Ernst Flatow

Memorial plaque in the Friedenskirche in Cologne-Ehrenfeld, where he worked as vicar

Memorial plaque in the church of Hohen Neuendorf

Ernst Flatow (born June 26, 1887 in Berlin , † 1942 in the Warsaw Ghetto ) was a German Protestant pastor of Jewish origin, an opponent of National Socialism , hospital chaplain and victim of the Holocaust .

Life

Flatow, son of the factory owner Max Flatow and his wife Hedwig, attended high schools in Berlin, Groß-Lichterfelde and Fürstenwalde / Spree , where he passed his Abitur in 1907. He then signed up for a one-year volunteer service in Infantry Regiment No. 136 in Strasbourg . He then studied law , history , philosophy , philology and economics in Strasbourg, Heidelberg , Berlin, Jena and Freiburg and Rostock . Moved for a long time by reading Kierkegaard , he was baptized by Professor Gustav Kawerau in 1913 and began studying theology in Berlin. From 1914 to 1918 he was drafted into the First World War as an army soldier , was promoted to sergeant and was awarded the Iron Cross for “special bravery” before Verdun . After the end of the war he joined the German National People's Party (DNVP) and took up a service at the Inner Mission as a "Oberhelfer" in the Rauhen Haus in Hamburg . In 1920 he continued his theology studies in Rostock and Berlin, added a course as a working student in 1921 and passed his first theological exam in Berlin in 1926. In 1927 he began his vicariate in the evangelical parish of Cologne-Ehrenfeld and did pastoral service as an assistant preacher. In 1928 he passed his second theological exam and was ordained . The intended doctorate to become Dr. theol. was not made possible for him by the provincial church. Instead of working in an ecclesiastical pastoral office, from late 1928 he worked as a hospital chaplain for the city of Cologne .

In January 1933 Flatow learned of the secret conversation between Hitler and von Papen that had taken place on January 4th, before the transfer of power to the NSDAP , in the apartment of the banker Schröder. Here Hitler had announced the removal of all Social Democrats , Communists and Jews from leading positions. On the day of his appointment as Reich Chancellor , on January 30, 1933, Flatow declared: “Now it's our turn, Jews!” In March 1933, the city of Cologne fired him. However, the responsible authorities of the Rhenish provincial church refused to accept him in a pastor's office or to retire early. On November 10, 1933, the President of the Old Prussian Evangelical Upper Church Council in Berlin, Friedrich Werner , dismissed the first pastor of Jewish origin, Ernst Flatow. The reason was:

“ Flatow has in his appearance and his being so obvious those characteristics which the people regard as belonging to the Jewish race that employment in a community is impossible. "

In January 1941 Flatow was accepted by his friend Pastor Hermann Lutze in Bremen, and from April of the same year lived in Hohen Neuendorf . Through the mediation of the local pastor Hugo Rosenau, he was accepted from December 1st by Paul Braune in Lobetal , where he worked as a hospital chaplain . After a pastor Cologne on request whereabouts Flatows had informed the Consistory of the Rhine Province, he was born on April 13, 1942 along with all other Jews of Lobetal the Warsaw ghetto deported , where it was used in the construction of the ghetto walls. Here he found death.

Commemoration

• Flatow in memory of the Evangelical Parish of Ehrenfeld named the center of the parish of Alt-Ehrenfeld, built in 2011, in the Ernst-Flatow-Haus . A street in Cologne-Ehrenfeld is named after him and in the Ehrenfeld Church of Peace, a plaque designed by Willi Briant commemorates Flatow.
• In the church of Hohen Neuendorf hangs a memorial plaque on a gallery on which the parish asks for forgiveness for the death of the Jewish Christian pastor who lived in their parish in 1941 before he died in the Warsaw ghetto in 1942 .

literature

• Evangelisches Pfarrhausarchiv (ed.): Against forgetting. Fates of Jewish Christian pastors in the period from 1933–1945. Booklet accompanying the special exhibition in the Lutherhaus Eisenach from April 1988 to April 1989.
• Hans Prolingheuer: Done from the land of the living. Stories of suffering under the cross and swastika . Neukirchen-Vluyn 1983, pp. 147-217.
• Hartmut Ludwig, Eberhard Röhm . Baptized Evangelical - persecuted as "Jews" . Calver Verlag Stuttgart 2014, ISBN 978-3-7668-4299-2 , pp. 100-101.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See the entry by Ernst Flatow in the Rostock matriculation portal
2. ^ H. Prolingheuer: Small political church history, p. 182
3. ↑ Biographical information: Hugo Otto Arthur Rosenau, born on August 9, 1899 in Meseritz, married to Gertrud, née Stowen, from Berlin since November 30, 1925, contained in: Evangelical Pastor's Book for the Mark Brandenburg. Edited by Otto Fischer, Verlag ES Mittler & Sohn, Berlin 1941, Volume II, Part 2, p. 711 and in Pfarralmanach Part I Die Berliner Kirchenkreise, abbreviated edition as of May 1, 1946, p. 27: In Hohen Neuendorf Pastor Rosenau from 1926.
4. ↑ Inauguration of the new Ernst Flatow House in Ehrenfeld ( memento of the original from October 20, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
5. ↑ Decision of the Ehrenfeld district assembly ( memento of the original from October 15, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 23 kB)