Walter Künneth

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Grave of Walter Künneth in the Neustädter Friedhof in Erlangen

Walter Künneth (born January 1, 1901 in Etzelwang ; † October 26, 1997 in Erlangen ) was a German Protestant theologian. During the time of National Socialism he was involved in the Confessing Church ; He advocated discrimination against Jews on the part of the National Socialist state in principle. In the 1960s, in the discussion about Rudolf Bultmann's demand for a demythologization of the New Testament, he was seen as a proponent of a word-based interpretation of the Bible. The Walter Künneth Prize is named after him.

Life

Youth and education

Walter Künneth was the fourth child of Pastor Lorenz Künneth and his wife. He grew up in the village of his father's second pastor, in Hersbruck . After attending the humanistic grammar school in Erlangen, Künneth studied Protestant theology in Erlangen and Tübingen from 1920 to 1924 . In 1924 he received his doctorate under Friedrich Brunstäd in philosophy on Richard Rothe's idea of God . As a student he became a member of the Christian student associations Erlanger Wingolf and Tübingen Wingolf .

Professional development

In 1926 Künneth was appointed to a teaching position at the Apologetic Central in the Evangelical Johannesstift Berlin-Spandau , a department of the Central Committee for Inner Mission. The apologetic work at the Johannesstift dealt with the world views and religious ideas of the Weimar Republic and the approaching Third Reich . In 1927 Künneth passed his second theological exam in Ansbach and received his doctorate with a thesis on Kierkegaard's concept of sin with Bachmann as a licentiate in Protestant theology. After his habilitation in Berlin in 1930, he held apologetic and theological lectures as a private lecturer. In 1932 he became head of the Apologetic Central in Berlin-Spandau, in the Evangelical Johannis Foundation .

On behalf of the Apologetic Central , Künneth, as the editor-in-chief, together with the lecturer for New Testament theology and social ethics at the University of Heidelberg , Heinz-Dietrich Wendland (* 1900; † 1992), gave twelve issues a year to the magazine for evangelical truth and church responsibility> Wort und Act < out. After the Apologetic Central and the editorial staff of its magazine were closed in 1937 and their work was banned, Künneth was banned from writing and speaking throughout the entire Reich. In the following year, however, Hans Meiser found him a pastor in Starnberg . In 1944 he was appointed to the dean's office in Erlangen.

In 1946 Künneth became honorary professor at the theological faculty in Erlangen , and in 1953 he took over the chair of Werner Elerts . From then on, he analyzed questions of state ethics in extensive works ( The Great Apostasy , 1947; Politics between Demon and God , 1954). One of Künneth's sons was Friedrich-Wilhelm Künneth , advisor for worship and spiritual life at the Lutheran World Federation in Geneva and ecumenical advisor for the Bavarian regional church. Friedrich-Wilhelm, who died in 2014, was also head of the ecclesiastical collection in Bavaria for 23 years .

Church political engagement

Together with Martin Niemöller , pastor in Berlin-Dahlem , and the then general secretary of the German Christian Student Union (DCSV) Hanns Lilje , Künneth founded the Young Reformation Movement in May 1933 , which opposed the "harmonization" of the Protestant churches by the Nazi state. As a member of the Confessing Church , Künneth was part of an illegal BK examination commission in Berlin-Spandau chaired by Heinrich Albertz . Künneth, however, was one of those of the Confessing Church who did not want to fight National Socialism politically, but wanted to react exclusively to religious attacks. All political plans and "solutions" of the Nazi regime that were not directly related to religious questions should remain unanswered by Christians. Künneth felt the political defense of National Socialism by some Christians from the Confessing Church, as he wrote in his autobiography in 1979, as a "clouding of the confessional struggle" and as an "ominous amalgamation between church and political fighting behavior".

“The actually hidden need [of the church struggle] lay in a clouding of the self-image of this church struggle as a struggle in the name of the creed. It was concentrated in a politicization that increased over the years. "

Künneth therefore endeavored to lead a depoliticized religious church struggle against the Nazi regime.

Because of this conviction, Künneth turned against the writings of Alfred Rosenberg . In the spring of 1935 he published a 216-page answer to the National Socialist standard work on racial ideology , Alfred Rosenberg's Myth of the 20th Century , under the title Answer to the Myth. The choice between the Norse myth and the biblical Christ . In this work, Künneth criticized Rosenberg's non-Christian ideology, u. a. its exclusion of the Old Testament from the Bible, but at the same time largely agreed to its anti-Semitism and spoke of, among other things, an "inferior" and "corrosive" " world Jewry " and of a "rootless asphalt Jewry of the present" ( answer ..., p . 67). Due to the great success of this document (36,000 copies within three months), the Gestapo responded with persecution.

