Wilhelm Rott

Wilhelm Rott (born January 25, 1908 in Düsseldorf , † January 27, 1967 in Remscheid-Lüttringhausen ) was a German theologian, resistance fighter and Protestant pastor.

Wilhelm Rott at his workplace in Berlin

Life

Wilhelm Rott grew up as the middle of three siblings. His father was a self-employed master tailor.

Education

W. Rott as a student

Wilhelm Rott began his studies in Tübingen in 1927 with the main subjects history and German and theology as a minor. Together with other theology students, he was involved in the youth movement-reformed guild Rüdiger von Bechelaren . In Marburg he came into contact with Rudolf Bultmann's theology of demythologizing and Martin Heidegger's philosophy of being . In Berlin he heard the church historian and pragmatic reformer Adolf von Harnack , a theological foster father of Dietrich Bonhoeffer . For him, Karl Barth was the theological, educational and political answer to his questions, especially after he had published the ' Kirchliche Dogmatik '. In the confused situation of the Weimar Republic , Rott saw a situation of upheaval in modernity that made a new spiritual orientation necessary, which, however, was not offered by any political side. All the more he felt that theology and the church were responsible.

Degree and Vicariate

After completing his studies, Rott began writing a dissertation on Martin Bucer . In this mediator between the hardened fronts of the Reformation period, he saw a role model for how compromises can be found in situations of spiritual upheaval. In May 1933 he started as an assistant preacher in Neuss, and from April 1934 with Superintendent Barnstein in Mülheim / Ruhr. Since he joined a protest note from Rhenish auxiliary preachers and vicars against a supremacy of German Christians in the preacher's seminars, he was dismissed from the church service of the Rhenish regional church. In the meantime, however, after the confessional synod in Barmen, the fraternal council was formed. W. Rott was employed by him as an "illegal" pastor.

Wilhelm Rott and Anni Reining

In Mülheim, Rott met Anni Reining in the community of Ernst Barnstein . She stood by him from now on until the end of his life.

Collaboration in the Confessing Church

Rott began his work in the seminary of the Confessing Church as a study inspector at the side of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Wilhelm Rott - in the background - and Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The theological approaches carried out by Bonhoeffer in the Finkenwalde seminary to be able to deal with the situation to some extent, such as the text “ Succession ” and “Common Life”, developed an understanding of the church that W. Rott was able to follow. However, as a Reformed theologian, Rott also experienced himself as a necessary antagonist of the Lutheran theologian Bonhoeffer, especially when it came to the question of the form of personal resistance required. The exchange with Ruth von Kleist-Retzow was helpful for both theologians in their personal decisions . Rott and Bonhoeffer initially parted ways. As an employee of the provisional church leadership in Berlin, Rott was responsible for:

"School and educational issues, managing director of the Chamber for Church Education at the VKL, visiting service in the regional churches, Christian support for non-Aryans, connection with the Old Prussian Council (Niesel) and conference of the regional brotherhoods ( President Scharf ), catechist. Work in conjunction with Dr. Hammelsbeck and Mission Director Lokies -Gossnershaus as well as G. Dehn. "

Jews were helped in the Gossner House in Berlin

The pace of the National Socialist ideologues around Alfred Rosenberg to reprogram Christianity into a “national religion” was increasingly being used in everyday propaganda. In addition, there was the diverse complicity of the churches. The congregations that had joined the Confessing Church needed independent instruction on questions of faith from the BK. W. Rott was entrusted with this. To this end, he worked on writings such as “Die Evangelische Christenlehre” together with Martin Albertz and “Confirmation, a study book”, together with Günther Dehn , which he presented and distributed during his visits to the congregations, a work that became increasingly dangerous. In addition, extensive travel was necessary, which became more and more complicated and strenuous with the expansion of the war in Germany. Through his catechetical activity, Rott was connected to the leading representatives of the BK throughout Germany, but he also met. a. with the regional bishops of Württemberg Theophil Wurm and Bavaria's Hans Meiser .

Rott was in regular contact with the Grüber office , the Burckhardthaus in Berlin (establishment of the Evangelical Young Girls' Association) and the Gossner Mission , the contact points for persecuted Christians of Jewish origin in Berlin. Charlotte Friedenthal, one of the Jews who had been rescued in “ Operation U-7 ”, had previously been his secretary for years. A more detailed study of its activities for the protection and rescue of persecuted Jews is still pending.

Rott made a conscious decision to marry Anni Reining on April 16, 1940, in spite of the omnipresent and special endangerment he is facing. The couple saw this as an act of resistance to the spirit of the destruction of life. During the war they became parents of two and then another five children.

He kept in contact with Dietrich Bonhoeffer as long as possible.

After several arrests by the Gestapo and the arrest of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Hans von Dohnanyi , his release from military service could no longer be continued. Due to an already existing military assignment to the department of General Hans Oster , he came to Athens as a soldier in the Abwehr office . After the end of the war, he was captured by the US Army in the Moosburg internment camp while retreating in May 1945 and, despite his activity in the resistance, interned until May 1946. He used the time in the Moosburg internment camp to build up the Protestant camp community. During this time the Stuttgart confession of guilt of the newly constituting EKD fell. The differentiation between the collective guilt of the Germans and the avowal of individual complicity in the National Socialist crime regime became an important concern for the community members and led to a new beginning for many.

