Werner Gruehn

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Werner Gruehn

Werner Georg Alexander Gruehn (born 18 . Jul / the thirtieth July  1887 greg. In Balgallen today Balgale , Latvia , † 31 December 1961 in Hildesheim ) was a German Protestant theologian and psychologist of religion .

Career

After attending grammar school in Riga and graduating from high school in 1907, he studied philosophy at the universities of Munich and Erlangen until 1909 and then Protestant theology at the University of Dorpat . After completing his studies in 1914, he was pastor adjunct in Sonnaxt (today Sunākste ) for a short time , but became a senior teacher in 1915, first in Riga, and three years later in Dorpat , where he also continued his pastoral work as vicar and deacon . In 1920 Gruehn acquired the qualification to teach systematic theology at the University of Dorpat with a work in the psychology of religion, which formed the starting point for his subsequent lifelong occupation with this area. In 1921 the University of Greifswald awarded him the title Lic. Theol., In 1927 the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel the doctoral degree hc in theology, in the same year he completed his habilitation again at the then Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin (today Humboldt University zu Berlin ), where he taught as a private lecturer until he was appointed associate professor in 1929 and finally became full professor of systematic theology in 1937 . In 1930 Gruehn became a member of the Academy of Non-Profit Science in Erfurt . From 1931 to 1939, in addition to his work in Berlin, he was professor and rector of the private German Lutheran Theological and Philosophical Academy in Dorpat.

After a few months at the Theological Faculty of the University of Berlin, Gruehn was the representative of the leader of the Nazi Lecturer Association and in this capacity came into conflict with Georg Wobbermin in the spring of 1939 , as he insisted that Gerhard Kittel's appointment, which had already been politically decided, was due to technical considerations to decide and possibly even to contradict.

After the end of the Second World War , Gruehn fled to Hanover , where he worked for a short time as a pastor, then moved to Hildesheim due to a serious illness and there he devoted himself to his interrupted and lost in the war, the psychological studies of religion, which he redrafted, as well as the reorganization of International Society for the Psychology of Religion . Gruehn's friend Wilhelm Keilbach took over the management of the company as his successor.

meaning

Gruehn's work on the psychology of religion received a great deal of attention, also among specialist psychologists . Together with his teacher Karl Girgensohn, Gruehn is considered to be the founder of the Dorpater School for Religious Psychology . In 1927 he became managing director of the International Society for Religious Psychology, and in 1929 he founded his own religious psychological institute in Dorpat. Karl Girgensohn's method of psychology of religion, which was based on the submission of religion-related texts and the investigation of the associations that followed, he developed into a stimulus-word method.

Political attitudes and relationship to Nazi ideology

Werner Gruehn became a member of the board of the German-Baltic Democratic Party in Riga in 1917 , which opposed the Latvian people's aspirations for independence; in 1919 he was briefly imprisoned by Bolshevik revolutionaries. Gruehn had become a member of the NSDAP on May 1, 1937 and was responsible for a new translation with anti-Semitic commentary and the publication of the memoirs of Aaron Simanowitsch, Rasputin's secretary, and wrote an anti-Semitic foreword in which he praised Hitler's racial policy.

In the 49th edition of the Handbuch der Judenfrage (Hammer-Verlag, Leipzig 1944, p. 571) by Theodor Fritsch , Gruehn was named as a representative of a "rattle literature" in a series with Alfred Rosenberg , Walter Frank , Arno Schmieder , Karl Georg Kuhn , Gerhard Kittel , called Hans Jonak von Freyenwald and FA Six .

family

Werner Gruehn's father Albert Grühn was a Protestant pastor, first in Balgallen, later in Erwahlen (today Ārlava, Latvia).

Werner Gruehn was married twice. Both marriages, concluded in 1918 and 1926, were divorced. There was a child from both marriages; the chemist Reginald Gruehn is Werner Gruehn's son from his second marriage.

Fonts (selection)

  • Recent studies on the value problem. A contribution to experimental research into the religious phenomenon , Krüger, Dorpat 1920 (habilitation thesis)
  • Religious Psychology . Shepherd, Breslau 1926
  • Pastoral care in the light of contemporary psychology . Railway, Schwerin 1926
  • The Theology of Karl Girgensohn: Outlines of a Christian Worldview . Bertelsmann , Gütersloh 1927
  • The Piety of the Present - Basic Facts of Empirical Psychology . Aschendorff , Münster 1956 (with the studies of the 1930s)

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Matthias Wolfes: Protestant Theology and Modern World: Studies on the History of Liberal Theology after 1918 (= Theological Library Toepelmann; Vol. 102). De Gruyter, Berlin and New York 1999, pp. 393, 398f.
  2. ↑ Werner Gruehn (ed.): The Tsar, the Magician and the Jews: Memories of the secret secretary Grigory Rasputins . Nibelungen Verlag, Berlin 1942
  3. ↑ Hartmut Ludwig: The Berlin Theological Faculty 1933 to 1945 . In: Rüdiger vom Bruch (ed.) With the collaboration of Rebecca Schaarschmidt: The Berlin University in the Nazi era. Volume II: Departments and Faculties . Steiner, Wiesbaden 2005, ISBN 3-515-08658-7 , p. 96, FN. 25, p. 119 p. 119 of the article on the web
personal data
SURNAME Gruehn, Werner
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gruehn, Werner Georg Alexander; Grühn, Werner
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German theologian and religious psychologist
DATE OF BIRTH July 30, 1887
PLACE OF BIRTH Belgallen, today Balgale , Latvia
DATE OF DEATH December 31, 1961
Place of death Hildesheim