Karl Peter Maurer

Carl Peter Maurer , also Karl Peter Maurer or Charles Peter Maurer , (born June 23, 1874 in Lobsann , † February 23, 1950 in Strasbourg ) was an Alsatian Lutheran theologian.

Life

Maurer came from an old family in northern Alsace. He was the son of the civil servant Peter M. Maurer and his wife Elisabeth Schmidt. Maurer studied Protestant theology at the University of Strasbourg from 1892 to 1896 . In his first semester he became a member of the Argentina-Strasbourg Association in the Wingolfsbund , with which he remained associated until his death. From 1896 he completed his vicariate in Strasbourg at the church Saint-Pierre-le-Jeune protestant (Jung St. Peter, Protestant), then in Colmar, Westhoffen, Bischwiller, Hoerdt and Strasbourg St-Guillaume (St. Wilhelm). He was ordained on February 19, 1898. On August 8, 1901, he married Maria Carolina Schahl (nickname Lina) in Strasbourg shortly before his appointment as pastor in Bust, where he had a new church built. He also founded an agricultural fund there with some citizens, which corresponded to a savings and loan fund in the sense of Raiffeisen . The marriage resulted in a daughter and five sons.

Maurer showed a keen interest in the mission from the start . As a result, he was sent as a delegate of the Evangelical Lutheran Mission Society of Internal and External Mission in Alsace-Lorraine and the Hermannsburg Mission in 1910 to the International Mission Conference in Edinburgh. He turned down an important position in the African mission in order to remain in the Alsatian pastoral service. In 1915 he became a pastor in Gerstheim , a community that had been divided for 40 years between a liberal majority and a Lutheran-Orthodox minority that had joined the protest community in Plobsheim. The church leadership had initially tried to prevent Maurer from being elected pastor. However, through Maurer's election, the parish was reunited. After Alsace had become French again, on February 21, 1919, he received a notification from the Directorate Commission that he had been appointed parish administrator in Schwindratzheim (both in the department of Bas Rhin (Lower Alsace)). All submissions from the community in Gerstheim were unsuccessful. On January 17, 1920 the prefect justified: "Le déplacement de Maurer de Gerstheim a été décidé en raison de ses sentiments fracophobes." ("The transfer was due to his anti-French feelings"). According to Siegwalt, the transfer was the result of agitation against bricklayers by liberals and francophiles from nearby Erstein .

Maurer became one of the editors of the autonomist magazine Die Zukunft, which appeared in Alsace from 1925 . He was a co-signer of the "Call to all Alsatian-Lorraine loyalists" of the Alsace-Lorraine Homeland Federation of June 8, 1926. Maurer not only worked with Karl Roos during this time , but was also instrumental in raising money from the German Reich and the Switzerland involved in financing the autonomy movement. From 1926 to 1939 he was a member of the Progress Party. Due to his involvement in the Alsatian autonomy movement, Maurer was briefly interned in Arches in 1940, then appointed President of the Evangelical Church AB of Alsace and Lorraine by the Nazi regime . He held this office from 1940 to 1944 under difficult conditions in place of Robert Hoepffner , who had fled to Perigueux . Despite his reluctance to act, he drew the mistrust of the German occupiers, especially the Gestapo . He held the office until Hoepffner's return and then retired to the Bethlehem House in Strasbourg-Cronenbourg, where he stayed until the end of 1947. He was interned, sentenced, then pardoned and expelled from Alsace, where he was only able to return shortly before his death.

Maurer was the author of the agende for the parishes of the Augsburg Confession in Alsace-Lorraine from 1906 with numerous Alsatian peculiarities. Together with Karl Fuchs he wrote the hymnbook for the Christians of the Augsburg Confession in E.L. from 1908. He revised the organ book Hallelujah. Four-part melody book together with liturgical chants and sacred songs , founded by Friedrich Ihme . From 1912 to 1918 and from 1921 to 1939 he was editor of the Orthodox Lutheran Messenger of Peace , founded by Weyermüller and Ihme.

As President of the Church Administration during the Nazi era, he managed to maintain the independence of the Alsatian Church, while the Lorraine regional church was integrated into the Palatinate Church. Maurer turned down the offer of the Nazi administration to give the Strasbourg Cathedral to the Protestant Church in order not to burden the relationship with the Catholics in Alsace.

For masons, Lutheranism and Germanness were inextricably linked. In his rubric in the Messenger of Peace , his German and Lutheran sentiments as well as his conservative, anti-parliamentary convictions are clearly recognizable. In 1908 he considered the elevation of Alsace-Lorraine to an equal Reichsland with its own parliament as unrealistic and a connection to Prussia more useful. After the establishment of a state parliament in Alsace in 1911, he criticized in 1912: "In Alsace-Lorraine, the parliamentary development, the tearing of the country into parties, continues." As in the Zabern affair, the Alsatian population, led by the francophone press , protested against German rule and Prussian militarism, Maurer rebelled in the name of the good "conservative German-Alsatians": "The enemies of the German cause have never been worked into the hands of this kind as in these days."

