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from Part II - Searching for the Purpose of Suffering: Despair—Accusation—Hope
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2018
Werner Sylten was born in 1893 in Hergiswil, Switzerland. He later moved to Germany, where he went to school in Berlin. He studied theology at the University of Marburg and became a vicar in Hildesheim. Later the protestant pastor, who was close to the religious socialists, became head of a girls’ reform school in Köstritz. As a “half-Jew” he was dismissed from his post and became a business manager for the Confessing Church in Thuringia. In February 1941 he was arrested and on May 30, 1941, he was taken to Dachau (prisoner number 26,077).
On August 12, 1942, he was moved together with eighty-two other prisoners as part of an “Invalidentransport” to the gas chambers of Hartheim, near Linz in Austria. Werner Sylten died there on August 26, 1942.
Gebet
“Wenn mir am allerbängsten wird um das Herze sein,
So reiß mich aus den Ängsten kraft deiner Angst und Pein.”
Christus allein kann Segen
auch schaffen aus dem Leid,
auf unbeschwerten Wegen
uns führ'n zur Ewigkeit,
die in dies dunkle Leben
voll Rätsel und voll Streit
kann Licht und Freude geben
und Fried’ und Ruh’ verleiht,
die uns die Welt bleibt schuldig,
die uns der Mensch nicht gibt.
Drum schaue nur geduldig
auf Christ, der uns geliebt,
daß er sein Leben tauchte
in Nacht und Gram und Tod,
und der am Kreuz noch hauchte:
“Mein Gott, dennoch, mein Gott.”
Mein Gott auch in des Lebens
dunkler Weglosigkeit
laß uns doch nicht vergebens
Not und Verlassenheit
im Schauen auf dich verwinden.
Reiß uns aus Angst und Pein
und laß am Kreuz dich finden,
dich unser Heiland sein.
Prayer
“When my heart is anguished, and at its most afraid,
Then wrench me from these fears through your own fear and pain.”
Christ alone can create
blessing from agony,
lead us on glad pathways
into an eternity
that can grant this life of darkness,
of conflict and uncertainty,
the radiance and happiness,
peace and serenity
that man to us denies,
and the world to us still owes.
So look with patient eyes
to Christ who loved us so,
that he doused his life in grief,
in night and death's dark flood,
and on the cross still breathed:
“My God, yet still my God.” […]
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