Otto Soltau (clergyman)

Baptist chapel north: Otto Soltau's first place of work

Baptist Church Berlin-Weißensee: Otto Soltau worked from 1932 to 1953

Otto Soltau (born November 7, 1880 in Willinghusen ; † June 8, 1966 in Mainz ) was a Baptist clergyman who held a leading position in various branches of his Free Church . After the establishment of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in 1949, he headed the Eastern section of the Federation of Evangelical Free Churches .

Life

From a young age Otto Soltau worked in a responsible manner in Sunday school and in the so-called youth club of the Eilbeck Baptist congregation. He gave his first sermons when he was 16 years old. From 1903 to 1907 he attended the seminary of the German Baptists , which until 1997 was based in Hamburg-Horn and is now in Wustermark-Elstal .

His first pastor position, which Soltau took up in the year of his graduation, was in the Baptist congregation in Norden . In addition to his parish activities, he headed the supraregional youth work of the Northwestern Association (today the State Association of Baptists in the Northwest ). In 1912, Soltau moved to Hohenkirch in West Prussia (today: Książki ), where he worked as a preacher for the local Baptist community until 1920. He then went to Dresden and in 1927 to Elberfeld . From there he moved to the Berlin-Weißensee Baptist Church in 1932 and was its pastor for over 21 years . From 1936 to the mid-1950s Otto Soltau was a board member of the Mission Society of German Baptists , from 1936 to 1939 as its second chairman and from 1949 as its first chairman.

The establishment of the two German states in 1949 had its impact on the from Baptist, Elim- and Brethren composite Federation of Evangelical Free Churches . Although the church federation was an all-German body until 1969, an internal division took place as early as 1949. Under the umbrella of a federal management east , separate administrative facilities and a separate publishing house were set up for the GDR area. After Otto Soltau had already belonged to this governing body in 1949 in addition to his community service, he became its head in 1953 as Federal Chairman East . He held this office until 1957. He then moved to the Federal Republic and spent his retirement in Mainz. He donated his private library to the Buckow Theological Seminary, founded in 1959 .

literature

• Axel Steen: Soltau, Otto . In: One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism. 150 years of Baptist congregations in Germany (Ed. Günter Balders). Wuppertal and Kassel 1985. p. 362

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Unless otherwise indicated, the facts and data in this section are taken from the following short biography. Axel Steen: Soltau, Otto . In: One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism. 150 Years of Baptist Congregations in Germany (Ed. Günter Balders), Wuppertal and Kassel 1985, p. 362
2. ↑ Nordwestliche Vereinigung des Bund deutscher Baptisten (Ed.): Minutes of the conference held in Felde from May 30 to June 1, 1909 by the members of the Nordwestliche Vereinigung , Kassel 1909, p. 28
3. ↑ Heinz Boberach , Carsten Nicolaisen , Ruth Pabst (arrangement): Handbook of the German Protestant Churches. 1918 to 1949. Organs, offices, associations, people . Volume 1: Supraregional institutions . Göttingen 2010. p. 336
4. ^ Karl Heinz Voigt: Ecumenism in Germany. From the founding of the ACK to the Charta Oecumenica (1948–2001) . Göttingen 2015. p. 266
5. ↑ Stefan Duhr: The libraries of free church theological seminars in the Soviet Zone / GDR 1945–1990: presented at the libraries of the theological seminars in Friedensau near Magdeburg and Buckow near Berlin (master's thesis). Presented to the Humboldt University of Berlin, Philosophical Faculty I, Institute for Library and Information Science, 2006/2007. P. 67 ( PDF online )