Hanns Lilje

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Hanns Lilje (1953)

Johannes Ernst Richard "Hanns" Lilje (born August 20, 1899 in Hanover ; † January 6, 1977 there ) was a German Evangelical Lutheran theologian , art historian , regional bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran regional church of Hanover and deputy chairman of the Evangelical Church in Germany ( EKD).

Life

After graduating from the Leibniz School in Hanover , Hanns Lilje had to do military service on the Western Front in 1917 and 1918 , where he was awarded the Iron Cross 2nd class . After his return he studied theology and art history in Göttingen , Leipzig and Zurich and was ordained into the evangelical pastoral service on November 28, 1924 . From 1925 to 1927 he was student pastor at the Technical University of Hanover, 1927 to 1935 General Secretary of the German Christian Student Association and 1935 to 1945 General Secretary of the Lutheran World Convention . With a doctoral thesis on Martin Luther's view of history, he was awarded a Dr. theol. PhD . In the same year he became vice-president of the Christian Student Union .

Lilje foresaw the participation in government by the National Socialists and was initially positive about it. He wrote: “It is to be expected with great certainty that National Socialism will be involved in some form of government in the course of this year, probably in the spring. The answer to the question of whether this is desirable must be answered with yes. ”He pathetically greeted the NSDAP's takeover of power in the spring of 1933 as a“ new German morning ”, which he mistakenly assumed to correspond to the Church's call“ Back to Christ ”.

When it became clear that the Nazis the DC circuit of the churches by the "German Christian Faith Movement" aspired, he qualified his opinion and was co-founder of " Young Reformation Movement ". On May 9, 1933, he went public with Walter Künneth at a press conference and announced the call for the foundation. Many theologians from different directions signed the call for the collection; Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Niemöller later also joined.

In 1941 he published the essay "The war as an intellectual achievement", which was also distributed as a separate work. Since it was rediscovered in the context of the 14th German Evangelical Church Congress in Stuttgart in 1969, it has been criticized as a religious glorification of the war experience because it equates the soldier's “sacrifice” with the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. In the Scriptures it was said a .: “It doesn't just have to be on the soldiers' belt locks, but also in their hearts and consciences: With God ! This sacrifice can only be legitimized in the name of God ”. In his autobiography, published in 1973, Lilje defended himself by saying that he was “naturally not concerned with glorifying the war, and certainly not with the war unleashed by the National Socialists”; His intention, as well as that of an essay by Alfred Delp under the identical title, was "to offer the man who was fatefully involved in the war with spiritual help to survive this situation."

Since his work in Berlin, Lilje had been on friendly terms with the leading employee of the Berlin City Mission and its later director (1945–1947), Pastor Hans Dannenbaum . For years Lilje took part in the preaching service in the city mission church in Berlin's Kreuzberg district, where Dannenbaum mainly worked, and he regarded it as a "mysterious coincidence" that he was in the city mission pulpit in January 1944 - immediately before the war-related destruction of the Johannist-Brachvogelstrasse-Johanniterstrasse building complex on January 29th - there he was able to give his last sermon on Psalm 73, verses 16 and 17. In the same year from 1944 to 1945 Lilje was in Gestapo detention in Berlin and Nuremberg because of his pastoral contacts with members of the Kreisau Circle . Later, in his book Im sinstern Tal, he presented the circumstances of his trial before the People's Court under the presiding judge Roland Freisler .

In July 1945 Lilje became an Oberlandeskirchenrat in Hanover and a member of the council of the newly founded Evangelical Church in Germany, and in October 1945 she was one of the signatories of the Stuttgart Confession of Guilt . However, he also stood up for convicted Nazi perpetrators, including mass murderers such as Paul Blobel and Franz Six , and soon after the end of the war called for an end to the issue of 'coming to terms with the past'.

From 1947 he was regional bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Hanover and also from 1947 a member of the Executive Committee of the Lutheran World Federation , from 1948 a member of the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches and from 1950 abbot of the Loccum Monastery . In the same year and until 1968 he used the Dachenhausenpalais in Hanover as his residence and official residence.

In 1951 he was one of the founders of the Kronberger Kreis with Eberhard Müller and Reinold von Thadden . He also belonged to the group of speakers for the ARD program Das Wort zum Sonntag .

