Ludwig Heitmann

Ferdinand Carl Ludwig Heitmann (born June 16, 1880 in Hamburg-Ochsenwerder ; † July 2, 1953 in Hamburg ) was an influential German Evangelical Lutheran pastor in Hamburg, co-founder of the Berneuchen movement and the Evangelical Michael Brotherhood.

Life

Heitmann attended the Harburger Realgymnasium and passed the high school diploma here in 1899. In order to study theology, he first had to learn the ancient languages ​​and take supplementary exams. He then studied theology in Göttingen and Berlin . He belonged to the wingolf .

St. Annen around 1900

After a brief activity as a teacher, he was ordained in 1905 in the St. Michaelis Church by Senior Georg Behrmann ; his first position was that of assistant preacher at the St. Catherine's Church for the strongly proletarian district of St. Annen in the Hammerbrook district .

In 1909 he became pastor of St. John's Church in Hamburg-Eppendorf . He held this office until his retirement in 1951, where he was active as a volunteer chaplain on the Western Front from 1915 to 1918 .

Heitmann was married to Marie Henriette Luise Wilhelmine Schwartz (born January 23, 1897 in Lübeck; † June 20, 1970 in Hamburg) since 1927.

Act

Since his work on the 2nd theological exam, Heitmann has been concerned with the opportunities and tasks of the church in the modern city. In Hammerbrook he had founded an apprenticeship association, in Eppendorf he concentrated on youth work, which was shaped by his approach in the sense of the Bündischer Jugend .

In the Eppendorfer church he introduced a number of liturgical innovations, such as a week-end celebration for the young people, an experimental dinner according to the Didache order , and from 1930 the celebration of Easter Vigil .

In the 1920s, Heitmann was involved in the popular church movement and campaigned for a new church . The new church faction , also represented in the synod, wanted to overcome the deep rift in Hamburg between the positive and the liberal . Although he the strongest supporters of the introduction of the episcopate in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Hamburg state counted, he stood in the church struggle on the side of the critics of Bishop Franz Tügel , with whom he had worked in the early 1920s. Fundamentally independent of party politics, Heitmann joined the Pastors' Emergency League when it was founded in October 1933 and was Hamburg's representative on its governing body, the Reich Brotherhood Council .

Heitmann was best known for his three-volume work Großstadt und Religion , which was published several times in the 1920s. For his commitment to modern religious education in 1929, he received an honorary theological doctorate from the theological faculty of the University of Giessen .

From the beginning, Heitmann took part in the Berneuchen conferences from 1923 to 1927; he was one of the co-authors and is one of the co-signers of her program publication Berneuchener Buch . Together with Karl Bernhard Ritter , Wilhelm Stählin and Wilhelm Thomas , he founded the Evangelical Michael Brotherhood in 1931. With great personal commitment, he ensured that numerous pastors and lay people in Hamburg and northern Germany joined her, including the architect Gerhard Langmaack , whom he had confirmed in Eppendorf in 1911, and Axel Werner Kühl . From 1942, however, there was a serious rift between Heitmann and the Michaelsbrothers about the course of the brotherhood, which Heitmann perceived as increasingly un-Lutheran due to the form of individual confession introduced in the Michael's brotherhood, which led to his resignation in 1945.

Works (selection)

• The secondary school student: A contribution to the psychology of young people of the middle class. Eger, Leipzig 1912 (The Development Years, Issue 4)
• The War of Nations and Christianity: A Response. In: Christian world . Volume 29, 1915, pp. 360-364.
• Big city and religion . Boysen, Hamburg

  Part 1. The religious situation in the big city . 1913, from the 2nd edition (1921) title: The structure of the modern city

  Part 2. The battle for religion in the big city . 1919

  Part 3. The religious truth for the big city 1920

• Holy Communion. Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, Hamburg (The German Cathedral)
• (with Karl Bernhard Ritter and Wilhelm Stählin): The prayer of the times of day. 3rd, expanded and revised edition, Bärenreiter-Verlag, Kassel 1929
• Leisure and monastery. In: God's year . 1930, pp. 65–72 ( http://www.gottesjahr.de/goja1/gj30/3009a.htm ( Memento from October 19, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) )
• Lutheran creed and community organization (Church under construction, Book 1). Neuwerk-Verlag, Kassel-Wilhelmshöhe 1935.

literature

• Hans Carl von Haebler: History of the Evangelical Michaelsbruderschaft from its beginnings to the general convention in 1967. Ed. On behalf of the Evangelical Michaelsbruderschaft, Marburg 1975, pp. 155–159
• Rainer Hering:  Heitmann, Ferdinand Carl Ludwig. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 16, Bautz, Herzberg 1999, ISBN 3-88309-079-4 , Sp. 649-667.
• Rainer Hering: Heitmann, Ludwig . In: Franklin Kopitzsch, Dirk Brietzke (Hrsg.): Hamburgische Biographie . tape 5 . Wallstein, Göttingen 2010, ISBN 978-3-8353-0640-0 , p. 179-181 .