Paul Schneiss

Paul Heinrich Schneiss (born March 15, 1933 in Changsha ) is a German Protestant pastor and missionary .

Life

Paul Schneiss was born on March 15, 1933 as the son of a missionary in the Chinese city of Changsha and came to Mühlhausen an der Enz in 1937 . In 1953 he passed the Abitur and a year later he joined the mission seminar of the Liebenzeller Mission . In 1958 he moved to Japan as a missionary and stayed there until 1962. Back in Germany, he began to work as a parish deacon of the Evangelical Church in Baden , based in Bühl, in 1963 , and in the same year he married Kiyoko Sakurai, whom he had previously in Japan had got to know. In 1967 he began studying theology in Heidelberg.

His work at DOAM

In 1966 he became an employee of the DOAM (German East Asia Mission) in Mannheim , where he was promoted to managing director in 1968 . In 1970 he traveled to Japan, in 1972 he became the first East Asia consultant in the newly founded Evangelical Mission in Southwest Germany, based in Stuttgart . In 1975 he traveled to Japan again, this time as a member of the United Church of Christ in Japan . Since the 1970s, the church democratization movement on the part of the NCCK (National Council of Churches in Korea) has been supported by the World Council of Churches and in this context Schneiss was the only foreigner to attend several South Korean court cases, most of them against opponents of the dictatorial Yusin regime Park Chung-hee . He flew almost weekly from Tokyo to Seoul for the imprisoned writer Kim Chi-ha . At the same time he helped the Korean professor Ji Myung-gwan at the Tokyo Women's University ( Tōkyō Joshi Daigaku ) in the publication of his writings on the actual situation and the democratization movement in South Korea. He showed solidarity with the Korean democracy movement and acted as a link between the various international actors. As a result, he was declared persona non grata by the South Korean government in 1977 , and this status was only revoked after the official end of the military dictatorship in South Korea in 1988.

After Park Chung-hee's death, Schneiss' wife and a US American friend flew to Seoul on May 17, 1980 and watched a large movement of troops from their hotel. It turned out that they were marching towards Gwangju , which resulted in the Gwangju uprising a few days later . Schneiss received a call from his wife and immediately informed the German journalists in Japan of this unusual troop transfer. Jürgen Hinzpeter from NDR , at that time ARD correspondent in Tokyo, then came to Gwangju and was the only journalist to report on this massacre. Paul Schneiss, who received the copy of the recordings from Gwangju from Hinzpeter, sent them to Amnesty International and the World Council of Churches, so that the massacre became internationally known. For this, Paul Schneiss and his wife were honored with the Maimutterpreis ( Korean : 오월 어머니 상) in 2011 .

In 1984 he returned to Germany and from then on worked voluntarily for DOAM, of which he was chairman from 1991 to 2011.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Schneiss, Paul - biography. DOAM, German East Asia Mission, accessed on June 8, 2020 . 
2. ↑ Schneiss, Paul - biography. DOAM, German East Asia Mission, accessed on June 8, 2020 . 
3. ↑ The Democratization Movement in Korea and Pastor Paul Schneiss. Kyungin-Ilbo, accessed June 8, 2020 (Korean). 
4. ↑ Paul Schneiss, the assistant to the journalist Jürgen Hinzpeter. Korea Video Journalist Association, accessed June 8, 2020 (Korean). 
5. ^ Witness 4 'My walk with Korean friends'. newspower, accessed June 8, 2020 (English). 
6. ↑ The Democratization Movement in Korea and Pastor Paul Schneiss. Kyungin-Ilbo, accessed June 8, 2020 (Korean). 
7. ↑ The Maimutter Prize winner Paul Schneiss: "One should remember the past". Yonhap News Agency, accessed June 8, 2020 (Korean).