Canon Dick Lewis, and other members of the Anglican-Lutheran Society, write:
BISHOP Johannes Hempel of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Saxony, and a former president of the World Council of Churches (WCC), died on 23 April, aged 91.
Born in the Saxon town of Zittau on 23 March 1929, Johannes Hempel was Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Saxony from 1972 until his retirement in 1994. He had been elected to the Central and Executive Committees of the WCC in 1975 and, at the WCC’s sixth Assembly in Vancouver in 1983, was elected one of the WCC’s seven presidents, a post he held until 1991.
Bishop Hempel was involved in ecumenical work throughout his career. David Tustin, former Bishop of Grimsby and a former Anglican President of the Anglican-Lutheran Society, served with Bishop Hempel, a Lutheran delegate, on the Anglican-Lutheran European Regional Commission (ALERC) from 1980 to 1982. The Helsinki report (1982) of ALERC added substantially to the doctrinal consensus begun by the Pullach report of 1972. He and I chaired the tripartite Conversations in 1987-88 which led to the Meissen report, On the Way to Visible Unity, of 1988. It was he who, on behalf of the Federation of Evangelical Churches in the German Democratic Republic, hosted our final meeting at Meissen in March 1988, though he was prevented by illness from attending on the last morning.
In 1981, Bishop Hempel invited the WCC to hold its Central Committee meeting in Dresden, where his Saxony Church had its headquarters: a city known for its efforts in promoting reconciliation after experiencing massive destruction in the closing months of the Second World War. Bishop Hempel and Bishop John Gibbs had become very close friends and worked together to strengthen the link between Dresden and Coventry which had been established in 1959. Bishop Hempel continued to work hard over many years to further Anglo-German reconciliation.
On the 500th anniversary of the birth of Martin Luther in 1983, Bishop Hempel, who was then Presiding Bishop of the Federation of Evangelical Churches in the German Democratic Republic (GDR), welcomed representatives of all the main Christian world communions to East Germany to mark the occasion. Among those present were the Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie, and Christopher Hill, at that time the Archbishop’s Secretary for Ecumenical Affairs.
“In preparation for that visit,” Bishop Hill says, “I visited the German Democratic Republic and stayed with Bishop Hempel and his family for a couple of days in Dresden. One evening, he told me of the agonies of conscience he had because he himself could travel as a privileged person unlike his fellow pastors.
“During that visit, Bishop Hempel not only invited Robert Runcie to preach on the German Remembrance Sunday in the Holy Cross Church in Dresden, but also to co-preside. The liturgy was very similar indeed to 1662 and the music included some by Heinrich Schütz, Master of Music in Dresden from 1615-72. In addition, Bishop Hempel asked me to assist in the administration of the chalice. The church was packed, and, in receiving the sacrament, as well as saying “Amen”, many said ‘Danke’ for our visit.”
Dame Mary Tanner, who was also present, writes: “I remember Archbishop Robert administering the cup in that service in Dresden with tears in his eyes as the young people wearing peace badges held his hand and thanked him for coming to be with them. He remembered that these were the people whom he had faced in the tanks during the war.
“On the walk back from the service, the Archbishop said that we must do something to bring our Churches closer together. Shortly after returning to England, he wrote to the Presiding Bishops of East and West Germany suggesting that formal conversations be set up to explore the way of reconciliation.”
The same year, 1983, Bishop Hempel had given strong support to the WCC’s Vancouver Assembly’s call for a conciliar process for justice, peace, and the integrity of creation. In the GDR, the initiative culminated in an ecumenical assembly in Dresden in 1989 that made unprecedented demands for political change, just months before the communist-ruled republic was gripped by mass protests largely resulting from a Church-based peace movement with the motto “Swords into Ploughshares”.
John Arnold, in 1983 a member of Archbishop Runcie’s team, recalls: “The moment in 1989 when the Mayor of Dresden sent for Bishop Hempel to discuss the situation in the city was one of the key events which led up to the fall of the Berlin Wall slightly later. What happened in Berlin was more spectacular, but the turning-points had already occurred in Dresden and Leipzig.”
Bishop Hempel’s successor, Bishop Volker Kress, said that “in the dramatic times before and after 1989, he acted with great spiritual authority”.
The end of communism in the GDR was followed by German unification in 1990, and the following year, the Protestant Churches from East and West Germany were reunited under the umbrella of the EKD. In 1991, Johannes Hempel became the first East German bishop to become Deputy Chair of the first Council of the reunited EKD.
On hearing of his death, Bishop Heinrich Bedford-Strohm, the present Chair of the EKD, praised Bishop Hempel’s commitment to the WCC and his efforts “to make visible that we are the one Church of Jesus Christ, whatever our confession or national or cultural background”.
Bishop Hill adds: “On my visit, in Leipzig, Bishop Hempel introduced me to a young student who had just been prevented from taking a university course because he had said the wrong things in his school magazine.
“I last saw Bishop Johannes when, in a Council of European Churches capacity, I attended the Synod of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) in Dresden, five years ago. Sadly, his wife had Alzheimer’s, but they were both there for the festival eucharist in the newly restored Frauenkirche. He was frail but mentally very much there, and we enjoyed some reminiscence.”
May Johannes Hempel rest in peace and rise in glory.
