Evangelical emergency community in Germany

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Evangelical Notgemeinschaft in Deutschland (ENiD) was a conservative association of members of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD). The EKD classified it as a “very conservative lay organization”. In its statute, the ENiD defined itself as “an association of members who are moved by the internal emergency of the church and who, in view of the challenges of the present, know that they are bound to the biblical witness in the Reformation understanding”. The association was founded on September 30, 1966 in Stuttgart as an emergency community of Protestant Germans in the legal form of an “e. V. ”and deleted from the register of associations in June 1996. The number of members is estimated at 700.

The members of the ENiD were grouped into local groups. Officers led the local groups in accordance with the guidelines for chairmen. Local groups existed u. a. in Bonn, Lüneburg, Cologne, Hamburg, Hanover, Munich and Stuttgart. Where there were not enough members, they formed regional groups, e.g. B. in South Hesse. The Walter Künneth Institute, named after the theologian Walter Künneth , was considered the center of ideas .

The ENiD had not appeared in public since 2008 and was finally dissolved in 2017.

Own representation

The ENiD was characterized in the social network Facebook as follows:

“The ENiD is an association of nationally-minded German Protestants who are moved by the internal emergency of the church and who, in view of the challenges of the present, are bound to the biblical testimony in the Reformation understanding. Church must remain church! The purpose of the association is to reflect on the mission of the church, which is the right proclamation of the gospel. This necessarily results in loyalty in the area of ​​earthly duties to the family, to the neighbor, to the people and the fatherland. With reference to Luther, the Bible and the [sic] Gospels, we invoke national identity, the family and the [sic] unborn life. We do not recognize the Oder-Neisse line as a natural border between states. We take it for granted that nature is recognized by God. We are against homosexual marriages and despise the 'career spirit' of women initiated by the established. The woman should not be disadvantaged professionally, but take her role as a mother seriously and honor it. We reject socialism in the form in which it existed in any case, as it necessarily runs into a dictatorship. Thus we will never bow to a communist state that questions the culture of Western Germany. "

history

founding

In 1965, the Evangelical Church in Germany demanded reconciliation with Germany's eastern neighbors in a pamphlet on the east or expellees, combined with the recognition of the Oder-Neisse line , since the demand for the return of the eastern territories would damage the credibility of German peace policy and run counter to reunification. As a reaction to this, the Dortmund pastor Alexander Evertz and other pastors and lay people founded the emergency community of Protestant Germans on September 30, 1966 under the motto "Church must remain church". In Article 2 of the statutes their intention is presented: “The purpose of the association is to reflect on the mission of the church, which consists in the right proclamation of the gospel. This necessarily results in loyalty in the area of ​​earthly duties to the family, to the neighbor, to the people and the fatherland. ” The association derived a national-conservative attitude to political and social issues from the commitment to the Christian faith. The association was later renamed Evangelische Notgemeinschaft in Germany . In part, the ENiD sees itself in the tradition of the Confessing Church , as the naming of the Walter Künneth Institute, a registered association, makes clear. In doing so, she referred to the conservative sections of the Confessing Church , who rejected the influence of the Nazi regime on the church solely for reasons of loyalty to the Confession and not because of its anti-Semitism .

As a spiritual mentor was u. a. Pastor Werner Petersmann , who was active with the German Christians from 1934 to 1945 , then engaged in evangelical work for expellees and finally became a candidate for the National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD). With reference to Martin Luther , the Bible and the Gospels , he warned against "foreign infiltration", called for "national identity", "the purity of peoples" and "ethno-pluralistic measures". In addition, an important topic since then has been the family and the “unborn life”, the eastern border as well as the “dangers” of homosexuality , feminism and socialism .

Development after 1990

In 1995 the connection between the ENiD and the Evangelical Central Office for Weltanschauung questions on right-wing extremists and organizations as well as their own ideological orientation were the subject of a small inquiry from PDS MP Ulla Jelpke in the German Bundestag , who considered both organizations to be "ultra-conservative". The Federal Government replied that there were no findings on either organization within the meaning of Section 3 (1) BVerfSchG.

