Hans Jürgen Wittig (1935–2023)

Hans Jürgen Wittig (1935–2023)

Anyone who has ever experienced Hans Jürgen Wittig during a city tour in Rome or another city will remember it for years to come. Those were extraordinary experiences!

Born into a family of preachers, he learned about history at a young age and was fascinated by it for the rest of his life. He worked as a secondary school teacher for around 40 years and knew exactly how his pupils' ears pricked up when stories were told. That was his forte.

He taught "German for Foreigners" in Friedensau

But he also wanted to get to the bottom of things. He not only wanted to know history, but also to understand it, especially as an Adventist who starts from it and waits for God to put an end to our history. When he retired, he received a request from Friedensau Adventist University to take responsibility for the "German for Foreigners" course. He accepted and came to Friedensau in 1999. Until 2006, he enriched the university with his knowledge and his personality - and all on a voluntary basis!

He was committed to Friedensau and its church

Jürgen Wittig liked being in Friedensau, as he emphasized time and again. Here, he found much of what he enjoyed doing: in addition to teaching German, he lectured on topics of world history at library readings, for example. He loved books, and he found more than enough suitable literature in the university library. He loved the Latin language and was happy to help students translate texts and quotations that they needed for their research work. And he also loved his church, especially when he addressed controversial theological questions in aphorisms, for example: the question of the Second Coming or the delay of the Second Coming accompanied him throughout his life. Dealing with this complex of questions kindled his interest in Gnosticism, the philosophical movement that kept Christianity in suspense as early as the end of the first century AD because it reinterpreted the parousia in terms of the inner world. Anyone who knew Jürgen Wittig a little better was aware of his warning voice against modern Gnosticism.

When he retired from service in Friedensau, he kept in touch. Now, he has passed away quietly on December 28, 2023 and was laid to rest in the Heidelberg mountain cemetery  (Text: Dr. theol. Johannes Hartlapp | Image rights: private).