As an Evangelical Christian in Politics: Heinrich Albertz (1915-1993)

Heinrich Albertz reflected the tension between the ethics of the Sermon on the Mount and a pragmatic ethics of responsibility, which is particularly perceptible for an evangelical Christian, not only time and again in sermons, publications and as a regular speaker at the 'Wort zum Sonntag'. He has had to endure them himself time and again: as a young vicar of the Confessing Church in Breslau, refugee minister in Lower Saxony after 1945, SPD politician in Berlin from 1955, governing mayor from 1963 to 1967, pastor in Berlin-Schlachtensee, volunteer escort during the terrorist exchange during the Lorenz kidnapping in Aden in 1975, and opponent of rearmament. Based on his autobiographical diary entries from 1981, the lecture will introduce the topic, which was as burning today as it was then.

Literature: Heinrich Albert, Blumen für Stukenbrock. Biographical, Stuttgart 1981