Ernst Lange (theologian)

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Ernst Lange (born April 19, 1927 in Munich ; † July 3, 1974 in Windhaag / Upper Austria ) was a German Protestant theologian , professor of practical theology, senior church councilor and church reformer .

Family of origin

Ernst Karl Jakob Lange was born as the son of the psychiatrist Johannes Lange (1891–1938) and the doctor Katharina (Käthe) Lange, geb. Silbersohn, born in Munich. Katharina Silbersohn came from an East Prussian Jewish merchant family and studied medicine in Heidelberg, Berlin, Königsberg, Kiel and Munich. After her license to practice medicine in 1915, she practiced military representation in the country, received her doctorate in 1917, opened her own medical practice in Pasing during the First World War in January 1918 and married the assistant doctor Johannes Lange. In 1927 she sold her Pasinger house. The family moved into Emil Kraepelin's former apartment in the building constructed by James Loeb for the German Research Institute for Psychiatry (architect: Carl Sattler ) at Bavariaring 46 in Munich. It is the house where Ernst Lange was born.

In 1930 his father was offered a position in Breslau to succeed Karl Bonhoeffer , the father of Dietrich Bonhoeffer . The mother, who always had her own practice in Munich, filed for divorce in 1934 and returned to Munich and Schondorf with her daughter Ursula. The son stayed with the father and his new partner in Wroclaw. Katharina Lange committed suicide in 1937.

biography

After his father's death in 1938, Ernst Lange visited the Schondorf am Ammersee school home , the director of which was a distant relative of the family. In 1943, Lange had to leave school without a high school diploma because he was a “ half-Jew ”. He moved to Berlin without a high school diploma .

After an optician's apprenticeship and high school diploma in 1945 in a "special course for racially persecuted people", he studied theology in Berlin , Sigtuna and Göttingen until 1950 , and from 1950 to 1953 he was vicar in the Berlin youth parish office. From 1954 to 1959 he worked as a publishing editor and lecturer at Burckhardthaus in Gelnhausen, a training center for community helpers and the seat of the West German branch of the Young Women's Christian Association YWCA. 1959 to 1960 followed half a year as an assistant fitter at Orenstein & Koppel in Berlin.

In 1954 Ernst Lange traveled to the USA as a delegate of the Evangelical Youth of Germany to the 2nd General Assembly of the World Council of Churches . There he got to know the "East Harlem Protestant Parish" in New York. In East Harlem, three theology students had started a congregation in an empty butcher's shop that became the meeting place for the youth.

Inspired by the experience in East Harlem, the Orbishöher Freundeskreis came up with the idea of ​​building a similar community in Berlin. The consistory of the Evangelical Church in Berlin-Brandenburg showed interest.

In 1960 Lange became a pastor in Berlin-Spandau . There he built the “Shop Church on Brunsbütteler Damm” in a former bakery. As a mixture of inviting offers, social commitment and a discussion forum, the shop church became one of the most popular reform projects of the Protestant church.

In 1963, Lange became professor for practical theology at the Church University of Berlin . In 1965 he gave up his professorship for health reasons and was pastor in Spandau until 1967.

From 1968 to 1970, Lange worked at the World Council of Churches in Geneva as director of the department for “Ecumenical Action”. His increasing depression caused him to resign in 1970. In the WCC, Ernst Lange succeeds in getting the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire into the education department in Geneva.

From 1973 he was appointed to the planning group of the church chancellery of the Evangelical Church in Germany in Hanover.

Ernst Lange was with Beate Lange (1927-2010), b. Heilmann, married. The marriage has two sons and two daughters.

On July 3, 1974, Ernst Lange committed suicide in a holiday home in Windhaag, Upper Austria.

Theological thinking

Ernst Lange's theological thinking has been shaped from the beginning by the question of how the credibility of God can prove to be in the world. Therefore the church should get involved in the life and reality of the modern world.

His contact with the Brazilian pedagogue Paulo Freire at the WCC in Geneva is important for Lange's practical theological theory formation . This relationship leads him to the insight that learning is to be understood as a form of faith and education as a problem and as a function of the church. Lange was inspired by his “pedagogy of the oppressed” and literacy campaigns for “conflict-oriented adult education”.

Lange's concept of a non-ideological, faith-based and lifeworld-oriented preaching practice has also achieved considerable importance within Protestantism. His approach is u. a. the much-used Göttingen sermons on the Internet .

