F. K. Otto Dibelius
Encyclopedia
Friedrich Karl Otto Dibelius (15 May 1880 – 31 January 1967) was a German bishop of the Evangelical Church in Berlin-Brandenburg, and staunch opponent of Nazism
and communism.
, in 1880. One of his cousins was the Protestant theologian Martin Dibelius
. From 1899–1903 he studied at the Frederick William University of Berlin. He received his PhD in 1902. From 1904–06 he studied at the Preachers' Seminary in Wittenberg
.
. From 1907–09 he was the archdeacon
at St. Mary's Church in Crossen an der Oder. From 1909–1910 he was the assistant pastor at the Church of Ss. Peter and Paul in Danzig. From 1911–1915 he was the chief pastor at Lauenburg in Pomerania. From 1915–1925 he was the pastor of the Heilsbronnen congregation in Berlin-Schöneberg
. In 1918 he was the executive secretary (part time) of the Mutual Trust Council in the Evangelical Supreme Ecclesiastical Council of the Evangelical State Church in Prussia's older Provinces, which renamed after the separation of state and religion into Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union (APU) in 1922.
of the Kurmark
within the old-Prussian Ecclesiastical Province of the March of Brandenburg. He then also became a member of the consistory
, an administrative body, of that ecclesiastical province and joined the German National People's Party
.
A problem was the spiritual vacuum, which emerged after the church stopped being a state church
. Dibelius, published his book Das Jahrhundert der Kirche (The century of the Church), in which he declared the 20th century to be the era when the Evangelical Church may for the first time develop freely and gain the independence God would have wished for, without the burden and constraints of the state church function. He regarded the role of the church as even more important, since the state of the Weimar Republic
– in his eyes – would not provide the society with binding norms any more, thus this would be the task of the church.
The church would have to stand for the defence of the Christian culture of the Occident. In this respect Dibelius regarded himself as consciously anti-Jewish, explaining in a circular to the pastors in his general superintendency district of Kurmark, "that with all degenerating phenomena of modern civilisation Judaism plays a leading role". His book was one of the most read on church matters in that period.
On 21 March 1933 the newly elected Reichstag
convened in Potsdam
's Evangelical Garrison Church
, an event commemorated as the Day of Potsdam, and Dibelius, then the locally competent General-Superintendent held the preach. Dibelius downplayed the boycott against enterprises of Jewish proprietors and such of Gentiles of Jewish descent
in an address for the US radio. Even after this clearly anti-Semitic action he repeated in his circular to the pastors of Kurmark on the occasion of Easter (16 April 1933) his anti-Jewish attitude, giving the same words as in 1928.
in Germany were not to be streamlined from within using the Nazi-submissive German Christians
faction within the church, they abolished the constitutional freedom of religion and religious organisation. This was an act strictly opposed by Dibelius, who just saw the separation of state and church as a prerequisite of the latter's free development to its best. On 24 June the Nazi Minister of Cultural Affairs, Bernhard Rust
appointed August Jäger as Prussian
State Commissioner for the Prussian Ecclesiastical Affairs . Jäger furlough
ed – among many others – Dibelius.
On 14 July Adolf Hitler
discretionarily decreed an unconstitutional premature re-election of all elders ( or Presbyter) and synodals in all 28 Protestant church bodies in Germany for 23 July. The new synod
s of the 28 Protestant churches were to declare their dissolution as separate church bodies in favour of a united German Evangelical Church
. Representatives of all 28 Protestant churches were to attend the newly created National Synod to confirm the designated Ludwig Müller as Reich's Bishop. Müller already now regarded himself as leader of that new organisation.
In the campaign for the premature re-election of all presbyters and synodals on 23 July the Nazi Reich's government sided with the German Christians. Under the impression of the government's partiality the other existing lists of opposing candidates united to form the Evangelical Church list. The Gestapo
(est. 26 April 1933) ordered the list to change its name and to replace all its election posters and flyers issued under the forbidden name.
The Gestapo confiscated the office and the printing-press of the Evangelical Church list, in order to hinder any reprint. Thus the list, which had been renamed as Gospel and Church , took refuge with the Evangelical Press Association , presided over by Dibelius and printed new election posters in its premises in Alte Jacobstraße # 129, Berlin. However, the German Christians gained 70–80% of the seats in presbyteries and synods. From 1933–34 Dibelius served the pastorate at San Remo
, Italy.
