Hans Schönfeld

Nationality

Germany

Date of Birth

1900

Date of Death

1954

Political
Preference

Hans Schönfeld was born in Fehrbellin, Brandenburg and studied Protestant theology and economics in Berlin, Greifswald, Tübingen, Rostock and Frankfurt am Main. Schönfeld was a pastor and economist and worked as researcher for the ecumenical movement.

In 1926 Schönfeld became an assistant to the Enquete Commission of the Reich Chamber of Commerce. In 1929 he was sent to Geneva by the German Evangelical Church Federation to direct the International Social Institute, which he had founded with Wilhelm Menn. After the institute was transformed into the study department of the Life and Work movement and later the World Council of Churches, he was its first director from 1931 to 1946, collaborating closely with Nils Ehrenström and Visser ‘t Hooft.

During the Second World War, Schönfeld, who was a close friend of Eugen Gerstenmaier‘s, developed into an important intermediary between the resistance movement, in particular the Kreisau Circle, and international ecumenism. In this role, he met Bishop George Bell and Dietrich Bonhoeffer in the vicinity of Stockholm in 1942 and presented him with a memorandum on German resistance, to be sent to Sir Stafford Cripps in the British government.

From 1948 to 1950 he worked as a senior consistory in the church office of the EKD in Frankfurt am Main.