Wilhelm Krückeberg
Wilhelm Friedrich Krückeberg (born April 21, 1914 in Mitterbach ; † September 5, 1990 in Fulda ) was a German Lutheran theologian , pioneer of ecumenism , co-founder of the Federation for Evangelical-Catholic Reunification , in which he has been a full-time mediator between the church authorities since 1968 was active.
Life
Youth and Studies
His father, a Protestant pastor from Brandenburg, had started his first pastor's position in Mitterbach. When Wilhelm Krückeberg was eight years old, the family moved to Berlin, where the father took over the management of the Deaconess Mother House, Bethanien , and later to the community of Grunow near Frankfurt an der Oder. Here Krückeberg graduated from high school in 1933 and decided to study theology, which he began in Königsberg and continued at the Bethel Church University . He then followed the theologian Karl Barth , who had lost his chair at the University of Bonn in the Third Reich , to Basel, where he was first encouraged to think more intensively about the church as a whole. He experienced a deepening in this direction in Berlin through Hans Asmussen and also through the church struggle situation of the Third Reich. Since 1934 Krückeberg adhered to the Confessing Church , which is why he was excluded from studying at the University of Berlin in 1937 and continued studying in Erlangen.
In 1938 he passed his first theological exam with the Examination Commission of the Confessing Church under the direction of Pastor Hans Asmussen and Superintendent Martin Albertz . This was followed by the parish vicariate in Grunow / Niederlausitz and in Spremberg-Land.
Experiences in war and captivity
From the beginning of the war as a soldier, Krückeberg came to Poland, France, Yugoslavia and Russia as a sergeant. In 1940 he passed the second theological exam while on leave from the front and was ordained in the same year in the St. Anne's Church in Berlin-Dahlem in an intercessory service for Martin Niemöller , who was in the concentration camp and pastor of this community .
Since his younger brothers had died as active officers at the beginning of the war, his father applied for a transfer from the Russian front to the replacement force in 1941. When Krückeberg did not want to leave his troop, his superior persuaded him with the words: "Krückeberg, go home, we urgently need pastors at home after the war!" Since this probably saved his life, this sentence should last a lifetime for Krückeberg Be encouraged to act courageously and selflessly. While working as a trainer in Bad Freienwalde (Oder) , he married the pastor's daughter Flora Herlyn in 1942. Promoted to lieutenant in 1943, he came to the Italian front, where he was first Italian and then American captivity.
Through various experiences during the two and a half years imprisonment in a camp in Crossville (Tennessee) Krückeberg received decisive spiritual impulses from Catholicism. a. the personality of Heinrich Kahlefeld , whom he got to know here, who aroused a strong longing for fellowship with the Catholic Church in him and made it seem possible in principle.
Church work and ecumenical movement
Released from captivity in West Germany in 1946, he immediately reported to his home church authority in Berlin-Brandenburg after meeting his family and immediately took over the large community of Buckow (Märkische Schweiz) without allowing himself to relax . After three years of work under difficult church conditions in the Soviet zone of occupation and the poorest supply of food, health reasons forced him to move to West Germany, where he took over the pastor's post in Horneburg / Stade district, which he held for 18 years.
Krückeberg took the spiritual office assigned to him very seriously. As a Lutheran, the dispensing of the sacraments was extremely important to him as a church task in his parish work, but in the period after the Second World War he felt a special responsibility for preaching the Gospel and fulfilling it in charity. He was uncomplicated in helping and acting and so again and again homeless people, traveling craft boys, socially insecure young people or offenders on probation found accommodation in the rectory, which often demanded a lot of understanding and personal restrictions from his wife and seven children.
The ecumenical concern was also reflected in his pastoral work. So he worked intensively on the problems of mixed marriages and families, and confirmation classes were particularly important to him. With great love and openness to critical questions, he designed it systematically as a Protestant-Catholic teaching of the faith and thus also as a basis for ecumenism. The life of worship was renewed through the involvement of the children in family services, the regular performance of sacrament services (previously only on high feast days) and the celebration of Easter Vigil. All of this was unusual and daring in his time and not without contradiction, but it turned out to be particularly fruitful because Krückeberg, as a person deeply rooted in Protestant Christianity, had recognized that there were no essential differences in faith, and he therefore embraced ecumenism had inner conversion in his heart and lived it, so that his opponents also had to take it from him.
