Horst Kasner

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Horst Kasner (born August 6, 1926 in Berlin as Horst Kazmierczak ; † September 2, 2011 ibid) was a German Protestant theologian and father of Chancellor Angela Merkel .

Life

parents

Horst Kasner was born in 1926 as the son of the Prussian police officer Ludwig Kaźmierczak (* 1896 in Posen , † 1959 in Berlin) and his wife Margarete, née Pörschke, in the Berlin district of Wedding .

Horst Kasner's father, Ludwig Kaźmierczak - the surname was later changed to Kasner - was born out of wedlock to Anna Rychlicka Kaźmierczak and Ludwig Wojciechowski in Posen. In early 1915, at the age of nineteen, he was drafted into the Prussian army, fought on the Western Front and was captured by the French or deserted. The Polish press published a photo in 2013 that allegedly shows Kaźmierczak in the uniform of the Blue Army in 1919/1920 (together with his wife Margarete ). This was formed under French command from German prisoners of war of Polish origin and fought at least in part in 1918 in France on the side of the Western Allies against the German Reich, and from 1919 to 1921 in the Polish-Ukrainian War and Polish-Soviet War . It is therefore possible that Kazmierczak also fought against Germany.

In the early 1920s moved Ludwig Kazmierczak to Berlin after the Prussian and German Reich belonging Posen in 1920 part of the newly established Poland had become. In 1930 he changed his surname to Kasner, which gave the family members this surname. Ludwig Kasner was chief sergeant in 1931 and chief sergeant in the police force in Berlin in 1943.

Childhood, studies, marriage

After his birth in the Wedding district, Horst Kasner grew up in the Pankow district of Berlin . He was first baptized Catholic, but then confirmed Protestant.

Kasner was released from captivity to Heidelberg , where he completed his Abitur in 1946. From 1948 he studied Protestant theology , first at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg , then at the Bethel Church University . During his studies he kept in regular contact with his home church, the Evangelical Church in Berlin-Brandenburg , and as early as 1951 he expressed his wish to return there. Since moving to the GDR ran into difficulties in 1953 because of the particularly restrictive ecclesiastical policy at the time, he made an appointment with the responsible consistory to serve his vicariate in Hamburg. As vicar at the Epiphany Church in Winterhude , he married the two years younger Latin and English teacher Herlind Jentzsch (born July 8, 1928 in Danzig ; † April 6, 2019 ). Their daughter Angela was born in July 1954 .

Relocation to the GDR

Just one day before the birth of daughter moved Kasner from Hamburg to the GDR over. The migration movements at that time across the not yet fully sealed inner German border ran in the opposite direction: in the first five months of 1954 alone, 180,000 people had left the GDR, between 1949 and the construction of the Wall in 1961 around 2.5 million. Kasner, however, who was also encouraged by the Hamburg bishop Hans-Otto Wölber , stuck to his plan to go to Brandenburg against the background of the lack of pastors in the GDR at the time. He took up a pastor's position in the village of Quitzow near Perleberg ; Wife and daughter, who had initially lived with grandmother Gertrud Jentzsch at Isestraße 95 after the birth , moved into the rectory there after six weeks. The situation of Christians and churches in the GDR at that time was marked by oppression from the SED . Individual pastors showed varying degrees of willingness to work together with the government and to participate in the " building of socialism ".

Pastoral College Templin

In 1957 Horst Kasner moved to the small town of Templin in Brandenburg. At the request of Albrecht Schönherr , who became general superintendent in 1963, he took over the construction of a seminar for church services, later a pastoral college, a church training center. "Due to his good prerequisites for the office and his ability to work pedagogically" Kasner was appointed to Templin, said Schönherr in a conversation in 2004. The location of the training center was the Waldhof, a church building complex outside the immediate city area of ​​Templin , on whose premises mentally handicapped people were also accommodated from 1958.

The son Marcus was born on July 7, 1957 and the second daughter Irene was born on August 19, 1964.

Horst Kasner was considered a churchman who was not in opposition to the state leadership and church policy of the SED, but he was also not listed as an IM of the Stasi . Like Albrecht Schönherr and Hanfried Müller , he was a member of the Weißensee working group , which represented opposing positions to the bishop in Berlin-Brandenburg, Otto Dibelius . From the point of view of the government, Kasner was one of the “progressive” forces. His nickname in GDR times, which is also quoted again and again in the press, was accordingly the "red Kasner". After Rainer Eppelmann , Kasner described himself as the real inventor of the term church in socialism . As head of the pastoral college for many years, he was in a key position within the Evangelical Church in Berlin-Brandenburg: theologians had to go to Templin as part of their further training or during their training as vicars before the second theological exam. In this context, there is no known pressure on pastors who - unlike Kasner - were considered critical of the system. Richard Schröder wrote in 2004:

“For me, Mr. Kasner has always been one of the trustworthy people. And in any case, he wasn't a conformist . The Pastoral College Templin has always been a window to the West for us, through Western speakers and Western literature. The theological speakers were not hand-picked by line. "

Horst Kasner took part in trips abroad by the National Front and, in addition to the privilege of being able to travel westwards, had two cars: a company car and a private vehicle that had been procured through Genex . On the other hand, however, his wife Herlind Kasner was denied work in the GDR school service. A recruitment attempt by the State Security is considered to have failed. In contrast to most other pastor families, the children's entry into higher education was not hindered.

