Hans Philipp Ehrenberg (; 4 June 1883 – 21 March 1958) was a German Jewish philosopher and theologian. One of the co-founders of the Confessing Church, he was forced to emigrate to England because of his Jewish ancestry and his opposition to Nazism.
Life
1883–1914 Hans Ehrenberg was born into a liberal Jewish family,Suzanne Schatz, Hans Ehrenberg – Ein judenchristlicher Pfarrer in Dortmund (PDF) Retrieved November 27, 2010 the eldest of three children.G.V.R. Born, F.R.S., "The Wide-Ranging Family History of Max Born" (PDF) The Royal Society. (2002) pages 224 and 240. Retrieved November 28, 2010 His parents were Emilie (née Fischel) and Otto Ehrenberg, brother of Victor Ehrenberg, a German jurist, and Richard Ehrenberg, a German economist. His younger brothers were Paul Ehrenberg and the historian Victor Ehrenberg, father of British historian Sir Geoffrey Elton and physicist Lewis Elton. From 1898 to 1900, he attended the Christianeum in Altona.Archive of the Christianeum After his graduation exam at the Wilhelm Gymnasium in Hamburg in 1902, and then studied economics, law and political studies (Rechtswissenschaften und Staatswissenschaften) in Göttingen, Berlin, Heidelberg and Munich.Peter Noss, Hans Ehrenberg biography, Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon, Vol. 19, pp. 201–219. Nordhausen (2001) . Retrieved March 10, 2010 His attitude towards workers was already clear by 1906, when he wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on the situation of steel workers (Hüttenarbeiter) in the Ruhr Valley. After his military service in 1907–1908, he continued his studies in philosophy and completed his doctorate in Heidelberg in 1909 and habilitation in 1910. He first became a private docent, then a professor of philosophy at the University of Heidelberg. His philosophical interests included the landscape of peace, truth, goodness and liberation. Ehrenberg was baptised as a Protestant Christian in Berlin in 1911.Rüdiger Lux. Franz Rosenzweig biography. Jewish Virtual Library. (1986) Retrieved March 10, 2010 Around this time, he developed a close friendship with his cousin Franz Rosenzweig, and with Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy,Arnold Betz, "Franz Rosenzweig Essay and Exhibit" Divinity Library of Vanderbilt University, official website. Retrieved November 28, 2010M. Darrol Bryant and Hans R. Huessy, Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy: Studies in his Life and Thought Edwin Mellen Press, Toronto, Canada (1986) page 66. Viktor von Weizsäcker, and Martin Buber.Maurice Friedman, Martin Buber's Life and Work Originally published by E.P. Dutton, New York. One-volume edition published by Wayne State University Press, Detroit (1988), p. 107.Mathew Jose Makkanal, "Martin Buber's Concept of Religion" Retrieved November 30, 2010Wayne Cristaudo and Frances Huessy (Editors), "The Cross and the Star: The Post-Nietzschean Christian and Jewish Thought of Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy and Franz Rosenzweig" (PDF) Cambridge Scholars Publishing (2009) Retrieved November 30, 2010 Rosenzweig later claimed that "Ehrenberg was my real teacher in philosophy"."Franz Rosenzweig" Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Stanford University, official website. (February 27, 2009) Retrieved November 28, 2010 In 1913, he married Else Anna Zimmermann (1890–1970), a linguist, teacher and descendant of Martin Luther. They had two children, Juliane and Andreas."Respons Dr. Günter Brackelmann" Hans Ehrenberg Society, official website. Retrieved November 30, 2010 One of his uncles was Victor Mordechai Goldschmidt.The Ehrenberg/Elton Papers at the German-Jewish Archive, Special Collections of The Library, University of Sussex, Brighton, England One of his cousins, Hedwig Ehrenberg, studied physics and mathematics at the University of Goettingen, where she met and later married Max Born. Hans Ehrenberg, with Franz Rosenzweig and Eugen Rosenstock, was in regular correspondence with Louis D Brandeis through the friendship of their maternal families. In view of Hans Ehrenberg's father's and uncles' relatives, friends and acquaintances, and their travels over the lands and voyages across the seas and oceans, the reach of his communications extended to a world-wide network in many countries in all continents.
1914–1933 Ehrenberg volunteered for the First World War and served as a non-commissioned officer, then a lieutenant after late 1914. He won the Iron Cross, 2nd Class as well as the Badische Offiziersorden (Zähringer Löwe 2.Klasse). He left the war and the army early due to reasons of health. He then devoted more time to his philosophical and literary interests.
Ehrenberg had seen the war as a legitimate defensive war, but during this time and afterwards, his views changed completely. He spoke of war crimes and German guilt."Die Namensgebung" Official website, Hans-Ehrenberg-Schule. History of the school. (2006) He joined the Social Democratic Party (SPD) in 1918, and for 18 months, was a city councilman in Heidelberg, as well as a member of workers' and soldiers' committees. He began making Christian pacifist statements in 1919. In the same year, he received an associate professorship in Heidelberg. At this time, working with Christian socialists, he began to think about becoming a Protestant minister.
