Werner-Christoph Schmauch

Werner-Christoph Schmauch , today mostly W. Christoph Schmauch or Christoph Schmauch (born February 1, 1935 in Breslau ) is a German-American Protestant theologian and pastor .

Life

Schmauch is the son of the Protestant theologian and pastor Werner Schmauch , one of the founders of the Christian Peace Conference . After eighth grade in the elementary school in Görlitz , he attended the grammar school at the gray monastery in East Berlin from 1950 to 1953 . In April 1953 he left the GDR and was recognized as a political refugee. With the help of Martin Niemoeller he came to the church high school of Laubach in Upper Hesse, where he passed his Abitur exam in 1955 . He studied Protestant theology in Göttingen , Bonn and - after immigration to the USA - in Springfield (Ohio), and was ordained in the United Lutheran Church in America in 1958 . From 1958 to 1961 he ministered to Lutheran congregations in the province of Alberta , Canada , and then a congregation of the United Church of Canada in Ontario until 1964.

In the same year he immigrated to the USA for the second time. He studied at Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York , where he obtained a Master of Sacred Theology (STM) degree in 1968 . At the same time he worked for the Methodist Church as an intern at the Church Center for the UN New York City (Seminar Associate at the Church Center for the United Nations), a position he held until 1970.

Since 1963 he worked - like his father - in the Christian Peace Conference, became International Secretary of the CFK and in 1970 a representative of the CFK at the UN as an NGO . From 1985 to 1989 he was Deputy General Secretary and at the same time a member of the European Committee of the National Council of Churches of the USA (NCC-USA).

In 1970 he was one of the eight founder and until 1975 honorary president of the American Association for the Study of the GDR (American Society for the Study of the German Democratic Republic). The society temporarily had up to 300 members; In 1975, however, there was a crisis and most of the members left the society, which is viewed by research as generally insignificant . In 1970 he - together with his American wife Kathryn (Kit) - took over the management of the World Fellowship Center s in Conway ( New Hampshire ), an international, intercultural and interreligious academy and summer university founded in 1941, which they jointly until their retirement in 2001 supervised.

In 1975 he founded the GDR Symposium ( New Hampshire Symposium for the Study of the German Democratic Republic ), a dialogue project between the GDR, the Federal Republic of Germany and the USA, which took place for one week every summer for 25 years (15 volumes : Studies in GDR Culture and Society , University Press of America).

As Executive Director of World Fellowship and Deputy Secretary General of the Christian Peace Conference, Schmauch had the opportunity to travel to six continents. In 1989 the Evangelical Theological Faculty of Comenius in Prague honored him with the award of a doctor theol. hc (“laboratories suo .... iustitia inter nationes proferenda paceque mundana confirmanda optime meritus est”).

As a displaced person from Silesia, he made a special effort to reach an understanding and reconciliation with Poland and, through frequent visits and personal contacts, he contributed to peaceful coexistence in Europe.

Schmauch lives in Columbus (Ohio) , USA. He has been married to Kathryn Hively since 1957. They have three sons, a daughter and four grandchildren. In 2009 he celebrated his 50th ordination anniversary in the First Church of Christ ( UCC ) in Conway, NH.

Works

• Werner Schmauch: ... pay attention to the word: selected works. Ed .: Werner-Christoph Schmauch. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1967

As a co-author

• Hannelotte Reiffen (ed.): Christians and Marxists in our society today. Walter Kreck on his 75th birthday; Festschrift. Cologne: Pahl-Rugenstein Verlag 1983, ISBN 3-7609-0768-7
• Hannelotte Reiffen (Ed.): The Peace Movement in the United States , pp. 187–192.
• Christoph Klessmann (Ed.): Children of the Opposition , Gütersloh 1993; therein pp. 138–144: From Görlitz to Conway
• Frank Ahlmann (Ed.): Perspective and Horizons. Series of publications by the Evangelical Academy Goerlitz , Volume 3; therein: The process of secularization in Europe , pp. 69–82.
• W. Christoph Schmauch: Christians, Jews and Luther's Anti-Semitism ; in: Jewish Currents Reader. 1976–1986, edited by Louis Harap, New York 1987, pp. 32–37 (from: Jewish Currents magazine, November 1983).
• Christoph Schmauch: The Maze of Ideas in The Maze of Peace , edited by Alan Geyer, Friendship Press, New York 1969, pp. 44–71.
• W. Christoph Schmauch: In Metanoia an independent periodical of social and cultural issues # 1, summer 1991, edited by Ludek Broz, Prague, How the Churches in the USA feel Responsibility for Peace, pp. 39–47: presented at the Japan Mission Conference Tokyo, Feb. 25-28, 1991. Also published in Japanese.
• W. Christoph Schmauch: The European Union and the Process of Secularization , in: Jewish Currents, March / April 2004, pp. 9-11.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ insignificant on the whole , Heinrich Bortfelt: In the shadow of the Federal Republic. Cultural Relations between the GDR and the United States. In: Philipp Gassert u. a. (Eds.): The United States and Germany in the Era of the Cold War, 1945–1990: 1968–1990. ( The United States and Germany in the Era of the Cold War, 1945–1990: A Handbook , Volume 2) Washington, DC: Publications of the German Historical Institute / Cambridge University Press 2004 ISBN 9780521834209 , pp. 305f.
2. ^ World Fellowship: History
3. ↑ See for example the reports by David W. Robinson and Otto Emersleben , who participated in 1987, in: David W. Robinson: Under construction: nine East German lives. Jefferson, NC: McFarland 2004 ISBN 9780786419968 .
4. ^ Werner Christoph Schmauch: From Görlitz to Conway . In: Christoph Kleßmann (Ed.): Children of the opposition . Gütersloh 1993, pp. 138-144
5. ^ Community letter (PDF; 895 kB)