Ernst Ludwig Dietrich

Ernst Ludwig Dietrich (born January 28, 1897 in Groß-Umstadt ; † January 20, 1974 in Wiesbaden ) was a German Protestant theologian and orientalist and from 1933 to 1945 regional bishop of the Evangelical Church in Nassau-Hessen .

Training and career beginnings

Dietrich studied 1915-1919 theology and Oriental Studies at the University of Giessen and received his doctorate in 1922 at Hermann Gunkel in the Old Testament scholarship for licentiate and 1922 with Rudolf Kahle to doctor as Orientalist with a focus on Islam and Judaism . After completing his studies, he attended the Friedberg seminary and became a parish assistant in Mainz in 1920 . In 1923 he became pastor in Wackernheim near Mainz, in 1927 in Hamburg-Barmbek and in 1929 at the Marktkirche in Wiesbaden. He saw himself as a member of the religious history school , i.e. as a liberal theologian, and stood in opposition to the theology of Karl Barth .

Regional bishop under National Socialism

Under pressure from the political situation, the regional church days in Wiesbaden, Frankfurt and Darmstadt approved the merger of the three regional churches in Hessen-Nassau, Nassau and Frankfurt am Main on September 12, 1933 to form the Evangelical Church in Hesse and Nassau . With the appointment of 37-year-old Dietrich on February 8, 1934 as regional bishop of the new regional church by Reich Bishop Ludwig Müller , the association became legally binding. At the beginning of July 1934, in connection with the so-called Röhm Putsch , Dietrich issued a ban on membership in the Pastors' Emergency League , the forerunner of the Confessing Church ; He justified this with the statement: Junge Kirche , booklet 15: "The events ... have opened the eyes of the blind and the unique greatness of the leader, which I have always known, showed all the world".

Dietrich had joined the NSDAP in 1932, although it was actually non-political , and also represented the validity of the Aryan paragraph , according to which "non-Aryans" should be dismissed from church service, as well as the adoption of the National Socialist leader principle . He did not belong to the church party of the German Christians - it was enough for him to be a National Socialist - but nevertheless allowed himself to be carried to a higher vocation by it. With his administration he encountered various resistance in the pastorate, which he sought to break through threats, arbitrary transfers and criminal proceedings.

In the course of a new state church policy, the NSDAP dropped Dietrich at the end of 1935. He was induced to renounce his functions in the church leadership while retaining his official position as ("half paralyzed" - so Dietrich) regional bishop. From 1937 Dietrich increasingly distanced himself from National Socialism and became a staunch opponent of Hitler. In 1938 he took over the pastoral position reserved for the regional bishop at the Wiesbaden market church.

In 1939 he founded together with other church groups, including the Confessing Church, a "Church Unification Work". He publicly declared his path so far wrong and the Führer principle unsuitable for the church and expressed his regret about the afflictions inflicted on the pastors during his tenure as regional bishop. He confessed to a pastor colleague that the Confessing Church had recognized the threat to the church earlier. Theologically, however, he could not join the Confessing Church.

post war period

In May 1945, Dietrich resigned his office as regional bishop and was transferred to the pastoral position he was in charge of. After the political denazification (1946-1948) and a lengthy ecclesiastical procedure, he was - he was suspended for four years - in 1949 the leadership of his pastoral office and the public effectiveness recognized again. In 1950 Dietrich was given a teaching position at the Orient Institute in Frankfurt am Main and in 1956 at the Goethe University for Jewish literature in Hebrew in the post-Biblical period. In 1951 he had his “lic. theol. ”into a doctorate. He performed his pastoral ministry until 1968, and held academic lectures until 1973.

Family and personal

Ernst Ludwig Dietrich was married to Gertrud Ohly (1896–1988), the goddaughter of his predecessor as regional bishop of Nassau August Kortheuer . They had two children: Hanndiether (Hanno) Dietrich, missing as a soldier in Russia, and Wolfgang Dietrich, Dr. med., radiologist in USA, later Munich and Kleve / Niederrhein.

Dietrich had an extraordinary talent for languages ​​as well as great musical inclinations and skills as a harpsichordist and organ player.

