Dietrich Vorwerk

Karl Wilhelm Dietrich Vorwerk (born February 22, 1870 in Droyßig , † February 5, 1942 in Dresden ) was a German Protestant educator , pastor and religious writer . He was parish pastor in Schierke (1902–1908) and then superintendent and consistorial councilor in Roßla until 1912 , after which he stayed in Wernigerode for scientific and literary work from 1912 to 1915 , then went to Buslar as a pastor and was 1 from 1918 to 1934 Pastor of the Andreas Church in Dresden.

In the decades before and after the First World War , Vorwerk developed an extensive literary and poetic activity. His subjects were prayer life, popular missions, pastoral care for children and young people, but also the personality of Jesus . The popular volume Harzluft (5th edition 1924) tries to combine piety, health and love of home. The book Can a Pastor Also Be Saved? (6th edition 1927) Distribution in which Vorwerk described the specific difficulties of his profession with empathy and humor.

His poem “The pastor's sermon to himself”, in which he describes the different demands on a pastor in pairs of antinomies (“A pastor must be / very big and very small ...”), is cited many times in Christian literature and on the Internet . to close with the statement: "- very different from me."

A dark shadow lies on Vorwerk's work through his unreserved joining in with the cheers of the war of 1914/1915. Without reservation, he identified the cause of the German Empire with that of the Kingdom of God and praised the god of cherubins, seraphins and zeppelins . In Hurray and Alleluia (1914) he rhymed an Our Father paraphrase, in which it a. called:

Forgive with compassionate long-suffering

every bullet and every blow,

that we sent over!

Do not lead us into temptation

that our wrath is your judgment of God

too mildly accomplished!

literature

Pastors' book of the ecclesiastical province of Saxony , Volume 9, Biograms Tr-Z, Leipzig 2009, p. 170

Individual evidence

↑ often with no or wrong statement of the author, so in the pastoral paper for the dioceses of Aachen, Berlin, Essen, Hildesheim, Cologne and Osnabrück 9/2012, p. 288: "Salzburg handwriting from the Middle Ages"
↑ “A pastor has to be / very big and very small; / noble sense as from a royal family, / simple and plain like a farmhand; / a hero who subdued himself / a man who wrestled with God; / a source of holy life, / a sinner whom God has forgiven; / a master of his own desires, / a servant of the weak and anxious; / bowing to no great, / bowing to the least; / a disciple before his master, / a teacher in the battle of the spirits; / a beggar with pleading hands / a herald with golden donations; / a man in the battlefields / a woman by the sickbeds; / an old man who looks, / a child who trusts; / striving for the highest, / paying attention to the smallest; / in tune with joy / trust in suffering / far from envy; / clear in thinking / true in speaking; / friend of peace, / enemy of indolence; / fixed in itself, / completely different from me. "( Plowed through land. Poems by Dietrich Vorwerk , Schwerin ² 1921, p. 17f.)

Web links

Literature by and about Dietrich Vorwerk in the catalog of the German National Library
Literature list in the online catalog of the Berlin State Library
Address by Bishop Wolfgang Huber with reference to Hurray and Hallelujah (PDF file; 59 kB)

personal data
SURNAME	Vorwerk, Dietrich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Vorwerk, Karl Wilhelm Dietrich (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German Protestant clergyman, pastor and religious writer
DATE OF BIRTH	February 22, 1870
PLACE OF BIRTH	Drunky
DATE OF DEATH	February 5, 1942
Place of death	Dresden

[1] ten with no or wrong statement of the author, so in the pastoral paper for the dioceses of Aachen, Berlin, Essen, Hildesheim, Cologne and Osnabrück 9/2012, p. 288: "Salzburg handwriting from the Middle Ages"

[2] “A pastor has to be / very big and very small; / noble sense as from a royal family, / simple and plain like a farmhand; / a hero who subdued himself / a man who wrestled with God; / a source of holy life, / a sinner whom God has forgiven; / a master of his own desires, / a servant of the weak and anxious; / bowing to no great, / bowing to the least; / a disciple before his master, / a teacher in the battle of the spirits; / a beggar with pleading hands / a herald with golden donations; / a man in the battlefields / a woman by the sickbeds; / an old man who looks, / a child who trusts; / striving for the highest, / paying attention to the smallest; / in tune with joy / trust in suffering / far from envy; / clear in thinking / true in speaking; / friend of peace, / enemy of indolence; / fixed in itself, / completely different from me. "( Plowed through land. Poems by Dietrich Vorwerk , Schwerin ² 1921, p. 17f.)