Hans Rempel (theologian)

Hans Rempel , also Johannes Rempel or Johann Rempel , (born January 27, 1909 in Rodnitschnoje near Orenburg , † October 9, 1990 in Kiel ) was a German Lutheran pastor.

Life

Rempel was born in 1909 to German-born Mennonite farmers in Rodnichnoje in the Urals , where he spent his childhood and youth. He attended schools in Rodnichnoje and Pretoria / Ural. He experienced the Russian Civil War , the catastrophic famine of 1921–1922 in Soviet Russia and the collectivization of agriculture in the Soviet Union . Arrested in the course of the Stalinist terror in 1929 and exiled to Arkhangelsk in 1930 , he managed an adventurous escape via Norway and England to Germany . Equipped with a Nansen pass , issued by the German Embassy in London, he was temporarily housed in the "refugee camp for Russian Germans " in the former NCO school in Mölln .

His further educational path led him to the evangelical Bible school in Chrischona , Switzerland - during this time he published his book Der Sowjethölle entronnen, which was later distributed in eleven editions - to study evangelical theology in Tübingen , which had to be interrupted in the absence of a university entrance qualification .

After Rempel had obtained his Abitur at the Institute for Foreign Students in Berlin in 1933, he continued his theology studies in the capital, albeit with the addition of philosophy and history . In 1938 he completed his studies with a doctorate ( Das Deutschtum in der USSR since 1917 ) with the German-Austrian Eastern European historian (and NSDAP member) Hans Uebersberger . Rempel also received German citizenship in 1938 .

After a short period in the Verein für das Deutschtum Abroad , he was able to continue working scientifically with a grant at the Institute for Research on Germanness. Drafted into the Wehrmacht on April 1, 1940 and deployed as a cavalryman in France and Poland , from October 1940 he became an employee in the military geography department of the General Staff of the Army and from July 1941 a consultant in the Reich Ministry for the occupied eastern territories . In this position he went on a business trip to the Ukraine in 1942 . a. in the Mennonite settlement area of Chortitza . He visited the last home of his late father in the village of Einlage and met his father's third wife there, who had accompanied him in the last days of his life.

On January 1, 1942, Rempel was accepted into the NSDAP as an employee of a Reich Ministry . From February 1943 until the collapse in 1945 he was back in the field, first on the Eastern Front , then in Hungary and Czechoslovakia . He experienced the immediate end of the war between the Soviet and American occupation areas in the forests of Thuringia and Bavaria , where he hid with his comrades. He escaped being a prisoner of war. His résumé after the Second World War :

“It is a fundamental, an ethical, a human matter and question whether we who took part in this terrible war will continue to do military service of our own free will. We do not have to forget everything as quickly as possible and carry on as if nothing had happened, but we have to accept life as an overwhelming gift. We got away with it again. We will not be able to answer the question why we of all people stayed alive, but we should ask ourselves what we got away with. We must not suppress the bad experiences; rather, in conscious memory of past fears and pains that we have inflicted on others and that we have suffered ourselves, we have to start all over again with life, to live humanely, to live together, full of hope to live."

Rempel found his wife and child in East Frisia . From April 1946 he was parish assistant to Fritz Rienecker in Geesthacht -Düneberg and then continued his theology studies in Hamburg (church lectures) and Kiel from the summer semester 1947 . After a vicariate in Kiel, visiting the preacher's seminary in Preetz , second theological examination and ordination on October 29, 1950 in Kiel, he became an assistant chaplain at St. Nikolai in Kiel (at the side of Provost Hans Asmussen ), then later there, and finally from 1955 until 1974 pastor of the Luther congregation in Kiel . At the same time he received the regional church commission from Holstein Bishop Halfmann to look after the Mennonite congregations, the "Church of his fathers", in Schleswig-Holstein.