Fonts

• sub sebut - The eschatological restoration among the prophets In: BZAW 40 (1925), pp. 1-66. At the same time Lic. -Dissertation Gießen, Theol. Faculty 1921.
• The Mahdi Mohammed Ahmed from Sudan according to Arabic sources . In: Islam. Journal of the History and Culture of the Islamic Orient. Trade journal of the Morgenländische Gesellschaft, Berlin from 1910. No. 14 (1925), pp. 199–288. At the same time Wiss. Doctoral thesis in Giessen, Faculty of Philosophy, 1922.
• Abd al-Wahhib as-Sarani and his mysticism as a type of Islamic mysticism in Egypt in the 16th century (unprinted), but report after a lecture at the German Orientalist Day in Hamburg in 1926. Sarani's life and teaching according to his autobiography in: RDMG 81, NF 6 (1927) LXIII-LXV.
• Mohammed Ahmed Ibn cAbd-Allah (al-Mahdi) Saiyid and the Mahdiyya of Sudan . In: Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, ed.ERA Seligman, Vol. IX (1933, 161967), p. 572.
• Teacher and pupil in the Cairo religious life of the 16th century AD according to the Latacif al-Minan of Abd al-Wahhab as-Sarani. In: Studies on the history and culture of the Near and Far East. Paul Kahle on his 60th birthday, ed. v. W. Hefening / W. Kirfel, Leiden, 1935, pp. 69-78.
• Primitive man as androgynous . In: ZKG 58 (1939), pp. 297-345.
• The "religion of Noah", its origin and its meaning. In: ZRGG 1 (1948), pp. 301-315.
• Extra-biblical words of Jesus, basic text with German translation, Wiesbaden 1950.
• Judaism in the Age of the Crusades. In: Saeculum 3 (1952), pp. 94-131.
• The religious-emphatic I-word among Jewish apocalyptists, wisdom teachers and rabbis , In: ZRGG 4 (1952), no. 4, pp. 1–23.
• The Hebrew Literature of the Post-Biblical Period. In: Handbuch der Orientalistik I 3; Semitic Studies, 1954, pp. 70-132.
• The rabbinical criticism of God. In: ZRGG 7 (1955), pp. 194-224.
• The doctrine of reincarnation in Islam. In: ZRGG 9 (1957), pp. 129-149.
• The Judeo-Christian dispute at the end of the 16th century. In: Judaica 16 (1958), pp. 1-39.
• Oriental Judaism in its religious ideas from post-biblical times to the present. In: Handbuch der Orientalistik I 8, Religion 2 (1962), pp. 325–404.
• The love of the individual for God in Jewish piety from the time of the Gaons to the appearance of Kabbalah. In: Oriens Vol. 17 (1964), pp. 132-160.
• Jesus in Islam. In: The great conversation between religions . Edited by Eleonore von Dungern on behalf of the Keyserling Society. Munich / Basel 1964 (Terra Nova 2), pp. 113–128.
• 22 articles in the encyclopedia The religion in history and present, Tübingen 3 1961: Poor care, elbows, sin, election, parable and parable, God, Haggadah, Halacha, Judaism, Kabbalah, casuistry, revelation, Pharisees, rabbis, responses, Sadducees, Schma, Schmone `Esre, Scripture interpretation, morality, Sopherim, Talmud.
• The history of Judaism from the destruction of the Second Temple to the expulsion from Spain (= J. The World Religions III). In: Saeculum World History, ed. v. H. Franke, Volume III, Freiburg 1967: The high cultures under the sign of the world religions (1), 285–315.

literature

• Otto Renkhoff: Nassau biography. 2nd edition Wiesbaden 1992, No. 751.
• Hermann Otto Geißler: Ernst Ludwig Dietrich (1897–1974): A liberal theologian making decisions. Evangelical pastor - regional bishop - religious historian (= sources and studies on Hessian church history. Volume 21). Hessian Church History Association, Darmstadt 2012, ISBN 978-3-931849-35-1 .

Web links

• Directory of the estate

Individual evidence

1. ^ Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. 2nd, updated edition. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2005, p. 110.