Ernst Schwarz (pastor)

Ernst Schwarz (1921)

Ernst Matthias Schwarz (born February 21, 1845 in Melk ( Lower Austria ); † July 22, 1925 in Waiern (now part of Feldkirchen in Carinthia )) was a Protestant pastor and founder of the Diakonie in Waiern (Feldkirchen, Carinthia), which is part of today the Diakonie de La Tour is.

Origin and coinage

Ernst Schwarz was born in Melk on the Danube (Lower Austria) in 1845. His father Ludwig worked as a hydraulic engineer on the Danube regulation. He was married twice, both times to a Catholic. The children Amalie and Eduard Schwarz came from the first marriage; after the death of his first wife, Ludwig Schwarz remarried; the youngest child of the second marriage was Ludwig, Heinrich, Gustav, Emilie and Ernst. In accordance with the provisions of the tolerance patent that were still valid at that time, the children followed the parent of the same sex in the denomination, i.e. H. the sons became Protestants, the daughters Catholic. Before Ernst Schwarz was one year old, his mother Therese died. The older daughter Amalie subsequently took on the role of a surrogate mother for the family and accordingly also looked after her siblings. In 1853 the father Ludwig Schwarz was transferred to Vienna . In the course of time, the second eldest son Ludwig, who began studying Protestant theology in Vienna in 1854, also played an essential role in bringing up the siblings. The changed circumstances gave Ernst Schwarz the opportunity to take a stronger interest in Protestant religious life. Last but not least, it was probably also the example of the big brother who pointed a way in the direction of theology for the youngest brother as well. The time when Ludwig Schwarz worked as a pastor in Gorizia was to be of importance for the later development of diakonia when similarly minded people came together here. The caretaker and curator of the Gorizia community was Julius Hektor Ritter, Baron von Zahony, an industrialist. Ludwig Schwarz was often a guest in his house, always accompanied by his younger brother Ernst. This is how the Schwarz brothers got to know Elvine Ritter von Zahony , who later became Countess de La Tour. Ernst Schwarz took a very close interest in the religious crisis and reorientation of his brother that he was going through in Gorizia, and so they began to orientate themselves in parallel to the example of Martin Boos . Ernst Schwarz also began studying Protestant theology in Vienna, and later continued in Jena and Heidelberg. After studying in Heidelberg, Schwarz went to Geneva. Five years after starting child rescue work in 1878, Ernst Schwarz married Pauline Neckermann, who was born in Wolfsberg in 1854. From the beginning Pauline Schwarz was also an employee in social work, from 1881 then in the children's rescue center. The marriage of Ernst and Pauline Schwarz had a total of six children: Siegfried (born 1879), Reinhold (1880), Paul (1882), Lisbeth (1885), Elwine (1890) and Ernst (1897). Due to the increasing family responsibilities, Pauline Schwarz had to withdraw to a certain extent from working in the institutions, but she remained "at times still the top housemother from whom one could get advice".

Work as pastor and senior

On March 12, 1871, Ernst Schwarz was elected pastor of Waiern near Feldkirchen. By founding the institutions in Waiern, Ernst Schwarz also got a special position in the structure of the Protestant church in Carinthia. But this was certainly not the only reason that he was nominated for other offices. In 1901 Schwarz was elected senior of the senior council across the Drau and confirmed in his office in 1907. For Ernst Schwarz's attitude towards Catholicism, his biography is undoubtedly of great importance; the fact that he himself came from a mixed-denominational marriage or family made it possible for him to act as a bridge to the Catholic Church that other pastors did not have. For Ernst Schwarz, one motive in dealing with the relationship between the Protestant and Catholic Church was probably also the concern that a confrontation would harm people, for example in the area of ​​family life. From the very beginning, Schwarz saw his institutions of the Inner Mission as a non-denominational work; it was by no means about building a rescue institution for Protestant children only. For Ernst Schwarz's theological stance, one influence is of decisive importance, which is of general importance for the history of Inner Mission or Diakonie in Austria: the Catholic clergyman Martin Boos and the movement he influenced. Schwarz had got to know the spiritual and religious world of Boos through his brother Ludwig. For Ludwig Schwarz, the example and role model of Martin Boos was a decisive influence on his work in the congregation (and later in the diaconal work in Gallneukirchen ), for Ernst Schwarz this was an equally decisive influence immediately before starting his theology studies. The larger theological framework into which this movement and also the personal piety of Ernst Schwarz (and other founding personalities of the Inner Mission ) fit is Pietism or the revival movements of the 19th century influenced by Pietism . The essential point here is the development of an ideal of a very personal and practical piety; Christianity should not only be spiritual orientation and belief, but should also be clearly expressed in life.

