Committee on the Eastern Churches
Committee on the Eastern Churches
1. Brief description
The ‘Eastern Churches Committee’ (OKA) is the name given to a church committee recognised by the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD), which existed from 1946 to 2000 and was responsible for the welfare of Protestant displaced persons and refugees from Eastern Europe.
2. History
As early as 1945, efforts to organise displaced persons and refugees within the church began with the formation of self-help initiatives (from 1946: regional aid committees organised along regional lines ). A push for a unified church organisation came at a working conference of the EKD held in Frankfurt am Main from 29 to 31 July 1946, led by representatives of the churches that had previously existed in the regions of origin of the displaced persons and refugees (‘Eastern and Refugee Churches’). A committee comprising eight members was elected to ‘represent these former churches before the EKiD’.[1] By resolution of the (provisional) Council of the EKD on 10–11 October 1946, this committee, designated the ‘Committee of the Former German Eastern Churches’, was recognised as the representative body of the Protestant churches that no longer existed in the regions of origin and in the former settlement areas of Germans in Eastern Europe. Following uncertainty regarding the allocation of responsibilities and the committee’s relationship with the EKD and the regional churches, statutory clarification was provided in the rules of procedure adopted by the EKD Council on 1 July 1949. These stipulate that the OKA “on behalf of the EKiD […] looks after the Protestant displaced persons from the East”. Its administrative office was established in Hanover in 1950, where the OKA’s work was organised until it ceased operations in 2000. A spokesperson was appointed in each regional church to act as the OKA’s representative.
In order to consolidate the church’s ‘work in Central and Eastern Europe’, the OKA was, following a resolution by the EKD Council, integrated into the‘Protestant Commission for Central and Eastern Europe (EKMOE)’ (see also‘Aid Committees’) within the EKD, thereby bringing its work to an end. The Protestant Press Service announced in April 2000:
The integration of work relating to the Eastern Churches into the EKMOE will help to preserve, in future too, the spiritual, historical and cultural heritage of the displaced persons, refugees and resettlers from the scattered Protestant Eastern Churches. The EKD’s Committee for the Eastern Churches will cease its activities in their current form; the historical aspects of its work will in future be undertaken by a “Specialist Committee for Church History”, which the EKMOE has established.[2]
On 17 October 2000, the responsible Senior Church Councillor reported that this announcement had been fully implemented.
3. Responsibilities and duties
The Rules of Procedure of 1 July 1949, referred to above, set out the OKA’s tasks as follows: to encourage the pastoral and spiritual work of the aid committees and, in collaboration with them, to look after the refugees in the Western Zones. In this respect, the OKA’s responsibilities corresponded to those of the aid committees, which, unlike the OKA, were organised along regional lines. Furthermore, the OKA’s responsibilities included advising the governing bodies of the EKD and the regional churches on matters relating to pastoral care for displaced persons and their integration, as well as on the provision of support for displaced persons, particularly the clergy amongst them.[3] The OKA established standing committees (‘Working Group on Ethics and Law’, ‘Working Group on Religious Education’, ‘Working Group for Protestant Youth Displaced from Their Homelands within the Protestant Parish Youth Movement’, ‘East German Protestant Study Group’, ‘Publications Committee’) and also undertook cultural and academic activities, commented on church policy issues (in some cases in the form of expert reports or memoranda), organised ‘Conferences for Pastors from the East’ and ‘Eastern Church Conferences’ on historical or cultural topics, as well as workshops, and published materials,[4] in particular, from 1956 onwards, the newsletter *Ostkirchliche Information* with news and reports on, amongst other things, church and cultural activities, new publications and events relating to work with displaced persons and resettlers, as well as church announcements from the relevant regions.[5] In 1957, following an agreement between the OKA and the University of Münster, the ‘Eastern Church Institute at the University of Münster’ was established, which carried out academic work until its dissolution in 2008.
4. Controversies
The relationship between the OKA, which resolutely championed the views and interests of displaced persons, and the EKD was not without tension. In 1962, the OKA rejected the recognition of the Oder-Neisse border, as set out in the Tübingen Memorandum, citing the‘right to a homeland’of the displaced persons. The emotionally charged debate at the time over the recognition of the border led the church’s governing bodies to ask whether a more detailed statement from the EKD on Ostpolitik was necessary. It was not the OKA but the ‘EKD Chamber for Public Responsibility’ – in which the displaced persons had no representation – that was then commissioned to draft a paper on the issue of displaced persons and Ostpolitik (the Ostdenkschrift). Although the views of the OKA and other representatives of displaced persons were taken into account, they were unable to influence the memorandum in the way they had hoped.[6] Since then, the OKA’s influence within the EKD Council has steadily declined – a sign of the ‘dissolution of the symbiosis between the EKD and the displaced persons’.[7]
In 1995, the OKA drew up the Loccum Declaration, which incorporated the principles of the ‘Eastern Policy Paper’ and took account of the EKD’s ‘work in Eastern Europe’. Furthermore, the document recalled the flight and expulsion of Germans, whilst at the same time calling on those ‘responsible’ to ‘recognise expulsions and “ethnic cleansing” as inhumane political aberrations that do not contribute to peace [and] to do everything in their power to ensure that such attempts are morally and politically condemned”.[8] This conceptual rapprochement came late, as the principles formulated here had already largely become self-evident. The winding up of the OKA’s work and its integration into the EKMOE in 2000 was criticised by Hartmut Koschyk, the spokesperson on displaced persons’ issues for the CDU/CSU parliamentary group in the Bundestag, as “the countless Protestant Christians who are involved in cross-border reconciliation and understanding work also expect the support of their church in this regard” and because in Eastern Europe “the cultural heritage of the Germans is being rediscovered, particularly by members of the younger generation”.[9] However, even this criticism ultimately failed to prevent the OKA from ceasing its activities.
