Helmut Thielicke

German Protestant theologian and rector of the University of Hamburg from 1960 to 1978.

Thielicke studied philosophy and theology in Erlangen, but soon had to undergo an operation on his thyroid. Despite the negative outcome of this operation (pulmonary embolism, tetanus), which were still causing complications 4 years later, he finished his studies and in 1932 he got his doctorate in philosophy. He took his postdoctoral lecture qualification in 1935 under the growing pressure of the Nazi-Regime, which refused him an appointment to Erlangen in view of his activity within the "Confessing Church". In 1936 he obtained a professorship in systematic theology in Heidelberg, where he met Marie-Luise Herrmann, to whom he was married in 1937. They had four children.

After repeated interrogations by the Gestapo from the mid-1930s onwards, he was finally dismissed in 1940. Thielicke was conscripted, but nine months later he was able to take over a church in Ravensburg. In 1942 he assumed theological office in Stuttgart. The bombing of Stuttgart in 1944 forced Thielicke and his family to go to Korntal, where he continued his lecture tours and preaching services in the following years; these were anonymously translated into many languages in Switzerland and read on various fronts of the war. In 1954, continuing his postwar efforts to revive Germany's academic and spiritual heritage, he accepted a call to Hamburg to found a new theological faculty, where he acted as both dean and professor while also pastoring the main church of Hamburg, St. Michaelis.

Thielicke died 5 March 1986 in Hamburg, aged 77.