Günther Dehn

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Günter and Luise Dehn at their silver wedding anniversary

Günther Carl Dehn (born April 18, 1882 in Schwerin ; † March 17, 1970 in Bonn ) was a Protestant pastor and practical theologian. He was a religious socialist , later an illegal instructor in the Confessing Church and, after 1945, professor of practical theology . The Dehn case made him known throughout Germany in 1931/32 as one of the first victims of nationalist and Nazi smear campaigns against critical intellectuals in the Weimar Republic .

Life

Training and first work experience

Dehn's parents were the postal inspector, later head post councilor, Carl Dehn, and his wife Kathinka Dehn, née Groß. The family moved several times because their father was transferred to another job, for example to Berlin in 1887 . Dehn went to elementary school there. From 1890 he attended high school in Köslin (Pomerania) and Konstanz , which he graduated from high school on July 25, 1900. In the same year he began to study German , history and philosophy in Berlin (1st semester) and Halle / Saale (2nd and 3rd semester) . He saw himself as a humanist , but read the New Testament and became a Christian. In 1902 he moved to Bonn and took up the subject of Protestant theology to become a pastor. After the first theological exam, Dehn became teaching vicar at the church of Boitzenburg (Uckermark) in 1906 . After the second theological exam, he became a cathedral assistant preacher in 1908 and an inspector at the cathedral candidate foundation (Berlin) until autumn 1911 .

Berlin memorial plaque in Berlin-Moabit (at the Reformation Church, Beusselstrasse 35 / corner of Wiclefstrasse)

In October of that year he took up his first pastor at the Reformation Church in Berlin-Moabit . This was a large working-class community of about 10,000 members, most of whom lived on the subsistence level . There, Dehn tried to bring the Christian message closer to the workers with reference to their everyday problems. As a pastor, even during the First World War, he remained a point of contact, especially for the urban working-class youth, and wrote down his experiences with them. He published these in several studies from 1912 to 1923. This resulted in the book Proletarian Youth , published in 1929 . The way of life and the world of thought of the urban proletarian youth .

In August 1915 Dehn married Luise Lahusen, the daughter of the Berlin general superintendent Christoph Friedrich Lahusen (1851-1927). In the last year of the war, 1918, he looked after prisoners of war in the camps near Arnhem and Hattem (Netherlands).

Christian and socialist

In the religious socialism of Christoph Blumhardt (1842–1919), Hermann Kutter (1863–1931) and Leonhard Ragaz (1868–1945), Dehn saw a possibility after the November Revolution to bridge the traditional gap between church and proletariat . To this end, he founded the Association of Socialist Church Friends in 1919 . When this merged in December 1919 with the Bund Neue Kirche under the Charlottenburg pastor Karl August Aner to form the Federation of Religious Socialists of Germany (BRSD), Dehn left the board and remained a simple member.

In 1920 he joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany on the occasion of the Kapp-Lüttwitz Putsch , but resigned in 1922 because his efforts to lead the workers to Jesus Christ did not meet with approval in the SPD. Nevertheless, Dehn wanted to show the workers that he understood them. He remained connected to the Religious Socialists and spoke at a larger meeting in Berlin around 1922, and gave a lecture at their congress in Meersburg on Lake Constance in 1924.

From 1923, Dehn took over a Berlin group from the Neuwerk movement , which was founded by Eberhard Arnold and Guida Diehl after the war : a cooperative movement that tried to implement the commandments of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount and the community of goods of the early Jerusalem community . Every Wednesday the group met in Dehn's apartment for three hours in the evening to take turns reading the Bible together and discussing current political, social, literary and church issues. The majority of the group consisted of women between 20 and 30 years of age, many of whom had to do with young people professionally as youth leaders, social welfare workers or teachers. The male participants were mostly students of theology, philology and politics, but also bank officials and welfare workers. Most of them came from church families and had become critical of the church through negative experiences with church youth work. Dehn claimed this work until 1931.

In the same year Otto Dibelius , then General Superintendent of the Kurmark, founded the Berlin Religious Education Institute , which was supposed to train elementary school teachers in evening courses for six months to become Christian educators for confirmation classes . He asked Dehn to work there as a trainer, which he only did for a year.

