Hanfried Muller

Hanfried Müller (born November 4, 1925 in Celle ; † March 3, 2009 in Berlin ) was a German Protestant theologian and unofficial employee of the GDR State Security . He was editor of the Weißenseer Blätter .

Life

Müller studied between 1945 and 1952 in Bonn and Göttingen . It was shaped by representatives of dialectical theology , especially Karl Barth , Hans Joachim Iwand and Ernst Wolf . In terms of church politics, Müller followed the so-called Dahlem direction of the Confessing Church and turned against national-conservative currents in German Protestantism. In Göttingen he was a founding member of the university group of the Free German Youth , which was banned in West Germany in June 1951. During a demonstration on May 1, 1951, he and several other demonstrators unrolled a banner calling for a referendum on the threat of remilitarization of Germany. That earned him a complaint for "serious breach of the peace" (the investigation was later discontinued). As a result, the University of Göttingen opened disciplinary proceedings that were kept pending.

In 1952 he moved to the GDR and married Rosemarie Streisand in November 1952 . Provost Heinrich Grüber performed the wedding ceremony . In 1956 Müller received his doctorate from the Humboldt University of Berlin under Heinrich Vogel . His dissertation was the first German-language complete presentation of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's theology . Since 1958 Müller taught as a lecturer, since 1964 as professor for systematic theology at the Humboldt University in Berlin. His courses were extremely poorly attended in the first few years; From 1963 to 1967 they were completely boycotted - for political or church-political reasons. His antipodes at the theological faculty were the theologians Hans-Georg Fritzsche and Herbert Trebs , who also worked as unofficial employees of the State Security and fought against Müller.

In 1958, Müller and Gerhard Bassarak founded the Weißensee working group in Berlin as a platform for theologians who advocated a “Church for Socialism”. Since 1959 Müller was a member of the Christian Peace Conference .

Müller was very critical of the church as an institution. In particular, he rejected an intertwining of church and secular power and called for an open, serving attitude of the church to society. In an autobiographical note from 2005, Müller characterized his early development as a path of threefold internal liberation: He sees the ecclesiastical-theological emancipation followed by the political-democratic and finally the socio-economic internal liberation.

Müller maintained contacts with representatives of the SED, in particular with the Ministry for Higher Education and the State Secretary for Church Affairs, as well as with important representatives of the Berlin-Brandenburg Church and the EKU Synod. His fundamentally positive relationship to the GDR and socialism was widely known. But since he does not believe the Christian faith "religiously", i. H. was not regarded as one worldview among others, it occupied a special position. On the one hand, his communist interlocutors in the SED could often not understand "what we actually meant by our strict distinction between belief in Christ and religious worldview", on the other hand, as a "non-religious" Christian, he was not religious enough for many "allies of Christian provenance".

Müller cooperated with the Ministry for State Security since 1954 and was listed as an unofficial employee (secret informator) under the code name "Hans Meier". After 1990 he confessed to “partial cooperation” with the Stasi, emphasizing that the employees of the MfS knew much more than he did and that they were actually his “unofficial employees”. Espionage proceedings opened in 1994 have been discontinued. In the discussion about the history of the GDR , he appealed to the supporters of the SED regime not to admit guilt.

Since 1982 Müller was the editor of the Weißenseer Blätter , which appeared at irregular intervals. The Weißenseer Blätter was the magazine of the Weißenseer working group of the Evangelical Church Berlin-Brandenburg, in which Müller played a decisive role. The publication of the magazine ended with issue 3/2006. In it, Müller u. a. sharp criticism of oppositional activities under the umbrella of the church. Especially since the end of the GDR, Müller cultivated close relationships with Marxist intellectuals such as Peter Hacks , Hans Heinz Holz and the chief commentator of GDR television, Karl-Eduard von Schnitzler . Müller supported the communist platform of the PDS .

The sermon at his memorial service on March 12, 2009 in Berlin-Friedrichsfelde was preached by the reformed pastor Dieter Frielinghaus on 2 Cor 4: 5  LUT : “For we do not preach ourselves, but Jesus Christ, that he is Lord, but we are your servants for Jesus' sake. "

