Friday, October 17, 2025

It is the 17th of October 2025. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

 

There are those theologians and other characters in church history whose names and legacy resound on account of their thought and actions- often in turbulent times- whose ideas transcended their own time. That is, I am not living during the fall of the Roman Empire, but Augustine’s thoughts on those issues transcend that context alone.

And on the other side of the coin are those church leaders and theologians whose work is so bound up in a particular context that we move beyond them when their particular theological and social critiques are too intertwined with their own times. Unfortunately, that leaves characters like Helmut Gollwitzer often lost in the mists of history despite a remarkable story.  

Helmut Gollwitzer was born in Bavaria in 1908, the son of a Lutheran pastor. He himself would decide to study theology and spent time at the Universities of Munich, Erlangen, Jena, and Bonn. The years he spent are significant- 1928 to 1932. That is, he was wrestling with theological and social questions at the very end of the Weimar Republic as Germany was wrestling with its post-World War I existence and the events that would lead to the rise of the Third Reich.

Gollwitzer was serving as a tutor and private preacher to Austrian minor nobility when Hitler came to power. He came to have connections with the anti-Nazi Confessing Church (in opposition to the Pro-Nazi “German Church”). By 1935, Gollwitzer was in Thuringia- a major incubating center for Nazi’s- preaching against the curious blend of Christianity and German nationalism. This would lead to his being expelled by the Gestapo in 1937 and his work under Martin Niemoller in Berlin. Niemoller, of the famous “First they Came for the Socialists, And I Did Not Speak Out for I was Not a Socialist” poem, would soon have the Nazi’s “come for him,” and Gollwitzer would take over that Berlin church.

By 1940, Gollwitzer was banned from preaching and was drafted into the German army as a medical orderly. Serving on the Eastern Front, he would surrender to the Soviets in May of 1945 and remain in their custody until 1949.

Two interesting things came out of his time under Soviet arrest. First, as a young scholar, he had been interested in Marxism and its critique of the West. While he would take Marx’s criticism seriously, he would see its deficiencies firsthand and would come to fashion a critique and response to Marxism from a Christian perspective (but not from a capitalist perspective, which he saw as also deforming from a Christian perspective).

He would also write about his experience as a German POW in “…und führen, wohin Du nicht willst”- published in 1951 and in English as “Unwilling Journey: A Diary from Russia”.

The postwar years would see him as an academic, teaching at the University of Bonn and the Free University of Berlin. For a time, he served as a secretary to Karl Barth, his Doctoral Supervisor, and Barth recommended that Gollwitzer become his successor at Basle. Perhaps ironically, he was denied the post because of his “unclear attitude” towards the Soviet Union.

Throughout the 1960s and 70s, he would be associated with student movements, and this, along with his engagement with Marxism, made him unpopular with some. Gollwitzer was close to the leading student radical Rudi Dutschke, and when Dutschke was assassinated, Gollwitzer preached at his funeral.

He was a student and heir of Barth, but considered insufficiently Barthian by some of his followers. He advocated for student radicals, but would condemn overt violence. He critiqued Marx but was seen as insufficiently critical of the Soviet Union (despite having written his work about his own time as a POW). And thus, the anti-Nazi, POW, pastor, and professor who was affectionately called “Golli” by his students has slipped through the cracks.

And so we remember him today- Helmut Gollwitzer- born in 1908, died on this, the 17th of October in 1993 at the age of 84.

 

The Last word for today comes from the daily lectionary and Psalm 119- verses 97 to 104 from the Seedbed metrical Psalter at psalms.seedbed.com: 

O, how I love Your law, it is
my meditation sure.


I’m wiser than my enemies

from Your commandments, Lord.

I’ve insight more than those who teach;

Your statutes are my way.


I understand more than the old;

Your precepts I obey.

I’ve kept my feet from evil ways,

That I may keep Your word.


I’ve not turned from Your ord’nances;

You’ve taught me, and I’ve heard.

How sweet Your words are to my taste;

Yes, more than honey sweet.


Your precepts understanding give;

I hate all wrong I meet.

 

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 17th of October 2025, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man interested in other personal names that are also headwear- like Helmut… he’s got a Beanie and a cap… Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man who's got a tam and a trilby… but don’t forget the Pamela… also both a name and a form of headgear… I’m  Dan van Voorhis

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.