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To the East. Principal task of the delegates who met at Bielefeld last week was to elect a successor to venerable Bishop Wurm. They chose another big figure in German Protestantism. Like Wurm, the new chairman, stocky, white-goateed Bishop Otto Dibelius, Lutheran Bishop of Berlin and Brandenburg, was unbending in his opposition to the Nazis. Barred from the pulpit, he defied Nazi orders against speaking and writing, and was brought to trial. When Minister for Church Affairs Hanns Kerrl shouted at him: "What right have you to speak for the Church, now that you have been dismissed from your religious duties?" Dibelius answered calmly: "Herr Minister, a Christian is never off duty."
Today, 68-year-old Bishop Dibelius is again fighting for freedom of the Church—this time, in the Russian zone of Germany, against the Communists. His fearless words, in & out of the pulpit in Berlin, have made him the outstanding spokesman of Protestantism in eastern Germany. By electing him, the Bielefeld delegates have thrown the whole weight of their support to the Church in the east.
Said new Chairman Dibelius: "The Church in the east is already firmly united in its stand. Now that the Protestant Church of all Germany has joined with us, we can carry on the fight with renewed determination."