Karl Kulisz

Karl Kulisz (born June 12, 1873 in Dzięgielów , Teschen district ; † May 8, 1940 in Buchenwald concentration camp ; also Karol Kulisz ) was a Lutheran theologian of the Evangelical Augsburg Church in Poland and a victim of National Socialism .

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Karl Kulisz

Karl Kulisz was born as the son of the house owners Adam Kulisz and Anna Hławiczka. He studied Protestant theology at the Universities of Vienna and Erlangen before he was ordained to the ministerial office on January 6, 1899 after his vicariate in Ligotka Kameralna .

In 1908, Kulisz himself took over the pastoral position in Ligotka Kameralna after his vicar mentor and pastor Jerzy (Georg) Heczko left. Here Kulisz published the Christian journal Dla Wszystkich .

In 1919, Kulisz moved to the first parish of the parish of Teschen and stayed there until 1939. Here he was considered a popular and impressive preacher, who was also superintendent of the Silesian diocese of the Evangelical Augsburg Church in Poland from 1921 to 1936 .

From a very early age, Karl Kulisz was active in national Polish in the East Prussian Masuria region . Here, between 1903 and 1905, he founded a Polish bookstore and printer in Osterode with Pastor Franciszek (Franz) Michejda and in agreement with General Superintendent Juliusz Bursche . The Polish newspaper Masurian Messenger was launched by him.

From 1910 to 1919, Kulisz edited the evangelization paper Word of Life , and from 1919 on he was a member of the delegation that the then Rada Narodowa Księstwa Cieszyńskiego ( Silesian-Teschen National People's Council ) sent to Paris for the purpose of annexing the Teschen Land to Poland.

Karl Kulisz was the founder and head of the Dzięgelów Deaconess Center near Teschen, as well as of Bethesda.

In September 1939 he was arrested by the Gestapo because of his Polish national activities in the province of Upper Silesia and his involvement as representative of this province at the Council of Ambassadors in 1919. First he was taken to a prison in Silesia, then in 1940 to the Buchenwald concentration camp near Weimar . On the very first day, the concentration camp guards knocked out one of his eyes and broke his jaw. Despite constantly renewed requests from his Teschen community, Kulisz was not released. His body was cremated and the urn containing the ashes was sent to his widow in 1940.

literature

• Eduard Kneifel : The pastors of the Evangelical-Augsburg Church in Poland. A biographical pastor's book. Eging 1968.