Helmut Matthies

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Helmut Matthies (February 2011)

Helmut Matthies (born May 7, 1950 in Dungelbeck near Peine in Lower Saxony ) is a German Protestant theologian, pastor, Evangelical journalist and head of the Protestant news agency idea until 2017 .

Life

General

Matthie's parents were innkeepers in Peine, Lower Saxony. A pastor's wife awakened faith in Jesus Christ in him. After a diaconal work and the Abitur in 1972 at the preparatory college in Laubach, Matthies studied Protestant theology in Berlin , Hamburg and Heidelberg from 1974 and as a guest student at the Catholic University of St. Georgen in Frankfurt (Main). During his time in Hamburg he was particularly involved in the student mission in Germany (SMD) and attended courses from Helmut Thielicke , among others . Gerhard Löwenthal helped him to install a cross in a chapel against the resistance of the host - the Protestant student community .

In 1978, Matthies interned at the German Press Agency (DPA) . In the same year he took over the management of the evangelical news agency idea , which provides information on events and developments in church and society from an evangelical perspective; he is editor-in-chief of the weekly magazine ideaSpektrum . It was founded in 1982 to pastor of the Evangelical Church in Hessen and Nassau ordained and leave for service with idea. The church president Helmut Hild accompanied him on his way to the pastor.

Matthies is a volunteer member of the main board of the German Evangelical Alliance . He is the deputy chairman of the Association of Evangelical Booksellers and Publishers. V. (VEB). According to Volker Dettmar, Matthies also became a member of the right-wing conservative Evangelical Emergency Community in the 1970s . In an interview in 2014, Matthies contradicted this representation: He was only present as a student in 1969 at an event and then at two board meetings and had now confirmed that his membership had "expired for decades". According to the entry in the Stuttgart register of associations, Matthies was a member of the board of directors of the emergency community from May 1979 to April 1983.

Matthies differentiates his political orientation according to topics: ethically he is conservative, on environmental issues such as the prohibition of factory farming he is with the Greens and on the subject of abortion he is "according to the current classification right". In 2006 he signed the “Appeal for Freedom of the Press” staged by the weekly newspaper Junge Freiheit , against the exclusion of Junge Freiheit from the Leipzig Book Fair . In the run-up to the election of the Federal President in 2010 , he publicly spoke out in favor of the election of the SPD and Greens candidate , Joachim Gauck . He made a similar statement in an interview with a regional newspaper.

In February 2016, he criticized the commitment of the Bavarian regional bishop and EKD council chairman Heinrich Bedford-Strohm for refugees and called for a right to human dignity for Frauke Petry ( AfD ): "If the church absolutely means, in a democracy with numerous parties [...] if you have to talk about politics, then you shouldn't do it unilaterally. "

At the end of 2017, Matthies handed over the management of the evangelical news agency idea to Matthias Pankau and took over the honorary role of chairman of the board on February 1, 2018. Since 2018 he has also been the honorary managing director of the association “Faith, Courage and Freedom - Christians in the GDR and after”.

Private

Matthies was married to the doctor Heidrun Matthies from 1983 until her death in 2018; he is the father of a son and lives in Brandenburg an der Havel .

Red Book Church

In 1976, Matthies, at that time still a student, published the Red Book Church together with Jens Motschmann , which contains a total of three essays written by Matthies. Under the title From Protestant to Marxist student communities , Matthies advocated the thesis that, since the 1960s, the influence of “theological neo-Marxism” within the Protestant church had grown stronger. In the article Kirchliche Presse on the left-wing course , Matthies accused the Deutsche Allgemeine Sonntagsblatt , the Evangelical Press Service , the Evangelical Commentaries and the Lutheran Monthly Bullets of the same and recommended idea as an “alternative to the Protestant press service”.

Finally, Matthies defended the South African apartheid regime against Protestant criticism from Germany under the heading The Church is talking - South and South West Africa in the distorting mirror of the Evangelical Academies : “Although the opinions among theologians and lay people are very different, and even thanks to tourism, more and more people from South Africa and to get to know South West Africa and come to the view that this multi-ethnic state can definitely come to a peaceful, just and Christian solution to the problems by means of 'separate development', the official church and its institutions in Germany have long since sided with the radical ones Opponents of the country beaten. ”Of the seven authors of the Red Book , five belonged to the Evangelical Emergency Community .

