Johannes Reinhold Schultz

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Johannes Reinhold Schultz (1905–1941); Photograph, 1938

John Reinhold Schultz called Hans, (born 10 jul. / 23. September  1905 greg. In Parnu , died on April 1, 1941 in Tuszyn ) was a Baltic German theologian. He is considered to be one of the most important actors in the conflict of Baltic theologians with National Socialism. He recognized early on that "National Socialism and Christian faith are at odds with one another".

Church historical circumstances

As an immigrant upper class, the Baltic Germans had great influence on the religion, culture and language of the Latvians and Estonians from the late 12th century onwards . In the course of the Reformation , the Baltic Germans as well as the Estonian and Latvian populations overwhelmingly adopted the Lutheran faith . After the Baltic fell to Russia, the German minority formed the main part of the Baltic upper class. At the University of Tartu (German: Dorpat ) in what is now Estonia, only German was taught until the end of the 19th century, although it was in an area that was never dominated by Germans. Most of the students and lecturers were German. In the 19th century, the Baltic Germans fell into the maelstrom of nationalism, also triggered by the Russification policy imposed by Tsar Alexander II. From then on, teaching in Tartu was only allowed in Russian. In 1893 the city was officially renamed Yuryev in the course of Russification; the use of the Estonian or the German name was partially prohibited. In addition, the tsarist empire encouraged the influx of Russians into the Baltic cities, where the Germans previously made up the majority of the population. In the course of the Russian Revolution, Latvia and Estonia declared their independence in early 1918. With this, the Germans finally lost their hegemony in politics and society. Estonians and Latvians took over political leadership. The Baltic German estates were broken up in land reforms and distributed to Latvian and Estonian farmers. The former large landowners were left with residual goods of up to 50 hectares in size. The result was a wave of emigration. Up until the 1930s, the proportion of the Baltic Germans in the populations of the states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania shrank to an average of one to three percent, but they owned about 1/5 of the national wealth. In Estonia, with its total population of around 1.2 million people (1934), their number fell from a good 60,000 in the 1920s to around 16,000 in the 1930s. In the debate on whether to emigrate or stay, the words of the pastors had great weight.

Exterior view of the Nikolaikirche. This is where the German cathedral parish held its services in the interwar period.

There were also changes in canon law. Until 1919 there was no bishop in Estonia , but an Estonian general superintendent . A German-Baltic always held the office. The last person in this office was Wilhelm Kentmann . The General Superintendent was in personal union Upper pastor at the cathedral of Reval and preached as such there once a month on special occasions. On September 12, 1919, Jakob Kukk was elected as the managing bishop of Estonia at the second Estonian church congress in Tallinn, and a year later was elected by a large majority as the only candidate for life bishop. As such, he now claimed the right to preach in the cathedral church on special occasions. The German congregation rejected this resolutely, whereupon the Estonian state took over the administration of the church and left it to the bishop and his consistory . The German congregation could have continued to use the cathedral with the consent of the consistory, but decided to hold their services in the Nikolaikirche in the lower town from now on .

In the countries of the Baltic states, however, the Germans were recognized as a national minority and retained a certain degree of cultural independence. At the time of the statehood of the republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in the Baltic States until the resettlement of the German minority in 1939, there were many German-speaking Evangelical Lutheran congregations with a long tradition and history. National tensions intensified in the early 1930s. The debate has long been about the relationship of the Baltic German ethnic group to the German Empire and national affiliation. In 1933 National Socialist groups tried to infiltrate the German Baltic Party in Estonia . The Estonian government stepped in, declared the internal party elections to be invalid and issued a ban on political Nazi groups.

A discussion also flared up among theologians about how to deal with National Socialism. Alongside Pastor Waldemar Thomson, Hans Schultz recognized as early as the early 1930s that "National Socialism and Christian faith are at odds with one another". He was in opposition to most of the pastors in Estonia, who were less critical of the new movement or who even worked in the leadership circles. However, the attitudes of the pastors were anything but consistent and ranged from emphatic closeness to resolute rejection. In between there was a large group of those who approached National Socialism uncertainly and tentatively.