After his return to Germany (July 1934) and after – from May to October 1934 – the intra-church opposition, the so-called Confessing Church
, had built up its own organisational structures, circumventing the officially recognised bodies of the old-Prussian church and the newly established Nazi-submissive German Evangelical Church, Dibelius served again as general superintendent in the Kurmark – ignoring his official furlough – accepted only by those congregations whose presbyteries rejected the Nazi adulterated official old-Prussian church. From 1934–45 he was a member of the March of Brandenburg provincial Councils of Brethren, the leading bodies established by the Confessing Church on all levels, such as deaneries, ecclesiastical provinces and for the overall old-Prussian church as well as in other Nazi-subjected Protestant church bodies in Germany and on the Reich's level dubbing the position of Reich's Bishop Müller by the Reich's Council of Brethren.
. The Soviet occupying power agreed that Dibelius would use the self-chosen title of Bishop, which was regarded a non-Protestant title and rejected by many, especially since the Nazi-submissive German Christians used that title for their church leaders, claiming an intra-church hierarchy in the range of the Führerprinzip
.
In June an overall provisional church executive, the Council of the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union emerged, acting until December 1948 mostly in Central Germany
, since traffic and communication between the German regions had collapsed. On 13 June 1945 the old-Prussian ecclesiastical province of Westphalia under synodal Praeses
Karl Koch
unilaterally assumed independence as the Evangelical Church of Westphalia
. Dibelius fought this and tried to maintain the unity of the old-Prussian church.
On 15 July Heinrich Grüber was appointed Provost of St. Mary's and St. Nicholas' Church in Berlin and Dibelius invested him on 8 August in a ceremony in St. Mary's Church
, only partially cleared of the debris. In 1945 Dibelius became a member of the newly founded Christian Democratic Union party in Germany, which later split into the western CDU
and the eastern puppet party CDU(D)
Theophil Wurm
, Bishop of the Evangelical-Lutheran Church in Württemberg
, invited representatives of all Protestant church bodies to Treysa (a part of today's Schwalmstadt
) for 31 August 1945. The representatives of the six still existing old-Prussian ecclesiastical provinces (March of Brandenburg, Pomerania, Rhineland, Saxony, Silesia, and Westphalia; the other three, located in the Former eastern territories of Germany had fallen under Polish and Soviet rule, newly annexed by Poland and the Soviet Union) and the central old-Prussian Evangelical Supreme Ecclesiastical Council used the occasion to make fundamental decisions about the future of the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union. The representatives decided to assume the independent existence of each ecclesiastical province and to reform the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union into a mere umbrella organisation ("Neuordnung der Evangelischen Kirche der altpreußischen Union"). Dibelius and some Middle German representatives (the so-called Dibelians) could not assert themselves against Koch and his partisans, to maintain the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union as an integrated church body. However, Dibelius assumed the position of president of the old-Prussian Evangelical Supreme Ecclesiastical Council.
, the Hamburgian State, Hanover, Mecklenburg
, the Free State of Saxony, and Thuringia, against any unification after the experiences during the Nazi reign with the German Evangelical Church
. But it was decided to replace the pre-1933 German Federation of Protestant Churches by the new umbrella Evangelical Church in Germany
, provisionally led by the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany, a naming borrowed from the brethren council organisation. Beginning in 1949, Dibelius was chairman of the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany.
In December 1946 Dibelius spent two weeks visiting prisoner-of-war camps in England, Scotland and Wales, a journey that had been made possible by the Control Commission for Germany and the Minister of State for War, at the request Geoffrey Fisher
, Archbishop of Canterbury. On Christmas Eve, at the invitation of Leslie Stannard Hunter
, Bishop of Sheffield
, he conducted a service at Sheffield Cathedral
, attended by over 1,000 German prisoners of war.
In 1947 at a meeting of delegates of the six surviving ecclesiastical provinces they confirmed the status quo, with the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union having transformed into a league of independent church bodies. The schism within the old-Prussian church was not yet fully overcome, since only the most radical German Christians had been removed or resigned from their positions. Many neutrals, forming the majority of clergy and parishioners, and many proponents of the quite doubtable compromising policy in the times of the struggle of the churches
assumed positions.
