Ernst Otto (theologian)

Ernst Otto (born September 12, 1891 in Schmölln , † February 17, 1941 in Au (Sieg) ) was a German Lutheran theologian . He played a leading role in the Confessing Church in Thuringia .

Life

Otto studied Protestant theology in Greifswald and Leipzig and, after his ordination in 1920, initially became an assistant chaplain and later a pastor in Altenburg . In 1927 he became an employee, in 1929 head of the “People's Service”, a church training department of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Thuringia . In 1933 he joined the Pastors' Emergency League , later the Confessing Church (BK). In 1934 he took part in the first Confessional Synod in Barmen, became chairman of the Thuringian Brotherhood and founded the Lutheran Confessional Community in Thuringia. In 1935 he became a member of the Reich Brotherhood Council . As an "emergency bishop" recognized by the BK, he ordained several theologians in 1936, including Helmut Gollwitzer . In the same year he became a member of the Council of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Germany .

After Otto had refused in 1937 to collect a regional church collection for the purposes of the German Christians , he was released by the state as a prison chaplain and in 1938 put on hold by the German Christian church leadership. In 1939 he moved with his family to Au an der Sieg in the Westerwald, where he became the director of the "Hohegrete" bible home, but died after only two years.

literature

• Hannelore Braun, Gertraud Grünzinger: Personal Lexicon on German Protestantism 1919–1949 . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2006, ISBN 3-525-55761-2 ISBN 978-3-525-55761-7 , p. 191.

Web links

• Ernst Otto in the online exhibition Resistance !? Evangelical Christians under National Socialism (with a portrait).