In early 1933, the initiator of the National Socialist movement in Latvia, Erhard Kroeger , wrote an article and thus provoked a literary confrontation with theologians. Among his most important opponents were the theologians Herbert Girgensohn in Latvia and Hans Schultz in Estonia . In his remarks, published in the Baltic Monthly Hefts , Kroeger opposed what he believed to be a "spiritualized weakness" that was caused by the belief in the second coming of Jesus Christ and the establishment of his thousand year kingdom and the hope for an "age without political friction and without a fight ”and therefore renounce the resolute political discourse. In his further remarks he described an altruistic ethic of the political as political inversion , which, following Friedrich Nietzsche, he opposed the will to power as the core of political endeavors. In Estonia, Hans Schultz rejected this unconditional will of the National Socialist movement in the Baltic states to rule beyond any moral conception of good and evil. Schultz rejected Kröger's concept because of its anti-Christian thrust and emphasized that Christian standards would also apply to the ethics of politics. With the title "Anti-Machiavell", Schultz alludes to the discrepancy between Frederick the Great's position in "Anti-Machiavell" and his own political practice. Although he shared some of the movement's notions of order in the text, he rejected the ideology that Kroeger wrote down to support his theses. What is important for politics is a “will that is illuminated and disciplined by the spirit of Christ”. What is needed now is a “clarification of the fronts” between the movement and Christians. A clearly established contrast is better for the “national community” than a concealment of internal differences. It must also be prevented that Christians get into a contradiction between theory and practice, say Christianity and obey Nietzsche (“Anti-Machiavell”). In the appendix to this document, Erhard Kroeger answered briefly with a final word. In it he agreed with Schultz's thesis that the will to power finds its limit in the legal idea.

In the same edition of the Baltic Monthly Letters, Schultz published another article entitled Die deutsche Revolution und die Theologie . With the catchphrase German Revolution , the Baltic Germans took up a term from contemporary NSDAP propaganda, which called the seizure of power in 1933 the National Revolution or German Revolution . In his opening remarks he writes “The German revolution is a very complex and comprehensive process. That is why every attempt to understand and interpret this process today is a risk. The time has certainly not come today for historical judgments and humanities categorization. We can confidently leave them to the research work of the coming decades. ”With this, Schultz maintains a critical distance from movement and clearly distinguishes himself from the often enthusiastic expressions in his environment. He rejects nationalism as an atrocity and warns against the Nazism, which penetrated into all areas of life: The revolutionary upheaval in Germany is not just about the thin layer of the political in the narrower sense, but also all the deeper layers of sociological, philosophical and also religious being " detected. He therefore calls for a passionate conversation between theology and the revolution in order to make clear the church's rejection of an attitude based on "the health of existence and the self-sufficiency of the forces of a people". Schultz closes his essay with the words that theology will "not cease to destroy the veil that conceals the ultimate and decisive depths of those who believe in the health of their existence."

Life

Building of the knight and cathedral school in Reval at Dom-Schulstrasse 11, 2018. Hans Schultz was a teacher here from 1915 to 1924 and from 1933 to 1935.

Childhood and youth

Hans Schultz was the fourth son of pastor Otto Woldemar Ludwig Schultz (1864–1929) and his wife Johanna, née Luther. His grandfather was Woldemar Schultz, the Estonian general superintendent and pastor at Reval Cathedral (1813–1887). Hans was born in Pärnu and on July 23 . / October 6,  1905 greg. baptized in the local St. Jakobi Church. From 1915 to 1924 he attended the Knight and Cathedral School in Reval .

Study and job

From 1924 Hans studied theology at the University of Tartu . There he was a member of the Estonia student association ., During his studies he spent a semester in Tübingen and graduated in 1927 with the academic degree Magister Theologiae at the University of Tartu. From 1928 to 1931 he stayed in a tuberculosis sanatorium in Switzerland due to illness, which he then left completely cured. On February 5, 1933 he was ordained by Professor Gunnar Rudolf Knüpffer in Tallinn Cathedral, where he was pastor at the cathedral parish in Reval from 1933 to 1938 and teacher at the cathedral school from 1933 to 1935. From 1938 to 1939 he was an associate professor for systematic theology at the private German theological-philosophical Luther Institute in Tartu . At that time, Schultz was living with his family in Elva near Tartu.

