JF Gerhard Goeters

Johann Friedrich Gerhard Goeters (born April 1, 1926 in Bonn ; † August 20, 1996 there ) was a German Reformed theologian and church historian.

Life

Goeters grew up as the son of the church historian Wilhelm Gustav Goeters in Bonn and Münster . After military service and captivity he studied from 1948 Protestant theology in Bonn, Göttingen , Tübingen , Zurich and Basel , and was founded in 1957 in Zurich (at Fritz Blanke ) with a thesis on the spiritualists and Antitrinitarier Ludwig Haetzer Dr. theol. PhD. As an employee at the Institute for Protestant Church Law in Göttingen, he was involved in the edition of the Protestant church regulationsParticipated in the 16th century and completed his habilitation in 1963 with a thesis on the church ordinances of the Electoral Palatinate (published in 1969) at the University of Bonn in the subject of church history. In 1967 he was appointed to the University of Münster . In 1970 he returned to Bonn, where he took over the professorship for modern church history as the successor to Ernst Bizer , which he held until his retirement in 1991.

His research focused on the history of the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland (where he also served as a member of the regional synod ), the history of the Reformation and in particular the Anabaptists , Pietism , the Prussian Union and the Reformed in Germany. Together with the Mennonite theologian Heinold Fast , Goeters discovered the so-called art book in the Burgerbibliothek Bern in 1955 , a collection of writings from the early Anabaptist movement compiled in the 16th century by Jörg Probst Rotenfelder .

From 1968 Goeters was a full member of the Historical Commission for Westphalia .

Goeters was married and had three daughters.

Trivia

Goeters did not have a driver's license. On his excursions on the Lower Rhine, he was mostly on his bike. It was not until he was 30 that he became active in the wingolf club in Bonn . As “Doc Goeters” he was a popular keynote speaker. He was very committed to the Adolf-Clarenbach-Haus Protestant Study Center .

Goeters Prize

Since 2001, the Society for the History of Reformed Protestantism has been awarding the JF Gerhard Goeters Prize every two years for an excellent German-language dissertation or habilitation on a topic of the history of Reformed Protestantism.

Major works

• Ludwig Hätzer (ca 1500 to 1529): spiritualist and anti-Trinitarian. A marginal figure of the early Anabaptist movement . 1957.
• The resolutions of the Wesel Convention of 1568 . 1968.
• The files of the Synod of the Dutch Churches in Emden. From 4th to 13th Oct. 1571 . 1971.
• The history of the Evangelical Church of the Union. A manual , 3 volumes. Edited together with Joachim Rogge . 1992-1999.
• Reformed Pietism in Germany 1650–1690 . In: History of Pietism Vol. 1, 1993, pp. 241-277.
• Reformed Pietism in Bremen and on the Lower Rhine in the 18th century . In: Geschichte des Pietismus Vol. 2, 1995, pp. 372-427.
• Studies on the history of the Lower Rhine Reformation (ed. V. Dietrich Meyer ). 2002 (with bibliography).
• Contributions to the Union and the Reformed Confession (ed. V. Heiner Faulenbach and Wilhelm H. Neuser ). 2006.

literature

• Heiner Faulenbach (ed.): Steadfast faith. Festivities for the 65th birthday of Johann Friedrich Gerhard Goeters . 1991 (with bibliography).
• Heiner Faulenbach: To continue to live with him. In memory of Gerhard Goeters . In: Monthly books for Protestant church history of the Rhineland 45/45, 1996/1997, pp. 629–640 (with addendum to the bibliography pp. 640–644).
• Eberhard Wulfhorst: In memory of Johann Friedrich Gerhard Goeters (Bo 56) . In: Wingolfsblätter 115, 1996, pp. 176-177.
• Harm Klueting : Johann Friedrich Gerhard Goeters. A portrait instead of an obituary . In: Yearbook of the Association for Westphalian Church History 91, 1997, pp. 13-25.
• Hans-Georg Ulrichs: Goeters, Johann Friedrich Gerhard , in: Religion in Past and Present , 4th edition, Bd. 3, 2000, Sp. 1062f.

Web links

• Biographical information on the website of the Historical Commission for Westphalia
• Literature by and about JF Gerhard Goeters in the catalog of the German National Library
• Directory of the estate in the archive of the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland

Individual evidence

1. ^ Website of the Historical Commission for Westphalia