Ernst Farmer Ox

Ernst Bauerochse (* 1925 in Hermannsburg , Lower Saxony) is a Protestant pastor, missionary and church representative.

Youth and education

After attending school in Hermannsburg and Eschede , Ernst Bauerochse began an apprenticeship at the savings bank in 1940. In 1943 he was drafted into the Wehrmacht and in 1945 promoted to lieutenant in the reserve. In the same year he was taken prisoner by the French. In the prison camp he dealt intensively with what he had experienced and decided not to return to the profession he had learned. He dedicated his life to sharing Christian love in a world full of enmity and hatred as he had experienced. While in the prison camp, he took the opportunity to begin studying theology.

After his release from the prisoner-of-war camp in 1947, he was denied university studies due to the lack of a high school diploma. That is why he entered the seminary of the Evangelical Lutheran Hermannsburg Mission in 1947 . He spent the academic year 1949/50 at the University of Durham in Northern England, and the following year at the University of Hamburg, where, in addition to theology, he studied the Ethiopian languages Amharic and Oromiffa . He was selected for the mission in Ethiopia , but had to wait until 1954 because the imperial Ethiopian government did not grant him an entry permit. During this time he worked as a vicar in the Burgdorf parish near Hanover. In 1952 he married Brunhilde Engemann from Paderborn.

Missionary work in Ethiopia

In 1954, the Bauerochse couple and their son Hartmut, born in 1953, were finally able to travel to Ethiopia. There Ernst Bauerochse began his work at the Aira mission station in the western Wallagga province. In 1961, Bauerochse founded a Bible school there because the rapid expansion of Protestant congregations made the use of local evangelists necessary. Bauerochse was appointed field leader of the mission in 1957 and mission superintendent in 1963.

In 1967 the Lutheran World Federation appointed peasant ox as deputy director of the radio station “Radio Voice of the Gospel”, which was established in 1963 near the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa. In 1970 Bauerochse took over the overall management of the station.

Activities in Germany

After working for twenty years in Ethiopia, Ernst Bauerochse returned to Germany in 1974 with his family, which also included his sons Wolfgang and Lothar, who were born in 1955 and 1963 respectively. The Hannoversche Landeskirche initially appointed him as managing director of the regional church mission council. In 1977 the Hermannsburg Mission was merged with part of the Leipzig Mission to form the Evangelical Lutheran Missionswerk in Lower Saxony , and Bauerochse began an educational lecture at this work. This is where development-related education found its place. At the same time, Bauerochse was the representative of the supporting churches of the Missionswerk (Hanover, Braunschweig, Schaumburg-Lippe) for the Church Development Service. He continued this assignment for several years after his retirement (1989). At the same time he was chairman of the e. V. Leipzig Mission (West), until the association dissolved after the unification of East and West Germany in 1992.

In retirement he did research on the history of the mission in Ethiopia and the history of the Evangelical Lutheran Church Mekane Yesus in Ethiopia and published several books and articles. Bauerochse's other areas of work after retirement are topics of local history and the Low German language.

bibliography

• Their destination was Oromoland: The Beginnings of the Hermannsburg Mission in Ethiopia , LIT Verlag, Münster 2006, ISBN 3-8258-9567-X
• Commissioned: Memories of a Missionary , Ludwig-Harms-Haus, Hermannsburg 2007, ISBN 3-937301-48-8
• Christians in Ethiopia , Freimund Verlag Neuendettelsau 1986
• A youth in times of war , Pößneck 2005, title of the Volksbund book series
• The open door: observations and experiences in Gallaland , missionary action of Ludwig-Harms-Haus GmbH 1957
• The work in Ethiopia , in: Vision Church worldwide. 150 years of the Hermannsburg Mission and Evangelical Lutheran. Missionswerk in Niedersachsen , Hermannsburg 2000. pp. 585–683. English: A Vision Finds Fulfillment , LIT-Verlag, Vienna and Berlin 2008
• The Hermannsburg Mission in the Age of Totalitarianism . In: Georg Gremels, The Hermannsburg Mission and the 'Third Reich' , Münster 2005. pp. 127–140, ISBN 978-3-8258-8972-2
• God's pioneers in Ethiopia . In: Yearbook of Ev.-luth. Mission in Lower Saxony , Hermannsburg 1994; Pp. 33-40
• Called to be a shepherd , Hermannsburg 1959

Web links

• Literature by and about Ernst Bauerochse in the catalog of the German National Library