Georg Fritze

Friedrich Bernhard Georg Fritze (born August 1, 1874 in Magdeburg , † January 3, 1939 in Cologne ) was a Protestant pastor and theologian , religious socialist and anti-fascist .

Georg Fritze - Figure on the Cologne town hall tower

Life

Fritze studied Protestant theology in Halle (Saale) and Marburg , took the first theological exam in Halle in 1896, the second exam in Magdeburg in 1898 and then did military service (1889–1890). Then he was assistant preacher, and later "second pastor" in the Belgian Mission Church in Charleroi , where he ordained on September 30, 1900 . After four years he returned to the Prussian provincial church in Saxony , where he first had to catch up with the vicariate . After a year he was elected as pastor in the Nordhausen community . In 1905 he married the Dutch Katharina Anna "Cato" Havelaar (1883–1964) from Haarlem ; the marriage resulted in four children.

In April 1916, Fritze took the election to the pastor in the Trinity Church in Cologne . On January 15 and 19, 1919, in the Cologne Gürzenich Hall , which was completely overcrowded for the occasion, he spoke about the then extremely unusual topic of “Church and Social Democracy”. Georg Fritze calls for an end to the church's opposition to the labor movement and at the same time criticized the SPD's hostility to religion . As a result, a group of religiously interested workers came together around the committed pastor, which constituted itself on March 9, 1920 as the “ Association of Religious Socialists Cologne”. After Christoph Blumhardt , who had to give up his pastoral office for this in 1899, Fritze was one of the first pastors in Germany, along with Erwin Eckert and Emil Fuchs, to become known as socialists.

In September 1919 Georg Fritze traveled to the Tambach meeting of Protestant theologians (from which the so-called dialectical theology of the 1920s emerged) and met Karl Barth , who later, like Fritze, was one of the few Protestant pastors in Germany until his expulsion from Germany the SPD became. However, Fritze remained more of a liberal theologian who only turned to dialectical theology, and in particular to Karl Barth, at the beginning of the 1930s: especially since Barth was now active in neighboring Bonn.

During the 1920s, Fritze also campaigned for the ordination of women; at least four women completed their time as vicars with him, which was unusual at the time.

In 1928 Georg Fritze became the first pastor in the renovated Carthusian Church in Cologne . In the "Carthusian Parish Papers" he repeatedly warned against fascism . In December 1930, he and his colleagues from the Association of Religious Socialists in Cologne discussed the question of violence in the resistance against National Socialism . They already feared "possibly impending battles" and discussed whether they should be met in a non-violent way, or whether violent clashes should be expected and one should prepare for them.

Georg Fritze - family grave in Cologne's south cemetery

From 1933 onwards, the growing number of so-called German Christians in Cologne parishes intensified the conflicts. Fritze, on the other hand, took part in the founding of the Confessing Church . However, this attempted to evade the National Socialist appropriation of the church, but beyond that it did not have anti-fascist effects. Finally, representatives of the Confessing Church also demanded that Fritze should distance himself from socialism and bow to the demands of the Nazis. In 1938 Fritze was asked to take an oath of allegiance to Adolf Hitler . His refusal was ultimately used as an excuse to remove him from the parish on October 17, 1938. After grueling arguments, Georg Fritzes health was severely impaired. On January 3, 1939, he died aged 64 after a stroke of heart failure in his Cologne apartment. He was buried three days later in the south cemetery (hallway 71).

Commemoration

In 1980 the church issued a public apology issued by the Cologne City Church Association. In 1981, a memorial plaque for Georg Fritze was installed in the courtyard of the Carthusian Church, designed by the Cologne artist and architect Rudolf Alfons Scholl .

Since the same year, the church district of Cologne-Mitte has awarded the Georg Fritze memorial gift every two years to “people and groups who stand up for the victims of dictatorship and violence”.

In Cologne-Seeberg a side street to Karl-Marx-Allee was called Georg-Fritze-Weg. In 1992 the Evangelical Congregation donated a Georg Fritze statue by the sculptor Joachim G. Droll for the tower of Cologne City Hall .

Quotes

(all page references from Prolingheuer: Der Rote Pfarrer , detailed documents there)

“We must not and cannot forget that the core of the Gospel, on which our existence is based, is the kingdom of God and that this kingdom of God counts its members in all peoples of all parts of the world and that the kingdom of God and the kingdom of the fatherland, so much we both praise, are not the same and that only one of them can be the highest. "(1917, p. 33)

"There is no revolution more radical than taking seriously brotherly love." (1921, p. 39)

“In the sermon it is not important that the pastor finds witty words from his education and nice comparisons; Nor should he let himself be determined by whether many or fewer people come to him - what matters is that he utters the word of God. It should be like John's visibly outstretched index finger (in Grünewald's picture of the crucifixion), which points to Jesus: there is light, there is life! See, this is God's Lamb who bears the sin of the world! Wherever God is preached in this way and where the hearts receive the word in this way, something happens, there becomes peace, joy, freedom, obedience against the will of God ... "(1933, p. 86)

"The church will not perish by the shouting of its opponents, but it could be fatally damaged by the silence of its friends!" (1938, p. 138)

literature

• Hans Prolingheuer: The red pastor. The life and struggle of Georg Fritze (1874–1939) . 2nd Edition. Pahl-Rugenstein, Cologne 1989, ISBN 3-7609-1271-0 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Death certificate No. 10 from January 4, 1939, registry office Cologne I. In: LAV NRW R civil status register. Retrieved August 14, 2020 . 
2. ^ Georg Fritze: Church and Social Democracy . In: Hans Prolingheuer: Der rote Pfarrer (...) 2, 1989. pp. 193-201
3. ↑ Bruno Fischer: Cologne and the surrounding area 1933-1945: the historical travel guide. Ch. Links Verlag, Cologne 2012; P. 30. ( Google Books )

Web links

• Literature by and about Georg Fritze in the catalog of the German National Library
• Biography (Homepage Carthusian Church Cologne, Evangelical Congregation Cologne)
• Life path of Georg Fritzes (Cologne city map with entries on Georg Fritze)
• The Pastor Georg Fritze Memorial Gift and its Prize Winners
• Fritze in the online exhibition Resistance !? Evangelical Christians under National Socialism (with a portrait and many written and pictorial sources).