Harald Rohr

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Harald Rohr after his retirement in Niederndodeleben

Harald Michael Walter Rohr (born February 20, 1940 in Breslau ; † January 12, 2016 in Hohe Börde ) was a German Protestant pastor , human rights activist and one world activist. He was the founder of the Third World Information Center in Herne , co-founder and long-standing board member of the international human rights organization for the right to food FIAN , and a member of the regional synod of the Evangelical Church of Westphalia . Together with the later Nobel Peace Prize -carrier Kailash Satyarthi , he played a significant role in revealing exploitative child labor in the Indian carpet industry and the introduction of the Rugmark -Siegels for carpets without exploitative child labor. For the Bread for the World campaign he was a "committed supporter and initiator" and for over 20 years a member of the aid organization's distribution committee . As a co-founder of the third oldest third world store in Germany , he was a pioneer in fair trade. He also campaigned for the rights of asylum seekers in custody for deportation and victims of marriage trafficking, against child prostitution , for conscientious objectors , for nuclear disarmament , including through the organization of Easter marches, against land mines and for access to affordable AIDS drugs in developing countries.

Life

He was born in Breslau as the son of the pastor Gottfried Rohr and his wife Rosemarie, nee. Buntzel. His grandfathers were Walter Rohr, Superintendent von Jauer and pastor at the Friedenskirche there , and Walther Buntzel, Superintendent von Brieg . For the first years he lived in Steinseifersdorf near Peterswaldau in the Eulengebirge with his mother, who died in 1945 at the age of 30. At the end of the war, his grandmother fled with him to Bavaria , later to Westphalia , where he was brought together with his father who had returned from the war. He grew up in Münster, Westphalia. He had been married since 1966 and had four sons. He was diagnosed with advanced cancer in the summer of 2015, from which he died on January 12, 2016. He is buried in Dortmund's Ostenfriedhof .

Act

Harald Rohr, 1974

After studying Protestant theology, a vicariate in Wattenscheid and an assistant preacher position in Herten , he came to Herne in 1968 , where he accepted a position as parish priest in Baukau . He was involved in the still young campaign "Bread for the World" and in advising conscientious objectors.

Beginnings of Third World Solidarity and Fair Trade

The world shop on Von-der-Heydt-Straße in Herne, 1975

In 1974 he founded the third nationwide " Third World Store " in Herne . When he was considering leaving in order to devote himself entirely to Third World work, the Herne District Synodal Board, at the instigation of Superintendent Fritz Schwarz , created a parish office for ecumenical diakonia for him , within the framework of which he could devote himself entirely to this topic. Thereupon he founded the Information Center Third World (IZ3W) Herne (today "One World Center Herne") in 1976, inspired by the Information Center Third World Dortmund, which has existed since 1971.

One of the early topics of the information center was the situation in South Africa , at a time when apartheid was not yet unanimously condemned and whose later first black President Nelson Mandela was still considered a terrorist in conservative circles. The IZ3W called, among other things, for a boycott of fruits from South Africa, one of the most important sources of income for the apartheid state. Such engagement regularly led to complaints from conservative Christians to his superior, Fritz Schwarz, who however always refused to punish him.

Harald Rohr and project partner in the "Jute instead of plastic" campaign, 1980

From the mid-1970s until his retirement he was a member of the Committee for Ecumenical Diakonia ("Distribution Committee") of Bread for the World, the highest body that decided on the allocation of funds for the aid organization. In 1978 he traveled to Sri Lanka and India for the first time , later to Zaire and the Philippines , which resulted in long-term partnerships.

Peace movement

From around 1979, Harald Rohr participated in the peace movement , which campaigned for nuclear disarmament and especially against so-called retrofitting , as an organizer of Easter marches and as a speaker at demonstrations and events. His work partly anticipated the conciliar process that was decided in 1983 at the World Conference of Churches in Vancouver , Canada .

Working for the human right to food

In 1986 he was one of the founders of FIAN (FoodFirst Information and Action Network), an organization for the human right to food represented in 60 countries , whose board member and treasurer he remained until 1998 and whose German section was located in the Herner Information Center until after the turn of the millennium was settled. This transformed the discourse on food security from the question of charitable aid to the question of human rights, while traditional development aid had mostly ignored the often political causes of hunger. At the same time, FIAN's founding created awareness of the previously neglected economic, social and cultural rights enshrined in the UN Social Pact as fundamental and inalienable to civil and political human rights.

Creation of the fair trade label Rugmark for carpets without child labor

In the 1990s he was out and about in India with Kailash Satyarthi, who was later honored with the Nobel Peace Prize for his work, in sometimes risky covert missions to uncover child labor in Indian companies, which was already forbidden at the time. The "Rugmark" seal introduced in 1995 for Indian carpets without exploitative child labor, one of the first seals in fair trade, remained a focus of work for a long time.

Commitment to refugees

From the 1980s he campaigned for refugees housed in Herne and Castrop-Rauxel who were exposed to hostility and, in some cases, violent attacks. With the establishment of a deportation prison in Herne in 1992, the dispute intensified. A particularly drastic experience was the suicide of the 23-year-old Sudanese refugee Emanuel Tout in detention. Harald Rohr accused the authorities of driving refugees into illegality with their policy of imprisonment and that the courts only heard the authorities' side. In 1998 he caused a sensation with a hunger strike for the rights of asylum seekers.

Further work

Harald Rohr was a long-time member of the regional synod of the Evangelical Church of Westphalia . Other topics of his work were the campaign to ban landmines , which led to the Ottawa Convention in 1998 , a campaign against child prostitution ( ECPAT ), support for victims of marriage trafficking and access to affordable AIDS medicines for those affected in developing countries.

