Heinrich Kloppenburg

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Heinrich (Heinz) Ferdinand Otto Kloppenburg (born May 10, 1903 in Elsfleth ; † February 18, 1986 in Bremen ) was a German Evangelical Lutheran theologian of the Confessing Church and senior church councilor .

Live and act

Kloppenburg's father was the captain of the merchant navy Diedrich Kloppenburg. He first attended elementary school in Hude , later the upper secondary school and then the old grammar school in Bremen. He then completed commercial training in the wool industry from 1919 to 1922, and then went to sea for two and a half years. In 1925 he made up his Abitur at the Bremen Old High School.

After graduating from high school, he studied Protestant theology at the universities of Marburg , Göttingen , Münster and Bonn from 1925 to 1930 . After the tentamen (1st exam), he was provisional assistant preacher in Bad Zwischenahn from November 1930 and vicar in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Oldenburg from October 1932 . After the exam (2nd exam), which he took on June 30, 1932 in Oldenburg , he was ordained a pastor on October 9, 1932 and from October 30, 1932 initially worked in Wilhelmshaven - Heppens . At first he was taken with the promises of the National Socialists and became a member of the NSDAP and the German Christians . He soon realized that their policies contradicted his beliefs. In 1934 he became a founding member and board member of the Pastors' Emergency Association and in May 1934 he took part in the Barmer Confession Synod. In February 1935, Kloppenburg was elected to the Presidium of the Confessing Synod and thus in fact head of the Confessing Church of Oldenburg. After an initially unsuccessful disciplinary procedure , he was put into temporary retirement by the German-Christian church regiment on November 26, 1937 and the Gestapo banned him from speaking in the Reich. From 1941 he acted as a representative in Wiefelstede at the request of the community . From 1942 he was also chairman of the conference of the regional brother councils of the Evangelical Church.

After liberation from National Socialism in 1945, he was appointed to the senior church council of his regional church and held this office until he was temporarily retired in 1953. From 1947 to 1950 he was the German secretary in the refugee commission at the World Council of Churches in Geneva and until 1970 commissioner of the Evangelical Church for socio-political issues as well as vocational school pastor in Dortmund . At this stage he had become a member of the Churches' Commission on International Affairs of the World Council . In 1952 he ran in vain for the office of bishop in Oldenburg. In 1961 he took part in the 1st All-Christian Peace Assembly in Prague , but stopped working in the CFK after 1968 when the CFK supported the Warsaw Pact's suppression of the Prague Spring . He was also committed as the federal chairman of the International Union of Reconciliation . In close association with Martin Niemöller and other representatives of the West German peace movement , he became chairman of the “Working Group of German Peace Associations” from which in 1956 the central agency KDV emerged . From 1959 to 1971 Kloppenburg was chairman of the KDV central office.

Kloppenburg joined the SPD after the war . In later years he also became a member of the Board of Trustees of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation .

Honors

On June 4, 1963, the Comenius Faculty in Prague awarded him an honorary theological doctorate , as did the Eden Theological Seminary in the USA on June 5, 1957 .

On his 80th birthday in 1983 he was awarded the Grand Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany .

After his death, parts of his written estate were kept in the “Archive of Social Democracy”.

Works

  • Martin Niemöller. Cologne: Pahl-Rugenstein, 1982
  • Those who hunger and thirst for justice. Mendelsohn, Jack. - Berlin: Evangelische Verl. Anst., 1969
  • To the members and friends of the Christian Peace Conference in the Federal Republic of Germany. - [Dortmund]: [Young Church], 1968
  • Christians against Hitler. Robertson, Edwin Hanton. - Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verl.-Haus G. Mohn, 1964, The German edition was revised. u. with Erg. verse. by Heinz Kloppenburg
  • Fire on earth. Niles, Daniel Thambyrajah. - Stuttgart: Evang. Mission Edition, 1962
  • The message for the world. Niles, Daniel Thambyrajah. - Munich: Kaiser, 1960
  • Has our German conscience already been overcome? Kloppenburg, Heinz. - Hamburg: Society f. Christian-Jewish Cooperation eV, 1959
  • The uprising of consciences against the atomic bomb . Kloppenburg, Heinz. - [Göttingen]: Verl. Wissen u. Responsibility, 1959
  • Confession of Christ in the Atomic Age? Munich: Kaiser, 1959
  • Sermon on 2 Corinthians 6, 1-10, go to Invokavit on Sunday, d. February 14, 1937, in d. Rüstringen-Heppens church. Barmen mark: Presbytery d. evang.-ref. Parish, 1937
  • Sermon on Hebrews 10: 19-25, go on the 2nd Sunday of Advent, December 10, 1936 in d. evang.-luth. Rüstringen-Heppens church. Barmen mark: Presbytery d. evang.-ref. Parish, [1937]
  • Sermon on Hebrews 10: 19-25, go on the 2nd Sunday in Advent, d. December 6, 1936 in d. evang.-luth. Rüstringen-Heppens church. Wuppertal-Elberfeld (: Köhler), 1936
  • Children's and community services in their liturgical and community relationships. Hoyer, Erich. - Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1933, 2nd edition, presumably by e. Gleanings / by Heinz Kloppenburg
  • A migration bird's trip to India: Bremen - Calcutta. Wülfingerode-Sollstedt: Treue Verlag, 1926, 1st ed.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. munzinger.de: Heinrich Kloppenburg , accessed on October 13, 2015
  2. Cheers weeks after the beginning of the war ( Memento from August 3, 2012 in the web archive archive.today )
  3. fes.de

Web links