It was Dibelius' policy to gain the mainstream support of parishioners. Thus the strict opposition of the Dahlemites and Barmensians, forming the uncompromised opposition of the Confessing Church during the struggle of the churches, continued to maintain their conventions in the old-Prussian brethren councils. On 14 January 1949 representatives of the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union decided to reconcile the groups and founded a committee to develop a new church constitution. On 15 August 1949 the Evangelical Supreme Ecclesiastical Council, presided by Dibelius, issued the proposal of the committee for a new constitution, which would bring together the Westphalians striving for the complete unwinding of the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union, the Dahlemites and Barmensians as well as the Dibelians.
The bulk of the mainstream parishioners shared a strong skepticism about, if not even objection to, communism, and so did Dibelius. So after the foundation of the German Democratic Republic
(GDR) in the Soviet zone of occupation on 7 October 1949, including – apart from West Berlin
the bulk of the territory covered by the Evangelical Church in Berlin-Brandenburg -, its Bishop Dibelius was often defamed in the East as the propadandist of the western Konrad Adenauer
government. He was declared persona non grata
by the German Democratic Republic in 1960. After the construction of the Berlin Wall
in 1961 the GDR refused to allow Dibelius to enter its territory and East Berlin
.
On 24 February 1950 Dibelius – heading the Evangelical Supreme Ecclesiastical Council – invited for an extraordinary old-Prussian General Synod, which convened on 11–13 December in Berlin. The new constitution transformed the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union into a mere umbrella and did away with the Evangelical Supreme Ecclesiastical Council, replacing it by the Church Chancery , as administrative body. The new governing body, replacing the Church Senate led by the Praeses of the General Synod (de facto destroyed since 1933), became the Council of the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union.
The heads of the church body, officiating a term of two years, now bore the title President of the Council . Until the appointment of the first head in 1952 Dibelius, the former president of the Evangelical Supreme Ecclesiastical Council, and its other members officiated per pro as the head and members of the church chancery.
Beginning in 1954 he was the president of the World Council of Churches
(part time). He died in 1967 in Berlin (West).
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
and communism.
Early years
He was born in Berlin, BrandenburgProvince of Brandenburg
The Province of Brandenburg was a province of the Kingdom of Prussia and the Free State of Prussia from 1815 to 1946.-History:The first people who are known to have inhabited Brandenburg were the Suevi. They were succeeded by the Slavonians, whom Henry II conquered and converted to Christianity in...
, in 1880. One of his cousins was the Protestant theologian Martin Dibelius
Martin Dibelius
Martin Dibelius was a German theologian and a professor for the New Testament at the University of Heidelberg.Martin Dibelius was born in Dresden, Germany in 1883...
. From 1899–1903 he studied at the Frederick William University of Berlin. He received his PhD in 1902. From 1904–06 he studied at the Preachers' Seminary in Wittenberg
Wittenberg
Wittenberg, officially Lutherstadt Wittenberg, is a city in Germany in the Bundesland Saxony-Anhalt, on the river Elbe. It has a population of about 50,000....
.
Early pastorates
He was then employed as minister by the Evangelical State Church of Prussia's older Provinces. From 1906–07 he was the assistant pastor at Klosterkirche in GubenGuben
Guben is a town on the Lusatian Neisse river in the state of Brandenburg, Germany. Located in the Spree-Neiße district, Guben has a population of 20,049...
. From 1907–09 he was the archdeacon
Archdeacon
An archdeacon is a senior clergy position in Anglicanism, Syrian Malabar Nasrani, Chaldean Catholic, and some other Christian denominations, above that of most clergy and below a bishop. In the High Middle Ages it was the most senior diocesan position below a bishop in the Roman Catholic Church...
at St. Mary's Church in Crossen an der Oder. From 1909–1910 he was the assistant pastor at the Church of Ss. Peter and Paul in Danzig. From 1911–1915 he was the chief pastor at Lauenburg in Pomerania. From 1915–1925 he was the pastor of the Heilsbronnen congregation in Berlin-Schöneberg
Schöneberg
Schöneberg is a locality of Berlin, Germany. Until Berlin's 2001 administrative reform it was a separate borough including the locality of Friedenau. Together with the former borough of Tempelhof it is now part of the new borough of Tempelhof-Schöneberg....
