Erich Müller-Gangloff

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Erich Müller-Gangloff , pseudonym Christoph Obermüller (born February 12, 1907 in Roth , Kusel district , † February 23, 1980 in West Berlin ) was a German author and director of the Evangelical Academy of West Berlin.

Life

Müller-Gangloff attended secondary school in Berlin. After graduating from high school in 1926, he studied German and history in Berlin, Innsbruck and Marburg , where he completed a thesis on linguistic history as a Dr. phil. received his doctorate . He was a member of the Deutsche Burse Marburg, headed the press office of the general Marburg student body and was the editor of the Marburg university newspaper . As a member of the youth group Freischar Schill , which is close to the NSDAP , he worked on their magazine Der Umsturz and Die Kommenden under the editorship of Werner Lass and Ernst Jünger . After receiving his doctorate, he first worked as a librarian, and from 1933 as a freelance writer . He was in contact with Ernst Niekisch and spent several months in 1933 on the estate of the writer Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen .

During the Second World War he was drafted into the Wehrmacht and became a prisoner of war , from which he escaped in 1946. In 1951 he founded the Evangelical Academy of Berlin (West), of which he was director until 1970. In the circles she reached, he promoted historical thinking and the examination of the history of the German Empire , especially the time of National Socialism. In 1955 he coined the term “ unresolved past ”, which has since become an integral part of the vocabulary of historical-political debates.

From 1956 onwards, Müller-Gangloff campaigned against nuclear armament in the Federal Republic. He attended the first meetings of the Christian Peace Conference in 1961.

In his 1965 book “Living with the Division. A communal German task ”, Müller-Gangloff described reunification as a lie of life for the Germans. He was of the opinion that reunification was historically playful and also represented a demand that threatened peace and security.

Müller-Gangloff was a member of the Michaelsbruderschaft and temporarily editor of their magazine Quatember , which owes its name to him.

The question of how far Müller-Gangloff was influenced and used by the Ministry for State Security and in particular its agent Hans-Joachim Seidowsky is answered very differently today. Hubertus Knabe concludes from the available files that Müller-Gangloff was deliberately used to promote the interests of the SED in internal German dialogue. On the other hand, Merrilyn Thomas concludes from her examination of the files that Müller-Gangloff, on the contrary, acted successfully in the interests of and possibly on behalf of the West, in that he succeeded in building up Christian networks in the GDR, Poland and Czechoslovakia through the Action atonement To prepare Ostpolitik .

Publications

  • National Bolshevism . Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, Hamburg 1933.
  • The German tribes. Bielefeld and Leipzig: Velhagen & Klasing 1941
  • Forerunner of the Antichrist. Berlin: Wedding-Verlag 1948
  • Christians in captivity , Berlin: Verlag Die Schichtung 1948
  • Trinity of Evil? Kassel: Stauda-Verlag 1953
  • God's third word. Revolution from the Gospel. (Calwer Hefte 41) Stuttgart: Calwer Verlag, 1961
  • Postmodern horizons. Powers and Ideas in the 20th Century. Gelnhausen: Burckhardthaus-Verlag, 1962
  • Live with the division. A common German task. Munich: List, 1965
  • From divided to double Europe. Eight theses on German Ostpolitik, at the same time an answer to the “German” question. Stuttgart: Radius 1970
  • (Ed.) Community. Evangelical Academy Berlin-Brandenburg

Essays

  • Easter and the Oikumene in: Quatember 1954
  • The freedom of a Christian today , in: Quatember 1955/56
  • Christians spoke to Khrushchev , in trade union monthly bulletins 3/1963, page 151 ( digitized ; PDF; 36 kB)

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.bpb.de/geschichte/zeitgeschichte/deutschlandarchiv/189672/kann-man-den-deutschen-vertrauen-ein-rueckblick-nach-einem-vierteljahrhund-deutscher-einheit
  2. ↑ Hans Carl von Haebler: History of the Evangelical Michaelsbruderschaft from its beginnings to the general convention in 1967. Ed. On behalf of the Evangelical Michaelsbruderschaft, Marburg 1975, p. 195 with note 387
  3. ↑ Hubertus Knabe: The infiltrated republic. Stasi in the west. Berlin: Propylaen 1999 ISBN 3-549-05589-7 , pp. 295-297.
  4. ^ Merrilyn Thomas: Communing with the enemy: covert operations, Christianity and Cold War politics in Britain and the GDR. Frankfurt etc .: Peter Lang 2005 ISBN 978-3-03910-192-4 , pp. 63-74
personal data
SURNAME Müller-Gangloff, Erich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Müller, Erich; Obermüller, Christoph (pseudonym); Heißenberger, Friedrich (pseudonym); Müller-Ney, Erich (pseudonym); Hügel, Andreas (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German director of a Protestant academy and author
DATE OF BIRTH February 12, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH Roth
DATE OF DEATH February 23, 1980
Place of death West Berlin