Hans-Joachim Margull

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Hans-Joachim (Jochen) Walter Margull (born September 25, 1925 in Tiegenhof , † January 26, 1982 in Hamburg ) was a German missiologist .

Training and first years in the profession

Margull, whose father worked as the state secretary in Danzig, attended elementary school in Tiegenhof, where he was born. He then graduated from high school and high school in Leipzig , which he left in 1943 with a secondary school diploma . After the Reich Labor Service and military service in the Navy, he passed the Abitur in Leipzig after the end of the war in 1946. After studying Protestant theology and philosophy at universities in Greifswald, Halle and Mainz, he was one of the first German students to receive a scholarship from the Ecumenical Council of Churches . With this he attended Biblical Seminary New York and completed the Master of Sacred Theology. After the first theological exam in Mainz in 1951, he passed the second exam in Darmstadt in 1953. Ordination took place in 1954 in the Wiesbaden mountain church .

Margull worked briefly as vicar for the Evangelical Church in Hesse and Nassau and from 1953 to 1955 as a student pastor for the General Secretariat of the Evangelical Student Community in Germany. At their office in Stuttgart , he took over the study project. During this time he traveled to England, Switzerland and many countries in Latin America, the Middle East and southern Europe for the World Christian Student Union from Geneva . In the 1950s, he founded the journal Approaches. A semester magazine of the Ev. Student community in Germany , which he edited on a voluntary basis.

In 1953 Margull moved to the University of Hamburg , where he stayed until 1961. As a scientific assistant to Walter Freytag , he worked on his festschrift, speeches and essays. In 1958 he received his doctorate at Hamburg University on the “Theology of Missionary Annunciation. Evangelism as an Ecumenical Problem ”to the Dr. theol. In his habilitation in 1960 for missiology and ecumenical relations of the churches, he dealt with chiliastic messianic movements in Africa and Southeast Asia in a study on missiology.

After his time in Hamburg, Margull went to Geneva in 1961. Until 1965 he served as Executive Secretary for the Unit for Preaching Issues for the World Council of Churches. Margull developed the study program “Mission as a Structural Principle”, which was considered to point the way in the field of the missionary structure of the community. The program aimed to bring together leading ecumenical theologians, missionaries and sociologists. It defined the problems that the Christian mission faced in integrating the church and mission under the aspects of God, world and church. In 1971 Margull took over the chairmanship of the new department for dialogue.

Professor at the University of Hamburg and work in ecumenism

In 1963 Margull moved to the United Church University in Tokyo as a visiting professor . In 1967 he was appointed to the University of Hamburg as successor to Walter Freytag. As a full professor, he spoke in his first lecture on “The situation as a place of theological reflection”. While Freytag viewed the meaning of church and mission rather eschatologically, Margull dealt with the present and current problems. He always took past experiences into account and asked cautious questions. He had chosen his field of study based on his experiences during the Nazi era and was concerned that solidification and absolutization might occur. He was therefore critical of systematizations and always questioned his own theological views.

In addition to teaching, Margull was involved in ecumenism. From 1968 to 1975 he chaired the Working Committee on Mission and Preaching of the World Council of Churches. In 1970 in a leading position he prepared and carried out the first multi-religious dialogue in Ajaltoun . In the course of intensive discussions with other religions, he got the impression that new ways should be sought within the framework of theology and mission to enable an exchange between the various faiths.

In addition to questions of dialogue, Margull devoted herself to vulnerability as a second focus . Based on the theological understanding of vulnerability, he assumed that Christians who were interested in a real exchange would have to change their understanding of mission. During the assembly of the World Council of Churches in Nairobi in 1975, he found that large parts of Christianity did not support this.

Later Margull dealt with the worldwide Christian proclamation and the independent Christianity in the "Third World", for which he used the term "tertiary renaissance". For research purposes he traveled to Africa, Israel and India. He assigned theologians from Asia, Africa and Latin America appropriate questions for the dissertation. He also edited the series on the intercultural history of Christianity. Thanks to his efforts, the Mission Academy at the University of Hamburg became a place where theologians from all over the world came together and communicated.

In his last work, Margull dealt with "religious factors in Egyptian-Israeli peace and the function of a Jewish-Islamic dialogue in maintaining it". During the German Evangelical Church Congress , he organized a gathering of Jews and Muslims.

Hans-Joachim Margull died in January 1982. The theologian Gert Hummel wrote on the occasion of his death that “the gap left by Mr Margull will hardly be closed”.

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personal data
SURNAME Margull, Hans-Joachim
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Margull, Jochen; Margull, Hans-Joachim Walter; Margull, Hans-Jochen
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German missiologist
DATE OF BIRTH September 25, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH Tiegenhof
DATE OF DEATH January 26, 1982
Place of death Hamburg