Karl Klingemann (theologian)

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Karl Klingemann, the new General Superintendent of the Rhine Province (1913)

Karl Viktor Klingemann (born November 29, 1859 in London , † February 1, 1946 in Bonn ) was a German Protestant clergyman and superintendent of the Rhine Province from 1913 to 1928 .

Life

Karl Klingemann was a son of the Hanoverian diplomat of the same name and friend of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy Karl Klingemann and his wife Sophie (1822–1901), the half-sister of Friedrich August Rosen and sister of Georg Rosen . Soon after the father's death in 1862, the family returned to Germany. In 1909 Klingemann published the correspondence between his father and Felix Mendelssohn.

He studied Protestant theology at the Universities of Bonn and Marburg . During his studies in 1878 he became a member of the Arminia Marburg fraternity . In 1883 he passed the church examination. After his ordination in Berlin he was sent to the German Evangelical Congregation in Alexandria as a pastor . In 1890 he returned. For a year he worked as a clergyman and travel preacher of the Rhenish Provincial Committee for Inner Mission in Langenberg (Rhineland) , today a district of Velbert . In 1891 he came to Essen as a pastor and in 1900 became the first superintendent of the new church district in Essen. In 1913 he was appointed general superintendent of the Rhine Province of the Church of the Old Prussian Union based in Koblenz .

After his retirement in 1928, Klingemann moved to Bonn and taught as an honorary professor at the theological faculty of the University of Bonn.

Klingemann met Heinrich Claß at a rally of the Pan-German Association at the Niederwald Monument in 1900 . When Claß became chairman of the Pan-German Association in 1908, he appointed Klingemann as his deputy. Klingemann kept this office until his appointment as general superintendent and remained an active member afterwards. Faith and love of the country , so the title of his 1915 paper, uncritically coincided with him.

After 1918, as a representative of national Protestantism, he rejected the Weimar Republic . He was involved in the German National People's Party and from 1919 to 1921 was its member of the Prussian State Constitutional Assembly . In 1925 he was part of the German delegation at the World Conference on Practical Christianity in Stockholm and was the spokesman for its national Protestant group, which was like a "bloc" ( George Kennedy Allen Bell ) as opposed to the social gospel stance represented by the majority at the conference and support for the League of Nations .

In 1933 he welcomed the takeover of power by the National Socialists, to which he attached “high expectations”, but at the same time thanked Karl Barth “with full approval” for his critical work Theological Existence Today! and stood in the church election in Bonn in July 1933 as the top candidate on the list of Gospel and Church against the German Christians . In the following years he dealt mainly with family research and was only occasionally active as a journalist.

He was married to Margarethe, born in 1891. Conze (1866–1956), the daughter of a silk manufacturer in Langenberg. The couple had four children, of whom the only son Hermann died in World War I.

Fonts

  • Buddhism, pessimism and modern worldview. Essen 1898
  • Pilate. A passion play. Essen 1904
  • (Ed.) Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy's correspondence with Legation Councilor Karl Klingemann in London. GD Baedeker, Essen, 1909 ( digitized in the Internet Archive )
  • Heroism in the Bible. Bonn 1915
  • Faith and love of the country. 1915
  • Father sorrow. Essen 1918
  • Race and nationality in their relationship to religion and belief. A mission problem. Essen 1929
  • The vital forces of the Evangelical Church in Rhineland. Essen 1931
  • The Easter song “Christ is erupted” as a witness to the German past and German migrations. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen, 1932
  • Ernst Moritz Arndt, a fighter for faith and freedom (= people who heard the call, 17). Brunnen, Gießen / Basel, 1937

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See the presentation of Klingemann's speech in Wolfram Weisse: Practical Christianity and Kingdom of God: the ecumenical movement Life and Work, 1919-1937 (= Church and Confession 31). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen, 1991, ISBN 3-525-56535-6 , p. 321 f.
  2. ^ Stefan Flesch: Karl Klingemann. In: Internet portal Rheinische Geschichte . January 26, 2019, accessed February 2, 2019 .
  3. ^ Rolf Joachim Erler (ed.): Karl Barth-Charlotte von Kirschbaum, Correspondence: 1925–1935 (= Karl Barth Complete Edition 45). TVZ, Zurich, 2008, ISBN 978-3-290-17436-1 , p. 303 with note 28.
  4. ↑ Angela Dienhart Hancock: Karl Barth's Emergency Homiletic, 1932-1933: A Summons to Prophetic Witness at the Dawn of the Third Reich. Eerdmanns, Grand Rapids, 2013, ISBN 978-0-8028-6734-6 , p. 318
personal data
SURNAME Klingemann, Karl
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Klingemann, Karl Viktor (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Protestant clergyman and general superintendent of the Rhine Province (1913–1928)
DATE OF BIRTH November 29, 1859
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH February 1, 1946
Place of death Bonn