For several semesters Rempel worked as a lecturer at the Kiel Adult Education Center. He dealt with subjects such as "Christianity and Bolshevism" and "Churches and sects - what do others believe?" He founded the Working Group of Christian Churches in Kiel. Participating in it: the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Schleswig-Holstein , the Roman Catholic Church , the Orthodox Church , the Evangelical Methodist Church , the Evangelical Free Church Congregation ( Baptists ), the Seventh-day Adventist Church , the Free Christian Church ( Pentecostal Church ), the Salvation Army and the Christian Community .

As the owner of the parish office of St. Nikolai II since September 21, 1952, Rempel was commissioned to organize religious discussions at vocational schools. With the financial support of the Prime Minister Lübke , he was able to win two full-time and some part-time teachers for this task. He was also active as the provost representative of the Gustav Adolf factory and member of the provincial board of this factory, as provost representative for members of the Greek Orthodox Church in Kiel, as a member of the board of trustees of the adult education center in Kiel and as a scientific tour guide in Starnberg with the special program Vorderer Orient and Holy Land .

Rempel retired on June 1, 1974 and died in 1990 at the age of 81 in Kiel. The marriage on December 13, 1941 resulted in a son (born 1942) and a daughter (born 1948).

The hour of the church

Rempel agreed with Wilhelm Halfmann , who later became Bishop of Holstein, in the view presented at the end of May 1945 that the Church “today has a very special responsibility for our people”. After the unconditional surrender of the Wehrmacht, the church was given freedom of speech and action. Rempel saw it as the order of the day to tackle what was possible and do it as well as possible. So he decided to serve the Church.

Under the headings “The hour of the church” (pp. 427–436) and “Three years later” (pp. 437–445) Rempel reported in his book Jump over the wall with God of the tasks and possibilities of the church in the first Years after the Second World War using the example of Geesthacht-Düneberg and Kiel:

“The task was to make the hour of the church the greater hour of the church through active charity . ... The aid organization of the EKD on a pan-German level was followed by the establishment of regional church evangelical aid organizations. ... The donations from the USA, Canada, Switzerland, Sweden and other countries for food, clothing, shoes, blankets, dishes, toys, books and other things even extended to the delivery of entire prefabricated houses, even prefabricated churches made of wood. ... In the rubble desert of Kiel, a foreign aid organization, among others, did a particularly beneficial job. It was the Mennonite Central Committee of USA and Canada , or MCC for short. ... The Mennonite aid organization started its work in December 1946 under the direction of Cornelius Dyck from Canada in Kiel. ... In January 1947 a feeding campaign for all three to six year old children from Kiel began, in which the aid organization of the Protestant Churches of Switzerland also participated. In a rented kitchen, meals for 13,750 children were prepared in 18 kettles every day. ... From April 28, 1947, a feed was started for 3000 old people selected by the city doctor. … In November 1947, the Mennonite Relief Organization had the working group of the Free Welfare Service nominate expectant mothers who were physically miserable; They received regular food allowances from the fifth month of pregnancy to two months after delivery. ... When a large number of prisoners of war were released home from the Soviet Union at the end of 1949, the Mennonite Relief Organization began to care for people returning home with food. ... Since December 1947, 200 students at Kiel University have been fed with funds from Swiss donations; it was expanded to 2,800 students on April 28, 1948 with the help of the Mennonite Central Committee. ... As a token of thanks, the Kiel students had a bronze plate with a relief and a dedication attached to the Menno Simons monument near Bad Oldesloe . ... When the working group of the voluntary welfare organization set up four-week beach trips for 1,500 school children in need of relaxation in the summer, the head of the relief organization, C. Dyck, provided high-quality food. ... Pastor Adolf Plath, the Kiel provost representative of the Evangelical Church's aid organization, reported in the Kiel congregation book in 1952: 'The Mennonites have proven to be our loyal and generous friends and brothers over and over again. We can only think of them with great gratitude. They sent 1,110,000 kilos of food to Kiel and 93,680 kilos of clothing and shoes, which we ... distributed in close cooperation with the public welfare organization and the other charities. '"

