Trevor Huddleston

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Bronze bust of Huddleston with quote from Mandela in Bedford
Wall painting in Christ the King Church in Sophiatown depicting Huddleston

Ernest Urban Trevor Huddleston CR KCMG , (born June 23, 1913 in Bedford , United Kingdom , † April 20, 1998 in Mirfield , West Yorkshire , United Kingdom) was a British Anglican archbishop and fighter against apartheid in South Africa .

Life

Trevor Huddleston's father, Sir Ernest Huddleston, was director of the Royal Indian Navy. Huddleston studied at Lancing College in Lancing ; later he attended Christ Church College , Oxford . He spent part of his vacation picking hops in Kent . So he began to be interested in missionary work. He studied theology at Wells Theological College in Wells . In 1937 he was ordained a priest, in 1939 he joined the Anglican order Community of the Resurrection (CR, German: "Community of Resurrection").

In 1943 he moved to Johannesburg , South Africa. He began his service as head of the mission station of the CR in Sophiatown in the northwest of the city, where mostly blacks lived.

Over the next 13 years, Huddleston became a popular priest. In 1949 he moved to Rosettenville in the south of the city and became Provincial of the Community of South Africa and Superintendent of the local seminary of St Peter's Theological College - where the future Archbishop and Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu was a graduate - and of St Peter's College . This school was open to blacks and was called the "Black Eton of South Africa". Huddleston gave young musicians the opportunity to play in the Huddleston Jazz Band , including Hugh Masekela , Jonas Gwangwa and Zakes Mokae .

In 1956 he closed the school because he did not want to answer for an inferior education for black people under the newly enacted Bantu Education Act . He became known as a tireless activist against apartheid. This is how he got his nickname Makhalipile (German: "The Intrepid"). Especially at the beginning of the forcible evacuation of Sophiatown in August 1955, Huddleston offered nonviolent resistance. In 1955 the African National Congress (ANC) gave him the honorary title Isitwalandwe (German: "Who wears the feather headdress of a rare bird" ) at the People's Congress in Kliptown , the highest honor given by the ANC. Huddleston was the first recipient of this title with Albert Luthuli and Yusuf Dadoo .

In 1956, Huddleston was banned by the South African government . He was then called back to England. In the same year, his best-known book, Naught for Your Comfort (German: “Nothing for your comfort”, German edition as wines, you beloved country: South Africa ) was published, in which he passionately denounced the apartheid system. From then on he worked for a few years in the headquarters of the order in Mirfield and continued to campaign against apartheid. In 1959 he was one of the initiators of an international economic boycott of the apartheid regime. In 1960 he was appointed Bishop of Masasi in what is now Tanzania . He was friends with the first president of Tanzania, Julius Nyerere . Eight years later he became the suffragan bishop of Stepney within the Diocese of London . In 1978 he was appointed Bishop of Mauritius and finally Archbishop of the " Province of the Indian Ocean ".

In 1981, Huddleston succeeded Ambrose Reeves as president of the British anti-apartheid movement. In 1983 he resigned as archbishop and returned to England. From then on he devoted himself again primarily to the fight against apartheid. In 1994 he was given the right to vote in the first free South African elections . He lived briefly in South Africa again in 1995, but had to return to England for health reasons.

In 1998, Huddleston died at the Order's headquarters in Mirfield. His remains were transferred to South Africa in 2015 and buried in Christ the King Church in Sophiatown.

Honors

Quotes about Trevor Huddleston

  • The former President of South Africa, Nelson Mandela , said of Huddleston: "No white man has done more for South Africa than Trevor Huddleston".
  • "Father Huddleston was a pillar of wisdom, humility and sacrifice for the legions of freedom fighters in the darkest moments of the struggle against apartheid." (Nelson Mandela in his obituary for Huddleston)
  • "If one were to say who as an individual made apartheid a topic for the whole world, then it was Trevor Huddleston." (Desmond Tutu, South African Nobel Peace Prize Laureate , in his obituary for Huddleston)

Others

Huddleston's best-known book, Naught for Your Comfort , is called in the German translation Weine, du beloved Land: South Africa . But this is the almost literal translation of the title of the 1948 novel Cry the Beloved Country by the South African Alan Stewart Paton . His book is called in the German edition Because they should be comforted .

Works by Trevor Huddleston

Film about Trevor Huddleston

1989: Makhalipile: The Dauntless One (documentary about Huddleston's fight against apartheid)

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Trevor Huddleston: Naught for Your Comfort , biographical epilogue Father Huddleston , Fount, 1987
  2. ↑ Huddleston's biography , accessed November 5, 2014
  3. ↑ Trevor Huddleston: Naught for Your Comfort . William Collins Sons, Glasgow 1987, ISBN 0-00-626957-5 , p. 127.
  4. ↑ List of the award winners ( Memento of October 23, 2012 in the Internet Archive ), (English)
  5. ↑ Eric Pace: Archbishop Trevor Huddelston, 84, dies; Fought apartheid from its earliest days . ( October 15, 2009 memento on the Internet Archive ) The New York Times, April 21, 1998 (obituary)
  6. ↑ De Slum-Pater . In: Der Spiegel . No. 37 , 1959, pp. 54-55 ( online ).
  7. ↑ Timeline at sahistory.org.za, accessed April 16, 2015
  8. ↑ Video of the flyover , accessed on January 18, 2016
  9. ↑ a b Portrait of Huddleston at bedford.gov.uk (English), accessed on October 8, 2012
  10. ↑ see photo of the bronze bust of Huddleston
  11. ↑ Huddleston Obituary. In: New York Times , April 21, 1998, accessed October 8, 2012
personal data
SURNAME Huddleston, Trevor
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Huddleston, Ernest Urban Trevor (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British Archbishop and fighter against apartheid
DATE OF BIRTH June 23, 1913
PLACE OF BIRTH Bedford , UK
DATE OF DEATH April 20, 1998
Place of death Mirfield , UK