Wilhelm Flor

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Karl Wilhelm Flor (born May 23, 1883 in Oldenburg , † November 19, 1938 in Leipzig ) was a lawyer of the Confessing Church in the church struggle .

Life

His father was the Oldenburg Minister of Justice Georg Flor (1833–1908). After attending grammar school in Oldenburg, Flor studied law at the universities of Munich , Leipzig and Berlin . He passed the first state law examination in 1904 with “good” and the second in 1909 with “good”. In the same year he was appointed court assessor and assistant judge at the Oldenburg regional court. In July 1914 he was appointed magistrate in Rüstringen . In the First World War he was a lieutenant in the Landwehr . In 1919 he joined the DVP , of which he was a member until 1931. In the Evangelical Lutheran Upper Church Council he worked as a part-time unskilled worker from 1923 and as a part-time legal member from 1925. In the Reich League of Higher Officials, he chaired the regional association, as well as in the regional association of the DVP. He became a district judge at the Oldenburg district court in 1921. In 1922 he became a member of the Stahlhelm , from which he resigned in 1927. He was appointed to the Oldenburg Higher Regional Court in 1926 as a councilor. He was appointed assistant judge at the Reich Court in 1931 and a Reich Judge on September 1, 1933. He joined the party on May 1, 1933 , as a man who fell in March before the NSDAP's membership ban began. On April 20, 1938, Flor was awarded the Silver Loyalty Service Medal.

Very soon he campaigned for the Pastors' Emergency League and the Confessing Church with reports and other publications, most of which appeared in the magazine Junge Kirche , critically and in harsh diction , to investigate the illegality of measures taken by German-Christian church leaders to reshape the regional churches and also to denounce individual disciplinary proceedings against pastors of the Confessing Church - mostly from Prussia and Saxony. The courts often endorsed his expert opinion in the trials brought by the dismissed clergy against their employers. Flor also rejected the centralization tendencies of Reich Bishop Müller , as they impaired the confessional status of the individual regional churches, accused the bishop of incompetence, denied the legality of the national synod and proclaimed emergency church law. He was involved in the preparatory work for a provisional church leadership, which was to be formed by the Confessing Church and the so-called intact regional churches, and justified this step in several publications. As early as 1933, as a Protestant Christian of the Confessing Church, he wrote in an essay Der Kirchenstreit judged from a legal point of view :

“Whoever believes his church in danger must not only fight, he must. I have no respect for those who refuse to fight for the Church and would rather leave the field without a fight so as not to cause unrest. "

In 1933 it caused a considerable sensation that a Reich judge advocated the Confessing Church in this way. For this reason, the Confessing Church appointed him in 1935 to the first provisional church leadership under Regional Bishop Marahrens . He already held leading positions in the Confessing Church of Saxony, for example in the District Council of Brothers in Leipzig , in the State Council of Brothers in Dresden and, most recently, since 1937 as President of the Saxon Confession Synod . He was involved in the most important pronouncements and meetings of the Confessing Church, was one of the signatories of the Ulm Declaration of April 22, 1934, and prepared the 1st Synod of Confession in Barmen from May 29 to 31, 1934, where he was also a soon then gave a paper on questions of canon law that appeared in print. In it he took up again the allegations of his earlier reports to denounce the legal and unconstitutional unlawfulness of the leader principle in the church and the centralization efforts. The proposals of the Confessional Synod for the order of the German Evangelical Church, published on October 5, 1934, were drafted and signed by him. It was therefore only logical that he was a member of the 1st provisional leadership of the German Evangelical Church.

Flor continued to lead the legal preparatory work for the Dahlem Synod in 1935. He gave many public lectures throughout Germany. In 1936 Flor became a member of the Reich Brotherhood Council and a member of the Chamber for Legal Issues at the Reich Church Committee , in 1937 a member of the working group between the provisional church leadership and the Lutheran Council and President of the Saxon Confessing Synod.

At the church assembly in Hanover on September 20, 1934 he said:

“Thousands of pastors are still in danger, and yet the pastors of the confessional community remain firm. It even goes without saying that they should remain firm. One thing, however, in which such an exemplary attitude is a matter of course is firmly established, it will and must prevail. Despite everything, we therefore need not be despondent about our cause. Lord God! "

However, he was not allowed to exercise his office in church leadership, probably as a result of a prohibition by his superior authority. When the Reichsbruderrat split over the question of church committees after the more radical majority had rejected the committees, he protested sharply because he represented the moderate line of the Saxon Confessing Church. He was no longer a member of the provisional church leadership formed at the 4th Synod of Confessions in Oeynhausen. Flor campaigned several times, and sometimes with success, for pastors who had been released or imprisoned, such as Pastor Niemöller , and complained several times to the highest party and government authorities. He was repeatedly banned from speaking and writing. His role in the church struggle was known abroad. The Bishop of Chichester George Kennedy Allen Bell has Bonhoeffer recommended him as the man who later legitimate in church relations could create.

family

Since 1911 Flor was born with Frieda. Calmeyer – Schmedes (1892–1942) married, the daughter of Theodor Calmeyer-Schmedes (1857–1920). The marriage produced three children, including Hartwig (1913–1972), Colonel i. G., and Georg (1920–1995), Ministerialdirektor in Bonn and Konsistorialpräsident in Berlin.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The Biographisch-Bibliographische Kirchenlexikon gives the year of birth as 1886. Friedrich Karl Kaul , History of the Reichsgericht, Volume IV (1933–1945), East Berlin 1971, p. 267 gives the year of birth 1882.
  2. ↑ Friedrich Karl Kaul , History of the Reichsgericht, Volume IV (1933-1945), East Berlin 1971, p. 268.
personal data
SURNAME Flor, Wilhelm
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Flor, Karl Wilhelm (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer of the Confessing Church
DATE OF BIRTH May 23, 1883
PLACE OF BIRTH Oldenburg
DATE OF DEATH November 19, 1938
Place of death Leipzig