Walter Thiemann

Walter Wilhelm August Thiemann (* 6 August 1898 in Barmen; † 26 February 1983 in Siegen) was a German Lutheran pastor.

Career

Securities card of Walter Thiemann as a prisoner in the National Socialist concentration camp Buchenwald

Thiemann was born as the son of the merchant Friedrich Thiemann and Bertha Thiemann, née Weber. He graduated from the Gymnasium Barmen in 1916. After participating in the First World War, he studied theology in Bonn and Tübingen from 1919. In the years 1924/25 he visited the preacher’s seminary in Soest. From 1925 he worked as a pastor in Bethel and was also the director of the Lutheran elementary school home in Lienen. In 1934 he came to Gronau. As an active member of the Confessing Church he was arrested in July 1939 and spent five months in the Gestapo prison in Münster and in the Buchenwald concentration camp. In 1940 he came as a pastor to Neunkirchen and in 1946 to Siegen, where he worked until his retirement in 1964. There he was the founder of the Society for Christian-Jewish Cooperation (see German Coordinating Council of the Societies for Christian-Jewish Cooperation).

Honors

• 1968: Cross of Merit 1st Class of the Federal Republic of Germany