Wilhelm Kaspar

Wilhelm Kaspar (born January 3, ^jul. / January 15,  1853 ^greg. In Rauden near Tuckum , Kurland Governorate , Russian Empire ; † May 26, 1919 in Wenden , Latvian SPR ), Latvian Vilhelms Kaspars , with full name Vilhelms Frīdrihs Kaspars , was a Latvian clergyman. He is considered an evangelical confessor and is recorded on the Riga martyr's stone.

The dates in this article are based on the Julian calendar for the period up to 1918 unless otherwise noted.

Life

Youth and education

Wilhelm Kaspar's father was called Fritz Kaspar. Wilhelm Kaspar attended grammar school in Libau , which he graduated from high school. He studied theology from 1875 to 1880. In 1877 he was a member of the Dorpat Theological Association . He graduated with a Candidate Degree and was ordained on December 23, 1881.

Pastor for Eastern Siberia

From 1882 Wilhelm Kaspar looked after the parish of East Siberia as a divisional preacher for ten years, with its seat in Irkutsk and a catchment area of ​​5000 km², making it the largest parish in the world. The services there were held in German, Latvian, Estonian, Finnish and Russian. During his work in this parish, Kaspar covered about 100,000 km on horseback. There were practically no paths and bridges. Temperatures fell to below −60 ° C. Under these conditions, Kaspar visited the dispersed Evangelical Christians in the diaspora to bring them the word of God and to administer the sacraments. It is said that he had to do twice the work compared to other pastors . Taking care of a diaspora community was seen as valuable, but it was physically very stressful.

Pastor in Schujen and Lodenhof

So Kaspar gladly followed the call to his homeland: from 1891 he served as pastor in Schujen and Lodenhof . The change was great; he came from loneliness to a comparatively busy life. The Church in his home country tended increasingly towards what was termed liberal theology, against which Kaspar took vigorous action, drawing on the experience he had gained in Siberia. There he had worked with the exiles and the uprooted, and a doctrine that did not provide a clear definition of sin and salvation would have served him little. In April 1891 he was awarded the golden pectoral cross. Kaspar succeeded in quickly settling in with his congregation, since he gave himself completely to it.

On February 5, 1902, he gave a lecture on the position of the pastor on the confession at the 25th expanded conference of Wendens' preachers in Wenden.

In the September / October 1904 issue of the church newspaper Mitteilungen und Nachrichten für der Evangelische Kirche in Russia he published the article De corona nuptiali on the question of refusing the bridal wreath. A controversial discussion of the article among pastors was expected in advance.

From the Russian Revolution of 1905

During the Russian Revolution of 1905 , Kaspar stayed with his congregation while many others fled because of the great danger to the country pastors. He was under the protection of his congregation, which, under his leadership, agreed not to allow the church to misuse, which it succeeded in doing.

In September 1907 Kaspar ran for the pastor's office in the Latvian parish of St. Anne's Church in Libau . Other candidates were the pastor of St. Matthiae , Andreew Needra (later Prime Minister of Latvia), and the Lutheran pastor of Mohilew , Karl Feldmann. The candidates had been nominated by the Courland Consistory. The election was carried out by two guilds that had received 3,000 signatures from the community for Needra, whose election was considered certain in advance, as the guilds had previously decided to choose the candidate who was favored by the community. The Octobrists magazine Golos Moskwy , published in Moscow , claimed that the Baltic Germans and radical socialist Latvians wanted to do everything possible to prevent the anti-radical Needra from being elected. The Latvian magazine Latwija judged these claims that they were completely unfounded, as there was good understanding between Germans and Latvians in Libau. The assessment of Latwija was quoted in German-Baltic magazines.

The election took place on October 26th. As expected, Kaspar was not elected and remained pastor in Schujen and Lodenhof.

On June 16, 1909, at the summer meetings of the Scientific Commission of the Rigas Latvian Association in the Latvian Interim Theater in Riga, in front of 600 men and women , Kaspar gave a 1½-hour lecture on the struggle for worldview . In doing so, he defended Christian doctrine, according to the Düna newspaper , against atheistic arguments.

War years

The remote community was initially almost untouched by the First World War . The revolutions of 1917 also had a negative impact on spiritual matters here. When the Russian troops withdrew, external problems arose. The German invasion was seen by many as a liberation. At least Kaspar and other ecclesiastical people saw the occupation as an opportunity to overcome the atheistic aftermath of the revolution. These hopes were dashed when the German troops were withdrawn and the Bolsheviks gained the upper hand in the Latvian War of Independence that followed . There was a great movement of refugees while the pastor stayed with his congregation. Kaspar and his church were initially not affected.

This changed in January 1919. The Bolsheviks established a registry office, which was housed in the best room of the pastorate. The church wedding had to be preceded by the civil ceremony. The registrar tried to dissuade each couple from the church wedding. His continued failure at this made the communist official Kaspar's enemy.

On March 4th, the registrar and some militiamen visited the pastorate. A house search was carried out that lasted four hours. The following were confiscated as evidence against the pastor:

• a letter from the provost about serving the vicariate
• Kaspar's letters to his daughter
• a revolver the pastor had forgotten to deliver

arrest

Wilhelm Kaspar was arrested as an alleged counter-revolutionary . His driver had to drive him to Wenden. One of the militiamen said to the driver: "Say goodbye to your master, you will not see him any more." In Wenden the pastor was interrogated. He was charged with a statement in one of his sermons. He had talked about the weeds had to be weed out and was asked who he meant by that. He also said that eternal life was preferable to this world. “... one should help him to get over the stars quickly”, Oskar Schabert later described in his Baltic Martyrs Book (see under “Literature”) the comment that Wilhelm Kaspar received on this statement during the interrogation. Witnesses to exonerate Kaspar came forward, but they were not admitted. Evidence was sought against him.

