Erwin Balzer

Erwin Balzer (born March 15, 1901 in Berlin , † March 5, 1975 in Hamburg ) was a German Evangelical Lutheran theologian.

Life

After studying Protestant theology, the son of a teacher took over his first parish on Helgoland in 1930. He joined the NSDAP in 1931 and in 1933 became pastor of the Christ Church in Altona-Othmarschen. At the age of only 33 he was appointed Bishop of Lübeck on June 1, 1934 , with the help of the NSDAP party book and the recommendation of the Lübeck Senator of Justice, Hans Böhmcker . Balzer was an active National Socialist. In his area of ​​office he set up a " German Christian Church Regiment ". In 1939 he was a co-founder of the Institute for Research into and Elimination of Jewish Influence on German Church Life in Eisenach . On April 4, 1939, together with 10 other church leaders, he signed the so-called Godesberg Declaration of the National Church Unification of April 26:

"In that National Socialism combats every claim to political power by the churches and makes the National Socialist worldview appropriate to the German people binding, it continues Martin Luther's work on the ideological and political side and thereby helps us to regain a true religious understanding of the Christian faith [ ... The NS] is the completion of the work that the German reformer Martin Luther began [...] The Christian faith is the unbridgeable religious opposition to Judaism . "

- Godesberg Declaration 1939

The eleven church leaders supplemented their approval of the Godesberg Declaration on April 4th with an anti-Catholic and anti-ecumenical statement:

“Every supranational or international church with a Roman Catholic or world Protestant character is a political degeneration of Christianity. Genuine Christian faith can only develop fruitfully within the given order of creation . "

Together with the publication in the official gazette, the 11 national church members announced that they would set up an anti-Semitic church institute, the institute for researching and eliminating the Jewish influence on German church life , which then happened. The "Godesberg Declaration" is expressly named as the basis for this.

On July 1, 1945, Balzer was dismissed as Bishop of Lübeck, but received his ecclesiastical dignity back in 1955. A year later he retired and lived in Hamburg until his death.

literature

• Karl Friedrich Reimers: Lübeck in the church struggle of the Third Reich: National Socialist leader principle and Evangelical-Lutheran regional church from 1933 to 1945 (= work on the history of the church struggle / supplementary series, 2). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht , Göttingen 1965, DNB 453970176
• Hansjörg Buss: “De-Judged” church. The Lübeck regional church between Christian anti-Judaism and ethnic anti-Semitism (1918-1950) . Schöningh, Paderborn 2011, ISBN 978-3-506-77014-1
• Jörg Fligge : Lübeck schools in the "Third Reich": a study on the education system in the Nazi era in the context of developments in the Reich . Schmidt-Römhild, Lübeck 2014, ISBN 978-3-7950-5214-0 , p. 974 (section Biographical Notes )

Individual evidence

1. ^ Burgkloster zu Lübeck / Office for Culture of the Hanseatic City of Lübeck, "Erase my eyes from ...", Lübeck 1994, p. 23
2. ^ Church, Christians, Jews in Northern Elbe 1933-1945: History and Church History in National Socialism in Lübeck. ( Memento of March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) North Elbian Church Office, accessed on February 19, 2020.
3. ↑ The whole explanation from Renate Meurer, Reinhard Meurer: Texts of National Socialism: Examples, Analyzes, Suggestions for Work. Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag , Munich 1982, ISBN 3-486-84061-4 , pp. 41-45. The declaration was officially church-made on April 6, 1939 when it was published in the DEK's legal gazette, and it was supplemented.
4. ↑ Balzer and 10 other church leaders, according to the Kirchliches Jahrbuch 1933–1944, p. 294f.

predecessor	Office	successor
Johannes Evers	Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Lübeck State (until 1937) and Evangelical Lutheran Church in Lübeck 1934–1945	Johannes Pautke