Both the book and the essay sparked criticism. At that time , Eberhard Stammler spoke of “foolish theses” and “wrong judgments” by young conservative theologians. The journalist and theologian Hans Hafenbrack also criticized the book because Matthies worked there with personal defamation in order to paint the picture of a communist infiltration of the church. Volker Dettmar writes: “The tenor of this publication [of the Red Book] is the assumption that the Protestant Church in Germany has been infiltrated by communists and is pursuing a 'popular front policy'. The authors see themselves in the midst of a religious struggle against which the church struggle of the Third Reich was a vanguard battle ”.

Fonts

  • God can also be different. Fontis-Verlag, Basel 2019, ISBN 978-3-03848-172-0 .
  • (Ed.) The media challenge. Christians and journalism. Brunnen-Verlag, Giessen / Basel 1994, ISBN 3-7655-5724-2 .
  • (Ed.) How do you become a Christian, Mr. Bishop? Brendow, Moers 1988, ISBN 3-87067-331-1 .
  • with W. Thielmann, Heinz-Georg Binder: Conversations about God and the world. Coprint Druck- und Verlagsgesellschaft, Wiesbaden 1980, ISBN 3-922819-01-X .
  • (Ed.) Between Adjustment and Resistance. Interviews with bishops and comments on the situation of the Protestant churches in the GDR. Coprint, Wiesbaden 1980, ISBN 3-922819-00-1 .
  • with Jens Motschmann: Rotbuch Church. Seewald Verlag, Stuttgart 1976, ISBN 3-512-00452-0 .

Awards

General

In 1997, Matthies received the “Yes to Life” foundation award .

Matthies received an honorary doctorate from the state-independent Theological University Basel (STH Basel). (In Germany, the title may not be used as part of the name because the university is not recognized there.)

In 2007, Matthies accepted the Walter Künneth Prize as editor-in-chief for idea .

In 2009, Matthies received the Gerhard Löwenthal Prize for Publicists.

Controversy about the Gerhard Löwenthal Prize

For accepting the Gerhard Löwenthal Prize, Matthies was criticized by Christhard Wagner , education officer of the Evangelical Church in Central Germany (EKM). On December 28, 2009, Wagner spoke of the idea that the idea would “balance on the ridge of right-wing extremism”. The head of the EKD's journalism department , Oberkirchenrat Udo Hahn , told the KNA that he would have advised Matthies against accepting the award if he had been asked.

Gerhard Löwenthal's widow, the daughter of Ernst Lemmer , said she was hurt by these statements in an interview with Junge Freiheit and described it as infamous to associate Löwenthal, a Jew who had experienced the persecution of Jews by the Nazi regime, with right-wing extremism want. Matthies replied in an idea comment that he had accepted the award because "otherwise he would have been ashamed of a Jew who, like hardly any other journalist in the West, has stood up for the persecuted and disenfranchised in the communist area".

In the laudation, Rolf Sauerzapf , who was also a member of the former Evangelical Emergency Community , mentioned that Matthies had previously been called "right-wing radical" by the Evangelical Church, for example because of an idea editorial from October 4, 1989 entitled Reunification - what else ? who was even called "endangering peace".

Matthies described it as "defamation", "manipulative" and "one-sided" that the Evangelical Church in Central Germany and the church press did not mention in their report on this incident that before him, even without such criticism, Church Councilor Rolf Sauerzapf , Peter Scholl-Latour , Wolf Jobst Siedler and Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann accepted the award. The prize is awarded by the Conservative Education and Research Foundation in cooperation with Junge Freiheit . The foundation has connections to Junge Freiheit as well as to the FAZ Conclusion Foundation through the Board of Trustees.