Development of the diaconal institutions

Soon after taking office, Pastor Schwarz made it a concern to take action against the widespread miserable living conditions of children, and he was also concerned about the high number of illegitimate births. His calls that, for example, every "intact" family could take in a child from a dysfunctional background were initially unheard. The immediate reason to take the initiative was - if one follows a chronicler of the early years - a bereavement in the parish. So in 1873 he began taking boys into the rectory. After the pastor's marriage in 1878, his wife Pauline took on the job of housemother, and the parsonage became a real nursing home. A call for help and support for his work, written and sent out in 1881, went largely unheard. In May 1881, Schwarz announced his intention to found a child rescue facility for poor, neglected Protestant children and to open this facility on October 13th, the 100th anniversary of the tolerance patent. In an appeal on June 4, 1881, Ernst Schwarz formulated his diaconal program as it were: “All this gives me hope that help will come for the poor children here in the country too. There is a lot of misery among the children here in Carinthia. In the population of 348,000 souls, including 17,000 Evangelicals, there are many poor, neglected, wandering children. They have a great lack of bread and no dear home; But what is worst, they have a thousand times no nourishment from the word of God, no instruction to Jesus! The state tries seriously to keep them in school through laws and to improve them, but without penetrating the gospel. But in the best case the school laws are insufficient; the many poor children are beyond belief! You wander back and forth with your parents from one school community to the other. Only the establishment of homes with family-like facilities can protect and save. ”In fact, the formal establishment of the children's rescue center took place a little later, on October 31, 1881. Initially, it was the premises of the Protestant parish of Waiern that were used to house the children . The growing number of children to be looked after soon made additional space necessary. From the beginning it was clear to Ernst Schwarz that placing the children in the parish and school house could only be a temporary solution. That is why he made several trips in the following years to gain support for his child rescue work. One result of these trips was that several associations were set up in Switzerland that were dedicated to supporting Waiern. Schwarz took a concrete step in the direction of building his own house in June 1886 with the acquisition of two pieces of land and a call to build his own rescue house . At this point in time, a total of 32 children were being cared for in the children's rescue center. The foundation stone ceremony for the new institution took place on July 17, 1887, and the shell was completed by the end of the year. Finally, on November 14th, 1888, the children's rescue center was inaugurated. Around this inauguration, however, as before, it was criticized several times that the institution was not an official institution of the parish or the Evangelical Church, but ultimately a private initiative of Ernst Schwarz.

In September 1892 the student home in Klagenfurt started its work, initially with Amalie and Heinrich Schwarz, two siblings of Ernst Schwarz, as house parents. The purpose of the alumnate was summarized in an information sheet: “This branch of the Children's Rescue Center in Waiern has the purpose of keeping our sons together under a house-parents in a family-like manner, to educate and care for them so that they become determined, Christian-minded, well-educated, physically strong, hard-working men work once as a blessing for family and people, for God and the emperor's empire. ”From November 1892 this home was housed in Zigguln Castle, in spring the facility moved to a house on the Lend Canal, in the immediate vicinity of the Protestant Johanneskirche . As a rule, only Protestant students are accepted, provided that there are no obstacles to their entry into one of the schools in Klagenfurt. In the summer and autumn of 1903 the first conflicts broke out in and around the dormitory, triggered by growing dissatisfaction with the recently appointed head of the house, Brinckmann. These tensions escalated into a personal conflict between Brinckmann and Ernst Schwarz. The core of the conflict was evidently that - according to Schwarz 's representation - Brinkmann was increasingly working on severing the connection between the dormitory and the institutions in Waiern and bringing this institution closer to the Klagenfurt parish.

