Dietrich von Oppen

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Dietrich von Oppen (born November 22, 1912 in Eberswalde near Berlin , † January 27, 2006 in Marburg ) was a German social ethicist .

origin

His parents were the Prussian major Konrad von Oppen (1875-1914) and his wife Helene, née von Ruville (* 1879). The Prussian Lieutenant General Karl von Oppen was his grandfather.

Life

From 1933 to 1939 von Oppen first studied theology, then history and sociology in Berlin and Königsberg. In 1933 he became a student member of the SS and then worked 1935–37 in the land service of the German student body . From 1937 he was a member of the NSDAP . Between military service and a long-term illness, he completed his studies in 1942 with a dissertation on demographic change in West Prussia under the title The population change in West Prussia from the founding of the Empire to the World War .

From the 1950s he worked as a sociologist in Dortmund and Hamburg, where he completed his habilitation in 1957 with Helmut Schelsky on the German consumer cooperatives. At the same time, he developed extensive public lecturing activities, including a. in Protestant academies and at church conventions. This resulted in his most influential book, "The Personal Age", in which he developed an ethic of personal responsibility based on the Christian faith.

From 1960 to 1980 Dietrich von Oppen taught social ethics at the theological faculty of the Philipps University in Marburg . During this time, in addition to and through his lectures, numerous other lectures and publications were created on the challenges of the upheavals of the modern era for responsible, human behavior in today's world. He examined these challenges for a wide range of topics, ranging from diakonia and development aid to threats to the environment and peace . When looking for ways into the future, he pursued the concept of partnership-based dialogue. The New Testament provided him with important foundations for this , as did thinkers like Martin Buber . He also tried to implement dialogic concepts in his own practice. In the period after 1968 he conducted "reform seminars" with students. He was temporarily a member of the board of directors of the Philipps University. From 1973 to 1976 he also worked as an ephorus for the Hessian Scholarship Institute. In 1992 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Theological Institute of the University of Cluj-Napoca (Klausenburg) in Sibiu (Herrmannstadt) .

In the mid-1990s, von Oppen's dissertation in Marburg became the subject of public debate. A former listener ( Klaus Ahlheim ) made known NS-compliant and anti-Semitic formulations contained therein, such as For example: "The empire is Jewish from the eastern provinces" or "All real culture was imparted to the Poles through the Germans in the course of their history". Von Oppen was accused of hiding his past and presented this as an example of the predominant forgetting and hiding of the past in the post-war era of the Federal Republic of Germany. Other voices rose for von Oppen, who emphasized that he had unequivocally advocated the building of a democratic society based on the modern history of freedom and human dignity, which was also based on Christianity, in his teaching and personally.

Works (selection)

  • The personal age. Forms and foundations of social life in the 20th century. (Handbook of Christians in the World, 7) Stuttgart / Gelnhausen: Burckhardhaus and Kreuz Verlag, 1960, OCLC 976633298
  • The population change in West Prussia from the establishment of the Empire to the World War . Unpublished dissertation, Innsbruck 1942 permalink.obvsg.at (published 1955 in a revised form udT "Germans, Poles and Kashubians in West Prussia 1871-1914" in: Yearbook for the History of Central and East Germany , Vol. 4, pp. 157-223, ISSN  0075-2614 )

literature

  • Siegfried Keil, Marburg: Obituary for Professor Dr. Dietrich v.Oppen. In: Journal for Evangelical Ethics. Vol. 50 (2006), No. 2, pp. 145-146.
  • Klaus Ahlheim: A beautiful life. Hanover 2000.
  • Martin Schindel: "And even if I want tomorrow, I can only make it out of today." Dietrich von Oppen - memories on the occasion of his 100th birthday. In: Deutsches Pfarrerblatt. 113.2013.4, pp. 206-210.
  • Gothaisches Genealogisches Taschenbuch der Uradelige houses. The nobility born in Germany (primeval nobility). 1917. Eighteenth year, Justus Perthes, Gotha 1916, p. 617.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, second updated edition, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 , p. 444.
  2. ^ Quotations from Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Fischer Taschenbuch 2005, p. 444.
personal data
SURNAME Oppen, Dietrich von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German social ethicist
DATE OF BIRTH November 22, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH Eberswalde
DATE OF DEATH January 27, 2006
Place of death Marburg