During his term of office there were various contacts with Catholic priests and laypeople, which Krückeberg also deliberately brought about. B. allowed the holding of the Catholic church service in the Protestant parish hall. Various efforts for an ecumenical location had preceded Germany in the first half of the 20th century, such as the foundation of the High Church Association of the Augsburg Confession , the Una Sancta Movement , the Evangelical Michael Brotherhood and the collection around Hans Asmussen, who were deeply convinced the separation of the churches contradicts the New Testament and is in this sense a sin, solicited an understanding and worked out the commonalities of the faith in order to overcome the separation of the churches. All these endeavors reflect a need for spirituality which, in the opinion of those involved, Protestantism had lost and the lack of which made many people responsible for the rise in power of National Socialism in the post-war period. Since the mid-fifties, the collection began talks with the Catholic side with the aim of offering the church leaders something that could later be very useful for the ecumenical endeavors of the Second Vatican Council . On the basis of all these preparations, Pastor Max Lackmann , director Gustav Huhn (Heimvolkshochschule Burg Fürsteneck ) and the Indologist Paul Hacker founded the Association for Evangelical-Catholic Reunification (today “Association for Evangelical-Catholic Unity”) in Fürsteneck, the Krückeberg belonged from the beginning. The aim of the federal government was to unite the Protestant and Catholic churches. From 1960, the quarter-annual journal supplied blocks all important church authorities and church leaders with theological essays to reunification. Max Lackmann, who had been dismissed from the evangelical pastoral service in 1958 because of “Catholic tendencies”, also traveled to Sweden, Denmark, Austria and the USA to give lectures on the concerns of the federal government , and the interested groups that were forming at home and abroad also escaped not the attention of the Vatican.
After the great turning point of the pontificate of John XXIII. and the Second Vatican Council 1962–1965, Krückeberg recognized the task of helping to bring about communion with the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church had decided on far-reaching reforms that were very much in keeping with Protestantism, but the reaction on the Protestant side remained cautious. Krückeberg was therefore convinced that the rapprochement could only take place on the ground and wanted to do it within his community work, but such a project turned out to be very difficult without the support of the Hannoversche Landeskirche . Even ecumenical worship services could hardly be implemented at that time.
To support the parish priests in their hard work and as a link to the other Protestant and Catholic brotherhoods, the Brotherhood of St. James was founded in 1964 as a spiritual prayer community within the covenant . The members take a spiritual vow that obliges them to live Christianity in an exemplary manner and, depending on their strength, to actively work with prayer and action for the service of the unity of the church in accordance with the goals of the “covenant”.
His "uncomplicated way of helping" sometimes made Krückeberg act rashly and without reassurance. In 1966, for example, he felt he had to come to the aid of the pastor in his neighboring parish, in whose church, which was under renovation, a neo-Gothic figure of Christ with a flowing robe and orb in hand was to be re-erected in accordance with the will of the responsible state curator, which would reflect the renewal tendencies in parish work Experience of the Second World War was incompatible, since she represented the "world ruler" and not the "man of pain". Both pastors agreed on this point. Krückeberg quickly removed this figure and destroyed it, but admitted the act willingly and not without pride. The subsequent disciplinary proceedings for property damage ended with a reprimand and the suggestion of a change of pastor, which was pending after 18 years in Horneburg anyway. However, Krückeberg asked for his early retirement, as he now wanted to devote himself entirely to the work of the Federation for Evangelical-Catholic Reunification , which at the end of the 1960s was in a phase that promised hope for success and was very extensive , combined with many trips to church leaderships on the Protestant and Catholic side.
Activity for the Protestant-Catholic reunification
The Commission to Investigate the Confessio Augustana
At the suggestion of Cardinal Bengsch in Berlin and Cardinal Bea in Rome, the Augsburg Confession ( Confessio Augustana ) of 1530, the binding confession of the Lutheran Church, was first examined in a confessional mixed commission to which Krückeberg belonged Reunification in faith theologically examined. Especially in the central questions of “God and Childhood”, “means of grace” (sacraments) and “nature and form of the church”, a congruence of Protestant and Catholic doctrine could be worked out, which “makes it possible for Protestant Christians with a clear conscience and in faithfulness to enter into communion with the Catholic Church against the faith of their fathers ”. The result of the commission was sent to all Protestant church leaderships, all Catholic bishops and the Unity Secretariat in Rome. As a concrete step, the rite of an "evangelical mass" was developed, in which both Catholic and Protestant Christians could recognize themselves.
Striving for a “supplementary consecration” and its rejection from the Protestant side
In 1968 the federal office was relocated to Gersfeld-Dalherda , where in 1973 an old farmhouse was acquired, which was largely renovated in-house and also designed as a meeting place with overnight accommodation for groups. It was inaugurated in 1977 as the Hans-Asmussen-Haus . From 1968 the federation increasingly turned to the mutual understanding of ministry of the churches and worked out the possibility of “supplementary ordination” for Protestant pastors by a Catholic bishop. This should give Catholic Christians the opportunity to take part in the Lord's Supper (communion) in an evangelical mass. An increasing flattening of ecclesiastical authority and an inconsistent attitude towards office and sacrament in the Protestant regional churches also aroused the longing for a gradual integration into the Catholic tradition. A visit to the Unity Secretariat in Rome with Cardinal Johannes Willebrands encouraged the representatives of the Federation in their efforts.
