Kortheuer, Christian Hermann Wilhelm August

Protestant pastor

Born: 03.01.1868 in Wiesbaden

Died: 31.05.1963 in Königsfeld (Black Forest)

Kortheuer studied Protestant theology in Greifswald, Halle and Marburg until 1890, during which time he attended the preacher's seminary in Herborn.

After his ordination in 1893, he was an assistant preacher and from 1894 a pastor in Eibelshausen. After serving as a pastor in Hochheim and Flörsheim/Main from 1899, he became pastor of the Lutherkirche in Wiesbaden in 1911 and chairman of the "Kirchlich-positiven Vereinigung" in 1913. From 1914-18 he was a field chaplain and military hospital chaplain. In 1919, he was appointed a part-time consistorial councillor by the Prussian Minister of Culture Konrad Haenisch and confirmed by the French occupation authorities. He also worked on the new Nassau church constitution of 1922.

In 1925, he was elected Bishop of Nassau by the first Nassau regional church congress. In 1933, the new state church congress, led by the "German Christians", decided to unite Nassau with Hesse-Darmstadt and Frankfurt am Main to form the "Evangelical State Church of Nassau-Hesse". Kortheuer was retired and the Wiesbaden market church pastor Ernst Ludwig Dietrich was appointed "plenipotentiary".

Kortheuer sought to mediate between the Confessing Church and the new church leadership in the "church struggle". He remained a leading figure in the Inner Mission in Nassau until 1959. In 1945, he was appointed provisional head of the Protestant Church in Nassau and Frankfurt by District President Hans Bredow; he held this office for Nassau until 1947. Kortheuer's main focus was on inner mission, popular mission, church building and pastoral care. In 1927, the University of Marburg awarded him an honorary doctorate in theology.