. In 1918 he was the executive secretary (part time) of the Mutual Trust Council in the Evangelical Supreme Ecclesiastical Council of the Evangelical State Church in Prussia's older Provinces, which renamed after the separation of state and religion into Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union (APU) in 1922.
General superintendent of Kurmark
In 1921 he was a member of the Evangelical Supreme Ecclesiastical Council (part time). From 1925–33 he was the superintendent-generalSuperintendent (ecclesiastical)
Superintendent is the head of an administrative division of a Protestant church, largely historical but still in use in Germany.- Superintendents in Sweden :...
of the Kurmark
Kurmark
Kurmark is a German term meaning "Electoral March", referring to territory of the former Electorate of Brandenburg. The Kurmark included the Altmark, the Mittelmark, the Uckermark, the Prignitz, and the lordships of Beeskow and Storkow...
within the old-Prussian Ecclesiastical Province of the March of Brandenburg. He then also became a member of the consistory
Consistory
-Antiquity:Originally, the Latin word consistorium meant simply 'sitting together', just as the Greek synedrion ....
, an administrative body, of that ecclesiastical province and joined the German National People's Party
German National People's Party
The German National People's Party was a national conservative party in Germany during the time of the Weimar Republic. Before the rise of the NSDAP it was the main nationalist party in Weimar Germany composed of nationalists, reactionary monarchists, völkisch, and antisemitic elements, and...
.
A problem was the spiritual vacuum, which emerged after the church stopped being a state church
State church
State churches are organizational bodies within a Christian denomination which are given official status or operated by a state.State churches are not necessarily national churches in the ethnic sense of the term, but the two concepts may overlap in the case of a nation state where the state...
. Dibelius, published his book Das Jahrhundert der Kirche (The century of the Church), in which he declared the 20th century to be the era when the Evangelical Church may for the first time develop freely and gain the independence God would have wished for, without the burden and constraints of the state church function. He regarded the role of the church as even more important, since the state of the Weimar Republic
Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic is the name given by historians to the parliamentary republic established in 1919 in Germany to replace the imperial form of government...
– in his eyes – would not provide the society with binding norms any more, thus this would be the task of the church.
The church would have to stand for the defence of the Christian culture of the Occident. In this respect Dibelius regarded himself as consciously anti-Jewish, explaining in a circular to the pastors in his general superintendency district of Kurmark, "that with all degenerating phenomena of modern civilisation Judaism plays a leading role". His book was one of the most read on church matters in that period.
On 21 March 1933 the newly elected Reichstag
Reichstag (Weimar Republic)
The Reichstag was the parliament of Weimar Republic .German constitution commentators consider only the Reichstag and now the Bundestag the German parliament. Another organ deals with legislation too: in 1867-1918 the Bundesrat, in 1919–1933 the Reichsrat and from 1949 on the Bundesrat...
convened in Potsdam
Potsdam
Potsdam is the capital city of the German federal state of Brandenburg and part of the Berlin/Brandenburg Metropolitan Region. It is situated on the River Havel, southwest of Berlin city centre....
's Evangelical Garrison Church
Garrison Church (Potsdam)
The Garrison Church was a Baroque church in Potsdam, eastern Germany. It was built under the second Prussian king Friedrich Wilhelm I. between 1730 and 1735. During World War II, the church burned down on 14 April 1945. The ruin was demolished on 23 June 1968 by the SED leadership under Walter...
, an event commemorated as the Day of Potsdam, and Dibelius, then the locally competent General-Superintendent held the preach. Dibelius downplayed the boycott against enterprises of Jewish proprietors and such of Gentiles of Jewish descent
Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses
The Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses in Germany took place on 1 April 1933, soon after Adolf Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor on 30 January 1933...
in an address for the US radio. Even after this clearly anti-Semitic action he repeated in his circular to the pastors of Kurmark on the occasion of Easter (16 April 1933) his anti-Jewish attitude, giving the same words as in 1928.