From 1949–1967 he was deputy council chairman of the EKD, from 1952–1957 president of the Lutheran World Federation and from 1955 to 1969 he was the leading bishop of the United Evangelical Lutheran Church in Germany (VELKD) . Until 1966 member of the Presidium of the Conference of European Churches , since 1961 member of the Executive Committee, since 1968 member of the Presidium of the World Council of Churches and from 1945–1957 President of the Central Committee for Internal Mission.

He was particularly active in the field of media work . So he founded the Deutsche Allgemeine Sonntagsblatt and paid attention to an "understandable language". He often preached on the radio and organized conferences for journalists in Hermannsburg and Loccum. His portrayal of himself as a resistance fighter close to Dietrich Bonhoeffer and others against National Socialism earned him worldwide attention and sympathy, but was not covered by his behavior in the Third Reich and was therefore "highly problematic". Unusually for a Protestant bishop, he had a bishop's ring made and insisted on the address " Reverend ".

Lilje felt hostility from the GDR rulers, who denounced him as a " NATO bishop" because of his approval of West German rearmament , which the EKD, which was all German until 1961, initially rejected . That is why he could not be chairman of the EKD Council. In spring 1961 he would actually have been the legitimate successor to Bishop Otto Dibelius in this function, which was prevented by the veto of the member churches from the GDR. In his place, the East Berlin President Kurt Scharf was elected as the new President of the Council. He had his credit u. a. gambled away with a questionable “Spiegel” interview in which his understanding of East Germans “picking up the gun” against GDR state officials was discussed.

He died at the age of 77 on January 6, 1977. His grave is in the monastery cemetery in Loccum.

Honors

Hanns Lilje has been awarded eleven honorary doctorates . In 1954 he received the Federal Cross of Merit with a star and shoulder ribbon of the Federal Cross of Merit , in 1957 the Lower Saxony State Medal and the Grand Cross of the Federal Cross of Merit. In 1974 he was awarded the Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Medal from the Alfred Toepfer Foundation FVS .

In 1978, the City Council of Hanover renamed the square “Am Markte” on the west side of the Marktkirche to “Hanns-Lilje-Platz”. He is also the namesake of the Hanns-Lilje-Heim in Wolfsburg, the Hanns-Lilje-Haus in Hanover, the Hanns-Lilje-Foundation founded in 1989 and the Hanns-Lilje-Prize of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen .

Works

  • The Technical Age (1928)
  • Luther's view of history (1932)
  • Christ in the German fate. Berlin: Furche 1933 (= votes from the German Christian student movement 88)
Digitized , Regional Church Archive Stuttgart
  • Mission as a Divine Order (1935)
  • Confession and confession. (= Confessing Church 32) Munich: Kaiser 1935
  • Digitized , Regional Church Archive Stuttgart
  • The Path of the Church of Jesus Christ in War (1939)
  • The Last Book of the Bible (1940)
  • The King Priest - An Indian Novella (written in the Gestapo prison in winter 1944/45)
  • The war as an intellectual achievement. (= Furche-Schriften 26) Berlin: Furche 1941
  • Wanderer on the Path (1946)
  • Luther, Dawn and Crisis of Modern Times (1946)
  • In the dark valley (1947)
  • Nihilism (1947)
  • Goethe's Faith (1949)
  • Church and Politics (1951)
  • Freedom and Commitment in the Order of the Economy (1954)
  • Christ in the world of labor (German: Christ in the working world , 1954)
  • World under God, Account of a Journey (1956)
  • Church and World (1956)
  • The Christian Foundations of Economic Ethics (1957)
  • The Concept of Authority in Modern Democracy (1959)
  • Christianity in a divided Europe (German: Christianity in divided Europe , 1961)
  • Body and soul wholeness (1961)
  • Atheism - Humanism - Christianity (1962)
  • Martin Luther, A Picture Monograph (1964)
  • Encounters (Editor; 1949)

