Friedrich-Wilhelm Krummacher

This article describes the theologian and bishop of the 20th century. For his great-grandfather of almost the same name, see Friedrich Wilhelm Krummacher

Krummacher 1960

Friedrich-Wilhelm Gustav Adolf Daniel Theodor Krummacher (born August 3, 1901 in Berlin , † June 19, 1974 in Altefähr ) was a Protestant theologian and from 1955 to 1972 Bishop of the Pomeranian Evangelical Church .

Krummacher house in Weitenhagen

Life

Friedrich-Wilhelm Krummacher was the son of the later court preacher Theodor Krummacher and his wife Elisabeth, née Countess von der Goltz . The Krummacher family had produced high-ranking clergy in Prussia for generations . Friedrich-Wilhelm Krummacher studied theology in Berlin, Tübingen and Greifswald and completed his studies in 1927 with a dissertation on church history on the Lower Rhine revival movement. He was ordained in Berlin in 1925 and was then employed as an assistant preacher in Berlin-Wannsee . Then he was appointed vicar provincial of the Kurmark , whose general superintendent Otto Dibelius was. Dibelius later became an important patron and companion of Krummacher. From 1928 to 1933 Krummacher was pastor in Essen-Werden .

In 1933, Krummenacher in the Nazi Party and was the same year in which the ecumenical competent Ecclesiastical Foreign Office of the German Protestant Church called, where he served as church council for the German Protestant congregations abroad in Europe. At the beginning of the Second World War (1939) Krummacher was called up as a division pastor for the Wehrmacht . In November 1943 he was taken prisoner by the Soviets and taken to the Krasnogorsk prison camp, which was politically important for the Soviet Union . The National Committee Free Germany and the Association of German Officers were founded there in 1943 under Soviet direction . Under the impression of the criminal warfare of the National Socialists, Krummacher joined both groups and became an active co-founder of the Church Working Group within the National Committee. In this role and as a former high church official, he was obviously chosen by the Soviet leadership as a future church informant in the Soviet occupation zone, because in August 1945 he was released to Berlin together with the so-called Ulbricht group .

In retrospect, the Ecclesiastical Working Group was accused of having come too close to Soviet propaganda. A call to all clergymen (Catholic and Protestant) in the eastern areas of Germany on July 15, 1944 is judged to be particularly controversial:

“Don't be frightened by the fear of the Red Army! It does not come as an enemy of the German people, but solely as an enemy of Hitler and his satellite. Especially as Christians who have always been hostile to National Socialism, you have nothing to fear! As soon as the front has passed over your towns and villages, you will go back to your peaceful occupation. You pastors will again be standing at the altars and on the pulpits and performing your pastoral ministry unhindered and in public. So don't panic! - When the Russian troops approach, show that you are the peaceful people! Walk towards them with crosses or white or black-white-red flags as a sign of your peaceful disposition! Prevent shooting in your area! Have the German soldiers stop fighting and, as Christians, contribute to avoiding further senseless blood sacrifices! Behave correctly towards the occupation authorities and do not allow anyone to lead you into the madness of active or passive resistance. It is up to you how the Red Army treats you. ”( Gerd R. Ueberschär : The National Committee“ Free Germany ”and the Association of German Officers. )

Krummacher was initially appointed to a pastor's office in Berlin-Weißensee and was appointed superintendent for Berlin-Land. In 1946 he took over the post of general superintendent in Berlin. He was now active again under Dibelius, who had become bishop in Berlin-Brandenburg in 1945. As early as 1945, Krummacher co-founded the Protestant weekly newspaper Die Kirche, which still exists today . After the Soviet occupation forces had set up internment camps for political prisoners in their zone, Krummacher tried to provide church support for the prisoners.

When the bishop of the Pomeranian Evangelical Church of Scheven died in 1954 , Dibelius, who had meanwhile also become chairman of the Eastern Church Conference , stood up for Krummacher as his successor, because he expected his pupil to be a counterpoint to the pro-government Thuringian bishop Moritz Mitzenheim . On February 10, 1955, Krummacher was elected by the Pomeranian Synod as bishop with his seat in Greifswald .

Bishop Krummacher's service villa in Greifswald, Rudolf-Petershagen -Allee 3

Memorial plaque to Bishop Krummacher at the house at Rudolf-Petershagen-Allee 3

Krummacher's assumption of office coincided with the deterioration in the relationship between the GDR government and the churches, caused primarily by the demand for a declaration of loyalty to the socialist state, the obstruction of church youth work and the introduction of state-sponsored youth consecration . In contrast to Bishop Mitzenheim, Krummacher vehemently advocated the independence of the GDR churches and the unhindered practice of religion in the discussions with the GDR leadership. When the government realized that, contrary to earlier hopes, Krummacher would not allow himself to be instrumentalized for its church policy, it tried to make him compliant by means of smear campaigns and harassment, but in vain. Attempts to discredit him because of his earlier National Socialist stance also remained fruitless. The State Security Service appointed a leading lawyer in the Greifswald consistory as an informant on the bishop.

