Paul Robert Schneider


Paul Schneider was born on Hunsrück in 1897, the son of a village pastor. After earning an accelerated wartime degree from a high school in Giessen, he fought in World War I, last of all as a lieutenant. His National Conservative leanings were evident when he joined a Freikorps in 1920.


He studied theology at the universities of Giessen, Marburg and Tübingen und subsequently passed his two church examinations at the University of Koblenz. Schneider’s study of Adolf Schlatter’s theology transformed him from a liberal into a conservative biblical theologian.


Schneider took over his father's position as a pastor in Hochelheim (Wetzlar District) upon his death in 1926. Thoroughly open-minded about the National Socialists at first and even briefly joining the German Christians in July of 1933, he increasingly came into conflict with the National Socialists and German Christian church authorities starting at the end of 1933.


As a result, he was forcibly transferred to Dickenschied and Womrath on Hunsrück and incarcerated several times. The father of six children was ultimately sent to Buchenwald concentration camp in November of 1937, where he was murdered on July 18, 1939.


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