As a member of the coordination group for work on ecclesiastical unity , which consisted of 25 Protestant and Catholic theologians, Krückeberg was instrumental in the creation of the document On the Way to One Church - a step towards the establishment of community in office and sacrament . It discusses the theological foundations of ecclesiastical office and its historical development and alienation up to the Reformation. The social and clerical difficulties that opposed the renewal of the office by the reformers are shown up to the loss of apostolic authority in the evangelical pastoral office or the individually different importance that is attached to the evangelical ordination on the part of its bearers, and the associated refusal of the to equate Catholic Church, Catholic ordination and Protestant ordination .
As a consequence of the uncovering of historical misunderstandings and on the basis of the Second Vatican Council, the document elaborates a concrete possibility for official classification by a professio fidei initially in Germany. In 1970 the experts Karl Lehmann (later Bishop of Mainz) and Josef Ratzinger , then Bishop of Regensburg, judged it to be theologically correct and practically feasible. In 1973 it was presented to the responsible church leaderships, the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) and the regional church leaderships, the members of the German Bishops' Conference and the Unity Secretariat in Rome. For Krückeberg, this was linked to personal contacts with those responsible. Together with Pastor Peter Noeske and Gustav Huhn, he held talks with all German Catholic and Protestant bishops about this matter with great enthusiasm in the 1970s, since he believed that “Christian unity” was within reach.
But as close as this goal seemed at times, as promising as the many reactions, especially on the Catholic side, the federal government soon had to realize that the time for such a step was obviously not yet ripe: The EKD council did the "supplementary consecration" without theological ones Justification, but rejected with the threat of a disciplinary breeding process for followers of Catholic doctrine. After John Paul II took up the pontificate , the problem of office and then reunification was noticeably superseded by other church problems and was finally no longer an issue with church leaders. With the appointment of Josef Cardinal Ratzinger as 1st Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Catholic point of view also hardened. As a result, some members of the "Bund" left disappointed, others felt even more driven to hold on to their work.
retreat
So Wilhelm Krückeberg reflected more on his pastoral duties and devoted himself entirely to the basis of ecumenism. He was happy to look after the federal working groups and prayer communities spread across Germany, and to give lectures and services. He consciously cultivated personal encounters and conversations about individual religious problems.
Krückeberg formulated his experiences from two decades of work for Christian unity in 1983:
“What we have tackled happens in a very wide space, so that we cannot overlook or estimate what has actually come out of it over time. That seems a good thing to me. It is left to a different assessment. There are clear limits to our work. The growth did not take place in the way that some might have hoped and also considered essential for existence. But isn't it good to perceive here too that His ways are not our ways? We have learned to view these limits as a benefit and help. Within these limits, it is important to fully focus on what appears to be low. "
Wilhelm Krückeberg died in 1990 as a pedestrian in a traffic accident at the age of 76.
Fonts
Krückeberg saw the publication of the quarterly magazine Baussteine für die Christian Unity as a special task , which he placed at the service of "Evangelical-Catholic understanding" and in it showed that the Bund for Evangelical-Catholic reunification no longer had such great goals as its name still contained it, but rather endeavored to deepen the Evangelical-Catholic conversation and to learn from other cultures, such as the Eastern Church and Judaism, and not to slacken in the endeavor to move forward together, to achieve what had not been achieved in the To surrender the flattening again.
As the chief editor of the building blocks for Christian unity , Krückeberg wrote all forewords for issues 49/1973 to 119/1990, as well as articles in issues 35/1969, 39/1970 /, 41/1971, to 47/1972.
literature
- Gustav Huhn: It started with Hans Asmussen. A report on the way to one church, Regensburg 1981.
- Maria Locher: Pastor Wilhelm Krückeberg. A Brief Picture of Life, Building Blocks for Christian Unity 120, 1990.
- Ingrid Reimer: Binding life in brotherhoods, communities, unions. Stuttgart 1986.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Personal communication to the author
- ↑ http://evangelischkatholisch.wordpress.com/
- ↑ Gustav Huhn: It began with Hans Asmussen , p. 38.
- ^ Building blocks for the unity of Christians in the service of Evangelical-Catholic. understanding
- ↑ Ax in the forest . In: Der Spiegel . No. 49 , 1966, pp. 110-111 ( online ).
- ^ Gustav Huhn: It began with Hans Asmussen , p. 52
- ↑ Printed in Gustav Huhn: It began with Hans Asmussen , p. 154 ff.
- ^ Opinion texts printed by Gustav Huhn, pp. 68–79.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Krückeberg, Wilhelm |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Krückeberg, Wilhelm Friedrich (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German Protestant theologian |
| DATE OF BIRTH | April 21, 1914 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Mitterbach |
| DATE OF DEATH | 5th September 1990 |
| Place of death | Fulda |