Protestant Church of the Augsburg Confession of Alsace and Lorraine

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The Protestant Church of the Augsburg Confession of Alsace and Lorraine (French: Église protestante de la Confession d'Augsbourg d'Alsace et de Lorraine , EPCAAL) is a Lutheran church with the status of an ecclesiastical corporation under public law (établissement public du culte) in France . The church has 210,000 members (as of 2010) and belongs to the Lutheran World Federation . EPCAAL includes parishes in the departments of Bas-Rhin , Haut-Rhin (historic Alsace region ) and Moselle (historic Lorraine district ) in the Grand Est region .

The Lutheran Consistoire supérieur (Upper Consistory) in Strasbourg

In 1961 she was a founding member of the Conference of Churches on the Rhine . The first conference took place in their conference center Château du Liebfrauenberg in Gœrsdorf . Since 2006 she has been a member of the Union of Protestant Churches of Alsace and Lorraine . It is also one of the ecclesiastical organizations of the Fédération Protestante de France (FPF), i. H. of the Protestant League of France .

history

Main Church of St. Thomas in Strasbourg

After the Concordat of 1801 with the Vatican, Napoleon issued similar statutes through the organic articles for members of non-Catholic religious communities (Calvinists, Jews, Lutherans), which provided for semi-state governing bodies (consistories). On April 8, 1802, Napoleon decreed the establishment of the 27 Lutheran consistories, each of which should preferably comprise several parishes with a total of at least 6,000 souls. The General Consistory (Consistoire générale) based in Strasbourg in Alsace , which numerically forms a center of French Lutheranism, was superordinate to them. So the Église de la Confession d'Augsbourg de France received the main features of its constitution. The administrative church leadership, the Directoire, also had its seat in Strasbourg.

With the growth of the population and migration (especially for the purpose of income), Lutheran congregations also emerged in former diaspora areas; accordingly, the number of Lutheran consistory was increased to 40 on March 26, 1852, and the general consistory was renamed the upper consistory.

The annexation of Alsace and parts of Lorraine after the Franco-German War from 1870 to 1871 brought 286,000 French Lutherans and their church leaders to Germany. The 45,000 Lutherans remaining in France, soon increased to 80,000 by Lutheran optants from the annexed area and other migrants, had to reorganize. Johann Friedrich Bruch , consistorial councilor at the senior consistory since 1849 and member of the Directoire since 1866, made special contributions to the restructuring of the Lutheran structures in Alsace-Lorraine . He presided over the interim church authority and in this position pushed through the establishment of the Church AB of Alsace and Lorraine in 1871/1872. Since then, the jurisdiction of the senior consistory and directorate (directoire) has been limited to the Lutheran parishes in Alsace and the Lorraine region . Today 40 regional consistories are subordinate to the senior consistory in Alsace and the Moselle department alone.

In the last quarter of the 19th century, the quarrels about the Catholic joint use of Lutheran church buildings increased. By order of Louis XIV from 1684, all Lutheran and Reformed parishes must make the choir of their church buildings available for Catholic masses if there is no Catholic church in their parish but at least seven Catholic families are resident. In the 1880s that still affected 120 Reformed and Lutheran church congregations.

From 1903 to 1914 Friedrich Curtius was President of the Church Directory. In 1905 he was also elected President of the Upper Consistory. Together with Bishop Adolf Fritzen , Curtius tried to settle the many quarrels about the simultaneous churches, but in vain. The disputes were often only resolved by the fact that the Catholic parishes built their own parish churches, whereby the number of Catholic joint uses of Protestant church buildings could be reduced to 64 cases by 1914.

According to the new Alsace-Lorraine constitution of 1911, the senior consistory president was a member of the first chamber of the Alsace-Lorraine state parliament . When the imperial administration in the Reichsland banned French as the language of preaching in church services after the outbreak of war in 1914, Curtius protested in vain and resigned as senior consistorial president.

The AB Church of Alsace and Lorraine and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of France (this name from 1906) remained separate after 1918 when Alsace-Lorraine came back to France. In the course of French centralism, the state parliament and many forms of expression of regional identity were lost; but the church remained regional. When transferring the legal relationships of the three departments (Bas-Rhin, Haut-Rhin and Moselle) that make up the area of ​​the former Alsace-Lorraine, the French Republic proceeded on the principle that all German regulations continue to exist as regional peculiarities ( Droit local en Alsace et en Moselle ), which were considered more advantageous than the corresponding rules in the rest of France.

In the Second World War , before German troops marched into Alsace in 1940, many exposed representatives of the French Republic fled to western parts of France, including Church President Robert Hœpffner in Périgueux . The German occupation did not establish a military government, but placed Alsace under the civil administration of the NSDAP district of Baden-Alsace . The Moselle department became the Lorraine CdZ area .

The church was seen as a potential stumbling block to conformity. The EPCAAL was divided territorially. The Lutheran parishes in the CdZ area of ​​Lorraine were added to the Evangelical-Uniate German United Protestant-Evangelical-Christian Church of the Palatinate , a destroyed regional church , and the Lutheran church in Alsace was renamed the Evangelical-Lutheran regional church of Alsace . On June 26, 1940, the occupation government appointed Charles Maurer , pastor in Schwindratzheim , as the executive president of the Alsatian Lutheran Church. He was the editor of the weekly "Friedensbote" and was active with the Alsatian autonomists . After the outbreak of war, he was taken into preventive detention by the French authorities as a supposedly insecure cantonist in Arches , but was released again after France's defeat. In 1941 the occupying government abolished the organic articles, stopped paying pastors' salaries, closed the denominational schools, ended religious instruction in schools and confiscated the assets of church associations and foundations.

