Lothar Kreyssig

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Lothar Paul Ernst Kreyssig , also Kreyssig (born October 30, 1898 in Flöha , Saxony , † July 5, 1986 in Bergisch Gladbach ) was a judge and founder of the Action Reconciliation and Action Group Solidarity World .

Life

education

Kreyssig was born as the son of a businessman and grain wholesaler. After primary school he attended a grammar school in Chemnitz . He passed the secondary school diploma and volunteered for service in the German army during the First World War . Two years of military service took him to France, the Baltic States and Serbia. After the end of the war, he studied law in Leipzig between 1919 and 1922 , where he joined the Landsmannschaft Grimenisa . Kreyssig received his doctorate in 1923 and from 1926 took up a position at the Chemnitz Regional Court . From 1928 he worked there as a judge.

time of the nationalsocialism

Before the " seizure of power " by the National Socialists , Kreyssig had elected the NSDAP . After the "seizure of power" he initially behaved in conformity with the system and joined the National Socialist People's Welfare . In 1934 he also became a member of the Association of National Socialist German Jurists (BNSDJ) and of the Reich Association of German Civil Servants . With reference to his judicial independence, he refused to join the NSDAP as early as 1933. Kreyssig was a Protestant Christian and joined the Confessing Church (BK) in 1934 . In 1935 he became President of the Synod of the Confessing Church in the area of ​​the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Saxony , whose official organs were dominated by German-Christian at that time and which was therefore viewed by the BK as a destroyed church .

Professionally, he could continue to work as a judge. In 1937 he was transferred to Brandenburg an der Havel as a guardianship judge . In the nearby town of Hohenferchesar , he acquired an estate, the Bruderhof , on which he operated biodynamic agriculture . There were repeated investigations against Kreyssig in connection with his church activities.

As the only German judge, he denounced the euthanasia murders of the National Socialists . As a guardianship judge, he had noticed that news of the death of his disabled ward was mounting. In a letter dated July 8, 1940, he reported his suspicion that the sick were being murdered en masse to the Reich Minister of Justice Franz Gürtner , but also opposed the disenfranchisement of prisoners in the concentration camps :

“Right is what is useful to the people. In the name of this terrible doctrine, which is still uncontested by all guardians of the law in Germany, entire areas of community life are excluded from law. B. the concentration camps, now completely also the sanatoriums and nursing homes. "

- Lothar Kreyssig

He was then informed that the euthanasia campaign had been initiated by Hitler himself and that it was being carried out under the responsibility of the Führer’s office . Thereupon Kreyssig filed a complaint against Reichsleiter Philipp Bouhler for murder. He forbade the institutions in which his wards were housed from moving them without his consent. On November 13, 1940, Kreyssig was summoned by the Reich Minister of Justice. Gürtner presented him with Hitler's handwriting, with which he had triggered the murder , and which constituted their sole legal basis. With the words "A leader's word creates no law" Kreyssig made it clear that he did not recognize this. The Reich Minister of Justice stated that he could no longer be a judge. In December 1940 Kreyssig was given a compulsory leave of absence. Attempts by the Gestapo to take him to the concentration camp failed. Two years later, in March 1942, Kreyssig was retired by Hitler's decree.

Kreyssig then devoted himself increasingly to ecological agriculture and work in the church.

In 1943 Kreyssig organized a hiding place for the Jew Gertrude Prochownik (1884–1982), the widow of the painter Leo Prochownik (1875–1936), when she went underground to avoid the threatened deportation to a concentration camp . From November 1944 until the end of the war, Kreyssig Prochownik hid at home.

After 1945

After the end of National Socialism, he was recognized as a resistance fighter . As a supposed Junker , however, he lost parts of his property.

Because of the insufficient rule of law of the judiciary working in the Soviet occupation zone , Kreyssig decided against resuming his professional activity. Instead, he accepted an offer from Bishop Otto Dibelius and in 1945 became Consistorial President of the Church Province of Saxony in Magdeburg . In 1947 he became President of the Synod of the Church Province. He held this office until 1964. At the Kurmärkischer Kirchentag 1950, which took place from May 29 to June 1 in Potsdam , after the opening service by the general superintendent of the Kurmark Walter Braun, he gave a lecture on the question of the responsibility of Christians in church and society.

In 1952 he briefly headed the church chancellery of the Evangelical Church of the Old Prussian Union . In the same year he became their president. He held this office until 1970.

Between 1949 and 1961 he was a member of the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany . From 1949 to 1958 he was also Vice President East of the German Evangelical Church Congress . Spiritually he was at home in the Evangelical Michael Brotherhood . Kreyssig's views were already controversial in his day. So he advocated an ecumenical movement for Christians, which, however, should also include the Jewish religion . Kreyssig turned against the German rearmament and rejected the German division .

