Konrad Raiser

Konrad Raiser ( born January 25, 1938 in Magdeburg ) is a German Protestant theologian. He was from August 1992 to December 2003, the World Council of Churches.

Life and work

Raiser, son of the lawyer Ludwig Raiser, grew up in Schwerin, Göttingen, Bad Godesberg and Tübingen. After finishing high school in Tübingen in 1957 he studied at the University of Tübingen, the Theological Seminary Bethel, Ruprecht- Karls- University of Heidelberg and the University of Zurich Protestant theology. His first theological examination he put 1963 in Tübingen from. From 1963 to 1965, Raiser Vicar of the Württemberg State Church. He then studied 1965/66 Sociology and Social Psychology at Harvard University. Then Raiser was a research assistant at the Department of Practical Theology of the Evangelical Theological Faculty of Tübingen, where he received his doctorate in 1970 with a dissertation on the social philosophy of George Herbert Mead.

In March 1967 married Konrad Raiser and Bertha Elizabeth Baroness von Weizsäcker, physicist and philosopher daughter of Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker. Of their four sons were born.

The theologian was 1969 Employees of the World Council of Churches in Geneva, where he was appointed in 1973 as Deputy Secretary General. An appointed professor of systematic theology at the Faculty of the Ruhr - University Bochum Evangelical Theological received Konrad Raiser 1983. At the same time he was director of the Ecumenical Institute of the Faculty. In August 1992, Raiser was elected General Secretary of the World Council of Churches. He took office in January 1993 and was re-elected in 1996 and 2002. Since 2004 lives in Berlin Raiser retired.

Awards

Konrad Raiser honorary doctorate from the Theological Academy in Budapest (1992) and the University of Geneva (1996). The Federal Cross of Merit with Star and shoulder ribbon was given to him by Federal President Johannes Rau in 2004.