Paul Leo

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Paul Leo with his second wife Eva

Paul Leo (born January 9, 1893 in Göttingen , † February 10, 1958 in Dubuque , Iowa) was a German Protestant theologian and clergyman. Even of Jewish origin, he campaigned for the persecuted Jews during the Nazi era . After brief imprisonment in a concentration camp in November and December 1938, he emigrated to the USA in 1939, where he last lived as a professor for the New Testament in Dubuque (Iowa) .

Life

Paul Leo was the youngest son of the classical philologist Friedrich Leo (1851-1914) and Cécile geb. Hensel (1858-1928). Both parents' families were of Jewish origin, but had been of Protestant denomination since the early 19th century. On his mother's side, he was the great-grandson of the Enlightenment philosopher Moses Mendelssohn and the great-nephew of the composer Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy . After the father's death, the family lived in modest circumstances, which were made worse by the economic crisis of the 1920s.

Studied in Göttingen, Marburg and Tübingen

After graduating from high school in Göttingen , Paul Leo first studied history and later theology at the University of Göttingen . Later he moved to Marburg and Tübingen , where his academic teachers were Rudolf Otto , Rudolf Bultmann , Karl Heim and Adolf Schlatter . For health reasons, he had to interrupt his studies several times. In 1928 he was promoted to Dr. theol. PhD . In Marburg he founded the reformed Academic Association Marburg in November 1918 with other students who were active in the youth .

Work as a minister in ecumenism

After completing his studies, Paul Leo worked as a pastor on Norderney and from 1930 in Osnabrück ; he participated intensively in ecumenism . He took part in several ecumenical meetings, about which he published numerous reports. In the autumn of 1926 he founded the Deinenser conference with eleven other pastors , which met twice a year for theological discussions. The Hannoversche Young Evangelical Conference emerged in 1929 from the circle to which Otto Piper and Richard Karwehl also belonged .

In May 1931, Leo's first wife Anna (née Siegert) died after giving birth to their daughter of the same name, Anna Leo.

Under the National Socialists

After the " seizure of power " by the National Socialists in 1933, Leo, the Protestant pastor of Jewish origin, dealt with the question of the position of the "Jewish Christians" in Germany. With the support of Bishop August Marahrens , Leo developed a basic concept on this topic, which he represented at lectures throughout Germany in the following years. He advocated that Jews and non-Jews are inseparable in the church and that hatred of Jews is incompatible with Christian faith. His position brought him close to the Confessing Church . In his memorandum Church and Judaism (published in May 1933) he said:

“For the church there can only be a Jewish question by asking whether the Jews are unbaptized or baptized. The unbaptized are the object of their missionary love, the baptized full members of their community. "

On August 17, 1935, the Mayor of Osnabrück, Erich Gaertner, prohibited him from entering the Osnabrück city hospital . He justified this with the non-Aryan descent of Leo Paul. In fact, however, the city was not the sponsor of the hospital, but a corporation under Heinrich Fründ, so that this prohibition was in itself a violation of the law. Heinrich Fründ , who wanted to keep everything political away from the hospital himself, was removed from this position by the National Socialists in 1938.

In March 1938, the Hanoverian regional church forced Paul Leo into retirement. As of April 6, 1938, Leo decided not to continue to look after his Osnabrück-Haste parish . He then worked underground as a lecturer for candidates from the Confessing Church. During the pogrom night (November 9, 1938) he was arrested and taken to Buchenwald concentration camp . After a few weeks in detention, during which he was mentally and physically ill-treated, he was released towards the end of December on condition that he leave Germany within two months.

emigration

Grave site (metal work by Eva Leo)

After an inflammatory article against Paul Leo appeared in the SS magazine Das Schwarze Korps on January 9, 1939 , he immediately sent his daughter to Holland on a special train for children and then emigrated to the Netherlands himself. There, on August 30, 1939, he was joined by the metalworker Eva Dittrich (1901–1998), whom he had met in summer 1937 in Hanover and who wanted to emigrate with him to the USA. Leo himself received a visa for the USA and left with his daughter, while Eva Dittrich, as a safe German citizen, did not receive a visa. She traveled to Venezuela with Leo's relatives (including his brother, the Romanist Ulrich Leo ).

Living in the USA

Paul Leo moved to Pittsburgh upon his arrival in New York , where he held the Chair of American Church History at the Western Theological Seminary of the Presbyterian Church (now Pittsburgh Theological Seminary ). He was able to support himself, his daughter and his partner in Venezuela from his earnings. After the summer semester of 1940 he traveled to Venezuela and got married to Eva Dittrich in a Presbyterian chapel in Caracas. On August 5, 1940, the family was able to enter the USA.

Paul Leo taught Greek at the Western Theological Seminary until 1943 and then switched to the Lutheran Church. He got a pastorate in Karnes City (Texas), after about a year he moved to a country pastor in Cave Creek and Crabapple north of Fredericksburg . In 1950 he received a professorship for New Testament at the Wartburg Theological Seminary in Dubuque (Iowa) , where he worked until his death on February 10, 1958.

In addition to his daughter from his first marriage, Anne Leo Ellis (* 1931, children's book author), Paul Leo had two children with his second wife Eva: Christopher Leo (* 1941, political scientist) and Monica Leo (* 1944, puppeteer).

swell

  1. ↑ Hartmut Ludwig and Eberhard Röhm . Baptized Evangelical - persecuted as "Jews" . Calver Verlag Stuttgart 2014 p. 210 and master list
  2. ^ Paul Leo Lutheran pastor with Jewish roots (1893-1958) . Verlag Traugott Bautz GmbH, Nordhausen 2019, ISBN 978-3-95948-453-4 , p. 22 .
  3. ^ Evidence of the marriage: Yearbook of the Society for Church History of Lower Saxony, Volume 93, 1995.

literature

See also

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Leo, Paul
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Leo, Paul Friedrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Protestant theologian and clergyman
DATE OF BIRTH January 9, 1893
PLACE OF BIRTH Goettingen
DATE OF DEATH February 10, 1958
Place of death Dubuque, Iowa