The third facility was a hospital in Waiern in 1893/94, which opened in November 1894 (and formed the beginning of today's Waiern hospital). The approach to building the home was for Ernst Schwarz, as with the child rescue facility, a humanitarian as well as a religious concern: “It is my deep conviction that many so-called sick people who keep looking for a cure for the body, only need recovery, healing and refreshment of the soul through God's Word and through the Savior! ”In the following years it was the financial basis for caring for the sick in particular that became an ongoing challenge, even a constant problem. The generally insufficient care allowances were a special problem.

Evangelical Church Aid Association

From 1899 preparations were made to found an association as the new sponsor of the diaconal institutions in Waiern and Klagenfurt. In January 1901, the statutes of this "Evangelical Church Aid Association" were approved by the Carinthian state government. The purpose of the association was to “contribute to the awakening and promotion of Protestant faith and life and to help in the emergency of our people”. The actual handover of the facilities to this association was not to take place until 1903. In 1905, the institutions in Waiern were also interlinked in terms of personnel and institutions with those in meetings: Countess Elvine de La Tour was invited to join the board of the relief organization. Ernst Schwarz himself had been appointed chairman of the association for life. The annual festivals formed an essential part of the life of the aid organization soon after it was founded. These celebrations should serve “that we look back on the path we have covered, we are happy when we have come a little further after all the effort and work, but also hold serious self-examination whether we have not lagged behind, or even on wrong paths it is advisable that we also look upwards and forwards, set new goals and take new paths to help our fellow human beings ”. The first annual festival of the institutions in Waiern and the Evangelical Church Aid Association took place on September 8, 1902.

During the time of the so-called Los-von-Rom movement , Ernst Schwarz was a prominent voice in the Protestant communities of Carinthia, and in this context he got into a very intense personal conflict due to his commitment to social issues. Schwarz emphasized that the many people willing to convert are looking for something that the Evangelical Church can give them. One should therefore consciously accept these people and integrate them into the church. Agitatory or German national tones, on the other hand, were relatively rare to find in Ernst Schwarz. He left the national motivations and formulas largely aside and instead gave the movement an accentuation through his own pietistic piety. It was a way for him to bring people to true Christianity. Ernst Schwarz was drawn into the conflict in a very concrete and personal way after Paul Kayser came to Feldkirchen as a chaplain in 1899. Like Schwarz, Kayser also focused his main attention on the children and also complained about the high number of illegitimate children as one of the basic evils. The institution in Waiern, however, was added as a provocative element for him. Kayser built up Catholic institutions, which were deliberately intended as a counter-offer, even as a declaration of war, against the institutions in Waiern. In public he directed several polemical accusations against Schwarz personally, which he answered just as clearly and publicly. The accusation of "proselytizing" was particularly bitter: Schwarz tried to bring those who were cared for in Waiern to the Protestant faith, which was the actual purpose of the institutions. Schwarz tried to refute this and accused Kayser of deliberately allowing the conflict to escalate. The further development of Kaplan Kayser's institutions and the conflict with Ernst Schwarz and his institutions in Waiern were to be determined in particular by the fact that Kayser's charity expanded rapidly - and this into other areas of activity as well. There was also the takeover of a Catholic orphanage in Treffen, which the Boniface Society had founded there (in the immediate vicinity of the institutions of the Countess de La Tour). In 1910, however, Kayser's undertakings were already in massive financial difficulties - according to Kayser, precisely because they wanted to destroy him, and in particular he accused the Freemasons. The bankruptcy of the Kayser enterprises and his arrest triggered a deep crisis in the Catholic Church of Carinthia; A number of dignitaries and institutions were affected by the financial obligations, including Bishop Josef Kahn (who was subsequently even forced to resign), the St. Josefs Association, the Abbot of Tanzenberg and the central treasury of the agricultural cooperatives .

