Johannes Oberhof

Johannes Oberhof, 1951

Johannes Albert Eduard Oberhof (born April 24, 1905 in Löwenbruch ( Teltow-Fläming district ), † November 27, 1987 in Uffing am Staffelsee ) was a German Protestant clergyman and a supporter of religious socialism .

Life

Family, education and work

Oberhof was the son of pastor Albert Oberhof († 1910) and Sophie Oberhof, born from Jena . His grandfather was the Prussian infantry general Karl Wilhelm Eduard von Jena . He attended elementary school in Siegen , from 1915 the monastery school in Donndorf and from 1918 the school in Schulpforta . In 1923 he moved to Plön and passed the high school in 1924.

From 1924 he studied theology and philosophy at the University of Tübingen , among others with Karl Heim . In 1926/27 he continued his studies at the University of Halle , where he was impressed by the New Testament scholar Julius Schniewind . He spent the final two semesters at the University of Münster , where he heard lectures from Wilhelm Stählin . In 1927/28 he moved to Berlin , where he worked as a literary writer for the National Socialist writer Bogislav von Selchow, who was involved in the Kapp Putsch . Oberhof's collaboration with von Selchow ended in September 1935. After that, he was vicar and professor in Berlin and the surrounding area until March 1939 . He passed the second theological examination in 1939 before the Evangelical Consistory of the Mark Brandenburg in Berlin. Subsequently, as a scholarship holder of the German Research Foundation, he was commissioned to work on the Nietzsche image of the present .

Oberhof took part in the Second World War from 1939 to 1940 as a volunteer soldier . In 1944 he was used again on the Eastern Front and released from Soviet captivity in early 1946.

In 1943 he married Erika Radke and the marriage had three sons.

In 1946 he became a chaplain in the Bremen-Oslebshausen prison and in 1947 pastor of the St. Martini parish in Bremen.

Participant in the peace congress

1950 Oberhof took part in the Second World Peace Congress in Warsaw. In an article from November 24th, the Bremer Nachrichten reported :

“He is said to have commented on his impressions at this congress at a SED press conference . - As is well known, Pastor Oberhof was supposed to speak on August 19th of this year at an event of the Committee of Fighters for Peace on the property of the Lesmona factory on Panzenberg, which was destroyed in the war. However, he later withdrew his initial commitment. "

That newspaper note was the beginning of a series of articles.

On November 25, 1950, statements by the church committee of the Bremen Evangelical Church and the St. Martini Congregation were published. It said:

“As we learned from the daily newspapers, Pastor Oberhof took part in the Second World Peace Congress in Warsaw. The church committee will ask Pastor Oberhof to comment on his return from his trip. ” And:
“ In a further statement, the St. Martini congregation points out that Pastor Oberhof did not say anything about this before the start of the vacation he was still entitled to, where and how he wants to spend it. The community does not identify with what is happening. "

The Bremer Nachrichten then wrote:

“It is not our intention to want to dictate to a clergyman which congresses he or she should attend as a private person or not. However, our intention is to show that a Protestant pastor who enjoys the freedom of the West to preach the word of God cannot join the camp of those who negate the freedom of the spirit as well as the Christian spirit of freedom of conscience - In any case, he cannot do so without being accountable to those whom he looks after in the name of the Gospel. […] Nobody who goes on a trip to Warsaw today should be in the dark about the character of his travel destination. Not even about what is intended with his presence. "

Oberhof justified himself in November 1950 in a "discussion of the questions raised by his participation in the 2nd World Peace Congress". An article in the Bremer Nachrichten closes with the note that Oberhof withdrew from a request from the Bremen Evangelical Church to consult with the excuse of insufficient time.

"Contrary to the will of his community, which chose him as pastor, now to want to take the position that" he has his office from God "seems to us to be a rather inadequate attempt to get rid of his duties."

Disciplinary proceedings

The newspapers continued to report at short intervals on the course of the information evening and in detail on the speech in the Friedrichstadt-Varieté. In December 1950, a contribution appeared "Disciplinary proceedings against Oberhof", according to which a formal disciplinary procedure was initiated against him for defamatory attacks on leading men of the church and a simultaneous temporary dismissal.

The disciplinary proceedings dragged on, the author Bockhöfer notes that Oberhof devoted himself to the fight against rearmament during this time and appeared in numerous events throughout Germany. The Bremer Nachrichten wrote that he “appeared repeatedly at events organized by communist front organizations”.

When Theodor Heuss inquired about Oberhof, Karl Carstens , who later became Federal President, passed the question on to Bremen on June 13, 1952 and noted:

“As far as I know, Mr. Oberhof is currently involved in the so-called peace propaganda initiated by the KPD and SED. suspended from his official duties as pastor ”.

The church disciplinary proceedings began in November 1952. The BEK press office announced after the proceedings were over:

“The disciplinary chamber of the BEK negotiated from March 11th to 14th, 1953 against the suspended Pastor Johannes Oberhof from the St. Martini congregation in Bremen. The hearing took place in accordance with the regulations of the church's disciplinary code and closed to the public ”.

“The disciplinary chamber recognized Pastor Oberhof as being punished for removal from office. As a result, he loses his pastor at the St. Martini parish and gains the position of a clergyman in waiting ”.

“The Chamber saw a disciplinary offense in the fact that Pastor Oberhof grossly violated his official duties as a clergyman at St. Martini and that he made derogatory and factually incorrect statements about leading figures of the Evangelical Church in Germany in public meetings. Furthermore, according to the Disciplinary Chamber, there has been serious misconduct in marriage. Pastor Oberhof's political views and activities, especially his participation in the Warsaw Peace Congress, played a role neither in the initiation of the proceedings nor in the conviction ”.

