Ruth Wendland

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Ruth Wendland (born September 10, 1913 in Altfriedland , † June 13, 1977 in Berlin ) was a Protestant pastor and German resistance fighter against the Nazi regime . At the risk of her life, she and her mother Agnes Wendland hid and protected people who were persecuted as Jews in the parsonage of the Gethsemanegemeinde Berlin during World War II .

Life

Rectory of the Gethsemanegemeinde Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg

In 1916 her parents moved to Berlin because her father was Dr. Walter Wendland in the Prenzlauer Berg district of the Evangelical Church of the Old Prussian Union took up a parish position in the parish of the Gethsemane Church and at the same time worked as a lecturer in church history at the Friedrich Wilhelms University in Berlin .

After visiting the Girls High School Pankow she studied from 1933 at the Berlin Friedrich-Wilhelms University theology with the goal of becoming a pastor.

A year later, she and her mother Agnes Wendland joined the Protestant opposition movement Confessing Church . This organization resisted attempts by the Nazi regime to bring the teaching and organization of the German Evangelical Church into line.

From 1936 she continued her theology studies for two years in Basel . When she returned to Berlin in August 1943, she and her mother hid and protected the two Jewish siblings Ralph and Rita Neumann, who were living underground because of the persecution by the Nazi regime.

Ralph Neumann lived in the rectory while his sister worked as a domestic help in the pastor's family. In order to protect their father, Ruth and Agnes Wendland hid the true identity and origin of their Jewish roommates from him.

After the first, unauthorized ordinations of two women as pastors on January 12, 1943 by Kurt Scharf , President of the Brandenburg Provincial Synod and Pastor in Sachsenhausen , the Old Prussian Council of Brothers took this development into account and decided to admit women to ordination for the Old Prussian Confessing Church. On October 16, 1943, Annemarie Grosch, Sieghild Jungklaus, Margarethe Saar, Lore Schlunk, Ruth Wendland and Gisela von Witzleben received their ordinations as pastors in a church belonging to the general parish of Berlin-Lichterfelde.

From October 1943 Wendland then worked as a vicar in a Protestant community in Zehlendorf . A year later, her father suffered a stroke and moved to live with her sister Angelika in Senzke , whereupon her mother Agnes continued to run the parish.

In February 1945, Ralph Neumann was arrested during a check by a military patrol in Lehrter Bahnhof . Agnes Wendland then personally campaigned for the Gestapo to be released, whereupon she was arrested and held in the Gestapo labor education camp on Grosse Hamburger Strasse in Berlin-Mitte .

Since her mother fell ill with typhus while in custody , Ruth offered to be imprisoned instead of her sick mother. This exchange was approved. After three days of imprisonment, Ruth Wendland was released from custody and a few weeks later saw the end of World War II.

In August 1964 the presbytery of the old town parish in Mülheim an der Ruhr elected her pastor. That was the first time that this parish in the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland occupied a pastor's position with a woman. Wendland died in Berlin in 1977.

Honors

On August 12, 1975, Yad Vashem awarded her the honorary title Righteous Among the Nations for her courageous work in saving persecuted Jews . Her mother Agnes Wendland was also posthumously awarded this honorary title on the same day. A tree in the avenue of the righteous at the memorial there has been a reminder of both women since 1975 . This honor was inspired by the two Jewish siblings who were hidden and protected in the rectory at the time and who survived the Holocaust.

literature

  • Israel Gutman with the collaboration of Sara Bender (Ed.): Lexicon of the Righteous Among the Nations. Germans and Austrians. Wallstein Verlag, ISBN 978-3-89244-900-3 .
  • Ralph Neuman: Memories of my youth in Germany 1926–1946 . Ed .: German Resistance Memorial Center. ISBN 3-926082-23-2 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ilse Härter and Hannelotte Reiffen were the first two pastors in Germany. Cf. Rajah Scheepers, “The stony path from women to the rectory”, in: Meeting point: Journal of the Ev. Matthäusgemeinde Berlin-Steglitz , No. 5, September / October 2018, Parish Church Council of the Matthäusgemeinde Berlin-Steglitz (ed.), P. 4 seq., Here p. 4. No ISSN.
  2. ↑ Rajah Scheepers, "The stony path from women to the rectory", in: Meeting point: Journal of the Ev. Matthäusgemeinde Berlin-Steglitz , No. 5, September / October 2018, Parish Council of the Matthäusgemeinde Berlin-Steglitz (ed.), P. 4seq., Here p. 5. No ISSN.
personal data
SURNAME Wendland, Ruth
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Protestant theologian and German resistance fighter against the Nazi regime
DATE OF BIRTH September 10, 1913
PLACE OF BIRTH Altfriedland
DATE OF DEATH June 13, 1977
Place of death Berlin