¶ At their second synod (the first was in 1949), leaders of the Evangelical Church in Germany, representing 42,100,000 Protestants in the East and West zones, rejected the fiery Rev. Dr. Gustav Heinemann, 55, for a second term as president. Heinemann, who violently opposed Adenauer's alignment with the West and campaigned against German rearmament, was discarded in favor of the Rev. Dr. Constantin von Dietze, 63, Cambridge-educated former rector of Freiburg University. Elected without opposition for another six-year term as chairman of the church council: Bishop Otto Dibelius.
¶ Speaking to his first mass audience since his illness, and for the...
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