During the struggle of the churches
Once the Nazi government realised that the 28 Protestant church bodiesLandeskirche
In Germany and Switzerland, a Landeskirche is the church of a region. They originated as the national churches of the independent states, States of Germany or Cantons of Switzerland , that later unified to form modern Germany or modern Switzerland , respectively.-Origins in the Holy Roman...
in Germany were not to be streamlined from within using the Nazi-submissive German Christians
German Christians
The Deutsche Christen were a pressure group and movement within German Protestantism aligned towards the antisemitic and Führerprinzip ideological principles of Nazism with the goal to align German Protestantism as a whole towards those principles...
faction within the church, they abolished the constitutional freedom of religion and religious organisation. This was an act strictly opposed by Dibelius, who just saw the separation of state and church as a prerequisite of the latter's free development to its best. On 24 June the Nazi Minister of Cultural Affairs, Bernhard Rust
Bernhard Rust
Dr. Bernhard Rust was Minister of Science, Education and National Culture in Nazi Germany. A combination of school administrator and zealous Nazi, he issued decrees, often bizarre, at every level of the German educational system to immerse German youth in the National Socialist philosophy...
appointed August Jäger as Prussian
Free State of Prussia (1933-1935)
The Free State of Prussia briefly continued to exist in name after take-over by the Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler. Unlike the Free State of Prussia that existed from 1918 to 1933 during the Weimar Republic, the Nazi Free State had no parliamentary democracy and was ruled exclusively under the...
State Commissioner for the Prussian Ecclesiastical Affairs . Jäger furlough
Furlough
In the United States a furlough is a temporary unpaid leave of some employees due to special needs of a company, which may be due to economic conditions at the specific employer or in the economy as a whole...
ed – among many others – Dibelius.
On 14 July Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
discretionarily decreed an unconstitutional premature re-election of all elders ( or Presbyter) and synodals in all 28 Protestant church bodies in Germany for 23 July. The new synod
Synod
A synod historically is a council of a church, usually convened to decide an issue of doctrine, administration or application. In modern usage, the word often refers to the governing body of a particular church, whether its members are meeting or not...
s of the 28 Protestant churches were to declare their dissolution as separate church bodies in favour of a united German Evangelical Church
Protestant Reich Church
The Protestant Reich Church, officially German Evangelical Church and colloquially Reichskirche, was formed in 1936 to merge the 28 regional churches into a unified state church that espoused a single doctrine compatible with National Socialism...
. Representatives of all 28 Protestant churches were to attend the newly created National Synod to confirm the designated Ludwig Müller as Reich's Bishop. Müller already now regarded himself as leader of that new organisation.
In the campaign for the premature re-election of all presbyters and synodals on 23 July the Nazi Reich's government sided with the German Christians. Under the impression of the government's partiality the other existing lists of opposing candidates united to form the Evangelical Church list. The Gestapo
Gestapo
The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...
(est. 26 April 1933) ordered the list to change its name and to replace all its election posters and flyers issued under the forbidden name.
The Gestapo confiscated the office and the printing-press of the Evangelical Church list, in order to hinder any reprint. Thus the list, which had been renamed as Gospel and Church , took refuge with the Evangelical Press Association , presided over by Dibelius and printed new election posters in its premises in Alte Jacobstraße # 129, Berlin. However, the German Christians gained 70–80% of the seats in presbyteries and synods. From 1933–34 Dibelius served the pastorate at San Remo
Sanremo
Sanremo or San Remo is a city with about 57,000 inhabitants on the Mediterranean coast of western Liguria in north-western Italy. Founded in Roman times, the city is best known as a tourist destination on the Italian Riviera. It hosts numerous cultural events, such as the Sanremo Music Festival...
, Italy.
After his return to Germany (July 1934) and after – from May to October 1934 – the intra-church opposition, the so-called Confessing Church
Confessing Church
The Confessing Church was a Protestant schismatic church in Nazi Germany that arose in opposition to government-sponsored efforts to nazify the German Protestant church.-Demographics:...
, had built up its own organisational structures, circumventing the officially recognised bodies of the old-Prussian church and the newly established Nazi-submissive German Evangelical Church, Dibelius served again as general superintendent in the Kurmark – ignoring his official furlough – accepted only by those congregations whose presbyteries rejected the Nazi adulterated official old-Prussian church. From 1934–45 he was a member of the March of Brandenburg provincial Councils of Brethren, the leading bodies established by the Confessing Church on all levels, such as deaneries, ecclesiastical provinces and for the overall old-Prussian church as well as in other Nazi-subjected Protestant church bodies in Germany and on the Reich's level dubbing the position of Reich's Bishop Müller by the Reich's Council of Brethren.
