Walter Koch (Canon Lawyer)

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Walter Koch (born February 3, 1894 in Starzeddel , Guben district ; † October 8, 1965 in Remscheid-Lennep ) was a German lawyer. From 1937 to 1945 he was Consistorial President of the Evangelical Consistory of the Rhine Province .

Life

Koch spent his childhood in Starzeddel in Brandenburg (today: Starosiedle, Poland ), where his father Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst Koch had been pastor of the Lutheran parish since 1891. In 1903 the family moved to Vietz in the Landsberg (Warthe) district and in 1911 to Berlin-Kreuzberg , where Ernst Koch was pastor at St. Simeon Church and superintendent of the Kölln- Stadt church district until 1933 .

Walter Koch attended the Joachimsthalsche Gymnasium in Berlin-Wilmersdorf , where he passed his Abitur in 1912. He began to study law at the Humboldt University in Berlin , which he interrupted in 1914 to volunteer for military service. On August 12, 1914, he entered the army. After being wounded several times, shortly before the end of the First World War , he was taken prisoner by the British , from which he was released on October 31, 1919. Upon his return, Walter Koch completed his studies in 1921 with the trainee exam.

On November 1, 1921, he entered the civil service as a trainee lawyer . In 1923 Koch received his doctorate with the text The Legal Certificate in Commercial Law at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Berlin, on November 10, 1924 he passed the Great State Examination in Law. Initially a court assessor, he entered the service of the Church of the Old Prussian Union as a legal consistorial councilor in 1926 and advanced to become an authority on questions of church finance management and church tax law .

Koch had been a member of the NSDAP since May 1, 1933 and at least also in 1933/34 a member of the national church unification of German Christians . In 1933 he was appointed senior consistorial councilor and finally in November 1937 consistorial president of the Rhenish provincial church. Both the skilled church lawyer and staunch partisans saw the members of the Confessing Church as "sharp opponents" and enemies of the state. Koch implemented the requirements of the Reich Ministry for Church Affairs and the Berlin Old Prussian Evangelical Upper Church Council without reservation, supported state and party offices in the persecution of political opponents of the National Socialist regime and was in turn assured of the help of the Gestapo in dealing with troublesome pastors . Conversely, pastors persecuted by the Nazi state, such as Pastor Paul Schneider from Dickenschieder or Pastor Hermann Albert Hesse from Wuppertal , could not expect any help from the consistory. An ordinance of March 1939 made it possible for Koch to regard an attitude directed against the state order as an official offense and to take disciplinary action against consistent pastors. In May 1945, at the request of the newly formed provisional church leadership, Koch was initially given leave of absence and finally retired in 1946. In the denazification process he was classified as a “fellow traveler” in group IVb based on statements made by his secretary and the Wuppertal pastor of the German Christians. In February 1951, Walter Koch was admitted to the Remscheid District Court and the Wuppertal District Court .

Walter Koch was married to Rosalie Grawinkel (1897–1981) and the marriage resulted in two daughters.

Quote

"He, Although has always been reluctant to sell the church to the state, and any kriminiellen actions are absolutely far from his, but he was to an extent on the DC circuit endeavor of the Church that including their actual job, the Annunciation, significantly damage suffered. "

- The regional church office of the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland to the special commissioner for denazification in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia on June 20, 1951

swell

  1. Simone Rauthe: Sharp opponents. The discipline of church employees by the Evangelical Consistory of the Rhine Province and its finance department from 1933 to 1945 . Düsseldorf 2003.
  2. ^ Archives of the Evangelical Church in Rhineland Düsseldorf, Walter Koch personnel file, 9101 of June 20, 1951.

literature

  • Uwe Kaminsky: The role of Walter Koch and Hans Friedrich Sohns in the consistory of the Evangelical Church of the Rhine Province (1937–1945). A contribution to the topic of the Church in War . In: Monthly Issues for Evangelical Church History of the Rhineland 53 (2004), pp. 211–233.
  • Jürgen Kampmann: The replacement of the Rhineland Consistorial President Dr. Walter Koch by Konsistorialrat Helmut Rößler in May 1945 . In: Monthly Issues for Evangelical Church History of the Rhineland 44 (1995), pp. 253–275.