Honors

1961: Brothers Grimm Prize of the State of Berlin 1972: Honorary doctorate from the Evangelical Theological Faculty of the University of Tübingen

Works

  • From mastering life. Gelnhausen 1957
  • Try in East Harlem. In: HJ Schultz: Piety in a worldly world. Stuttgart 1959.
  • Everyday opportunities. Reflections on the function of Christian worship in the present. Gelnhausen 1965.
  • Introduction to: Paulo Freire: Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Stuttgart / Berlin 1971. pp. 7-28.
  • Don't believe in death. Edited by R. Schloz. Bielefeld 1975.
  • Language school for freedom. Education as a problem and function of the church. Munich 1980.
  • Church for the world. Essays on the theory of church action. Munich, 1981
  • The ecumenical utopia or what moves the ecumenical movement? Munich 1986.
  • Preaching as a profession. Essays on homiletics, liturgy and parish ministry. Stuttgart 1976; Edition Ernst Lange 3, Munich 1982; 2nd edition Munich 1987.
  • Ernst Lange Reader. From the utopia of a world that can be improved. Texts. Edited by Georg Friedrich Pfäfflin a. Helmut Ruppel. Berlin 1999.
  • Trust life. Devotions and sermons . Edit and ed. v. Martin Bröking-Bortfeldt. 2nd edition Rothenburg / T. 2002
  • Letters 1942-1974 . Edited by Martin Bröking-Bortfeldt (†), Christian Gößinger and Markus Ramm, Berlin 2011

literature

  • Jan Hermelink : Art. Lange, Ernst . In: Theologische Realenzyklopädie 20 (1990), pp. 436-439
  • Klaus-Gunther Wesseling :  Ernst Lange (theologian). In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 4, Bautz, Herzberg 1992, ISBN 3-88309-038-7 , Sp. 1085-1092.  ( Article / beginning of article in Internet archive )
  • Werner Simpfendörfer: Ernst Lange. Attempt a portrait . Wichern, Berlin 1997, 2nd edition, ISBN 978-3-88981-099-1 .
  • Hartmut Heidenreich: Art. Lange, Ernst . In: Norbert Mette / Folkert Rickers (ed.), Lexicon of Religious Education. 2 vol., Neukirchen-Vluyn 2001, 1151–1152
  • Martin Bröking-Bortfeldt: Cross of Reality and Horizons of Hope. Ernst Lange's sermons and his homiletic development . Stuttgart 2004 (= Prakt. Theol. Today Vol. 70; also Diss. Theol. Hamburg 2004)
  • Markus Ramm: Live responsibly. Developments in Ernst Lange's educational conceptions in the horizons of theology, church and society . Regensburg 2005 (= Protestant Theol. In Regensburg Vol. 1; also Diss. Phil. Regensburg 2005)
  • Gudrun Azar: The first doctor in Pasing: Dr. med. Käthe Silbersohn . In: Moved into the light. Jewish life in the west of Munich. Munich 2008, 121–122
  • Benedikt Weyerer: The patron James Loeb . In: excluded - disenfranchised - deported, Ed. Ilse Macek, Munich 2008, 457
  • Gerhard Altenburg: Church - Institution in Transition. A search for traces of Ernst Lange's understanding of the church. Berlin 2013 (= Church in the City, Vol. 21; also Diss. Theol. Hamburg 2012)
  • Hartmut Ludwig, Eberhard Röhm . Baptized Evangelical - persecuted as "Jews" . Calwer Verlag Stuttgart 2014, ISBN 978-3-7668-4299-2 , pp. 192-193.
  • Gerhard Rein : The foreign should no longer be foreign. On the trail of Ernst Lange . In: Gerhard Rein: On the border between West and East . Quintus, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-945256-92-3 , pp. 191-217 .

Web links

swell

  • Bavarian State Archives Munich, estate file "Katharina Lange"

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Festschrift of the 75th anniversary of the Maria Theresa Clinic, Congregation of the Sisters of Mercy of St. Vinzenz von Paul, Munich 2005, p. 5
  2. ↑ Registration register, City Archives Munich
  3. ↑ Benedikt Weyerer: The patron James Loeb s. u.
  4. ^ List of architectural monuments in Ludwigsvorstadt
  5. ↑ Gudrun Azar: The first doctor in Pasing: Dr. med. Käthe Silbersohn p. 122
  6. ↑ Claudia Keller: The house of God in the bakery. In: Der Tagesspiegel from August 16, 2015
  7. ↑ Hartmut Ludwig and Eberhard Röhm . Baptized Evangelical - persecuted as "Jews" . Calver Verlag Stuttgart 2014 p. 192
personal data
SURNAME Long, Ernst
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Protestant theologian, church reformer and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH April 19, 1927
PLACE OF BIRTH Munich
DATE OF DEATH 3rd July 1974
Place of death Windhaag near Freistadt , Upper Austria