Stephan Pfürtner

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Stephan Hubertus Pfürtner (born November 23, 1922 in Danzig ; † July 2, 2012 in Marburg ) was a German Catholic moral theologian and social ethicist .

Life

Pfürtner grew up with five siblings as the son of a typographer in Danzig. In 1941 he came to Lübeck as a medical student and member of a medical company of the Wehrmacht . There he was arrested by the National Socialists because he had participated in a discussion group of the Lübeck chaplain Johannes Prassek . He was accused of making fun of Hermann Göring . Together with the other Lübeck martyrs , he was imprisoned until the Lübeck Christian trial and was in solitary confinement. At the People's Court trial , his commander stood up for him. Pfürtner was sentenced to 6 months' imprisonment, which was covered by pre-trial detention, which is why he was released immediately after the trial. A little later he came back to the front in the east.

After the Second World War came Pfurtner 1945, the religious order of the Dominicans at. As a theologian , he taught moral theology at the University of Friborg (Switzerland) from 1966 to 1974 . In his book "Church and Sexuality" in 1972 he was critical of the encyclical Humanae vitae , with which Pope Paul VI. 1968 judged the birth control pill and other contraceptive methods as reprehensible acts to prevent reproduction. After he was accused by the Roman Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith of violating church authority in the area of sexual ethics , he followed the invitation of the church leadership and resigned from his chair in 1974. He left the Dominican Order and married the doctor Irmgard Bloos in 1974, with whom he had two children.

Pfürtner lived with his family in Marburg, where he held a chair for social ethics in the Protestant theology department from 1975 until his retirement in 1988.

Righteous among the peoples

As a soldier, Pfürtner helped three Jewish women to escape from the Stutthof concentration camp in November 1944 and hid one of them in his parents' house in Danzig. All three women survived the Nazi era , although one of them was caught again and taken to the Theresienstadt concentration camp .

Awards

Works (selection)

  • Luther and Thomas in conversation. Our salvation between certainty and danger. Kerle, Heidelberg 1961.
  • Church and Sexuality. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1972, ISBN 3-499-68039-4 .
  • Power, law, conscience in church and society. Benziger, Zurich 1972, ISBN 3-545-24038-X .
  • Politics and Conscience - Conscience and Politics. Basic considerations on the relationship between ethics and politics. Benziger, Zurich 1976, ISBN 3-545-24049-5 .
  • with Werner Heierle: Introduction to Catholic social teaching. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1980, ISBN 3-534-06687-1 .
  • (Ed.) Against the Tower of Babel. Dispute with Ivan Illich . Rowohlt, Reinbek 1985, ISBN 3-499-15640-7 .
  • with Dieter Lührmann and Adolf Martin Ritter : Ethics in European History. 2 volumes. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1988.
  • Fundamentalism. The escape into the radical. Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau 1991, ISBN 3-451-04031-X .
  • Sexual Hostility and Power. A pamphlet for Responsible Freedom in the Church. Grünewald, Mainz 1992, ISBN 3-7867-1650-1 .
  • (Co-author) Isolation instead of dialogue? The Magisterium of the Church and Morality. Edition Exodus, Lucerne 1994, ISBN 3-905575-87-6 .
  • Not without hope. Experienced history 1922 to 1945. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-17-017091-0 .
  • Come on, Holy Spirit! Ecumenical meditation on the Pentecost sequence. Paulus, Friborg 2004, ISBN 3-7228-0628-3 .

literature

  • Josef Schäfer (arr.): Where his witnesses die is his kingdom. Letters from the beheaded Lübeck clergy and reports from eyewitnesses. Hamburg 1946.
  • Else Pelke: The Lübeck Christian Trial 1943. Mainz 1961/1974 (with an afterword by Stephan Pfürtner).
  • Ludwig Kaufmann : An unsolved church conflict, documents and contemporary historical analyzes. The Pfürtner case. Freiburg / Switzerland 1987.
  • Ingaburgh Klatt: " Erase my eyes ..." The life and violent death of the four Lübeck clergymen during the Nazi era. An exhibition in the castle monastery in Lübeck from November 8, 1993 to November 10, 1994. In: Democratic history: Yearbook on the workers' movement and democracy in Schleswig-Holstein 8 (1993), pp. 205-280.
  • Martin Merz: "The priests on the scaffold". A Lübeck trial 50 years ago. Booklet accompanying the exhibition "Erase my eyes from ..." The life and violent death of the four Lübeck clergy during the Nazi era. Revised Manuscript of a radio broadcast as part of the series "Religion and Society" on August 6, 1993 in the third program of the North German Radio. Lübeck 1993.
  • Isabella Spolovjnak-Pridat and Helmut Siepenkort (eds.): Ecumenism in resistance. The Lübeck Christian Trial in 1943. 3rd edition. Lübeck 2006.
  • Nikolaus Klein: Stephan H. Pfürtner (1922–2012). In: Word and Answer. 4/2015.

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Stephan Pfürtner died in Marburg
personal data
SURNAME Pfürtner, Stephan
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Pfürtner, Stephan Hubertus
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Catholic moral theologian and social ethicist
DATE OF BIRTH November 23, 1922
PLACE OF BIRTH Danzig
DATE OF DEATH 2nd July 2012
Place of death Marburg