Walter Höchstädter (pastor)

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Walter Höchstädter (born October 9, 1907 in Nuremberg , † 1994 in Würzburg ) was a German pastor , member of the Confessing Church (BK) and critic of National Socialism .

Life

Walter Höchstädter was born in Nuremberg on October 9, 1907. His father was the Munich magistrate Emil Höchstädter , who belonged to the ecclesiastical, regime-critical circle around Albert Lempp . This enabled Höchstädter to come into contact with the thoughts of Karl Barth and the Confessing Church at an early stage .

In his youth he was involved in the German National Youth Association (DNJ). During his school days in Munich, he was also involved in the youth movement guild Hagen von Tronje, which also included the Protestant theologian Helmut Gollwitzer . In addition to Gollwitzer, the theologians Karl-Heinz Becker and Georg Lanzenstiel were also among his theological and youthful circle of friends.

After graduating from high school in 1927, he began studying mathematics and physics in Marburg , but switched to theology at the end of 1927. In Marburg he moved around the local Burse . Further stations of his studies followed Erlangen and Tübingen , where together with Gollwitzer, inspired by Georg Merz , he turned to Karl Barth's ideas.

In 1931 Höchstädter passed his first theological exam . This was followed by a visit to the preacher's seminary in Nuremberg . His theological career began for Höchstädter in 1932 as city vicar in Neu-Ulm . Since 1935 Höchstädter acted as pastor in Kulmbach . It was here that he met his future wife Maria Federschmidt, daughter of Dean Gottfried Federschmidt, to whom he became engaged in September 1936 and whom he married in April 1937. Several children were born from this marriage.

In April 1938 in Kulmbach the dissident and therefore suspended pastor Karl Steinbauer , whom Höchstädter already knew from Lempp's circle , was supposed to speak at a parish conference on the subject of “Prohibition of preaching and residence according to the biblical view and today”. Instead of the lecture, Steinbauer was summoned to the town hall, which he initially followed, accompanied by Höchstädter, but this was followed by imprisonment for several days. Höchstädter and his wife could only provide their guest with additional food, a Bible and a hymn book. Höchstädter himself was summoned to the police for sermons critical of the regime and for intercession for imprisoned brothers, but without being convicted or imprisoned.

At the beginning of the Second World War , Höchstädter, like many pastors of the Confessing Church, was called up for military service. After serving in France and Yugoslavia as a soldier, he was employed as a Wehrmacht priest from 1941. Operations in Russia and Romania followed . Even as a Wehrmacht priest in Dnipropetrowsk , he criticized a letter from Bavarian regional bishop Meiser : “At Easter, regional bishop Meiser once again sent pastoral pastoralists to the ministerial brothers who were in the field, as he has often done before. He enclosed a booklet by Hanns Lilje with this letter , entitled 'The War as a Spiritual Achievement' (published by Furcheverlag Berlin). At the time, I was so excited by this book that after reading it I tore it up and threw it in the wastebasket. Hanns Lilje, whom I knew from various publications from the church fight and whom I judged to be a cool-headed BK man, deals with the subject of 'war' like a mathematical equation. [...] How could he write this script in the year of the Russian campaign? Who should the readers be? Did he want to give the brothers a clear conscience, who were torn in a desperate situation? Or did he want to prove to the people in the party and state that the Confessing Church is also committed to this war, in other words an alibi to the Gestapo, with which he too had to deal? Incidentally, what would his ecumenical friends, with whom he once had contact through the Christian student movement, etc., would have said if they had got hold of this scripture at that time? Could he have dedicated the magazine to them? - We in our group of theologians in Dniepropetrovsk were unanimously of one opinion: It doesn't work like that, you can't talk like that. "

Walter Höchstädter's father, District Court Judge Emil Höchstädter, also criticized the events during National Socialism by handing over a memorandum on the persecution of Jews (“ Easter Message from Munich Laity ”) to Bishop Meiser on behalf of the Lempp Circle in 1943 together with the Orientalist Wilhelm Hengstenberg . Reading out this script brought Pastor Helmut Hesse into custody, as a result of which he died.

Influenced by this message and thus also wrote a "last echo of vibration in Lemppschen circle about the extermination of the Jews" Höchstädter 1944 in the French military hospital in Annecy his pamphlet are why sober! Greetings to the brothers whom he illegally copied and distributed hundreds of times. Research into authorship came to nothing after Höchstädter was taken prisoner of war. Several hundred copies circulated in a row among German prisoners of war in different camps.

It said: “The blood of millions of slaughtered Jews, men, women and children, is crying out to heaven today. The church must not be silent. She must not say that the settlement of the Jewish question is a matter for the state [...] Woe to her if she does not do that! Woe to her if she becomes complicit in the outbreaks of hatred in the world through silence or through all sorts of dubious excuses! "

After Höchstädter took part in a shooting of German prisoners of war near Annecy as spiritual advisor and campaigned unsuccessfully for those shot, he was transferred from the hospital to the prison camp. After being a prisoner of war, he resumed his pastor in Kulmbach. This was followed by pastoral positions in Diebach near Rothenburg (from 1947) in Tutzing (from 1956) and from 1961 in Schney near Lichtenfels. Höchstädter retired in October 1973. He died in Würzburg in 1994.

