Evangelical rectory

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This article or paragraph presents the situation in Germany . Help us to describe the situation in other countries.

The Protestant parsonage is not only the residence for the Protestant pastors and their families, but also describes an important cultural and historical institution (especially in past centuries). Since the Reformation , the rectory has been a particularly prominent building in the parishes because it has stood as a symbol for the continuity of history and the identity with the cultural (primordial) community. As a cultural institution, the rectory is a "refuge of education and a bulwark against secular loss of meaning". It is of great importance because the pastor's families have always lived and imparted special values, so that pastors' children in particular often held prominent positions.

Rectory of St. Magni in Braunschweig

Rectory and pastor's family

The Reformation represented a decisive turning point in the history of the parsonage. The abolition of celibacy for pastors meant the entry of pastors' wives and thus entire parish families into the Protestant parsonage. Martin Luther's wife Katharina von Bora was a well- known role model for the role of the pastor 's wife and the often associated open and hospitable house .

Pastor children often enjoyed an above-average education. From its beginnings in the Protestant parsonage since the Reformation of the 18th and 19th centuries developed in Germany, the educated middle class . Despite the adage "Pastor's children, Miller's cattle rarely or never", numerous important personalities in very different fields have outgrown a parsonage, yes, the Protestant parsonage became a "hotbed of poets and thinkers " (Heinz Schlaffer): according to Friedrich Nietzsche , Jean Paul , Hermann Hesse , Brother Roger , Ingmar Bergman , Vincent van Gogh , Jane Austen , Paul Tillich , Friedrich Dürrenmatt , Matthias Claudius , Friedrich Schleiermacher , Christoph Blocher and Christopher Wren , but also Gudrun Ensslin ; and in the present Klaus Harpprecht , Elisabeth Niejahr , Sabine Rückert , Hans W. Geißendörfer , Angela Merkel , Rezzo Schlauch , Christine Lieberknecht , Margrethe Vestager , Benjamin von Stuckrad-Barre , Christoph Hein , Christoph Wonneberger , Gerhard Schöne , Ulrich Noethen and Martin Kohlhaussen .

Under the sovereign church regiment , the pastor also became a state official on the front line in many places and, together with the teacher, cantor and sometimes mayor, formed the core of the educated elite. Parsonages served, among other things, as a "religious biotope, political counter-draft, bourgeois enclave or anti-bourgeois battlefield". This was true in Germany as well as in the Lutheran churches of Scandinavia or the Reformed churches in Scotland, the Netherlands and Switzerland.

As preachers and pastors, the pastors were at the same time propagandists and contact persons for the people and, through their function as masters of ceremonies for baptisms , weddings and funerals, often also contact persons in all kinds of emergencies.

The Protestant rectory of the present

Rectory in Sagard on Rügen

In the recent past, the role of pastors has changed, many pastors' wives have their own professions and there are female and male pastors. Along with this, the meaning of the rectory also changed.

In the regional churches of the EKD , pastors are usually obliged, if there is a rectory, to rent and live in it. The continued existence of the rectory has been increasingly discussed since the 1970s. Here completely different aspects were important:

  • Pastors in working-class districts or social problem areas often found the houses inappropriately large.
  • Pastors living alone complained that the living space was too large.
  • Due to the compulsory official housing, pastors can only build or buy their own home shortly before retirement.
  • Basic renovations or building maintenance work can sometimes overwhelm parishes. This is especially true for particularly old or large rectories.
  • The occupation of listed houses requires great concessions from the residents.
  • Pastors in restricted employment relationships have to rent the same apartment at the same conditions as office holders in a full position, despite lower salaries.
  • Self-employed spouses are generally not allowed to work from home or to set up an office in the rectory.

In some regional churches, the regulations have been revised and partially changed since the 1990s in the light of criticism so that, at the request of the parishes and pastors, apartments can be reduced in size or employment of relatives can be approved. In addition to the obligation to move into a company apartment, there is a residence obligation, i.e. the obligation to move into an apartment within the parish or the area of ​​responsibility. In 2006, for example, a resolution of the spring synod of the Evangelical Church of Kurhessen-Waldeck emphasized the principle of adherence to the residence obligation of their local pastors.

In the course of austerity measures by the churches, more and more parsonages remain empty or are even sold, so that the social presence is dwindling. First regional churches - such as B. the Lippe regional church - approve the move out of the rectory even if pastors are still in active service, if they submit a corresponding application and the local church council agrees.

In the literature

Since pastors often appear in literature, the rectory also plays a role again and again. For the Protestant parsonages, this becomes particularly clear in the following novels:

In addition, certain images are also conveyed in series such as Heartbreaker - Father of Four Sons and others.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Eichel, The German Rectory. 2012. Blurb
  2. ↑ Heinz Schlaffer : The short history of German literature . Hanser, Munich; Vienna 2002, ISBN 978-3-7306-0021-4
  3. ^ Susanne Mack: Career of a Pastor's Daughter. deutschlandradiokultur.de, October 26, 2005, accessed on October 26, 2014
  4. ↑ Simon Broll: The most famous pastor children in the world. spiegel.de, September 17, 2013, accessed October 26, 2014
  5. ↑ acorn. The German rectory. 2012. Blurb
  6. ↑ Church law regulating the employment relationships of pastors in the Evangelical Church in Germany (Parish Service Law of the EKD - PfDG.EKD) of November 10, 2010 ( Memento of February 6, 2013 in the web archive archive.today )
  7. ↑ 4.0 Parish Service Act of the EKD (PfDG.EKD) - Canon Law online reference work §38 (1). Retrieved February 6, 2019 .
  8. ^ Lippische Landeskirche: Exemption from compulsory official housing. Accessed July 15, 2018 (German).

literature

  • Cord Aschenbrenner: The Protestant rectory. 300 Years of Faith, Spirit and Power: A Family Story . Pantheon, Munich 2016, ISBN 978-3-8275-0013-7 ( review ).
  • Christine Eichel: The German rectory. Hoard of spirit and power. Bastei-Lübbe, Cologne 2012. ISBN 978-3-86995-040-2 .
  • Ludwig Fündling: The Evangelical Lutheran rectory in Hanover. B.-Charlottenburg 2, Marchstr. 2: Church statistics. Office d. German Evang. Church 1935. Hannoversches Pfarrvereinsblatt; 1935, Oct. No.
  • Nicolai Gießler (interview by Tabea Frey): “In the country, a piece of church life dies when there is no more lights on in the rectory” : The regional model in the church district of Aalen. In: For work and reflection : a + b ; Journal for the Evang. Regional Church in Württemberg. Stuttgart: Verl. & Buchh. d. Ev. Ges. Vol. 69 (2015), 17, pp. 31-34 ISSN 0016-2434
  • Martin Greiffenhagen (Hrsg.): The Protestant rectory : a cultural and social history. Kreuz-Verlag, Stuttgart 1991. ISBN 3-7831-0751-2
  • Verena Hennings: Life in the rectory : A social-scientific investigation from the Oldenburg church. Isensee, Oldenburg 2011. ISBN 978-3-89995-790-7
  • Katrin Hildenbrand: Life in rectory. To transform a Protestant way of life. W. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2016. ISBN 978-3-17-029672-5
  • Sabine Scheuter, Matthias Zeindler (eds.): The reformed rectory: discontinued or future model? TVZ, Zurich 2013. [Monument; 7] ISBN 978-3-290-17704-1

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