Hans Böhm (Provost)

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Böhm on the pulpit of the Marienkirche in Berlin , 1951

Hans Adolf August Hugo Böhm (* May 5, 1899 in Hamm , † April 3, 1962 in Berlin ) was a German Protestant pastor in the Neumark, Berlin-Zehlendorf and Teltow, resistance fighter during the Nazi era and provost in after World War II Berlin. As treasurer, speaker and ecumenical advisor for the Confessing Church , he played a leading role in the church struggle between 1933 and 1945.

Career until 1933

Böhm was born as the son of the office director Ernst Böhm and his mother Helene Böhm, nee. Dunemann was born in Hamm (Westphalia) on May 5, 1899 and grew up in Pankow after the family had moved . He attended the secondary school there, was drafted into the army in 1917 and was therefore admitted to the emergency school leaving examination. He received his military training with the 2nd Guards Field Artillery Regiment in Potsdam and was sent to Quiévrain (Belgium) as an officer candidate for the Field Artillery Fahnenjunkerschule. In July 1918 he went into the field and suffered a serious wound on October 8, 1918 in the heavy fighting in retreat near Cambrai , which led to the amputation of his right leg. For his service in the war he was awarded the Iron Cross second and first class , the Wound Badge (black) and the Cross of Honor for Frontline Fighters . He passed the first theological exam on December 19, 1922 in Berlin with the grade "passed", and passed the second theological exam on October 28, 1924, also in Berlin, with the grade "overall good". This was followed by a doctorate at the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Tübingen with Prof. Dr. Karl Groos about "the beauty problem with Georg Friedrich Meier " 1926 February 19 After teaching at Vicariate Superintendent Beier in Berlin-Pankow Böhm in Berlin's St. Nikolai church on March 22, 1926 ordained . On September 1, 1927, he married Wilhelmine Reinhardt (* February 12, 1904) in Stuttgart-Oberheim; the marriage resulted in five children. In 1930 he got a job as a “theological laborer” at the Evangelical Upper Church Council in Berlin . In May 1933 Böhm protested against the appointment of the lawyer August Jäger as State Commissioner for all regional churches in Prussia by the National Socialists. He refused to work under Jäger "as long as the management of the EOK, which was then in Eisenach, had not commented on it ..." As a result, Böhm and a number of other members of the EOK were taken off from this service in May 1933. At the same time he joined the NSDAP on May 1, 1933 "out of inner conviction, together with several other colleagues from the EOK" .

Life and Work in the Confessing Church

A subsequent application for a pastor's position in the Berlin parochial parish failed due to the objection of the faction of German Christians . By taking over a representation in the Berlin-Zehlendorfer community Schönow in 1933, he came into close contact with parishioners who were active in the same church district, such as Martin Niemöller and Martin Albertz , who were also critical of the Nazis' overcoming church policy. He joined the pastors' emergency association founded by Niemöller in September 1933 . Pastor Böhm held the service at the Kurmärkischer Kirchentag on May 11, 1934, the central venue of which was the Nikolassee parish.

On October 15, 1934, he moved from the parish of Schönow to the pastor's office of the " district settlement pastor" in the same parish of Kölln-Land I with responsibility for the new settlement areas in southern Zehlendorf and the adjacent district of Teltow . He became a member of the "Confessing Church" founded in the spring of 1934, which elected him as its spokesman. He succeeded in combining committee work in the Confessing Church with his work as a district settlement pastor. From the spring of 1935 he was able to win members, elect brother councils and organize regular meetings of the Confessing Community in the three supervised community areas in the settlement around Haus Schönow, the Neu-Teltow settlement and the village of Ruhlsdorf. During this time, in 1935, the “Siedlungskirche” (settlement church) in Teltow was built and opened on today's Mahlower Strasse, and artists who were considered “degenerate” under National Socialism were involved in its design; the painter Moritz Melzer and the sculptor Hans Mettel .

In October 1935, at a meeting with Reich Church Minister Hanns Kerrl , Böhm and other confessional pastors refused to participate in the church committees formed by the National Socialists. This led to a break in the Confessing Church. In 1936 their church leadership resigned. Thereupon Böhm was elected by the brother council together with the Berlin pastors Martin Albertz and Fritz Müller to the second provisional church leadership and became its ecumenical advisor and treasurer. After a planned termination of the pulpit against the ideology of the National Socialists in March 1935, 130 clergymen were arrested in Berlin, including Böhm. He was also a signatory to the critical memorandum to Hitler from the summer of 1936.

In August 1936, Böhm undertook a trip to Chamby-sur-Montreux as ecumenical advisor to the Confessing Church together with Dietrich Bonhoeffer to prepare for an ecumenical conference. A second preparatory meeting took place in London in February 1937, at which Bonhoeffer introduced Boehm to Bishop George Bell . After a penance and prayer service in September 1938 on the occasion of the imminent invasion of German troops in Bohemia, Müller, Böhm and Albertz had their salaries blocked. The official church opened disciplinary proceedings against them, whereupon they were removed from office. Also in 1938 Böhm was expelled from the NSDAP at the request of the Berlin Gauleiter Artur Görlitzer . In the same year, Böhm, together with the other leaders of the Confessing Church Müller and Albertz, commissioned the Kaulsdorf pastor Heinrich Grüber to set up an organization that enabled more than a thousand racially persecuted Protestant Christians to emigrate from Germany (Grüber office). Another arrest took place in December 1941 because of his illegal participation in the church college. He was arrested for the fourth time on charges of helping Arthur Nebe and Hans Bernd Gisevius to escape after the assassination attempt on Hitler on July 20, 1944 , and released shortly before the end of the war.

