Gerhard May (Bishop)

Gerhard May (born February 13, 1898 in Graz ; † February 25, 1980 in Vienna ) was Bishop of the Evangelical Church AB in Austria .

Life

Gerhard May grew up as the son of the Reformed pastor Fritz May (1869–1928) in Cilli ( Celje ) in Lower Styria (today Slovenia ) and studied Protestant theology in Vienna, Halle (Saale) and Basel . In 1925 he took over his father's pastoral position in Celje, which was now part of Yugoslavia . He also worked on the experience of the "double diaspora " (denominational and linguistic) scientifically and was awarded an honorary doctorate from Heidelberg University in 1936 . On October 13, 1944, he was introduced to the Evangelical Church AuHB in Austria by his father-in-law, Johannes Heinzelmann , as the leading clergyman (with the title of bishop, which was still controversial at the time) . After the Second World War he devoted himself to the renewal of the Lutheran Church. Major achievements are the church reform of 1949, with which the office of bishop was strengthened, and the Protestant law of 1961, which brought full legal equality and replaced the Protestant patent.

May was involved in the ecumenical movement . On behalf of the head of the external church office of the German Evangelical Church (DEK), Theodor Heckel , he was intensively involved in the preparation of the World Church Conference in Oxford in 1937. 1954–1961 he was a member of the central committee of the World Council of Churches . He was also a member of the presidium of the Lutheran World Federation . From 1958 to December 1, 1960 May was the first chairman of the World Council of Churches in Austria .

He was buried at the Baumgartner Friedhof (group E1, number 97) in Vienna.

May had been married to Hedwig Heinzelmann since 1925, a daughter of Pastor Johannes Heinzelmann , who was later his predecessor as the chief superintendent of the Evangelical Church AB. The marriage had five children. The son of the same name, Gerhard May , became professor of church history in Mainz .

Fonts

• (Ed.): Sources on the history of Protestantism in Yugoslavia . Zagreb 1933
• The Volksdeutsche Mission of the Church . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1934
• Diaspora as a church. In: Journal for Systematic Theology 1940, pp. 459-480
• Cilli. City, landscape, history . Publishing house of the Cultural Office of the City of Cilli, Cilli 1943.
• (Ed.): The Evangelical Church in Austria . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1962
• A bishop writes ... The fraternal official circulars from Bishop D. Gerhard May, 1944-1968 . Zurndorf 2005

literature

• Karl Schwarz :  May, Gerhard. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 5, Bautz, Herzberg 1993, ISBN 3-88309-043-3 , Sp. 1095-1103.
• Karl Schwarz: May, Gerhard , in: Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart , 4th ed. Vol. V (Tübingen 2002), Sp. 936.
• Karl Schwarz: From Cilli to Vienna: Gerhard May's path from ethnic German thought leader to bishop of the Evangelical Church in Austria . In: Peter Maser , Christian-Erdmann Schott [Hrsg.]: Contributions to East German Church History, Volume 7: Church History in Life Pictures. Life testimonies from the Protestant churches in Eastern Europe in the 20th century , Münster 2005, pp. 189–214.
• Karl Schwarz: Under the law of the diaspora. The diaspora understanding of the Austrian theologian Gerhard May between political boom and theological metaphor . In: Klaus Engelhardt , Johannes Hempel , Karl Schwarz: Church and Diaspora - Experiences and Insights (= sources and research on diaspora science 3), Leipzig 2006, pp. 9–40.

Web links

• Literature by and about Gerhard May in the catalog of the German National Library
• Entry in the Evangelical Museum Austria

Individual evidence

1. ↑ wien.at: Vienna 1958: Reports of February 1958. 12/02/1958: 60th birthday of Bishop Gerhard May ; Report from city hall correspondence from 1958

predecessor	Office	successor
-	Bishop of the Evangelical Church AB in Austria 1949–1968	Oskar Sakrausky