Rebuilding the old-Prussian church and Berlin-Brandenburg ecclesiastical province
Before the end of World War II Dibelius addressed some moderate incumbents of leading positions in the official old-Prussian church, in order to establish their acceptance and co-operation in a future provisional leading body – the so-called Beirat (advisory council) of the old-Prussian church, once the Nazis would be defeated. On 7 May 1945 Dibelius organised the forming of a provisional church executive for the old-Prussian Ecclesiastical Province of the March of Brandenburg, comprising Greater Berlin and the political province of Brandenburg. The provisionally leading advisory council reconfirmed Dibelius as general superintendent of Kurmark and also commissioned him to serve per pro the vavant general superintendencies of Berlin and the New March and Lower LusatiaLower Lusatia
Lower Lusatia is a historical region stretching from the southeast of the Brandenburg state of Germany to the southwest of the Lubusz Voivodeship in Poland. Important towns beside the historic capital Lübben include Calau, Cottbus, Guben , Luckau, Spremberg, Finsterwalde, Senftenberg and Żary...
. The Soviet occupying power agreed that Dibelius would use the self-chosen title of Bishop, which was regarded a non-Protestant title and rejected by many, especially since the Nazi-submissive German Christians used that title for their church leaders, claiming an intra-church hierarchy in the range of the Führerprinzip
Führerprinzip
The Führerprinzip , German for "leader principle", prescribes the fundamental basis of political authority in the governmental structures of the Third Reich...
.
In June an overall provisional church executive, the Council of the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union emerged, acting until December 1948 mostly in Central Germany
Central Germany (geography)
In geography, central Germany describes the areas surrounding the central point of modern-day Germany.The town of Niederdorla, in the state of Thuringia, claims to be the most central town in Germany...
, since traffic and communication between the German regions had collapsed. On 13 June 1945 the old-Prussian ecclesiastical province of Westphalia under synodal Praeses
Praeses
Praeses , is a Latin word meaning "Seated in front of, i.e. at the head ", has both ancient and modern uses.-Roman imperial use:...
Karl Koch
Karl Koch
Karl Koch is the name of:* Carl Koch , also spelled Karl Koch, German film director, writer* Carl Koch , American architect* Karl Koch , German botanist...
unilaterally assumed independence as the Evangelical Church of Westphalia
Evangelical Church of Westphalia
The Evangelical Church of Westphalia is a Protestant church body in the German state of Northrhine-Westphalia. It's the most important Protestant denomination in Westphalia...
. Dibelius fought this and tried to maintain the unity of the old-Prussian church.
On 15 July Heinrich Grüber was appointed Provost of St. Mary's and St. Nicholas' Church in Berlin and Dibelius invested him on 8 August in a ceremony in St. Mary's Church
St. Mary's Church, Berlin
St. Mary's Church, known in German as the Marienkirche, is a church in Berlin, Germany. The church is located on Karl-Liebknecht-Straße in central Berlin, near Alexanderplatz. Its exact age is not known, but it was first mentioned in German chronicles in 1292. It is presumed to date from earlier...
, only partially cleared of the debris. In 1945 Dibelius became a member of the newly founded Christian Democratic Union party in Germany, which later split into the western CDU
Christian Democratic Union (Germany)
The Christian Democratic Union of Germany is a Christian democratic and conservative political party in Germany. It is regarded as on the centre-right of the German political spectrum...
and the eastern puppet party CDU(D)
Christian Democratic Union (East Germany)
The Christian Democratic Union of Germany ) was an East German political party founded in 1945. It was part of the National Front with the Socialist Unity Party of Germany until 1989....
Theophil Wurm
Theophil Wurm
Theophil Wurm was the son of a pastor and was a leader in the German Protestant Church in the early twentieth century....
, Bishop of the Evangelical-Lutheran Church in Württemberg
Evangelical-Lutheran Church in Württemberg
The Evangelical-Lutheran Church in Württemberg is a Protestant church in the German former state of Württemberg, now the part of the state Baden-Württemberg. The seat of the church is in Stuttgart.It is a full member of the Evangelical Church in Germany , and is a Lutheran Church...