After the Second World War

After the collapse of Germany, Böhm was appointed senior church councilor in the newly formed consistory of the Evangelical Church in Berlin-Brandenburg and appointed " Provost of Kölln " to St. Petri in Berlin. As provost he was instrumental in the internal and external reconstruction of the Ev. Church in Berlin-Brandenburg involved. The new basic order was created under his leadership. He also held the office of chairman of the board of trustees of the church college, the 1951 Berlin church convention was essentially under his leadership. As a representative of the Ev. At the end of 1947 he visited German prisoners of war in several English prisoner-of-war camps and was a German delegate at the founding assembly of the World Council of Churches in Amsterdam in September 1948. At the supraregional level, he was Vice-President of the Synod of the Evangelical Church in Germany . For health reasons, Böhm was retired on April 1, 1960 at his own request.

Honors

After Hans Böhm, part of the still existing Andréezeile in Berlin-Zehlendorf was named Hans-Böhm -zeile in 1966. For his services after the Second World War, in particular for his work on the new basic order for the Evangelical Church in Berlin-Brandenburg, the development of the Church University in Berlin and his ecumenical work, he received an honorary doctorate from the Christian-Albrechts-Universität Kiel for the first time. January 1956

Publications

Church and the Young Generation in the Struggle of the Time by Dr. Hans Böhm, speaker in the Ev. Oberkirchenrat, Berlin. Published in the series "Der Weg der Kirche" (Issue 2) Verlag Walter de Gruyter Co Berlin / Leipzig 1933

How does the church come to a new order? - A suggestion by Otto Dibelius and Hans Böhm. Printed as a manuscript. Vereinsdruckerei GmbH Potsdam 1936

literature

  • Eberhard Bethge : Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Theologian - Christian - Contemporary. Christian Kaiser, Munich 1967.
  • Manfred Gailus : Fratricidal conflict in one's own house. The Protestant Pastors in Berlin and National Socialism. In: Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte 13, 2000, pp. 20–44.
  • Peter John, Herbert Mayer, Sylvia Schubert: Signposts to Berlin's street names - Zehlendorf. Edition Luisenstadt, Berlin 1996.
  • Hans-Peter Sandvoss: Resistance in Steglitz and Zehlendorf. German Resistance Memorial Center, Berlin 1986
  • Hans-Peter Sandvoss: Resistance in the middle and Tiergarten. German Resistance Memorial Center Berlin 1994.
  • Karzek, Thomas: Who was Hans Böhm? In community news of the Ev. Kirchengemeinde St. Andreas, Teltow Issues April, May, June and August 2020. Web version: https://kirche-teltow.ekbo.de/informationen/geschichte.html Accessed on August 25, 2020

Web links

Commons : Hans Böhm (1899–1962)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Personal files Böhm, Hans im Ev. Central archive, Berlin signature ELAB 10/128
  2. ↑ Doctoral file UAT 131/1001 in the Tübingen University Archives
  3. ↑ Böhm, Hans in: Statement on the disciplinary proceedings against him from November 21, 1938 in the Böhm file, Hans signature ELAB 10/133 in Ev. Central archive, Berlin
  4. ↑ ibid.
  5. ^ Sandvoss 1994: p. 235
  6. ↑ Memorial plaque Kurmärkischer Kirchentag 1934 inside the church: Explanation of the marble plaque by Pastor Boeckh in the communiqué of the parish for June 1984
  7. ^ Böhm, Hans in: Activity report of the Ev. Settlement pastor from October 1934 to October 1935 in the archive of Ev. St. Andreas parish, Teltow
  8. ↑ File "Siedlungskirche" in the archive of Ev. St. Andreas parish, Teltow
  9. ^ Sandvoss 1986: p. 25
  10. ↑ Bethge 1967: p. 630
  11. ↑ Bethge 1967: p. 635
  12. ↑ Gailus 2000: p. 20ff
  13. ^ Sandvoss 1986: 163
  14. ↑ appeal document into acts Böhm, Hans, Signature ELAB 10/128 in Ev. Central archive, Berlin
  15. ↑ Obituary notice of the Ev. Church in Berlin-Brandenburg in the Böhm, Hans files, signature ELAB 10/128 in the Ev. Central archive, Berlin
  16. ↑ Böhm files, Hans 1947–1948, signature ELAB 10/130 in Ev. Central archive, Berlin
  17. ↑ John et al. 1996: 147.
  18. ^ Letter from Bishop Dibelius, Berlin to Prof. Herzberg, Kiel from September 19, 1955. In honorary doctoral file, Hans Böhm der Theol. Faculty of Christian Albrechts University, Kiel
personal data
SURNAME Bohm, Hans
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Böhm, Hans Adolf August Hugo (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Protestant pastor, resistance fighter in the time of National Socialism
DATE OF BIRTH May 5, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamm
DATE OF DEATH April 3, 1962
Place of death Berlin