Ehrenberg began his theological studies in Münster, in 1922, completing his second theological exam in 1924. In 1923 and 1925, he and Nicolai von Bubnov published two volumes of German translations of Russian theological writings which were acquired and read by Dietrich Bonhoeffer and twice quoted from an essay that was in the second volume.A Crossings Celebration: Ed Schroeder and His Ministry (PDF) Greenhorn Productions, St. Charles, Missouri and HomeLee Press, University City, Missouri (1993) pp 10–11. Retrieved November 27, 2010 He attended the World Conference of Life and Work in Stockholm, in 1925, and became friends with Nathan Soderblom and the English ecumenist George Bell. With Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy he was a co-founder, and also a prolific member of the philosophical discussion group and journal, "Die Kreatur", during the time 1925 to 1930.
Abandoning a promising academic career, in 1925, he became the minister of Pauluskirche in Bochum,"Station 12: Christuskirche" Stadt Bochum (City of Bochum), official website. Retrieved April 2, 2011 in a heavily working-class area. He got involved in the Kampfbund christlicher Arbeiter (The Fighting Christian Workers), though he left the SPD, feeling that parish work was incompatible with political party activism. In 1927, he made speeches on church and antisemitism in opposition to riots organised by Nazi brownshirts. One lecture he gave in Hattingen, entitled "The Church and Anti-semitism" prompted a letter of complaint against him to the consistory in Münster:"We cannot believe that a governing body of our Church approves of a race-conscious Jew who, as a Protestant clergyman, lectures German Protestant Christians about political anti-semitism based on racial attitudes.Original version: "Wir können nicht glauben, daß eine die Oberaufsicht leitende Behörde unserer Kirche es billigt, daß ein rassenbewußter Jude als evangelischer Geistlicher vom rassischen Standpunkt aus die deutschen evangelischen Christen über den politischen Antisemitismus belehren soll."
1933–1945
After the Nazis seized power in 1933, more attacks followed and Ehrenberg's moral and pedagogical integrity were put in question.
Ehrenberg became one of the founders of the Confessing Church. He and four other Westphalian ministers had already formulated the "Bochum Confession" in May 1933. The first of its kind, it contained a denial of Nazi ideology and a confession of Christianity's Jewish origins. In July 1933, he published 72 Leitsätze zur judenchristlichen Frage (Seventy-Two Theses to the Jewish-Christian Question), clearly stating his own opposition to antisemitism and calling on the Protestant church to do the same.Wolfgang Gerlach. Translated by Victoria Barnett. And the Witnesses Were Silent: The Confessing Church and the Persecution of the Jews (2000) page 129. After he was the target of attacks in Der Stürmer, and facing pressure from the German Christian church authorities, Ehrenberg asked for early retirement in 1937. He continued, however, to work for the Confessing Church, whose ministers in Bochum openly showed solidarity with him.
In September 1938, he was barred from delivering any speech or sermon. His home was destroyed in the pogroms of Kristallnacht and a few days later, he was taken to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. In 1939, he was able to emigrate to England, thanks to the intervention and pledges of Carl Friedrich Goerdeler, Hans Koch and George Bell, Anglican bishop of Chichester.Wendy Leigh, "My family was lucky to escape. Millions didn't; As Jews were rounded up and sent to the Nazi death camps, Ben Elton's family fled to a new life." Scottish Daily Record & Sunday (2001) Retrieved November 29, 2010 He had had a correspondence with Bell and was perhaps more significant than Franz Hildebrandt or Bonhoeffer in convincing Bell of the growing crisis in German churches under the Nazi state.John S. Conway, Book review of Die Kirchen und das Dritte Reich. Spaltungen und Abwehrkampfe 1934 bis 1937 by Gerhard Besier. Propylaen, Munich (2001) Association of Contemporary Church Historians Newsletter, Vol. III, No. 2 (February 2002) Retrieved November 27, 2010 His family joined him shortly afterward. Ecumenism, religious unity, became increasingly important to him here.
Even though Ehrenberg was strictly anti-communist, his life was saved on several occasions by a communist trade union leader,Günter Brakelmann, [Hans Ehrenberg. Ein judenchristliches Schicksal in Deutschland Part 2: Widerstand, Verfolgung und Emigration 1933–1939. Hans–Ehrenberg–Gesellschaft, Vols. 3 and 4. Waltrop (1997/1999) in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
Ehrenberg spoke openly about the German confessional church in England in an effort to prevent the growing disaster in Germany. George Bell also spoke out about Nazi interference in the church.Keith Clements, "Barmen and the Ecumenical Movement" (PDF) World Council of Churches (2009) Retrieved December 10, 2010 Ehrenberg and George Bell were of the same view that civilians and civilian infrastructure should not be affected by the ongoing war in central Europe.
His close friends included Pastor Dr. Werner Koch, a surviving member of the German resistance and the youngest brother of Hans Koch.
1945–1958 Ehrenberg returned to Germany in 1947, after the war, working as a minister at the Bethel Institution in Bielefeld. In 1953, he returned to Heidelberg, where he died in 1958. His papers are archived at the Westphalian Protestant church archives in Bielefeld. Unlike his colleague and friend, Hermann Maas, he was unable to travel for personal health reasons to Israel after 1950 to visit friends and colleagues there, namely Martin Buber, Raphael Rosenzweig, among others.
Legacy