Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon

The Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL) is a German biographical encyclopedia covering deceased persons related to the history of the church, philosophy and literature, founded by Friedrich Wilhelm Bautz, the first volume of which appeared in 1975..

Shortly after the Second World War, the pastor Friedrich Bautz developed the idea of writing a biographical lexicon of protestant church figures.

[2] His son, Traugott Bautz (1945–2020), recalls that his father had originally envisioned writing a two-volume handbook.

However, the family's remote and isolated location in the small village of Holtorf (now part of Schnackenburg) on the border with Soviet-occupied Germany, being far from any accessible academic libraries, made such an undertaking impossible at the time.

[2] From there the work, which had been extended in scope to cover non-Protestant Christians and had developed a greater focus on bibliographic information, was printed and distributed initially in loose-leaf fascicles (instalments).