Oberhof appealed the judgment to the Supreme Church Disciplinary Body . At the beginning of January 1954 the appeal was rejected and the verdict became final. He had previously sued the administrative court against the refusal of the Bremen City and Police Office to issue him a passport. This lawsuit was dismissed.

Gross violations of official duties at St. Martini were cited in the disciplinary proceedings. Bockhöfer explains:

“The trust that the community had in him was exhausted after three years, and towards the end of 1949 the mood was already tense. Oberhof was different than what the community thought it should have been; He dismissed house calls as “shoe sole theology”; he neglected the confirmation classes; Failure to comply with agreements, lack of punctuality and frequent absences led to resentment. The community resented him for having gone to the cinema for Christmas to distract himself from the death of his newborn son and for having withdrawn from the summer excursion through a bath in the Weser followed by a break ”.

Bockhöfer wrote further:

If you follow the autobiographical records, a thunderstorm of hatred erupted in the community: “I was not yet back from Berlin, the building owner of my community,” HH Wilts, “called my wife and explained to her: 'It's over with Pastor Primarius in St. Martini!' Wilts had threatened him with 'a fight' down to the knife '' if he didn't abandon his political goals. "

About the time after the disciplinary procedure, Bockhöfer noted:

“Oberhof got into the fronts of the Cold War , certainly also because financially he never recovered from being thrown out of Bremen; the dispute over the amount of his salary and later his pension dragged on. He did not find a permanent job in his learned profession and finally had to make ends meet as a publishing editor, insurance agent, washing machine representative, employee of the Bavarian church administration and as a theater statistic ”.

“It's not easy to get a reliable picture of Oberhof. His struggle against rearmament, which he considered fatal, is to be taken seriously. People who knew him better came to different conclusions than the Bremen press. Johannes Oberhof was a pastor who did not let the guilt of the Germans rest in the First and Second World War, who considered peace to be more important than the daily duties towards the congregation ”.

Düsseldorf trial

Until 1953, Oberhof was a member of the Presidium of the Peace Committee of the Federal Republic of Germany , and in 1951/52 he was also a member of the executive management of the main committee for public opinion polls. He was chairman of the preparatory committee for the 1951 World Youth Festival in Berlin and member of the board of the Democratic Cultural Association .

In 1960, in a trial against six leading representatives of the Peace Committee of the Federal Republic of Germany in Düsseldorf for "ringleadership in an association whose activities are directed against the constitutional order of the FRG", he was sentenced to three months' probation in prison. This was justified in particular by the fact that four of the six defendants (but not Oberhof himself) had belonged to the now banned KPD . Their activities for peace are therefore only a camouflage for the real aim of the "establishment of a communist regime in the Federal Republic" assumed by the Federal Prosecutor General .

Church President Martin Niemöller , Gustav Heinemann , the physicist John Desmond Bernal and Hans Joachim Iwand had testified in Oberhof's defense .

In 1961, Der Spiegel commented that it had been the “most unusual political criminal trial to date”, and the court's proceedings “shed light on the misery of political justice in the liberal constitutional state: for the purpose of protecting the freedom of all citizens, individual means are used that distort the elementary basic relationship of every legal system, the relationship between means and ends, to the detriment of law and freedom. "

literature

• Hartwig Ammann: Bremer Pfarrerbuch. The pastors of the Bremen Evangelical Church since the Reformation . Vol. 2, No. 701, p. 131. Verlag HM Hauschild GmbH, Bremen 1996
• Reinhard Bockhöfer: Pastor Johannes Oberhof's dearly paid engagement against rearmament. In: Helmut Donat, Andreas Röpcke (eds.): "Put your arms down - hands out!" Peace movement in Bremen 1898-1958. Catalog for the exhibition at the Bremen State Archives. Donat, Bremen 1989, ISBN 3-924444-45-5 .
• The mouse". On the history of the pastors in Bremen. Archive of the Society for Family Research eV in Bremen. Signature: XIX d 2b
• Robert Mießner: The Bremen pastors since the Reformation . Ms., 1951
• Friedrich-Martin Balzer (Ed.): Justice injustice in the Cold War. The criminalization of the West German peace movement in the Düsseldorf trial in 1959/60. PapyRossa, Cologne 2006, ISBN 3-89438-341-0 .
• Christoph Butterwegge (among others, ed.): Bremen in the Cold War. Contemporary witnesses report from the 50s and 60s: Western integration - rearmament - peace movement. With a foreword by Klaus Wedemeier. Bremen 1991

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Reinhard Bockhöfer: Pastor Johannes Oberhof's dearly paid engagement against rearmament . In: Helmut Donat , Andreas Röpcke (eds.): "Lower your arms - your hands reached!" Peace movement in Bremen 1898–1958. Page 178
2. ↑ Reinhard Bockhöfer: Pastor Johannes Oberhof's dearly paid engagement against rearmament . In: Helmut Donat, Andreas Röpcke (eds.): "Put your arms down - hands out!" Peace movement in Bremen 1898-1958. Page 176
3. ↑ Reinhard Bockhöfer: Pastor Johannes Oberhof's dearly paid engagement against rearmament . In: Helmut Donat, Andreas Röpcke (eds.): "Put your arms down - hands out!" Peace movement in Bremen 1898-1958. P. 179/180
4. ↑ Broken spine . In: Der Spiegel , No. 28/1961, pp. 20–31, here: p. 20.