Reinhard Henkys

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Georg Reinhard Henkys (born July 22, 1928 in Nidden ; † May 11, 2005 in Pasewalk ) was a Protestant publicist and journalist and one of the most important experts on the subject of "Church in Socialism". Hans Hafenbrack called Henkys in an obituary on the website of the Evangelical Press Service a “bridge builder between East and West”.

The theologian Jürgen Henkys was his brother.

Life

Henkys, the eldest son of Pastor Georg Henkys, came from an East Prussian family of theologians. After elementary school in Heiligenkreutz , where his father took over the pastor's office in 1929, and middle school in Palmnicken , he attended high school in Königsberg . At the age of 16, Henkys was called up for military service as an air force and flak helper in the Kurland Kessel . After the end of the war, Henkys studied German, history and economics in Berlin, Bonn and Tübingen. This was followed by an internship at the Berliner Kurier . From 1955 he was an editor at epd -Landesdienst in Düsseldorf, from 1960 employee of the epd-Zentralredaktion in Bethel near Bielefeld .

On the day the Wall was built , August 13, 1961, a Sunday, after going to church, his editor-in-chief asked him to take the next plane to Berlin and there to take over the epd's reporting on the churches in the GDR .

In addition to working for the epd, Henkys was a sought-after commentator on all ARD channels and other radio stations. In addition to his work on the churches in the GDR, he also published several books on Nazi violent crimes and, in 1961, the brochure Was it really so bad? which influenced "entire generations of high school students" in North Rhine-Westphalia.

In 1975 he founded his own magazine for his life's topic, the Church in Socialism .

Awards

Publications (selection)

  • God's people in socialism: How Christians live in the GDR . Wichern, Berlin 1983, ISBN 3-88981-005-5 .
  • (as ed.): The Protestant churches in the GDR: Contributions to an inventory . Kaiser Munich 1982, ISBN 3-459-01436-9 .
  • Dietrich Goldschmidt (Ed.): Terror and Resistance 1933 - 1945. Part: The National Socialist Violent Crimes: History a. Court . State Center for Political Education, Berlin 1964 (the first German account of Nazi crimes at the time)
  • Was it really that bad? (Brochure on “Christians and Jews under National Socialism”) 1961

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Hans Hafenbrack : Publicist Reinhard Henkys has died. In: ekd.de . May 12, 2015, archived from the original on July 9, 2006 ; accessed on May 17, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Henkys, Reinhard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Protestant publicist and journalist
DATE OF BIRTH July 22, 1928
PLACE OF BIRTH Nida (Lithuania)
DATE OF DEATH May 11, 2005
Place of death Pasewalk