With the support of the Martin Luther Association , based on the Confessing Church , it was possible to prevent the Alsatian Lutheran Church from being incorporated into the German Evangelical Church . The Alsatian Lutheran Church had to struggle with financial difficulties and a lack of pastors - many pastors were in exile in the west or south of France. Some works of dissolved associations and foundations could be continued to a limited extent under the roof of the church; duplicated sermon texts were read out in church services without pastors (reading sermons) and religious instruction was given in Sunday schools. Organs of collegial voting , such as the Alsatian Lutheran consistory, were replaced by leadership structures, the deaneries, with only one man at the head.

In order to avoid suspicious observation by the Gestapo, unofficial circles (e.g. the parish convents) were established where the real problems were openly discussed. Maurer successfully preserved the possessions of exiled pastors and professors from the occupation forces. He turned down the offer of the occupiers to take over the Catholic cathedral in Strasbourg as a Lutheran church as an attempt to poison the relations between the Alsatian churches. With the relocation of the fighting to Alsace at the end of 1944, Maurer withdrew from the church leadership. On May 1, 1945, Hœpffner took office again. Maurer was arrested in 1947 and sentenced as a collaborator in 1948.

After the Second World War there was renewed efforts by the state to eliminate the regional legal peculiarities, but this ultimately did not take place. In the rest of France, laicism has been the state principle since 1905 , while the recognized religious communities of Calvinists, Jews, Catholics and Lutherans in Alsace and in the Moselle department were able to maintain the concordat status of 1802-1904 with the organic articles. This means that they are state co-financed, use, for example, the theological faculty of the State University of Strasbourg and can operate state co-financed denominational schools.

A merger with religious communities in the rest of France, which are subject to secularism, would only be possible if Church AB gave up its state-church relationship. In the 21st century, around 50 Protestant churches in Alsace and the Moselle department are still being used simultaneously by Catholic parishes. The senior consistory, as church leadership, is made up of elected and born members who must be appointed - and thereby confirmed - by the prime minister before the formal assumption of office.

Church inspections

EPCAAL maintains seven ecclésiastiques (church inspections) based in Bouxwiller (Lower Alsace) , Brumath , Colmar in Upper Rhine, Dorlisheim , La Petite-Pierre , Strasbourg and Wissembourg in Alsace.

Church presidents

The church presidents ( French président du Directoire ) and their vice-presidents are, by virtue of their office, members of the senior consistory. The presidents are also presidents of the chapter on St. Thomas in Strasbourg (Chapitre de Saint-Thomas; confirmed November 29, 1873). The presidents were:

See also

Web links

Commons : Église protestante de la Confession d'Augsbourg d'Alsace et de Lorraine (EPCAAL)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Lutheran World Federation: 2010 World Lutheran Membership Details ( Memento of September 26, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 199 kB); Lutheran World Information 1/2011, p. 9.
  2. ^ A b c François-George Dreyfus: Organization of the Protestant Community . On: Virtual Museum of Protestantism: Theological Information, Discussions, Protestant Tradition , accessed February 26, 2013.
  3. ^ Protestantism in Alsace. On: Virtual Museum of Protestantism: Theological Information, Discussions, Protestant Tradition , accessed February 26, 2013.
  4. ↑ a b Harry Gerber:  Bruch, Johann Friedrich. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 2, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1955, ISBN 3-428-00183-4 , p. 641 ( digitized version ).
  5. ↑ cf. “Etudes: Cultes protestants” ( Memento from June 6, 2013 in the Internet Archive ), on: Institut du Droit Local Alsacien-Mosellan (IDL) , accessed on December 17, 2013.
  6. ↑ a b c d “Simultaneum” , on: Wiki-protestants.org , accessed on February 26, 2013.
  7. ↑ a b Albert Schweitzer : Theological and philosophical correspondence: 1900–1965 (= works from Albert Schweitzer's estate). Published by Werner Zager . Beck, Munich, 2006, ISBN 978-3-406-54900-7 , p. 191.
  8. ^ "Law on the Constitution of Alsace-Lorraine" of May 31, 1911 , in: Constitutions of the World , accessed on December 17, 2013.
  9. ↑ Thus, among other things, the Bismarck social security in the three departments - in the rest of France something similar was not created until later - as well as the existing connections between state and religion, e.g. B. December 26th and Good Friday are also public holidays.
  10. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k Ernest Muller: Maurer Charles. In: Dictionnaire du monde religieux dans la France contemporaine (10 vols.). Beauchesne, Paris 1985-2001, Volume 2: L'Alsace (1987), Ed .: Jean-Marie Mayeur, ISBN 2-7010-1141-8 , pp. 285-287, here p. 286.
  11. ↑ a b c d e Ernest Muller: Mason Charles. In: Dictionnaire du monde religieux dans la France contemporaine (10 vols.). Beauchesne, Paris 1985-2001, Volume 2: L'Alsace (1987), Ed .: Jean-Marie Mayeur, ISBN 2-7010-1141-8 , pp. 285-287, here p. 287.
  12. ↑ The dates from 1871 to 1914 follow Anthony Steinhoff: The gods of the city: Protestantism and religious culture in Strasbourg, 1870–1914. Brill, Leiden / Boston 2008, ISBN 9789004164055 , p. 80.
  13. ^ Anthony Steinhoff: The gods of the city: Protestantism and religious culture in Strasbourg, 1870-1914. Brill, Leiden / Boston 2008, ISBN 9789004164055 , p. 185.