Jurgen Moltmann's A Broad Place: An Autobiography

Jurgen Moltmann was born on April 8, 1926 in a secular home in Hamburg Germany. He was raised in a shared settlement of few teachers, led by visionary Helmut Herling and his socialist neighbor Alfred Schar. Jurgen’s parents put him and all of his siblings to work in gardens when they were younger. During this time he belonged to a real community as he spoke about his community in his autobiography A Broad Place: An Autobiography . The peace lasted through the survival of the settlement during the Nazi period and the war. In 1937 Alfred Schar was killed in the Fuhlsbuttel concentration camp. When his father was called by the army in 1939-1943, he took over many of his father’s task in home and garden. The trust of his mother, brothers and sisters

When he was younger he also took great interest in mathematics, physics and chemistry. Taught himself till Louis Broglie’s book Matiere et Lumber ( Matter and Light). His studies were interrupted when he was called by the German Army. As Jurgen Moltmann stated in his autobiography “I had no desire for these experiences, but they put their stamp on my life, and so I shall say something about them” (19). The death and destructions of Wars left a traumatic mark in his life. As with many boys his age, Moltmann was sent to a school in Kaunas, Lithuania, and given army boots to march with, which made his feet blister severely. He and his peers were made to run, crawl, march, and stand with gas mask. In August of 1944, 50 men including Jurgen Moltmann were unexpectedly equipped and set to move as a new company. They were put on the train from the German frontier to Poland to experience the frontier as part of a training regiment and then sent back. On September of 1944, they were armed for battle with gas masks, spades and revolvers. They traveled all day on a train towards the West. After getting off at Venlo, they marched all night to