Hermann Barth

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Hermann Martin Barth (born November 12, 1945 in Ludwigshafen ; † March 15, 2017 in Hanover ) was a German pastor, Protestant theologian and President of the Church Office of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) as well as an ethicist .

Life

Hermann Barth studied Protestant theology from 1965 to 1970 at the Universities of Heidelberg , Edinburgh and Tübingen up to the first state examination in theology . From 1970 to 1977 he worked as a research assistant at the Old Testament seminar at the University of Hamburg and received his doctorate in Protestant theology in 1974 . From 1977 to 1985 he worked as a vicar and parish priest .

Since 1985 he has been active in the church office of the Evangelical Church in Germany , first as a senior councilor for questions of the church's public responsibility and from 1993 to 2006 as vice-president of the church office and head of the main department “Theology and Public Responsibility”. From 2006 to 2010 Barth was President of the Church Office. "Barth interpreted his office as theological vice-president and later president of the church office rather aggressively and presented pointed views on theological and bioethical questions." In contrast to Lutheran theologians, for insisting that the commitment to their confessions is constitutive for a church, Barth campaigned for the EKD as a community of member churches with different denominations to be recognized as a church itself.

In 2004 he was appointed a member of the National Ethics Council by resolution of the Federal Cabinet to succeed Bishop Wolfgang Huber . From April 2008 to March 2010 he was a member of the German Ethics Council . He was chairman of the board of the Social Science Institute of the EKD .

Hermann Barth died on March 15, 2017 in Hanover after many years of Parkinson's disease. He was buried in the Oggersheim cemetery in Ludwigshafen .

Honors

The Evangelical Theological Faculty of the Westphalian Wilhelms University of Münster awarded Hermann Barth an honorary doctorate on October 19, 2010.

Publications (selection)

  • Joint declaration of the churches “God is a friend of life”. (Collaboration), 1989.
  • EKD genetic engineering study "Consent with Creation". (Collaboration), 1991
  • Argumentation aid for current medical and bioethical questions “To deal with life in a spirit of love”. (Collaboration), 2002
  • How do we want to live? Contributions to bioethics from an evangelical perspective. 2003

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b obituary notice in the Neue Presse of March 22, 2017, p. 22.
  2. ↑ a b Reinhard Bingener: Hermann Barth died . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of March 17, 2017, p. 4.
  3. ^ Rainer Clos, Wiebke Rannenberg: Formative for ethics and ecumenism. On the death of the former EKD Church Office President Hermann Barth ( Memento from March 17, 2017 in the Internet Archive ), Evangelischer Pressedienst (epd), March 16, 2017.
personal data
SURNAME Barth, Hermann
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Barth, Hermann Martin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Protestant theologian and ethicist
DATE OF BIRTH November 12, 1945
PLACE OF BIRTH Ludwigshafen am Rhein
DATE OF DEATH 15th March 2017
Place of death Hanover