After the war

After his release, he received several offers from his former colleagues in the BK to work in a leading position in the newly formed Evangelical Church in Germany . In accordance with his longstanding desire for pastoral work as a parish priest, however, he turned down these offers and took over a pastor's office in the completely destroyed city of Koblenz . With the financial help of an American church aid organization, he was able to support starving and burned-out refugee families. Above all, he used the money to build up intensive youth work and to offer family camps. For him, however, the focus was on politically committed preaching activity in the sense of a confessional theology and in the development of evangelically responsible adult education in the sense of academy work. In doing so, he tried - as before in the Moosburg internment camp - to gain an understanding of the individual's involvement with the National Socialist mentality and to dissolve it with pastoral care.

He participated in the networking of practical theologians in Europe who had worked in the ecclesiastical opposition during the time of National Socialist rule. A meeting he helped organize to exchange ideas with Polish and Czech colleagues took place as early as 1947, with French pastors of the Resistance in 1950. With the latter, through his college friend in Bonn, Roland de Pury, he had a friendship that had endured the war. He kept in contact with the World Council of Churches , which was already very helpful to him during his time in the BK, as well as with Karl Barth, who co-wrote the Darmstadt Word .

In 1962 he took part in a semi-official EKD delegation with Provost Grüber to Israel . At the synods of the EKD he campaigned for the recognition of the State of Israel. Together with Martin Niemöller , Gustav Heinemann and Helmut Gollwitzer , he was publicly involved in opposing the military chaplaincy contract , especially because it resulted in the separation of the EKD into a West German and an East German church.

Wilhelm Rott at a lecture event

He was increasingly disappointed by the development of state and church under Konrad Adenauer and Otto Dibelius , especially after the military chaplaincy contract had been signed. He stayed in conversation with Albrecht Schönherr about the development of the “Church in Socialism” . Increasingly, the conservative forces also asserted themselves in the “Moosburger Brother Circle”, which had emerged from former inmates of the Moosburg internment camp. He also tried to advocate reform of the EKD in public lectures. His commitment as a Protestant theologian based on the experience of the BK always consisted for him necessarily in a socio-political commitment, which from 1960 onwards included educational issues.

In October 1959 he became superintendent of the Koblenz church district. In addition to the training activities he valued, he increasingly had administrative tasks that required practical constraints. His hope for a renewal of the church through cooperation with the Catholic Church in ecumenism, which he built on personal contact with Karl Rahner , was not fulfilled to the extent that he had wished.

He died a few days after his 59th birthday after a short illness.

From the funeral address given by State Secretary Buchheim on February 1, 1967:

In the then provincial capital of Koblenz ... he tried in everything he did to enforce the model of the Barmer Declaration in cooperation with the Christian community and the civil community, between church and state ...

meaning

Like other survivors of the Finkenwalde seminary ( Albrecht Schönherr , Eberhard Bethge ), Wilhelm Rott felt committed to the theological concept begun there. He saw in its continuation, even under changed circumstances such as internment or post-war church, the possibility of overcoming the evil of the time of the National Socialist regime. With his theology, which was based on Karl Barth, and his independent, self-reliant spirit, he succeeded in realizing a congregation concept that largely corresponded to the guidelines of the Barmer Declaration .

literature

• Bettina Rott: Wilhelm Rott, 1908–1967: Life testimony. Pro Business Verlag, 2008, ISBN 978-3-86805-051-6 .
• Wilhelm Rott: What is positive Christianity? West German Luther Verlag, Witten 1936.
• Wilhelm Rott: Confirmation: A study book on the question of their right design. Burckhardthaus-Verlag, Berlin 1941.
• Wilhelm Rott: My protection so that I will not fall and in an emergency I will call you, you want to answer me. In: Wilhelm Rott, Herbert Werner (Hrsg.): Gebetetes Gotteswort, A guide to praying. The Rufer-Verlag, Wuppertal 1939.
• Evang Gemeindeverband Koblenz: Swim against the tide: The Koblenz pastors Wilhelm Winterberg (1907–1991) and Wilhelm Rott (1908–1967). Books on Demand.
• Wilhelm Rott's estate is in the archives of the Rheinische Landeskirche, estate (7NL) ( Memento from July 20, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
• Anni Rott's diaries (private collection)
• Martin Rott, Roland de Pury (1907-1979), in: www.reformiert-info.de, version from July 28, 2008
• Wolf Dieter Zimmermann (ed.): Encounters with Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Wilhelm Rott: He always thought of something. 4th edition. Kaiser Verlag, 1969, ISBN 3-459-00033-3 .
• Hartmut Ludwig: The church struggle shaped his life: Wilhelm Rott. In: Dietrich Bonhoeffer : year book. 4, 2009/2010, Gütersloher publishing house

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Evangelical Student Home Linz
2. ↑ The camp community - How a young pastor founded a community in a Nazi camp after the war , Sunday newspaper, 03/2007 issue of January 21, 2007.
3. ↑ ^{a b} The pastor of the Protestant camp community. In: moosburg.org. Retrieved August 15, 2020 . 
4. ↑ web.ev-akademie-tutzing.de ( Memento from August 12, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
5. ↑ Martin Rott, Roland de Pury (1907-1979), in: www.reformiert-info.de, version of July 28, 2008
6. ↑ Anni Rott's diary from January 3, 1966 (private collection)