Diether Lauenstein

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Diether Lauenstein (born April 8, 1914 in Herford , † December 28, 1990 in Windhoek , Namibia ) was a German theologian and Indologist, pastor of the Christian community and publicist.

Life

Diether Lauenstein grew up in difficult circumstances; his father was sick, the mother had to carry the family with three children alone. His studies were financed by the father of a classmate.

From 1934 to 1939 he studied Catholic and Protestant theology in Tübingen, Sanskrit in Marburg with Johannes Nobel and Friedrich Heiler, and philosophy with Nicolai Hartmann in Berlin. In 1939 he finished his studies in theology and after a year at the Christian Community's seminary was drafted into the armed forces . He took part in the French campaign and the war against the Soviet Union and lost a leg from a serious wound. He was awarded a Dr. theol. doctorate, completed his habilitation at the University of Greifswald and had a teaching position for Indo-European and Sanskrit from August 10, 1944 . Ludwig Heller (Indologist) bequeathed his estate to him.

In 1945 he left Greifswald, worked as a journalist in Herford, received the English Journalism Prize and founded a daily newspaper in East Westphalia. In 1946 he went to the seminary again and was ordained a priest of the Christian Community on October 13, 1946 by Emil Bock .

He was then pastor in Tübingen, from 1951 in Essen, from 1965 in Bochum, where he built a church with the famous architect Hans Scharoun . A life friendship connected him with Gerhard Kienle . Through his course work for younger doctors, his work at the seminary and his involvement in the founding of the Herdecke community hospital and what later became the first private university in Witten / Herdecke , he significantly shaped the anthroposophical work, which reached a broader public that was effective for civilization.

He was the publisher of the Logoi series together with Manfred Krüger .

In 1975 Lauenstein emigrated to Windhoek because of a lung disease and founded an academy there. In 1978 he bought the German-language Allgemeine Zeitung in Windhoek with his own funds and with funds from the CSU-affiliated Hanns Seidel Foundation . The Allgemeine Zeitung had from the mid-1970s under its chief editor Kurt Dahlmann for South Africa and its apartheid policy advocates independent Namibia and called for the general and free vote for all Namibians. The majority of the German-speaking population in Namibia supported this course. Lauenstein, on the other hand, was on the side of the South African-friendly minority: he fired Dahlmann, initially took over the chief editor himself and tried rigorously to get the newspaper on a pro-apartheid and anti-independence course. For political reasons, he also set up an English-language edition of his newspaper.

Works

  • The awakening of the mysticism of God in India. The development of the bhakti term (the devotional devotion) within the older religious ideas of the Indians (= Diss. Marburg 1943). Reinhardt, Munich 1943 (Christianity and foreign religions 8)
  • The Messiah. A biblical inquiry . Urachhaus, Stuttgart 1971
    • Revised edition: Fischer Taschenbuch (Perspektiven der Anthroposophie), Frankfurt am Main 1984
  • The secret of the whale. Melville's Moby Dick and the Old Testament . Urachhaus, Stuttgart 1973
  • The self and society. Introduction to philosophical sociology in contrast to Max Weber and Jürgen Habermas in the way of thinking of Plotinus and Fichte . Free Spiritual Life (Logoi 2), Stuttgart 1974
  • The curriculum vitae and its laws . Urachhaus (Lectures 3), Stuttgart 1974
  • The four thought models of the West . Urachhaus (Lectures 13), Stuttgart 1976
  • The mysteries of Eleusis . Urachhaus, Stuttgart 1987, ISBN 3-87838-498-X
  • The old testament. Stimulus for a new reading from the perspective of the Gospels . Bible texts, selected and commented on by Diether Lauenstein. Urachhaus, Stuttgart 1990

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Biographies of Namibian Personalities in alphabetical order , letter L
  2. ↑ Be nice to the poor Namibia-Germans . In: Der Spiegel . No. 35 , 1978 ( online ).
  3. ↑ Seamlessly in the service of the readers - the AZ-Chronik from 1916 to 2006 Article from the Allgemeine Zeitung of August 4, 2006

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Lauenstein, Diether
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German theologian, Indologist and pastor of the Christian community
DATE OF BIRTH April 8, 1914
PLACE OF BIRTH Herford
DATE OF DEATH December 28, 1990
Place of death Windhoek