Stewart W. Herman

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Stewart Winfield Herman , Jr. (born August 4, 1909 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania , † February 16, 2006 in Greenport, Suffolk County (New York) ) was an American Lutheran clergyman, agent and university rector.

Life

Stewart Winfield Herman, Jr. was a son of Stewart W. Herman, pastor of the Zion Lutheran Church in Harrisburg, PA. He attended Gettysburg College until graduation in 1930 and then Gettysburg Theological Seminary until 1934. In the same year he was ordained a pastor by the United Lutheran Church in America .

Nollendorfplatz with the American Church

He went to Europe for a doctoral degree and did research at the University of Strasbourg and the University of Göttingen . In 1936 he was commissioned to look after the American Church in Berlin on Nollendorfplatz and continued his studies at the University of Berlin . In 1937 he took part in the Second World Conference on Practical Christianity in Oxford . When the Second World War broke out , he was accepted into the diplomatic service of the US embassy, ​​which had now also taken on the representation of the interests of numerous opposing states of the German Reich.

After the American entry into the war as a result of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Herman was interned with the embassy staff under George F. Kennan in Bad Nauheim . In June 1942 he and the embassy staff were able to return to the USA via Lisbon . For a short time he took up a teaching position at the Hamma Divinity School of Wittenberg University in Springfield (Ohio) , but was then recruited by the Secret Service Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in autumn 1943 and sent to London in April 1944 . Here he observed developments in Germany and Central Europe; In 1944 he gave a detailed assessment of the credibility of Hans Schönfeld's report on German resistance efforts.

On February 19, 1945, Herman officially retired from the OSS to take on a position at the World Council of Churches in Geneva at the suggestion of Henry Smith Leiper . Here he became deputy director of the Emergency Aid and Reconstruction Department. This was connected with an unofficial mission arranged with Allen Welsh Dulles . Traveling from July to December 1945 with logistical support from the OSS made it possible for him to be one of the first to give reports on the situation in post-war Germany. His first trip began on July 30th, together with Vice Consul Robert Shay and Gero von Schulze-Gaevernitz . His first conversation partners were Otto Fricke and Martin Niemöller in Frankfurt am Main on July 31 . From August 7th to 15th, 1945 he was in Berlin and saw the destroyed American Church for the first time. At the end of August he, like Karl Barth , whose trip he had made possible with the help of the OSS, took part as an observer at the church conference in Treysa in Hephata (Schwalmstadt) , and in October he was present at the reading of the Stuttgart confession of guilt .

From 1948 to 1952 he was director of refugee aid for the Lutheran World Federation ; he managed to organize the admission of thousands of Displaced Persons (DPs) in the USA and Canada.

In October 1952, Stewart Herman was named executive secretary of the Lutheran Cooperation in Latin America Department of the National Lutheran Council and director of the Latin America Committee of the Lutheran World Federation.

When the Lutheran School of Theology (LSTC) was founded as the central church college in Chicago in 1963, he became its founding president. He stayed in that position until he retired in 1971.

Awards

Fonts

  • It's Your Souls We Want. New York: Harper [c1943]
(dt.) Your souls we want. Church in the underground. Translated into German by Wilhelm Gossmann. Munich, Berlin: Neubau-Verlag 1951
  • The Rebirth of the German Church. With an introduction by Martin Niemöller . London: SCM Press 1946
(German) The 7000 Witnesses: Church on the move. Translated into German by Bernhard Kumpf. With a foreword by Hanns Lilje . Munich; Berlin [West]: Neubau-Verlag 1952
  • Report from Christian Europe. New York, NY: Friendship Press 1953

literature

  • Gerhard Besier : Ecumenical Mission in Post-War Germany: The Reports by Stewart W. Herman on the Conditions in the Evangelical Church in 1945/46.
1st chapter. In: Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte 1 (1988), pp. 151-187, JSTOR 43097651
Part 2. In: Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte 1 (1988), pp. 316–352
Conclusion, in: Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte 2 (1989), pp. 294–358, JSTOR 43098045
  • Clemens Vollnhals : The Protestant Church after the collapse. Reports by foreign observers from 1945. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1988 (work on contemporary church history A 3) ISBN 9783525557532
(39 of the 72 reports edited here are from Herman)
  • Stephen R. Herr, Matthew L. Riegel: Stewart W. Herman, Jr .: From Nazi Berlin to International Envoy. In: Frederick K. Wentz (ed.) Witness at the Crossroads: Gettysburg Lutheran Seminary Servants in the Public Life. Gettysburg, PA: Gettysburg Seminary 2001
  • Stephen R. Herr: Stewart W. Herman, Jr .: an American Lutheran pastor's journey with Germany and its churches 1934-1945. Gettysburg 2011 (STM Thesis)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Vollnhals (lit.), p. XXX
  2. ↑ Jürgen Heideking , Christof Mauch (ed.): USA and German Resistance: Analyzes and Operations of the American Secret Service in the Second World War. Tübingen: Francke 1993 ISBN 9783772021305 , p. 215 ( National Archives , RG 226, Entry 125, Box 8, Folder 133)
  3. ↑ Herr (Lit.), p. 88
  4. ^ Richard Smith: OSS: The Secret History of America's First Central Intelligence Agency. Rowman & Littlefield 2005 ISBN 9781599216584 , p. 216
  5. ↑ Herr (Lit.), pp. 97f
  6. ↑ See Herman's reports on this in Vollnhals (Lit.), No. 19, p. 59, and No. 20, p. 73
  7. ↑ Herman's reports on his contacts in Berlin in Vollnhals (Lit.), No. 27, p. 93
  8. ↑ Herr (Lit.), p. 102
  9. ↑ See Vollnhals (Lit.)
personal data
SURNAME Herman, Stewart W.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Herman, Stewart; Herman, Stewart Winfield (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American Lutheran minister, agent, and university principal
DATE OF BIRTH 4th August 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
DATE OF DEATH February 16, 2006
Place of death Greenport, Suffolk County (New York)