Günter Besch

Günter Besch (born August 17, 1904 in Altdöbern ; † September 2, 1999 in Bremen - Oberneuland ) was a German Protestant theologian .

biography

Besch was the son of pastor Oskar Besch and the teacher Hildegard Besch. He graduated from the Cottbus grammar school with his older brother . He studied Protestant theology at the University of Greifswald and at the Humboldt University in Berlin . Here he learned u. a. Adolf von Harnack , Hans Lietzmann Reinhold Seeberg and Karl Holl know. At the age of 22 he passed the theological exam. For shorter periods of time she was an intern at the Cathedral Candidate Foundation in Berlin and then a private tutor.

From 1928 to 1931 he was study inspector at the seminary in Kückenmühle . In 1929 he was ordained a pastor in Stettin . As a pastor he worked in Stettin and from 1931 to 1937 in Stargard and from 1937 to 1945 he was provincial pastor for the Inner Mission in the ecclesiastical province of Pomerania . He was involved in the Confessing Church .

As a displaced person, Besch became a pastor in Bielefeld - Eckardtsheim in 1945 . In 1946 the Bremen Evangelical Church (BEK) appointed him pastor at the Church of Our Dear Women . Here he worked until 1974. At the same time, the Pomeranian Karl Kampffmeyer worked as pastor of this church until 1974, as did Besch fellow campaigners in the Confessing Church.

He was a member of the church committee in the BEK since 1953 and from 1959 to 1971 secretary of the church committee. In 1966 he was appointed as a part-time representative of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) for questions relating to resettlers and displaced persons. In retirement he was chairman of the Gustav-Adolf-Werk .

Besch had been married to Ursula Kähler, daughter of the Szczecin general superintendent Walter Kähler , since 1932 . Both had four children

Honors

• 1962: Honorary doctorate from the Theological Faculty of the University of Göttingen
• 1973: Great Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
• 1979: Great Gold Medal for Services to the Republic of Austria

literature

• Günter Besch in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely available)
• Susanne Bennewitz (ed.): A room in the tropics . Letters from exile in Guatemala (1937–1940). Hentrich & Hentrich Verlag, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-942271-79-0 .
• Arnold Wiebel: Günter Besch - Pastor to Our Lady and co-designer of the Bremen Church after 1945 . In: Pastors in Bremen: Images of life from the 19th and 20th centuries , Volume 2 of the series of the Bremer Dom eV Foundation , Edition Temmen , Bremen 2007, ISBN 3861085968 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Announcement of awards of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. In: Federal Gazette . Vol. 25, No. 43, March 9, 1973.
2. ↑ List of all decorations awarded by the Federal President for services to the Republic of Austria from 1952 (PDF; 6.9 MB)