Kurt Froer

Kurt Frör (born October 10, 1905 in Rothenburg ob der Tauber , † February 16, 1980 in Erlangen ) was a German Protestant clergyman and university professor .

Life

Kurt Frör was the son of the study council Franz Frör.

education

He attended the Dom-Gymnasium in Freiburg from 1915 to 1924 and enrolled in 1924 to study philosophy and theology at the University of Munich ; he continued his studies at the University of Kiel , the University of Berlin and the University of Erlangen until 1928. His thesis - in 1928 Paul Althaus came in Erlangen - in 1932 under the title of Evangelical thought and Catholicism since Schleiermacher in Albert Lempps appeared publisher.

On March 9, 1928, he passed his first theological exam in Ansbach and on March 22, 1930, he received his Lic. Theol. He had his second theological exam on September 10, 1931 in Ansbach.

career

Kurt Frör was on October 9, 1928 Pfarramtsverweser in Reichenhall and on November 2 In 1928 his ordination . Shortly thereafter, on December 1, 1928, he became city vicar in Munich-Sendling , until he became a study inspector at the Preacher's Seminary in Nuremberg on April 1, 1932 under director Julius Schieder (1888–1964) and became city vicar there on May 1, 1935. On August 1, 1936, he was appointed second pastor at the Christ Church and on July 1, 1945 as pastor at the Stephanuskirche in Munich . On September 1, 1949, he was appointed to the Rummelsberg Diakonie in Rummelsberg for church instruction in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria .

On October 1, 1952, he began teaching as an associate professor for practical theology at the University of Erlangen, albeit with the rank and duties of a full professor; on April 1, 1959 he was appointed full professor for practical theology, pedagogy and didactics ; for this he became a university preacher on May 1, 1964 . His retirement took place on March 31, 1972.

His students included Walter Rupprecht and Dietrich Stollberg , among others .

family

Kurt Frör had been married to Maria (née Nicol) for the first time since 1935, and they had one child together. After marrying Berta (née Dietzfelbinger) in 1941, he and his second wife had three more children.

Writing

Kurt Frör dealt with the catechism and based the concept of evangelical instruction in 1952 in his work Education and Kerygma on the Lutheran doctrine of the two regiments of God and was thus able to improve education as a purely secular event from the kerygmatic dimension, which is reflected in Christian instruction, Education and pastoral care accomplished, differentiate conceptually. Thus, the basis was laid for a discussion at eye level between general education and religious education .

He also published in the Confessing Church series .

Working in church resistance against the Nazi regime ( church struggle )

First, Kurt Frör saw National Socialism as "God's merciful help" against the "educational chaos" of Weimar liberalism and repeatedly pointed to the common ideals of Protestant and National Socialist education: service, sacrifice, comradeship, loyalty, etc. On the other hand, he also acknowledged that that the Church of Jesus Christ as a politically centralized " non-denominational " national church could never be legitimate, he initially took a position typical of the Bavarian regional church and large parts of the Confessing Church : In a leaflet he wrote for the Bavarian People's Mission Church and Race in December In 1933 he affirmed on the one hand race as a God-given order of creation and spoke out in favor of the preservation, purification and recovery of our race , but on the other hand he condemned the idolatry of the race to a new religion and turned sharply against a racial struggle that aimed at the extermination of a moral and religiously polluted Half animal operates .

He had joined the Confessing Church early on and was one of the founding members of the Bavarian parish brotherhood and maintained contact with Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) and the Pastors' Emergency Association . When the Bavarian regional church was forcibly incorporated into the imperial church in October 1934 , his impeachment took place, as did that of regional bishop Hans Meiser (1881–1956) and Julius Schieder, which, however, were overturned due to protests by evangelical parishioners.

