Karl Boll

Karl Friedrich Wilhelm Boll (born June 30, 1898 in Lübeck ; † August 12, 1991 in Reinbek ) was a German Protestant pastor and psychologist.

Live and act

Karl Boll was born as the son of a hotelier in Lübeck. From 1915 he did voluntary military service in the dragoon regiment during the First World War . Due to a serious wound he stayed in a hospital until January 1919 and in September of the same year passed the Abitur at the Oberschule zum Dom in Lübeck. Boll then studied Protestant theology at the Universities of Kiel , Tübingen and Rostock as well as the Bethel Church University . The widow Tila von Erckert hired him as an educator in Mecklenburg in 1923.

Boll received his doctorate on November 15, 1924. phil. In his dissertation he dealt with Arthur Schopenhauer . After he had passed the first theological exam on March 31, 1927, he received a position as vicar with Ludwig Heitmann in Hamburg-Eppendorf . Boll passed the second theological examination in 1927. Heinz Beckmann ordained him on April 21, 1929 at the main church of St. Nikolai . Subsequently, Boll initially worked as an assistant pastor, from April 3, 1932 as a pastor at the Eppendorf General Hospital . He had received the title of pastor on June 13, 1930. He kept the post of pastor of the hospital until the end of the Second World War .

The theologian was a member of the NSDAP from March 1933 to September 1944 . He got involved with the German Christians and became one of the leading figures in the Hamburg movement. Boll worked closely with Mayor Carl Vincent Krogmann . Since it had been suggested to him for political reasons, Regional Bishop Franz Tügel awarded Karl Boll the title of senior church councilor on September 5, 1934 . Tügel recalled Boll on September 18, 1936. Boll lacked the trust of other pastors. In addition, he is closely linked to the Bund für German Christianity and its radical Thuringian wing. Boll represented a "national church" orientation, which Tügel regarded as "contrary to the denomination" for theological reasons. However, Boll continued to receive correspondingly higher salaries and was allowed to stand as “Oberkirchenrat a. D. “. During a training session, Boll took the view that Paul's letter to the Galatians portrayed "the Aryan world not being foreign to Jewish Christianity".

In order to harm the later Bishop Karl Witte , Boll passed on incriminating documents to the editorial staff of the weekly newspaper Das Schwarze Korps . In his function as senior church councilor, the theologian is said to have submitted numerous other denunciation letters to the Gestapo . After the title of Oberkirchenrat had been stripped of him, the NSDAP Boll Gauleitung publicly expressed its trust. After he had left his leading position among the German Christians at the end of 1936, Boll founded the combat group of the Coming Church in January 1937 . Since the group was viewed as radical, Boll had to leave the German Christians.

In February 1940, during the Second World War , Boll was called up as a psychologist for military service. In May of the same year he became a war administrator, and on March 1, 1941, he became a member of the reserve government. From March 1943, Boll was actively involved in the weaponry and lived temporarily in Norway . He was reported to have been reported in September 1944 as allegedly defeatist . After being assigned to five years in prison on January 19, 1945, Boll spent three months in prison at Torgau Fortress . In April 1945, American occupation forces arrested the theologian, but released him immediately for health reasons. On December 1, Boll was permanently retired as pastor. He was later no longer active as a theologian and was thus the only Hamburg clergyman who was suspended from service due to National Socialist activities. In retirement he received payments based on the income of a senior church councilor. Until 1950 he lived in his pastorate in Lokstedt . After legal negotiations, Boll had to leave the apartment that had been bought by a Jewish family who had been forced to leave the country during the Nazi era .

From 1952 to 1955 Boll worked as a psychologist in the state examination office for the public service of the city of Hamburg. He did not mention his membership in the NSDAP. In 1957 he moved to the Ministry of the Interior in Kiel , where he accompanied selection procedures as an expert. Two psychological reports drawn up in 1945 and 1956 concluded that Boll suffered from depressive psychosis as a result of the injuries sustained in 1917. This is associated with strong mood swings and can trigger pathological disorders of mental activities, according to the experts.

Boll spent the later years of his life in Reinbek. In retirement, he did research on literary issues and focused on Theodor Storm . He worked actively in the professional association of German psychologists and belonged to the Kosmos-Gesellschaft der Naturfreunde and the Theodor Storm Society .

Web links

• Literature by and about Karl Boll in the catalog of the German National Library

literature

• Rainer Hering: Boll, Karl . In: Franklin Kopitzsch, Dirk Brietzke (Hrsg.): Hamburgische Biographie . tape 4 . Wallstein, Göttingen 2008, ISBN 978-3-8353-0229-7 , pp. 55-56 .