Max Lackmann

Max Lackmann (born February 28, 1910 in Erfurt , † January 11, 2000 in Fulda ) was a German Protestant theologian . He was a resistance fighter against National Socialism and an ecumenist "from the very beginning".

Life

Lackmann grew up in Dortmund and attended the humanistic grammar school there . Afterwards he was an educator in the Bethel institutions . There he met his first wife and married her in 1939. In Bethel he came to the "living faith" and decided to study theology . In Bonn he attended Karl Barth's lectures . It was then that he realized that a Christian cannot accept the Nazi ideology. Therefore, in 1934 he wrote his pamphlet “Lord, where should we go?”, Which caused a great stir in Germany. The scholarship and membership of the German student body were withdrawn from him, so that he could no longer study in Germany. Karl Barth got him a place at university in Basel . When he returned to Germany after several years, he was still on the black list of the National Socialists and was constantly watched. After his ordination in 1940, he joined the Confessing Church . So it was inevitable that for his fearless sermons he was first sent to prison and later to Dachau concentration camp . At the end of the war he was liberated by the Americans. In Dachau he had lived closely with several hundred Catholic priests in the “ pastors' block ” and suffered together for the faith. It was inconceivable for him that the denominations should continue to be alien or hostile to one another as before. The reunification of Christians thus became a life's work for him.

His Protestant regional church had no understanding for this commitment and retired him prematurely because of “ Catholic tendencies ”. With Paul Hacker and Gustav Huhn he founded the "Bund für Evangelisch-Katholische Reunification" (today: " Bund für Evangelisch-Katholische Reunification") in 1960 . The aim was to gather people who were ready to live in an evangelical church united with Rome . Only Protestant Christians who basically agreed to this plan could become members. There were also sponsors and Catholic friends. Lackmann was also a co-founder and member of the St. James Brotherhood , which had the same goals , a spiritual community with binding vows under the direction of a superior, with Protestant and Catholic members.

As a result, there were differences over the objectives of the federal government because of the question of the right path to denominational reunification. While Lackmann pleaded for a detachment from the (Protestant) regional church structures and the establishment of an Evangelical Catholic Union Church (demand for "moving out of the housing of Protestantism"), the rest of the board wanted a balanced relationship with the Protestant regional churches and the Roman Catholic Maintain the Church (model of the “balanced yes”). After a lost vote on this problem, Lackmann resigned from the Bund and the Brotherhood in 1969. From 1973 he got involved with his second wife in his "House on the Mount of Olives" in Dalherda / Rhön for Bible camps, where young people from different denominations had the first experience of ecumenical fellowship .

Max Lackmann dealt extensively in his literature with unresolved issues that stood between the denominations. During the Second Vatican Council he was a journalist in Rome and wrote a detailed report after each session under the title "With Evangelical Eyes" (5 volumes).

Due to illness, he has lived very withdrawn in recent years.

Selected important works

• Lord where shall we go? A word from a Protestant theology student to his fellow students. (= Theological existence today. Issue 11.) Chr. Kaiser Verlag, Munich 1934.
• The truth will set you free. Five sermons after returning home from Dachau, Iserlohn 1945
• God still calls! Three sermons after returning from Dachau (dedicated to the memory of Ludwig Steil , pastor in Wanne-Eickel, died on January 17, 1945 in the Dachau concentration camp), Herford 1945
• Guilt and mercy. A homecoming from Dachau, Iserlohn 1945
• The message of Fyodor Dostoyevsky . A signpost, Iserlohn 1946
• Sola fide. An exegetical study of James 2 on the Reformation doctrine of justification, Gütersloh 1949 (Contributions to the Promotion of Christian Theology 50)
• From the secret of creation. The history of exegesis of Romans I, 18–23, II, 14–16 and Acta XIV, 15–17, XVII, 22–29 from the 2nd century to the beginning of Orthodoxy, Stuttgart 1952
• On the Reformation doctrine of justification , Stuttgart 1953
• Worship of the saints. Attempt of a Lutheran teaching about the saints, Stuttgart 1958
• Call of Protestant Christianity to Catholic fulfillment . In: Max Lackmann, Hans Asmussen , Ernst Fincke , Wolfgang Lehmann , Richard Baumann (eds.): Catholic Reformation . Stuttgart 1958, 82-132
• Catholic Unity and Augsburg Confession , Graz a. a. 1959
• Last Supper and Sacrifice , with Hans Asmussen, Peter Meinhold, Erwin Iserloh. Stuttgart 1960
• Credo ecclesiam catholicam. Evangelical confession against Protestantism , Graz a. a. 1960
• Protestantism and the Ecumenical Council , Klosterneuburg 1960
• A cry for help from the church for the church , Stuttgart 1960
• Catholic Reformation , Stuttgart 1960
• The Christian and the Word , Graz u. a. 1962
• With evangelical eyes. Observations of a Lutheran at the Second Vatican Council, Graz a. a. 1963
• Conversation about indulgences. Evangelical discussion report, Graz a. a. 1965
• Where is the Evangelical Reformation? Special issue of the journal Building Blocks for Christian Unity . Soest 1965
• The New Testament and the Visible Unity of the Church , Soest 1966
• We want reconciliation today. An ecumenical commitment. Edited by the Theological Committee of the Federation for Evangelical-Catholic Reunification, Recklinghausen 1968
• The evangelical mass. Order of the fixed parts of the Holy Mass. Theological explanations for the Protestant mass. In: modules , worksheets of the federal government f. ev.-cath. Reunification Volume 7/8, 1962; Evangelical mass after the ev.-luth. Agende I with explanations of the Theol. Federal Committee f. ev.-cath. Reunification, Ztschr. "Baussteine", special issue 1973.

Web links

• Lackmann, Max. In: Traugott Bautz: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL) (in German). 22nd Nordhausen: Bautz. cols. 763-766.
• Entry (verbrannte-und-verbanned.de)
• Literature by and about Max Lackmann in the catalog of the German National Library