Georg Kretschmar

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Georg Kretschmar (born August 31, 1925 in Landeshut / Silesia (now Polish: Kamienna Góra); † November 19, 2009 in Munich ) was a Protestant theologian and former archbishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Central Asia (ELKRAS) based in Saint Petersburg .

Career

Georg Kretschmar studied theology in Tübingen , Bonn , Heidelberg and Oxford from 1945 to 1948 . In 1950 he received his doctorate in Heidelberg and two years later he completed his habilitation in Tübingen with Hanns Rückert . In 1954 he was ordained a pastor .

From 1956 to 1967 he was Professor of New Testament and Church History in Hamburg . In 1967 he became a professor of church history and the New Testament at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich , where he co-founded a new Protestant theological faculty. His main research areas were church history and patristics (teaching of the early church), but he also gave important impulses for church contemporary history research. He taught until his retirement in 1990.

Since 1990 Georg Kretschmar has been closely associated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Central Asia. First - still at the time of the Soviet Union - he went to Riga in Latvia . After Latvian independence, he moved to Saint Petersburg in Russia to continue to work on the reconstruction of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Russia and the countries of the former Soviet Union.

In fact, he and his colleagues succeeded in reopening the theological training in St. Petersburg and the Central Church Office, as well as forming several ELCRAS dioceses and a synod that are involved in the governance of the church. For several years he was head of the theological seminary of the ELCRAS, from 1992 deputy bishop.

In 1994 he was given the office of Bishop of the ELCRAS, which he held until 2005 (from 1999 onwards as Archbishop). At the age of 80 he was released from his obligations. The previous bishop of the German Evangelical Lutheran Church of Ukraine (DELKU), Edmund Ratz , has been appointed as his successor.

Other functions / offices

  • Chairman of the Faculty Conference of the Evangelical Theological Faculties in the Federal Republic of Germany and West Berlin (1969–1971)
  • Member of the international scientific societies for New Testament scholars, patristic scholars and liturgical scholars
  • Member of the Scientific Society for Theology
  • Member of the Moscow Committee, later also of the Romania Committee of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD)
  • Chairman of the Evangelical Working Group on Contemporary Church History
  • Member of the Study Commission of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF)
  • Member of the Joint Orthodox-Lutheran Commission

Honor

literature

  • Carsten Nicolaisen : In memory of Georg Kretschmar (* August 31, 1925 † November 19, 2009) , in: Mitteilungen zur kirchlichen Zeitgeschichte 4, 2010, pp. 171–176.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Obituary to Kretschmar on the side of the ev.-theol. Faculty of the LMU Munich , accessed on November 24, 2013
personal data
SURNAME Kretschmar, Georg
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Protestant theologian
DATE OF BIRTH August 31, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH State hat , Silesia
DATE OF DEATH November 19, 2009
Place of death Munich