Ernst Kähler

Grave of Ernst Kähler in the old cemetery in Greifswald

Ernst Kähler (born June 7, 1914 in Duisburg-Meiderich ; † November 17, 1991 in Greifswald ) was a German Protestant theologian and church historian .

Origin and academic career

Ernst Kähler came from a family of academics who produced several well-known theologians, including his grandfather Martin Kähler (1835–1912) and his son Christoph Kähler (* 1944). He was married to Sibylla von Kirchbach (1922–2009) since 1943 . The marriage had six children.

After graduating from high school and after completing his labor service, Kähler studied Protestant theology at the universities of Tübingen, Göttingen, Halle and Basel, a. a. with Karl Barth . In autumn 1939 he passed the first theological exam before the examination committee of the Brotherhood Council of the Confessional Synod of the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland and became vicar of the Confessing Church . From January 1940 to May 1945 he was drafted into the military and was seriously wounded several times. From 1942 to 1951 he managed the position of a scientific assistant in the theological faculty of the Martin Luther University in Halle . There he joined the CDU in early 1946, but left it in May 1950 in protest against the increasing change to the block party . A teaching position in the subject of regional church and ecclesiastical art history at the University of Halle was withdrawn from him in 1950 for political reasons. In 1948 he refused an appointment as a lecturer in church history at the Bethel Church University , because he felt obliged to the Halle faculty.

Kähler started work at the theological faculty of the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen in September 1948 with his teacher Ernst Wolf with a thesis on Karlstadt and Augustin . An introduction to the commentary by Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt on Augustine's work “De spiritu et litera” is doing his doctorate. The habilitation followed in 1952 in Halle with the Karlstadt und Augustin edition . Sanctissimi Augustini de spiritu et litera liber. Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt's commentary on Augustine's work “de spiritu et litera” . Both writings were published in one volume in 1952. At the beginning of 1951, as rector and lecturer in church history, he took over the further development of the Naumburg Catechetical College to become a church university , at which a full theology course was offered for future pastors and high school catechists . During this time he also founded the Church Proseminar in Naumburg , at which young people who were not admitted to the state high schools of the GDR for political reasons could take a humanistic Abitur . In September 1954 he was appointed professor with a teaching position for church history at the theological faculty of the Ernst Moritz Arndt University of Greifswald . In 1958 he became a full professor there; in July 1960 professor with chair for church history. In 1978 he retired .

Kähler held a number of church and theological-scientific offices, u. a. he was a member of the pan-German commission for the publication of Martin Luther's works ( Weimar edition ), together with Walter Kreck 1963–1968 chairman of the theological committee of the Evangelical Church of the Union and a member of the Synod of the Evangelical Church in Greifswald . In 1957 he received an honorary theological doctorate from the Göttingen Theological Faculty.

Kähler made a name for himself in particular as an editor of theological writings by Martin Luther and as a Reformation historian.

Fonts

• Karlstadt and Augustin. An introduction to the commentary by Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt on Augustin's work “De spiritu et litera” , Niemeyer, Halle 1952 (Hallische Monographien, number 19)
• Studies on the Te Deum and the history of the 24th Psalm in the Old Church , Evangelische Verlags Anstalt, Berlin 1958; also: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1958 (publications of the Evangelical Society for Liturgy Research, Issue 10)
• Bugenhagen and Luther , In: Johann Bugenhagen. Posts on the 400th anniversary of his death. Edited by Werner Rautenberg, Berlin 1958, 108–122.
• The reality of God and the reality of the world in the work of Johann Bugenhagen , In: Evangelische Theologie 19 (1959), 453–469.
• Reformation 1517 - 1967 , Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, undated [1968].

As editor

• Martin Kähler: History of Protestant Dogmatics in the 19th Century , Evangelische Verlags Anstalt, Berlin 1962
  • Parallel edition: Kaiser, Munich 1962 (Theological Library, Volume 16)
• Martin Kähler: Jesus and the Old Testament , Neukirchener Verlag, Neukirchen-Vluyn 1965 (Biblical Studies, Issue 45)
• Martin Kähler: Essays on the Biblical Question , Evangelische Verlags Anstalt, Berlin 1967
  • Parallel edition: Kaiser, Munich 1967 (Theological Library, Volume 37. Systematic Theology)
• Reformation 1517-1967. Wittenberg Lectures , Evangelische Verlags Anstalt, Berlin 1968

literature

• Lothar Mertens : Lexicon of the GDR historians. Biographies and bibliographies on the historians from the German Democratic Republic. Saur, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-598-11673-X , p. 324.

Web links

• Literature by and about Ernst Kähler in the catalog of the German National Library
• Literature about Ernst Kähler in the state bibliography MV