Max Witte

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Max Witte (born July 5, 1909 in Kötermoor , Oldenburg , † July 11, 1955 ) was a German clergyman. He was pastor in Braunschweig from 1947 to 1955 .

Origin, education, time of National Socialism

Witte was born in 1909 in Kötermoor (Oldenburg) as the son of a teacher, attended grammar school in Oldenburg and graduated from high school in 1928. After three semesters of German studies in Tübingen, he studied theology in Berlin. He left the NSDAP and the SA , which had initially inspired him, in 1931, disappointed. After his first theological exam and marriage, he worked as a vicar in Leinde near Wolfenbüttel. After a conflict with the head of the National Socialist women's association , he was transferred to Wahle near Braunschweig. After the second exam, he was ordained to the ministry in 1935. After the seizure of power, he joined the Pastors' Emergency League , which was directed against the Nazi-friendly German Christians . As a soldier he was deployed in Greece, as a prisoner of war in France until 1947 he worked as a Protestant camp pastor.

Conflict over forms of the Lord's Supper

During the war he was elected pastor of the parish of St. Ulrici at the Brothers Church in Braunschweig and took up this position in autumn 1947. With the first communion he held on Maundy Thursday 1948, there was a great crowd, so that he not only held Holy Mass according to the Lutheran agenda, but several times a week and twice on Sunday.

Based on Wilhelm Löhe's liturgical work and in connection with the order for the evangelical mass - the full service with celebration of Holy Communion - the congregation now held its masses with a psalm as the introit , with that of the Congregation sung or spoken nicaenum as a creed and the nunc dimittis in postcommunio. Almost forgotten forms of the early church arose quite naturally in the attitude of the congregation: kneeling when confessing sins, when consecrating and receiving the sacrament, crucifying oneself and clasping one's hands during prayer. The altar was decorated, for the altar service the alb and a stole were used over the usual robe . Finally, as a reminder to be vigilant in faith, an "eternal lamp" was hung on the altar, smoked in the high mass on the Sunday before the beginning of the Lord's Supper liturgy and in the preparatory devotion for Ash Wednesday the penitent ashes were dusted on the head as a sign of transience. This striking design of the worship life that was unknown to the Brunswick church Christians was going from the church leadership in the person of Bishop Martin Erdmann and Oberlandeskirchenrat Hans Eduard Seebaß seen as an exemplary sign of hope ecclesial renewal, but aroused great indignation among the general mass of the national church. The image of a congregation that comes to their place of worship for devotion, prayer, psalm singing and frequent reception of the sacraments, who enthusiastically sings the songs of the Reformation and comes to individual confessions, remained unfamiliar and incomprehensible for most of them. During Advent, Witte gave street sermons every day from 5:30 p.m. to 5:50 p.m. except on Mondays on Braunschweig's Burgplatz, standing on a box with the crucifix erected by his side. According to the communion statistics of 1954, there were 8,700 communicants in the 1200 souls in the Brothers community, and 23,300 in the remaining 154,800 souls in the other Protestant communities in Braunschweig.

Large parts of the Protestant Church saw Witte's work as an inadequate approximation of Roman Catholic customs. A majority of the Synod of the Braunschweig Evangelical Lutheran Regional Church considered this to be so questionable that, despite the sympathy of the church leadership for Witte and his community, they passed a law on ritual customs in 1953. The use of incense and lamps as well as ash dust in the penitential devotion on Ash Wednesday were prohibited. Bishop Erdmann and Oberlandeskirchenrat Seebaß protested against this provision in 1955 because they considered it to be contrary to the denomination, because according to the concord formula , a ban on middle things ( adiaphora ) that are not decisive for salvation leads to a confession .

In 1955 Witte died of a pulmonary embolism. His work has shaped the parish of the St.Ulrici Brothers to this day.

Fonts

literature

  • Martin Wittenberg : Max Witte in memory. In: worship and church music. Volume 6, 1955, pp. 195–199.
  • Dietrich Kuessner : Confessing and forgiving in the post-war period. A contribution to the understanding of the dispute between Bishop D. Martin Erdmann and Max Witte and Georg Althaus . In: The difficult way into the post-war period. Evangelical Lutheran regional church in Braunschweig. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1994, ISBN 3-525-55239-4 , pp. 100-131.

Web links

References and comments

  1. ↑ Information from his later successor in office Jürgen Diestelmann
  2. ↑ Martin Wittenberg: Max Witte in memory. In: worship and church music. Year 6, 1955, pp. 195–197, with an afterword by the editors, pp. 197–199.
  3. ↑ Church law concerning the order of the main worship service. In: Regional Church Official Gazette of the Braunschweig Evangelical Lutheran Regional Church. Volume 66, July 14, 1953, p. 17.
  4. ↑ Martin Wittenberg: Max Witte in memory. In: worship and church music. P. 196.
personal data
SURNAME Witte, Max
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German clergyman
DATE OF BIRTH July 5, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Kötermoor , Oldenburg
DATE OF DEATH July 11, 1955