Some people who became known to the Office for the Protection of the Constitution later had problems in their civil service.)

Exhibition hall 13

On Thursday and Friday, all-day events on the subject of retrofitting took place on the exhibition grounds in Hall 13, announced under titles such as: "Secure Peace", "Peace, Security and Disarmament", "Armaments - Race to Death?", "Secure Peace - Creating peace. ”A prominent guest was Defense Minister Hans Apel, other guests were Christoph Bertram , Wolfgang Huber , Gert Krell , Egon Bahr , Alois Mertes and Marie Veit .

There are different versions of the sometimes tumultuous course of the event on June 19th. In front of an audience of 8,000, the Minister of Defense was about to speak, but the crowd began to trample; many who had not been admitted to the overcrowded event tried to disturb outside the door with whistles. When eggs flew, police officers secured the podium with protective shields. A trumpet choir intoned the chorale "Down is the sunshine" and drowned out the expressions of discontent. At the request of the discussion leader, the police withdrew.

Blood campaigns were supposed to expose the supposedly clean war technique. This form of protest was also used when the Defense Minister appeared at the Kirchentag. The FAZ reported that the minister was spattered with blood at the event; A letter to the editor then corrected that medical students in the audience had covered themselves with blood - like the activists, she belonged to the “AG against Disaster Medicine” of the medical student body at the University of Hamburg . Demonstrators waited in front of the minister's official car, throwing bags of cattle blood at the vehicle. As Apel approached, there was a scuffle between demonstrators and security personnel. Apel was finally able to get in and drove away.

Apel himself recalled in 2007 that he was "shouted down, thrown with blood bags, nobody stood by me." As a member of parliament, he was "opportunistic" in 1981 and accepted this; But when he no longer had a mandate and the blessing of same-sex couples was discussed, he resigned from the Evangelical Church because of this.

Trinitatiskirche Altona

Trinity Church in Altona (2011)

In the Trinity Church in Altona , Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and Bishop Wölber answered questions from concerned citizens in a panel discussion on Friday, June 19; ZDF broadcast the event moderated by Reinhard Appel (“How Christian can politics be?”) live. The audience consisted of 400 selected people. A young person confronted Schmidt with the sentence: “I am afraid of your politics!” Schmidt argued as a responsible , ethical statesman and answered confessions of fear from the audience by telling of his own fear as a Wehrmacht soldier. From these biographical reports he deduced the consequence that war should never again start on German soil.

Peace demonstration

On June 20, 100,000 participants attended a peace demonstration on the sidelines of the Kirchentag. Under the motto “Against the nuclear arms race in West and East”, she moved through downtown Hamburg from the Kirchentag. With this broad impact, which had not yet been achieved, the Hamburg Kirchentag marked a breakthrough for the new peace movement in the Federal Republic.

Working group Jews and Christians

The working group Jews and Christians in Hamburg could look back on its twenty years of existence. It was located in hall 4 and offered the following events there:

The members of the working group made a joint statement entitled “On the Danger of New Anti-Semitism ”. After a phase of horror at the crimes of the Nazi state, “the signs of relapse into hostility towards Jews are now increasing. The old anti-Semitism becomes visible behind the criticism of the Israeli government, which can of course be criticized just as much as the politics of any government. ” Enemies - would be judged. The declaration ends with the sentence: "Enmity against Jews also affects the Jew Jesus of Nazareth ."

After-work meal

Main Church of St. Michaelis (2013)

The experiences of the first after-work meal in St. Lorenz , Nuremberg in 1979, were made fruitful for the after-work meal on Friday, June 19. The key words were:

  • Praise and world responsibility,
  • Communion and communication,
  • Lord's Supper and Satisfaction Supper .

Desmond Tutu and Leonardo Boff led the central service in Hamburg's main church St. Michaelis , prepared by the Last Supper Forum . The impulses from the large communion forums at the two church conventions in Nuremberg and Hamburg have noticeably changed the practice of communion in the Protestant churches: the atmosphere was characterized by a happy communal meal, with thanks for the gifts of creation and participation in the heavenly worship service. This was at the expense of the previous Protestant devotion to the Lord's Supper with an emphasis on the forgiveness of sins and the encounter with Christ.

Church music

Fritz Baltruweit was in 1980/81 as vicar and department head, responsible for the preparation of many musical and liturgical events at the Kirchentag. He wrote and composed the song “Fear not, caught in your fear” for the Kirchentag slogan. The three stanzas each formed the summary of a chapter in the media package that was published for the Hamburg Kirchentag. It was sung in many parishes in preparation for the Kirchentag. With regard to the reception, the singular case occurred here that the song is contained in all eight regional parts of the Evangelical Hymnal, but was not included in the main part. From the same Kirchentag songbook from 1981 comes “Friends that the almond twig”. Baltruweit set to music a poem that Shalom Ben-Chorin (who was also closely associated with the Kirchentag movement) had already written in 1942.