Publications

• Experiences, memories, thoughts: On the history of the church and society in Germany since 1945 ; GNN Verlag Schkeuditz, 2010, ISBN 978-3-89819-314-6
• Congratulations from an outsider on Karl Marx's 175th birthday , Frankfurt am Main: Wiss. and Sozialismus eV, 1993
• Just by Faith , Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1973, 1st ed.
• From the Church to the World , Leipzig: Koehler u. Amelang VOB, 1966, 2nd edition.
• From the Church to the World , Hamburg-Bergstedt: Reich, 1961 DNB 453484719
• The Christian in Church and State , Booklets from Burgscheidungen No. 4, Burgscheidungen 1958.
• The Frankfurt Theological Declaration of the Ecclesiastical Brotherhoods of October 4, 1958 , Issues from Burgscheidungen No. 10, Burgscheidungen 1958.
• From the Church to the World , n.d., (1956)
• Evangelical dogmatics at a glance , Berlin: Evang. Verl.-Anst., 1989, 2nd edition (1978, 1st edition)

literature

• Dieter Kraft (Ed.): From Church and World. Festschrift for the 80th birthday of Hanfried Müller . Well, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-00-018328-0 ( table of contents and foreword online )
• Ernst Feil : Dietrich Bonhoeffer's theology: hermeneutics, christology, understanding of the world ; LIT Verlag Berlin-Hamburg-Münster, 2005, ISBN 9783825888770 (preview of the comments on H. Müller here )
• Ehrhart Neubert:  Müller, Hanfried . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 2. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
• Friedemann Stengel: The theological faculties in the GDR as a problem of church and university policy of the SED state up to their transformation into sections 1970/71 (= work on the history of church and theology, vol. 3). Evangelische Verlags-Anstalt, Leipzig 1998, ISBN 3-374-01708-8

Web links

• Literature by and about Hanfried Müller in the catalog of the German National Library
• Peer Pasternack (ed.): College & Church. Theology & Politics. Visiting a network of relationships in the GDR (PDF; 1.4 MB) - Edition Berliner Debatte, Berlin 1996, ISBN 3-929666-27-8

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Michael Hüttenhoff / Henning Theißen (eds.), Defense – Appropriation – Instrumentalization. On Karl Barth's reception in the GDR, Leipzig 2015, pp. 99–127
2. ↑ Hanfried Müller: Experiences, memories, thoughts: On the history of the church and society in Germany since 1945 ; GNN Verlag , Schkeuditz 2010, ISBN 978-3-89819-314-6 , pp. 87f. + 97.
3. ↑ Hartmut Ludwig and Eberhard Röhm . Baptized Evangelical - persecuted as "Jews" . Calver Verlag Stuttgart 2014 p. 337
4. ↑ Hanfried Müller: From the Church to the World. A contribution to the relationship of the Word of God to the societas in Dietrich Bonhoeffer's theological development , 1st edition Leipzig / Hamburg 1961, 2nd edition Leipzig 1966. DNB 453484700
5. ↑ Dieter Kraft : FROM THE CHURCH TO THE WORLD - OBITUARY TO HANFRIED MÜLLER
6. ↑ See: Linke, Dietmar, theology students at the Humboldt University. Between the lecture hall and the dock, Neukirchen-Vluyn 1994, p. 41ff
   On the boycott of Müller's lectures: ibid. P. 44.
7. ↑ See: Excerpts from letters from Hanfried Müller to Gerhard Winter from 1978 and 1979 (online at pkgodzik.de) (PDF; 163 kB)
8. ↑ kominform.at: The theologian Hanfried Müller is celebrating his 80th birthday today ( Memento of the original from April 11, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. - Congratulations from Arnold Schölzel to the "Stalinist" H. Müller, first published on October 4, 2005 in the Junge Welt 
9. ↑ Hanfried Müller, Liberation. May 1945: Experience-Memory-History, in: Weißenseer Blätter 1/2005, pp. 8–9
10. ↑ On Müller's IM activity cf. Dietmar Linke: theology students ; Pp. 451–472 (numerous references)
11. ↑ Michael Hüttenhoff / Henning Theißen (eds.), Defense-appropriation-instrumentalization. To Karl Barth's reception in the GDR. Leipzig 2014, pp. 103-104
12. ↑ See H. Müller, Experiences-Memories-Thoughts, Schkeuditz 2010 , p. 145, note 97: "Caused by the initiation of an investigation by the public prosecutor's office at the Berlin Superior Court on October 31, 1994, I wrote in Weißenseer Blätter 5/1994, P. 43 ff. On the accusation of "having worked as an unofficial employee of the Ministry for State Security since about 1954" and specifically for the purpose of "intelligence service clarification of church circles in the Federal Republic including Berlin (West)" in detail and what actually meant The accusation, namely that of class treason, was confirmed, but the suspicion of espionage that was part of it was vigorously rejected. I don't know whether the public prosecutor's office took notice; in any case, she has closed the case. "
13. ↑ Ehrhart Neubert:  Müller, Hanfried . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 2. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
14. ↑ The gates wide ; in: Der Spiegel, issue 3/1996 from January 15, 1996.