Hans Godwin Grimm

Hans Godwin Grimm, was born in 1899 at Sablon-lez-Metz, Lorraine. The son of Gustaf Grimm, one of the three last elders of the churches of Christ in Strasbourg, Alsatia. A descendent of one of the oldest Christian families in Central Europe, between the Moselle and the Alps. he was baptized at the age of 17 on March the 18th, 1916, in the freezing waters of Hanauer Weiher pond.

He attended college in Strasbourg. He started preaching whilst studying at Konigsberg and Hamburg universities, obtaining a license in comparative history of religions. He researched information for a history of churches of Christ in Central Europe.

In 1933 the Nazis imprisoned all elders and deacons of the Lord's church on German soil in concentration camps. The Nazis interred Brother Hans Grimm in Hammerstein and Lichtenburg concentration camps, for illegally preaching in Anhalt, Germany. There he suffered hunger, thirst, constant thrashings about the arms, shinbones and head along with many political, religious and non-Aryan prisoners. He sustained deafness in one ear and crushed kidneys. His manuscripts were confiscated and after his release he had to sell his important books and furniture to survive. He continued preaching like his ancestors, in woods, hills, swamps and city hiding places.

In 1939 at the outbreak of the Second World War he was commissioned as an interpreter with the army. A second manuscript and collection of documents perished in the bombing of Leipzig in 1944.

In East Prussia adult members of the church followed their shepherds into prisons and hard labour convoys. Not one survived beyond 1944. In 1942 a remaining eleven Alsatian church of Christ families were deported to Poland. There, in January 1945 Hans father perished when advancing Russian tank regiments massacred and almost exterminated them.

In Christmas 1945, in Leipzig, Hans learned from a few survivors, of his father's death and of the extremities suffered by the churches in eastern Europe. Whilst preaching and teaching, he worked as a proofreader, reporter and lecturer at Leipzig Teacher's Training College. He supported not only himself, but also old and sick brothers and sisters in famine stricken, ravaged East Germany. Many young people responded the gospel.

On July the 9th, 1948, he married Ilse Hildegard Kohler of Leipzig, Germany. In October of 1948, the Communists imprisoned him for supposed conspiracy in religious circles against the Red government. He was incarcerated in the infamous prisons of Leipzig, Waldheim and Graefentonna. On his release in December 1952 he escaped to West Berlin and rejoined his wife. There he lectured at the Evangelical Academy for Social Ethics in Kassel. In March 1959 the Protestant State Church of Kurhessen-Waldeck invited him to become president of the Academy providing he promised not to attack the teaching of the Confession of Ausburg. He declined. The same month two brothers from the U.S.A., Roy Palmer and Otis Gatewood, met him and to their amazement learnt of the survival of the Lord's church in Mid and Eastern Europe.

Brother Hans Grimm continued preaching and working with the churches of Christ in Kaiserslautern and Mannheim, Germany, and as late as 1963 in Biel, Switzerland.