Johannes Beermann (Bishop)

Johannes Beermann (born April 4 ^{. Jul} / 16th April  1878 ^greg. In Oberpahlen , then Governorate of Livonia , now Estonia ; † 23. January 1958 in Goettingen ) was an Estonian -German Protestant theologian. As a German Christian he was rooted in the National Socialist ideology and was therefore evangelical bishop in the Free City of Danzig from 1934 to 1945 and from 1939 in the Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia .

Life

Beermann, son of an Estonian teacher and a German mother, studied Protestant theology at the Universities of Dorpat and Berlin from 1898 to 1905 . In 1906 he became a teacher in St. Petersburg . After serving in the Russian military, he became a school inspector in 1918 and a teacher in Reval in 1919 . In 1920 he was one of the founders and first chairman of the German associations in Estonia.

In 1932 the Regional Synodal Association of the Free City of Danzig , a member association of the Evangelical Church of the Old Prussian Union , appointed Beermann as pastor of the Osterwick parish in the Großes Werder district of the Free City. He also joined the NSDAP in 1932 . As the first party member among the Protestant pastors of Danzig and as a supporter of the German Christians , he was appointed Bishop of Danzig in October 1933 , after the old Prussian Brown General Synod renamed the previous regional leadership positions from General Superintendent to Bishop and removed the previous General Superintendent Paul Kalweit in September 1933 . Beermann's inauguration by the old Prussian regional bishop and Hitler's imperial bishop Ludwig Müller took place on March 21, 1934 in Danzig's Johanniskirche, which was draped with large swastika flags. At the Reich Conference of German Christians in Berlin on September 21, 1934, Beermann gave a greeting speech on the upcoming official introduction of Müller as Reich Bishop, which he concluded with a pledge of loyalty to Müller, the Führer, the German people and with the cry "Danzig remains German!" .

Beermann was described by followers of the Confessing Church as "personally friendly, kind-hearted, well-meaning towards his pastors, certainly inviolable in character". Nonetheless, he actively supported and was responsible for the National Socialist conformity of the Evangelical Church in Danzig. His reputation among the population of Gdańsk did not correspond to his high office, as he always showed himself to be an outspoken supporter of the National Socialists. For example, on January 17, 1935, he arranged for the Evangelical Youth Office in Danzig to be transferred to the Hitler Youth . And so, looking back , the Danzig Confessional Pastor Kurt Walter comes to the devastating judgment: "Beermann was not able to carry out his office with spiritual authority, but contributed to the destruction of the church".

After the annexation of Danzig in 1939, its jurisdiction extended to the church area Danzig-West Prussia , which was territorially congruent with the newly created Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia . It therefore also included Pomeranian parishes which until then had belonged to the predominantly German-speaking Uniate Evangelical Church in Poland under General Superintendent Paul Blau . With Senior Consistorial Councilor Gerhard M. Gülzow , Beermann received a middle man as a deputy. When the Soviet troops marched in in 1945, he resigned and fled to the west, where he found shelter in Göttingen.

literature

• Kurt Walter : Danzig . In: Günther Harder , Wilhelm Niemöller : The hour of temptation. Parishes in the church struggle 1933–1945. Testimonials. Chr. Kaiser, Munich 1963, pp. 37–56.
• Hannelore Braun, Gertraud Grünzinger: Personal Lexicon on German Protestantism 1919–1949. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2006 ISBN 3525557612 , p. 31 f.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Entry in the baptismal register of Oberpahlen (Estonian: Põltsamaa)
2. ^ Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. Fischer Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-596-16048-0 , p. 36.
3. ↑ Barbara Krüger, Peter Noss: The structures in the Evangelical Church 1933-1945. In: Olaf Kühl-Freudenstein, Peter Noss, Claus Wagener (eds.): Kirchenkampf in Berlin 1932-1945: 42 city stories (= studies on church and Judaism; vol. 18) Institute Church and Judaism, Berlin 1999, p. 149– 171, here p. 158. ISBN 3-923095-61-9 .
4. ↑ Ernst Sodeikat: The persecution and the resistance of the Evangelical Church in Gdansk 1933-1945 (= work on the history of the church struggle, Volume 15). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1965, p. 150.
5. ^ Danziger Allgemeine Zeitung, No. 223 of September 22, 1934.
6. ↑ Walter (Lit), p. 59.
7. ↑ Ernst Sodeikat: The persecution and the resistance of the Evangelical Church in Gdansk from 1933 to 1945 (= work on the history of the church struggle, Volume 15). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1965, p. 150ff.

predecessor	Office	successor
Superintendent General Paul Kalweit	Bishop of Landessynodalverbandes the Free City of Danzig 1933 - 1940	himself ( for the enlarged parish )
(1) himself ( for the smaller parish ) and (2) general superintendent Paul Blau ( Uniate Evangelical Church in Poland )	Bishop of Old Prussia. Church area Danzig-West Prussia 1940 - 1945	none ( church area perished )