Kurt Dietrich Schmidt

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Kurt Dietrich Schmidt (* 25. October 1896 in Uthlede , † 27. July 1964 in Hamburg ) was a German Protestant - Lutheran church historian and member of the Confessing Church in the time of National Socialism .

Live and act

After graduating from the Pforta state school in 1914 and voluntarily participating in the First World War , Schmidt studied Protestant theology in Göttingen and worked there from 1921 to 1925 as an inspector at the Theological Monastery .

In 1923 he was with the church historian Carl Mirbt with a work on the aftermath of the late medieval reform ideas during the first period of the Council of Trent to Lic. Theol. PhD. A year later he completed his habilitation with the study of writing and tradition that followed the dissertation (printed together under the title Studies on the History of the Council of Trent , 1925).

After his assistantship in Göttingen, he accepted an appointment as professor of church history at the University of Kiel in 1929 . Schmidt also worked with the Protestant-conservative “ Christian Social People's Service ” from 1929 until it was dissolved in 1933 .

Because of his activities in the establishment of a denominational community in Schleswig-Holstein , in which he held management functions from the start (co-founder of the "Emergency and Working Group of Schleswig-Holstein Pastors" (NAG) on October 20, 1933 in Rendsburg , member of the State Brothers Council , author of the Declaration of no confidence in DC- Landesbishop Adalbert Paulsen on December 6, 1933, prompting of an expert opinion by the Theological Faculty of Kiel on the Parish Occupation Act of October 5, 1933, head of the Legal Committee of the 1st Synod of Confessions, 1935), because of his participation in a nationwide rally for theological university professors the resignation of Reich Bishop Ludwig Müller at the end of 1934 and because of his participation in the exams that the "Provisional Church Administration" of the German Evangelical Church carried out for the next generation of theologians with a religious orientation, Schmidt was dismissed from university service in 1935. But he also continued to protest in his publications against the National Socialist legend of the violent conversion of the Teutons to Christianity.

In the spring of 1935, Schmidt had justified his involvement in the church struggle as a university professor as follows to the Reich Minister responsible for him, Bernhard Rust :

“If a conflict arises over the creed, then I am called to work as a denominational theologian who is supposed to serve the church to ensure the purity of its preaching through theological reflection. If this work results in a clear position, however, it would be a betrayal of the special professional honor of the German professor, the profiteri , the confession and to become a hypocrite through silence. "

Since 1936 Schmidt taught as a lecturer at the Lutheran mission seminar in Hermannsburg , and since 1947 he was involved in church lectures in Hamburg. In 1948 he became a full-time lecturer at the newly founded church college, in 1950 professor and in 1953 full professor at the newly founded Ev.-Theol. Faculty in Hamburg .

Carsten Nicolaisen judged him:

"In view of the anti-church and anti-Christian ideologies of the 20th century, the Lutheran confession for S. gained identity and became a point of reference for his ecclesiastical and political decisions in the tension between Lutheran loyalty to authorities and opposition to political rule that went against Christianity . Ethos violated. "

After 1945, Schmidt was the founder of the “Kirchenkampfforschung”, and from 1955 to 1964 he was chairman of the “Commission of the Ev. Church in Germany for the History of the Church Struggle in the National Socialist Era ”and, together with Heinz Brunotte, has published the series of works on the history of the church struggle since 1958 . In 1961, together with Ernst Wolf, he founded the handbook series The Church in its History . Schmidt's Grundriß der Kirchengeschichte (4 vol. And 1 ep. Vol., 1949, since 1954 in one vol., 9th edition 1990) is one of the most successful theological textbooks in Germany.

In 1930 Schmidt was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Göttingen .

Summary of his church struggle research

“The most beautiful - at the same time bravest - example of this [for the church resistance ] is the memorandum that the 2nd Provisional Church Administration, i.e. the leadership of the Confessing Church , presented to Adolf Hitler on May 18, 1936 , perhaps the most open word that Hitler was ever said. ... The word should be a strictly confidential form of address from the church leadership to the head of state. However, through a gross indiscretion, it ended up in the hands of the Swedish embassy preacher and through him in the world press. Thereupon it was read from the pulpit in many congregations in Germany, strangely enough, without the pastors reading it being held accountable. The congregations perceived the word as an act of liberation; they felt that had to be said sometime.

