Wilhelm Voigt (pastor)

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Street sign, Celle

Wilhelm Voigt (* 1889 in Hanover , † 1963 in Celle ) was a German Protestant clergyman .

Life

Voigt, who grew up in Holdenstedt / Uelzen, was a pastor in Celle- Neuenhäusen from 1933 to 1961 .

His first pastoral posts during the First World War were in Osterwald near Coppenbrügge and until 1923 in Eitzendorf / Hoya. From here Friedrich von Bodelschwingh appointed him to head the deaconess mother house in the Bodelschwingh'schen Anstalten in Bethel near Bielefeld .

From the beginning of the Hitler regime in 1933 until its end, Voigt held the office of chairman of the Evangelical Lutheran Confessional Community from his parish . Regional Church of Hanover . It was not only the “Celle baptisms” that he carried out that brought the National Socialist press against him and put him under constant control by the Gestapo , as did his contacts with high theologians and officers who supported the resistance .

After 1945 Voigt helped to build up the paritätische welfare community, founded the youth home “Die Insel” and, together with Pastor Reske, the Lobetal-Werk (Diakonisches Werk). He had lifelong friendships with the later refugee pastor and SPD politician Heinrich Albertz as well as his former Bible student at the Ratsgymnasium Hannover and later regional bishop Hanns Lilje and many others.

Voigt married Dorothea geb. Zietz, principal pastor's daughter from Lübeck . The couple had seven children. Two daughters remarried clergymen, one daughter became a deaconess, two sons took up spiritual offices in the shoes of their father and other ancestors. One son died as a naval officer, one ( Hans-Heinrich Voigt ) became an astronomer .

The city of Celle named the street at the former old rectory after him.

The figure of Wilhelm Voigt and his large family became the template for the multi-volume trilogy of novels "Das Pfarrhaus" by Hans-Helmut Decker-Voigt, which has been published since 2015 . In 2016, the volumes "Vom Haken mit dem Kreuz" and "Vom Kreuz mit den Haken" followed, which the rectory in Celle took as an example of the church's resistance work in Hitler's Germany and which the German Pastor Gazette 2017 as the great literary event in connection with the Reformation .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Family Kohls - "Judentaufe" | Celle under National Socialism. Retrieved November 13, 2017 .
  2. ↑ The rectory. Retrieved on November 13, 2017 (German).
  3. ↑ pfarrerverband.de - The website for Protestant pastors in Germany. Retrieved November 13, 2017 .
personal data
SURNAME Voigt, Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Protestant clergyman
DATE OF BIRTH 1889
PLACE OF BIRTH Hanover
DATE OF DEATH 1963
Place of death Celle