Institute for Protestant Theology at the Free University of Berlin
The Institute for Protestant Theology, specializing in the history of religion, was part of the Free University of Berlin . The institute was founded in 1957 and closed in 2009. Helmut Gollwitzer and Friedrich-Wilhelm Marquardt taught here, among others .
History of the institute
The institute building was located at Ihnestrasse 56 and since 1999 has been named after the first professor, Helmut Gollwitzer (1908–1993), one of the most famous and prominent theologians of the 20th century in Germany. The establishment of the institute nine years after the establishment of the Freie Universität was a political issue in several respects, as the institutional presence of Protestant and Catholic theology accommodated the struggle of the young Freie Universität at the time for academic recognition.
But the scientific profile of this institute was also shaped from the outset by its own accents, in that it set itself the task of reflecting “the matter of theology in the broad horizon of the sciences in general and the general problems of contemporary reality”. Theology should concern itself not only with the discussion of its traditional subjects, but also with its social responsibility. Friedrich-Wilhelm Marquardt , Gollwitzer's successor since 1975, continued this interdisciplinary openness and consistently placed topics of Judeo-Christian conversation at the center of his academic work. In this way, the institute became an internationally recognized place where the question of the conditions and possibilities of a theology in the face of traditional Christian anti-Judaism is an integral part of the course offer.
The institute was rooted in the Protestant tradition. In particular, she looked at the history of the Protestant Church, its dogmatic decisions and, above all, the biblical sources from a scientifically responsible perspective. In the group of so-called "small subjects", so the department council at the time, under the changed conditions of the 1990s, "the cooperation of Protestant theology in the processing of its own - not least national - traditional context remains essential."
In addition to the basic biblical-scientific, church-historical, and systematic-theological topics and regular introductory events, the following focuses in particular were taken into account in the course offerings: ecumenism, theology for the renewal of the Christian-Jewish relationship, criticism of religion, but also topics from the question horizon of feminist theology . The institutional link between the Ev. Theology specializing in the history of religion. Carsten Colpe's work has been formative since the early 1970s , even after his retirement. He turned down two honorable appointments to America (successor to Goodenough and successor to Eliade) in order to continue teaching at Free University . From 1996 to 2005 the institute was headed by Michael Weinrich, after which he was headed by Ralf K. Wüstenberg as visiting professor.
A profile-building focus of the institute was at the interface between theology, philosophy and comparative religious studies, so that the theological internal view is confronted with the different perspectives of the external perception of their objects.
From the winter semester 2003/2004 the Institute for Evangelical Theology had specialized in addition to the expiring Master’s degree programs in the BA degree course “Evangelical Theology and Non-Christian Religions”. a. in association with the institutes for religious studies, Jewish studies, Islamic studies.
By decision of the Academic Senate, the Institute for Protestant Theology was closed after the end of the 2009 summer semester.
literature
- Florian Dieckmann (ed.): Farewell to the Institute for Protestant Theology at the Free University of Berlin . Berlin: Zlotopol 2009. ISBN 978-3-942080-00-2