Hermann Kapler

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Hermann Paul Kapler (born December 2, 1867 in Oels (Silesia), † May 2, 1941 in Berlin ) was a German lawyer and influential Protestant church politician.

Life

After studying law and political science, Kapler received his doctorate from the University of Berlin in 1889 and worked as an "unskilled worker" at the Berlin Consistory and Provincial School College from 1895 . In 1901 he became a full member of the Evangelical Upper Church Council (EOK) in Berlin, the governing authority of the Evangelical Church in the older provinces of Prussia . Here he was particularly responsible for looking after the Protestant congregations abroad, but was also significantly involved in drafting the Law on Teaching Complaints (“Heresy Law”) of 1910.

In 1919 Kapler became non-theological vice-president, in 1925 president of the EOK of the Evangelical Church of the Old Prussian Union, as it was called after the upheaval. Until 1919 he was called Oberkonsistorialrat in the Ev. Oberkirchenrat , supplemented from 1920 by secular vice-president . His greatest success was the conclusion of a church treaty with the Free State of Prussia in 1931. As EOK President, Kapler was also President of the German Evangelical Church Committee (the executive body of the German Evangelical Church Federation), to which he had been a member since 1919, and thus the highest representative of Protestantism in Germany . Despite differing views on the question of war guilt, Kapler played an important role in the Ecumenical Movement for Practical Christianity (Life and Work) . In 1925 he headed the German delegation at the World Conference on Practical Christianity in Stockholm . As early as 1922, at a preliminary conference in Hälsingborg , he had coined the phrase that later became the motto of this movement: teaching separates, service unites .

When the National Socialists tried to bring the Protestant regional churches into line in the spring of 1933 , Kapler offered only cautious resistance. As chairman of a committee of three (with August Marahrens and Hermann Albert Hesse ) he worked out a new constitution on behalf of the German Evangelical Church Federation and met the government's wishes for an imperial church headed by a Reich bishop. After a violent campaign was launched against Pastor Friedrich Bodelschwingh, who was elected bishop of the Reich , Kapler resigned on June 8, 1933, weary. The appointment of a successor without asking the government provided the basis for the appointment of August Jäger as State Commissioner in the Prussian Church.

The church historian Kurt Meier describes Kapler, together with Otto Dibelius and the Vice-President of the Evangelical Upper Church Council Georg Burghart, as supporters of the nationwide boycott of Jews on April 1, 1933, which was accompanied by a number of murders.

Fonts (selection)

  • Concept and essence of the conditio iuris . Lette-Verein, Berlin 1889 (diss.).
  • The revision of the method to reject the doctrine of clergy in the Prussian State Church . In: Preußisches Pfarrarchiv 2, 1910, pp. 98–128.
  • On the title question in the heresy law . In: Deutsche Juristen-Zeitung 16, 1911, pp. 1205ff.
  • The German protected areas as a field of work for the Gustav Adolf Association . Hinrichs, Leipzig 1913.
  • (with Hans Preuß ): Lutheranism around 1530 in words and pictures . Furche-Kunstverlag, Berlin [1930].
  • German Evangelical Diaspora Abroad and the German Evangelical Church Federation . German Evangelical Church Federation, Berlin-Charlottenburg 1930.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gerhard Besier : The war guilt question, the problem of different state and church borders and the ecumenical movement. In: ders./ Eckhard Lessing (Ed.): The history of the Evangelical Church of the Union. A manual . Vol. 3. Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, Leipzig 1999, p. 129.
  2. ↑ Kurt Meier: Church and Judaism. The attitude of the Protestant Church to the Jewish policy of the Third Reich. Göttingen 1968, p. 25.
personal data
SURNAME Kapler, Hermann
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kapler, Hermann Paul (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer and Protestant church politician
DATE OF BIRTH December 2, 1867
PLACE OF BIRTH Oils
DATE OF DEATH May 2, 1941
Place of death Berlin