Kasner's constant interlocutors in matters of SED church politics were Wolfgang Schnur and Clemens de Maizière , the father of the later GDR Prime Minister Lothar de Maizière . Schnur, who later became chairman of the Democratic Awakening Party , was a member of the Synod of the Evangelical Church in Greifswald, at times Vice President of the Synod of the Evangelical Church of the Union (EKU) and Synod of the Federation of Evangelical Churches in the GDR. Clemens de Maizière also worked as a lawyer in the GDR. He was also a synodal of the Berlin-Brandenburg Church and a leading member of the GDR CDU . The negotiating partner of Clemens de Maizière, Wolfgang Schnur and Horst Kasner in the GDR government was the then State Secretary for Church Affairs Klaus Gysi from 1979 to 1988 .

Kasner has been critical of the social order of the Federal Republic of Germany since the 1960s at the latest; he did not support reunification . After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1992, he saw East Germany cheated out of the promised economic miracle. He criticized the fact that "the established parties had taken prey from the state" and that "the party state of the FRG ... actually only stood out from the party dictatorship of the GDR through the multi-party system".

He was temporarily involved against the military continued use of the Wittstock military training area (" Bombodrom "). In addition, he was chairman of the dedicated to the conservation of the chapel in the countryside incipient development association church Old Placht eV

Kasner died on September 2, 2011 at the age of 85 in Berlin and was buried in Templin.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Family history of the Chancellor: Merkel's Polish roots Spiegel-Online from March 13, 2013
  2. ↑ According to information in several press releases (e.g. Jörg Ratzsch, Peter Könnicke, Susann Fischer: Angela Merkel mourns her father , Sächsische Zeitung, September 5, 2011) , the place of death was Templin ; According to information from the family with reference to the death certificate, however, Kasner died in Berlin-Mitte .
  3. ↑ Chronicle - Little Church in the Green Retrieved March 1, 2015.
  4. ↑ Merkel has Polish roots. Süddeutsche Zeitung of March 13, 2013.
  5. ↑ http://www.n-tv.de/panorama/Merkels-Opa-kaempfte-gegen-Deutsche-article10353776.html
  6. ^ Dziadek Angeli Merkel był w armii Hallera. Walczył z Niemcami? Gazeta Wyborcza (Poznań), March 23, 2013
  7. ↑ Grandfather's War. , In: FAZ , March 22, 2013
  8. ↑ Merkel's grandpa causes a stir. Focus.de
  9. ^ Family history of the Chancellor (archive). Net forum
  10. ↑ Chancellor Merkel's family used to be Catholic. ( Memento from November 5, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Palatine Mercury from April 24, 2013.
  11. ↑ Günther Lachmann, Ralf Georg Reuth: "The first life of Angela M.", Piper, Munich 2013, p. 20
  12. ↑ Karl-Heinrich Lütcke : "... as soon as the emergency call of the eastern zonal regional churches for Brothers came to his ear ...". Theologians from West Germany become pastors in the eastern region of Berlin-Brandenburg (1949–1956). In: Yearbook for Berlin-Brandenburg Church History 70, 2015, pp. 262–290, here pp. 276 f.
  13. ↑ Angela Merkel mourns her mother. Retrieved April 12, 2019 .
  14. ↑ Lit .: Langguth
  15. ↑ Merkel's father Horst Kasner died. In: Abendblatt.de. Hamburger Abendblatt , September 5, 2011, accessed on June 2, 2020.
  16. ↑ The clergyman Horst Kasner died at the age of 85 - Angela Merkel mourns her father. In: Schwäbisches Tagblatt. SCHWÄBISCHES TAGBLATT GmbH, September 5, 2011, accessed on March 14, 2018 .
  17. ↑ Alexander Cammann: The legend of Angela. In: ZEIT ONLINE. ZEIT ONLINE GmbH, September 6, 2009, accessed on March 14, 2018 .
  18. ↑ The journalist Christiane Hoffmann reproduces a statement by Eppelmann: "Kasner told him that he was the real inventor of the 'Church in Socialism', says Eppelmann, who was in Templin as part of his pastoral training." Chr. Hoffmann: Der Pfarrer and the pastor's daughter ; in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, March 11, 2012, http://m.faz.net/aktuell/politik/inland/gauck-und-merkel-der-pfarrer-und-die-pfarrerstought-11679371.html , accessed on 29 October 2018
  19. ↑ quoted from Lit. Langguth
  20. ↑ Jacqueline Boysen quotes his comment from the church newspaper of the Berlin-Brandenburg Evangelical Church (summer 1992) in Angela Merkel , p. 159, Ullstein Buchverlag Berlin 2005, ISBN 978-3-548-36832-0
  21. ↑ Martin Klesmann, Jürgen Schwenkenbecher: No rest in Rheinsberg ; Berliner Zeitung, June 7, 2006
  22. ↑ Das Kirchlein im Grünen , publisher: Förderverein Kirche Alt Placht eV, leaflet, no year, before 2012
  23. ^ Gudrun Janicke: Funeral of Horst Kasner. Angela Merkel says goodbye to her father ; Stern , September 10, 2011
personal data
SURNAME Kasner, Horst
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kaźmierczak, Horst
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Protestant pastor
DATE OF BIRTH August 6, 1926
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin-Wedding
DATE OF DEATH September 2, 2011
Place of death Berlin