Wilhelm Niemöller (theologian)

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Wilhelm Niemöller (born April 7, 1898 in Lippstadt ; † October 13, 1983 in Bielefeld ) was a Protestant pastor and church historian . During the time of National Socialism he was an important representative of the Confessing Church in the ecclesiastical province of Westphalia. Although he was a member of the NSDAP at an early age , he became one of the most active fighters against church politics and the statements of faith of German Christians during the church struggle .

Family and education

The parents of Niemöller were the Lutheran pastor Heinrich Niemöller and his wife Paula, nee. Müller. Among the five children he was the younger brother of Pastor Martin Niemöller , who later became President of the Church , in whose shadow he stood all his life. In 1900 the family moved from Lippstadt to Elberfeld , where the father worked at the Trinity Church . After his Notabitur on later to become Wilhelm Dörpfeld high school , he was drafted into the field artillery and took part in battles mainly in the West. He was seriously wounded in the Cambrai tank battle . In 1918 he took part in an officer training course and became a lieutenant shortly before the end of the war. After the end of the war he was able to begin studying Protestant theology at the Westphalian Wilhelms University in Münster in 1919 , further stations were the Bethel University of Applied Sciences , the University of Greifswald , the University of Erlangen and finally again Münster. Julius Smend in Münster and Karl Girgensohn in Greifswald particularly influenced him from his teachers .

During the time of the Kapp Putsch , he made himself available to the Reichswehr. In Erlangen he joined the nationally-minded resident defense.

In 1923 he passed his first exam before the church examination board with a “good” and was then assigned to the Protestant community of Ibbenbüren ( Christ Church ) for practical training . The second exam was also passed with good. Then he was assistant preacher (pastor for employment) in Kidney Court and Witten at the Witten Deaconess House . There he was in 1924 and ordained . His first pastor was the rural Schlüsselburg . Here he wrote his first ecclesiastical work on his congregation.

Time of the church struggle

Wilhelm Niemöller on the church struggle in Bielefeld (1947)

Coming from a Prussian national conservative parsonage, Wilhelm Niemöller joined the NSDAP as early as 1923, although he did not become particularly active in it. His brother Martin, on the other hand, considered party-political neutrality as a pastor to be appropriate, but had also voted for the NSDAP as early as 1924 out of aversion to " any kind of republic ".

On the occasion of the church election on July 23, 1933, together with nine other National Socialist pastors from Westphalia, he published a declaration in the daily press in which they demarcated " against the Reich leadership of German Christians in Berlin, which through its church policy endangers the confession of the church, ours In his own words, the inner freedom of the church, which is dear to the heart, is threatened and the relationship of trust between church, people and state is likely to be shaken. "Because of this declaration, he was expelled from the NSDAP a few days later on July 20, 1933. In September 1934 he successfully sued the party courts for retrial. In an internal situation report of the NSDAP Gauleitung Westfalen Nord from 1934 it is noted "the most ardent riot work of the clergy against the state" and about Wilhelm Niemöller: "Added to this is the influence of Bethel near Bielefeld with the incumbent pastor Niemöller, who started his fight against the German Christians in the toughest and most ruthless way " .

He held his position in life from 1930 to 1963 (only interrupted by the war) as a pastor at the Jakobus parish in Bielefeld, which had joined the Confessing Church in the church struggle. During this time, Niemöller gave lectures across Germany against the position of the German Christians. At the same time he held positions in the Confessing Church, was a member of the Westphalian Brotherhood Council and participant in all Confessional Synods at the level of the Westphalian Provincial Church , the Church of the Old Prussian Union and the German Evangelical Church (DEK). He has endured numerous harassments from the regime: one arrest, seven bans on speaking, nine legal proceedings, eleven house searches. In 1937 his passport was also revoked. In August 1939, before the war began, he was drafted and served on the Eastern Front from 1942 to 1944. In May 1945 he was captured in Austria. But he was able to return to his church in August.

Work in the post-war period

After the Second World War , Niemöller wrote numerous books on the history of the Protestant Church during the Nazi dictatorship. He was encouraged to do this during a brief activity in the office of President Karl Koch , where he was able to save important files or acquire them privately, which then became the basis of his archive for the church fight. A first brief account ( church struggle in the Third Reich ) appeared in 1946, in 1947 a collection of documents on the church struggle in Bielefeld followed, and in 1948 his extensive monograph, Struggle and Testimony of the Confessing Church, was published . Other books were devoted to special topics in church struggle research. In doing so, he first and foremost perceived church history under National Socialism as the history of the Confessing Church - a perspective that has long shaped historical research on the church struggle and is now increasingly viewed critically. Niemöller also edited important sources, especially the files of the Confession Synods of the DEK in the series of works on the history of the church struggle .

In 1959, Niemöller was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Theological Faculty of the Georg-August University in Göttingen .

estate

The extensive collection created by Wilhelm Niemöller, the Bielefeld archive of the church struggle , comprises around 48 meters of shelf space . It is kept in the Bielefeld regional church archive and is available for research.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Michael Heymel: Martin Niemöller. From naval officer to peace fighter. Lambert Schneider Darmstadt 2017, p. 35
  2. ^ Press report: Declaration by the National Socialist Pastor of Westphalia . In: Westphalian Latest News Bielefeld, July 18, 1933 | Digitized at www.zeitpunkt.nrw Retrieved on September 2, 2019
  3. ^ Press report: Exclusion from the NSDAP. Pastor Niemöller (Bielefeld) . In: Westphalian Latest News Bielefeld, July 20, 1933 | Digitized at www.zeitpunkt.nrw Retrieved on September 2, 2019
  4. ↑ Ralf PAHMEYER: Evangelical Church and modernity. The history of the Bielefeld church district in outline . In: Matthias Benad, Hans-Walter Schmuhl (ed.): Departure into modernity. The Evangelical Church District Bielefeld from 1817 to 2006 . Verlag für Regionalgeschichte Bielefeld 2006, pp. 93–94
  5. ^ Landesarchiv NRW Münster, holdings NSDAP Gauleitung Westf. Nord, main department, No. 4, August 1934
  6. ^ Church district Bielefeld: Evangelical-Lutheran Jakobus-Kirchengemeinde .
  7. ↑ The article is largely based on the article in the BBKL .
  8. ↑ Christiane Kuller, Thomas Mittmann: “Kirchenkampf” and “Societas perfecta”. The Christian churches and their Nazi past. www.zeitgeschichte-online.de , 2014, accessed on September 2, 2019 .
  9. ^ Entry in the central database of papers of the Federal Archives .
personal data
SURNAME Niemöller, Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German pastor, Christian resistance fighter
DATE OF BIRTH April 7, 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH Lippstadt
DATE OF DEATH October 13, 1983
Place of death Bielefeld