Erich Foerster

Erich Foerster (born November 4, 1865 in Greifswald , † October 12, 1945 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a German Protestant theologian .

Live and act

The son of a ministerial director in the Prussian Ministry of Education and Culture attended the humanistic high school Schulpforta up to the Abitur and studied Protestant theology and law in Marburg and Berlin.

After the first theological exam, he became vicar for a year to the Schönbach pastor Martin Rade , whom he also supported as editor of the cultural Protestant magazine Die Christliche Welt . From April 1891 he published the newly founded supplement Chronicle of the Christian World and wrote quarterly reports on current developments in church politics until 1903.

From 1893 to 1895 he was pastor in Hirschberg (Silesia) . During his pastoral work in the Reformed community in Frankfurt am Main from 1895 to 1934 , Foerster completed his habilitation in 1907 at the Academy for Social and Commercial Sciences there with his two-volume work on the Prussian regional church. In 1911 he received a paid teaching position, in 1915 he was appointed honorary professor for the history of religion at the University of Frankfurt am Main . In the same year he was also Konsistorialrat in Frankfurt (until 1925).

Foerster dealt with the relationship between church and state as well as the problems of order within the church. He followed Rudolph Sohm in the differences between the legal-state and the spiritual-ecclesiastical area. At the same time, the proclamation should take place in a thought of sober and free religiosity.

Foerster was a member of the German Democratic Party (DDP) from late 1918 to autumn 1919 . He joined the Confessing Church after 1933 .

Fonts (selection)

• The possibility of Christianity in the modern world , Mohr, Freiburg 1898.
• The legal situation of German Protestantism 1800 and 1900 , Ricker, Gießen 1900.
• The origins of the Prussian regional church under the government of King Friedrich Wilhelm the Third are told according to the sources. A contribution to the history of church formation in German Protestantism, 2 vol., Mohr, Tübingen 1905/07.
• The Christian religion in the judgment of its opponents , Mohr, Tübingen 1916.
• Social capitalism , Mohr, Tübingen 1924.
• Adalbert Falk . His life and work, Klotz, Gotha 1927.
• Rudolph Sohm's Critique of Canon Law. On the 100th anniversary of his birthday, October 29, 1841, Bohn, Haarlem 1942.
• Life memories. Based on his handwriting from May and June 1943, rewritten and supplemented by his grandson Erich Schulz-Du Bois. Preetz in Holstein: self-published 1996.

literature

• Karl Gerhard Steck :  Foerster, Erich. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 5, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1961, ISBN 3-428-00186-9 , p. 277 ( digitized version ).
• Matthias Wolfes :  Foerster, Erich. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 16, Bautz, Herzberg 1999, ISBN 3-88309-079-4 .
• Werner Zager (Ed.): An account of the Christian faith in the shadow of the Third Reich , Spenner, Kamen 2012 ISBN 978-3-89991-131-2 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Erich Foerster in the catalog of the German National Library