On January 21, 2010, a meeting between Matthies and Wagner took place in the presence of the idea chairman Horst Marquardt and the bishop Ilse Junkermann . According to a joint press release, after the conversation there was still a “different assessment” of the acceptance of the Löwenthal Prize and “the associated external impact”. The EKM made it clear that even Wagner's previous statement was not intended to equate the position of idea and Helmut Matthies with right-wing extremism.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Pur-Magazin 02/1997, p. 31
  2. ↑ Helmut Matthies: Review of an unusual bishop and EKD council chairwoman: “We are Protestant” . Website of idea. Retrieved July 19, 2010.
  3. ↑ a b c Chrischona-Magazin 02/2004, p. 4
  4. ↑ a b c d The story of a slander. January 7, 2010; Archived from the original on July 8, 2010 ; Retrieved July 8, 2010 .
  5. ↑ Imprint Idea . Idea.de. Archived from the original on October 12, 2007. Retrieved June 25, 2010.
  6. ↑ The Evangelical Alliance introduces itself: Main Board . Ead.de. Retrieved June 25, 2010.
  7. ↑ Home www.veb-medien.de
  8. ↑ Volker Dettmar: Interest and information. Comparison of the press agencies "Evangelical Press Service" and "Information Service of the Evangelical Alliance". Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1994 (also Diss. Frankfurt a. Main), here: Section on the Evangelical Notgemeinschaft, pp. 78–83. Dettmar speaks of "extremely right-wing conservative".
  9. ↑ a b Dirk Wingender: Ethically, I am conservative. Idea director Helmut Matthies on legal allegations and his story. Mittelhessen.de, November 12, 2014, accessed on November 27, 2014 .
  10. ^ Stuttgart District Court, VR 2032
  11. ↑ nz: Celebrities stand up for “Young Freedom”. Archived from the original on January 13, 2014 ; accessed on January 2, 2013 (in Netzeitung , February 7, 2006).
  12. ↑ ideaSpektrum 23/2010 p. 19
  13. ↑ "Ethically I am conservative" Interview Matthies on legal allegations and his story from November 12, 2014
  14. ↑ Is politics more important than belief? idea.de from February 14, 2016, accessed on August 11, 2016.
  15. ↑ Wolfgang Polzer: Journalist, Prophet and Bridge Builder , idea, Liestal / Wetzlar January 10, 2018, pages 28–30
  16. ↑ Federal President: idea has a firm place in the media landscape , idea.de, article from February 2, 2018.
  17. ↑ Germany: Peaceful Revolution , ead.de, article from October 3, 2019.
  18. ^ Helmut Matthies: Church press on the left course . In: Jens Motschmann, Helmut Matthies (ed.): Rotbuch Kirche . Stuttgart 1976, pp. 95-115.
  19. ↑ Helmut Matthies: The Church speaks - South and South West Africa in the distorting mirror of the Evangelical Academies . In: Motschmann / Matthies, p. 207.
  20. ↑ Motschmann / Matthies, p. 232.
  21. ↑ Eberhard Stammler: Church in the pillory. Foolish theses of young conservative theologians . In: Die Zeit , No. 22/1977.
  22. ↑ Hans Hafenbrack: History of the Evangelical Press Service. Evangelical press work from 1848 to 1981. Luther-Verlag 2004, p. 586. See also Olaf Schwencke: Protestantisches Prinzip. 30 years of Loccumer Kulturpolitische Kolloquien (PDF; 116 kB) Kulturpolitische Mitteilungen , No. 88, I / 2000, pp. 8–9. Schwencke offers a concrete example in Section 5.
  23. ↑ Volker Dettmar: Interest and information. Comparison of the press agencies "Evangelical Press Service" and "Information Service of the Evangelical Alliance". Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1994 (= also Diss. Frankfurt a. M.), page 93.
  24. ↑ Foundation award . Yes to Life Foundation , archived from the original on June 25, 2010 ; Retrieved June 25, 2010 .
  25. ^ STH Basel . Sthbasel.ch. Archived from the original on February 7, 2009. Retrieved July 5, 2010.
  26. ↑ Andreas Spath: Walter Künneth Prize 2007 . Ksbb-bayern.de. Retrieved July 5, 2010.
  27. ↑ Foundation for Conservative Education and Research (FKBF) . Fkbf.de. Retrieved June 25, 2010.
  28. ↑ EKM - Archive Press Office Magdeburg - EKM's head of education criticizes the head of the Protestant news agency idea for accepting a prize from “Young Freedom” . Ekmd.de. December 28, 2009. Retrieved June 25, 2010.
  29. ↑ kna.de - message from December 30, 2009 untitled, 1:05 pm, quoted from Helmut Matthies at kath.net .
  30. ^ By Christian Vollradt: Interview with Ingeborg Löwenthal . Jungefreiheit.de. Retrieved June 25, 2010.
  31. ↑ Excerpt from the laudation . Jf-archiv.de. Retrieved June 25, 2010.
  32. ↑ Clarifying encounter between the Evangelical Church in Central Germany (EKM) and the Evangelical News Agency idea. Evangelical Church in Central Germany , archived from the original on June 25, 2010 ; Retrieved June 25, 2010 .
personal data
SURNAME Matthies, Helmut
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Protestant theologian, pastor and journalist
DATE OF BIRTH May 7, 1950
PLACE OF BIRTH Dungelbeck near Peine