Later Career

After four years without an official job and steady income, Ina Gschlössl was hired as a social worker in the Inner Mission – without pay of course – in January of 1938 by Hans Encke, a pastor active in the Confessing Church.

She was in charge of guardianships and foster care as well as ministry to prisoners, including inmates condemned to death in “Klingelpütz” Prison. During World War II, she aided “half and non-Aryan” Protestants and took care of a Jewish family.

In 1945, Pastor Encke – now superintendent – gave her the job of organizing religion classes at vocational schools and put her completely in charge. There were no classrooms, hardly enough qualified teachers, no plans or curricula and no school materials in bombed out Cologne.

Ina Gschlössl organized all that and much more. Ms. Gschlössl played a significant role in reestablishing our work, the clear ecclesiastical and political views she had adopted in the preceding years helping her greatly. We thus owe her much for the new beginning and renewal of destroyed structures, wrote Superintendent Encke in her letter of reference in1946.