Many church institutions and ideas throughout Germany can be traced back to Kreyssig. He founded the Evangelical Academy of the Church Province of Saxony and encouraged pastoral care by telephone . The action group he founded for the hungry was a preliminary stage of the later action group Solidarity World and the organization Bread for the World .

His most important work, however, was the Action atonement . In 1958 Lothar Kreyssig called for it to be founded. Young Germans should go to the former enemy countries and to Israel to ask for forgiveness and peace. Through practical work, they should set a sign of reconciliation. The first areas of operation were Norway , the Netherlands , Great Britain , France and Greece . With the construction of the Berlin Wall , Kreyssig was cut off from the international activities of his organization. He therefore gave up management in 1962 and devoted himself to setting up the Action atonement in the GDR . One of the first missions of this initiative was the clearing of rubble from the destroyed Magdeburg church buildings Sankt Petri and Wallonerkirche .

Family grave in Hohenferchesar

In 1971 Kreyssig moved to West Berlin with his wife . Since 1977 he lived in a retirement home in Bergisch Gladbach, where he died in 1986. Lothar Kreyssig was buried in the family grave in Hohenferchesar .

Honors

The cities of Flöha , Brandenburg , Magdeburg (see Magdeburg street list L ), Karlsruhe and Bergisch Gladbach have each named a street after him. A special needs school in Flöha and an elderly care center in Lehnin bears his name. The parish hall of the Evangelical Paul-Gerhardt-Kirchengemeinde Lichtenberg in Berlin-Karlshorst has been called Lothar-Kreyssig-Haus since 2006 . The Lothar Kreyssig Peace Prize has been awarded every two years by the Magdeburg-based foundation of the same name since 1999. In 2019, the social activist Jenny Rasche, who works in Romania , received this .

On his 100th birthday, a memorial plaque was unveiled in the Brandenburg Higher Regional Court in Brandenburg an der Havel. In front of the building of the former district court there, today the seat of the General Public Prosecutor's Office of the State of Brandenburg, Steinstraße 61, two steles commemorate Lothar Kreyssig, inside the building a plaque with a text written by his biographer Konrad Weiß . The unveiling of this plaque took place on July 11, 2007 by his sons Jochen and Uwe Kreyssig . Both were also present when, on May 5, 2008, a memorial stele donated by the Brandenburg Legal Society was unveiled in front of the public prosecutor's office building, commemorating the 50th anniversary of Lothar Kreyssig's call to found the Action atonement. On October 22, 2006, a commemorative event took place in the Federal Ministry of Justice under the patronage of Federal Justice Minister Brigitte Zypries on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the death of Lothar Kreyssig with the participation of the Action Reconciliation Peace Services. On July 5, 2008, a memorial stone was unveiled in Hohenferchesar, where he lived from 1937 to 1972.

The Supervision Court Day e. V. will award a sponsorship award every two years from 2012 in memory of Lothar Kreyssig. "His courage as a guardianship judge to oppose the arbitrary regime of National Socialism and to prevent the murder of disabled people", had moved Margot von Renesse to suggest him as the namesake of the sponsorship award.

In 2018, Kreyssig and his wife were posthumously honored by the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial as Righteous Among the Nations .

Works

  • The criminal concept of the fornicator as a measure [ie measure] of immoral art. Leipzig, Univ., Diss., 1923
  • Justice for david. God's judgment and grace over the ancestor Jesus Christ. According to the 2nd book of Samuelis . Evangelical Publishing House, Berlin 1949
  • Call for action atonement 1958 (PDF)

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Address directory of the old men of the German Landsmannschaft.
  2. ↑ a b c Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . 2nd updated edition. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2005, p. 340.
  3. ^ Letter printed in full by Götz Aly (ed.): Aktion T4 1939-1945 - The euthanasia center at Tiergartenstrasse 4 . Berlin 1989, ISBN 3-926175-66-4 , pp. 53-55. Also quoted from Ernst Klee: The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich . Fischer Taschenbuch 2005, p. 340.
  4. ↑ a b Yad Vashem honors Lothar and Johanna Kreyssig . Jewish General, October 24, 2018
  5. ↑ Neue Zeit , June 3, 1950, p. 2 "The Christian and responsibility. The traditional Kurmärkische Kirchentag in Potsdam"
  6. ^ Lothar Kreyssig House in Berlin-Karlshorst
  7. ^ Magdeburg honor for humanity. In: Volksstimme . November 24, 2019, accessed November 24, 2019 .
  8. ↑ Quote from the flyer of the BGT Supervision Court Conference e. V. (PDF)
personal data
SURNAME Kreyssig, Lothar
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kreyziger, Lothar Kreyssig, Lothar Paul Ernst
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer, judge and founder of Aktion Sühnezeichen
DATE OF BIRTH October 30, 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH Flöha , Saxony
DATE OF DEATH 5th July 1986
Place of death Bergisch Gladbach