In 1998 the ENiD annual conference with the title “Confusion of the Spirits” took place in the Johannes Haw House in Leutesdorf near Neuwied . The title referred to the "confusion of spirits" that would have led to the GDR. Speakers were u. a. Fritz Hehle from Dresden (then chairman of the CDU parliamentary group in Saxony) on the subject of "Aftermath of GDR socialism: confusion of minds through confusion of important terms". Other speakers were Ekkehard Jacoby (pastor from Königswinter) with "Thoughts on the development of our problems today" and the ENiD board member at the time Armin-Ernst Buchrucker from Wuppertal on the subject of "The effects of the 1968 cultural revolution on society and the church - with special attention to feminism" .

On the introduction of dual citizenship in 1999, the ENiD declared that this would lead to “the infiltration and abandonment of our people and fatherland”.

In 2000, ENiD had to cancel its annual conference after the conference venue, the Gustav Stresemann Institute , had terminated its lease. The institute relied on the contract paragraph, according to which a termination is possible if “the event endangers the safety or the reputation or the smooth business operations” of the institute. This was preceded by protests by anti-fascist groups from Bonn.

In 2001 there were serious internal disputes about direction and leadership, in the course of which the chairman, Pastor Hanns Schrödl (Weßling near Munich), who had been in office since 1982 , was relieved of his office and other board members, including the editor of Renewal and Defense , Lothar Gassmann , resigned. A court ruled that Hanns Schrödl's dismissal was legal. At the end of October 2003, around 50 members left the ENiD with him and founded the Evangelical New Consentation in Germany. V. It operates under the same address as ENiD in Renningen and also represents a conservative theological-political position. Ulrich Motte (Munich) then took over the chairmanship, but resigned after 16 months in July 2005. One of the first board resolutions under Motte was the relocation of the office to Karlsruhe.

From November 2005 until his death in 2015, Gottfried Meskemper headed ENiD. The chairman of the Friends' Association for Christian Schools Herbert Becker and Werner Gössling were elected as assessors for the board members Walter Rominger and Arno Peter Müller , who also resigned .

In 2007 the EKD presented a reform paper on the restructuring of church work against the background of new social conditions. Gottfried Meskemper, chairman of the ENiD, accused the EKD of degenerating into a “religious lavatory” and promoting the end of the Protestant communities and the self-dissolution of the Protestant church.

On July 16, 2016, the general assembly in Kamen resolved the self-dissolution of the association, which had already been initiated by resolution of the general assembly on December 16, 2013. Four liquidators were appointed at the general meeting in Essen. The association's assets were donated to charitable purposes in accordance with the statutes. The Evangelical Emergency Community in Germany was deleted from the register of associations at the Stuttgart District Court on May 30, 2017.

activities

In addition to “community life”, the groups organized events on religious and socio-political issues. To help the group leaders, they offered chairperson meetings. The ENiD regularly held nationwide study conferences, including a. 1995 in Bad Pyrmont with guest speaker Alfred Mechtersheimer , 1996 in Coburg with Günter Rohrmoser , 2000 in Frankfurt with Claus Nordbruch . ENiD's tasks also included the “support of needy pupils in evangelical denominational schools” and students at denominational theological academies. The movement of denominational schools in Germany was partly co-founded by members of the ENiD. The Free Evangelical Confession School in Bremen was initiated by the later chairman of the ENiD Gottfried Meskemper.

With the political scientist Klaus Motschmann as editor, the board of the ENiD published the magazine Renewal and Defense every month until 2005 with a circulation of approx. 9000 copies. According to its own information, it had 6,000 subscribers. A number of renowned authors have written for renewal and defense , including

In addition, supplements and documentation of the conferences were published. In the conservative quarterly magazine Criticón , later renamed Neue Nachrichten , articles by ENiD members were repeatedly published. The Walter-Künneth-Institut e. V. published the series Echorufe .

Collaboration and collaborations

Since it was founded, the ENiD maintained connections with conservative to right-wing extremist circles. She had membership forms enclosed with the Bayernkurier and the National-Zeitung (Munich) . Contacts are made through personal channels and double memberships, etc. a. to the Southern Africa Aid Committee , the European Doctors' Action , the Berliner Kulturgemeinschaft Preußen e. V. and the Conservative Culture and Education eV (conservative office around Löwenthal and Groppe). Authors of the ENiD wrote in Mut und Junge Freiheit . In the Junge Freiheit , Hans B. von Sothen recommended renewal and defense in a magazine review .

