Simon Schoeffel

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Photo-request.svg
 Image wanted 

Johann Simon Schöffel (born October 22, 1880 in Nuremberg , † May 28, 1959 in Hamburg ) was a German Protestant theologian and regional bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Hamburg state .

Life

The son of a legal officer attended the Melanchthon high school in his hometown, where he obtained his university entrance qualification. To study Protestant theology, Schöffel enrolled at the University of Erlangen in 1899 , where he completed his first theological exam in 1903 - with a two-semester change to the University of Leipzig . In 1899 he became a member of the Bubenruthia Erlangen fraternity .

After the vicariate in Weihenzell and Merkendorf , he became court chaplain of Prince Gustav Ernst zu Erbach-Schönberg in 1904 and a catechist in Nuremberg in 1906 . In 1908 he passed his second theological exam and was ordained in Ansbach for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria on the right side of the Rhine .

In 1909 Schöffel became the fourth pastor at the St. Salvator Church in Schweinfurt . In 1916, he moved there in the third pastorate on his doctorate in Erlangen, doctor of philosophy, acquired in 1918, the licentiate in theology and in 1922 an honorary doctorate of theology at the University of Erlangen.

In 1921 Schöffel received a call to the St. Michaelis Church in Hamburg and took up this position on April 6 of the following year. In the beginning it was not easy for him, because as the main pastor he first had to gather a personal congregation. The Lutheran- oriented Schoeffel also had to assert himself against the current of liberal theology existing in Hamburg. His intensely prepared sermons soon gave him a wide response. His duties included lectures at the University of Hamburg . In 1929 Schöffel became President of the Synod .

The witch hunt on democrats after the abolition of the civil rights of the Weimar Constitution and the reshuffle of the Hamburg citizenship in accordance with the results of the Reichstag election in 1933 encouraged anti-republican synodals, supporters of the National Socialist German Christians , and conservative anti- liberal synodals, supporters of the Young Reformation movement led by Bernhard Heinrich Forck at the time and use the presbyterial-synod church regiment to repeal it. Synodal President Schöffel convened an extraordinary regional synod , where the majority of the synodal members of the Young Reformation Movement and German Christians forced Karl Horn , incumbent senior of the Hamburg church , to resign.

With their majority, the New Reformation and German Christian synodals eliminated essential provisions of the presbyterial-synodal church order at the regional synod on May 29, 1933 and replaced the elected church leadership consisting of senior and church council with the office of regional bishop , previously unknown in Hamburg , for which Schöffel took up and into which he was chosen. The church law granted the regional bishop completely non-Protestant hierarchical leadership competences over the clergy and church people; the leadership principle replaced the tried and tested Lutheran collegial principle . The new Nazi leadership of the Hanseatic city accepted Schöffel into the Hamburg State Council , a powerless advisory body that replaced the citizenry.

This coup transformed the Hamburg church under Schöffel's conversion into a conformist bishop destroyed country church .

Forck and Theodor Knolle later found themselves in the opposition of the Hamburg Confessing Church , who in 1933 as conservative Lutherans had carried out the putsch in their regional church. Due to his intriguing manner, Schöffel had also made opponents among the German Christians, who ensured that he had to resign from his bishopric on March 1, 1934. On March 5th he was followed by the German Christian Franz Tügel .

After Hamburg's capitulation in World War II on May 3, 1945, changes also took place in the church districts. Tügel only resigned at the urging of the British occupying forces. Schöffel, who meanwhile acted as a victim of the German Christians and concealed his alliance with them in the church coup, was re-elected bishop on February 27, 1946. In 1950 he was appointed professor at the church college in Hamburg . After a minor heart attack , he resigned from office on December 1, 1954.

Act

Schöffel, who represented the position of the Lutheran Church as a theologian, campaigned for the church to be reintegrated into the state. Particularly in the field of education, he saw the church as the appropriate institution. During the time of National Socialism he supported the racial politics of the Third Reich. Nevertheless, he was considered a productive theological scientist and meritorious pastor.

