In Memoriam Prof. Jürgen Moltmann

The World 

Updates from Tübingen    

by Birgit Hallmann 

Visitors and Guests:
The summer semester is slowly coming to an end and we continue to keep very busy.

In early June we hosted Mircea Paduraru (doctoral student at the University of Bucharest) in the Institute guest room. Mircea was here to make a presentation of his doctoral work for our English-German Colloquium for New Testament. His topic was: „Ecclesiology and Power. Towards an Anatomy of Church Discipline within the Evangelical Churches in Romania.“ Mircea shared the following about his brief stay in Tübingen:

„The experience of staying in the Gastzimmer of Tübingen’s Institut zur Erforschung des Urchristentums was wonderful. The guest room is nice, simple and clean, and the fact that the Institute is situated some two hundred meters away from the iconic Stiftskirche and a five minute walk from the University 's Theologicum gives the place a special aesthetic and spiritual aura. Also the quiet and peaceful working atmosphere and the kind and discrete presence of Birgit and Dennis add to the spirit of the place. It was a rich experience to live and sleep practically in a nice library, surrounded by books, and to work hard and focused, away from daily distractions.“ (Mircea Parduaru, June 2024)

In Memoriam: Many of our readers will fondly remember Prof. Dr. Jürgen Moltmann, world renown for his “theology of hope” and ground-breaking professor of systematic theology in Tübingen from 1967 to 1994. Prof. Moltmann, who had just celebrated his 98th birthday in April, passed away peacefully and without prolonged suffering at his home on June 3, 2024. Moltmann was mourned in the local newspaper as the “last survivor among the great scholars who, during the 1960’s and 1970’s, had made Tübingen’s theology so exciting and so attractive for Christians throughout the world” (source: Schwäbisches Tagblatt, June 6, 2024). A memorial service was held on June 14th in the Tübingen Stiftskirche.