Künneth was one of the first to take a critical look at Hitler's 1937 decree to hold church elections so that a general synod could work out a new constitution for the German Evangelical Church . In his article, Church and General Synod, signed by name, in the March edition of Words and Deeds , he analyzed the “surprising proclamation ” and formulated the relevant maxims that guide the Confessing Church, especially the Provisional Church Administration (VKL), when exercising their responsibility should let. Due to the broad resistance, mainly due to the declaration made by the Old Prussian Confessing Church on June 17, 1937, these church elections imposed by the Nazi state did not take place . Künneth was secretly monitored, the Apologetic Central was closed and its work was prohibited. In 1937 Künneth was "banned from writing and speaking for the whole of the Reich" and his teaching license (venia legendi) was withdrawn from him. The reply written by him, Evangelical truth! A word about Alfred Rosenberg's publication: " Protestant pilgrims to Rome , the betrayal of Luther and the myth of the 20th century" (1937) was confiscated and destroyed by the Gestapo immediately before its publication.

At the beginning of the Third Reich, Künneth supported discrimination against Jews. In 1934, in the book Nation Before God, which he co-edited, he spoke of the fact that

“The Jewish influence had been so prevalent for decades that the danger of overgrowth of the German intellectual life and foreign infiltration of the German public could no longer be denied [...] The Church knows that the state has the sword office. This office means hardness and severity. The church cannot and does not want to fall into the arms of the state in the exercise of this office. From this point of view, the new state legislation towards Jews, Jewish Christians and Jewish mongrels living in Germany is to be assessed. "

On the other hand, he clearly opposed the application of the " Aryan paragraph " in the church:

"The norm of the race and the lack of solidarity with the people can absolutely not be decisive for the ecclesiastical community, which stands or falls with faith in Christ, but is independent of historical and biological ties."

And further:

“Finally, it must not be forgotten that it was in the essence of Christian mission to originally have primarily Jewish Christians as carriers of the proclamation, without this having prevented the Christ message from reaching other races and peoples. It would be a sign of a superficial examination of history and a lack of practical experience if one wanted to fundamentally deny the missionary, pastoral or practical effect of the foreign-racial servants of the church. "

The Gestapo sought contact with the Apologetic Central , headed by Künneth , in order to "be able to lead the fight against illegal free-thinking and illegal Marxism together in the future ," as Künneth wrote to the Reich Church Government on December 16, 1933. In addition, Künneth also mentioned that contact had been made with the Propaganda Ministry and that the Reich Ministry of the Interior had "made important material available for examination and practical use". It is unknown whether and how this cooperation developed further.

In the mid-1960s, Künneth advocated the death penalty from a theological point of view and was of the opinion that its abolition was "a moral weakness, an admission of state-political profanation".

Künneth was an opponent of religiously based pacifism. The “ideological undermining of the will to defend” with biblical quotations means “a deep rebellion against God's will to order”. According to the Basic Law , one has the right to invoke one's conscience , but one can "never invoke the Bible and the promise of the peace of Christ when refusing military service ".

Confrontation with Rudolf Bultmann

In the 1950s and 1960s, Künneth became increasingly involved in the dispute over Rudolf Bultmann's call for the New Testament to be demythologized . At the center of this demand from Bultmann were the question of the resurrection of Jesus and Christology (interpretation of the person of Jesus). In 1966, Künneth co-founded the confessional movement No other gospel, alongside Peter Beyerhaus , Paul Deitenbeck , Rudolf Bäumer , Gerhard Bergmann and Wilhelm Busch . In 1967 he and Bäumer wrote the "Düsseldorf Declaration" on Christology.

Awards and honors

Walter Künneth as namesake

The viewpoints represented by Walter Künneth serve as role models for theologians from the conservative- evangelical direction. The Church Collection on the Bible and Confession has been awarding the Walter Künneth Prize annually since 2004. The theological “think tank” of the Evangelical Emergency Community in Germany was called Walter-Künneth-Institut e. V.

