Elisabeth Adler

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Elisabeth Adler (born August 2, 1926 in Magdeburg , † January 15, 1997 in Berlin ) was a German director of an Evangelical Academy .

Life

Adler was the daughter of Susanne Martin and Rudolf Adler. The father was a classical philologist . Her parents, who sympathized with the Confessing Church , planted her inner distance from the Nazi regime . She was a compulsory member of the BDM and after being called up for the Reich Labor Service, she obtained a military diploma .

After Germany's liberation from National Socialism , she continued her studies in German and history in Halle and Berlin. She participated in the life of the Protestant student community . After earning her teaching - diploma she had known since 1950 Travel secretary in the office of the Berlin student community, learned church leaders from around the world. In 1956 she began working as a director of studies at the Evangelical Academy of East Berlin. In 1959 she was given the European department of the Christian Student World Federation (WSCF) with a change of location to Geneva . During the regional conference of the WSCF in Graz in 1962 she met the general secretary of the Christian Peace Conference (CFK) Josef Hromádka . Since then she has participated in CFK. At the same time in 1961 she was elected to a “Committee for Personnel Exchange” in New Delhi and shortly afterwards became Deputy Secretary General. She coined the bon mot of "Enlightenment and Embrace", with which she described profound ecumenical learning and cooperation. From 1966, Adler was again head of studies, now at the now independent academy in East Berlin and became its head in 1967. She was the first woman in such an office, in which she worked until she retired in 1988.

At the plenary assembly of the World Council of Churches in Uppsala in 1968, Adler named the temptation to clericalism , triumphalism and verbalism as specific church offenses . A concrete consequence of this positioning was her participation in the program adopted there to combat racism . She campaigned for this program, which also supported violent liberation movements such as the SWAPO , the ANC and the PLO , in the congregations, although she was criticized for it from West German church leaders. She managed to get the WCC to extend its mandate for the program for another five years. She also provided substantial support to the “Church in Solidarity with the Poor” program.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Adler was elected several times to the GDR regional committee of the CFK.

In the book Two Kinds of Past , which summarizes her life , she writes about her work in an Eastern ecclesiastical academy:

“ When the GDR no longer existed, I unexpectedly felt it was a loss. Looking for reasons for my grief, I found that I didn't want to live in Germany again. My last Germany was "Greater Germany". What I appreciated about the GDR, which I really didn't love that much, was that it was a small and actually insignificant country. "

She worked in the editorial department of the magazine Junge Kirche , as a moderator of the Ecumenical Assembly of Berlin and in committees of the Gossner Mission .

Fonts

  • Memoirs and diaries / World Student Christian Federation , Grand-Saconnex, Geneva, Switzerland: WSCF, 1994
  • Desmond tutu . Berlin: Union-Verl., 1985, 2., arr. Ed.
  • Walter Bredendiek - one of the cloud of witnesses
  • For how much longer? Berlin: Union-Verlag, 1982, 1st edition.
  • Orientation Ecumenism , Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1979, 1st ed.
  • A first start . Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1975, 1st edition.
  • Ecumenism in the fight against racism . Bielefeld, Frankfurt (Main): Eckart, 1975
  • "Pro-Existence" , London: SCM Press, 1964, Papers, ed.
  • Pro-existence - proclamation and intercession in the GDR , Berlin: Vogt, 1960

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ World Council of Churches at www.bible-only.org/
  2. ↑ Elisabeth Adler: Two Pasts, 1993, p. 7
  3. ↑ In: Beeskow, Hans-Joachim / Bredendiek, Hans-Otto (eds.): Church history from "left" and from "below" , pp. 294–296; ISBN 978-3-939176-83-1
personal data
SURNAME Adler, Elisabeth
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German director of an Evangelical Academy
DATE OF BIRTH August 2, 1926
PLACE OF BIRTH Magdeburg
DATE OF DEATH January 15, 1997
Place of death Berlin