Werner Sylten

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Werner Sylten
Memorial plaque of the EKD in the inner courtyard of the Hartheim Castle killing center
Memorial for Werner Sylten in Wendenschloß in Berlin-Koepenick

Werner Sylten (born August 9, 1893 in Hergiswil am See , Canton of Nidwalden , Switzerland ; † August 26, 1942 in the Nazi killing center Hartheim in Upper Austria ) was a Protestant theologian of Jewish descent, educator and opponent of National Socialism . He was persecuted and murdered by the National Socialists .

Life

Werner Sylten was born as the oldest of five children in Hergiswil in the canton of Nidwalden in Switzerland. Due to the father's job, the family often moved and Sylten attended schools in Berlin , in Friedeburg near Breslau and in Lohr am Main . He studied theology in Marburg and was a member of the SBV Frankonia Marburg student association in the Schwarzburgbund . During his studies he became a soldier in the First World War .

After the war, he finished his studies, supplemented by economics and social education , in Berlin. After positions as youth vicar in Göttingen and as pastor in Hildesheim , Sylten did church social work in Thuringia for young people at risk from 1925 . He worked as a pastor in a reformatory for girls in Bad Köstritz near Gera and reformed the home so that girls with a vocational qualification as domestic help could leave it until he was dismissed from his pastoral service in 1936 because of his Jewish descent.

Syltens Hildegard kept the pressure on the family of the " half-Jews " Sylten was exercised, was not and is already committed in 1935 suicide .

Sylten joined the Pastors and was conferred with the help of Martin Niemoller employment with Pastor Heinrich Grüber in office Gruber in Berlin, where he was responsible for the pastoral care. In the “Grüber office” he helped to save the lives of more than a thousand “non-Aryan” Christians by enabling them to emigrate.

Sylten lived in Wendenschloß in Köpenick with his new partner Brunhilde Lehder and his children . After Grüber's arrest by the Gestapo in 1940, Sylten continued to manage the office until it was finally closed two months later.

Sylten was arrested on February 27, 1941, taken to the Alexanderplatz police prison and finally deported to the Dachau concentration camp . He had to do hard physical labor there in agriculture, but he continued to work as a pastor and mediator in the concentration camp. Despite illness from the inhumanity and torture of the concentration camp imprisonment, Sylten did not report sick, as the patient transports from the concentration camp led to certain death.

After Grüber had once rescued him from the transport list by bribing him, a short time later he was transported from the camp as sick due to the obvious presence of a purulent rash. Werner Sylten was probably brought to the Nazi killing center in Hartheim Castle near Alkoven near Linz in Upper Austria on August 12, 1942, as part of the so-called " Aktion 14f13 " , where he was gassed . The official date of death is August 26, 1942 (date of the death certificate).

Honors

  • The Evangelical Church in Germany honors Werner Sylten with a memorial day in the Evangelical Name Calendar on August 26th .
  • In Bad Köstritz (Thür.) Werner-Sylten-Straße is named after him.
  • In 1963 the Werner-Sylten-Weg in Berlin-Zehlendorf was named after him.
  • In 1977 the Werner-Sylten-Haus community center was inaugurated in Eisenach
  • In 1979 the Yad Vashem Memorial awarded him the honorary title of Righteous Among the Nations.
  • In 1993 the St. Laurentius parish in Alt-Köpenick named their preaching place Kirchsaal (Köpenick Southeast) in Werner-Sylten-Saal and soon afterwards the cemetery chapel in Werner-Sylten-Kapelle .
  • On December 12, 2006, a stumbling block was laid in front of his former home at Ostendorfstrasse 19 in the Wendenschloß villa colony . Since November 6, 2012, another stumbling stone in front of his former home in Gotha, Bachstraße 14 and since September 8, 2014, a third stumbling stone at the former girls' home in Bad Köstritz reminds of him.
  • In Gotha (Thür.) Werner-Sylten-Straße is named after him. The Ev.-Luth at number 1 on this street is appropriate to the person. Parish office and the Church of Reconciliation are located.
  • The Evangelical Church in Central Germany has been giving 2018 the Werner-Sylten Prize to individuals and groups who have rendered outstanding services to the Christian-Jewish dialogue.

literature

  • Bruno Köhler: Gotha, Berlin, Dachau. Werner Sylten. Stations of his resistance in the Third Reich. Radius, Stuttgart 1980, ISBN 3-87173-563-9 .
  • Hartmut Ludwig, Eberhard Röhm . Baptized Evangelical - persecuted as "Jews" . Calver Verlag Stuttgart 2014, ISBN 978-3-7668-4299-2 , pp. 340–341.
  • Hartmut Draeger: Werner Sylten - educator of humanity and martyr in National Socialism. His home education 1925–1936 based on the principles and structures of the Jenaplans. Beau Bassin 2018, ISBN 978-613-8-35143-6 .
  • Martin Krautwurst: Diploma thesis FSU Jena - Werner Sylten, Education and Theology in the Times of National Socialism. Jena 1997.
  • Martin Krautwurst: The pedagogical-theological approach of the pastor Werner Sylten / Thuringian girls' home Bad Köstritz from 1925-1936 , ISBN 978-620-2-44102-5 .

Web links

Commons : Werner Sylten  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jochen-Christoph Kaiser: Protestantism, Diakonie and 'Judenfrage' 1933–1941. In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 37 (1989), no. 4, p. 709 ( PDF ).
  2. ↑ Werner-Sylten-Weg. In: Street name lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein (near  Kaupert )
  3. ^ Daniel Fraenkel (Ed.): Deutsche und Österreicher , p. 270 ( Google Books )
  4. ↑ Representation of the solemn laying of the Stolperstein; on ev-schule-koepenick.de, accessed on December 5, 2012 ( Memento from December 3, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
  5. ↑ Christine Schimmel: Stumbling block for pastor Werner Sylten in Bad Köstritz. Ostthüringer Zeitung , September 9, 2014, accessed on September 9, 2014 .
  6. ↑ Gotha, Reconciliation Church. Retrieved February 25, 2018 .
  7. ↑ EKM awards Werner Sylten Prize for Christian-Jewish dialogue for the first time In: ekmd.de , January 8, 2018, accessed on February 18, 2020.
personal data
SURNAME Sylten, Werner
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Protestant theologian of Jewish descent, educator and opponent of National Socialism
DATE OF BIRTH August 9, 1893
PLACE OF BIRTH Hergiswil am See , Canton of Nidwalden, Switzerland
DATE OF DEATH August 26, 1942
Place of death Nazi killing center Hartheim , Upper Austria