After the National Socialists came to power in the Reich, he criticized the suppression of freedom of expression and the hostile attitude towards the Jews on several occasions and indicated closeness to the Confessing Church . After Robert Hoepffner, President of the Church of the Augsburg Confession, was deposed in 1940, he nevertheless accepted his appointment as his successor by the National Socialist government. In a confidential letter dated September 14, 1940 to all pastors, he wrote that the Lutheran Church of Alsace was a “German church and a German-speaking church” and that the pastors were not apart from the “great movement that blows over our people” should. The evangelical faith is compatible with the acceptance of the National Socialist principles. The pastors were asked to report non-Aryan pastors to the board of directors, and the French-minded pastors were threatened with refusal of their salary. Maurer later justified this in the process by saying that he wanted to avert difficulties from the pastors so that they could continue to receive their salaries. Following the demands of the National Socialists, he redesigned the church constitution in line with the Führer principle and took the opportunity to install a bishop's church, strictly organized from above, in the Lutheran sense without synodal control bodies. Parliamentarianism has always been repugnant to him.

Maurer tried everything to prevent the Germans Christians from gaining a foothold in Alsace. Therefore, despite the great shortage of pastors in Alsace, he refused to take over 70 pastors from the empire. He feared that this could be connected with infiltration by this close pastor. After the theological faculty in Strasbourg was closed, he enforced that theology students of the regional church had to study in Tübingen, Erlangen or Leipzig. So he ruled out that they would listen to lecturers who were close to German Christians, for example in Heidelberg . On the other hand, contrary to his actual convictions, he ordained a woman for the first time, Alice Schlotterbeck , because he considered it justified in times of need.

As the old man's chairman of his Argentina association, he transferred it to the "NS-Kameradschaft Karl-Hackenschmidt ", which meant for members of the association, which had always rejected duels and scales, that they had to admit to the principle of unconditional satisfaction and were part of the Nazi German Student union . All other Wingolf associations had refused to take this step, instead disbanded themselves or had been banned. Maurer became "old gentleman leader"

At the general assembly of the Lutheran Society on November 11, 1947, after a speech by the General Secretary of the Lutheran World Federation , Michelfelder, he spoke and emphasized the “unchangeable German character of the Evangelical Lutheran Church”.

Fonts

• Agenda for parishes of Augsburg confession in Alsace-Lorraine. Strasbourg 1906.
• Hymnbook for Christians of the Augsburg Confession in Alsace-Lorraine. Strasbourg 1908.

literature

• Ernest Muller: Karl Peter Maurer . In: Jean-Marie Mayeur, Yves-Marie Hilaire: Dictionnaire du monde religieux dans la France contemporaine . Vol. 2, Alsace, pp. 285-287.
• Martin Siegwalt: Carl Maurer. A life for church and home. Freimund, Neuendettelsau 2014.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} Ernest Müller: Karl Peter Maurer. In: Jean-Marie Mayeur, Yves-Marie Hilaire: Dictionnaire du monde religieux dans la France contemporaine. Vol. 2, Alsace, pp. 285-287.
2. ↑ Cf. Martin Siegwalt: Carl Maurer: A life for church and home. Neudettelsau 2014, p. 18.
3. ↑ See Martin Siegwalt: Carl Maurer. A life for church and home. Neudettelsau 2014, p. 30f.
4. ↑ See Martin Siegwalt: Carl Maurer. A life for church and home. Neudettelsau 2014, p. 30.
5. ↑ See Martin Siegwalt: Carl Maurer. A life for church and home. Neudettelsau 2014, p. 40.
6. ^ ^{A b} The Protestant intellectual milieu in Germany, its press and its networks, 1871 to 1963. Bern 2008, p. 86.
7. ↑ See Martin Siegwalt: Carl Maurer. A life for church and home. Neudettelsau 2014, p. 83.
8. ↑ ^{a b} Cf. Martin Siegwalt: Carl Maurer, A life for church and home. Neudettelsau 2014, p. 136.
9. ↑ See Martin Siegwalt: Carl Maurer. A life for church and home. Neudettelsau 2014, p. 61.
10. ↑ See Martin Siegwalt: Carl Maurer. A life for church and home. Neudettelsau 2014, p. 128.
11. ↑ ^{a b c} Cf. Martin Siegwalt: Carl Maurer. A life for church and home. Neudettelsau 2014, p. 129.
12. ↑ See Martin Siegwalt: Carl Maurer. A life for church and home. Neudettelsau 2014, p. 138.
13. ↑ See Martin Siegwalt: Carl Maurer. A life for church and home. Neudettelsau 2014, p. 84.
14. ↑ ^{a b} Cf. Martin Siegwalt: Carl Maurer. A life for church and home. Neudettelsau 2014, p. 94.
15. ↑ See Martin Siegwalt: Carl Maurer. A life for church and home. Neudettelsau 2014, p. 68.
16. ^ Heinrich Barth in: Chronicle of the Argentina student union in Strasbourg 1907 to 1967. Oberhausen 1969, p. 256ff. (260)
17. ↑ Hans-Martin Tiebel: History of Wingolfs 1933-1945. In: History of Wingolf 1839-1994. Hanover 1998, p. 230ff.
18. ↑ See Martin Siegwalt: Carl Maurer. A life for church and home. Neudettelsau 2014, p. 85.