Maurus Gerner-Beuerle

Maurus Gerner-Beuerle (28 January 1903 – 10 August 1982) was a German Lutheran theologian and pastor who served for many years as the "Domprediger" at Bremen Cathedral. His gifts as a narrator and as a preacher, along with his commitment to truth led to his becoming one of the best known Christian preachers of the post-war generation in West Germany. He was, in addition, an author and poet. Much of his published work appeared in German, but some was written and published, at least partially, in the Alemannic he had learned as a child in South Baden.

Life Provenance and early years Maurus Wilibald Beuerle was born and grew up in the village Hausen im Wiesental, a short distance up the valley from Lörrach, in the extreme south-west of Germany. He was the third-born of his parents' four recorded children. He was born into a Protestant family: his father, Oskar Beuerle (1867-1952), served as the village pastor between 1901 and 1933. At Sankt Blasien he ran into difficulties. The prayer room that the congregation had formerly used had recently ceased to be available, and there was a pressing need to organise the construction of a little Protestant church for the congregation to use. Sankt Blasien was home to a powerful Jesuit school (which would be closed down by the government in 1939). There was inherent scope for divisions between Catholics and Protestants in the village, while both church communities had faced a new set of pressures and threats since the National Socialists had taken power across Germany in 1933 and rapidly transformed Germany into a one- party dictatorship. For Gerner-Beuerle there was an urgent need to raise funds for the construction of a new church. Meanwhile, it was also at Sankt Blasien that on 12 May 1935 his mother died of cancer, aged only 57. Before there had been time to make very much progress on the new church his Tuberculosis returned. Between 1936 and 1937 Maurus Gerner-Beuerle was obliged to take a prolonged cure, locked away from all contact for several months at a sanatorium with Specialist physicians in Davos. After that there was a further protracted period of convalescence at Schloss Elmau in Upper Bavaria. The treatment evidently worked: for forty years between 1936 and 1976 he was spared further health crises. But in during his absence from Sankt Blasien the parish council had become appallingly split over the funding for the proposed new Protestant church. Leading the opposition was Karl Bronner, the proprietor of a small shop in the parish and a Hitlerite extremist. Another villager, Ferdinand Odenheimer, promised to make a substantial cash donation. Odenheimer was also the proprietor of a shop, but it was a large one. Of greater significance, given that antisemitic racism had become a core underpinning of government strategy since 1933, was that Ferdinand Odenheimer was Jewish. It may have been as early as 1933, and was almost certainly before the parish council had had any opportunity to accept the gift offered by Odenheimer, that Karl Bronner lodged an objection to the possibility that it might be accepted. Regional church leaders were called in and prevaricated, seeking to impose various conditions that were either difficult or else impossible to meet. As the local minister, Gerner-Beuerle was forbidden by the church hierarchy from involving himself in the dispute. It is clear from his letters that he had already taken a firm opinion in favour of accepting Odenheimer's cash, however, and it is likely that parish councillors were not kept entirely in the dark as to their church minister's view of the matter. In 1936 Gerner-Beuerle applied for a "loft conversion" upper floor to be added to the apartment which he shared with his wife (whom he had married in 1932) and children (the first of whom was born in 1933). The parish council and the regional church leadership, delighted to find a simple question on which they could both agree, jointly turned down his request. That same year the parish council formally lodged a complaint against their minister. A further blow was the discovery that his vicar (deputy), Wolfgang Lorenz, was "scheming" against him. The new church was nevertheless consecrated on 13 December 1936.

The difficult years of immediate post-war period marked the high point of Gerner-Beuerle's hands-on pastoral role. He could come up to a crowd of people who had been pushed aside, while united more closely together through their shared hunger and the cold, and speak well-chosen words of consolation necessary to renew their self-confidence. His sermons were discussed on the streets and in the trams, and sometimes were even aired on the local radio, which meant having to contend with American military censorship. The first booklet of his sermons appeared as early as 1947, subjected to censorship. During the 1950s and 1960s, as material conditions improved, he continued to serve the city folk as a tireless pastor, a patient listener and a highly esteemed preacher.

The Johann-Peter-Hebel award is organised by the parish council of Hausen im Wiesental in celebration of the village's most famous son, whose father had worked as a weaver there during the winters in the 1760s. The Dialectal poet himself later lived there for many years. It is not impossible that Maurus Gerner-Beuerle's own close connections with the village played their part in his receipt of the award in 1971. The village authorities followed up the award with strong backing for the publication of a second volume of Gerner-Beuerle's German of that time and Alemannic poets. "Herrgottsbrünnli" was published locally in 1980. The poems in it again drew primarily on the author's boyhood years. Thus encouraged, during his final years the poet pastor bombarded the parish council with more poetry, much of which had been written long ago, but some of which was newly written. There would be no more literary awards, however.

Gerner-Beuerle's narrative abilities are beyond question: there is an obvious overlap between his published work and his gifts as a preacher. Many of the poems are examples of "Gelegenheitsdichtung" (loosely, "Occasional poetry"), albeit without overt commercial motivation. Many express a love for a distant illuminated vision of homeland (conflated with the poet's childhood). There are carefully shaped pearls on love. Of course there are prayers, poems of worship and laments against war. His printed output also includes many hectographed sermons and individually printed articles, appearing in church publications such as the "Dom Nachrichten" published by Bremen Cathedral, and in mainstream regional newspapers such as the Bremer Nachrichten and the Weser Kurier. There are many other written pieces that were never published, but are retained as an archive by Gerner-Beuerle's estate. There are hundreds of letters testifying to his prolific letter writing. Gerner-Beuerle sorted these himself. There are sets of letters from members of the congregations at each of the three parishes in which he served, and others from friends, from members of the community at Elmau, from his longtime mentor Johannes Müller, from family members and from the well-known personalities he had come across.