Karl Koch (theologian)

Karl Koch

Jakob Emil Karl Koch (born October 6, 1876 in Witten / Ruhr; † October 28, 1951 in Bielefeld ) was a Protestant theologian , member of the Confessing Church and from 1945 to 1949 President of the Evangelical Church of Westphalia in Bielefeld.

Life

The son of a postman attended the secondary school in Witten from 1886 to 1895 , where he graduated from high school . At the grammar school in Hagen he learned Latin, Greek and Hebrew and from 1896 to 1897 studied theology at the University of Greifswald, among others . Between 1897 and 1900 he was at the University of Bonn and passed the first and second theological exams at the Consistory of Münster in 1900 and 1902 . He completed his vicariate in Rehme near Bad Oeynhausen . In Schalke he was ordained to the ministerial office on November 30, 1902 .

In 1902 Karl Koch began the auxiliary preaching service in Feudingen in the Wittgensteiner Land and a little later in Schalke. In 1904 he became pastor in the Westphalian provincial church and was active in various parishes: 1904–1914 in Holtrup , 1914–1916 in Bünde (1915–1916 in the parish Ennigloh ) near Herford and then from 1916 to 1949 in Bad Oeynhausen . In 1927 Koch was elected to the part-time superintendent of the parish of Vlotho . He held this office until 1948. In 1927 the Westphalian Provincial Synod also elected him as its President.

When the Evangelical Church of Westphalia declared its independence in 1945 at the decisive instigation of Karl Koch, he became its first President with an area of ​​responsibility that clearly exceeded that of the bishopric of other regional churches, as it included not only the spiritual leadership, but also the chairmanship of the Provincial or regional synod and in the regional church office. Koch held this position until January 7, 1949, when Ernst Wilm succeeded him.

Political activity

Koch's political involvement fell mainly during the Weimar Republic . From 1918 to 1933 he was a member of the German National People's Party (DNVP), long-time chairman of the state association North Westphalia and a permanent member of the party executive. Koch took part in the Prussian constitutional state assembly and was a member of the Prussian state parliament from 1919 to 1933 , and of the Reichstag from 1930 to 1932 .

When the National Socialists came to power in 1933, his political activities ended. After the war , the church did not want to forego his political experience: The Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) commissioned him, together with the Rhenish President Heinrich Held , to represent the Evangelical Church in the deliberations on the Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany .

Working in the church struggle

From 1933 Karl Koch intervened in the church political struggle against the Third Reich . In a leading position in the Confessing Church, he defended himself against the penetration of German Christian and National Socialist ideology. In the governing bodies of the Westphalian provincial church, the Prussian regional church and the imperial church , he sought a balance between the church interest groups and also tried to compromise with the state.

After the church elections on July 23, 1933, Koch initially retained the office of President of the Westphalian Provincial Synod, which he had held since 1927. After the Gestapo closed the Provincial Synod on March 16, 1934, the Westphalian Confessing Synod was constituted on the same day , which Karl Koch elected to head the fraternal council appointed to lead it .

On March 21, 1934, the offset DC - Reich Bishop Ludwig Müller cooking on hiatus; However, he continued to exercise his office. Only after the collapse of the Reich Bishop's church regiment in November 1934 did the consistory in Münster reaffirm Karl Koch on February 26, 1935; however, the dissolved Provincial Synod was not restored. For the non-German Christian pastors and parishes, Karl Koch held the office of spiritual direction from 1936 to 1945 (while this was done by the Münster pastor Walter Fiebig for the DC-oriented pastors and parishes).

From 1934 to 1936 Koch was also chairman of the Brother Council of the Church of the Old Prussian Union and its council, as well as President of the first four Old Prussian Confessing Synods. Friedrich Müller succeeded him in the chairmanship of the Old Prussian State Brotherhood Council .

Karl Koch was also active at the level of the Reich Church . Since the fall of 1933 he was one of the few personalities of the older generation who held a church leadership office, the Pastor Martin Niemöller founded Pastors , then he became chairman of the Reich brother Council , member of the Council of the German Evangelical Church (DEK) and President of the Confessing Synod the DEK as well as head of their office in Bad Oeynhausen. In 1934 Koch was a member of the first provisional church leadership of the DEK, chaired by the Hanoverian regional bishop August Marahrens .