Resettlement and Death

According to the German-Soviet border and friendship treaty of September 28, 1939, resettlement agreements were concluded with Estonia and Latvia in October. The family found out about this later that month from rumors they had little faith in. At the end of the year, more than 50,000 Germans from Latvia and 14,000 Germans from Estonia had already been resettled, the majority of them to the newly annexed Polish areas, the new Gaue Wartheland and Danzig-West Prussia . In the course of the resettlement, the German parishes in Estonia were dissolved, as was Hans Schultz's parish in November 1939. He then settled with his wife and children in the port city of Gdynia near Danzig , which was renamed Gotenhafen , and lived in an assigned small apartment that was hardly heated. There, Hans apparently contracted another tuberculosis infection. The couple then moved to Grünheide near Berlin . Some time later, the Brandenburg welfare office sent Hans to a lung hospital in the Lüneburg Heath. His wife moved with the children to her sister Maja, whose family had been assigned a property in the Altburgund district in the Reichsgau Wartheland . The Polish population there had previously been expropriated by the National Socialists. After Hans's condition did not improve, he moved to his family in the autumn of 1940, who had since settled in Ostrowo (today: Ostrów Wielkopolski in Wartheland). At the turn of 1941 he was admitted to the Tuschinek sanatorium (today: Tuszyn in the Łódź Voivodeship ) of the Wartheland State Insurance Institute. There his condition suddenly and very quickly deteriorated in March. He died of tuberculosis on April 1, 1941. He is buried in the cemetery of the Evangelical Augsburg Church in Poland at the St. Matthew Church (św. Mateusz) in Lodz.

family

His brother was Kurt Rudolf Schultz (1901–1979), pastor in Estonia and later in Germany. Hans had been married to Alice Hartmann since August 11, 1934. The couple had three children. The social anthropologist and professor of human geography Silja Klepp is his granddaughter.

Works

  • Anti-Machiavellian . In: Baltic Monthly 1933. pp. 212–218
  • The German Revolution and Theology . In: Baltic Monthly 1933. pp. 390–398
  • The church concept of the Orthodox Church . In: Journal for systematic theology issue 17. 1940. pp. 399–458

literature

  • Schultz, Johannes (Hans) Reinh. in: Wilhelm Neander: Lexicon of Baltic German Theologians since 1920 . Verlag und Druckerei Fritz Eberlein, Hanover, 2nd edition 1988. ISBN 3-7777-0937-9 , p. 142