The Lord's Supper song "He is the bread, he is the wine" (text: Eckart Bücken , melody: Joachim Schwarz ) was written with a slightly different text in 1980 for a liturgical celebration and was printed in the song book for the Hamburg Kirchentag. It ties in with the Bible verse 1 Kings 19,7  LUT and interprets the Lord's Supper as food for the journey. The Kirchentag made it so popular that it was included in the Evangelical Hymnal (EG 228).

Closing service

The final service with around 90,000 participants took place on Sunday, June 21, 1981 in Hamburg's city park .

Web links

literature

  • Susanne Schregel: The nuclear war on the doorstep. A political history of the new peace movement in the Federal Republic 1970–1985. Campus Verlag, Frankfurt / New York 2011. ISBN 978-3-593-39478-7 .
  • Jan Hansen: Farewell to the Cold War ?: The Social Democrats and the rearmament dispute (1977–1987). Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2016. ISBN 978-3-11-044684-5 .
  • Jürgen Leinemann: "They all consider us non-human." In: Der Spiegel, June 22, 1981 ( online )
  • Hanna-Lotte Mikuteit: Hamburg: The Mecca of the Church Days . In: Hamburger Abendblatt , April 30, 2012 ( online )

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Jan Hansen: Farewell to the Cold War? S. 40 .
  2. ↑ Jürgen Leinemann: "They all think of us as non-humans." In: Der Spiegel . June 22, 1981.
  3. ↑ Jürgen Leinemann: "They all think of us as non-humans." In: Der Spiegel . June 22, 1981.
  4. ↑ Jan Hansen: Farewell to the Cold War? S. 41 .
  5. ↑ Jan Hansen: Farewell to the Cold War? S. 157 .
  6. ↑ Jürgen Leinemann: "They all think of us as non-humans." In: Der Spiegel . June 22, 1981.
  7. ↑ a b c Hanna-Lotte Mikuteit: Hamburg: The Mecca of the Church Days . In: Hamburger Abendblatt . April 30, 2012.
  8. ↑ René Martens: When informers mingled with religious friends of peace. In: Zeit Online. May 26, 2016, accessed on October 24, 2018 (A wording in the dossier suggests that this was not Wölber's first contact with the State Office for the Protection of the Constitution.).
  9. ↑ Jürgen Leinemann: "They all think of us as non-humans." In: Der Spiegel . June 22, 1981.
  10. ↑ Susanne Schregel: The nuclear war in front of the apartment door . S. 253 .
  11. ↑ Susanne Schregel: The nuclear war in front of the apartment door . S. 250-251 .
  12. ↑ a b Happy and aggressive for one's own convictions (interview with contemporary witnesses: Hans Apel). In: Deutschlandfunk. June 28, 2007, accessed October 24, 2018 .
  13. ↑ a b Jürgen Leinemann: “They all consider us non-human.” In: Der Spiegel . June 22, 1981.
  14. ↑ Jan Hansen: Farewell to the Cold War? S. 42 .
  15. ↑ Susanne Schregel: The nuclear war in front of the apartment door . S. 73 .
  16. ^ Declaration by the working group "Jews and Christians" at the German Evangelical Church Congress, Hamburg (June 20, 1981). In: AG Jews and Christians at the German Evangelical Church Congress. Retrieved October 24, 2018 .
  17. ↑ Martin Nicol: Way in the Secret. Plea for the Protestant service . 3. Edition. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2011, p. 210 .
  18. ↑ Corinna Dahlgrün: "... for the forgiveness of sins." Reflections on Protestant devotion to the Lord's Supper . In: Johannes Block, Holger Eschmann (Ed.): Peccatum Magnificare . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2010, p. 53-56 .
  19. ↑ a b Archives of the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland (ed.): The new song in the Evangelical Hymnal. Song poets and composers report . Uwe Nolte, Iserlohn 1996, ISBN 3-930250-12-8 , pp. 54 .
  20. ^ Britta Martini: Language and reception of the hymn . In: Martin Rößler, Jürgen Henkys (Hrsg.): Publications on liturgy, hymnology and theological research on church music . tape 38 . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2002, p. 253 .
  21. ↑ Joachim Stalmann: 228: He is the bread, he is the wine . In: Gerhard Hahn (Hrsg.): Liederkunde zum Evangelisches Gesangbuch . tape 17 . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2012, p. 27-29 .