The Evangelical Theological Faculty of the Westphalian Wilhelms University in Münster awarded Dehn an honorary doctorate on July 31, 1926 for his practical theological youth work. With this he acquired a teaching permit at German universities.

The "Dehn case": University office refused

On November 6, 1928, Dehn gave a momentous lecture on "Church and Reconciliation" in the parish hall of Ulrichskirche in Magdeburg . He affirmed the right to a war of defense and rejected conscientious objection , but stated in relation to the Bible verse Jn 15:13  EU :

“It is common practice that the Church places death for the fatherland under the biblical phrase: 'Nobody has greater love than that, that he gives his life for his friends.' We certainly want to give this death its dignity and its greatness; but just as surely we want to tell the truth. In this representation it is ignored that the person who was killed wanted to kill himself. This makes the parallelization with the Christian sacrificial death an impossibility.
Then one should also consider the question of whether it is right to erect monuments to the fallen in churches. Shouldn't that perhaps be left to the bourgeois community? "

This caused great outrage that continued beyond the community for months. Dehn's question was widely understood to mean that he viewed soldiers as murderers and therefore wanted to deny them Christian honor in the churches. Dehn received many hate and threatening letters. The German National People's Party in Magdeburg-Anhalt published a protest against him in the press, triggering a national smear campaign. Because of the ongoing protests, also from national associations, the Berlin regional church office called Dehn, where he declared himself. It was not until six months later that he received a reprimand: his behavior had harmed “general church interests”. He was asked to behave more prudently in the future without reference being made to the content of his speech.

From then on, Dehn was known throughout Germany as the “red pastor”. He applied unsuccessfully for other pastoral positions outside Berlin and as a prison pastor, but could not find a community that wanted to elect him. In 1930, however, he was unexpectedly appointed professor of practical theology from the University of Heidelberg to succeed Karl Eger . Before he could take up this position, the publisher of the Eiserne Blätter , Gottfried Traub , reminded the public of Dehn's Magdeburg affair in 1928. Thereupon the Ministry in Karlsruhe suspended his appointment “until the matter in question was clarified”.

In the meantime, Dehn had received another private course offer from the Prussian Minister of Culture Adolf Grimme for practical theology in Halle (Saale) . Dehn initially held on to his application for Heidelberg and asked the dean there - who had reported Traub's denunciation to the Baden ministry - that the theological faculty should express its confidence in him in view of the renewed accusations so that he could accept the appointment. This was rejected with six votes against one.

Immediately after receiving the rejection from Heidelberg, Dehn Grimme telegraphed the acceptance for Halle and traveled there. At the faculty there, the National Socialist German Student Union , headed by Joachim Mrugowsky , had already heard of his possible appointment and distributed leaflets against him. The faculty promised to defend him against any student attacks. He was given a year of vacation to prepare for the new job. During this time the campaign against him at the University of Halle was intensified. In June 1933, during his vacation in England , Dehn learned from the newspaper that the faculty had refused to teach him. He also learned from his wife that his books had also been burned in the May 1933 book burnings .

Illegal pastor trainer in the Third Reich

Nevertheless, Dehn moved back to Berlin-Schöneberg with his wife . He was allowed to serve as an assistant preacher there for nine months. The pastor of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church , his friend Gerhard Jacobi , now President of the Berlin Confessing Church (BK), suggested that Dehn work as theological advisor in the BK. Dehn accepted this and supervised the theological further training of the Berlin BK pastors, soon also as a member of the examination committee and lecturer at the Church University of Berlin-Zehlendorf . This was opened on November 1, 1935 and banned on the same day. In August 1937, a Himmler decree of the BK banned all training and examination activities for students and candidates, which nevertheless continued in secret.

In May 1941 the Gestapo seized all files relating to the illegal training of the Berliner BK during a search of the house of superintendent Martin Albertz in Berlin-Spandau . On May 9, 1941, Dehn was arrested for prohibited teaching and examination activities and imprisoned in various prisons in Berlin for a year until May 8, 1942. Immediately after the end of his detention, he was arrested again and was not released until July 3, 1942.

