Hermann Klugkist Hesse

Hermann Klugkist Hesse (born December 16, 1884 in Larrelt , † August 24, 1949 in Wuppertal ) was a German Reformed theologian and church historian.

Life

Hesse came from an old East Frisian clergy of Reformed style. His father Franz Hinrich Hesse (1842-1904) was superintendent in Emden. In 1911 he married Gertrud Reimann (1886–1963). The children were Marie-Luise (1912–1985), Franz (1917–2013), later professor for Old Testament theology in Erlangen, Marburg and Münster, Hermann (1920–2001) and Frauke (1925–2010).

Hesse was initially a pastor in East Friesland in parishes in the Evangelical Reformed Church of the Province of Hanover (Wybelsum, Weener and Loga) until 1920, and from 1920 to 1949 pastor of the then largest Reformed community in Germany in Wuppertal-Elberfeld, a parish in the church province of Rhineland former Evangelical Church of the Old Prussian Union . From 1924 he was editor of the Reformed Wochenblatt, which had a large circulation in Germany. As a lecturer he worked at the theological school and the seminary in the department of church history.

Since 1923, Hesse had known Karl Barth , who, as a professor in Göttingen, Münster and Bonn, called for a rethinking of Protestant theology after the First World War. In a lively correspondence, Hesse and Barth discussed theological issues as well as contemporary phenomena. With the emergence of National Socialism, Hesse followed Barth's line of content, who rejected the German Christians , who forced conformity with the Nazi state in the church, as heresy. In the organs of the internal church opposition, the pastors' emergency association founded by Martin Niemöller and the Confessing Church , Hesse was active from the start. Because Hesse was not prepared to accept any censorship even as the editor, the German-Christian presbytery withdrew the editor.

Thereupon, together with Pastor Karl Immanuel Immer (1888-1944) from Barmen, he published the new weekly newspaper “Unter dem Wort”, which with 30,000 copies became one of the main press organs of the emerging Confessing Church. Because of unpopular statements, both were put into temporary retirement by Reich Bishop Ludwig Müller in March 1934. It was precisely this that triggered a major protest movement in Elberfeld, which caused the number of members of the BK to grow sharply. The church buildings were withdrawn from the BK members and pastors by the other pastors, so that the BK congregation had to meet in halls. At the level of the Rhineland Provincial Church, Hesse was involved in committees and bodies. In 1935 he was arrested for a day because he had read a statement from the old Prussian Brotherhood Council from the pulpit. Hesse was involved in the founding of the Church University of Wuppertal , which had to be continued illegally after 1937. Until a large wave of arrests in 1939, he also took part in banned exams. In 1938 he and other pastors in Prussia refused to take an oath on Hitler . From 1940 onwards, Hesse made intensive efforts to resolve the church conflict in Elberfeld and an agreement was reached with the neutral pastors. As superintendent of the Elberfeld church district, Hesse was instrumental in rebuilding the church in Wuppertal and the Rhineland from 1946 onwards. He tried to find a reconciliation with his old opponents, but at the same time took a repentant attitude. In 1946 he met Karl Barth again, who was forced to emigrate to Switzerland in 1935.

Church history work

The first major monograph was written by Hesse on the East Frisian reformer Menso Alting . With his biography of Adolf Clarenbach , who was burned as a Cologne martyr in 1529, he became known to a broader public and earned his license in theology. The presentation about the Dutch theologian Hermann Friedrich Kohlbrügge was read as a camouflage to the events of the time during the church struggle and was very widely used (in the 80s the work was translated into Dutch). There were also numerous individual contributions and studies. Hesse's lectures were popular and often reached several thousand listeners during the church struggle. His lecture on Huguenot Admiral Coligny in 1937, in which Hesse even dealt with the question of tyrannicide, is remarkable . His extensive lectures on all epochs of church history are unpublished. For his scientific achievements he received in 1948 from the University of Bonn , the honorary doctorate awarded.

estate

Hermann Klugkist Hesse left a diary that recorded the church-political events of the Nazi era and the war experiences in Wuppertal for the years 1936 to 1947 on around 1200 pages. This has now been published in excerpts by his grandson Gottfried Abrath and gives an insight into the structures, the mentality and the milieu of the pastors in the church struggle. Abrath also included the political deficits of the BK and gave explanatory hypotheses as to why there was a complete failure on site with regard to the persecution of the Jews. This study shows how deeply the Evangelical Church in Germany was still rooted in the conservative national thought patterns of the empire. While a protest came about quickly in the area of ​​church politics, it is completely absent in the political areas. From 1939 onwards a retreat into a supposedly intact inner world can also be registered. In addition to the diaries, there is an extensive, as yet unpublished correspondence, particularly with his son Franz. Parts of the estate are in the archive of the Association of Evangelical Churches in Wuppertal-Elberfeld.

