Walter Lüthi

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Walter Lüthi (born January 5, 1901 in Günsberg , Canton Solothurn , † September 3, 1982 in Adelboden ) was a Swiss Protestant pastor and preacher.

origin

Lüthi had four older siblings and one younger brother. His father Jakob Lüthi was a village cheese maker and died at the age of 39 on January 9, 1905. After that, his mother Lina Lüthi, née Liechti, had to support the family with her work as a cleaning lady. Later, like some of her children, she was employed in the regional watch industry . During this time, the family lived mainly in Bettlach , a neighboring town to Grenchen , where the state strike of 1918 claimed three lives. After 1920, four of Lüthi's siblings emigrated to the USA.

Vinelz and Basel

After studying theology at the University of Bern , the University of Tübingen , the University of Zurich and the theological faculty of the Waldensian Church in Rome, Lüthi was pastor in Vinelz on Lake Biel from 1925 to 1931 . In 1928 he married the teacher Viola Jolanda Brünnich; they became parents of six sons and one daughter. From 1931 to the spring of 1946 Lüthi was pastor at the Oekolampad Church in Basel . In terms of his family history, he has always been moved by social problems, the situation of the workforce and concerns about peace. From 1938 onwards, he also recalled the Swiss share of responsibility for the fate of Jewish refugees.

Country parish of the Young Church

On August 30, 1942, the reformed youth organization Junge Kirche in Zurich-Oerlikon organized a Swiss rural community . In the afternoon, Federal Councilor Eduard von Steiger gave a speech in front of the 8,000 young people present, in which he tried to justify Switzerland's restrictive policy towards Jewish refugees in the Second World War with the now famous image of the “little lifeboat”.

In the morning, Walter Lüthi had already anticipated his answer to the Federal Council. In his address he said u. a .: In the city of Basel alone, according to official statistics, over three thousand dogs that are still well fed are fed. I may well treat them to their food. But as long as we in Switzerland are still ready to share our bread and our soup and our meat ration with maybe a hundred thousand dogs, and at the same time are worried that tens of thousands or even a hundred thousand refugees would no longer be acceptable for us, that is an attitude of a higher degree Lovelessness .

Bern: Münster parish and church struggle

In 1946 Lüthi was appointed as one of three pastors at the Bern Minster .

During the Cold War , in 1950, in the so-called Bern church dispute, a violent dispute broke out between a group of pastors around the theologian Karl Barth , to whom Walter Lüthi was a prominent member, and the later Federal Councilor Markus Feldmann .

Lüthi was a popular speaker at Protestant church days in Germany , e.g. For example, in 1956 he held a Bible study in Frankfurt am Main on the subject of the return to the festival and in 1959 in Munich another on the subject of God's people . He was a member of the editorial committee of the Protestant magazine Leben und Glaube and, together with Eduard Thurneysen, co- edited the Basel Sermons .

On September 15, 1968 Lüthi gave his farewell sermon in front of two thousand people in the Bern Minster.

Honors

Lüthi received honorary doctorates from the University of Basel and the University of Edinburgh for his preaching work .

Mentioned by Dürrenmatt

In his detective novel Der Richter und seine Henker , set in Bern in November 1948, Friedrich Dürrenmatt also mentions Lüthi while he describes how the young policeman Tschanz is waiting in front of the Bern Minster for Anna, the bride of his murdered colleague, who is at the service takes part in the Münster: The morning became more and more radiant, a shining sign above the fading of the bells. Tschanz waited, pale in the light that hit the walls, for an hour. He paced restlessly up and down in the arbours in front of the cathedral, also looked up at the gargoyles, wild grimaces that stared at the pavement that lay in the sunlight. The portals finally opened. The stream of people was enormous, Lüthi had preached ...

Quotes

  • "Because Christ died for all who wear human faces, all men should be brothers."
  • "Does it make no impression on us that anti-Semitism celebrated orgies in this Christian West like nowhere else in the world? Here, as a Swiss, one would prefer to have no memory - after all, it wasn't 20 years ago that our neighboring country 6 Millions of Jews were slaughtered, and Christian Switzerland closed its borders to the deathly feared refugees. "

Published sermons

Lüthi published numerous volumes of sermons, most of which had several editions and some of them were translated into French , English , Danish , Dutch , Hungarian , Czech , Slovak , Japanese , Afrikaans and Hindi , among others. a .:

  • The eternal year. Weekday sermons. 1937
  • The coming church. The message of the prophet Daniel. 1937
  • That's what the prophet Amos saw in 1939
  • Habakkuk is righteous with God , 1940
  • Devotions for all days of the year , 1941
  • John. The fourth gospel, sermons «on the edge of the crater», 1942
  • The builders of God. Nehemiah, the prophet fighting to build the city, 1945
  • Malachi answers the despondent , 1948
  • The Ten Commandments of God , 1950
  • Preacher Solomon Lives Life , 1952
  • The Letter to the Romans , 1955
  • What holds the world together. Temporal Images and Outlooks, 1957
  • The Acts of the Apostles , 1958
  • The apostle . Second Corinthians, 1960
  • The Beatitudes , 1961
  • The Gospel of Luke (Chapters 1 through 10), 1962
  • The Unfather , 1963
  • The first book of Samuel , 1964
  • Adam. The creation story (Genesis 1: 1 to 11: 9), 1965
  • Abraham (Genesis 12-24), 1967
  • Jacob (Genesis 25-50), 1968
  • Word on the working day. Radio viewing, 1970

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Lüthi, Walter: The Acts of the Apostles laid out for the community. Basel 1958, p. 246.
  2. ↑ Lüthi, Walter: The Acts of the Apostles laid out for the community. Basel 1958, p. 254.
personal data
SURNAME Lüthi, Walter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss reformed pastor
DATE OF BIRTH January 5, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH Günsberg , Canton of Solothurn
DATE OF DEATH 3rd September 1982
Place of death Adelboden