Theodor Heckel

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Memorial plaque on the bell tower of the homecoming memorial in Goslar ; Inscription: The German returnees to their Bishop D. Theodor Heckel 1894–1967 father of the prisoners of war 1939–1967

Theodor Heckel (born April 15, 1894 in Kammerstein , † June 24, 1967 in Munich ) was a German Protestant theologian and bishop .

Training and teaching

Theodor Heckel was the brother of Johannes Heckel .

After completing school at the Progymnasium Dinkelsbühl and the humanistic grammar school Ansbach , he studied theology in Erlangen between 1913 and 1914 , where he joined the Uttenruthia in the Schwarzburgbund in the winter semester 1913/14 , but interrupted his studies when the war broke out and was a volunteer in the war from 1915 to 1918. Then he took part in battles of the Freikorps Epp in southern Germany .

After the war he resumed studying theology in Erlangen from 1918 to 1920 and continued his studies from 1920 to 1922 at the seminary in Munich .

From 1922 to 1925 he was a travel preacher Munich-South based in Solln and from 1925 to 1928 he was a full-time religious teacher and teacher at the Protestant teacher training institute in Erlangen. From 1928 he was senior consistorial advisor and was appointed to the German Evangelical Church Federation in Berlin (here, among other things, clerk for congregations abroad).

In 1928 he received his doctorate on Richard Rothe .

Work in National Socialism

From 1928 to 1945 Heckel was head of the ecumenical external office of the German Evangelical Church (DEK), in which Eugen Gerstenmaier had been his assistant since 1935 . Heckel was an advocate of the Aryan paragraph in the anti-Semitic law for the restoration of the civil service . In 1934 he received the title of bishop. Heckel was neither a NSDAP member nor a German Christian , but he also closed himself off to the Confessing Church . While Dietrich Bonhoeffer was pastor abroad in London from 1933 to 1935, Heckel was his superior bishop. After his return, he denounced him in 1936 as an "enemy of the state". Heckel hindered the work of the Confessing Church because, in his opinion, it harms the constitutional church. Heckel wanted to keep the church confessionally independent from German Christians without being able to accomplish this.

In 1939 Heckel was the founder and since then head of the Free Evangelical Relief Organization for internees and prisoners of war. In this capacity and as a representative of the Council of the German Evangelical Church in Germany, he was also responsible for prisoner-of-war issues after 1945 and retained the official title of bishop.

Work in post-war Germany

At the end of the war, Heckel and the Hanoverian regional bishop August Marahrens were removed from office within the church. Heckel continued the prisoner-of-war work and began to organize the supply of German prisoners of war in the Soviet Union and was Dean of the City of Munich from 1950 to 1964 .

From 1950 he was a member and in 1962 Vice President of the regional synod of the Evangelical Church in Bavaria. From 1961 to 1967 he was a member of the Bavarian Senate .

Today Heckel is an example of the continuity and discontinuity in Lutheran Protestantism between the First World War and the Adenauer Federal Republic and the problem of denazification and the acceptance of former National Socialists into the church service of the new republic. Heckel's ability to polarize continues to this day. Although a Theodor Heckel educational institute had existed in Munich for decades, it was not until 2000 that the erection of a Heckel bust caused renewed controversy.

Honors

Works

  • Diss. And habil .: exegesis and metaphysics with Richard Rothe , Munich 1928 (research on the history and teaching of Protestantism, vol. I / 3)
  • Adolf von Harleß . Theology and church politics of a Lutheran bishop ; 1933

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, second updated edition, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 , p. 235.
  2. ↑ cf. TH and the consequences ... 2001.
personal data
SURNAME Heckel, Theodor
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Protestant theologian and bishop
DATE OF BIRTH April 15, 1894
PLACE OF BIRTH Kammerstein
DATE OF DEATH June 24, 1967
Place of death Munich