“The Swiss Evangelical Aid Organization also brought large quantities of food, clothing and shoes to Kiel. But it also set other key priorities. So it built two large barracks in the city, in which a kindergarten for 115 children, two sewing rooms with ten sewing machines for women who did not have their own sewing machine, were available. A shoemaker's workshop was also opened. 'It is of particular importance to our church life that we have received two churches from Switzerland,' said Pastor Plath in a report to the provost synod. In addition, funds were made available from Switzerland for the restoration of the Petruskirche and for the house of the Kiel city mission and for the parish hall in Friedrichsort . "

The Lutheran Church of the United States of America did in the years 1946 to 1960 a total of 517,817 kg of food, clothing, shoes and other donations to Kiel. She also donated $ 10,000 for the construction of the Vicelinkirche in Kiel . Ample donations flowed from Sweden to the parishes in Kiel until the early 1960s.

For around a decade, Rempel led the relief work at the community level. His wife and the growing children were also involved in some church services: "It was a world-facing side of preaching and pastoral care ."

"Release our prisoners of war!"

The week of October 19-25, 1953, was held throughout Germany as a prisoner-of-war commemoration week with a series of rallies. It began with the sirens of the big companies, steamers and other means of transport lasting one minute and ended on Saturday with the “Day of Loyalty” and on Sunday with the “Day of Faith”, on which all over the country at 7:00 p.m. in the windows Candles in memory of the prisoners of war were lit.

In Kiel it was decided by the parish of St. Nikolai with the returnees, representatives of the church leadership and the regional church office, representatives of the state government, the council assembly and the magistrate of the city of Kiel, the German Red Cross, all women's and men's groups to invite to an evening service.

“First we invited the press for an interview in which we stated that the Church saw in the arrival of the Late Returners a visible sign that God had answered their prayers after many years. This service will be a church rally that concerns the whole population. "

This appeal met with a tremendous response. Since Provost Asmussen fell ill, Rempel had to conduct the service alone. The Kieler Nachrichten reported on October 22, 1953:

“The church celebration in the overcrowded house of God clearly and impressively demonstrated the great sympathy that the whole German people takes in the fate of those returning and those who have not yet returned. The warning that Pastor Dr. Rempel for the sick provost Asmussen DD expressed in his sermon, was spoken from the hearts of all those gathered: 'We don't want to stop raising our voices. We direct the request and the demand to all states that are still holding prisoners of war: release them now! Let them be free for humanity and for God's sake! '"

Rempel wrote in his memoirs:

“I conveyed the greetings of the church and the provost to the returnees and congratulated them wholeheartedly with the words: 'We are happy with your relatives that the time of your imprisonment is over, that you have your home again and that your home is yours again has ... Let me tell you: The movement of your hearts is answered by the movement of our hearts. ' I then read out the names of the 36 returnees who had recently returned to Kiel. I went on to say that the German homeland united to express its love for those who had returned home. You, the former prisoners of war, had suffered a mission to the German people: 'You have paid reparations, have paid off a debt burden for us. They paid for what was indebted by the state. No question, 'I said,' has led to such strong contradictions and to such great confusion as the question of German soldierhood in World War II. And there was no need for the post-war period to come to the German people as united as in the effort to help their prisoners of war to return home. With this service we want to thank God for your return home and at the same time intercede for those who remained in captivity and for those convicted of war. With this service we also want to show the solidarity of the churches with the fate of returnees and prisoners of war. ' It was moving how the assembly of around one and a half thousand participants rose and began singing the chorale Now thank you all . "

The German Red Cross did an excellent job with the tracing service, by reuniting families that were torn apart and by looking after the prisoners with parcels. The responsible organizations and authorities try to shed light on each individual fate in painstaking detailed work.

The head of the Evangelical Aid Organization for Internees and Prisoners of War Theodor Heckel was one of the first to rush to the Friedland camp to greet returning prisoners. He had worked tirelessly since 1945 to clarify the fate of the prisoners. In 1950 he turned to the Ministry of the Interior of the Soviet Union with a written appeal to alleviate the grave fate of German prisoners in Soviet camps. He helped the prisoners through the Evangelical Relief Organization with package campaigns, which the Soviet government allowed from a certain point in time . Rempel: "Bishop Heckel never tired of recalling the fate of those who had not yet returned and calling for active help for them and those who had returned."

