Dieter Ackermann

Student pastor Dieter Ackermann 1971

Dieter Ackermann (born May 24, 1932 in Dresden , † December 5, 1985 in Meißen ) was a German Protestant theologian .

Life

After graduating from high school, Ackermann studied Protestant theology in Leipzig . From 1955 to 1957 he completed his vicariate in Papstdorf and at the Lückendorf seminary and was ordained in Hirschfelde (near Zittau ) in 1957 , where he performed his pastoral service until 1965. From 1965 to 1970 he was the owner of the third parish office of the St. Petri Lukas parish in Karl-Marx-Stadt ( Chemnitz ) and initially worked part-time as a student pastor. He actively worked in the Lückendorfer working group in the sense of a qualified community development . From March 1970 he took over the newly created full-time service at the student community of Karl-Marx-Stadt.

In addition, he was heavily involved in the Saxon church congress work . In this context, he developed a distance learning course for laypeople from 1970 onwards, which he then accompanied as a part-time study director. Starting with environmental issues, the various courses in this study letter program “Stud. christ. ”with existential, theological and social topics through written assignments, personal responses, consultation groups and conferences. They reached a total of several thousand participants.

In October 1976, Ackermann switched to the seminary of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Saxony in Lückendorf as director of studies . From September 1982 he was given the position of cathedral preacher at Meißen Cathedral while at the same time being appointed director of the Evangelical Academy Meißen in the cloister courtyard of St. Afra . Thanks to its impulses and a newly constituted board of trustees of experts, this conference and meeting place expanded its charisma with current, society-related educational and discourse offers.

Dieter Ackermann died of leukemia in Meissen on December 5, 1985 . He left behind his wife and four children.

Ackermann was one of the leading theological modernizers of church life in the 1970s and 1980s following the Protestant church reformer Ernst Lange . A characteristic quote from a last posthumously published sermon meditation: “Getting involved in Jesus' humanity - that can be described as a gain in liveliness. [...] To open and not to close - that can break up deadly incrustations in us today. ”( Die Union daily newspaper , Dresden edition, January 5, 1986)

literature

• Aribert Rothe: Evangelical adult education in the GDR and its contribution to political education. Leipzig 2000.
• Aribert Rothe: Evangelical Academies - special places in educational history and the educational landscape; The Evangelical Academy of Meissen (Saxony). In: Martha Friedenthal-Haase (Hrsg.): Evangelical Academies in the GDR Sources and studies on educational institutions between resistance and adaptation. Leipzig 2007, pp. 27-88; 281-306.