Ernst Lohmeyer

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Bust of Ernst Lohmeyer by Theodor von Gosen (1931), installed today in the Ernst Lohmeyer House in Greifswald

Ernst Lohmeyer (born July 8, 1890 in Dorsten , † September 19, 1946 near Hanshagen ) was a German Protestant theologian and university professor .

He opposed the anti-Semitism of the National Socialists and belonged to the Confessing Church , for which he was persecuted by the Nazi state.

After the invasion of the Red Army , Lohmeyer was appointed rector of the Ernst Moritz Arndt University in Greifswald in 1945. The university was closed again after six weeks by the authorities. In February 1946 Lohmeyer was arrested by the Soviet secret police for his involvement in actions against the civilian population in 1942/43 in the Soviet Union and shot in September of the same year.

Life

Ernst Lohmeyer was the son of Heinrich Lohmeyer (1851-1918), pastor in Schildesche , and his wife Marie Niemann (1856-1937). He spent most of his childhood in Vlotho , where his father was transferred in 1895. After attending the Friedrichs-Gymnasium in Herford , he studied theology, philosophy and oriental languages at the University of Tübingen from 1908 , went to the University of Leipzig for one semester in 1909 and then to the Friedrich-Wilhelms-University in Berlin until 1911 . He then worked for a year as a tutor for the Count of Bethusy-Huc in Klein Gaffron near Raudten .

In 1912 he received his doctorate as a licentiate in theology and passed the first theological examination at the Evangelical Consistory in Münster in the old Prussian church province of Westphalia . In 1913 he went to the Westphalian Jäger Battalion No. 7 as a one-year volunteer . The outbreak of the First World War prevented his scheduled release. In 1914 he was with the thesis "The doctrine of the will at Anselm of Canterbury " to Dr. phil. PhD at the University of Erlangen . As part of a war wedding, he married Melie Seyberth in 1916. After the end of his military service , he completed his habilitation in 1918 at the University of Heidelberg .

On December 10, 1921, Lohmeyer was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Theological Faculty of Berlin's Friedrich Wilhelms University.

On October 1, 1920, he succeeded Rudolf Bultmann as an associate professor for New Testament theology at the University of Breslau the following year . From 1930 to 1931 he was rector of the university. Lohmeyer was opposed to the emerging National Socialism and made his position public. When in 1932/1933 the lectures of the lawyer Ernst J. Cohn were disrupted by planned anti-Semitic actions by the National Socialist students, Lohmeyer had the police remove the troublemakers from the lecture hall on behalf of the Rector. The Cohn scandal and his advocacy of Martin Buber , with whom he demonstratively kept in contact after the seizure of power , were, in addition to his activities in the interests of the Confessing Church, some of the reasons for his transfer to the University of Greifswald in 1935, where he succeeded Joachim Jeremias . The public prosecutor's office in Szczecin opened a case against Lohmeyer within the meaning of the Treachery Act in 1937 , which was discontinued in 1938 without result.

At the beginning of the Second World War he was drafted in 1939 for military service in the rear services and used as an occupation officer in the Wehrmacht in Poland , Belgium and the Netherlands . Most recently he was during the Russian campaign with the rank of captain from the end of August 1942 to mid-March 1943, military commander of the Slavyansk, Krasnoarmejsk, Petrovsk, Strasteblijewsk, Ivanovsk, Marjansk, Temjursk and Krasnodar districts with headquarters in Slavyansk . As part of this mission, he is said to have neither participated in nor ordered the shootings of Soviet citizens. In 1943 he was released from service and later discharged from the Wehrmacht in order to take over the theological chair in Greifswald again from April 1943.

After the city was handed over to the Red Army without a fight , in which Ernst Lohmeyer had a part, a few days after the arrest of the previous Rector Carl Engel, he was entrusted with the provisional management of the Rectorate. However, teaching was interrupted by the Red Army High Command in Stettin and the university remained closed until February 1946. Because of his personnel policy - he tried to evade the cleansing of the university, including nominal NSDAP members, demanded by the KPD and the occupying power, in order to maintain the university's functionality - he came into conflict with the state administration. Lohmeyer was removed from his position as rector and arrested by the Soviet secret police the night before the university reopened on February 15, 1946. Apart from unclear explanations by German authorities, which justified the arrest with his military service, there was no information about his whereabouts. The Pomeranian regional church , high-ranking scientists and also the KPD chairman Wilhelm Pieck received no response from the Soviet occupying power to their efforts. Only in 1958 was his family informed that Lohmeyer had died on September 19, 1946 “in Russian custody”.

