Kurt Scharf

This article deals with Bishop Kurt Scharf, for other namesake see Kurt Scharf (disambiguation) .

Kurt Scharf (center) during the Evangelical Church Congress in 1961 in the Berlin Olympic Stadium

Kurt Scharf (born October 21, 1902 in Landsberg / Warthe ; † March 28, 1990 in Berlin ) was Bishop of the Evangelical Church in Berlin-Brandenburg and Chairman of the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany .

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After graduating from high school, Kurt Scharf studied Protestant theology in Tübingen , Jena , Halle and Berlin from 1920 to 1928 and became a member of the VDSt Berlin and old man of the VDSt in Tübingen . In the 1930s he was pastor of the Evangelical Church of the Old Prussian Union in Sachsenhausen near Oranienburg and as such had rare opportunities to serve prisoners in the concentration camp there . In 1933 Scharf became a member of the Confessing Church with the parish councils of Sachsenhausen and Friedrichsthal . Because of this commitment he was banned from speaking and writing several times. On August 2, 1934, he was arrested by the Gestapo for a few days and was then banned from his communities in Sachsenhausen and Friedrichsthal, which was only lifted after two months. In 1935, as President of the Confessing Synod of Brandenburg, he was chairman of the Conference of State Brotherhoods.

In 1937 he was one of those who signed the declaration of the 96 Protestant church leaders against Alfred Rosenberg because of his writing Protestant Rome Pilgrims .

In 1938 he visited Martin Niemöller in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp shortly after his imprisonment and celebrated the Lord's Supper with him.

In 1945 he was appointed provost and head of the Brandenburg department in the Berlin Evangelical Consistory as part of a church reorganization and reorganization . 1952 awarded him the Theological Faculty of the Humboldt University , the honorary doctorate along with the Potsdamer General Superintendent Walter Brown and the Jena theology professor Rudolf Meyer . In the period that followed, Kurt Scharf took on several leadership positions within the Protestant Church. From 1957 to 1960 Kurt Scharf was chairman of the Council of the Evangelical Church of the Union (EKU) , from 1953 the successor organization of the Evangelical Church of the Old Prussian Union, which had reorganized by changing the name and church order.

In the spring of 1961, Scharf surprisingly fell to the highest leadership position within German Protestantism when he was chairman of the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany ( EKD ) from 1961 to 1967 , succeeding Otto Dibelius . At that time, Scharf had come into play as a compromise candidate, since the GDR blocked a prominent West German bishop as the (all-German) council chairman. But Scharf also fell out of favor with the GDR rulers immediately after the Wall was built in August 1961, although he was a very thoughtful character and avoided any provocation. On August 31, 1961, Scharf, coming from West Berlin, was refused entry to his place of residence in the eastern part of Berlin and his GDR passport was taken away.

During his time as EKD Council Chairman, the State of Israel was diplomatically recognized by the Federal Republic of Germany on May 12, 1965. Scharf was one of those who increased the public pressure, which finally induced Chancellor Ludwig Erhard to initiate the exchange of ambassadors against the will of the Foreign Office . Because on October 26, 1964, the EKD Council sent a letter signed by Scharf to the Federal Government, in which it was clearly in favor of a German-Israeli ambassador exchange.

From 1966 to 1976 he was also elected bishop of the Evangelical Church in Berlin-Brandenburg as the successor to Otto Dibelius , but since the construction of the Wall in 1961, his area of ​​responsibility and influence was limited to West Berlin.

Scharf was chairman of the Action Reconciliation Service for Peace from 1980 to 1984 and in this capacity gave a speech at the special session of the UN on June 24, 1982 . In addition, Scharf was instrumental in the success of the construction of the international youth meeting center in Oświęcim / Auschwitz.

Kurt Scharf's grave of honor

On March 28, 1990, Scharf died in a bus operated by the Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe (BVG) on the way to visit a sick person. His grave, today an honorary grave of the city of Berlin , is in Berlin-Dahlem in the St. Anne's churchyard .

