Helmuth Kittel

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Helmuth Kittel (* 11. April 1902 in Potsdam ; † 20th January 1984 in Goettingen ) was a German Protestant New Testament scholar , religious educator , church historian and university lecturer. He is considered a spiritual advisor to the National Socialist Minister Hanns Kerrl .

Life

Kittel was the grandson of a pastor and the son of a Potsdam ministerial councilor. He graduated from high school in 1920 at the Viktoria-Gymnasium Potsdam and studied Protestant theology at the universities in Berlin and Tübingen from 1920 to 1925 . In 1925 he received his doctorate with a thesis on Oliver Cromwell in church history with Karl Holl . In 1925 he became an assistant at the theological faculty in Göttingen. In 1932 he completed his habilitation on the concept of “God's glory”, but soon turned to pedagogy. In the following years he worked as a lecturer from 1930 to 1932 at the Pedagogical Academy Altona , in 1933 at the now so-called College for Teacher Training in Lauenburg and from 1934 to 1937 at the College for Teacher Training in Danzig .

From 1930 to 1933 he was the federal leader of the German Freischar , which arose from a merger of various scout associations. At the beginning of 1933 he was involved in the establishment of the “Greater German Confederation” and in the same year led the Freischar into the Hitler Youth . In the spring of 1933 he demonstratively joined the SA and in 1937 the NSDAP . Until the end of 1933 he was a member of the Faith Movement German Christians and, from 1935, its successor organization, the Reich Movement German Christians . In 1935 he recommended that Adolf Hitler be included in the prayers for religious instruction: “Protect Adolf Hitler every day so that no accident happens to him. You sent him in need, keep him for us, oh dear God. ”In 1938 he was appointed to a chair for the New Testament at the University of Münster . In 1938 he signed the Godesberg Declaration and showed himself to be an advocate of National Socialism. From September 1939 to 1945 he was drafted into the Wehrmacht.

The reservations of the Evangelical Church of Westphalia about Kittel's political past initially prevented his reinstatement to the Münster chair in 1945. From 1946 to 1953 Kittel was a professor at the Pedagogical Academy in Celle ( Adolf-Reichwein-Hochschule Celle ), which was moved to Osnabrück in 1953 and of which he remained director until 1959. In 1963 he moved again to the theological faculty of the University of Münster, where he retired in 1970. In 1958 he received an honorary doctorate from the Theological Faculty of Münster, and in 1983 he received an honorary doctorate from the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Augsburg . In 1963 he received the Great Cross of Merit of the Lower Saxony Order of Merit . Kittel avoided confrontation with his role in the Nazi state for life.

His pioneering work 1947 is significant: From religious instruction to evangelical instruction . Unlike Richard Kabisch, he did not want religious instruction based on a general concept of religion, but rather orientation towards God's Word in the Gospel, which is also followed by the hymn book and the catechism. The school church service is still part of it. The teacher, too, must ultimately show himself to be a sinner and thus a vulnerable authority, but the teacher can only be a believer in the church, which is why the vocation is necessary in consultation between state and church.

Kittel had been with Elisabeth born in 1929. Wolfram married.

Fonts

  • From religious instruction to evangelical instruction Wolfenbütteler Verlagsanstalt, 1947
  • The development of pedagogical universities, 1926–1932: A contemporary historical study on the relationship between state and culture , Schroedel, Hanover 1957
  • The University of Education , Darmstadt 1965
  • 50 years of religious education. Experiences and experiences , Aachen 1987

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Quoted from Barbara Stambolis , Helmuth Kittel, in: Jugendbewegt coined, pp. 405–416, here p. 413.
  2. ^ Text by Renate Meurer, Reinhard Meurer: Texts of National Socialism. Examples, analyzes, suggestions for work. Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag , Munich 1982, ISBN 3-486-84061-4 , pp. 41-45.
personal data
SURNAME Kittel, Helmuth
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German SA member, religious educator and church historian
DATE OF BIRTH April 11, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Potsdam
DATE OF DEATH 20th January 1984
Place of death Goettingen