In 2002 he retired and moved to Niederndodeleben in Saxony-Anhalt , from where he supported the development of voluntary church structures in the field of development and the Third World for a decade as a voluntary representative for Bread for the World. Until his death, he was the author of the intercession service of Bread for the World, which he launched , through which congregations were provided with templates for intercessions on human rights, social, ecological and other current topics every week, also in many other church and non-church media, in particular He was a regular guest author of the newspaper Our Church .

Web links

Works

Harald Rohr: Treasures of the Heart: Sermons on current affairs . Ed .: Eine Welt Zentrum Herne. Luther-Verlag, Bielefeld 2019, ISBN 978-3-7858-0749-1 ( dnb.de [accessed on January 13, 2019]).

Obituaries

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Harald Rohr: Working under a false name ?! In: Information Center One World. Retrieved January 13, 2019 .
  2. ↑ FIAN co-founder Harald Rohr passed away. January 19, 2016, accessed January 13, 2019 .
  3. ^ A b FIAN International: Right to food defender Harald Rohr passes away. Accessed January 13, 2019 .
  4. ↑ a b Evangelical Church of Westphalia (ed.): Negotiations of the 1st (ordinary) meeting of the 18th Westphalian regional synod from November 14th to 17th, 2016 . Bielefeld ( evangelisch-in-westfalen.de [PDF]).
  5. ^ A b Martin Domke: Nobel and Sakharov Prize Winners 2014 - “Old Westphalia”. (PDF) In: Westfalen WeltWeit. News from ecumenism, mission and Church world responsibility. Möwe - Office for Mission, Ecumenism and World Church Responsibility, 2015, accessed on January 13, 2019 .
  6. ↑ Eckehard Röhm: Bread for the World mourns Harald Rohr. In: Bread for the World. January 15, 2016, accessed January 13, 2019 .
  7. ↑ a b Dr. Hans-Joachim Döring: Obituary for Pastor Harald Rohr: "With love and passion for God's wide and endangered world". Lothar Kreyssig Ecumenical Center, accessed on January 14, 2019 .
  8. ↑ a b Axel Gebauer :? Hunger strike against asylum law (new Germany). Retrieved January 14, 2019 .
  9. ↑ a b Ute Eickenbusch: Odyssey with a happy ending. In: Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung . November 30, 2012, accessed on January 15, 2019 (German).
  10. ↑ a b Information on the sexual exploitation of children - PDF. (PDF) ECPAT Deutschland eV, June 2008, accessed on January 15, 2019 .
  11. ↑ a b Jörg Ernst: The development policy public relations work of the Protestant churches in Germany and Switzerland . LIT Verlag Münster, 1999, ISBN 978-3-8258-4572-8 ( google.de [accessed on January 15, 2019]).
  12. ↑ a b Bread for the World at the Dessau Christmas Market: Evangelical Church of Anhalt. November 24, 2005, accessed January 15, 2019 .
  13. ^ Sobiesław Nowotny: Historija Kościoła Pokoju w Jaworze / History of the Peace Church in Jauer . Jawor 2003, p. 63 ( jelenia-gora.pl [PDF]).
  14. ^ Brieg - Stadt und Landkreis (1964) / District Mollwitz with Mollwitz, Bärzdorf, Grüningen and Laugwitz - GenWiki. Retrieved January 14, 2019 .
  15. ↑ Karin Rohr: Short biography of Harald Rohr . In: Herzensschätze: Sermons on current affairs . Luther-Verlag, 2019, ISBN 978-3-7858-0749-1 , pp. 236-238 .
  16. ^ Herner pastor Harald Rohr dies at the age of 75. In: Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (WAZ). January 17, 2016, accessed on January 13, 2019 (German).
  17. ↑ About us. In: 3. Welt eV Accessed on January 17, 2019 (German).
  18. ↑ a b His Mission: Justice. In: Our Church . January 20, 2016, accessed January 13, 2019 .
  19. ↑ 5 to 12: day of action 12./13. January . In: The daily newspaper: taz . January 10, 1991, ISSN  0931-9085 , p. 5 ( taz.de [accessed on January 14, 2019]).
  20. ↑ Petra Bornhöft: When a school becomes a refugee home ... In: Die Tageszeitung: taz . November 17, 1986, ISSN  0931-9085 , p. 9 ( taz.de [accessed on January 14, 2019]).
  21. ^ WG: No asylum granted - suicide in deportation prison . In: The daily newspaper: taz . December 29, 1993, ISSN  0931-9085 , p. 4 ( taz.de [accessed on January 14, 2019]).
  22. ↑ Von Rol, Kirbach: Prison, deportation prison, there is a growing threat of foreigners in Germany who are "obliged to leave the country". Even if they haven't committed anything: Deported - into the cell. In: Die ZEIT. April 4, 1994. Retrieved January 14, 2019 .
  23. ↑ Robin Alexander: Starving, so that the refugees are satisfied . In: The daily newspaper: taz . April 14, 1998, ISSN  0931-9085 , p. 6 ( taz.de [accessed on January 14, 2019]).
  24. ↑ Help for 25 years / Advice center for migrant women supports women in need. Retrieved January 15, 2019 .
  25. ^ Harald Rohr: Peace Education and Peace Education in Saxony. Retrieved January 16, 2019 .
  26. ↑ All intercession. Retrieved January 14, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Rohr, Harald
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Rohr, Harald Michael Walter (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Protestant pastor, human rights and one world activist
DATE OF BIRTH February 20, 1940
PLACE OF BIRTH Wroclaw
DATE OF DEATH January 12, 2016
Place of death High Börde