Wilhelm Busch (pastor, 1868)

Wilhelm Busch (born June 3, 1868 , † October 31, 1921 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a German Protestant theologian who worked as a pastor mainly in Wuppertal and Frankfurt am Main.

family

Wilhelm Busch was the son of an orphanage director and teacher in Elberfeld .

On September 26, 1894, he married Johanna Kullen, who came from Hülben from the Swabian Alb . Her family was a "teacher dynasty" shaped by Swabian Pietism , which reached back to the early 18th century. The marriage had nine children, five daughters and four sons. Wilhelm , Johannes and Friedrich became theologians like their father. During National Socialism, they were temporarily banned from teaching and preaching. One of the daughters is Johanna, married. Stöffler, Lydia, married. Eißler and Maria, married. Scheffbuch, all of whom had important theologians as sons; Daughter Johanna and her husband Eugen Stöffler are among the Righteous Among the Nations , because as members of the Württemberg parsonage chain they hid Jews and saved their lives. Grandchildren include the Karl Barth biographer Eberhard Busch , Rolf Scheffbuch , Winrich Scheffbuch and Konrad Eißler . The historian Hedwig Richter is a great-granddaughter .

Career

Busch studied in Basel , Halle and Greifswald and received a doctorate in theology. From 1894 Busch worked in the newly founded parish of Dahlerau after he had already returned to Barmen some time before from his Germany-wide trips .

Busch was then recalled from the small community in Dahlerau to the industrial city of Elberfeld, where he worked in the Hombüchel assembly house and in the Trinity Church . During the period he devoted himself to the social question of the workers' mission. He was very involved in the work of the association and also encouraged the construction of the Katernberg clubhouse , which he opened in April 1904.

At the instigation of the resident doctor Moritz Schmidt-Metzler , Busch moved with his family to Frankfurt in 1906, where he took over the Lukas community in a newly developed district of Sachsenhausen . He was a very popular pastor who did a modern parish work with house calls and intensive club work. The community that had grown in this way was replaced by the new Lukaskirche , which was inaugurated on October 12, 1913 by Wilhelm Busch. During the First World War he had the Lukas parish hall converted into a hospital with 40 beds.

Memorial grave of the couple Wilhelm and Johanna Busch in the Frankfurt Südfriedhof

Wilhelm Busch went on mission trips to Austria and Spain, where Catholics were to be converted to the Evangelical Church.

Fonts

• Aunt Hanna . A Wuppertal original (1904)
• The books Esra, Nehemia and Esther in religious reflections for modern needs (1912)
• The dams in danger (1913)
• The books Jona, Micha and Nahum in religious considerations for modern needs (1914)
• The warrior in the field (1914)
• Mutual fertilization of community and church (1918)
• What does the Bible say about modern ideas about the League of Nations, communism and others? (1919)
• The Revelation of John in Religious Contemplations for Modern Need (1920)
• From a Swabian village school house (Kullen family). 2nd edition Elberfeld (1906).

literature

• Wilhelm Busch (jun.): Pastor Dr. Wilhelm Busch. His life and work. Bramstedt / Elmshorn 1941.
• Wilhelm Busch : Pastor Wilhelm Busch. A Merry Christian ( Witnesses of God Present, Volume 2). Brunnen-Verlag , Giessen 1949.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Daniel Fraenkel, Jakob Borut (ed.): Lexion of the Righteous Among the Nations. Germans and Austrians. Wallstein, Göttingen 2005, file 7924 ; Max Krakauer: Lights in the Dark. Escape and rescue of a Jewish couple in the Third Reich. New ed. by Gerda Riehm and Jörg Thierfelder with the assistance of Susanne Fetzer. Stuttgart 2007.
2. ↑ Evangelical parish Elberfeld-Nord, website for the Katernberg club house
3. ↑ How the Lukaskirche came into being ( Memento from December 28, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Frankfurter Neue Presse , November 2, 2014.