Dorothee Sölle

Dorothee Steffensky-Sölle (; 1929–2003), known as Dorothee Sölle, was a German Lutheran liberation theologian who coined the term "Christofascism".

Life and career Sölle was born Dorothee Nipperdey on 30 September 1929 in Cologne, Germany. Her father was Professor of labour law Hans Carl Nipperdey, who would later become the first president of the West-German Federal Labour Court from 1954 to 1963. Sölle studied theology, philosophy, and literature at the University of Cologne, earning a doctorate with a thesis on the connections between theology and poetry. She taught briefly in Aachen before returning to Cologne as a university lecturer. She became active in politics, speaking out against the Vietnam War, the arms race of the Cold War, and injustices in the developing world. Notably, from 1968 to 1972 she organized the weekly ecumenical (political prayer night) taking place in the Antoniterkirche (Cologne). Those were sunday evening services which by means of prayers, performances and considerations of protest addressed contemporary issues such as the war in Vietnam/Laos/Campodia, authoritarian patterns in church, faith and public life.

Between 1975 and 1987, she spent six months a year at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, where she was a professor of systematic theology. Although she never held a professorship in Germany, the former Benedictine priest , with whom she had her fourth child and with whom she organized the . The 19th century Germany historian and university professor Thomas Nipperdey has been her brother.

Sölle died of a heart attack at a conference in Göppingen on 27 April 2003. She has been buried on the Nienstedten Cemetery in Hamburg.

Theology The idea of a God who was "in heaven in all its glory" while Auschwitz was organized was "unbearable" for Sölle. God has to be protected against such simplifications. For some people Sölle was a kind of prophet of Christianity, who abolished the separation of theological science and practice of life, while for others she was a heretic, The composer Ludger Stühlmeyer converted Sölle's poems Kreuzigen and Atem Gottes hauch mich an into musical compositions as well. The vocal and organ arrangements were commissioned by a circle of friends of the Evangelische Akademie Tutzing; the work was first performed in April 2013 and included a reading by Ursula Baltz-Otto during a commemoration of the 10th anniversary of the death of Dorothee Sölle.