Marcel Sturm

Marcel Sturm (born June 1, 1905 in Mulhouse , † June 18, 1950 in Baden-Baden ) was a French military pastor in the French sectors of Berlin, West Germany and Austria and thus also a church advisor to the military government. He comes from the Jakob Sturm family (1489–1553). Sturm was the initiator of the establishment of the Franco-German Brother Council .

Life

Sturm studied theology and philosophy in Montpellier and Strasbourg. From 1929 to 1939 he was pastor in Hüningen, Alsace, near the Swiss border. In August 1939 he was drafted into the French army as a reserve officer and was slightly wounded during the Wehrmacht's Blitzkrieg in 1940. Sturm then fell into German captivity in Boulogne-sur-Mer . However, he managed to flee to the free zone in southern France, where he fled to Algeria with his wife and children.

His wife and two of his daughters died of typhus in Algiers . Sturm later became a military pastor for the Maghreb , and from 1942 for all of North Africa. After the liberation of Paris in August 1944, he returned to the French capital, where he established the military chaplaincy.

In 1945 Sturm became a church advisor to the French military government in Baden-Baden ( Aumônier general ). His tasks included pastoral care in the occupation army and in the prisoner-of-war camps as well as establishing and partially supporting connections to the German Protestant Church. For this endeavor he gave lectures and organized conferences as well as encounters between French and German young people and church representatives. Storm was so z. B. responsible for the logistics of the Stuttgart meeting in October 1945, at which the Evangelical Church in Germany for the first time admitted that Evangelical Christians were complicit in the crimes of National Socialism ( Stuttgart confession of guilt ).

The Franco-German reconciliation was an important concern for Sturm. He tried to bring the Protestant churches of the two countries closer together and acted as a mediator between German and French delegates at the founding meeting of the World Council of Churches in Amsterdam in 1948. On Sturm's initiative, the Speyer Conference took place in March 1950, at which the Franco-German Brotherhood was founded.

Sturm died on June 18, 1950 in his apartment in Baden-Baden.

Act

Just like the Bishop of Orléans, Robert Picard de la Vacquerie (Catholic Church), tried to normalize or improve the Franco-German situation after the Second World War, Marcel Sturm also tried to achieve this goal on the Protestant side.

The two military chaplains were in contact with persons of religious and ecclesiastical life in the French zone of occupation and tried to establish relationships with the German churches on behalf of the French military government and their national churches, but also out of their own interest. They tried to make everyday church life work and were committed to the reconstruction of German churches. Sturm and Picard de la Vacquerie are considered to be "bridge builders" of the Franco-German rapprochement.

Sturm acted as adviser and mediator on the French and German sides and between them, helping to solve problems and eliminate misunderstandings. His most important undertaking was the Franco-German Brother Council. In doing so, he created a supranational body and a discussion group and was able to eliminate prejudices and help build transnational networks in the area of ​​the Evangelical Church.

literature

• Jörg Thierfelder ; Michael Losch: The Protestant field bishop Marcel Sturm - a “bridge builder” between the Protestant Christians in Germany and France , in: Blätter für Württembergische Kirchengeschichte, 99th year, 1999, pp. 208-251.
• Martin Greschat : Marcel Sturm: L'Eglise évangélique en Allemagne depuis mai 1945 , in: Revue d'Allemagne 21, 1989, pp. 567-575.