The plan for a children's home in Waiern was presented as early as 1908/09. After a major donation, construction began in 1911, and the home was opened the following year. Another building project that could be implemented in 1912 was the construction of a new farm building on the Köraushube, which was raised in 1904. In the years from around 1910 onwards, the indebtedness of the institutions in Waiern increasingly became an issue that also concerned and occupied people and bodies outside of the evangelical church aid association. The critics made Ernst Schwarz personally responsible for the poor financial condition and sometimes even made further financial support dependent on whether Schwarz would withdraw at least in some areas. This led to disagreements with associations such as the Gustav Adolf Foundation as well as with church authorities and colleagues. The board of the relief organization was also divided, several board members resigned. In addition to the criticism in the matter, Ernst Schwarz increasingly saw the criticisms made as inappropriate criticism of himself and his life's work and repeatedly expressed the fear that his "opponents" would work to destroy and destroy his life's work. That there was no final escalation, i.e. H. the breakdown of the institutions or the forced withdrawal of Ernst Schwarz was due not least to the fact that this escalation happened on the eve of the First World War. This changed the basic conditions of every church or diaconal activity very dramatically.

The last years of life

The early 1920s were marked by various developments. First, as part of the various foreign aid measures in Austria, there were also “American feedings” in the institutions in Waiern. Second, an infant station was set up, which generally looked after six children. A third event of this time was a (renewed) major fire in the building of the children's rescue center in 1921. Ernst Schwarz (and his wife Pauline) had health problems as early as the autumn of 1924. At the beginning of the winter of 1924/25, Ernst Schwarz began to feel increasingly weak, although he continued to work with undiminished commitment. However, immediately after the New Year service in 1925, he collapsed unconscious. In mid-May he fell ill again with bilateral laryngitis. Two months later, on July 22, 1925, Pastor Schwarz died, who had worked in the community for 54 years and headed the institutions in Waiern for 44 years. Schwarz's life's work was recognized and valued at all church levels. In his communication to the Oberkirchenrat about the death of the Waier pastor, Robert Johne spoke of the "oldest and most deserving Protestant pastor in Carinthia". In the senior council of 1927 he paid tribute to the personality of Schwarz in an effort to do justice to a multi-faceted personality: “What a heavy loss to Waiern, the Zion of the Evangelical Church in Carinthia, in the death of venerated senior senior D on July 22, 1925 Ernst Schwarz suffered will remain in our memories for a long time. A good chunk of the spirit of the great, leading men of inner mission lived in him. Childlike trust in God, heartfelt prayer life, fiery love for Jesus and a firm faith in the victory of the gospel made him an apostle of the Lord. ”After Ernst Schwarz's death in 1925/26, the leadership functions in the parish of Waiern and the diaconal functions were separated Institutions. However, a close connection was to remain for a long time.

literature

• 110 years of Evang. Diakoniewerk Waiern. Feldkirchen 1983.
• 120 years of Evangelisches Diakoniewerk Waiern. Klagenfurt 1993.
• Alexander Hanisch-Wolfram: History of the parish Waiern 1808-2008. Feldkirchen 2008.
• Alexander Hanisch-Wolfram: Faith that is active in love. Ernst Schwarz and the Diakonie in Waiern (= Kärntner Landesarchiv. 40). Klagenfurt 2011.
• Rolf G. Hülser: Where love lives. 125 years of the Evangelisches Diakoniewerk Waiern. Klagenfurt 1998.
• Kurt Schaefer: Ernst Schwarz - The work of love in Waiern. Feldkirchen o. J.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Alexander Hanisch-Wolfram: Faith that is active in love. Ernst Schwarz and the Diakonie in Waiern . Ed .: Kärntner Landesarchiv. Klagenfurt 2011, p. 28-30 .
2. ↑ Kurt Schaefer: Ernst Schwarz - The work of love in Waiern . Feldkirchen, S. 11-24 .
3. ↑ Ernst Schwarz: [Appeal?] 1881.
4. ^ Unknown: Information sheet about the home in Klagenfurt . (around 1890).
5. ↑ Ernst Schwarz: Brief history of the Christian children's rescue center in Waiern near Feldkirchen in Carinthia with its branch institutions . Waiern 1892, p. 31 .
6. ↑ Carinthian Evangelical Seniorat: Report on the Seniorat meeting of the Carinthian Evangelical Seniorat on the other side of the Drau in Villach . Villach 1927.