In fact, he was interned in solitary confinement at Domstrasse 7 in Greifswald and was sentenced to death by a Soviet military tribunal on August 28, 1946 for his work as a military commander in the German-Soviet war. Andreas Weigelt stated in 2015: “Nevertheless, he was involved in the murderous German occupation policy against his will. In November 1942, in his capacity, he, who did not approve of the occupation, approved the transfer of a Russian saboteur to a field court. Soviet interrogators learned from residents that Lohmeyer was involved in this process and the saboteur was executed shortly after the liberation of the Slavyansk region in July 1943. So, contrary to what had long been assumed, Lohmeyer was not received for his criticism of the Soviet university policy, but rather persecuted and sentenced to death for involuntary participation in actions against Soviet citizens [...] His arrest in February 1946 is possibly related to the arrest of members of the Greifswald Landeschützen Battalion 24, who may have named his name. In any case, research has shown that already his arrest became known immediately after his arrest, the military context. "On September 19, 1946 Lohmeyer was in a forest near Hanshagen shot .

On August 15, 1996, the Moscow State Military Prosecutor formally overturned the death sentence . In the final rehabilitation report it was stated that "Ernst Lohmeyer was arrested and convicted without sufficient reasons and only for political motives."

memory

Ernst Lohmeyer House

The name "Ernst-Lohmeyer-Haus" bears the seat of the theological faculty of the University of Greifswald in the new building that was moved into in 2000 on Rubenowplatz. In addition, Ernst-Lohmeyer-Platz was chosen as the address for the complex of the former clinic building on Friedrich-Loeffler-Straße , which houses the philosophy faculty, the departmental library and other facilities of the university and the student union.

Works

  • The Doctrine of the Will in Anselm of Canterbury . Deichmann, Leipzig 1914 University thesis: Erlangen, Phil. Diss., 1914.
  • Christ cult and imperial cult . Mohr, Tübingen 1919.
  • Social questions in early Christianity. Quelle & Meyer, Leipzig 1921.
  • On the concept of religious community: a problem-historical investigation into the fundamentals of d. Early Christianity . Teubner, Leipzig 1925.
  • The Revelation of John . Mohr, Tübingen 1926. Overall title: Manual for the New Testament. Department 16.
  • Galilee and Jerusalem. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1936.
  • Cult and Gospel . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1942.
  • The Gospel of Mark. Göttingen 1967.
  • "Kyrios Jesus". An investigation into Phil 2,5-11. Winter, Heidelberg 1928, 2nd edition Darmstadt 1961.

literature

Monographs and collections of articles (alphabetically by author)

  • Christfried Böttrich (Ed.): Ernst Lohmeyer. Contributions to life and work. ( Greifswald Theological Research ; 28). Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, Leipzig 2018. ISBN 978-3-374-05687-3 .
  • James R. Edwards: Between the Swastika and the Sickle: The Life, Disappearance, and Execution of Ernst Lohmeyer Eerdmans, Grand Rapids 2019. ISBN 0802876188 .
  • Andreas Köhn (ed.): Ernst Lohmeyer's testimony in the church struggle. Wroclaw University Sermons. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2006, ISBN 978-3-525-55382-4 .
  • Andreas Köhn: The New Testament scholar Ernst Lohmeyer. Studies in biography and theology. Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2004. ISBN 978-3-16-148376-9 .
  • Wolfgang Otto (Hrsg.): Freedom in the bondage. In memory of the theologian Ernst Lohmeyer on the occasion of his 100th birthday. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1990. ISBN 3-525-53588-0 .
  • Werner Schmauch (Ed.): In Memoriam Ernst Lohmeyer. Evangelisches Verlagswerk, Stuttgart 1951.

Contributions

Web sources

Web links

predecessor Office successor
Carl Engel Rector of the University of Greifswald
1945 		Rudolf Seeliger

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Klaus-Dieter Müller, Thomas Schaarschmidt, Mike Schmeitzner, Andreas Weigelt: Death sentences of Soviet military tribunals against Germans (1944-1947). A historical-biographical study . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2015, ISBN 978-3-525-36968-5 , short biographies on the enclosed CD, p. 421f.
  2. ↑ Andreas Weigelt, Klaus-Dieter Müller, Thomas Schaarschmidt and Mike Schmeitzner (eds.): Death sentences of Soviet military tribunals against Germans (1944-1947). A historical-biographical study, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Güttingen 2015, p. 312
personal data
SURNAME Lohmeyer, Ernst
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Protestant theologian
DATE OF BIRTH July 8, 1890
PLACE OF BIRTH Dorsten
DATE OF DEATH September 19, 1946
Place of death at Hanshagen