The “Aid Agency for Protestant Pastors e. V. ”under its director Roland Reuter was a member of ENiD after its establishment and maintains close ties to groups of the confessional movement in the Rhineland. The association supported Protestant pastors who came into conflict with the church leadership for legal reasons, and advised a confrontational stance.

Through double membership the ENiD had many connections to the confessional movement “No other gospel” , which is also organized in the conference Confessing Communities in the Evangelical Church in Germany .

The ENiD was u. a. Member of the Conference of Confessing Communities in the Evangelical Church in Germany. Ecumenical connections existed to the "confessional ecumenism", which was founded by Peter Beyerhaus with conservative currents of the Catholic Church. The “confessional ecumenism” rejected the EKD's ecumenism, which is described as syncretistic , and wants an ecumenism that is made up of “confessing, ie conservative believers of the three denominations of Protestantism, Catholicism and Orthodoxy”.

Board

In addition to the chairman, the management of ENiD also included a board of several members.

Members of the board between 1966 and 1996 (selection)

On the board from 1982–2001

  • Hanns Schrödl , theologian, chairman of ENiD from 1982 to 2001, today head of Evangelical Reconsideration in Germany
  • Ilsemarie Lorenz , deputy chairwoman of ENiD from 1982 to 2001

On the board from 2003-2005

  • Christof Ehrler , former ENiD board member (under Motte) - resigned in 2008
  • Ulrich Motte , journalist ( Focus , idea, Junge Freiheit ), chairman of ENiD 2003–2005

On the board from 2005

Known members

literature

  • Jens Mecklenburg (Hrsg.): Handbook of German right-wing extremism . Elefanten-Press, Berlin 1996, ISBN 3-88520-585-8 , pp. 381-382 (Antifa edition) .
  • Lutz von Padberg: Church and media: study conference of the Evangelical Notgemeinschaft in Deutschland e. V. from October 27-29, 1989 in Wuppertal . Edition 49 of Renewal and Defense , supplement, Verlag der Evangelischen Notgemeinschaft in Deutschland, 1990.

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b anti-fascist press archive and education center berlin ev (apabiz): Profile: Evangelische Notgemeinschaft in Deutschland e. V.
  2. ↑ facebook.com
  3. ↑ The situation of the displaced and the relationship of the German people to their eastern neighbors ( Memento of March 5, 2013 in the Internet Archive ), 1965, accessed on March 25, 2013
  4. ↑ Printed matter 13/1969 of July 12, 1995 by the German Bundestag
  5. ↑ hagalil.com
  6. ↑ Messages: Ev. Notgemeinschaft fears foreign infiltration. In: Junge Freiheit (archive). March 19, 1999, accessed May 4, 2011 .
  7. ↑ selk.de (PDF; 294 kB)
  8. ↑ idea.de (registration required) ( Memento from February 22, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  9. ↑ nrw.vvn-bda.de
  10. ↑ idea.de (registration required) ( Memento from February 22, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  11. ↑ idea.de (registration required) ( Memento from February 22, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  12. ↑ gottfried-meskemper.de
  13. ↑ Courageous Protestant: Prof. Motschmann †. In: idea spectrum. No. 50, December 14, 2016, p. 10
  14. ↑ idea.de (registration required) ( Memento from February 22, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  15. ↑ jf-archiv.de
  16. ↑ antifaschistische-nachrichten.de ( Memento from April 26, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  17. ↑ bible-only.org
  18. ↑ Stuttgart District Court, VR 2032, quoted from: antifascist press archive and education center berlin ev : Evangelische Notgemeinschaft in Deutschland eV - extended, accessed: June 14, 2015.
  19. ↑ Apple and Rute , in: Der Spiegel, 48/1967, p. 74.
  20. ↑ Archived copy ( Memento from November 29, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  21. ↑ http://www.gnade.de/index_l/brisant/bt04.htm
  22. ↑ Answer of the Federal Government to the minor question from the MP Ulla Jelpke and the PDS group - printed matter 13/1771 (PDF; 311 kB), July 12, 1995