Emil Felden

Emil Jakob Felden (born May 7, 1874 in Montigny near Metz ; † December 4, 1959 in Bremen ) was a German Protestant theologian , socialist and pacifist politician ( SPD ) and writer.

biography

Felden was born in Lorraine as the son of a cooper and a gendarme . In Strasbourg , as a liberal Protestant , he studied theology alongside Albert Schweitzer , but also philosophy and economics . After ordination in Strasbourg in 1899, he worked as a vicar and private tutor in Alberschweiler in the Moselle department and in 1900 in Dehlingen near Zabern in what is now the Bas-Rhin department. From 1904 to March 1907 he worked as editor-in-chief at the Elsässischer Tageblatt in Colmar . During this time he published short stories and novels and gave many lectures. Felden developed a religiosity that rejected any church dogma . He was assigned to theological radicalism and was politically very progressive.

After a short activity at the Free Christian Congregation in Mainz , Felden was appointed pastor of the St. Martini Congregation in Bremen on October 1, 1907 . As a pastor, he represented an ethical natural religion and was guided by the findings of contemporary history. He published new hymn books and criticized the Bremen merchants' guild as backward. Through him, the Martini congregation became a workers' congregation, in constant conflict with conservative but also liberal pastors. The Lord's Supper became the fraternal meal for the congregation. Felden stood up for the rights of women and for the separation of church and state . After the First World War he fought against anti-Semitism , including in his novel The Sin Against the People (1921).

In 1919 Felden became a member of the SPD , from 1921 to 1922 he was a member of the Bremen citizenship and from 1923 to 1924 a member of the Reichstag . Then he withdrew from party politics. It met with approval from the workforce, but rather mistrust from party officials. In 1927 he paid tribute to Friedrich Ebert in the novel Eine Menschen Weg . Albert Schweitzer said of his former fellow student Felden: "His idealism made him a fighter" .

On June 30, 1933, after the " seizure of power " by the National Socialists , Felden was dismissed from office and his books were also burned . From 1941 to 1943 he again took on a pastor's position in Alsace as a vacancy representative. Before the end of the war he was evacuated to the Palatinate, where he was speaker and president at meetings of the re-established Free Religious State Community of Palatinate . In 1946 he was rehabilitated by the President of the Church Committee of the Bremen Evangelical Church . He lived in Mutterstadt until the end of 1952 and returned to Bremen in 1953.

Felden was married and had two daughters and two sons from his first marriage, one of his daughters was the well-known painter and art teacher Gerda Matejka-Felden . He was one of the Masonic humanitarian Grand Lodge Freemasonry to the rising sun on.

Honors

The Emil-Felden-Weg in Kattenturm in the Bremen- Obervieland district was named after him.

Works

• Spiritism and the other occult systems of our time. Oldenburg, Leipzig 1910.
• All or nothing. Pulpit speeches about Henrik Ibsen's plays. The act, Leipzig 1911.
• The separation of state and church. Diederichs, Jena 1911.
• Royal Children: Letters from a difficult time of separation in a marriage. Oldenburg, Leipzig 1914.
• In the stream of time and eternity. A book of devotion for free people. Unesma, Leipzig 1917.
• Tomorrow's people. A novel from days to come. Oldenburg, Leipzig [1918].
• Victorious people. Novel in 2 books. Oldenburg, Berlin [1920].
• The sin against the people. Novel. Oldenburg, Berlin 1921.
• Behind the dike. In: Reinhold Eichacker (Ed.): Haß. Answer by German poets to Versailles. Universal, Munich 1921.
• The man with the hard heart and other fairy tales and stories for young and old. Oldenburg, Berlin 1922.
• One man's way. A Fritz Ebert novel. Friesen, Bremen 1927.

literature

• Helmut Donat : Emil Felden - A life for peace, freedom and social justice. In: Helmut Donat, Andreas Röpcke (eds.): "Lower your arms - your hands reached!" Peace movement in Bremen 1898–1958. Catalog for the exhibition of the same name. Edited on behalf of the Bremen State Archives. Donat, Bremen 1989, ISBN 3-924444-45-5 , pp. 109-114.
• Georg Huntemann : Felden, Emil Jakob. In: Historical Society Bremen, State Archive Bremen (Ed.): Bremische Biographie 1912–1962. Hauschild, Bremen 1969, p. 144, column 2, to p. 147, column 1.
• Horst Kalthoff :  Felden, Emil. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 22, Bautz, Nordhausen 2003, ISBN 3-88309-133-2 , Sp. 316-319.
• Monika Porsch: Bremen Street Lexicon. Volume 7: habenhausen, Arsten, Kattenturm, Kattenesch. Butterfly, Bremen 1999, ISBN 3-932249-04-6 .
• Herbert Black Forest : The Great Bremen Lexicon . Edition Temmen, Bremen 2003, ISBN 3-86108-693-X .
• Volker Weidermann : The book of burned books. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2008, ISBN 978-3-462-03962-7 , pp. 102-104.
• Emil Felden, Bremen. In: Heinrich Schmidt (Ed.): What we owe to Ernst Haeckel. Volume 2, Unesma, Leipzig 1914, p. 125.
• Biographical information in: Bremer Pfarrerbuch. Volume 2, Hauschild, Bremen 1996, ISBN 3-929902-96-6 , p. 58.

Web links

• Literature by and about Emil Felden in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by and about Emil Felden at Open Library
• Julius Bamberger from GEW Bremen ( Memento from February 24, 2013 in the Internet Archive ): July 16, 2007: Julius Bamberger, Emil Felden and Richard von Hoff

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Pilick, Eckhart (ed.): Lexicon of free religious persons, Rohrbach / Pfalz o. J.
2. ↑ Marcus Meyer: Brother and Citizens: Freemasonry and Bourgeoisie in Bremen from the Enlightenment to the Reconstruction after 1945. Edition Temmen, Bremen 2010, ISBN 978-3-8378-1019-6 .