He rejected the German Christians decided from the beginning on, because it is a destruction of the church is, if you put people, state, type and race as a religious revelation next to or above Christ . He emerged in the struggle for the Christian education of the youth and the preservation of the denominational schools and published numerous programmatic writings such as The Necessary Struggle for the Denominational School and the Law and Order of Christian Education and in 1935 became a member of the school chamber of the First Provisional Church Administration (VKL), the highest Board of the Confessing Church and took part in the fourth Synod of Confession in Bad Oynhausen . As a result, he came, also because he campaigned for persecuted pastors, including Eduard Putz (1907–1990), and fought against the elimination of the church from public life by the Nazis, increasingly in conflicts with the Nazi regime. He was interrogated several times by the Gestapo for writing and sending out pamphlets directed against Nazi church policy and was banned from speaking . In 1937 his book The Babylonian Captivity of the Church appeared , in which he strongly warned against any seizure of the Church by the state.

After Martin Niemöller's arrest, together with Walter Hildmann , Wilhelm Schinner and Georg Roth , he copied and distributed a leaflet intended to inform the communities about this arbitrary state act. Because of this leaflet he was sentenced to 6 months imprisonment by the Munich special court in June 1939 , which he did not have to serve against payment of 1,000 Reichsmarks .

He became a member and temporarily head of the circle around the Munich publisher Albert Lempp , who tried to persuade the regional bishop Hans Meiser to take a public position against the persecution and extermination of the Jews at Easter 1943 with the famous " Munich lay letter " , including Carl Gunther Schweitzer , Emil Höchstädter , Hermann Diem , Walter Classen and Willi Hengstenberg belonged. He was also a member of the Munich network that tried to help persecuted “non-Aryans”.

In Lempp's circle he was the interface between this circle and the aid network around the Quakers Annemarie (1897–1995) and Rudolf Cohen (1864–1953), who were able to help numerous Jews to flee at the end of the 1930s.

During the Evangelical Weeks he was a member of the Advisory Chamber for Academic Work .

honors and awards

• Kurt Frör was awarded a doctorate by the theological faculty of the University of Erlangen in 1954. theol. appointed hc.
• On the occasion of his 100th birthday, a symposium was held in 2005 at the University of Erlangen.

Memberships

• Kurt Frör was from 1952 to 1963 a member of the Commission for Education Issues in the Lutheran World Federation .
• He was a member of the board of directors and the scientific advisory board of the Comenius Institute in Münster .

Fonts (selection)

• Evangelical thinking and Catholicism since Schleiermacher . Munich: C. Kaiser, 1932.
• What does evangelical education mean? Foundation of an evangelical doctrine of education . Munich: Chr. Kayser, 1933.
• From the regional church to the imperial church - basic information on the attitude of Bavarian Lutheranism . Munich, C. Kaiser, 1934.
• Spirit and figure of the German Christians . Nuremberg: Confessional Community 1935.
• Law and mandate of Christian education . Munich: Kaiser, 1936.
• The school demands of the German Faith Movement . Göttingen Verl. "Young Church" 1936.
• The Babylonian Captivity of the Church . Erlangen: Self-published by the parish fraternity in 1940.
• The necessary struggle for the denominational school . Wuppertal-Barmen, Umbruch-Verlag 1940.
• with Paul Althaus & Gerhard Schmidt: Theology in the service of teaching . Munich, Chr. Kaiser, 1950.
• Explanations of the new curriculum for church teaching in elementary schools . Munich: Evang. Press association for Bavaria 1950.
• Education and Kerygma: A Contribution to the Conversation Between Education and Theology . Munich, Chr. Kaiser, 1952.
• Biblical instruction according to the course of salvation history . Munich publishing house of the Evangelical Press Association for Bavaria 1954.
• with Alfred Ringwald & Erich Vogt: The Eternal Word: the Bible, its manuscripts, prints and translations from the beginning to the present . Stuttgart: privilege. Württ. Bible Institute, 1955.
• Drawing in church lessons, a workbook . Munich, Chr. Kaiser, 1958.
• Confirmatio: Research on the history and practice of confirmation . Munich: Evang. Press Association for Bavaria, 1959.
• Christianity and School . Munich Kaiser 1959.
• Church teaching at the elementary school . Munich publishing house of the Evangelical Press Association for Bavaria 1960.
• The churches, their mandate to educate and their will to educate . Frankfurt a. M .: Hirschgraben 1961.
• The Augsburg confession: for teaching in higher schools . Munich: C. Kaiser, 1962.
• On the history and order of confirmation in the Lutheran churches. From the negotiations of the International Seminary of the Lutheran World Federation in Loccum in 1961 on questions of confirmation . Munich, Claudius 1962.
• with Wilhelm Maurer : Pastoral office and responsible congregation: A theological vote on church reform . Munich, 1966.
• The Protestant instruction at the elementary school is a preparatory work in connection with the curriculum for the Protestant instruction at the elementary schools in the area of ​​the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland, the Evangelical Church of Westphalia and the Lippe Regional Church . Dortmund Crüwell 1967.
• Ways of Interpretation of Scripture: Biblical Hermeneutics for Teaching and Preaching . Düsseldorf, 1968.
• Outline of religious education: in the context of modern educational science . Constance: Bahn, 1975.