literature

  • Heinz Brunotte , Erich Ruppel : God is at work. Festschrift for regional bishop D. Hanns Lilje for his 60th birthday on August 20, 1959. Furche-Verlag, Hamburg 1959.
  • Horst Hirschler : Death and funeral of Abbot Lilje. In: Horst Hirschler and Ernst Berneburg (ed.): Stories from the Loccum Monastery. Studies, pictures, documents. Lutherisches Verlags-Haus, Hanover 1980, ISBN 3-87502-140-1 , pp. 40–43.
  • Eduard Lohse : Sermon from January 12, 1977 (for the funeral of Hanns Lilje) on Psalm 100.2. In: Horst Hirschler and Ernst Berneburg, Ernst (Hrsg.): Stories from the Loccum Monastery. Studies, pictures, documents. Lutherisches Verlags-Haus, Hanover 1980, ISBN 3-87502-140-1 , pp. 38–40.
  • Eduard Lohse:  Lilje, Hanns. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 14, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1985, ISBN 3-428-00195-8 , p. 562 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Ralph Ludwig : Hanns Lilje. a pious citizen of the world , Wichern-Verlag, Berlin, 2016, ISBN 978-3-88981-423-4 .
  • Harry Oelke: Hanns Lilje. A Lutheran in the Weimar Republic and in the church struggle . Kohlhammer, Stuttgart / Cologne / Berlin 1999, ISBN 978-3-17-016104-7 .
  • Gertraud Grünzinger:  Lilije, Hanns. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 5, Bautz, Herzberg 1993, ISBN 3-88309-043-3 , Sp. 63-69.
  • Ronald Uden: Hanns Lilje as a publicist. A study on the new beginning of post-war church journalism (= studies on Christian journalism. Vol. 1). CPV - Christliche-Publizistik-Verlag, Erlangen 1998, ISBN 3-933992-00-1 (also: University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, diss., 1997/98).
  • Ronald Uden: Hanns Lilje. Bishop to the public. Lutherisches Verlags-Haus, Hanover 1998, ISBN 3-7859-0771-0 .
  • Hanns Lilje: In the dark valley. Looking back on imprisonment. Edited by Hans Otte , with the assistance of Arnulf Baumann . Lutherisches Verlags-Haus, Hanover 1999, ISBN 3-7859-0781-8 .
  • Johannes Jürgen Siegmund: Bishop Johannes Lilje, Abbot of Loccum. A biography. Based on personal testimonials, writings and letters and reports from contemporary witnesses. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2003, ISBN 3-525-55447-8 , (also: Neuendettelsau, Augustana University, Diss., 2001).

Web links

Commons : Hanns Lilje  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Which school for my child? , Supplement to the Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung from January 12, 2011, p. 4
  2. a b c d Ronald Uden: Hanns Lilje - Bishop of the public
  3. Hanns Lilje: The political face of the time. In: Evangelische Truth 23 (1931/32), pp. 70–72, here p. 72
  4. Quoted from Harry Oelke: Hanns Lilje. A Lutheran in the Weimar Republic and in the church struggle. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart / Cologne / Berlin 1999, ISBN 978-3-17-016104-7 , p. 151
  5. a b c Simon Benne, Hanns Lilje: The Bishop, War and Imprisonment , November 17, 2016
  6. Christ in German Destiny. Berlin: Furche 1933 (= voices from the German Christian student movement 88) ( digitized version ), foreword p. 3
  7. a b Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945, S. Fischer Frankfurt / Main, p. 372
  8. See also Johannes Jürgen Siegmund: Bishop Johannes Lilje, Abbot of Loccum: a biography: based on personal testimonies, writings and letters and contemporary witness reports. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2003 ISBN 9783525554470 , pp. 252f.
  9. See for example Gerd Lüdemann's objections to the text "The war as an intellectual achievement" by Hanns Lilje from 2004, accessed on February 13, 2020
  10. p. 12, quoted from Dietrich Kuessner : "THE WAR AS SPIRITUAL PERFORMANCE". A writing from 1941 by Hanns Lilje, General Secretary of the Lutheran World Convention. (1989) In: Rainer Schmid, Thomas Nauerth, Matthias-W. Engelke, Peter Bürger: Texts on military pastoral care in the Hitler War. Ecumenical Institute for Peace Theology 2019 digitized , p. 218
  11. ^ Hanns Lilje: Memorabilia. Focus of a life. 1973, p. 190
  12. ^ Foreword by Regional Bishop Lilje to: Dannenbaum, Hans: Becoming and growing and growing of a mission church. Experience and factual report from work in the service of the Berlin city mission 1926–1947 , Schriftenmissions-Verlag, Gladbeck (1950) p. 7
  13. See speakers since 1954 .
  14. a b Ronald Uden, Hanns Lilje as a publicist, p. 353
  15. Ronald Uden, Hanns Lilje as a publicist lists radio sermons on 15 pages (pp. 480–494)
  16. a b Ronald Uden, Hanns Lilje as a publicist, p. 354
  17. Ronald Uden, Hanns Lilje as a publicist, p. 457
  18. Information from the Ordenskanzlei of the Lower Saxony State Chancellery