After a recovery cure in Tübingen , Dehn was allowed to represent the pastor who had been drafted for military service in Ravensburg from autumn 1942 until the end of the war , and reported about it later:

"For the first time in my life I was a pastor there that was welcomed, loved and honored by the community."

Practical theologian

After the war, Dehn taught in Bonn from 1946 to 1954 as a professor of practical theology. It was not until 1962 that he declared:

“My efforts for the proletariat have come to nothing. The problem of 'church and workers' has remained unsolved to this day; how could it be solved then! My happy belief in the victory of the gospel message also in the world of modern industrial work was slowly dampened and turned into resignation. "

Honors

Works

  • The religious thoughts of the proletarian youth presented in self-testimonies. Furche-Verlag, Berlin 1923
  • The Son of God. An Introduction to the Gospel of Mark . Berlin 1929
  • Church and Reconciliation. Documents on the Halle University Conflict. With an afterword by Günther Dehn . 1931
  • My time is in your hands. Biblical meditations for all Sundays and public holidays of the church year. Furche, Berlin 1937
  • The Ten Commandments of God - Narrated from Luther's little catechism for children . Goettingen 1939
  • Stay with us, Lord: Biblical meditations for the Sundays and feast days of the liturgical year. Furche, Hamburg 1959
  • The old days, the previous years: memories . Ch. Kaiser, Munich 1962
  • For a complete bibliography, see: JF Gerhard Goeters: Günther Dehn . In: TRE 8 (1981), pp. 390-392

See also

literature

  • Olaf Lewerenz: The relevance of the approaches of Friedrich Siegmund-Schultze and Günther Dehn for church-diaconal work in social hot spots. Shown using the example of the municipality of Amügel in Frankfurt / Main. BDW.A DA 136, Heidelberg 1990.
  • Rüdiger Weyer: Günther Dehn. In: the same: Church - State - Society in autobiographies of the church struggle. Epilogue: Martin Stöhr, Spenner, Waltrop 1997, ISBN 3-927718-82-3 , pp. 190–203
  • Ulrich Schwab: Article Günther Dehn. In: The religion in past and present (RGG), 4th edition, Volume 2, 1999, Col. 614
  • Raimund Hoenen: Günther Dehn (1882–1970) - outsider for peace. In: Arno Sames (ed.): 500 years of theology in Wittenberg and Halle 1502–2002. Contributions from the theological faculty of the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg on the university anniversary 2002. LStRLO 6, Leipzig 2003
  • Wilhelm Schneemelcher u. a. (Ed.): Festschrift for Günther Dehn on the occasion of Günther Dehn's 75th birthday on April 18, 1957, presented by the Evangelical Theological Faculty of the Rheinische Friedrich Wilhelms-Universität in Bonn . Verlag der Erziehungsverein bookstore, 1957
  • Friedemann Stengel: Who drove Günther Dehn (1882–1970) from Halle? In: Journal of Church History , vol. 114, No. 3, Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2003, ISSN  0044-2925
  • Friedemann Stengel: The university and its name - Martin Luther: Contexts of the awarding 1933. In: Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte: International journal for theology and historical science , Vol. 26, Issue 2, 2013.
  • Henrik Eberle: The Martin Luther University in the time of National Socialism 1933–1945. Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 2002, ISBN 3-89812-150-X
  • Walter Bredendiek: A prelude to upcoming events . In: Evangelical monthly STANDPUNKT (supplement), 1983, No. 1, pp. 2–8.
  • Friedrich Wilhelm Bautz :  Dehn, Günther. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 1, Bautz, Hamm 1975. 2nd, unchanged edition Hamm 1990, ISBN 3-88309-013-1 , Sp. 1242-1248.  ( Article / beginning of article in Internet archive )

Web links

Commons : Günther Dehn  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Dehn, Günther
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Dehn, Günther Carl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Protestant pastor and practical theologian
DATE OF BIRTH April 18, 1882
PLACE OF BIRTH Schwerin
DATE OF DEATH March 17, 1970
Place of death Bonn