Heinrich Quistorp (theologian)

Heinrich Quistorp (born August 23, 1911 in Rheydt ; † February 12, 1987 in Minden ) was a German Reformed theologian and member of the Confessing Church .

Life

Quistorp was born on August 23, 1911 as the fifth child of Gottfried Quistorp (1867–1948) and his wife Julie Quistorp, b. Praetorius (1880–1950), born in Rheydt (Rhineland). On site, he attended elementary school and the secondary school, which he graduated from high school in 1930. In his youth he was enthusiastic about music, sports and was active within the Bündische Jugend .

Quistorp began his studies by studying law in Innsbruck and Göttingen. In 1931 he switched to studying theology, which he continued in Göttingen, Erlangen and Bonn. In Erlangen he was involved in the youth movement reformed university guild Nothung, u. a. as Chancellor of the Young Guild. In Bonn he founded the student confessional community together with other theology students in the house of the German Christian Student Union (DCSV) . He also worked in the brotherhood of young theologians in the Confessing Church .

When the Jungstahlhelm was forced to join the SA , Quistorp refused to take the oath on the Führer Adolf Hitler . When his theological teacher Karl Barth also refused this oath and his teaching post was withdrawn for it, Quistorp and his fellow students Martin Eras and Siegfried Hajek wrote a student protest declaration, which was read out by the theology student Karl Krämer to applause in the lecture hall. After the Gestapo took action, over 200 other students expressed their solidarity with the authors and presented the joint declaration to the rectorate. Quistorp remembers the subsequent conflicts with the Nazi student council as follows:

"Lic. Dr. Rose (a strictly denominational Lutheran), who was a weapons student , challenged the leading DC Willy Böld to a duel, which however had to pass because he could not fight. [...] The students Eras, Hajek, Krämer and I received a summons before the Bonn university judge and were interrogated about the motives and reasons for our explanation by a (fortunately friendly Catholic) magistrate who, however, criticized our loud final sentence: 'We want them Thing and not a surrogate ! ' [...] He was then informed in outline about the theology of the DC and said goodbye to us after the official interrogation with the personal words: 'I am also not a persecutor of Christians, but a good Catholic!' - It was only months later that we received the official notification that the proceedings against us had been dropped. The intervention of the Swiss envoy to the Reich Education Minister Rust had the removal of the exmatriculation lock for (first the four of us, then) all of the signatories. "

In 1935 he passed his first theological exam at the Confessing Church in the Rhineland. This was followed by a vicariate in Bad Honnef . With the help of the Bernardium scholarship , he studied in Utrecht from 1936 to 1939 and worked on his licentiate . In August 1939 he returned to church service. He was released from military service by a regime-critical commander and sent to pastoral care on the home front. After a vicariate in Winterburg , he completed his second theological exam in Barmen .

Until August 1944 he worked as an assistant preacher for the Confessing Church (BK) in Bockenau and Gebroth in Hundsrück near his last vicariate. He was then transferred to represent the BK pastor Otto Voget in Heiligenkirchen near Detmold, who was imprisoned for his sermons . Shortly before the end of the war, Quistorp was drafted as well, which forced him to quickly relinquish the leadership of the brotherhood that had been entrusted to him a few months earlier.

He married Elfriede Thilo in August 1944 and had three children. His oldest daughter is the theologian and political scientist Eva Quistorp . After the war he worked as a pastor in the Neukirchen-Vluyn community until he was called to Kleve on the German-Dutch border in 1952 . Here he was involved in youth work and in exchange with Dutch communities.

The activity he started in the Reformed community in Minden in 1963 was followed by his early retirement in 1967 due to increasing depression, which made it impossible for him to pursue his profession. His family life also suffered from his health condition and so he separated from his wife and moved to his sisters in Bremen. In 1976 he married Lieselotte Orphal from the Reformed church in Minden. He spent his old age in a nursing home in Minden, where he died on February 12, 1987.

Fonts

• The last things in Calvin's testimony. Bertelsmann, Gütersloh 1941.
  • Calvin's Doctrine of the Last Things. Lutterworth Press, London 1955 (translated by Harold Knight).
• Translation by Jan Koopmans: The old church dogma in the Reformation. Kaiser Verlag, Munich 1955.
• Translation by Cornelis Antonie de Ridder: Maria as co-redeemer? Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1965.
• Translation by Willem Frederik Dankbaar : Calvin, his way and his work. Neukirchener Verlag des Erziehungsverein, Neukirchen-Vluyn 1966.

literature

• Hans Prollingheuer : The Karl Barth case. 1934-1935. Chronograph of an eviction. Neukirchener Verlag, Neukirchen-Vluyn 1984.
• Wolfgang Scherffig: It started with a no! (= Young Theologians in the Third Reich, Volume 1). Neukirchener Verlag, Neukirchen-Vluyn 1989
• Wolfgang Scherffig: Nobody was guilty (= Young Theologians in the Third Reich, Volume 3), Neukirchener Verlag, Neukirchen-Vluyn 1994

Left

• quistorp.de | Contributions to the genealogy and history of the Quistorp family: D. theol. Heinrich Quistorp

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Wolfgang Scherffig: It started with a no! (= Young Theologians in the Third Reich, Volume 1) Neukirchener Verlag, Neukirchen-Vluyn 1989, pp. 164–165.

See also

Quistorp is the name of a Protestant north German family.