Bibliography
- Eastern Churches Committee (ed.): How They Came to Be What They Are. The Eastern Churches Committee, the Aid Committees and their Convention. Hanover [c. 1960].
- Hartmut Rudolph: The Protestant Church and Displaced Persons 1945 to 1972. Vol. 1: Churches without a Country. The Reception of Pastors and Parishioners from the East in Post-War West Germany: Emergency Aid, Pastoral Care, Ecclesiastical Integration. Göttingen 1984 (Studies in Contemporary Church History, Series B: Monographs 11) [on the OKA, see in particular pp. 390–403].
- Hartmut Rudolph: The Protestant Church and Displaced Persons 1945 to 1972. Vol. 2: The Church in the New Homeland. Göttingen 1985 (Studies in Contemporary Church History, Series B: Monographs 12).
Web links
- kab.scopearchiv.ch/detail.aspx?ID=232540 (Sources relating to the work of the OKA in the Protestant Central Archive in Berlin)
- miami.uni-muenster.de/Search/Results?lookfor=ostkirchliche&type=AllFields&submitIt=(Eastern Church Information – OKI email)
Notes
[1] Quoted from Rudolph: Evangelische Kirche. Vol. 1, p. 198; see also pp. 63, 95, 212, 390 and 402; the abbreviation ‘EKiD’ was in common use at the time.
[2] Circular from the EKD Press Office, Hanover, 17 April 2000, quoted from Christian Erdmann-Schott: The Expert Committee for Church History of the Protestant Commission for Central and Eastern Europe (EKMOE) under the chairmanship of Peter Maser. In: Ibid. (ed.): Living Within Borders – Overcoming Borders. On the Church History of the 20th Century in East-Central Europe. Festschrift for Peter Maser on his 65th birthday. Berlin, Münster 2008 (Contributions to Theology, Church and Society in the 20th Century 16), pp. 159–171, here p. 162.
[3] The ‘Draft Regulation of the Council of the EKiD on Church Care for Displaced Persons from the East’ is reprinted in: The Minutes of the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany. Vol. 3: 1949. Edited by Karl-Heinz Fix. Göttingen 2006 (Studies in Contemporary Church History, Series A, Sources 11), pp. 256–258; see here for further sources on the establishment and work of the OKA.
[4] An overview of the OKA’s activities is provided by the catalogue of the Evangelical Central Archive in Berlin, kab.scopearchiv.ch/detail.aspx?ID=232540 (accessed 29 April 2015, 26 November 2021).
[5] Publisher: EKD Committee for the Eastern Churches, first edition 1956, last printed edition October 2000; continued as the OKI e-mail newsletter from 2003, published by the Convention of the Former Protestant Eastern Churches.
[6] Sabine Voßkamp: The Catholic Church and Displaced Persons in West Germany. Integration, Identity and the Discourse on Eastern Policy 1945–1972. Stuttgart 2007 (Confession and Society 40), chapter ‘The EKD’s Memorandum on the East and the Correspondence between the Polish and German Bishops in 1965’, esp. pp. 271ff.
[7] Christian–Erdmann Schott: Changes in Perception. The Protestant Church and its Displaced Persons. In: Ibid.: ‘Go forth from your fatherland…’ Displacement – Integration – The Legacy of the Protestant Silesians. Lectures, Essays, Sermons. Berlin, Münster 2008 (Contributions to Theology, Church and Society in the 20th Century 13), pp. 135–149, here p. 144.
[8] OKR Reiner Rinne/EKD Church Office: Integration of work with the Eastern Churches into the EKD’s work on Eastern Europe. In: Ostkirchliche Information, October 2000, pp. 2ff.
[9] CDU/CSU Bundestag Group/Koschyk: The EKD Council should reconsider the dissolution of the Eastern Churches Committee: www.presseportal.de/pm/7846/127892/cdu-csu-bundestagsfraktion-koschyk-rat-der-ekd-sollte-ende-des-ostkirchenausschusses-berdenken (accessed 29 April 2015, 26 November 2021).
Citation
Matthias Weber: Committee on Eastern Churches. In: Online Encyclopaedia on the Culture and History of Germans in Eastern Europe, 2015. URL: ome-lexikon.uni-oldenburg.de/p42124 (accessed 26 November 2021).
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