Travels, encounters, visits and family stories

Rempel visited Rome one day with his Canadian nephew Pete Härtens and was later invited by his sister and brother-in-law to their farm in Swift Current , Canada . Repeated vacations in Canada and visits to Canadian relatives in Kiel awakened the desire in Rempel to take an inventory of the Rempel family, who were scattered around the world, and to record the migrations and fates of the individuals in a brief story. In 1976 the Rempel family met in Clearbrook, British Columbia , to which all descendants of his grandfather, David Rempel, were invited as far as they could be located. 252 people appeared. Nobody from the Soviet Union could be there. In a 337 page book, the members of the family were presented in words and pictures. In a second volume, Rempel later examined the beginnings of the settlement history of his ancestors in Russia.

In 1970 Rempel received a four-week visit from his eldest sister and her son from the Soviet Union. He heard about the fate of his relatives, about whom he had learned almost nothing for 40 years. Jostling:

“We were once twelve brothers and sisters. Four of them had died young. I hadn't met her. The youngest brother I still knew had died in an accident. When my father got into a second marriage after my mother's untimely death, three stepsisters were added, so that we were eleven siblings before I was arrested in 1929. "

His eldest sister was arrested in 1952 and sentenced to 25 years in a prison camp in a show trial (allegedly because her brother Hans had visited her in Orenburg during the war ) and was taken to Abes concentration camp in the northern Urals . She survived two years in the camp in the murderous climate there. After Stalin's death, she was transferred to a camp in Kazakhstan , 180 km from Karaganda . After another quarter of a year, the camp gate opened for them. A Kazakh bought her a ticket and took her to the Orenburg train station. After a total of three years and a month in prison, she was able to be with her children again. Years later, she was rehabilitated by a Soviet court. She received no reparation.

In the spring of 1964 Rempel fulfilled a childhood dream and traveled for 29 days by train, boat and bus from Kiel via Munich, Venice and Greece to Lebanon , Syria , Jordan , Israel and Egypt . Via Greece it went back to Kiel. After this trip Rempel took over the sponsorship of a child in the Christian Palestinian camp Dbayeh, which was maintained by the Evangelical Carmel Mission in Beirut under the direction of his former student friend Martin Spangenberg.

A year later, Rempel, accompanied by his wife, led a trip to the Holy Land for the Institute for Scientific Travel - touring ring in Starnberg . This trip led again via Beirut. In the following years he led further trips to the Holy Land for the Starnberg Institute and came repeatedly to Lebanon, where he was also able to meet his godson again. Supported by Rempel, he passed his Abitur as one of the best in his class, studied medicine and became a specialist in gynecology. After obtaining his license to practice medicine, the Rempel couple took him on a trip to Germany by car and showed him the beauty of the country and the diversity of German culture. After completing his American master's thesis, the godson was taken on by Beirut University as an assistant professor and sent to Bahrain on the Persian Gulf. The Rempel couple visited him and his family in Manama , Bahrain. He went back to the United States and worked as a division manager in the Atlanta Department of Health . The Rempels repeatedly spent their holidays in his house there.

In a conversation with the grandson at the end of his memoirs, Rempel explained the title of the book as follows: "God shows us the springboard ... But we have to jump ourselves." Two insights came to him:

“The first: The summary of my life demands the most important thanks to God, especially for the people he has accompanied me on my way. But then I also have to thank the people on my way. The second insight is this: The restless searching and urging, the unwillingness to stop and not being able to stop are given to us by the Creator. But also that - as it rested once after the work was done - we can smile backwards. "

