Cornelius Wiebe

Kornelius Wiebe (born October 19, 1955 in the settlement of Urusu, Tatar ASSR , Soviet Union ; † June 22, 2015 in Tashkent , Uzbekistan ) was Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Uzbekistan within the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Russia, Ukraine, in Kazakhstan and Central Asia . He was of German descent and came from a Mennonite family. Despite his origins, Wiebe had only an imperfect command of German, which is related to the Stalinist reprisals and the associated ban on cultivating the German language, to which Russian Germans were exposed during the Second World War and afterwards.

Life

Wiebe was born in the settlement of Urusu in the Tatar ASSR, where his parents from Ukraine were deported from the German Volga Autonomous Republic . In the late 1950s, he and his family moved on to Kazakhstan and then to Uzbekistan. He first completed an apprenticeship as a locksmith. He studied civil engineering and then agriculture via distance learning. Although he was not a clergyman, Wiebe was elected provost in October 1994 . Since 2000 he has been bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Uzbekistan, founded in 1993.

On August 24, 2014 Wiebe received a visit from the German Federal Commissioner for Resettled Issues and National Minorities , Hartmut Koschyk, and a delegation made up of other MPs, including Stephan Mayer . During this visit, Bishop Wiebe reported on the plans of his parish to turn the former Protestant prayer house in the city of Tschirtschik into a museum that presents the history of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Central Asia.

He took part in the work of the Committee on Religious Affairs in Uzbekistan and was one of the initiators of the Bible Society there.

Web links

Koschyk visits the Evangelical Lutheran parish in Tashkent on koschyk.de

Meeting with the ambassador and visiting the bishop on elkras.ru. In: Der Bote Spezial. No. 1 2014, p. 4.

Individual evidence

↑ ELKRAS / Uzbekistan: One service - three anniversaries. at martin-luther-bund.de, accessed on February 14, 2015.
↑ Lutheran Bishop Kornelius Wiebe died , idea.de, message from June 24, 2015.
↑ Federal Commissioner Koschyk with Bishop Cornelius Wiebe and Member of the Bundestag Stephan Mayer on aussiedlerbeauftragter.de, accessed on February 14, 2015.

personal data
SURNAME	Wiebe, Cornelius
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Wiebe, Cornelius
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Uzbek provost and bishop of Uzbekistan
DATE OF BIRTH	October 19, 1955
PLACE OF BIRTH	Urusu, Tatarstan
DATE OF DEATH	June 22, 2015
Place of death	Tashkent

[1] ELKRAS / Uzbekistan: One service - three anniversaries. at martin-luther-bund.de, accessed on February 14, 2015.

[2] Lutheran Bishop Kornelius Wiebe died , idea.de, message from June 24, 2015.

[3] Federal Commissioner Koschyk with Bishop Cornelius Wiebe and Member of the Bundestag Stephan Mayer on aussiedlerbeauftragter.de, accessed on February 14, 2015.