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The Lutheran World Federation
Lutheran World Information |
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| 07.04.2004 |
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| Georgia: Lutheran Bishop Gert Hummel Dies |
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LWF General Secretary Lauds Hummel’s Dedication to People and Church Ministry
TBILISI, Georgia/GENEVA, 7 April 2004 (LWI) – The bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Georgia, Prof. Dr Gert Hummel, died March 15, aged 71. According to information received from the church, he succumbed to a cerebral hemorrhage.
Hummel originally came from Württemberg, Germany, and had been living in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, since 1998.
In a letter of condolence to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Russia and Other States (ELCROS), the general secretary of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF), Rev. Dr Ishmael Noko, said Hummel’s dedication to the church’s work, his personal care for the people of the country and commitment to spreading the gospel in word and deed, was an example to many in the worldwide Lutheran communion. “His sudden death leaves a void among the ‘workers in the vineyard’ and will not be filled easily,” said Noko. The Georgian church is an autonomous regional member church of ELCROS.
Hummel was born in 1933 at Sindelfingen near Stuttgart, Germany. He studied Protestant theology, philosophy and German language and literature from 1953 to 1961 in Tübingen and Heidelberg, and in Lund, Sweden. He graduated in theology in 1959 and concluded his studies in 1961 with doctorates from Tübingen and Lund. After his final theological examination in 1964, he served as a research assistant at the Institute for Protestant Theology at Saarland University in Saarbrücken, and taught at the teachers’ training college there. He was professor of systematic theology in Saarbrücken from 1972 to 1998.
The twinning of the cities of Saarbrücken and Tbilisi brought Hummel into contact with descendants of German immigrants in Georgia. After retirement in October 1998, he moved to Tbilisi and became pastor of the city’s Evangelical Lutheran congregation.
As early as 1991, Lutherans mainly from a German background had started gathering again in Georgia - the congregations previously established by Swabian immigrants in the early 19th century had ceased to exist under the Stalinist repression. The new groups were then organized in four state-registered congregations and about ten parish groups. At the July 1999 synod of Georgian congregations, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Georgia was founded and Gert Hummel was elected bishop.
Under Hummel’s leadership, the small Lutheran church in Georgia began to flourish. With the proceeds from the sale of his house in Saarbrücken, Hummel built a church in Tbilisi with a parish center, old people’s home and social service office. He financed the work of these institutions from his personal capital and with donations from a group of friends. In 2002 it was possible to get back and restore the historical church in Sukhumi (Abkhazia). In 2003, Hummel and his wife Christiane were awarded the Federal Merit Cross, 1st Class, of the Federal Republic of Germany, for their social service involvement in Georgia.
On behalf of the ELCROS bishops’ council, Hummel was looking after the Baku congregation in neighboring Azerbaijan, where he succeeded in reuniting parties after a split, and obtained state recognition for their newly established congregation.
A farewell memorial service for Hummel was held March 20, in the Church of the Reconciliation in Tbilisi. The funeral was planned for the end of March in Württemberg. He is survived by his wife Christiane and two adult children. (551 words)
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