Horst Thurmann

Horst Thurmann (born August 9, 1911 in Düsseldorf , † September 23, 1999 in Elberfeld ) was a German Protestant pastor , opponent of Hitler , prisoner in the Dachau concentration camp and Bible teacher.

Life

Thurmann decided prior to his leaving examination to a study of Protestant theology , but had not the profession of a parish priest in sight. Rather, he was aware of the difficult spiritual problems of a normal parish pastoral office, as well as the inability of university theology, which wants to compete in the race with science, where he is convinced that it should only be science to a strictly limited extent. At Easter 1930 he attended the theological faculty in Göttingen without placing great expectations in his education. His real motivation for studying theology was rather a pronounced missionary interest: to win people for Jesus Christ . He wanted to do this as a qualified theologian. The broad intellectual and cultural spectrum associated with Christianity motivated him above all to study church history . A few semesters in Marburg , Leipzig and Bonn followed . Because Horst Thurmann wanted to become a missionary - at times he had India in mind as the country of assignment - he also learned something of the Sanskrit language . In autumn 1934 he took the first theological exam . Various attempts to be sent out to a missionary service by mission societies did not, however, lead to the goal. He himself said: I saw all of this as a sign from the Lord to stay in Germany, where the creation of the Confessing Church offered real front-line work.

Instead, Horst Thurmann submitted to the “illegal” Confessing Church in the Rhineland for practical training and was active as a vicar in various of their parishes. The subsequent visit to the preachers' seminar of the Confessing Church in Finkenwalde / Stettin brought him a special encounter with Dietrich Bonhoeffer , about the content of which nothing is known. After numerous intensive discussions, this Thurmann asked after the dutiful half-year of the summer of 1936 to remain in the 'brother house' as an inspector and tutor .

After the second theological exam in Barmen , the Confessing Church called him back to the Rhineland in autumn 1937. He was ordained in the Friedenskirche in Düsseldorf . He then did service in various denominational parishes, and during this time he also became engaged to Magdalena Splettstößer. In January 1940 he came to Euskirchen , where he supported the confessional pastor there. On March 11, 1940, he was arrested by the Gestapo on charges of making statements that were dangerous to the state in pastoral discussions with the parents of his students. Among other things, he had had a dispute with the mother of one of his religious students , which prompted her to denounce him to the Gestapo. Thurmann later reported about it:

“ The mother of one of the children emphasized that religious education as an institution of the church was not important; but the Führer is a positive Christian , and 'everything the Führer does is good'. I restricted that no one was perfect. However, the woman repeated her sentence. It seemed to me that there was a case of pastoral care. To get the woman into conversation at all, I described a proven process of horrific extermination of Jews (about 80 Jews were brutally exterminated by the SS after the German invasion of 1939 in a Polish village ). I concluded: “Is such an act of the Führer also good?” The woman answered evasively and passed the conversation on to her husband. This indignantly notified the Gestapo, who saw this as an anti-state agitation. "

The malicious paragraph served to justify his conviction . A court sentenced him to six months in prison, which he served in Bonn. Immediately afterwards he was taken into “ protective custody ” and transferred to the Dachau concentration camp, where he arrived in early May 1941. Thurmann's son later said: After the arrest of her fiancé, Magdalena had a conversation with one of the leading pastors of the Confessing Church in the Rhineland, who was at the top after the war. In view of Thurmann's statements about one of the mothers regarding a massacre of Jews in Poland, the latter asked her: “Did your fiancé have to say that?” She felt the outrage over this question as quiet and made her decide to provide financial support rejected by the BK. This quarrel remained a sting that the Thurmanns had planted in the Rhenish regional church run by BK people.

Horst Thurmann was now a prisoner in what the SS contemptuously called the “Pfaffenblock”. During this time, his fiancée drove to the Reich Security Main Office in Berlin and complained that the arrested pastors were no longer given the parcels they had sent. It was initially successful, because the responsible SS-Unterführer was disciplined , and the parcels reached their addressees again . The pastors were again allowed to receive copies of the Bible and to organize their daily routine themselves. Moreover Thurmanns fiancee learned even a special perk: Because before the arrest even the squad was ordered, which was a civil ceremony on March 10, 1942 in Dachau approved -Stadt under guard. As a unique occurrence in the entire history of the concentration camp, it was also passed on: On September 11, 1943, the couple were married in church in the Evangelical Prayer Hall on Dachauer Frühlingstrasse in the presence of an SS man. After that, they were even allowed to spend a few more weeks together.

Horst Thurmann described the end of his concentration camp imprisonment as follows:

“ After years of extremely difficult experiences, we were liberated on April 29, 1945 by a military unit of the American army . The SS plan was to set fire to the camp at 9 p.m. on the same day and shoot the prisoners. The American unit still in Pfaffenhofen had been notified of the plan by a prisoner (in connection with an SS man) . In the direct advance the US troops succeeded in preventing the execution of the SS plan. At 5:30 p.m. on April 29, the camp was liberated. After a month of quarantine , we German Protestant pastors were invited to the Schwabing Hospital in Munich on May 29, 1945 through the mediation of the Bavarian church leadership . A month later I was able to arrive in Wuppertal-Elberfeld with my wife ... who had traveled to meet me in Dachau - Munich in a taxi vehicle approved by the American authorities . "

Thurmann's path with his church remained a rocky one even after the liberation. His theologically justified rejection of the popular church practice of infant baptism meant that even after the end of the war he had to fight for four years to find a post as parish priest who was willing to accept his theological knowledge. In particular, the refusal to baptize his own child and the rejection of an alternative act of blessing by the church leadership meant that he was put on hold . In April 1951, the Reformed Congregation offered him the administration of its hospital pastor . Thurmann responded because it did not oblige him to baptize babies. The appointment as a hospital pastor with all rights initially failed due to the objection of the church leadership. It was not until June 29, 1958 that he was finally introduced to his position.

Horst Thurmann spent his retirement in Wuppertal-Elberfeld. Here he worked as a teacher at the Bible seminar in Wuppertal . He was also one of the authors of the magazine "Bibel und Gemeinde" , for which he wrote several articles .

Publications

• The miracle canon , the miracle community. Verl. U. Scripture Mission d. Evang. Society f. Germany, Wuppertal-Elberfeld 1962.
• The regional church communities and the crisis of the regional church. Verl. U. Scripture Mission d. Evang. Society f. Germany, Wuppertal-Elberfeld 1963, [1. – 3. Thousand].

literature

• A strong couple. The “fanatical” BK pastor Horst Thurmann and his courageous wife Magdalene ; in: You swam against the current. Resistance and persecution of Rhenish Protestants in the "Third Reich" (Ed. By Günther van Norden and Klaus Schmidt )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ http://www.transparentonline.de/Nr58/58_6.htm Retrieved July 10, 2011
2. ↑ http://www.transparentonline.de/Nr58/58_6.htm Retrieved July 11, 2011
3. ↑ http://www.bibelbund.de/htm/2000-1-054.htm Retrieved July 12, 2011