Eva Hoffmann-Aleith

Eva Hoffmann-Aleith (26 October 1910 - 24 February 2004) was a German evangelical pastor, teacher and author.

As a woman pastor undertaking what was widely seen as a man's job she became a pioneer and a role model for successor generations.

Renate Eva Olga Aleith was born in Bergfeld, a small town in the Bromberg district of what was at that time the Prussian Province of Posen.

She grew up in Berlin, where she attended the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität, embarking on a degree in Philosophy.

She quickly switched to Evangelical Theology.

The Confessional Church ("Bekennende Kirche"), which had emerged during the 1930s as a response to government attempts to take over the churches, remained conflicted on gender issues.

She passed the necessary exams and went on to receive her doctorate by 1937 for a piece of work on church history.

Her dissertation was supervised by Hans Lietzmann and concerned understanding of the Apostle, Paul, during the first and second centuries.

It might have been assumed that she would now progress her career as an academic, but in the event she completed a practical term as a trainee pastor even though, in the context of the time and place, there was no prospect of a woman being appointed by the church to take charge of a parish.

Even fully qualified women pastors were restricted, under the regulations, to looking after the pastoral needs of "women, girls and children".

In 1938 she married Wilhelm Hoffmann, and together they moved to his new parish at Hohenwerbig (Fläming), a rural parish to the south-west of Berlin.

The marriage remained childless.

War broke out in September 1939.

Wilhelm Hoffmann was conscripted into the army in June 1940.

His young wife stayed behind in the parish as his "pastoral assistant" ("geistliche Hilfskraft").

Shortly after this Wilhelm Hoffmann was transferred, in his absence, to Stüdenitz, another rural parish not too far from Berlin.

Eva moved into the rectory with her parents and took on the pastoral duties which her husband would have undertaken in more normal times.

After initial uncertainty over how she should be addressed, the parishioners took to addressing her respectfully as "Frau Doktor" (literally "Mrs. Doctor").

Along with her pastoral work she also taught at the village school as did her father.

In the Soviet zone the worker shortage was exacerbated by large numbers relocating to the western occupation zones, a trend which accelerated towards the end of the 1940s as the economic and political situations on what were becoming the "two halves of Germany" diverged more starkly.

In 1942 it enacted a "regulation on women pastors" ("Vikarinnengesetz") which purported to create a separate and restricted category for women pastors.

Kurt Scharf, a youthful but already prominent churchman (who later became the evangelical Bishop of Berlin-Brandenburg), reacted by ordaining Ilse Härter and Hannelotte Reiffen, two female theologians serving in community-based jobs.

Eva Hoffmann-Aleith remained on the edge of the controversy.

"I'm representing my husband" ("Ich vertrete meinen Mann") was her statement, quoted in 1942 in the journal "Die Theologin" ("The female Theologian").

Her situation was far from unique: by 1943 she was one of ten qualified female pastors working in parishes in Brandenburg.

The war ended in May 1945, leaving the entire central portion of Germany - including the Hoffmanns' home region of Brandenburg - administered as the Soviet occupation zone.

Within the church many of the special arrangements that had operated during the war were rolled back.

At the same time, the slaughter of war had left the country desperately short of men of working age, which affected the church just as it affected other sectors.

Wilhelm Hoffmann had been captured, and was held as a prisoner of war till 1947.

In Stüdenitz Eva Hoffmann-Aleith accordingly continued to perform pastoral duties on his behalf during the postwar period.

Pastor Wilhelm Hoffmann resumed his ministry in 1948, but later the same year he was suspended from his duties on account of "wartime offences".

He crossed over to the west at around the same time that the Soviet occupation zone was relaunched as the Soviet sponsored German Democratic Republic (East Germany).

The marriage between Wilhelm Hoffmann and Eva Hoffmann-Aleith ended in divorce, formally in 1950.

Meanwhile, it was Eva Hoffmann-Aleith who continued to perform the pastoral duties in the parish.

From the outset she preached from the pulpit, as a "normal" male pastor would have done, rather than from the step in front of the altar.

In the early days she dressed for services in a simple black dress with a short jacket, but in or before 1952 she was appearing in a more overtly clerical gown ("Talar").

Little by little church regulations in East Germany caught up with reality, progressively bringing the formal roles of male and female pastors closer together.

There was a new set of regulations covering women pastors in 1952, to be followed by a "pastoral ordinance" in 1962.

In 1952 the church "general superintendent"Walter Braun (1892–1973), a long time proponent of "women in the pulpits", formally ordained her in the newly redefined post of "woman pastor", and her role was accordingly "reconsecrated".

In 1953 she published a booklet under the title "Woman in the pulpit" ("Die Frau auf der Kanzel?"), a "plea for women in pastoral office".