In the Journal for Bavarian Church History (ZBKG) Höchstädter, together with his friend Karl-Heinz Becker and his colleague Karl Steinbauer, is posthumously highlighted and honored for their personal commitment: “A fourth, numerically very small group of individual committed lay people and theologians like Karl-Heinz Becker, Karl Steinbauer or Walter Höchstädter courageously took a position of protest, also against the ban on their church leadership to express themselves unauthorized. "

Pamphlet

The reason for his eight-page text was the atrocities he experienced during his war effort, especially in Russia and France. In addition, while on leave at home, his father told him about the trial against the Scholl siblings and the events surrounding the Munich lay letter from the Lempp district . Höchstädter recapitulates his motivation as follows: “All these events moved me in such a way that I decided to act. I could never be silent. I had to speak after our church leaders remained silent about the atrocities of the extermination of the Jews and the war crimes. I was absolutely unhappy with the outcome of the conversation that Professor Hengstenberg and my father had had with Regional Bishop Meiser the year before. "

The church historian Berndt Hamm considers the writing to be "the clearest and sharpest voice of the Bavarian regional church against the National Socialist crimes."

The contemporary historian Clemens Vollnhals emphasizes that Höchstädter, with the script as a “private person, offered courageous resistance” “who called for the Christian profession of the Jews”.

For Heinrich Fink , the theologian and former rector of the Humboldt University in Berlin , voices like this pamphlet came "too late in terms of time, but formed a necessary precondition and preparation for the emergence of a new show of Christian-Jewish solidarity."

The sociologist and political scientist Daniel Goldhagen sees the script as an extremely rare, shining example of protest: "In the annals of German history during the Nazi era, Höchstädter's letter with its express and unreserved rejection of eliminatory anti-Semitism is an extremely rare and shining example."

Publications

  • Communion. The unity of the Church of Jesus. Diebach 1954
  • Liturgical Renewal? Kaiser, Munich 1961
  • Harmless Carnival? Schriftenmissions-Verlag, Gladbeck 1964
  • To demythologize the liturgy. Verlag Kirche in der Zeit, Düsseldorf 1966
  • Led through the maelstrom of times. Self-published, Bubenreuth 1983 (2nd edition 1985)
  • The Lempp circle. In: Evangelical Theologie 48, 1988

literature

  • Heinz David Leuner: When pity was a crime: Germany's silent heroes 1939–1945. Limes Verlag, Wiesbaden 1967.
  • Albrecht Bald: Resistance, Refusal and Emigration in Upper Franconia: the Nazi Regime and its Opponents 1933–1945. Bumerang Verlag, Bayreuth 2015.
  • Clemens Vollnhals: Evangelical Church and Denazification 1945–1949. Oldenbourg, Munich 1989, a. a. P. 132.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Manacnuc Mathias Lichtenfeld: Georg Merz: pastoral theologian between the times: the life and work in the Weimar Republic and church struggle as a theological contribution to the practice of the Church. Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1997, p. 165.
  2. ↑ Walter Höchstädter: Led through the vortex of times. 2nd edition, Verlag Bubenreuth, Erlangen 1985, pp. 73-74 u. a.
  3. ↑ Manacnuc Mathias Lichtenfeld: Georg Merz - Pastoral Theologian Between Times: Life and Work in the Weimar Republic and Church Struggle as theological contribution to the practice of the Church (= The Lutheran Church, History and Shapes; Vol. 18). Gütersloher Verlagshaus, Gütersloh 1997, p. 169.
  4. ↑ Walter Höchstädter: Led through the vortex of times. 2nd edition, Verlag Bubenreuth, Erlangen 1985, pp. 131-134.
  5. ^ Rainer Schmid, Thomas Nauerth, Matthias-W. Engelke, Peter Bürger (editor): Texts on military chaplaincy in the Hitler War. Published in cooperation with the Ecumenical Institute for Peace Theology, Düsseldorf 2019, pp. 223–224; Primary source: Walter Höchstädter: Led through the vortex of times. Verlag Bubenreuth, Erlangen 1983, pp. 207-208.
  6. ↑ Werner T. Angress , Ursula Büttner : The Germans and the persecution of Jews in the Third Reich. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2003, p. 332.
  7. ↑ Clemens Vollnhals : Evangelical Church and Denazification 1945-1949. Oldenbourg, Munich 1989, p. 132.
  8. ↑ Heinrich Fink : Stronger than fear: the 6 million who couldn't find a savior. Union Verlag, Berlin 1968, p. 39.
  9. ^ Daniel Goldhagen : Hitler's Willing Executioners. Little Brown, London 1996, pp. 431–432 (Hitler's willing executors. Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. From the American by Klaus Kochmann. Paperback edition. Goldmann, Munich 2000)
  10. ↑ Heinz David Leuner: When pity was a crime: Germany's silent heroes 1939-1945. Limes Verlag, Wiesbaden 1967, p. 176.
  11. ↑ Wolfgang Gerlach: When the witnesses were silent: Confessing Church and the Jews. Institute for Church and Judaism, Berlin 1987, p. 372.
  12. ↑ Journal for Bavarian Church History, Volume 79, self-published by the association, 2010, p. 255.
  13. ↑ Walter Höchstädter: Led through the vortex of times. Verlag Bubenreuth, Erlangen 1983, pp. 262–263 (section: So be sober!).
  14. ↑ Berndt Hamm, Harry Oelke, Gury Schneider-Ludorff: Scope of action and memory: The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria and National Socialism. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2011, pp. 85–86.
  15. ↑ Clemens Vollnhals : Evangelical Church and Denazification 1945-1949. Oldenbourg, Munich 1989, p. 132.
  16. ↑ Heinrich Fink: Stronger than fear: the 6 million who couldn't find a savior. Union Verlag, Berlin 1968, p. 39.
  17. ^ Daniel Goldhagen : Hitler's willing executors. Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (Original: Hitler's Willing Executioners ), Siedler, 1996, p. 505.
personal data
SURNAME Höchstädter, Walter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German pastor
DATE OF BIRTH October 9, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH Nuremberg
DATE OF DEATH 1994
Place of death Wurzburg