Works

• The church in the struggle of the present. Insights from their history on guidance for the future, Elberfeld 1924.
• Church studies of the evangelical church in Elberfeld. Guide to the introduction to the history, nature and order of the community, Elberfeld 1926. New edition in: Hermann Klugkist Hesse / Ernst Hense: The Reformed and Lutheran Congregation Elberfeld, ed. by Daniela-Nadine Reiher and Hermann-Peter Eberlein, Kamen 2014, ISBN 978-3-89991-155-8 , pp. 16–82.
• Menso Alting. A figure from the fighting times of the Calvinist Church, Berlin 1928.
• Petrus Cürtenius, 1607-1619 pastor in Elberfeld. A leader of the Lower Rhine Church from its early days, Elberfeld 1928.
• Spring light on the Rhine. Adolf Clarenbach. His life and death, Mörs 1929.
• Adolf Clarenbach. A contribution to the history of the Gospel in West Germany, Neuwied 1929.
• Hermann Friedrich Kohlbrügge, Wuppertal 1935.
• The one consolation in life and in death. The Heidelberg Catechism as a witness of the Church, Neukirchen 1939.
• Church history in plan, Gladbeck 1948.
• Letters from Peter Lo. A new contribution to the history of the Elberfeld preacher. ZBGV 70 (1949), pp. 6-115.
• The history of the Christian Church on the Rhine, Neukirchen, new edition 1955.
• Magister Werner Teschemacher (1589-1638) and the path of the Reformed Church in West Germany. ZBGV 77 (1960), pp. 1-134.
• The Ellerians in Ronsdorf; The Ronsdorf church planting and the word of God. In: Klaus Goebel (ed.): From Eller to Dürselen. New contributions to the church and town history of Wuppertal-Ronsdorf, Cologne 1981, pp. 5–13 and 14–25.
• The pastors of the Reformed Congregation Elberfeld (fragment). In: Hermann-Peter Eberlein (ed.): Album ministrorum of the Reformed Community of Elberfeld. Preachers and pastors since 1552, Bonn 2003, pp. 223–337.
• Elberfeld and its church in the Middle Ages and the Thirty Years War. Edited by Daniela-Nadine Reiher and Hermann-Peter Eberlein, Kamen 2013, ISBN 978-3-89991-147-3 .
• Elberfeld and its Reformed community in the 17th century. Edited by Daniela-Nadine Reiher and Hermann-Peter Eberlein, Kamen 2018, ISBN 978-3-89991-204-3 .
• Elberfeld and its church in the century of the Reformation. Edited by Daniela-Nadine Reiher and Hermann-Peter Eberlein, Kamen 2019. ISBN 978-3-89991-209-8 .

literature

• Hermann Klugkist Hesse jr: Hermann Klugkist Hesse (1884-1949). Wuppertaler Biographien 9, Wuppertal 1970, pp. 49-59.
• Klaus Goebel: Hermann Klugkist Hesse, directory of his writings, monthly books for Evangelical Church History of the Rhineland 19. 1970, 172–177.
• Gottfried Abrath: Structures of resistance in the church milieu. An analysis of the diaries of Pastor Hermann Klugkist Hesse - examples of the situation in autumn 1937 . In: Monthly Issues for Evangelical Church History of the Rhineland 37./38. , 1988/1989, 553-572.
• Gottfried Abrath: Comment on the position of Rhenish BK representatives in the dispute over the "church unification work" in 1942 . In: Günther van Norden, Volkmar Wittmütz (ed.): Evangelical Church in the Second World War , Cologne 1991, 259–268.
• Gottfried Abrath: Subject and Milieu in the Nazi State. The diaries of Pastor Hermann Klugkist Hesse 1936-1939 . Goettingen 1994.
• Hermann Klugkist Hesse jr .: In the service of the word - life report of H. Klugkist Hesse . Aachen 1995.
• Hermann-Peter Eberlein (Ed.): Album ministrorum of the Reformed Community of Elberfeld. Preachers and pastors since 1552, Bonn 2003, pp. 192–201.
• Gottfried Abrath: In between football with Karl Barth and Niesel - a methodical suggestion for the statistical analysis of diaristic topics and variance, presented using the example of the diaries of Pastor H. Klugkist Hesse 1936–1947 . In: Peter Schmidtsiefer, Birgit Siekmann: History as uncertainty . Nordhausen 2008.
• Gottfried Abrath: The adoption. Novel of a trip . Wermingsen, Norderstedt 2010. ISBN 978-3-83911-952-5 .
• Hermann-Peter Eberlein: Hermann Klugkist Hesse. In: Thomas Martin Schneider, Joachim Conrad, Stefan Flesch (Eds.): Between Confession and Ideology. 100 life pictures of Rhenish Protestantism in the 20th century. Leipzig 2018, pp. 96–99.
• Hermann-Peter Eberlein: Church history as community local history - To an exhibition about Hermann Klugkist Hesse at the Church University of Wuppertal. Yearbook for Evangelical Church History of the Rhineland 69 (2020), 171-174.

Web links

• Literature by and about Hermann Klugkist Hesse in the catalog of the German National Library