Dorothea Wendebourg

Dorothea Wendebourg (2018)

Dorothea Wendebourg (born July 6, 1952 in Langenberg (Rhineland) ) is a German Protestant theologian (church historian).

Life

Dorothea Wendebourg studied Protestant theology from 1969 to 1974 in Munich, Heidelberg and London ( King`s College ). After graduating in 1974, she completed a doctoral degree at the Pontificio Istituto Orientale in Rome and at the Tantur Ecumenical Institute near Jerusalem, before starting her dissertation on Spirit or Energy in the 1978 summer semester . For the divine anchoring of Christian life in Byzantine theology at the Evangelical Theological Faculty of the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich for Dr. theol.received his doctorate. From 1978 to 1986 she was assistant at the chair for ancient church history with Georg Kretschmar , since her habilitation in the winter semester 1982/83 with the study of Reformation and Orthodoxy. The ecumenical correspondence between the leadership of the Württemberg Church and Patriarch Jeremias II of Constantinople in the years 1573-1581 was also a lecturer . In 1983/84 she was a visiting professor at the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Hong Kong . In 1986 she became Professor of Church History at the University of Erlangen , from 1987 to 1996 she was Professor of Church History at the University of Göttingen , from 1996 to 2002 at the University of Tübingen , and from 2002 to 2017 she held the Chair of Medieval and Modern Church History / Reformation history at the theological faculty of the Humboldt University Berlin . In 2012 she taught as a visiting professor at Duke University / USA.

Her main research interests, which have shifted over time from East to West and from Patristic and Byzantine times to modern times, lie in the history of the Church and theology of the Reformation including its reception history, the history of ecumenism and the history of the liturgy . In various international commissions (eg. The Lutheran World Federation - Orthodox Churches, The Lutheran World Federation - Roman Catholic Council for Christian Unity , Commission on Faith and Order of the World Council of Churches ) she was personally involved in ecumenical conversations. Within Germany, she presided over important church-wide bodies (Chair of the Theological Committee of the United Evangelical Lutheran Church of Germany (VELKD), Lutheran co-chair of the Theological Chamber of the Evangelical Church in Germany ). She was also the deputy chairwoman of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Luther 2017 Kuratorium of the German Federal Government and the EKD in preparation for the 2017 Reformation anniversary . In addition to her scientific work, she tries to mediate between historical science and the public in popular print media and radio broadcasts.

Since 1999 she has been married to the professor emeritus Johannes Wallmann .

Fonts (selection)

• Mind or energy. On the question of the divine anchoring of Christian life in Byzantine theology. Christian Kaiser, Munich 1980.
• Reformation and Orthodoxy. The theological correspondence between the leadership of the Württemberg Church and the Ecumenical Patriarch Jeremias II in the years 1574-1581. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1986.
• Reformation theories. A church-historical dispute about the unity and diversity of the Reformatio (together with Berndt Hamm and Bernd Moeller ). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1995.
• The one Christianity on earth. Essays on church and ecumenical history. Mohr, Tübingen 2000.
• Food to remember. The memory command in the theologies of the communion of the reformers. Mohr, Tübingen 2009.
• Paul Gerhardt : Spiritual songs. Edition (in collaboration with Andreas Stegmann) and introduction. Reclam, Stuttgart 2013.
• So many Luther's. The Luther anniversaries of the 19th and 20th centuries. EVA, Leipzig 2017.

For essays, editorships, etc. a. see the website of the Humboldt University

Web links

• Prof. Dr. theol. Dorothea Wendebourg