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Schultz, Johannes (Hans) Reinh. in: Wilhelm Neander: Lexicon of Baltic German Theologians since 1920 . Verlag und Druckerei Fritz Eberlein, Hanover, 2nd edition 1988. ISBN 3-7777-0937-9 , p. 142
  2. ^ Heinrich Wittram : German Baltic theologians between ethnic pull and reformatory reflection in Latvia and Estonia in the 1930s . In: Michael Garleff , Karl Ernst von Baer Foundation., Baltic Historical Commission. (Ed.): Baltic Germans, Weimar Republic and Third Reich . Böhlau, Cologne 2001, ISBN 3-412-12199-1 , p. 217 .
  3. ↑ Wilhelm Kahle: Political Questions and Church Answers in the German Ethnic Groups in Latvia and Estonia 1918-1939 . In: Maser, Peter., Hauptmann, Peter (ed.): The church struggle in the German East and in the German-speaking churches of Eastern Europe . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1992, ISBN 3-525-56440-6 , pp. 206-232 .
  4. ^ Heinrich Wittram: German Baltic theologians between ethnic pull and reformatory reflection in Latvia and Estonia in the 1930s . In: Garleff, Michael., Karl Ernst von Baer Foundation., Baltic Historical Commission. (Ed.): Baltic Germans, Weimar Republic and Third Reich . Böhlau, Cologne 2001, ISBN 3-412-12199-1 , p. 219 .
  5. ↑ a b c Wilhelm Kahle: Political questions and church answers in the German ethnic groups of Latvia and Estonia 1918-1939 . In: Maser, Peter, Hauptmann, Peter (Hrsg.): The church struggle in the German East and in the German-speaking churches of Eastern Europe . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1992, ISBN 3-525-56440-6 , pp. 208 .
  6. ^ Oskar Angelus: The resettlement of the Estonian Germans in 1939/40 from an Estonian perspective . In: Baltische Hefte 15 (1969). P. 111
  7. ↑ Cord Aschenbrenner : The evangelical rectory: three hundred years of faith, spirit and power: a family history . Siedler, Munich 2015, ISBN 978-3-8275-0013-7 , p. 237 .
  8. ^ A b c Matthias Schröder: The Baltic German National Socialist "movement" in Latvia under Erhard Kroeger . In: Garleff, Michael., Karl Ernst von Baer Foundation., Baltic Historical Commission. (Ed.): Baltic Germans, Weimar Republic and Third Reich . tape 2 . Böhlau, Cologne 2001, ISBN 3-412-12199-1 , p. 125 .
  9. ↑ Sulev Vahtre (ed.): Eesti Ajalugu. Volume 6: Vabadussõjast Taasiseseisvumiseni. Ilmamaa, Tartu 2005, ISBN 9985-77-142-7 , p. 68.
  10. ^ Heinrich Wittram: German Baltic theologians between ethnic pull and reformatory reflection in Latvia and Estonia in the 1930s . In: Garleff, Michael., Karl Ernst von Baer Foundation., Baltic Historical Commission. (Ed.): Baltic Germans, Weimar Republic and Third Reich . tape 1 . Böhlau, Cologne 2001, ISBN 3-412-12199-1 , p. 219 .
  11. ^ Heinrich Wittram: German Baltic theologians between ethnic pull and reformatory reflection in Latvia and Estonia in the 1930s . In: Garleff, Michael., Karl Ernst von Baer Foundation., Baltic Historical Commission. (Ed.): Baltic Germans, Weimar Republic and Third Reich . Böhlau, Cologne 2001, ISBN 3-412-12199-1 , p. 220-221 .
  12. ↑ a b c Heinrich Wittram: Self-assertion and attachment to faith. Theological reflections in the German-Baltic church system as a response to the events of the time 1919–1939 In: Zeitschrift für Osteuropaforschung 23 (1974). P. 613.
  13. ↑ Erhard Kroeger: About political inversion . In: Baltic Monthly Issues 1933, No. 2 (February) pp. 91-97
  14. ^ David Feest: Delimitation or Assimilation. Reflections on the change in Baltic German ideologies 1918–1939 based on the "Baltic Monthly" . In: Journal for East Central Europe Research 45 (1996). Pp. 506-43
  15. ↑ Hans Schultz: Anti-Machiavell (with a closing word by E. Kroeger). In: Baltic Monthly Bulletin 1933, p. 212 ff.
  16. ^ A b Wilhelm Kahle: Political Questions and Church Answers in the German Ethnic Groups of Latvia and Estonia 1918-1939 . In: Maser, Peter, Hauptmann, Peter (Hrsg.): The church struggle in the German East and in the German-speaking churches of Eastern Europe . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1992, ISBN 3-525-56440-6 , pp. 230 .
  17. ↑ Erhard Kroeger: Closing Word . In: Baltic Monthly 1933, p. 229.
  18. ^ A b Hans Schultz: The German Revolution and Theology . In: Baltic Monthly 1933, p. 390 ff.
  19. ^ Wilhelm Kahle: Political questions and church answers in the German ethnic groups of Latvia and Estonia 1918-1939 . In: Maser, Peter, Hauptmann, Peter (Hrsg.): The church struggle in the German East and in the German-speaking churches of Eastern Europe . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1992, ISBN 3-525-56440-6 , pp. 231 .
  20. ^ Baltic Historical Commission (ed.): Entry on Schultz, Ernst Wilhelm Woldemar. In: BBLD - Baltic Biographical Lexicon digital
  21. ↑ a b Schultz, Johannes (Hans) Reinh. in: Wilhelm Neander: Lexicon of Baltic German Theologians since 1920 . Verlag und Druckerei Fritz Eberlein, Hanover, 2nd edition 1988. ISBN 3-7777-0937-9 , p. 142
  22. ↑ Estonorum album. Tallinn 1939 and supplements 1961: No. 1234.
  23. ↑ VAIMULIKE ELULOOD. Retrieved February 8, 2019 .
  24. ↑ Maa Hääl: maarahva ajaleht November 17, 1939 - DIGAR Eesti artiklid. Retrieved February 9, 2019 .
  25. ↑ Heinz von zur Mühlen (Ed.): Woldemar Hartmann. Memories: 1874–1962; as a lawyer in Russian Poland, Estonia and in the Warthegau . Carl-Schirren-Ges, [Lüneburg] 2004, ISBN 3-923149-48-4 , p. 216 .
  26. ↑ Heinz von zur Mühlen (Ed.): Woldemar Hartmann. Memories: 1874–1962; as a lawyer in Russian Poland, Estonia and in the Warthegau . Carl-Schirren-Ges, [Lüneburg] 2004, ISBN 3-923149-48-4 , p. 235 .
  27. ↑ A picture of the grave stone is available on the Internet: Mr SCOTT: Mr SCOTT jedzie do ... (- :: wycieczka No. 133 "Pravda, Tuszyn i Ruda Pabianicka". In: Mr SCOTT jedzie do ... (- :. Retrieved on February 8, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Schultz, Johannes Reinhold
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schultz, Hans
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Baltic German clergyman
DATE OF BIRTH September 28, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH Parnu , Estonia
DATE OF DEATH April 1, 1941
Place of death Tuszyn