Scharf was one of the masterminds of the EKD's Ostdenkschrift and was awarded the Copernicus Medal of the People's Republic of Poland in 1973 for his advocacy for reconciliation with Poland and an honorary doctorate from the Christian Theological Academy in Warsaw in 1985. In 1971 he received the Buber Rosenzweig Medal , in 1976 the Ernst Reuter Plaque , in 1977 the Gustav Heinemann Citizen Prize and in 1978 the Dr. Leopold Lucas Prize .

Scharf, at times also a member of the central committee of the World Council of Churches , was an advocate of the ecumenical idea. As Vice President of the United World Bible Societies, he campaigned for the worldwide distribution of the Bible . Kurt Scharf took on difficult cases of prison chaplaincy, for example , of Germans imprisoned for war crimes and of inmates of the Baader-Meinhof group .

At the initiative of Aktion Sühnezeichen Friedensdienste, Treitschkestrasse (→ Heinrich von Treitschke ) in Berlin is to be renamed Kurt-Scharf-Strasse.

Fonts

• (as ed.): On the Lord's Secret of Truth. Festschrift for Heinrich Vogel . Lettner, Berlin 1962.
• For a political conscience in the church. Edition W. Erk, 1972.
• Bridges and breaches . Edited by Wolf-Dieter Zimmermann. CVZ-Verlag, Berlin 1977.
• Quarrel with power . Pendo, Zurich 1983.
• Resist and Reconciliate. Review and Outlook . Edition Jo Krummacher, 1987.

literature

• Heinrich Vogel (Hrsg.): Men of the Evangelical Church in Germany. A celebration for Kurt Scharf on his 60th birthday . Lettner, Berlin 1962.
• Heinrich Albertz , Heinrich Böll , Helmut Gollwitzer a . a .: Pastors who serve terror? Bishop Scharf and the Berlin church dispute in 1974. A documentation. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1975 a. ö., ISBN 3-499-11885-8 .
• Rudolf Weckerling et al. (Ed.): Beyond the zero point. Christianity in western Germany; [Bishop D. Kurt Scharf on his 70th birthday on Oct. 21, 1972] . Kreuz, Stuttgart 1972.
• Hartmut Walsdorff (Ed.): Schalom, Kurt Scharf . Berlin 1983.
• Wolfgang Brinkel (Ed.): Brother Scharf 1902–1990. A Christian - gentle, powerful, and unwavering in faith . Action Reconciliation for Peace Services, Berlin 1990.
• Wolf-Dieter Zimmermann: Kurt Scharf . Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, Göttingen 1992.
• Evangelisches Bildungswerk Berlin (ed.): Documentation about Kurt Scharf on his ninetieth birthday . No. 95/1993.
• Action Reconciliation for Peace Services (Ed.): Kurt Scharf . Berlin 2002.
• Werner Raupp:  Sharp, Kurt Franz Wilhelm. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 22, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-428-11203-2 , p. 569 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Marc Zirlewagen: Kurt Scharf . In: Marc Zirlewagen (Ed.): 1881–2006 - 125 Years of Associations of German Students, Vol. 1: A historical review . Bad Frankenhausen 2006, pp. 239–242.
• Ehrhart Neubert :  Sharp, Kurt . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 2. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .

Web links

Commons : Kurt Scharf  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Kurt Scharf in the catalog of the German National Library

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1. ↑ Louis Lange (Ed.): Kyffhäuser Association of German Student Associations. Address book 1931. Berlin 1931, p. 194.
2. ↑ For example, Scharf was the first to confirm that Martin Niemöller had been brought to Sachsenhausen. Source: Exhibition: On the way to a responsible community
3. ↑ Friedrich Siegmund-Schultze (Ed.): Ecumenical Yearbook 1936–1937 . Max Niehans, Zurich 1939, pp. 240–247.
4. ↑ Wolf-Dieter Zimmermann: Kurt Scharf , p. 46f.
5. ↑ Neue Zeit newspaper , February 19, 1952, p. 2
6. ^ So Gerhard Gronauer: The State of Israel in West German Protestantism. Perceptions in church and journalism from 1948 to 1972 (AKIZ.B57). Göttingen 2013, pp. 185–190.

predecessor	Office	successor
Otto Dibelius	Bishop of the Ev. Church in Berlin-Brandenburg ( from 1972 only for the West area ) 1966–1976	(1) Albrecht Schönherr ( from 1972 for the east area ) (2) Martin Kruse ( west area )