On the question of Protestant canon law , however, he took a position based on the Bible and the Confession:

“Right is the initiation of the path of revelation. But that immediately means something else too, that the right to confession is built up; for revelation awakens confession. ... It is the task of the Church to guard this creed and to awaken it and to hear it, sometimes by speaking the word of revelation from which the creed grows, and now by repeating this creed, moved by the word of God . All rights of the church are based on this creed. Woe to canon law that passed it by or served other purposes! "

Entanglement in the system during the Nazi era

In May 1933, Schöffel was placed in the newly created hierarchical office of the regional bishop of the Hamburg regional church through an “enabling law”, which had repealed all democratic elements of the church constitution. Theodor Knolle officiated as general superintendent and deputy bishop, but he resigned at the beginning of March 1934 because of his refusal to merge the Hamburg regional church with the imperial church. Schöffel, who resigned on March 1st after political pressure, and Knolle followed on the 5th of the same month Regional Bishop Franz Tügel, who added the general superintendent to the office of bishop.

He warmly welcomed National Socialism. In 1934, Schöffel saw the path of the German people in the Third Reich, "who should realize their creative talents." "For us, however, this path is National Socialism." With a dismissive review of the Weimar Republic , he explained the path of the new authoritarian regime as compelling for Lutherans :

“So if National Socialism instinctively destroys the delusion of liberalism, rejects the cause of the bourgeoisie, rejects the masses, hates the class struggle and openly recognizes that these things are ready for judgment, then it is right, and the Lutheran will and must from here go out with him. What connects us with National Socialism is what is innermost, is the knowledge of the judgment that must be. The Lutheran, indeed he in particular, must recognize that the path of recent times was a path to ruin [...] National Socialism does this work by addressing the deep forces of the people, as they are in blood and race, in the spirit and history of the people are given, knocks and wakes them up. "

Schöffel also noted: “Blood from a foreign species brought into the bloodstream of humans, poisoned them and handed them over to death”, a sentence which, according to Rainer Hering, must be interpreted unequivocally in the light of the racial anti-Semitism of the propagandistic environment of 1934.

Post-war attitude of Schöffel and his employment policy for "burdened" pastors

After the war again in the office of Hamburg bishop, Schöffel represented views that did not take into account his role and that of his church in National Socialism. He tried to disguise his own role by re-dating the "Enabling Act" in the church to 1934 and declared liberalism to be the originator of National Socialism.

Schöffel explicitly refused to admit guilty to the crimes after 1933 in autumn 1945. In a conversation with Bishop George Kennedy Allen Bell , however, he emphasized that "now the Germans are being held in concentration camps, including often the noblest personalities, without special charges, without interrogation, without legal assistance, without a court judgment," as was once the case by the other side was made. He expressed himself in a similar way to Franz Tügel. This attitude corresponded to a general perpetrator orientation of the North Elbian Protestant churches after the war, which culminated in a massive commitment by the Schleswig-Holstein Church for the mass murderer Ernst Biberstein .

In general, Schöffel tried to get pastors burdened by National Socialism to work relatively quickly and to protect them from the Allies in the process of denazification . Eight clergymen who were particularly stressed were retired “for health reasons” and - in contrast to the liberal dissidents of this church - retained all spiritual rights and were even promoted to the highest salary level in order to receive the highest possible pension. After only one or two years they were given substitute duties and in the early 1950s they were given permanent jobs again - almost all of the retirements were reversed. The only exception was the young, radical German-Christian senior church councilor from 1934 to 1936, Karl Boll (1898–1991), whose re-employment had also been considered and who could now retire with full pension. The victims were neither punished nor admitted guilty - in many cases they even remained unreasonable.

Publications (selection)

