Fritz Majer-Leonhard

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Fritz Majer-Leonhard (born March 11, 1915 in Frankfurt am Main , † August 6, 1995 in Gerlingen ) was a German Protestant theologian and Nazi persecuted.

Life

His parents were the teacher Ernst Majer-Leonhard and his wife Emma nee. Cook.

The theology student was classified by the Nazi authorities as a " first degree hybrid " because his mother was Jewish. For this reason, the Württemberg regional church refused to accept him as a vicariate in 1937 after he had passed the faculty examination at the University of Tübingen . He then did labor and military service, but was discharged from the Wehrmacht in 1940 and worked as a commercial clerk in the Stuttgart company Paul Lechler junior.

In 1944 Majer-Leonhard was forced to work by the Todt Organization and was in the Wolfenbüttel Westbahnhof civil labor camp until the end of the war . In 1946 he took up a vicariate position in Stuttgart. In 1947 he became a pastor in Stuttgart-Feuerbach . In 1964 Majer-Leonhard became pastor of the Evangelical Society ; from 1965 to 1980 he was pastor at the Lutherhaus church in Stuttgart.

From 1945 Majer-Leonhard headed the relief center for racially persecuted people (initially under the name: Care Center for Non-Aryan Christians ) of the Evangelical Society in Stuttgart. Until the mid-1950s, this dealt with advising Christian victims of Nazi persecution on issues relating to official regulations on “ reparation ”, opportunities to emigrate, food allowances and the procurement of housing.

When this practical everyday help was less needed, Majer-Leonhard devoted himself to coming to terms with the Nazi dictatorship in the Protestant church. The relief agency advocated the preservation of the graves of euthanasia and concentration camp victims and, in the early 1960s, initiated a campaign for equal treatment of victims of the Nazi dictatorship and military and civilian war dead (War Graves Act, National Mourning Day ). If the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge initially rejected these efforts, in 1965 there was a rapprochement. The Bundestag passed a revised War Graves Act; Majer-Leonhard's initiative was successful at the price of a very vague term for the dead of the war. In lectures and publications, Majer-Leonhard dealt with the theological significance of Israel for Christians, Jewish Christianity and the mission of the Jews (which he advocated). Majer-Leonhard was 2nd chairman of the Society for Christian-Jewish Cooperation . Since the 1960s he worked in the EKD study commission "Church and Judaism". Relatively isolated in his regional church, Majer-Leonhard cooperated with the Jewish community in Stuttgart and was committed to a social institution in Kirjat-Jearim (Israel).

In the 1970s he stood up for Sinti and Roma who at that time had not yet received any “reparation” as victims of Nazi persecution. He described the discrimination against the Sinti (education, work, housing, health) to the Diakonisches Werk.

He initiated a research project on theologians who had been persecuted for racial ideological reasons during the Nazi era.

Fritz Majer-Leonhard was awarded the Otto Hirsch Medal in 1987 .

Publications

  • Christ witnesses from Israel: life pictures of Jewish Christians . Evangelischer Missionsverlag, Stuttgart 1955.
  • Article Jewish Christianity. In: Religion Past and Present . 3rd edition, Mohr-Siebeck, Tübingen 1959, pp. 967-976.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Eberhard Röhm , Jörg Thierfelder : Juden, Christen, Deutsche 1933–1945 , Volume 4/2, 1990, p. 429.
  2. ↑ a b Persecuted by the Nazis and later almost forgotten. The theologians Eberhard Röhm and Jörg Thierfelder have documented the fate of Protestant pastors with Jewish roots . In: Esslinger Zeitung, March 19, 2015.
  3. ↑ Gerhard Gronauer: The State of Israel in West German Protestantism: Perceptions in Church and Journalism from 1948 to 1972 . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen p. 502.
  4. ^ Christian Fuhrmeister, Wolfgang Kruse, Manfred Hettling, Bernd Ulrich: Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge: Lines of development and problems . Berlin 2019, pp. 340–343.
  5. ↑ a b Michael Volkmann: On the Christian-Jewish dialogue in the German south-west after 1945 .
  6. ↑ Gesa Ingendahl: auxiliary office for racial persecution (Württembergische church history online).
  7. ^ AK Sinti / Roma and Churches in Baden-Württemberg: Prehistory of the AK .
personal data
SURNAME Majer-Leonhard, Fritz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Protestant theologian and Nazi persecuted
DATE OF BIRTH March 11, 1915
PLACE OF BIRTH Frankfurt am Main
DATE OF DEATH August 6, 1995
Place of death Gerlingen