Peter Kawerau

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Peter Kawerau (born March 13, 1915 in Rawitsch ; † September 8, 1988 in Marburg ) was a German church historian with a focus on Eastern Churches .

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Peter Kawerau was born as the son of the teacher and later Magdeburg high school professor Friedrich Kawerau and his wife Hedwig née Lindner in Rawitsch in the province of Posen . He studied theology and oriental studies at the Universities of Breslau and Berlin . In 1940 he passed the first theological exam.

Military service and imprisonment in Africa, Canada and England followed. After being a prisoner of war, Kawerau began his Oriental studies studies with Hans Schaeder at the University of Göttingen in 1945 and obtained his doctorate in philosophy with Bertold Spuler with a dissertation on "The Jacobite Church in the Age of the Syrian Renaissance". In 1949 he passed the second theological exam in the Loccum seminary , but then did not enter the pastoral service, but was able to go to the Princeton Theological Seminary as a Research Fellow .

From May 1950 Kawerau became an assistant at the theological seminar of the University of Münster and received his doctorate in theology under Robert Stupperich in 1952 with a thesis on the radical Anabaptist Melchior Hofmann . Here he completed his habilitation in 1956 with a thesis on "America and the Oriental Churches".

In 1961 Peter Kawerau was appointed full professor at the Evangelical Theological Faculty of the University of Marburg . A new chair had been established here (among other things at the endeavors of Ernst Benz and Hildegard Schaeder ) to teach the history of the Eastern Orthodox Church and Protestantism. The Eastern Church Institute, founded in Münster in 1958, served as a model for this . Kawerau extended the area beyond the Slavic and Byzantine areas to the Caucasian and Seminitic cultural area and made the history of the Eastern Church into a broad, demanding and attractive subject within the Marburg theological faculty. Through Kawerau, Marburg became the second Evangelical Theological Faculty next to Göttingen, where one could study Syrian church fathers.

For health reasons, Kawerau ended his teaching activities in 1979, but - then living in Frankfurt am Main - continued his research as far as possible.

Works (selection)

  • Melchior Hofmann as a religious thinker , Haarlem, 1954
  • The Jacobite Church in the Age of the Syrian Renaissance , Berlin, 1955
  • America and the Oriental Churches (= Works on Church History 31), Berlin, 1958
  • History of the Old Church , Marburg, 1967
  • History of the medieval church , Marburg, 1967
  • Arabic sources on the Christianization of Russia , Wiesbaden, 1967
  • Luther. Life, Writings, Thinking , Marburg, 1969
  • Christianity of the East , Stuttgart a. a., 1972
  • Christian-Arabic Chrestomathy from historical writers of the Middle Ages , 3 volumes, Louvain, 1976–1977
  • Eastern Church History I. Christianity in Asia and Africa up to the appearance of the Portuguese in the Indian Ocean , Louvain, 1983
  • Eastern Church History II. Christianity in the Eastern Roman Byzantine Empire up to the conquest of Constantinople , Louvain, 1982
  • Eastern Church History III. Christianity in Europe and Asia in the Age of the Crusades , Louvain, 1982
  • Introduction to the Study of Eastern Church History , Marburg, 1984

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Kawerau, Peter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German church historian
DATE OF BIRTH March 13, 1915
PLACE OF BIRTH Rawitsch today Rawicz, Province of Poznan
DATE OF DEATH September 8, 1988
Place of death Marburg