Juliusz Bursche

Background

Bursche was born as the first child to Ernst Wilhelm Bursche, Vicar of the Lutheran church at Kalisz and his wife Mathilda, born Müller. The family went to Zgierz near Łódź, where his father became Protestant pastor.

Education

Bursche studied Lutheran divinity at the University of Tartu and became a member of the "Konwent Polonia" (Polish student fraternity, established in 1828), where he was influenced by the ideas of Leopold Otto, a Lutheran pastor at Warsaw.

Career

Otto wanted to overcome the stereotype of Catholic = Polish and Lutheran = German. After a short time as a pastor at Żyrardów he returned to the Warsaw Lutheran congregation in 1888. Bursche was sent to Moscow in 1915, where he remained until the Russian February Revolution in 1917.

According to the Treaty of Versailles the East Prussian plebiscite took place on July 20, 1920 and Bursche became the chairman of the Masurian Plebiscite Committee, organizing the unsuccessful Polish publicity campaign in East Prussia.

Over the period 1922-1939 he issued the Polish newspaper in Masuria Gazeta Mazurska. In 1936 the Polish government acknowledged the Evangelical-Augsburg (ie Lutheran) Church in Poland and Bursche became Poland"s first Lutheran bishop.

After the German Invasion of Poland in September 1939 Bursche was captured by the Sicherheitsdienst on October 3, 1939 and imprisoned at Radom, after October 13, 1939 at the central Gestapo – Prison in Berlin. In January 1940 he was sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp, in the end of February 1942 his family received the information that Bursche died on February 20, 1942 in Berlin–Moabit Prison.

The exact circumstances of his death and even the real date and place are unknown.

Bursche"s brothers: Edmund Bursche, Lutheran Pastor (July 17, 1881 – July 26, 1940 Mauthausen concentration camp) Alfred Bursche, Lawyer (November 16, 1883 – January 15, 1942 Mauthausen concentration camp) Teodor Bursche, Architect (May 31, 1893 – March 15, 1965).

Membership

He returned to German–occupied Warsaw in February 1918 and became a member of the Regency Council of the Kingdom of Poland. After the foundation of the Second Polish Republic he was a member of the Polish delegation at the Paris Peace Conference, and attempted to incorporate the predominantly Lutheran area of Masuria into the Polish state.

Connections

opponent:

Nazi Germany