# Der Lutheraner_Frankfurt am Main_Mai 1949_S52
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Page 52 May 1949 Number 5

In Brief:

From the Lutheran Church Office

The Lutheran Church Office, as the chancery of the United Evangelical Lutheran Church in Germany (VELKD) is now called, took up its work on April 1 in Hannover. According to statements by its director, Senior Territorial Church Councillor Brunotte, the relatively small agency is to be concerned above all with fostering fruitful cooperation among the Lutheran territorial churches newly united in the VELKD, and with cultivating the connection with the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD). Since its founding last year in Eisenach, the VELKD comprises the territorial churches of Hannover, Braunschweig, Hamburg, Schaumburg-Lippe, Schleswig-Holstein, Bavaria, the Land of Saxony, Mecklenburg, and Thuringia. The territorial church of Eutin is expected to join shortly as the tenth member. The Lutheran territorial churches of Lübeck, Oldenburg, and Württemberg remain outside the VELKD.

Senior Territorial Church Councillor Brunotte Also President of the EKD Church Chancery

The Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany elected the Hannover Senior Territorial Church Councillor Brunotte as successor to D. Asmussen, to be President of the EKD chancery. Thus the Lutheran Church Office and the EKD church chancery will be joined under a common leadership through personal union. As for the future seat of the chancery, which is currently still located in Schwäbisch Gmünd, four cities in Lower Saxony are under closer consideration.

This personal union in the important field of church administration, however, makes it seem highly unlikely that the concerns of the Lutheran churches will find vigorous representation within, let alone vis-à-vis, the EKD.

Bishop D. Johnsen Murdered?

Reports from returning prisoners of war strongly suggest, with a very high degree of probability, that the former territorial bishop of Braunschweig, D. Johnsen, who had fallen into Yugoslav captivity as a prisoner of war, became there the victim of an assassination. According to the consistent testimony of witnesses, he was held in an officers' camp for blocked units and had for some time already been pursued with particular malice by the camp commandant. When he was ordered one night to empty the latrine pit, a guard commanded him to harness the horses in the stable instead. According to the two comrades who had been assigned to this detail with him, D. Johnsen explained that he did not know how to do this and would rather help with emptying the pit. But the guard forced D. Johnsen to go with him into the stable. He did not return from this errand. The camp inmates were told the next day: "The priest attempted to escape and lies shot dead out in the field." D. Johnsen's comrades are convinced that he was killed in the stable. According to epd.

Estonian Clergy to Siberia?

According to a Swedish newspaper report, the bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Estonia, Pähn, formerly a clergyman in Reval, has been arrested along with ten other clergymen and deported to Siberia. He had been appointed bishop by the Bolsheviks in 1944 because of his anti-German stance, but appears to have since fallen out of favor.

A Landmark Disappears

The ruin of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in Berlin is now, after all, to be demolished. It will not be blown up, as originally intended, but gradually dismantled — a time-consuming and dangerous task that will take at least until the autumn of this year. An open square is to be created in place of the church.

Saxon Territorial Church Forced into Building Ban

A building ban on all church construction in the Land of Saxony has been announced in a decree from the Dresden Territorial Church Office. The reason given is the difficult financial situation of the territorial church caused by the sharp decline in tax revenue, which necessitates extraordinary economy measures. epd

Rudolf Schäfer, a Preacher with Pencil and Brush

In deep respect the "Lutheraner" greets Professor D. Rudolf Schäfer, who has completed the seventh decade of his life and work, and thanks him for all that he has given, in his rich body of work, to the German Christian people.

Rudolf Schäfer has not stood as a preacher of the Gospel in the pulpit. To be sure, he too is a master of the word. The writer of these lines gladly recalls an evening with his Berlin congregation, when he had the artist as an honored guest beside him. From his lips one heard a deeply thoughtful, heartfelt address on the five wise virgins, which has remained unforgettable to many. But Master Schäfer earned his theological doctor's cap as a wordless preacher, through his drawing pencil and painter's brush.