, invited representatives of all Protestant church bodies to Treysa (a part of today's Schwalmstadt
Schwalmstadt
Schwalmstadt is the largest town in the Schwalm-Eder district, in northern Hesse, Germany. It was established only in 1970 with the amalgamation of the towns of Treysa and Ziegenhain together with some outlying villages to form the town of Schwalmstadt.-Location:Schwalmstadt lies in the Schwalm...
) for 31 August 1945. The representatives of the six still existing old-Prussian ecclesiastical provinces (March of Brandenburg, Pomerania, Rhineland, Saxony, Silesia, and Westphalia; the other three, located in the Former eastern territories of Germany had fallen under Polish and Soviet rule, newly annexed by Poland and the Soviet Union) and the central old-Prussian Evangelical Supreme Ecclesiastical Council used the occasion to make fundamental decisions about the future of the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union. The representatives decided to assume the independent existence of each ecclesiastical province and to reform the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union into a mere umbrella organisation ("Neuordnung der Evangelischen Kirche der altpreußischen Union"). Dibelius and some Middle German representatives (the so-called Dibelians) could not assert themselves against Koch and his partisans, to maintain the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union as an integrated church body. However, Dibelius assumed the position of president of the old-Prussian Evangelical Supreme Ecclesiastical Council.
President of the Evangelical Church in Germany umbrella
As to co-operation of all the Protestant church bodies in Germany, strong resentments prevailed, especially among the Lutheran church bodies of Bavaria right of the river RhineEvangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria is a Protestant church in the German state of Bavaria. The seat of the church is in Munich....
, the Hamburgian State, Hanover, Mecklenburg
Evangelical Lutheran Church of Mecklenburg
The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Mecklenburg is a Lutheran church in the German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, serving the citizens living in Mecklenburg. The seat of the Landesbischof is the state capital Schwerin with Schwerin Cathedral as the principal church...
, the Free State of Saxony, and Thuringia, against any unification after the experiences during the Nazi reign with the German Evangelical Church
Protestant Reich Church
The Protestant Reich Church, officially German Evangelical Church and colloquially Reichskirche, was formed in 1936 to merge the 28 regional churches into a unified state church that espoused a single doctrine compatible with National Socialism...
. But it was decided to replace the pre-1933 German Federation of Protestant Churches by the new umbrella Evangelical Church in Germany
Evangelical Church in Germany
The Evangelical Church in Germany is a federation of 22 Lutheran, Unified and Reformed Protestant regional church bodies in Germany. The EKD is not a church in a theological understanding because of the denominational differences. However, the member churches share full pulpit and altar...
, provisionally led by the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany, a naming borrowed from the brethren council organisation. Beginning in 1949, Dibelius was chairman of the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany.
In December 1946 Dibelius spent two weeks visiting prisoner-of-war camps in England, Scotland and Wales, a journey that had been made possible by the Control Commission for Germany and the Minister of State for War, at the request Geoffrey Fisher
Geoffrey Fisher
Geoffrey Francis Fisher, Baron Fisher of Lambeth, GCVO, PC was Archbishop of Canterbury from 1945 to 1961.-Background:...
, Archbishop of Canterbury. On Christmas Eve, at the invitation of Leslie Stannard Hunter
Leslie Stannard Hunter
Leslie Stannard Hunter, DD was the second Bishop of Sheffield from 1939 until 1962. Born on 2 May 1890 and educated at Kelvinside Academy and New College, Oxford he was ordained in 1915 and began his career with curacies at St Peter's, Brockley and St Martin-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square. He...
, Bishop of Sheffield
Bishop of Sheffield
The Bishop of Sheffield is the Ordinary of the Church of England Diocese of Sheffield in the Province of York.The title was first created as a suffragan see in the Diocese of York in 1901. The only suffragan bishop of Sheffield assisted the Archbishop of York in overseeing the diocese...
, he conducted a service at Sheffield Cathedral
Sheffield Cathedral
Sheffield Cathedral is the cathedral church for the Church of England diocese of Sheffield, England. Originally a parish church, it was elevated to cathedral status when the diocese was created in 1914...
, attended by over 1,000 German prisoners of war.
