Ernst Lewek

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Friedrich Ernst Lewek (born December 18, 1893 in Leipzig , † November 8, 1953 in Leipzig) was a German Protestant pastor of Jewish descent and a member of the Confessing Church . He was an opponent of and persecuted by the Nazi regime , a concentration camp prisoner and, after the war, a board member of the Association of Persecuted Persons of the Nazi Regime (VVN), a member of the state parliament of Saxony and the People's Chamber of the GDR .

Life

The son of a goldsmith was born in Leipzig in 1893 and attended the Thomasschule there and, after his parents moved, the Kreuzschule in Dresden. After dropping his university he took a study of Protestant theology at the University of Heidelberg and was in May 1913 when the local singer stem Thuringia active. There he repeatedly distinguished himself through his musical talent, especially on the piano, and had a decisive influence on musical achievements until the outbreak of war. In the summer of 1914 he interrupted his studies and registered as a volunteer with Grenadier Regiment No. 101 in Dresden, with whom he was in the field from November of the same year. After being wounded near La Ville-aux-Bois in France in May 1915, he was dismissed from the military in February 1916 as an invalid and awarded the Iron Cross 2nd class and moved to his parents' apartment in Leipzig. He continued his studies at the University of Leipzig until January 1918 and was ordained pastor in the same year . In 1919 he was employed as an assistant chaplain in Radeberg, and in 1920 he was appointed a deacon at the Plauen Luther Church. In 1926 he returned to his homeland and took up the third pastor's post at the Nikolaikirche in Leipzig.

After the transfer of power to the NSDAP , he participated in the pastors' emergency union , from which a professing church emerged, and in 1935 was taken into " protective custody " and transferred to the Sachsenburg concentration camp. In 1938 he was relieved of his duties by the Saxon church leadership and until 1945 he was banned from any religious activity in Saxony. Efforts to get a job in church service at the Bavarian and Württemberg regional churches failed. In 1939 he was again in haftiert . From 1944 to 1945 he had to do forced labor in an armaments company in the Osterode subcamp of the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp .

When the Nazi rule was eliminated, Lewek joined the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (GDR) . He brought his experience as a persecuted person into the work of the VVN, of which he was a member of the Saxon state management. Since 1949 was also a member of the central board of the VVN. On June 8, 1950, a working committee for clergy in the VVN was constituted . Lewek stood out particularly when he, together with the clergymen Bruno Theek (Protestant), Karl Fischer ( Catholic ) and Werner Sander (Jewish), signed an appeal “To all who trust God!” In which these clergymen to resist rearmament West Germany and the associated deepening of the division of Germany .

On October 19, 1950, Ernst Lewek was elected a member of the GDR People's Chamber with the mandate of the VVN. From 1950 to 1952 he was also a member of the Saxon State Parliament under the mandate of the VVN.

Lewek was born in 1915 with Dorothea (Dora). Richter (1894–1970), engaged, whom he married on February 21, 1918. The marriage has seven children. His daughter Christa Lewek continued the anti-fascist engagement in her church office as senior church councilor of the Evangelical Church Berlin-Brandenburg and in the Federation of Evangelical Churches in the GDR with her own accents.

Posthumous honors

In the Nikolaikirchhof in Leipzig a stumbling stone was laid in memory of Ernst Lewek. The parish hall of the Nikolaikirche was also renamed the Ernst Lewek Hall in 2016.

literature

  • Erich-Zeigner-Haus eV and Association for the Promotion of the Nikolaikirche eV (Ed.): The life and work of Friedrich-Ernst-Lewek. On the ecclesiastical handling of the "non-Aryan" official brother during the Nazi dictatorship in Leipzig. Leipzig: bookra publishing house. ISBN 978-3-943150-15-5
  • Elke Reuter, Detlef Hansel: The short life of the VVN from 1947 to 1953: The history of those persecuted by the Nazi regime in the Soviet Zone and GDR. Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-929161-97-4 , p. 575
  • Georg Wilhelm: The dictatorships and the evangelical church: total claim to power and church response using the example of Leipzig 1933–1958 . (Works on contemporary church history 39), Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2004, ISBN 978-3525557396 ( partially digitized )
  • Hartmut Ludwig, Eberhard Röhm . Baptized Evangelical - persecuted as "Jews" . Calver Verlag Stuttgart 2014, ISBN 978-3-7668-4299-2 , pp. 218-219.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Thüringer Zeitung , organ of the singers in Weim. CC Thuringia-Heidelberg, 1st year, No. 6, June 1913
  2. ↑ Töllner, Axel: A question of race? The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria, the Aryan Paragraph and the Bavarian pastor families with Jewish ancestors in the "Third Reich". Volume 36 of the series Confession and Society, W. Kohlhammer Verlag, Stuttgart 2007, pp. 243–244
  3. ↑ G. Wilhelm, p. 559 (queried July 19, 2011)
  4. ↑ a b Hartmut Ludwig and Eberhard Röhm . Baptized Evangelical - persecuted as "Jews" . Calver Verlag Stuttgart 2014 p. 218
  5. ↑ Stolpersteine ​​Leipzig with a short biography of Ernst Lewek, accessed on February 27, 2019
  6. ^ "The life and work of Friedrich Ernst Lewek" with a note on the renaming on the Erich-Zeiger-Haus eV website, accessed on February 27, 2019
personal data
SURNAME Lewek, Ernst
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lewek, Friedrich Ernst (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Protestant pastor, resistance fighter and politician, MdV
DATE OF BIRTH December 18, 1893
PLACE OF BIRTH Leipzig
DATE OF DEATH November 8, 1953
Place of death Leipzig