Helmut Erlinghagen

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Helmut Erlinghagen SJ (born October 9, 1915 in Hagen ; † October 29, 1987 in Bad Soden am Taunus ) was a German Jesuit and eyewitness to the atomic bombing on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.

Life

Helmut Erlinghagen was a son of the building contractor Ernst Erlinghagen and his wife Bertha, nee. Brochhagen. He attended secondary school in Hagen- Haspe . On April 26, 1935, he was accepted into the Jesuit novitiate in 's-Heerenberg . In 1937 he and Klaus Luhmer were sent to the mission of the German Jesuits in Japan . He himself reports about the circumstances surrounding his ordination on July 1, 1945, shortly before the end of World War II in Asia:

In the last days of June 1945 I was prematurely ordained a priest in the chapel of the novitiate by Bishop Fukabori of Fukuoka , who was able to come to us with great difficulty . These ordinations , which were preferred not only to me, show the seriousness of the situation at that time: we should at least “ die as priests ”.

On January 2, 1945, he took the train with a fellow missionary from Tokyo to Hiroshima to the mission headquarters of the Society of Jesus , which was located between the train station and the city center. From there it went on to the novitiate of the Society of Jesus in Nagatsuka - he probably stayed here until October - which was four and a half kilometers from the center of Hiroshima on one of the western foothills of the mountains:

"The house was built in the Japanese style, but the solid cross supports made it more stable than the usual wooden structures."

There he was one of the few Europeans who saw the atomic bomb being dropped on the city. On the afternoon of August 6th, he and a search party, including Johannes Siemes and Klaus Luhmer, set out for the city to rescue the Jesuits who lived near the Catholic parish church near the city center. They found the four: Hugo Lassalle , Wilhelm Kleinsorge , Hubert Cieslik and Hubert Schiffer living in Asano Park ( Shukkei Garden ), albeit with injuries of varying severity, and were able to bring them to safety in the novitiate, where they were first treated by Pedro Arrupe were. As a late consequence, Erlinghagen fell seriously ill in 1978.

After studying philosophy in the USA, he moved back to Japan, where he taught ethics at the Sophia University in Tokyo . In 1971 he returned to his home country Germany and held a teaching position at the University of Mainz until his death in 1987 .

One of the most important concerns of his ethical work was to condemn the use of the atomic bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as a crime and to see the meaning of life in the atomic age in feeling responsible for all living values ​​and being included in social responsibilities.

Fonts

  • Japan - A German Japanese on the Japanese. 1974
  • Japan - a country study. 1979
  • Hiroshima and us - eyewitness accounts and perspectives. 1982
  • Suicide and meaningfulness in the atomic age. 1994

literature

  • Stefan Omlor: Helmut Erlinghagen (1915–1994) - a Jesuit from Hagen as an eyewitness in Hiroshima . In: Fabian Fechner u. a. (Ed.): Colonial pasts of the city of Hagen , Hagen 2019, ISBN 978-3-00-063343-0 , pp. 67-69.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ https://www.kulturkreis-glashuetten.de/wir-%C3%BCber-uns/
  2. ↑ https://www.fernuni-hagen.de/imperia/md/images/presse/fotos/2019/12/hagen-postkolonial-helmut-erlinghagen.jpg
  3. ↑ Biographical information , Provincial Archives , accessed on August 24, 2020
  4. ↑ a b Helmut Erlinghagen: Hiroshima and us. Eyewitness accounts and perspectives. Frankfurt am Main 1982. pp. 9, 11
  5. ↑ The World Peace Church (Hiroshima) is located here today
personal data
SURNAME Erlinghagen, Helmut
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German author and university professor; Eyewitness to the atomic bombing on Hiroshima
DATE OF BIRTH October 9, 1915
PLACE OF BIRTH Hagen
DATE OF DEATH October 29, 1987
Place of death Bad Soden am Taunus