Kurt Scharf

Kurt Scharf (October 21, 1902 - March 28, 1990) was a German clergyman and bishop of the Evangelical Church in Germany.

Life

Kurt Scharf was born in Landsberg an der Warthe in the Prussian Province of Brandenburg (now Gorzów Wielkopolski in Poland). After completing his Abitur he studied Protestant theology in Berlin and was a member of the Studentenverbindung Verein Deutscher Studenten Berlin (a member of the Verband der Vereine Deutscher Studenten). In the 1930s he worked as a pastor for the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union in Sachsenhausen, a locality of Oranienburg and as such had occasional opportunities to tend to the inmates of the homonymous concentration camp there. After the war as president of the Brandenburg Synod of the Nazi-opponent Confessing Church he became the chairman of the conference of Landesbruderräte (councils of the Confessing Church in individual states). In 1945 he was appointed provost and leader of the consistory of the old-Prussian March of Brandenburg ecclesiastical province. In 1952 he was given an honorary doctorate by the Faculty of Theology at Humboldt University. From 1966 to 1976 he was the elected bishop of the Evangelical Church in Berlin-Brandenburg (new name of the March of Brandenburg ecclesiastical province after it assume independence in 1948), although since 1961 the bishop's area of responsibility and influence had been restricted to West Berlin. As a result of this he functioned as the bishop of the Western...
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