Hanna Jursch (theologian)

Hanna Marie Margarete Jursch (born March 24, 1902 in Opole , Province of Silesia , † June 13, 1972 in Jena ) was a German Protestant theologian and church historian. Jursch was the first woman to hold a chair for theology at a German university.

Grave in the north cemetery in Jena

The daughter of one of the city's main cashiers graduated from high school in 1922 and began studying religion, German and art history at the University of Jena in the same year . After a semester, she switched to theology. In the fourth and fifth semesters she studied in Berlin . In 1926 the first theological exam took place in Jena. After graduating, she took on the position of assistant at Karl Heussi . She received her doctorate in August 1933 with the work Schleiermacher as a church historian with Heussi in Jena. In her dissertation she presented the theoretical foundations of the lectures of Friedrich Schleiermacher , which had been little treated in research until then . In 1934 she started the workThe picture of Judas Iscariot in the old church habilitated . The work went unprinted.

After completing the habilitation process, Jursch faced considerable difficulties. It was not until 1939 that she was appointed lecturer. In 1945 she became an associate professor under the Soviet occupation forces. In 1948 she became a professor with a full teaching assignment, and in May 1956, as the successor to her teacher Heussi, she became professor with a chair for church history and Christian archeology at the theological faculty of the University of Jena. Jursch was the first female theologian who could fill a chair in Germany. In 1962 she retired.

In 1955 she received an honorary doctorate from the University of Marburg . In her honor, the Hanna Jursch Prize was founded in 2001 , which has been awarded every two years since 2002 and is endowed with 5000 euros. Her book Hands as Symbol and Shape , written with Ilse Jursch, was published 14 times between 1951 and 1970. After her death she was buried in the Jena North Cemetery.

Fonts (selection)

• Schleiermacher as a church historian. The problem and the theoretical basis of Schleiermacher's church history. Fromm, Jena 1933
• The essentials. Poems. Junkelmann, Jena 1939
• with Ilse Jursch: hands as symbols and shapes. Evangelische Verlags Anstalt, Berlin 1951
• Tradition and new creation in the early Christian circle of images. Evangelische Verlags Anstalt, Berlin 1961
• The gem. Images and thoughts. Evangelische Verlags Anstalt, Berlin 1972

literature

• Joachim Schüffler (Red.): Image and Annunciation. Announcement for Hanna Jursch on her 60th birthday. Evangelische Verlags Anstalt, Berlin 1962.
• Hannelore Erhart : Theologian and University - the example of Hanna Jursch. In: Yearbook of the Society for Lower Saxony Church History 89, 1991, ISSN  0072-4238 , pp. 385-398.
• Hannelore Erhart:  Hanna Jursch (theologian). In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 17, Bautz, Herzberg 2000, ISBN 3-88309-080-8 , Sp. 733-539.
• Dietz Lange : Hanna Jursch (1902–1972). In: Inge Mager (Ed.): Women profiles of Lutheranism. Life stories in the 20th century (= The Lutheran Church, history and shapes. Vol. 22). Gütersloher Verlags-Haus, Gütersloh 2005, ISBN 3-579-05213-6 , pp. 501-506.
• Lothar Mertens : Lexicon of the GDR historians. Biographies and bibliographies on the historians from the German Democratic Republic. Saur, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-598-11673-X , p. 324.

Web links

• Literature by and about Hanna Jursch in the catalog of the German National Library
• Portrait in women's names for Jena's streets , catalog for the exhibition of the women's center Towanda Jena e. V., Jena 2015, p. 14; accessed on February 21, 2017.

Remarks

1. ↑ Cf. Volker Leppin : From breaking apart to rebuilding. The Jena Theological Faculty around 1945. In: Uwe Hoßfeld, Tobias Kaiser, Heinz Mestrup (eds.): University in Socialism. Studies on the history of the Friedrich Schiller University Jena (1945–1990). Cologne et al. 2007, pp. 1848–1870, here p. 1856.