Evangelical Church Messenger - Sunday paper for the Palatinate
| Evangelical Church Messenger - Sunday paper for the Palatinate | |
|---|---|
|
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| First edition | 1846 |
| Sold edition | 15,812 copies |
| ( IVW Q3 / 2017) | |
| Editor-in-chief | Hartmut Metzger |
| editor | Evangelical Press Association Pfalz eV |
The church weekly newspaper Evangelischer Kirchenbote - Sonntagsblatt für die Pfalz was founded in 1846 and has a circulation of around 16,000 copies in the area of the Evangelical Church of the Palatinate (Protestant regional church) . The publisher is the Evangelische Presseverband Pfalz eV, editor-in-chief has been Hartmut Metzger since 1994.
history
When Pastor Johann Christoph Lippert (1809–1886) launched the first edition of his “Weekly for Christian Instruction and True Progress” on October 3, 1846, he founded the story of the “Church messenger”, which in its first years was entitled “Gospel and Church” appeared. He should "represent the truth of the evangelical faith in a generally understandable way with the necessary reasons" and "make the members of our united Palatinate Church known about it and fix it in what alone can give this church support, life and stability". Pastor Lippert belonged to the Palatinate revival movement , and the new weekly remained a directional journal for church-conservative circles well into the 20th century.
1849-1932
Lippert remained the editor of the new weekly for only three years. Already in the June 30, 1849 edition, he explained to his readers: “For various reasons affecting him personally, the undersigned feels compelled to interrupt his business as the publisher of this magazine at the end of this half-year.” An entanglement in the political events of that period Lippert will hardly be allowed to report to him for weeks, otherwise his appointment as dean would not have taken place. But Lippert was related to a member of the provisional government of the Palatinate, and after the Palatinate uprising, the editorial work required an affirmation of the authoritarian reaction.
As announced by Lippert, Pastor Hermann Wilhelm Caselmann (1820–1902) continued the sheet from July 1849 under its current title. In his “Greetings to the Readers” Caselmann declared: “'Evangelical Church Messenger for the Palatinate' should be the new title of our paper. Although we are first delivering the continuation of the weekly of our venerable ministerial brother, Pastor Lippert, called 'Gospel and Church'. We chose the simple title because it seemed more indicative to us, for a sheet which in particular serves the interests of the Palatinate Protestant-Evangelical Church and is to continuously and thoroughly discuss all occurrences of importance in the same. ” The change in title is against the background to see the political events and the reorganization of the Palatinate Church, which then separated from Bavaria.
The church messenger no longer appeared in the Neidhard publishing house in Speyer , but was published in Landau by Eduard Kaußler and printed there by Baur in order to save the new publisher long distances. When Caselmann moved from Annweiler to Neustadt in 1852 , the publisher commissioned the local print shop Trautmann with the production of the sheet, as requested. But after Kaußler acquired the Baur printing works in Landau in 1853, a dispute arose between him and Caselmann about the future printing location of the sheet.
Kaußler informed Caselmann on June 25th, 1853 that the church messenger was now being printed again in Landau, and he replied on July 3rd: “I owe it to myself to organize this matter differently. So I have to inform you that the "Evangelical Church Messenger" has stopped appearing. I will found a different paper under different conditions, so that I am not obliged to make unnecessary sacrifices. " Kaußler then declared in the edition of July 7, 1853: " Pastor Caselmann resigned from the editorial office of the 'Kirchenbote' today. However, the sheet will continue to appear for the time being under the responsibility of the signed publisher ... "
The editors of the Kaußler church messenger were given to the Landau dean Scholler - and Caselmann published a true evangelical church messenger for the Palatinate on July 7, 1853 .
The Kaußler sheet stopped its publication in 1854 after it had lost most of the readers to the True Evangelical Church Messenger and the Landau publisher took over the "Evangelical sheets" published by Consistorial Councilor Ebrard. Caselmann's sheet, which had already been taken over by Pastor Stamp in Haardt in October 1853, appeared again under its old title on March 20, 1856 and omitted the name The True . Pastor Helffenstein in Hornbach was won as co-editor.
The union of the Evangelical Papers and the Church Messenger only succeeded in 1867, after it had failed ten years earlier due to the Lutheran-denominational attitude of the Church Messenger Party at the time . The Sunday paper published under the title Evangelischer Kirchenbote for the Palatinate was edited by the previous editor of the Evangelische Blätter , Pastor Carl Anton Scherer (1831–1905), and Pastor Helffenstein.
During the Palatinate hymnal controversy (1857–1862) , the church messenger increasingly developed into a fighting paper for the positives, but in 1863 it was competing with the Union as the weekly newspaper of the liberal Protestant association. Up into the 20th century, the two papers championed their respective theological and church-political positions with vehemence. If the “church messenger ” accused the Protestant association of abandoning the ground of belief, the positives in the union were denounced as Roman Catholic.
Pastor Scherer, the sole publisher of the "Kirchenbote" since 1874, entrusted the editing to his son-in-law in 1883: Pastor Theodor Hoffmann (1851–1930), who held this office until his death on June 18, 1930. For 48 years Hoffmann was editor of the "Kirchenbote" and received an honorary doctorate from the Erlangen faculty for this activity . Under Hoffmann's leadership, the church messenger became the organ of the Positive Association of the Palatinate , to which it was assigned in 1926.
1933 – today
After the Positive Association of the Palatinate dissolved under the influence of the political events of 1933, the association founded in 1934 to promote the evangelical people's mission in the Palatinate took over the publishing of the church messenger . Since 1966 it has been called the Evangelical Press Association in the Palatinate .
According to Theodor Hoffmann's request, pastors Theodor Schaller (1900–1993) and Karl Wien (1895–1978) were entrusted with the editorship in October 1930. After initial attempts to accommodate the National Socialist government as much as possible, they soon came into opposition. After the edition was confiscated on September 22, 1935, the Reichsschrifttumskammer (Reichsschrifttumskammer) prohibited them from managing the editors by order of October 1, 1935. The NSDAP party member Pastor Otto August Schwander took over the editing of the church messenger until the church press was banned in 1941.
In 1945, the editorial management was again transferred to Karl Wien (dean in Speyer since 1932), while Theo Schaller changed to the church management. Since the “Union” no longer appeared after the war, Vienna opened the “church messengers” to its readers and authors. From 1954 Albrecht Kircher stood by his side as an editor, who switched to the Evangelical Community Gazette for Württemberg in 1962 . Bruno Moritz was the co-editor from 1962 to 1970.
In 1970, state press pastor Hermann Lübbe became editor-in-chief of the "Kirchenbote", which continued the cautious opening to a folk church newspaper. Lübbe edited the Kirchenbote until 1986 and was a member of the editorial board until 1996. Since 1973 Lübbe has been supported by Helmut Borchers, who was responsible for the technical production of the sheet until October 2000. In 1986, the then 28-year-old pastor and journalist Hartmut Joisten took over the office of editor-in-chief until he moved to Munich in January 1994 as director of the Evangelical Press Association for Bavaria .
criticism
"It was part of the tragedy of those years that church and political movements were closely entangled." This is how the former Palatinate church president Theodor Schaller comments on the period between the Hambach Festival of 1832 and the revolution of 1848/49 . He saw rationalism on the side of the democratic movement, and pietism on the side of political restoration . The "Evangelical Church Messenger" is a child of this time, and detached from the respective political events and developments, he will probably never exist.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ IVW : Evangelischer Kirchenbote (woe) , accessed on November 11, 2017