Friedrich Justus Heinrich Middendorff

Friedrich Justus Heinrich Middendorff (born February 2, 1883 in Emden ; † May 12, 1973 in Schüttorf ) was a German Evangelical Reformed theologian and from 1946 to 1953 church president of today's Evangelical Reformed Church , which was then still the Evangelical Reformed Church in Northwest Germany was called. He became famous primarily for his irreconcilable attitude towards National Socialism .

Life

Friedrich Middendorff was born in Emden as the son of a reformed pastor. He studied theology in Halle , Tübingen and Erlangen and in 1909 took up his first pastorate in Uttum in East Frisia . From 1913 to 1926 he was pastor of the Neermoor parish near Leer . In 1926 he followed a call to Schüttorf .

He quickly became known beyond Schüttorf as he took over the editing of the Sunday paper for evangelical reformed congregations . Even before the NSDAP came to power , Middendorff publicly discussed Nazi ideology several times in the Sunday paper. His work in the Christian Social People's Service and his lectures soon made him a target of the NSDAP. This was followed by surveillance by the Secret State Police (Gestapo) and state reprisals, the climax of the conflict was reached on April 18, 1937, when almost a thousand Schüttorfer released the pastor with chants after he was arrested and transferred to the town hall. His 1935 article A Little on the Jewish Question , which was confiscated and banned, became known. In 1936 he was one of the co-signers of a memorandum to Adolf Hitler . Because of his sermons against the Nazi state, the Nazi authorities banned Middendorff from staying in his Schüttorf community from 1937 to 1945. His family was also expelled from Schüttorf in August 1938.

Middendorf initially took a pastor's position in Düsseldorf , where the Gestapo also had him monitored. His housekeeper was an informer for the Gestapo and provided detailed reports on him. When his new arrest was imminent, the Evangelical Reformed church leadership in Leer came to an arrangement with the Gestapo, warned Middendorff, forbade him from further sermons and transferred him to Hamburg-Altona, where he became pastor of the Reformed church there. He stayed there until the end of the war. During the Nazi period he was imprisoned three times: from April 18 to 29, 1936 in the Bentheim official prison, from June 23 to July 22, 1937 in the Berlin police prison on Alexanderplatz, and from August 15 to December 12, 1939 in Hamburg -Fuhlsbüttel . The parsonage was also hit during the bombing of the Hanseatic city, where he suffered a broken leg and foot and lost all of his household effects. Two sons died in the war. After the end of the war he returned to Schüttorf.

After the war from 1946 to 1953, he was the church president of the Reformed regional church. From 1949 to 1955 he was a member of the Synod of the EKD and from 1949 to 1959 a member of the Working Group of Christian Churches in Germany. At the beginning of the sixties he joined the German Peace Union , whose election to the Bundestag he propagated in 1961. In 1963 he was the top candidate in the Lower Saxony election in his constituency. Hit by a car on his usual morning walk in 1973, he died of the injuries the following day. According to him, in Schüttorf the Friedrich Middendorff Square named.

Today Middendorff's name represents in a special way that branch of German Calvinism which , for the sake of the gospel , was neither ready to make a pact with National Socialism nor to tolerate neutrality.

Works

• New and old . Wuppertal-Elberfeld: Verl. U. Scripture Mission d. Evang. Society f. Germany, 1962,
• The church struggle in a reformed church . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1961
• Sermon for the Reformation festival on Isaiah 33, 20a . Presbytery d. evang.-ref. Parish, 1937

literature

• Antje Donker: Middendorff, Friedrich Justus Heinrich , in: Biographisches Lexikon für Ostfriesland. Edited by Martin Tielke, 1st volume, Aurich 1993, pp. 255-256.
• Rainer Hehemann, Middendorf, Friedrich , in: Biographical manual on the history of the Osnabrück region. edit by Rainer Hehemann, Osnabrück 1990, pp. 201-202 (portr.).
• Karl Koch: Friedrich Middendorff (1926 to 1956) - A pastor's name as a trademark for a city , in: Heinrich Voort (editor), 1295-1995. 700 years of city rights in Schüttorf. Contributions to history . Edited by the city of Schüttorf (= Das Bentheimer Land vol. 134), Bad Bentheim 1995, pp. 213–221.
• Karl Koch: Kohlbrüggian in the county of Bentheim. A study on the reformed church history between 1880 and 1950. At the same time a contribution to the history of the church struggle , in: Emsland / Bentheim. Contributions to history. Vol. 12, Sögel 1996, pp. 355-432.
• Karl Koch:  Friedrich Justus Heinrich Middendorff. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 17, Bautz, Herzberg 2000, ISBN 3-88309-080-8 , Sp. 976-981.
• Helmut Lensing: The Christian Social People's Service in the Grafschaft Bentheim and in Emsland - The regional history of a strictly Protestant party in the final phase of the Weimar Republic , in: Study Society for Emsländische Regionalgeschichte (Hrsg.), Emsländische Geschichte Vol. 9 , Haselünne 2001, Pp. 63-133.
• Helmut Lensing: The reformed confessional pastor Friedrich Middendorff and the “church struggle” in Schüttorf . In: Osnabrücker Mitteilungen, Vol. 114, Osnabrück 2009, pp. 147–192. ISSN  0474-8158
• Erwin Lomberg, Gerhard Nordholt, Alfred Rauhaus (edit.): The Evangelical Reformed Church in Northwest Germany. Contributions to their past and present , Weener 1982, pp. 279–290.
• Hans-Jürgen Schmidt: In prison. A report by Pastor Friedrich Middendorff about his imprisonment in Berlin in 1937 . In: Bentheimer Jahrbuch 2007 (Das Bentheimer Land vol. 180), Bad Bentheim 2006, pp. 269–280.

Web links

• Literature by and about Friedrich Justus Heinrich Middendorff in the catalog of the German National Library
• altreformiert.de: Pastor Friedrich Middendorff (1883–1973)