Editing Gustav Heinemann (section)

==Family and religion==
In 1926, Heinemann married Hilda Ordemann (1896–1979), who had been a student of [[Rudolf Bultmann]], the famous Protestant theologian. His wife and the minister of his wife's parish, Wilhelm Graeber, led Heinemann back to Christianity from which he had become estranged.<ref name="fes"/> Through his sister-in-law, he became acquainted with Swiss theologian [[Karl Barth]], who strongly influenced him such as in his condemnation of nationalism and antisemitism.

Gustav and Hilda Heinemann had three daughters, Uta (later [[Uta Ranke-Heinemann]]), Christa (mother of [[Christina Rau]], former federal president [[Johannes Rau]]'s wife) and Barbara; they also had a son, Peter.

Heinemann was an elder (''Presbyter'') in Wilhelm Graeber's parish in Essen, when Graeber was sacked in 1933 by the new church authorities who co-operated with the Nazis. Opposition against those [[German Christians (movement)|German Christians]] came from the [[Confessing Church]], and Heinemann became a member of its synod and its legal adviser. As he disagreed with some of the developments within the Confessing Church, he withdrew from the church leadership in 1939, but he continued as an elder in his parish, in whose capacity he gave legal advice to persecuted fellow Christians and helped Jews who had gone into hiding by providing them with food.<ref name="Koch 620-631">{{BBKL|h/heinemann_g|band=17|autor=Diether Koch|artikel:Heinemann, Gustav Walter|spalten=620–631}}</ref>

Information sheets of the Confessing Church were printed in the cellar of Heinemann's house at Schinkelstrasse 34 in [[Essen]], [[Moltkeviertel]], and distributed all over Germany.

From 1936 to 1950, Heinemann was head of the [[YMCA]] in Essen.

[[Image:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-R95855, Bethel, Generalsynode, Gustav Heinemann spricht.jpg|thumb|left|Heinemann, at the general synod of the Protestant Church in Germany, 1949]]

In August 1945, he was elected as a member of the Council of the [[Protestant Church in Germany]]. The Council issued the [[Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt]] in October 1945 in which it confessed guilt for the failure of the Protestant church to oppose the Nazis and the Third Reich. Heinemann regarded the declaration as a "linchpin" in his work for the church.

From 1949 to 1955, Heinemann was president of the all-German Synod of the Protestant Churches of Germany. He was among the founders of the German Protestant Church Congress (''Deutscher Evangelischer Kirchentag''), a congress of the Protestant laity. In 1949, he was also one of the founding editors of ''Die Stimme der Gemeinde'' ("The Voice of the Congregation"), a magazine which was published by the ''Bruderrat'' (Brethren's Council) of the Confessing Church. In the [[World Council of Churches]] he belonged to its "Commission for International Affairs".
{{-}}