Elisabeth Moltmann-Wendel (25 July 1926 in Herne – 7 June 2016) was a German feminist theologian, best remembered as the founder of the European Society of Women in Theological Research (ESWTR) in 1986. Her publications translated into English include Liberty, Equality, Sisterhood: The Women around Jesus, A Land Flowing with Milk and Honey, I Am My Body, and Rediscovering Friendship.
Life
Provenance and early years
Elisabeth Wendel was born at Herne, a large industrial town a short distance to the west of Dortmund. The entire surrounding region was at that time heavily dependent on mining. She was just 6 in 1933 when the Hitler government took power. Her parents were traditionalist nationalists who detested everything about National Socialism, but as far back as she could ever remember she understood that she must avoid repeating at school everything that was said at home. In 1934 her father died through illness and her mother relocated with the children to Potsdam, just outside Berlin. In 1936, by now aged 10, she found she had become a member of the Hitler Youth organisation after a leather-working club of which she was a member became subsumed into it. (Hitler Youth membership became mandatory at her school a year later.) In Potsdam her mother became increasingly involved with the so-called "Bekennende Kirche" ("Confessing Church"), which had emerged during the 1930s as a reaction by protestant churchmen (and others), such as Karl Barth, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Wilhelm Busch, to government moves to unify Germany's traditionally fragmented protestant church organisations into a single semi-nationalised "Deutsche Evangelische Kirche" ("Church of Germany"). Elisabeth Wendel herself joined the "Bekennende Kirche" in 1942 and was thereafter, according to her obituarist Brigitte Enzner-Probst, spiritually moulded by it.
A woman and a theology student
The tide of the war had turned against Germany in 1942, and the security services had become more intolerant than ever of signs of political dissent on the home front. It was important than ever for Wendel and her family that she should avoid mentioning her membership of the "Bekennende Kirche" at school. In effect, like many in Germany, as a teenager she led two carefully separated parallel lives. In 1944 it was the turn of Wendel and her classmates to be conscripted for military service and she spent the year undertaking labouring work in support of the army until the Soviet army arrived and in Potsdam the Nazi nightmare was replaced by a new set of horrors and uncertainties. After May 1945 she was able to travel from her Potsdam home to Berlin, some 15 miles / 25 kilometers away, to attend lectures in Protestant Theology, initially at a Church College and subsequently at the "Friedrich Wilhelm University" (as it was still known at that time). In 1945 Berlin had been divided for administrative purposes between the armies of the USA, Britain, France and the Soviet Union: the university had ended up administered as part of the Soviet occupation zone. As the Soviet military administration became established she and her contemporaries found themselves under increasing pressure to choose between a version of God and a version of Marx. Many chose Marx, but Wendel chose God. For Wendel, progressing her study of Theology would become easier in the American or British occupation zones than if she remained in Potsdam. At some stage she secured a place at the prestigious University of Tübingen. She was, however, "disappointed with the Theology Faculty there", and while sources are vague over time lines in respect of this period, Wendel's stay at Tübingen was relatively brief, and is indeed ignored by some sources. In 1947 Elisabeth Wendel switched to Göttingen where she continued her studies in Theology. She was, in particular, encouraged in her studies by Otto Weber, the University Professor in Protestant Theology.