The Wilhelm and Marion H. Pauck papers

1901 January 31

(Wilhelm) Born, Laasphe, Germany

1920-1925

(Wilhelm) Student, University of Berlin

1925 September 24

(Wilhelm) Arrived in America

1928

(Marion) Born, New York City, Marion Hausner

1926-1953

(Wilhelm) Taught at Chicago Theological Seminary and at the divinity school and history department of the University of Chicago

1931

(Wilhelm) Earned full professorship

1936

(Wilhelm) President, American Society of Church History

1937 November 3

(Wilhelm) Became American citizen

1940-1941

(Wilhelm) President, American Theological Society

1943-1953

(Wilhelm) Chairman, Ecumenical Study Group, Chicago

1949

(Marion) Graduated from Barnard College

1951

(Marion) Graduated from Union Theological Seminary

1953-1967

(Wilhelm) Professor, Union Theological Seminary

1954-1963

(Marion) Assistant Editor, religious books department, Oxford University Press

1959

(Wilhelm) Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

1962-1963

(Wilhelm) President, American Theological Society

1963

(Wilhelm) First wife, Olga, died

1964

Wilhelm Pauck and Marion Hausner married

1967-1972

(Wilhelm) Distinguished Professor of Church History, Vanderbilt Divinity School

1972-1976

(Wilhelm) Distinguished Visiting Professor Emeritus, Stanford University

1976

(Marion) Published biography of Paul Tillich, co-authored by Wilhelm Pauck

1981

(Wilhelm) Died, Palo Alto, California

1995

(Marion) Delivered Richardson Lecture at Union Theological Seminary

2001

(Marion) Delivered lectures about Paul Tillich at Maximillian University

Wilhelm Pauck was born in Laasphe, Germany on January 31, 1901. He was the first of four children, three boys and one girl. His father, a learned botanist and physicist, transported his young family to Berlin in 1907, where Wilhelm attended the Paulsen Realgymnasium for eight years. Primus omnium throughout, he graduated as valedictorian in 1920, moving the audience to tears when he spoke of "the golden years of youth."

Pauck attended the University of Berlin from 1920 to 1925. He studied with Harnack, Holl, and Troeltsch. As a member of the Wingolf Fellowship he served as first, second, and third charge (officer) of this non dueling Christian group. He wrote his dissertation on Martin Bucer under the direction of Karl Holl learning the degree of Licentiate of Theology magna cum laude. Holl, recognizing Pauck's linguistic and diplomatic skills recommended him as the recipient of the first post World War I fellowship given by the theological faculty of the University of Berlin and the Federal Council of Churches.

Pauck arrived in America on September 24, 1925 and studied at the Chicago Theological Seminary; a year later he became an instructor there. He was ordained a minister in the Congregational Church (later the United Church of Christ) in the spring of 1928; shortly thereafter he married Olga Dietz Gumbel from Berlin. Pauck taught church history and historical theology in a dramatic and historically sound way. He specialized in the Reformation and in 19th and 20th century theology and philosophy. He earned a full professorship by 1931.

He traveled widely and lectured in churches, seminaries, and universities. He remained at the University of Chicago where he taught at the Chicago Theological Seminary, the Chicago Divinity School, and in the History department for 27 years. By the end of his tenure there he was known as the dean of historical theology in America. He became an American citizen on November 3, 1937. After two years in Germany after the Second World War serving as chairman of the Exchange Professors at the Universities of Frankfurt and Marburg, he accepted a call from Union Theological Seminary, New York in 1952.

His wife, Olga, died in 1963; he married Marion Hausner in 1964. He succeeded Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich in the Charles Briggs chair and retired in 1967. That year he became the first Distinguished Professor of Church History at Vanderbilt Divinity School. He ended his long and productive career as Distinguished Visiting Professor Emeritus at Stanford University by retiring in June 1976 after 50 years of teaching.

Dr. Pauck was president of the American Society of Church History (1936); President of the American Theological Society (1940-1941); (1962-1963); Chairman and founding member of the Ecumenical Study Group, Chicago (1943-1953). He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1959. He received five honorary degrees, including one from the University of Edinburgh (1968). He published ten books in the field of church history, books on Reformation and 19th and 20th century theologians. He and his wife, Marion, co-authored the biography of Paul Tillich published in 1976.

He died in Palo Alto, California in 1981. His ashes are interred in the Alta Mesa Memorial Park, Palo Alto, California.

Marion Pauck was born in New York City in 1928. She graduated from Friends Seminary, New York, (1945), Barnard College, (1949), and Union Theological Seminary/Columbia University (1951). After graduation she worked for her teacher, Reinhold Niebuhr, founder and editor of the little political journal "Christianity and Crisis."

In 1954 she accepted a call from Oxford University Press in New York where she was assistant editor of the religious books department until 1963. She edited Paul Tillich's Love, Power, and Justice, and Theology of Culture and was instrumental in persuading the press to publish the monographic series, A Library of Protestant Thought. In 1963 she began work on the biography of Paul Tillich who sent her abroad where she interviewed family, friends, and students of Tillich's in western Europe. A year later, she interviewed Tillich's students, friends, and colleagues in the USA. After she and Wilhelm Pauck were married in 1964, he became co-author of the biography, which was published in 1976. They were both musically gifted and enjoyed opera and symphony concerts, they also visited the great museums of the world on their travels.

After Dr. Pauck's death in 1981, Marion Pauck edited a volume of collected essays by Wilhelm Pauck, including the first third of the second volume of the biography of Paul Tillich he had begun. In the years that followed she gave lectures about her great teachers. Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich and their younger colleague and friend, her late husband. In 1995, she delivered the Richardson Lecture at Union Theological Seminary; in 2001 she delivered two lectures about Paul Tillich at the Maximillian University in Munich, Germany. She has published book reviews and articles for the North American Paul Tillich Society of which she is a founding member and past president. Marion Pauck lives in California and is active in Stanford University circles.