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Prof. Hans Joachim Hillerbrand, PhD

Durham, NC, USA

September 13, 1931 - November 18, 2020

Sep 13, 1931 - Nov 18, 2020

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Hans Joachim Hillerbrand, one of the country’s preeminent Christian Reformation and church historians, who spent his career uncovering the roots of the 20th Century rise of Nazism and anti-Semitism in early German church history and the Protestant Reformation, died November 14, 2020 in Evanston, IL. He was 89. The cause of death was complications from a lengthy illness.

One of the first and most vocal proponents of using a shared history as a vehicle of rapprochement between East and West Germany during the Cold War, Hillerbrand organized multiple academic exchanges and conferences that brought historians together seeking a shared understanding of the role of the rise of the Lutheran church in Germany. For this work, Hillerbrand was awarded the German Cross of the Order of Merit, the only federal honor of merit made by the Federal Republic of Germany.

German Consul General Lutz Görgens described Hillerbrand has “striving for a tolerant discussion of religious traditions and values, rather than for a clash of cultures and civilizations.”
Hillerbrand was born in the village of Gersheim in the Saar region, near the French border September 13, 1931, a border area of considerable contention in the time between World War I and II. Hillerbrand would later say that “the border between these two countries may well have foreshadowed the way my life unfolded "at the border" – between Lutheranism and the Mennonite faith of his wife Bonnie, between a life of scholarship and a life in administration, between a life in Germany and in the United States. Living "at the border" affords an astute ability to see both sides, both positions, both cultures. It also entails the burden that one always has two homes, two religions, two vocations.”

Julius H. Schoeps, the director of the Moses Mendelssohn Center for European-Jewish Studies said, "There is much that is idiosyncratic about Hans Hillerbrand. He grew up in Nazi Germany but saw his father arrested by the Gestapo. He is German but spent his adult life in the United States. He is a Lutheran, but his mentor, my father, was a Jewish scholar. Hans serves as bridge builder at a time when scholars often talk past one another."
His father Johann Hillerbrand was a pharmacist who acquired the authorization to operate a pharmacy in 1932 in the Bavarian town of Donauwörth. This authorization was withdrawn, however, by the Nazi government in 1938 for reasons of “political unreliability.”

Hans entered first grade in a Munich suburb and graduated from high school in 1951. He assisted to US Army Chaplains traveling Germany immediately after the war and had a starring role in Gospel Films produced story of a young man’s conversion in post-Nazi Germany. He received a UNESCO scholarship to study for one year at Goshen College in Goshen Indiana one of the few colleges to host students from post-Nazi Germany. There he met Bonnie Brunk whom he married in 1954. Bonnie would later state that it was not easy living with someone who was actually married to the 16th century.

Upon his return to Germany he studied Theology, Religion, and History at the University of Erlangen, where he received the doctor of philosophy degree, magna cum laude, in 1957. A two-year teaching assignment at Goshen College followed.

In 1959, he accepted a position at the Divinity School of Duke University, where he taught until 1970 in order to move to the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He was Dean of the Graduate Center 1972-1978 and Provost from 1978 – 1981.

In 1981, he moved to Southern Methodist University as Provost and Vice-President of Academic affairs. In 1988 he returned to Duke University as Dean of the College and Chair of the Department of Religion. He served as visiting professor at the universities of Munich, Potsdam, and Münster in Germany, as well as Union Theological Seminary in New York.

Alongside this distinguished administrative career, Hillerbrand was a leading expert on Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century, publishing more than two dozen books and over 60 articles in that field. He was editor of the four volume Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation received awards both from the American Booksellers Association and the Society for Sixteenth Century Studies.

Hillerbrand held several distinguished positions in scholarly societies. His equally well received and honored 4 volume Encyclopedia of Protestantism sought to address the historical and theological on Europe’s socio-political evolution. He was present of the Society for Reformation Studies and of the American Society of Church History. In 2007 he was elected president of the American Academy of Religion, the largest scholarly society in the field of the academic study of religion.

Hillerbrand deeply committed to the health and vitality of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) and helped the ECLA address its position on marriage equality and acceptance of LGBTQ clergy, and the ELCA’s relationship with the Anglican Communion.

Hillerbrand retired as a professor of religion at Duke and continued to write and publish on the history of Christianity and its socio-political context, ending his career with work explicitly on the historical roots of anti-Semitism in Germany.

Hillerbrand was an avid sailor and traveler.

Hillerbrand is an active member of St. Paul’s Evangelical Lutheran Church in Durham, N.C., teaching Sunday school and serving on various church committees. He is predeceased by his wife, Bonnie. He survived by his three grown children and 12 grandchildren.

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