Julia Helmke

Julia Helmke (* 1969 in Freising ) is a German Protestant theologian. Since July 1, 2017, she has been the general secretary of the German Evangelical Church Congress .

Life

Julia Helmke comes from the Bavarian regional church . From 1990 to 1996 she studied Protestant theology in Neuendettelsau, Rostock, Berlin, Montpellier, Heidelberg and San Jose in Costa Rica. She then completed her vicariate in Fürstenried , worked in the regional church office in Munich for a project on European ecumenism, the implementation of the Charter Oecumenica , and for the Lutheran World Federation. From 1999 to 2002 Helmke studied cultural journalism with a focus on film criticism at the University of Television and Film Munich . Since 2001 she has been a lecturer in the field of Christian journalism at the Friedrich-Alexander University (FAU) Erlangen-Nürnberg, where she received her doctorate in 2005 on the history and criteria of Protestant film work.

From 2005 to 2015 she headed the “Church in Dialogue” division in the House of Church Services in Hanover and was its deputy director. As the cultural representative of the Hanoverian regional church , she initiated, among other things, cultural prizes and a fund for church cultural work. Since 2015 she has worked as head of department for socio-political issues in the Federal President's Office and was responsible for the Federal President's appearances at church and Catholic days, but also for the areas of literature and film, churches and religious communities, commemoration and engagement policy. She is a trained spiritual guide and teaches regularly as an honorary professor for Christian journalism in Erlangen.

In her function as general secretary, Helmke is responsible for the strategic development of the Kirchentag and the establishment and maintenance of networks in church and society. She heads the central office in Fulda and is responsible for the full-time support of the voluntary leadership bodies of the Kirchentag as well as the collegial leadership of the full-time management team. Since 2003 she has been a member of the board of inter film , the international Protestant film organization, and took over the honorary presidency in 2013.

She publishes and trains in the field of religion and film as well as church and contemporary arts. She is a regular juror at festivals.

Committees and memberships

• Since 2018 member of the supervisory board of the joint venture of Protestant journalism
• Member of the Board of Trustees of the Foundation of the Evangelical Academy in Berlin since 2017
• Since 2014 member of the project management of the international research group Film and Theology and member of the Advisory Board of the Journal for Religion, Film and Media (JRFM)
• Since 2002 member of various juries and working groups in the field of art and culture in ecclesiastical and non-ecclesiastical areas
• Since 2013 president of the international ecumenical film organization INTERFILM

Web links

• Website on the website of the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg
• Website of the church film organization INTERFILM