  • The church sovereignty of the imperial city of Schweinfurt. Its development in the age of the Reformation up to its securing in the Augsburg religious peace of 1555 , Leipzig: Deichert 1918.
  • We still have a church! Halle: Müller 1927.
  • Christianity and Economy , Hamburg: Agency of the Rauhen Haus 1928.
  • Hamburg and the Reformation. A study of the history of ideas , Hamburg: Agency of the Rauhen Haus 1929.
  • Church history of Hamburg. First volume: The Hamburg church in the sign of mission and in the splendor of archbishopric dignity , Hamburg: Friedrichsen De Gruyter & Co. 1929.
  • with Adolf Köberle : Lutheranism and social question , Leipzig: Deichert 1931.
  • Faith, Law and Church (= Supplement 1 to Evangelical Hamburg. Half-monthly publication for Low German Lutheranism ), Hamburg: Paul Hartung 1935.
  • The necessity of church teaching (= Wittenberger series , volume 2), Berlin: Ev. Press Association 1936.
  • The glory of the Bible , Hamburg: Agency of the Rauhen Haus 1937.
  • with Marianne Timm & Martin Rang : From the church history of Hamburg. A quick review. With 41 drawings by Siegfried Oelke , Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1954.
  • with Martin Rang: Unser Glaube , Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1957.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Helge Dvorak: Biographical Lexicon of the German Burschenschaft. Volume I: Politicians. Sub-Volume 5: R – S. Winter, Heidelberg 2002, ISBN 3-8253-1256-9 , pp. 300-302.
  2. ↑ In most of the regional churches, the Young Reformation Movement welcomed the Nazi takeover of power, but unlike outside of Hamburg, the Young Reformation movement, together with the German Christians, immediately overturned the church order and created a fait accompli. While the Young Reformation Movement became a founding member of the Confessing Church in the Old Prussian regional church, it had led the putsch in Hamburg against the properly elected church leadership. As the stirrup holder of the German Christians, the Young Reformation movement in Hamburg sank into insignificance, but many of its members then joined the emerging group of the Confessing Church in the Hamburg regional church.
  3. ^ Rainer Hering: Episcopal Church between "Führerprinzip" and Lutheranism: The Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Hamburg State and the "Third Reich". In: Rainer Hering, Inge Mager (Hrsg.): Church contemporary history (20th century). (= Hamburg Church History in Essays, Part 5; Works on the Church History of Hamburg, Vol. 26). Hamburg Univ. Press, Hamburg 2008, ISBN 978-3-937816-46-3 , pp. 168ff.
  4. ^ Rainer Hering: Episcopal Church between "Führerprinzip" and Lutheranism: The Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Hamburg State and the "Third Reich". In: Rainer Hering, Inge Mager (Hrsg.): Church contemporary history (20th century). (= Hamburg Church History in Essays, Part 5; Works on the Church History of Hamburg, Vol. 26). Hamburg Univ. Press, Hamburg 2008, ISBN 978-3-937816-46-3 , p. 168.
  5. ↑ a b Rainer Hering: Bishop's Church between the “Führerprinzip” and Lutheranism: The Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Hamburg State and the “Third Reich”. In: Rainer Hering, Inge Mager (Hrsg.): Church contemporary history (20th century). (= Hamburg Church History in Essays, Part 5; Works on the Church History of Hamburg, Vol. 26). Hamburg Univ. Press, Hamburg 2008, ISBN 978-3-937816-46-3 , footnote 30 on p. 168.
  6. ^ Rainer Hering: Episcopal Church between "Führerprinzip" and Lutheranism: The Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Hamburg State and the "Third Reich". In: Rainer Hering, Inge Mager (Hrsg.): Church contemporary history (20th century). (= Hamburg Church History in Essays, Part 5; Works on the Church History of Hamburg, Vol. 26). Hamburg Univ. Press, Hamburg 2008, ISBN 978-3-937816-46-3 , p. 170.
  7. ↑ Simon Schöffel: Faith, Law and Church (Supplement 1 to the "Evangelical Hamburg") , Hamburg: Paul Hartung 1935, p. 8.
  8. ↑ a b c d e Rainer Hering: " Falling to an antichristian demonia. " P. 358f.
  9. ↑ Rainer Hering: “Falling to an antichristian demon.” P. 359. 361.
  10. ↑ Rainer Hering: " Falling to an antichristian demonia. " P. 361f.
  11. ↑ Rainer Hering: “Falling to an anti-Christian demon.” P. 360.
  12. ↑ Rainer Hering: " Falling to an antichristian demonia. " P. 363ff.
  13. ↑ a b Rainer Hering: “Falling to an antichristian demon.” P. 362.
predecessor Office successor
August Wilhelm Hunzinger Senior Pastor at St. Michaelis
1922–1954 		Hans-Heinrich Harms
predecessor Office successor
-
Franz Tügel 		Regional Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Hamburg State
1933–1934
1946–1954 		Franz Tügel
Theodor Knolle
personal data
SURNAME Schoeffel, Simon
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schöffel, Johann Simon (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Protestant theologian and regional bishop of Hamburg
DATE OF BIRTH October 22, 1880
PLACE OF BIRTH Nuremberg
DATE OF DEATH May 28, 1959
Place of death Hamburg