Not that he created only "pious" pictures! He is a true painter of the German people, in whom he is rooted with his very being. Our people's life in its colorful diversity and guileless character he has depicted for us, similarly to Ludwig Richter of old, and yet in a wholly distinctive way: from the child's first timid step to the folded hands of the old man on his deathbed, from the sunny morning when the field calls to the day's work, to the peaceful evening rest, life at home and abroad, in joy and sorrow, in parting and avoiding and homecoming, in peace and in the dark storms of war. All this comes to more than merely "artistic representation." He lives it along with them, in the depths of his heart. Thus his art refreshes the heart far more than merely the eye of the beholder.

Like a revelation of something entirely new appeared his first "picture-portfolios for the German home": "Frau Musica" — "All Sorts of Lights," among others. And yet it was the old, familiar to the heart: here the German soul speaks itself out. There is, for instance, the piece "Violin." The old folk listen to the evening playing of the young lad at the village well; the girl listens too — so deeply absorbed that she does not notice how flower after flower slips from her hand, away with the gently flowing water. From this picture sounds something before which words fall silent. How closely related is Schäfer's pencil-art to the folk song! Thus the painter himself provided his own collection of such songs, "Roses and Rosemary," with a heartfelt introduction and his own illustrations. And these are like new melodies to the old songs. With equal love he immersed himself in the verses and reflections of the faithful, never-aging "Wandsbeck Messenger." In all these pictorial works there is so much thoughtfulness and reverie, so much stern earnestness and again so much roguish smiling, that one never tires of them.

But, as the artist himself says, "almost everywhere a silver string vibrates along" in them: the tone from the invisible world of God. In "Roses and Rosemary" it is especially "the wondrous flower" whose "radiance illumines the forest"; out of its darkness the Holy Three Kings draw near to worship before the flower. The closing of the volume is formed by the ancient hymn "Fairest Lord Jesus." There, in the evening glow at the forest's edge, opposite the tall crucifix, sits on the bench the dear old man (is it not our D. Rocholl?), hands folded on his cane, gazing up in deep devotion at the holy cross. It has been said: "a picture that in power, intimacy, and depth is not easily matched."—

Our picture on the title page leads us to the quiet village churchyard. Through the gate strides Friend Asmus with a companion. It is the place of death; but Matthias Claudius loves it. No horror dwells here. On the graves the cross greets us with the word of life, here Job's confession: "I know that my Redeemer lives," and there the Savior's comfort of Jubilate Sunday: "A little while!" Deep Easter peace suffuses the whole.

The other drawing shows us the blessed goal of those who have fallen asleep in the Lord. There we behold, with the artist's believing eye, the vista with which Paul Gerhardt closes his joyful Easter hymn: "He brings us to the gates / that lead into heaven / on which in golden words / the verse is read: / whoever is mocked there with Him / shall also here be crowned with Him..." Does not this fine Easter sermon go straight to our hearts, comforting and strengthening, precisely in our time of suffering and death?

Here is the power and intimacy of the Lutheran faith. Professor Preuss says: "It is the Lutheran Church in which Schäfer sees and celebrates his homeland." He comes from a Lutheran parsonage. During his years of study in Düsseldorf he was, like his teacher Eduard von Gebhardt, a member of our congregation there. His service belongs to the whole of evangelical Christendom in Germany; but it is rooted in the old Lutheranism that is at once open to the world and reverent, manly and childlike, humble and unyielding in faith.

Thus Rudolf Schäfer has expounded for us the heartfelt hymns of the Lutheran Paul Gerhardt with exquisite pictures. With his pencil-sermon he has also known how to bring us closer to Luther's robust psalms, and with them, to the man Luther himself. In the drawings for the hymn of thanksgiving "Dear Christians, One and All Rejoice," we experience along with him the Man of God's whole inward path of Reformation. There lies the monk thrown across the table of his cell, as if utterly undone. Out of the smoke of the guttering candle the tablets of the Law loom threateningly. "The terror drove me to despair / that nothing but death remained for me—." But God's angel bends over him with