During the time of the “Third Reich” , Koch tried to establish ecumenical contacts. In 1934 he was elected to the council at the assembly of the Council for Practical Christianity in Fanö, Denmark. In 1936 he took part in a council meeting in Chamby .

In 1937 he was one of those who signed the declaration of the 96 Protestant church leaders against Alfred Rosenberg because of his writing Protestant Rome Pilgrims .

Work from 1945

It is largely due to the determined work of Karl Koch that the ecclesiastical province of Westphalia broke away in 1945 from the Evangelical Church of the Old Prussian Union and on June 13, 1945 became the Evangelical Church of Westphalia. On the fringes of the Treysa church assembly at the end of August 1945, this step towards the independence of the Westphalian as well as the other old Prussian provincial churches was accepted at Koch's instigation in the course of the so-called Treysa agreement against the efforts of the Berlin bishop Otto Dibelius .

The newly formed church leadership of the Evangelical Church of Westphalia under the direction of President Koch also arranged that Bielefeld was designated as the seat of the Westphalian Evangelical church leadership as well as the regional church office; the administration previously carried out by the consistory in Münster was discontinued there.

In October 1946 the Westphalian regional church sent President Karl Koch as a delegate to the ecumenical conference in Herford .

As President of the Evangelical Church of Westphalia, he was instrumental in building up the country's church. Among other things, he initiated the creation of the “ Evangelical Aid Organization of Westphalia” together with the Bielefeld pastor Karl Pawlowski and, together with Birger Forell, supported the establishment of the “refugee town Espelkamp ” and the planning of the Ludwig-Steil-Hof there .

At the constituent regional synod of the Evangelical Church of Westphalia in November 1948, Koch's successor in the presidency was not the Herford superintendent Hermann Kunst , who was favored by Koch , but Mennighüff parish pastor Ernst Wilm . The handover took place on January 7, 1949.

From then on, Koch lived largely withdrawn until his death in 1951; he was buried in Werste .

Other functions

From 1929 to 1933 Koch was deputy and from 1933 to 1951 chairman of the Westphalian Press Association

Honors

• On September 13, 1929, the Evangelical Theological Faculty of the Westphalian Wilhelms University in Münster awarded him an honorary doctorate.
• In his place of work Bad Oeynhausen in the southern part of the city, the Praeses-Koch-Strasse was named after him.
• In Osnabrück was at Berger Kamp the Karl Koch street named after him.

literature

• Gertraud Grünzinger:  Karl Koch. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 4, Bautz, Herzberg 1992, ISBN 3-88309-038-7 , Sp. 215-220.
• Jürgen Kampmann (Ed.): Karl Koch. Pastor, superintendent and president from the church district Vlotho. Thanks from the District Synodal Board of the Vlotho Church District for the farewell of Christof Windhorst from the office of Superintendent . Bad Oeynhausen 2004
• Heike Koch: Karl Koch (1876–1951): With God for Emperor and Empire , in: Frank Ahland, Matthias Dudde (ed.): Witten biographical portraits . Witten 2000, pp. 65-71
• Wilhelm Niemöller: Karl Koch. Praeses of the Confession Synods. (= Supplement to the yearbook of the Association for Westphalian Church History. Issue 2.) Publishing house of the Bethel establishment, Bethel near Bielefeld 1956.
• Martin Schumacher (Hrsg.): MdR The Reichstag members of the Weimar Republic in the time of National Socialism. Political persecution, emigration and expatriation, 1933–1945. A biographical documentation . 3rd, considerably expanded and revised edition. Droste, Düsseldorf 1994, ISBN 3-7700-5183-1 .
• Karin Jaspers, Wilfried Reininghaus: Westphalian-Lippian candidates in the January elections in 1919. A biographical documentation . Münster: Aschendorff 2020 (Publications of the Historical Commission for Westphalia - New Series; 52), ISBN 978-3-402-15136-5 , p. 110f.

swell

1. ↑ Friedrich Siegmund-Schultze (Ed.): Ecumenical Yearbook 1936–1937 . Max Niehans, Zurich 1939, pp. 240–247.

Web links

• Literature by and about Karl Koch in the catalog of the German National Library
• Karl Koch in the database of members of the Reichstag
• Online biography of Karl Koch

predecessor	Office	successor
-	President of the Evangelical Church of Westphalia 1945–1949	Ernst Wilm