Johannes Jänicke

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John Richard Adolf Jaenicke (* 23. October 1900 in Berlin , † the 30th March 1979 in Halle ) was a Protestant pastor and member of the Confessing Church in the era of National Socialism . 1955 to 1968 he was bishop of the Evangelical Church in the ecclesiastical province of Saxony .

Life

Jänicke was born in 1900 in the working-class district of Prenzlauer Berg as the son of the city missionary Ernst Jänicke and his wife Helene. He did his Abitur in 1918 at the Berlinisches Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster , which was followed by a short period of military service. After studying theology, he received his ordination in 1925 in the Evangelical Church of the Old Prussian Union .

At first he worked as an assistant preacher ; in doing so, the first chance contacts with the then Kurmark superintendent Dr. Otto Dibelius . Formative and friendly contacts were established with Pastor Günther Dehn (see below) and his “ Neuwerkkreis ”, in which youthful, critical young people who were inclined to religious socialism met.

First parish posts

In May 1926 Jänicke received his first pastor in Luckenwalde , a small town south of Berlin. In September 1926 he married Eva Rudolphi (1901–1965).

From 1929 to 1935 Jänicke held a pastor's position at the St. Ulrich church in Halle (Saale) . There he was mainly active in youth work. Between 1930 and 1933 he published the church newspaper Mut und Kraft . In defending the right of workers to paid annual leave , entrepreneurs in the city accused him of socialist sentiments. In his work in Halle he also dealt with topics such as "Christianity and Marxism".

After the seizure of power in 1933, Jänicke initially joined the Pastors' Emergency League and later the Confessing Church as an active representative. He formed a "Confessing Church" in Halle. He was then briefly in " protective custody ".

Parish office in Palmnicken

The wife's respiratory illnesses made it necessary to move from the climate of the Halle-Bitterfeld area. In 1935 the congregation in Palmnicken / East Prussia , directly on the Samland coast , was expressly looking for a parish priest . Jänicke applied and was elected. The Königsberg consistory , dominated by German Christians , confirmed the election after initial resistance.

Jänicke worked actively in the Confessing Church of East Prussia, in 1938 he was a member of the Brother Council of the Confessing Church in the Ecclesiastical Province of East Prussia and represented it in the Brother Council for the Church of the Old Prussian Union. In August 1939 he was drafted into the Wehrmacht and participated in part of the attack on Poland as a private. In the spring of 1940 like-minded people achieved the " uk " position in the consistory .

After returning to his pastor, the uk position was overturned in 1943 through an intrigue. Jänicke was called up as a paramedic and the consistory sent another pastor to Palmnicken, but the parish council immediately sent him away. Jänicke himself was now a medical sergeant on a medical train stationed in Koenigsberg and attended the train's stops there in order to do community work in Palmnicken during day vacations. In times of his absence due to the war, his wife Eva took over his duties in the community overcrowded with refugees and documented these years in her diary.

At the beginning of 1945 Jänicke returned to his community after the general dissolution of the Wehrmacht in Palmnicken. The Soviet occupying power tolerated him as a pastor. In 1947 he, his wife and the remnants of the community were evacuated.

Activity in the church province of Saxony

In 1948 he took over the office of director of the Burckhardthaus in Berlin. In 1949 he was elected provost of Halle and Merseburg and in 1955 bishop of the Evangelical Church Province of Saxony in Magdeburg. With his inauguration by Bishop Otto Dibelius on September 22, 1955, the Magdeburg Cathedral was re-inaugurated for worship after long restoration work.

  • Introduction by Johannes Jänicke in Magdeburg Cathedral
  • Bundesarchiv Bild 183-33062-0001, inauguration of a bishop in Magdeburg Cathedral.jpg
  • Bundesarchiv Bild 183-33062-0003, inauguration of a bishop in Magdeburg Cathedral.jpg
  • Bundesarchiv Bild 183-33062-0004, inauguration of a bishop in Magdeburg Cathedral.jpg
  • Bundesarchiv Bild 183-33062-0002, inauguration of a bishop in Magdeburg Cathedral.jpg

The years of his activity in the GDR were filled with repression and struggles, but also successes and encouragement in a rich church life. Important topics remained, among other things, the peace work and the relationship between state and church. Among other things, he discussed for the first time at the regional synod in April 1956 the compatibility of state youth consecration and confirmation . In 1957 he was responsible for drafting a legal opinion on the local elections. At the 3rd meeting of the III. Synod in Halle an der Saale , which took place on June 2, 1958, he went into his report on the trial against Consistorial President Kurt Grünbaum and Senior Consistorial Counselor Dr Kurt Grünbaum in the context of intensified attacks on the Evangelical Church in Magdeburg . Siegfried Klettwitz a. When honoring Grünbaum's four years of leadership from 1954 to 1958 in the ecclesiastical province of Saxony, the bishop emphasized his energetic "commitment while ignoring his own person" and his rich experience that he had previously gained in "leading positions in the state and the church".

Before the introduction of compulsory military service in the GDR in 1962, he initiated a study calling for alternative service for conscientious objectors. In a "Letter to Young Christians" that was only distributed by typewriter after the introduction of compulsory military service, he again defended the pacifist stance. In 1967 he left the state committee for the preparation of the Reformation celebrations in protest against the state appropriation.

In 1965 his wife Eva died of lung cancer. He himself held the office of bishop until October 1968. He spent his retirement in Halle (Saale), where he died on March 30, 1979. His grave and that of his wife are in the cemetery of the Pfeiffer Foundations in Magdeburg.

A retirement home of the Diakoniewerk Halle that was built in Halle in 1996 bears his name.

swell

  • Johannes Jänicke: I was able to be there. Wichern-Verlag, 1986 (autobiography)
  • An unpublished diary for the years 1944–1947 is also available.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Entry on Johannes Jänicke in the biographical database of the Federal Foundation for Work-Up
  2. ^ "Herd of an infectious health" , article on the 15th anniversary of Johannes Jänicke's death, in the church , March 27, 1994
  3. ↑ Reinhard Henky's Johannes Jänicke in Palmnicken in: To make the inner heart firm. Johannes Jänicke IN MEMORIAM. Contributions to the memorial event in Halle on October 22, 2000 on the occasion of his 100th birthday , Halle 2000, p. 3
  4. ↑ Notes from Pastor Eva Jänicke. In: Martin Bergau : Death March to the Amber Coast. The massacre of Jews in Palmnicken, East Prussia, in January 1945. Contemporary witnesses remember. Heidelberg 2006, ISBN 3-8253-5201-3 , pp. 157-205
  5. ↑ Christoph Radbruch, Elisabeth Koch: From the Diakonissenanstalt to the Diakoniewerk Halle. Halle 2011, p. 227
  6. ↑ Harald Schulze (ed.): Reports of the Magdeburg church leadership on the conferences of the provincial synod 1946–1989 , p. 146 f .; ISBN 978-3-525-55760-0
  7. ↑ "Focus of an Infectious Disease" , see above
personal data
SURNAME Jänicke, Johannes
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Jänicke, Johannes Richard Adolf (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Protestant pastor and bishop in Saxony
DATE OF BIRTH October 23, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH March 30, 1979
Place of death Halle (Saale)