Fonts (selection)

  • Resurrection Theology , 1st edition 1933, 6th edition 1982.
  • The nation before God. On the message of the Church in the Third Reich . Ed. Walter Künneth; Helmuth Schreiner , Berlin 1933. Contains on pp. 90-105 (in the 3rd edition 1934 pp. 115-137) the essay The Jewish problem and the church.
  • Answer to the myth. The choice between the Norse myth and the biblical Christ. Wichern-Verlag, Berlin 1935 (1st edition March 1935, 3rd edition extended by a second foreword May 1935)
  • Evangelical truth! A word about Alfred Rosenberg's work “Protestant Pilgrims in Rome” . Berlin 1937.
  • The big garbage. A historical theological investigation of the encounter between National Socialism and Christianity. Hamburg 1947.
  • The authority of the creed. Neuendettelsau 1950.
  • The right of resistance as a theological-ethical problem. Munich 1954.
  • Politics between demon and god. A Christian ethic of the political. Berlin 1954.
  • together with Ernst Fuchs : The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. The disputation of Sittensen. Documentation of a dispute. Neukirchen-Vluyn 1973.
  • Lifestyles. Committed to the truth . Wuppertal 1979.
  • The Christian as a citizen. An ethical orientation . Wuppertal 1984.

literature

  • Jochen Eber:  Künneth, Walter. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 20, Bautz, Nordhausen 2002, ISBN 3-88309-091-3 , Sp. 886-895.  ( Article / beginning of article in Internet archive )
  • Axel Töllner: A question of race? The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria, the Aryan Paragraph and the Bavarian parish families with Jewish ancestors in the “Third Reich” . W. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2007 ( Confession and Society. Contributions to Contemporary History. Volume 36), ISBN 978-3-17-019692-6 .
  • Joachim Kummer: Political Ethics in the 20th Century. The example of Walter Künneth. Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, Leipzig 2011, ISBN 978-3-374-02864-1
  • Wolfgang Maaser : Theological Ethics and Political Identity. The example of the theologian Walter Künneth , Bochum 1990, ISBN 978-3-925895-24-1 . (Also dissertation at the University of Bochum)
  • Ulrich Asendorf / Friedrich-Wilhelm Künneth (ed.): Testimony to Christ in the fog of the zeitgeist. Nicene confession of Christ today. Walter Künneth in honor , Neuhausen-Stuttgart 1979. ISBN 3-7751-0413-5

Web links

References and comments

  1. ↑ August Winkler: Vademekum Wingolfitikum , Wingolfsverlag, Wolfratshausen 1925, p. 208.
  2. ↑ See the imprint of the monthly magazine> Wort und Tat <, z. B. from the date of issue March 2, 1937, which was published by Wichern-Verlag (GmbH) with its headquarters in Berlin-Spandau, Ev. Johannis pen, distributed and printed in the Wichern printing plant in Berlin-Lichterflde-West.
  3. ↑ idea press service, January 27, 2014, p. 6.
  4. ↑ For 23 years the theologian headed the Church Collection in Bavaria Profiled Lutherans: Friedrich-Wilhelm Künneth is dead Evangelical news agency idea January 27, 2014
  5. ^ Walter Künneth: Lifestyles. Committed to the truth. Wuppertal 1979, p. 131
  6. ^ A b Walter Künneth: Lifestyles. Committed to the truth. Wuppertal 1979, p. 132
  7. ^ Ernst Klee : Persil notes and false passports. How the churches helped the Nazis . Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1991, pp. 133, 181.
  8. ^ Decree on the convening of a general constituent synod of the German Evangelical Church of February 15, 1937, repealed by Law No. 49 of the Allied Control Council for Germany of March 20, 1947 (OJ p. 265; decree )
  9. ↑ Wort und Tat , issue date March 2, 1937, pp. 76–84 (77): Record of the journal in the catalog of the German National Library. Künneth signed the contribution with the closing comment "Completed on February 25, 1937".
  10. ↑ Protestant resistance to the church elections Ev. Working Group for Contemporary Church History, Munich
  11. ↑ Walter Künneth: The nation before God . Berlin 1934, pp. 119-135.
  12. ↑ Walter Künneth: The nation before God . Berlin 1934, p. 124.
  13. ↑ Walter Künneth: The nation before God . Berlin 1934, pp. 125-126.
  14. ^ Evangelisches Zentralarchiv 1 / C3 / 392; quoted from Eberhard Röhm, Jörg Thierfelder: Juden - Christen - Deutsche, Vol. 1: 1933–1935. Marginalized. Calwer, Stuttgart 1990, p. 412.
  15. ^ Walter Künneth: The theological arguments for and against the death penalty . In: The Question of the Death Penalty. Twelve answers. Fischer Bücherei, Frankfurt am Main 1965, pp. 148–158.
  16. ^ Theodor Ziegler: Motifs and alternative designs of Christian pacifists. Evangelical University Writings Freiburg, Vol. 8, V&R unipress, Göttingen 2018, p. 99
personal data
SURNAME Künneth, Walter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German theologian
DATE OF BIRTH January 1, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH Etzelwang
DATE OF DEATH October 26, 1997
Place of death gain