Friedrich Delekat

Grave of Friedrich Delekat in the main cemetery in Mainz

Friedrich Delekat (born April 4, 1892 in Stühren , † January 30, 1970 in Mainz ) was a German Protestant theologian and religious educator .

Live and act

The teacher's son passed the Abitur in Bremen in 1911 and studied Protestant theology and philosophy in Tübingen, Berlin and Göttingen a. a. with Georg Simmel and Rudolf Otto . In November 1914 he volunteered as a soldier in the First World War and was seriously wounded several times. During his convalescence, he passed the theological exam in Breslau and was ordained in 1919 . He received his pastor in Priebus , where he got to know the social misery of the border region. In 1920 he married Hedwig Bickel. In 1923 he received his doctorate from the University of Marburg under Otto. theol. about Pierre Poiret and Christian mysticism . In Berlin in 1923 he took over the religious education institute newly founded by Bishop Otto Dibelius as scientific director and in 1925 received a Berlin pastoral post. He also received his doctorate in 1925 in Berlin on Pestalozzi as a Dr. phil. In 1929, after a controversial habilitation with Eduard Spranger, he was given the license to teach philosophy and education . In 1929 he succeeded Paul Tillich as professor of religious studies at the Technical University of Dresden , in order to work primarily in the training of Saxon elementary school teachers. He turned against an expansion of state access to the life of believers and against the political theology of Hans Gerber and Carl Schmitt .

As a member of the Confessing Church , Delekat encountered restrictions from the new rulers as early as 1933, but in November 1933 he signed the professors' commitment to Adolf Hitler at German universities and colleges . With Karl Koch and Hugo Hahn he appeared in public for the Confessing Church in Dresden in January 1935 in front of an audience of over 5,000. After his forced retirement in 1936, he was banned from speaking publicly. In 1943 he was brought to Stuttgart by Theophil Wurm as deputy pastor . In 1946 he was again appointed professor of theology at the newly founded University of Mainz . 1957/58 he was rector there . In the 1950s, Delekat interfered in many political debates, such as the German rearmament .

Fonts (selection)

• Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi. The human being, the philosopher and the educator , Berlin 1926
• Of the meaning and limits of conscious education: an attempt to determine d. Relationship between Christianity and Education , Leipzig 1927
• The Church of Jesus Christ and the State . Furche, Berlin 1933.
• What should Christian parents do in the struggle to raise their children? , Schwelm 1936
• Memoirs , Bonn 1971

literature

• Henrik Simojoki: Evangelical Education Responsibility: A Religious Pedagogical Study on the Work of Friedrich Delekat (1892–1970) , Tübingen 2008

Web links

• Literature by and about Friedrich Delekat in the catalog of the German National Library