Helmut Thielicke

In 1942 he assumed theological office in Stuttgart, from where he delivered numerous sermons and went on lecture tours, continually made difficult by the government by means of bans on travel, publication and preaching.

Thielicke published a critique of Bultmann's composition about the demythologisation of the New Testament, which gave rise to a respectful, but inconclusive correspondence between the two.

Hoping to promote Christian democracy in postwar Germany, he proposed a plan in 1942 that led to the establishment of the first Evangelical Academy in Bad Boll in 1945.

[1] The bombing of Stuttgart in 1944 forced Thielicke and his family to go to Korntal, where he continued his lecture tours and preaching services in the following years; these were anonymously translated into many languages in Switzerland and read on various fronts of the war.

As a consequence, he took over a professorship at the newly reopened theological faculty in Tübingen in 1947, being made administrative head of the university and President of the Chancellor's Conference in 1951.