During the war, the action against the mentally ill and weak, the so-called euthanasia , was criticized so severely that it was finally stopped. The protests against the treatment of the Jews, which were directed to the Reich government by church leaders, unfortunately did not have the same success. ...

One thing has not been issued: a great public appeal to all who wanted to be Christians to stand up unanimously against the elementary violation of the simplest commandments of God that happened there: for example after Kristallnacht , on the question of euthanasia, the final solution to the Jewish question or the like . ... The fact that only leaders of the churches took the floor in non-public petitions and that the churches as a whole did not stand up elementarily, that must be seen as part of their failure. They were also aware of this, which is precisely why they made the Stuttgart confession of guilt at the end of their path through the Nazi era in 1945 ... That had to come at the end. And that must be the last word today too. Because not when you bask in the splendor of what has happened and boast of your deeds, but only when you are aware of what has been neglected, you can hope to survive any new temptations better. "

- Kurt Dietrich Schmidt : The Church Resistance , July 24, 1964

Fonts (selection)

author

  • Germanic Belief and Christianity , in: Junge Kirche 5 (1937) 207-218 (online at geschichte-bk-sh.de) .
  • The conversion of the Teutons to Christianity
    • Vol. 1: The conversion of the East Germans to Christianity. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1939.
    • Vol. 2: The Catholic Mission under the West Germans (incomplete, only 7th and 8th delivery: pages 1–192). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1941 f.
  • Outline of the Church History , initially Vols. 1–4 and Erg.-Bd., Göttingen 1949–1959; the same in one volume: 1st edition, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1954; last: 6th edition, ibid. 1999.
  • Chronological tables of church history. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1959; last: 9th edition, ibid. 1990.
  • Collected essays . Edited by Manfred Jacobs, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1967 ( content ), therein a. a .:
    • Questions on the Structure of the Confessing Church (1962) , pp. 267–293 ( online ).
    • The Church Resistance (1964) , pp. 294–304 ( online ).
  • The Catholic Reform and the Counter Reformation (= The Church in Her History Lfg. L, Part 1: Vol. 3). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1975, ISBN 3-525-52348-3 .
  • Introduction to the history of the church struggle in the National Socialist era . [A series of lectures, typewritten. 1960, with handwritten corrections until 1964; posthumously] edited and provided with an afterword by Jobst Reller, Ludwig-Harms-Haus, Hermannsburg 2009; 2nd edition 2010.

editor

  • The Confessions and General Statements on the Church Question, Volumes 1–3: 1933–1935 , Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1934–1936.
  • Work on the history of the church struggle, by the Commission of the Evangelical Church in Germany for the history of the church struggle, 21 vols., Göttingen 1958–68 (in connection with Heinz Brunotte and Ernst Wolf ).
  • The Church in its History. A manual , Göttingen 1961 ff. (Ed. Together with Ernst Wolf)