Fonts

• Escaped the Soviet hell. Own experiences of a young Christian in today's Russia . 10th edition Kassel 1935.
• Deutschtum in the USSR since 1917 , Diss. Berlin 1938.
• German peasant performance on the Black Sea. Population and Economy 1825 . Leipzig 1940 ( Georg Leibbrandt Collection 3).
• The Rempel Family 1797-1976 . Clearbrook, BC 1976.
• He leads me on the right road for his name's sake. Psalm 23: 3: The way of the Rempel family . Virgil, Ont. 1980.
• Weapons of the defenseless. Alternative service of the Mennonites in the USSR . Winnipeg 1980.
• Brotherly help in the ruins of Kiel after 1945 . In: Heimatbuch der Deutschen aus Rußland 1990–1991 . Ed. V. the compatriot of Germans from Russia. Stuttgart 1991, pp. 280-288.
• Jump over the wall with God. From Mennonite farm boy in the Urals to pastor in Kiel. Published by Hans-Joachim Ramm, Husum: Matthiesen 2013, ISBN 978-3-7868-5502-6 .

literature

• Eduard Juhl / Margarete Klante / Herta Epstein: Elsa Brändström. The path and work of a great woman in Sweden, Siberia, Germany and America , Stuttgart: Quell 1962.
• Otto Auhagen: The turning point of the Russian-German peasantry in the years 1927–1930 , Leipzig 1942.
• Peter P. Dyck: Orenburg on the Urals. The story of a Mennonite settlement in Russia . Clearbrook, BC 1951.
• Alexander Dallin : German rule in Russia 1941–1945. A Study of Occupation Policy. From the American by Wilhelm and Modeste Pferdekamp. Droste Verlag, Düsseldorf 1958. - Unchanged new edition: Athenaeum, Königstein im Taunus 1981, ISBN 3-7610-7242-2 .
• Christian Lopau: The refugee camp for the Russian Germans in Mölln (1929-1933) , in: Institute for Culture and History of the Germans in Eastern Europe (Ed.): Research on the history and culture of the Russian Germans 7/1997 , Essen: Klartext 1997, p 107-117.
• Michael Fahlbusch : Science in the Service of National Socialist Politics? The “Volksdeutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft” from 1931–1945 . Nomos, Baden-Baden 1999 (on Rempel especially pp. 599 and 617), ISBN 3-7890-5770-3 .
• Sandra Zimmermann: Between self-preservation and adaptation. The attitude of the Baptist and Brethren congregations under National Socialism , Wölmersen 2001/2004 (online at bruederbewendung.de) .
• Karl-Heinz Frieser : The retreat operations of Army Group South in Ukraine. In: The Eastern Front 1943/44. The war in the east and on the secondary fronts. On behalf of the Military History Research Office, ed. by Karl-Heinz Frieser, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 2007 (= The German Reich and the Second World War, Vol. 8), ISBN 978-3-421-06235-2 , pp. 339–450, here pp. 438–444 ; see also Why Hitler fired the savior of an entire army . Interview with Karl-Heinz Frieser. In: Die Welt on March 28, 2014.
• Synodal Committee (Ed.): Community Book Kiel , Stuttgart: Ev. Publishing company 1952.
• Friedrich Hammer : Directory of the pastors of the Schleswig-Holstein regional church 1864–1976 , ed. from the Association for Schleswig-Holstein Church History, Neumünster: Wachholtz 1991, p. 310.