Bishop of the Evangelical Church in Berlin-Bandenburg
Until 1951 all the six still existing ecclesiastical provinces of the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union assumed new church constitutions declaring their independence with Dibelius' local Ecclesiastical Province of the March of Brandenburg transforming into the independent Evangelical Church in Berlin-Brandenburg. Dibelius was elected its bishop in December 1948 by the synod constituting that newly independent church body, after the function of bishop had been officially established by the new church constitution.In 1947 at a meeting of delegates of the six surviving ecclesiastical provinces they confirmed the status quo, with the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union having transformed into a league of independent church bodies. The schism within the old-Prussian church was not yet fully overcome, since only the most radical German Christians had been removed or resigned from their positions. Many neutrals, forming the majority of clergy and parishioners, and many proponents of the quite doubtable compromising policy in the times of the struggle of the churches
Kirchenkampf
Kirchenkampf is a German term that translates as "struggle of the churches" or "church struggle" in English. The term is sometimes used ambiguously, and may refer to one or more of the following different church struggles:...
assumed positions.
The bulk of the mainstream parishioners shared a strong skepticism about, if not even objection to, communism, and so did Dibelius. So after the foundation of the German Democratic Republic
German Democratic Republic
The German Democratic Republic , informally called East Germany by West Germany and other countries, was a socialist state established in 1949 in the Soviet zone of occupied Germany, including East Berlin of the Allied-occupied capital city...
(GDR) in the Soviet zone of occupation on 7 October 1949, including – apart from West Berlin
West Berlin
West Berlin was a political exclave that existed between 1949 and 1990. It comprised the western regions of Berlin, which were bordered by East Berlin and parts of East Germany. West Berlin consisted of the American, British, and French occupation sectors, which had been established in 1945...
the bulk of the territory covered by the Evangelical Church in Berlin-Brandenburg -, its Bishop Dibelius was often defamed in the East as the propadandist of the western Konrad Adenauer
Konrad Adenauer
Konrad Hermann Joseph Adenauer was a German statesman. He was the chancellor of the West Germany from 1949 to 1963. He is widely recognised as a person who led his country from the ruins of World War II to a powerful and prosperous nation that had forged close relations with old enemies France,...
government. He was declared persona non grata
Persona non grata
Persona non grata , literally meaning "an unwelcome person", is a legal term used in diplomacy that indicates a proscription against a person entering the country...
by the German Democratic Republic in 1960. After the construction of the Berlin Wall
Berlin Wall
The Berlin Wall was a barrier constructed by the German Democratic Republic starting on 13 August 1961, that completely cut off West Berlin from surrounding East Germany and from East Berlin...
in 1961 the GDR refused to allow Dibelius to enter its territory and East Berlin
East Berlin
East Berlin was the name given to the eastern part of Berlin between 1949 and 1990. It consisted of the Soviet sector of Berlin that was established in 1945. The American, British and French sectors became West Berlin, a part strongly associated with West Germany but a free city...
.
On 24 February 1950 Dibelius – heading the Evangelical Supreme Ecclesiastical Council – invited for an extraordinary old-Prussian General Synod, which convened on 11–13 December in Berlin. The new constitution transformed the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union into a mere umbrella and did away with the Evangelical Supreme Ecclesiastical Council, replacing it by the Church Chancery , as administrative body. The new governing body, replacing the Church Senate led by the Praeses of the General Synod (de facto destroyed since 1933), became the Council of the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union.
The heads of the church body, officiating a term of two years, now bore the title President of the Council . Until the appointment of the first head in 1952 Dibelius, the former president of the Evangelical Supreme Ecclesiastical Council, and its other members officiated per pro as the head and members of the church chancery.
Beginning in 1954 he was the president of the World Council of Churches
World Council of Churches
The World Council of Churches is a worldwide fellowship of 349 global, regional and sub-regional, national and local churches seeking unity, a common witness and Christian service. It is a Christian ecumenical organization that is based in the Ecumenical Centre in Geneva, Switzerland...
(part time). He died in 1967 in Berlin (West).
Works
- Dibelius, Otto, Das Jahrhundert der Kirche: Geschichte, Betrachtung, Umschau und Ziele, Berlin: Furche-Verlag, 1927. No ISBN
- Dibelius, Otto, In the Service of the Lord, London: Faber and Faber, 1964 [1961].