24 Facts About Hans Ehrenberg

Hans Ehrenberg was born into a liberal Jewish family, the eldest of three children.

Hans Ehrenberg's parents were Emilie and Otto Ehrenberg, brother of Victor Ehrenberg, a German jurist, and Richard Ehrenberg, a German economist.

Hans Ehrenberg first became a private docent, then a professor of philosophy at the University of Heidelberg.

Rosenzweig later claimed that "Hans Ehrenberg was my real teacher in philosophy".

One of his cousins, Hedwig Hans Ehrenberg, studied physics and mathematics at the University of Goettingen, where she met and later married Max Born.

Hans Ehrenberg volunteered for the First World War and served as a non-commissioned officer, then a lieutenant after late 1914.

Hans Ehrenberg left the war and army early due to reasons of health, as did many philosophers, thinkers, musicians and writers, in all armies and on all fronts.

Hans Ehrenberg devoted more time to his philosophical and literary interests.

Hans Ehrenberg had seen the war as a legitimate defensive war, but during this time and afterwards, his views changed completely.

Hans Ehrenberg joined the Social Democratic Party in 1918, and for 18 months, was a city councilman in Heidelberg, as well as a member of workers' and soldiers' committees.

Hans Ehrenberg began his theological studies in Munster, in 1922, completing his second theological exam in 1924.

Hans Ehrenberg attended the World Conference of Life and Work in Stockholm, in 1925, and became friends with Nathan Soderblom and the English ecumenist George Bell.

Hans Ehrenberg got involved in the Kampfbund christlicher Arbeiter, though he left the SPD, feeling that parish work was incompatible with political party activism.

Hans Ehrenberg became one of the founders of the Confessing Church.

Hans Ehrenberg continued to work for the Confessing Church, whose ministers in Bochum openly showed solidarity with him.

Hans Ehrenberg's home was destroyed in the pogroms of Kristallnacht and a few days later, he was taken to Sachsenhausen concentration camp.

Hans Ehrenberg had had a correspondence with Bell and was perhaps more significant than Franz Hildebrandt or Bonhoeffer in convincing Bell of the growing crisis in German churches under the Nazi state.

Hans Ehrenberg spoke openly about the German confessional church in England in an effort to prevent the growing disaster in Germany.

Hans Ehrenberg returned to Germany in 1947, after the war, working as a minister at the Bethel Institution in Bielefeld.

Hans Ehrenberg's papers are archived at the Westphalian Protestant church archives in Bielefeld.

Hans Ehrenberg was one of the few German Protestant theologians, even within the Confessing Church, to publicly express his vehement opposition to the antisemitism of the Nazis and publicly declare his support of the Jewish people.

Hans Ehrenberg strongly urged the Protestant church to take the same stand.

Hans Ehrenberg criticised Christian antisemitism and emphasized the similarities between Judaism and Christianity.

The Hans Ehrenberg Prize is awarded at the Protestant Christuskirche in Bochum, where Ehrenberg had been pastor.