Web links

• Literature by and about Hans Rempel in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Johann (his baptismal name) was the seventh of twelve children and the first son of his parents (Rempel: Mit Gott ... , p. 71).
2. ↑ His father Johann D. Rempel (1874–1938?) Had been a preacher for the Mennonite congregation in Klubnikowo since 1910 (online at gameo.org) .
3. ↑ Nearby, in Tozkoye Wtoroje , a drama took place from December 1915 to March 1916: There typhus raged so terribly among 25,000 prisoners of war that hardly more than 8,000 were alive when the epidemic slowly died out by itself in the spring. Elsa Brändström was only able to come to Tozkoye in May 1916 and create completely new conditions with her delegation. Eduard Juhl reports on this in the book Elsa Brändström ... , pp. 82–84.
4. ↑ Orenburg Mennonite Settlement (online at gameo.org)
5. ↑ Rempel was accused according to Article 58.10 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR of supporting the Mennonite emigration movement and "inciting the people through agitation, selling everything and plunging themselves into misery". (Rempel: Mit Gott ... , p. 111 f.)
6. ↑ Rempel: Mit Gott ... , p. 162 ff.
7. ↑ Hans-Joachim Ramm: Introduction , in: Rempel: Mit Gott ... , p. 14; see. also Brothers in Need (online at gameo.org) .
8. ↑ Rempel served in the 1st Squadron of Reconnaissance Division 168, which was subordinate to the 68th Infantry Division . (Rempel: Jump over the wall with God ... , pp. 251 ff .; 271 ff.)
9. ↑ Insert (Chortitza Mennonite Settlement) (online at gameo.org)
10. ↑ Rempel: Mit Gott ... , p. 306 ff.
11. ↑ Rempel first came to the interpreting department of the OKW and was then transferred to the newly established 6th Army on the Eastern Front as a special leader in the rank of lieutenant and assigned to a defense force at the army headquarters. After a short work as an interpreter, he was given the task of leading a Cossack squadron . In October 1943 he took part in the fighting for the gate to the Crimea near Zaporozhye . After several courses and attending the war school in Dresden , promoted to lieutenant on July 1, 1944, he returned to the Eastern Front, to the 1st Panzer Army (Rempel: Jump over the Wall with God ... , p. 320 f .; 343 ff .; 351 ff.)
12. ↑ Rempel was assigned to the liaison staff to the 1st Hungarian Army with the task of conducting negotiations with the Ukrainian rebels in the area of ​​the Hungarian army . After the collapse of Hungary, he returned to the 1st Panzer Army and took up positions in Slovakia . Again he was given the task of contacting partisan units and starting negotiations. Rempel: " Hitler's catastrophic occupation policy with its subhuman philosophy contributed significantly to the fact that the population sympathized with the partisans ." (Rempel: Mit Gott ... , p. 354 ff .; 362 ff.)
13. ↑ Rempel: Jump over the wall with God ... , Husum 2013, p. 412 f.
14. ↑ Biographical information based on Hasko v. Bassi in: Theologische Literaturzeitung 139 (2014) 5, Sp. 591 ff. And Karin Wolf: Hans Rempel - his personality, his memoirs. A search for traces , supplement to: Rempel: Mit Gott… , Husum 2013.
15. ↑ Hans-Joachim Ramm: Introduction , in: Rempel: Mit Gott ... , p. 18 f.
16. ↑ Rempel: Mit Gott ... , p. 459.
17. ↑ Hiking with tour operators . In: The time . No. 12/1976 ( online ).
18. ↑ Rempel: Mit Gott ... , p. 462 f.
19. ↑ Halfmann: How should we preach today? In: Jürgensen: The Hour of the Church ... , Neumünster 1976, pp. 261–263, here p. 263 (online at geschichte-bk-sh.de) .
20. ↑ Dyck, Cornelius J. (1921–2014) (online at gameo.org)
21. ↑ Rempel: Mit Gott ... , p. 438 ff.
22. ↑ Rempel: Mit Gott ... , p. 444.
23. ↑ Rempel: Mit Gott ... , p. 468.
24. ↑ Kieler Nachrichten , October 22, 1953, No. 247, p. 3.
25. ↑ Rempel: Mit Gott ... , p. 468 f.
26. ↑ Rempel: Mit Gott ... , p. 469.
27. ↑ Rempel: Mit Gott ... , p. 495 ff.
28. ↑ Rempel: Mit Gott ... , p. 501.
29. ↑ Rempel: Mit Gott ... , p. 503 ff.
30. ↑ Rempel: Mit Gott ... , p. 508 ff.
31. ↑ Rempel: Mit Gott ... , p. 505.
32. ↑ Auhagen, Otto (1869–1945) (online at gameo.org)