F. K. Otto Dibelius

Friedrich Karl Otto Dibelius (15 May 1880 – 31 January 1967) was a German bishop of the Evangelical Church in Berlin-Brandenburg, a self-described anti-Semite and up to 1934 a conservative, who became a staunch opponent of Nazism and communism.

He then also became a member of the consistory, an administrative body, of that ecclesiastical province and joined the right-wing and anti-semite German National People's Party.

In this respect Dibelius regarded himself as consciously anti-Jewish, explaining in a circular to the pastors in his general superintendency district of Kurmark, "I have always considered myself an anti-Semite.

[5] Even after this clearly anti-Semitic action he repeated in his circular to the pastors of Kurmark on the occasion of Easter (16 April 1933) his anti-Jewish attitude, giving the same words as in 1928.

The act was strictly opposed by Dibelius, who saw the separation of state and church as a prerequisite of the latter's free development to achieve its best role.

Representatives of all 28 Protestant churches were to attend the newly created National Synod to confirm the designated Ludwig Müller as the Reich's Bishop.

In the campaign for the premature re-election of all presbyters and synodals on 23 July the Nazi government sided with the German Christians.

[10] Thus, the list, which had been renamed as Gospel and Church (German: Evangelium und Kirche), took refuge with the Evangelical Press Association (German: Evangelischer Preßverband), presided over by Dibelius and printed new election posters in its premises in Alte Jacobstraße # 129, Berlin.

Before the end of World War II Dibelius addressed some moderate incumbents of leading positions in the official Old-Prussian church, in order to establish their acceptance and co-operation in a future provisional leading body – the so-called Beirat (advisory council) of the Old-Prussian church, once the Nazis were defeated.

In June an overall provisional church executive, the Council of the Evangelical Church of the Old-Prussian Union (German: Rat der Evangelischen Kirche der altpreußischen Union) emerged, acting until December 1948 mostly in Central Germany, since traffic and communication between the German regions had collapsed.

The representatives of the six still existing Old-Prussian ecclesiastical provinces (March of Brandenburg, Pomerania, Rhineland, Saxony, Silesia, and Westphalia; the other three, located in the Former eastern territories of Germany had fallen under Polish and Soviet rule, newly annexed by Poland and the Soviet Union) and the central Old-Prussian Evangelical Supreme Ecclesiastical Council used the occasion to make fundamental decisions about the future of the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union.

In December 1946 Dibelius spent two weeks visiting prisoner-of-war camps in England, Scotland and Wales, a journey that had been made possible by the Control Commission for Germany and the Minister of State for War, at the request of Geoffrey Fisher, Archbishop of Canterbury.

The schism within the Old-Prussian church was not yet fully overcome, since only the most radical German Christians had been removed or had resigned from their positions.

Many neutrals, forming the majority of clergy and parishioners, and many proponents of the quite doubtable compromising policy at the time of the struggle of the churches assumed positions.

So after the foundation of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in the Soviet zone of occupation on 7 October 1949, including – apart from West Berlin the bulk of the territory covered by the Evangelical Church in Berlin-Brandenburg -, its Bishop Dibelius was often defamed in the East as the propagandist of the western Konrad Adenauer government.

On 24 February 1950 Dibelius – heading the Evangelical Supreme Ecclesiastical Council – invited for an extraordinary Old-Prussian General Synod, which convened on 11–13 December in Berlin.

The new constitution (German: Ordnung der Evangelischen Kirche der altpreußischen Union) transformed the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union into a mere umbrella and did away with the Evangelical Supreme Ecclesiastical Council, replacing it by the Church Chancery (German: Kirchenkanzlei), as administrative body.