Imprisonment and death

During this time Wilhelm Kaspar had to stay in prison. A former confirmand of Kaspar, who had been forced to work as a keeper in the prison, supported Kaspar as best he could. He passed books to him, which allowed the pastor to study his favorite subject, the history of philosophy. More and more people were detained in the same cell. After all, it was occupied by 110 people. The pastor preached the word of God to them.

The prison was transformed into a church, as it were, while the actual church became the assembly room of the Bolsheviks after Kaspar had been neutralized by his arrest. The altar was now decorated with pictures of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin , Leon Trotsky and Karl Marx . The church was decorated with red flags. From the pulpit there was agitation against the so-called lies of the pastor. The parishioners were forced to attend these meetings. They were threatened with shotguns so that no contradiction was possible.

The pastor's detention conditions worsened. Prison officials loyal to the regime were hired. Food brought by family members did not reach Kaspar or the other " bourgeois ". This was life-threatening as the prisoners were given only 100 grams of bread and one plate of water soup per day.

The wanted witness against the pastor was finally found. It was a teacher of the Russian Orthodox denomination. He had previously held a hate speech against Kaspar, whereupon he was badly mistreated by his supporters. During the German occupation, the pastor stood up for the teacher in a court of the German army. But now the teacher made the claim that the pastor had betrayed him to the Germans.

Wilhelm Kaspar knew what consequences this accusation would have for him. So he wrote a farewell letter to his family. In it he wrote that he would give himself into God's hands and that the children should be faithful to the Christian faith and his memory. He is not a criminal, but a victim of the class struggle. The motto for his death should be the song "Christ is my life, death is my gain". He gave the wedding ring to another prisoner to hand over to his wife.

On May 14, 1919, a partisan group under Artūrs Veckalniņš brought the city center under their control with the help of residents and overflowing army units. 212–214 prisoners were freed, of which about 70 escaped with the withdrawing partisans from the city after Bolshevik reinforcements arrived. Kaspars returned to prison fearing that if the Bolsheviks returned as punishment, they would kill his wife and children.

When he was giving prayer on the evening of this exciting day, he chose Phil 4: 8-15  LUT as the text for it . At first it only came up to verse 13: "I can do everything through him who makes me mighty, Christ." Then he collapsed. He recovered once more and read on. Then he prayed the Lord's Prayer and gave the blessing. Again he couldn't go on because he was tormented by attacks of fever. He was infected with typhoid . Exhausted and almost starved, he remained in the cell for days without any medical treatment. Then he was taken to the prison hospital. There he was not given any care.

Kaspar's grave in the Cēsis Lower Cemetery.

The prisoners with whom he had shared the cell were shot on the night of May 25th to 26th, 1919, but Wilhelm Kaspar was not, because he died lonely at the same time. He was buried in the Lower Cemetery.

literature

• Alfred Seeberg : Album of the Theological Association to Dorpat-Jurjew , Theological Association, Dorpat-Jurjew 1905, p. 49, No. 109
• Oskar Schabert : Baltic Martyrs Book . Furche-Verlag, Berlin 1926, p. 175 ff. ( Digital version, the report is based on the records of Wilhelm Kaspar's wife, M. Kaspar, née Teraud)
• Harald Schultze and Andreas Kurschat (editors): "Your end looks at ..." - Evangelical Martyrs of the 20th Century , Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, Leipzig 2006, ISBN 978-3-374-02370-7 , Part II, Section Russian Empire / Baltic States , P. 541
• Kārlis Voldemārs Beldavs : Mācītāji, kas nāvē gāja , Luterisma mantojuma fonds, Riga 2010, ISBN 978-9984-753-56-0 (Latvian)

Web links

• Nekropole.info (Latvian)
• Wilhelm Kaspar on the website of the Central Library of Cēsis (Wenden) (Latvian)
• The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Russia. 1914.
• Portrait photo of Wilhelm Kaspar (second row from the bottom, far left)

Individual evidence

1. ^ According to a message in Rigasche Post No. 42 from August 29, 1937 online , his ancestors immigrated from Saxony.
2. ↑ magazine svētdienas rīts No. 32 from August 7, 1938 (Latvian) online
3. ↑ Zeitschrift Düna-Zeitung No. 91 of April 23, 1891 Wilhelm Kaspar | issueType: P online
4. ↑ Zeitschrift Düna-Zeitung No. 21 of January 25, 1902 Pastor Pastor Kaspar Pastor | issueType: P online
5. ↑ Zeitschrift Düna-Zeitung No. 4 of January 7, 1904 Kaspar | issueType: P online
6. ↑ Zeitschrift Düna-Zeitung No. 221 of September 22, 1907 Kaspar | issueType: P online
7. ↑ Rigasche Rundschau magazine No. 222 of September 24, 1907 Kaspar | issueType: P online
8. ↑ Zeitschrift Düna-Zeitung No. 136 of June 17, 1909 Kaspar | issueType: P online
9. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Oskar Schabert : Baltic Martyrs Book . Furche-Verlag, Berlin 1926, p. 175 ff. ( Digital version, the report is based on the records of Wilhelm Kaspar's wife, M. Kaspar, née Teraud)
10. ↑ Jānis Siliņš : Padomju Latvija 1918-1919. Riga 2013, ISBN 978-993-483-9900 , p. 194 (Latvian)