literature

• Dietrich Stollberg (ed.): Practice Ecclesiae. Kurt Frör on his 65th birthday . Munich 1970.
• Richard Riess and Dietrich Stollberg (eds.): The word that continues to work. Essays on practical theology in memoriam Kurt Frör . Munich 1981.
• Kurt Froer . In: The professors and lecturers of the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen 1743–1960 , part 1: Theological faculty; Law Faculty. Erlangen research: special series; Vol. 5. Erlangen 1993. ISBN 3-922135-92-7.
• Dietrich Stollberg (editor), Jürgen Belz, Hans J. Fraas, Richard Riess, Ulrich Schwab, Manfred Seitz, Wilhelm Sturm: Between church struggle and modernity: Kurt Frör (1905–1980). Practical theologian and Lutheran with a vision (Lutheran theology) . Society for Inner and Outer Mission Dept. Freimund Verlag 2007. ISBN 978-3-86540-032-1 .
• Thomas Kothmann : Kurt Frör (1905–1980). Teaching and Learning under the Gospel. In: Confessio Augustana III (2017), pp. 93–98.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Kurt Frör - at first devoted to National Socialism, the pastor who was born in Rothenburg in the Confessing Church resisted being taken over by the Nazi state | www.rothenburg-unterm-hakenkreuz.de. Accessed December 1, 2019 . 
2. ↑ Albrecht Peters: Commentary on Luther's Catechisms . S. 39. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1990, ISBN 978-3-525-56180-5 ( google.de [accessed December 1, 2019]).
3. ^ The scientific-religious-educational lexicon on the Internet. 2016, accessed December 1, 2019 . 
4. ↑ Berndt Hamm, Harry Oelke, Gury Schneider-Ludorff: Scope of action and memory: The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria and National Socialism . S. 77. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2010, ISBN 978-3-647-55768-7 ( google.de [accessed December 1, 2019]).
5. ↑ Axel Töllner: A question of race ?: the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria, the Aryan paragraph and the Bavarian pastor families with Jewish ancestors in the "Third Reich" . S. 136. W. Kohlhammer Verlag, 2007, ISBN 978-3-17-019692-6 ( google.de [accessed December 1, 2019]).
6. ↑ Friedhelm Kraft: Religious Didactics Between Cross and Swastika: Attempts to determine the tasks, goals and content of Protestant religious instruction, illustrated in the draft guidelines between 1933 and 1939 . S. 143. Walter de Gruyter, 2013, ISBN 978-3-11-082802-3 ( google.de [accessed December 1, 2019]).
7. ^ Gerhard Müller: Confessing Church concrete. Accessed December 1, 2019 . 
8. ↑ Resistance !? Evangelical Christians under National Socialism. Retrieved November 30, 2019 . 
9. ↑ Albert Lempp "The Lempp'sche circle. Accessed December 1, 2019 . 
10. ↑ Doctors in the Empire. Accessed December 1, 2019 . 
11. ↑ project. Retrieved November 30, 2019 .