Oscar Mauritz

Oscar Mauritz (born July 24, 1867 in Duisburg , † December 4, 1959 (other sources: February 6, 1958 ) in Bremen ) was a German pastor and cathedral preacher at Bremen Cathedral .

biography

Mauritz was the son of a conservative businessman from the Lower Rhine region; his mother was the daughter of the Bremen merchant Jansen. He grew up with his six younger siblings in a church-conservative parental home.

Mauritz attended high school in Duisburg and studied from 1886 to 1889 theology at the University of Bonn , the University of Tübingen and the University of Berlin. His studies led him to a very liberal theology. In 1889 and 1892 he completed his studies with his two exams in Koblenz .

From 1889 to 1892 he was assistant preacher at the Bremen Cathedral and from 1892 preacher at the German Protestant community in Manchester , where up to 5000 Germans lived at that time. In 1897 he became the fourth preacher at Bremen Cathedral. From 1915 to 1946 he was Pastor Primarius , i.e. first pastor, at the Bremen Cathedral.

His liberal sermons and those of Albert Kalthoff and Friedrich Steudel shaped the radicalism of Bremen ; they excited, but also led to conflicts. In 1900 he gave up the Trinitarian baptismal formula out of conscience and used the formula: "I baptize you in looking up to God the All-One, in whom we live, weave and are, whom the Christian Church confesses as Father, Son and Holy Spirit". After protests across Germany, the Prussian consistory intervened at the Bremen Senate. In 1905 the Bremen Senate declares that only baptisms according to the Trinitarian formula are valid. Over 300 out of 650 baptisms were repeated. The preachers Mauritz, Kalthoff and Steudel became members of the German Monist Association in 1906 , founded by the natural philosopher and free thinker Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919). Kalthoff became chairman of the Deutscher Monistenbund in 1906 and died in the same year. Mauritz and Steudel had to leave the federal government again in 1907 under pressure from the Senate.

In his view of religion as a celebration of the soul , Mauritz conveyed general rules of life instead of the usual biblical sayings. He was not a member of the NSDAP; his sermons were apolitical and characterized by respect for life. His relationship with the cathedral preacher and regional bishop Heinz Weidemann (1895–1976), who had been with the NSDAP since 1933 , was loyal and pastoral even in difficult situations. After the Second World War , he turned sharply against National Socialism . In 1946 he retired .

Mauritz was an advocate of intellectual freedom in the sense of the classical idealism of Goethe and Kant. The Bible and the philosophical and literary works of world literature were of equal value for him.

Mauritz had been married to the merchant's daughter Anna Schröder from Bremen since 1892; both had two children.

literature

• Herbert Black Forest : The Great Bremen Lexicon . 2nd, updated, revised and expanded edition. Edition Temmen, Bremen 2003, ISBN 3-86108-693-X .
• Peter Ulrich : The cathedral preacher Oscar Mauritz (1867-1958) - "Religion is celebration of the soul" . In: Detlev G. Gross (Ed.): Pastors in Bremen. Life pictures from the 19th and 20th centuries . Vol. 2, Edition Temmen, Bremen 2007, ISBN 978-3-86108-596-6 , pp. 93-109. (Series of publications by the Bremen Cathedral Foundation)
• Horst Kalthoff :  Oscar Mauritz. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 30, Bautz, Nordhausen 2009, ISBN 978-3-88309-478-6 , Sp. 975-978.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Horst Kalthoff on Oscar Mauritz In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon .
2. ↑ Black Forest to Oscar Mauritz In: The Great Bremen Lexicon .