literature

  • Johann Bielfeldt : The church struggle in Schleswig-Holstein 1933–1945 , Göttingen 1964.
  • Wolfgang Prehn: Kurt-Dietrich Schmidt , in: ders .: Time to walk the narrow path. Witnesses report on the church struggle in Schleswig-Holstein , Kiel 1985, p. 207 f.
  • Jendris Alwast: History of the Theological Faculty. From the beginning of the Prussian era to the present (History of the Christian-Albrechts-Universität 1665–1965, Vol. 2, Part 2) . Kiel 1988.
  • Ralph Uhlig: Expelled scientists from the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel (CAU) after 1933. On the history of the CAU under National Socialism. A documentation (Kieler Werkstücke. Series A: Contributions to Schleswig-Holstein and Scandinavian history, 2) . Frankfurt am Main u. a. 1991.
  • Jendris Alwast: Theology in the twenties in the context of science and the history of problems , in: Schleswig-Holstein Church History. Vol. 6/1: Church between self-assertion and external determination , Neumünster 1998, pp. 79-109.
  • Klauspeter Reumann: The church struggle in Schleswig-Holstein from 1933 to 1945 , in: Schleswig-Holstein Church history. Vol. 6/1: Church between self-assertion and external determination , Neumünster 1998, pp. 111–451.
  • Harry Oelke: Confessing Church History. The church historian Kurt Dietrich Schmidt under National Socialism ; with appendix: Two letters from KD Schmidt to Reich Science Minister Rust from 1935 , in: Thomas Kaufmann , Harry Oelke (ed.): Evangelical Church Historians in the “Third Reich” , Gütersloh: Chr. Kaiser 2002, pp. 330–366.
  • Gunther Schendel: Church historian in "forced retirement". Kurt Dietrich Schmidt: The Hermannsburg years up to the end of the Nazi era, in: Yearbook of the Society for Lower Saxony Church History, 101/2003 , pp. 215–255
  • Hannelore Braun, Gertraud Grünzinger (eds.): Personal Lexicon on German Protestantism 1919–1949 , Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2006.
  • Carsten Nicolaisen :  Schmidt, Kurt Dietrich. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 23, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-428-11204-3 , p. 204 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Jobst Reller: Kurt Dietrich Schmidts Leben und Werk , in: ders. (Ed.): Kurt Dietrich Schmidt: Introduction to the history of the church struggle in the National Socialist era , Hermannsburg: Ludwig-Harms-Haus 2009, pp. 264-306.
  • Karl Ludwig Kohlwage , Manfred Kamper, Jens-Hinrich Pörksen (eds.): “What is right before God”. Church struggle and theological foundation for the new beginning of the church in Schleswig-Holstein after 1945. Documentation of a conference in Breklum 2015 . Compiled and edited by Rudolf Hinz and Simeon Schildt in collaboration with Peter Godzik , Johannes Jürgensen and Kurt Triebel, Husum: Matthiesen Verlag 2015, ISBN 978-3-7868-5306-0 .
  • Gunther Schendel:  Schmidt, Kurt Dietrich. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume XXVIII, Bautz,, Sp. 1400-1413.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Alwast: Theologie in the twenties ... , 1998, p. 86.
  2. ↑ Reumann: Der Kirchenkampf in Schleswig-Holstein ... , 1998, p. 167.
  3. ^ Initially "Führerring" or "Führerrat" of the NAG, to which in addition to Schmidt Johannes Bielfeldt and Volkmar Herntrich belonged; see Reumann: Der Kirchenkampf in Schleswig-Holstein ... , 1998, p. 170 u. 187.
  4. ↑ Online at geschichte-bk-sh.de
  5. ^ The Confessions of 1933 , pp. 191 ff .; contrary to the representations in Prehn (p. 207) and Reller (p. 277) as well as the biogram of Theol. Faculty of Kiel without reference to the Aryan paragraph !
  6. ↑ See the resolutions of the Synod of July 17, 1935 in Kiel (online at geschichte-bk-sh.de) , p. 37 ff.
  7. ↑ Braun / Grünzinger: Personenlexikon ... , 2006, p. 222.
  8. ^ Oelke: Bekennende Kirchengeschichte ... , 2002, p. 352 f.
  9. ^ Oelke: Bekennende Kirchengeschichte ... , 2002, p. 353 f.
  10. ^ Oelke: Bekennende Kirchengeschichte ... , 2002, p. 343 ff.
  11. ↑ Quoted from Oelke: Bekennende Kirchengeschichte ... , 2002, p. 355.
  12. ^ NDB article Schmidt, Kurt Dietrich .
  13. ↑ Memorandum VKL 1936 ( online )
  14. ↑ With grave consequences: When this paper, marked as confidential, with its unusually clear criticism of the Nazi state, was published by a Swiss newspaper a few weeks later, the BK lawyer, Friedrich Weißler , was arrested and murdered in Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Weißler was of Jewish origin.
  15. ↑ See: Theophil Wurm : Writing to government offices 1941–1943 ( online ); Old Prussian Confessing Synod , Breslau, October 1943: “Beyond the killing of the criminal and the enemy in war, the state is not given the sword to handle ... The divine order knows terms such as 'eradicate', 'liquidate', ' unworthy life ' Not. The destruction of people simply because they are members of a criminal, old or insane, or of another race, is not the use of the sword given by God to the authorities. "
  16. ↑ Kurt Dietrich Schmidt: The Church Resistance (1964) , in: Collected essays . Edited by Manfred Jacobs, Göttingen 1967, pp. 294-304 ( online ).
personal data
SURNAME Schmidt, Kurt Dietrich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schmidt, Kurt-Dietrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Protestant theologian and church historian
DATE OF BIRTH October 25, 1896
PLACE OF BIRTH Uthlede
DATE OF DEATH July 27, 1964
Place of death Hamburg