Winfried Maechler

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Winfried Maechler (born April 12, 1910 ; † August 13, 2003 in Berlin ) was a German Evangelical Lutheran pastor and member of the Confessing Church .

Live and act

Together with Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Maechler attended lectures on Protestant dogmatics from Karl Barth in Bonn and, since 1932, had belonged to a group of young theologians that had gathered around the young private lecturer Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Berlin. During the World Youth Conference in Fanø, Denmark, in 1934, the young vicar Maechler gave a lecture on the subject of "Christ and the State" at Bonhoeffer's suggestion, with which he expanded his critical view of the Nazi state. After Bonhoeffer founded the illegal preachers' seminar of the Confessing Church in Finkenwalde in 1935 (there was a forerunner in Zingst ), Winfried Maechler, Albrecht Schönherr and Eberhard Bethge belonged to the first course of this seminar. So they belonged to the closest circle around Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Maechler made sure that donations could be used to procure furnishings for the still empty seminar house.

Initially Maechler was given the leadership of the congregation of the Confessing Church in Finkenwalde. From 1936 he was first assistant preacher. Later he was appointed pastor in Schlawe - the last German clergyman in this place. With the beginning of the Second World War , Winfried Maechler was drafted into the Wehrmacht and had to do military service. After the war he became a pastor at the Epiphany Church in Berlin-Westend . In this community, he also acted as a point of contact for other community members resettled from Schlawe and founded a Schlawe home district. From there he went to a London parish in 1960 as the successor to Eberhard Bethge and took over the parish in Sydenham , to which the two parishes of St. George and St. Paul belonged. For the many young German women who had married in South London, he set up a women's group at the Bonhoefferkirche. Two years later in 1962 a youth group was added. Once a week he organized a meeting for German teacher students who came to London. He also developed close ecumenical relationships with neighboring churches. He even initiated contacts with a Jewish community in Ilford . For example, together with Rabbi Blue from the World Federation for Liberal Judaism, he organized a Christian camp as part of the “European Action”, in which Jewish young people also took part.

Maechler was a member of the Christian Peace Conference and took part in the All-Christian Peace Assemblies in Prague in 1962 and 1978 .

In 1968 he returned to Berlin from London. The Evangelical Academy became his new field of work until he could retire. He lived here until his wife died. During these years he published articles in the journal of the Weißenseer Arbeitskreis . He spent the last years of his life in a senior citizens' home in Spandau .

In a greeting on the 100th birthday of Harald Poelchau , EKD Council Chairman Wolfgang Huber also paid tribute to the work of Bonhoeffer's pupil Winfried Maechler.

Maechler was married and had five children.

Works

Books

  • A Christian in the turmoil of the 20th century. Biographical (paperback)
  • Nonviolent Action. The problem of violence among Christians, Jews and Muslims
  • Contribution to the anthology: I want to be your God, Volume II: New Testament . Burckhardthaus-Verlag GmbH 1961

Audiovisual media

  • Slide series: “Dietrich Bonhoeffer”, 38 black and white slides with text booklet, EZB, Witten; before 1983. Bonhoeffer's life and work: youth, meeting with Karl Barth, New York , persecution of the Jews , Confessing Church, Finkenwalde, resistance against Hitler , imprisonment in Tegel , execution in Flossenbürg . From 15 years
  • Bonhoeffer video (2003). Edited by Klaus Maria Brandauer, Desmond Tutu, Adele Schmidt, Eberhard Bethge, John De Gruchy, Martin Doblmeier, Richard Mancini, Wolfgang Huber, Victoria Barnett, Christian Gremmels, Otto Dudzus, John Conway, Renate Bethge, Jean Lasserre, Winfried Maechler

literature

  • From good powers [video]: Dietrich Bonhoeffer's path to resistance / Christian Berger. - Germany, 1996. - 30 min., F./sw., Documentary film. The film author tries to make the traces of the past visible in the present. He works with interviews with contemporary witnesses (Winfried Maechler, Renate and Eberhard Bethge, Albrecht Schönherr, Klaus von Dohnanyi ) and scenic elements. Two actors read from the correspondence between Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his fiancée Maria von Wedemeyer . Bonhoeffer's topic, the tasks of the church in a secularized society, are - according to one theologian - consistently topical today.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Sponsorship meeting · Village and parish meeting ( Memento from September 10, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ ZEITSPIEGEL . In: The time . No. 16/1967 ( online ).
  3. ↑ Weissenseer Blätter: Mammonism assassins socialism / Winfried Maechler (1/90, p. 23)
  4. ↑ http://www.bonhoeffer.ch/filme-dias-und-ton
  5. ↑ http://www.imdb.de/video/screenplay/vi2428174617

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Maechler, Winfried
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Evangelical Lutheran theologian
DATE OF BIRTH April 12, 1910
DATE OF DEATH August 13, 2003
Place of death Berlin