On June 14, 1960, the East German bishops unanimously elected Krummacher, again on the initiative of Dibelius, as the new chairman of the Eastern Church Conference. The GDR government saw this as an affront to their favorite Mitzenheim and for a long time refused to recognize Krummacher as negotiator of the churches. Only when it became clear that Mitzenheim's course of ingratiation and the associated solo efforts led to his isolation within the church was Krummacher accepted. In the meantime, the latter also played an important role in ecumenical bodies and had become a member of the EKD Council , the all-German association of all Protestant regional churches. Since the EKD stood in the way of the GDR's striving for sovereignty, a new area of ​​conflict opened up. In his double function as East German church leader and high-ranking all-German church representative, Krummacher again got into a difficult relationship with the GDR leadership.

His consistent advocacy of ecclesiastical unity across the inner-German border found broad support at the ecclesiastical level in both East and West, so that until 1969 he was constantly re-elected chairman of the Eastern Church Conference, which was later renamed the Conference of Protestant Church Leaders in the GDR . Most recently he had vehemently opposed a split of the GDR churches from the EKD and tried to keep the unity of the Protestant church with ever new proposals. Ultimately, he was unable to assert himself against the attitude of the new generation of East German church leaders, and on June 10, 1969, the Federation of Evangelical Churches in the GDR was founded and separated from the EKD. After Krummacher had managed to have a passage about the “commitment to the special Christian community in Germany” included in the federal regulations, he then campaigned for close contacts between the federal government and the EKD.

In 1972 Krummacher retired and settled in Altefähr on Rügen. His regional church set him a monument with the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Krummacher-Haus, a church meeting center in Weitenhagen (near Greifswald) .

Krummacher had seven children with his wife Helga: Sigrid, Hans-Henrik, Irmtraud, Friedhelm , Helga, Bernd-Dietrich and Christoph .

Fonts

• Gottfried Daniel Krummacher and the Lower Rhine awakening movement in the 19th century (= work on church history. Vol. 24, ISSN  1861-5996 ). de Gruyter, Berlin et al. 1935.
• as editor: Ernst Oskar Petras: Be reconciled with God. A book from the German Evangelical Church Congress in Frankfurt am Main. Evangelische Verlags-Anstalt, Berlin 1957.
• Call to Decision. Sermons, speeches, essays 1944/1945. Documents from the Working Group for Church Issues at the National Committee for Free Germany. VOB Union Verlag, Berlin 1965.
• God's colorful grace. Sermons, Bible studies, lectures and essays. Evangelische Verlags-Anstalt, Berlin 1973.

literature

• Friedrich Bartsch, Werner Rautenberg (ed.): Church of God in this world. Festschrift for Friedrich-Wilhelm Krummacher on his sixtieth birthday. Evangelische Verlags-Anstalt, Berlin 1961.
• Wolfgang Breithaupt (Ed.): Friedrich-Wilhelm Krummacher and the House of Silence a documentation of the lectures on naming on June 20 and 21, 1998. Friedrich-Wilhelm-Krummacher-Haus, Weitenhagen 1998.
• Aulikki Mäkinen: The man of unity. Bishop Friedrich-Wilhelm Krummacher as a church personality in the GDR in the years 1955–1969 (= Greifswald theological research. Vol. 5). Lang, Frankfurt am Main et al. 2002, ISBN 3-631-39843-3 (also: Helsinki, Univ., Diss., 2002).
• Aulikki Mäkinen: Friedrich Wilhelm Krummacher - the man of unity , in: Contemporary history regional . Messages from Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, 6th year, 2002, issue 2, pp. 39–44.
• Short biography for:  Krummacher, Friedrich-Wilhelm . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Friedrich-Wilhelm Krummacher in the catalog of the German National Library
• Literature about Friedrich-Wilhelm Krummacher in the state bibliography MV

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Confident and happy in: Der Spiegel 52 (1964)

predecessor	Office	successor
Karl von Scheven	Bishop of the Evangelical Church of Pomerania 1955 - 1972	Horst Gienke
Otto Dibelius ( for all of Berlin )	General Superintendent for Berlin II (d. H. East) 1946 -1955	Fritz Führ