For the baseball owner and manager, see Emil Fuchs

Emil Fuchs (baseball)

Emil Edwin Fuchs was a German-born American baseball owner and executive....

Emil Fuchs (13 May 1874, Beerfelden

Beerfelden

Beerfelden is a town in the Odenwald in the Odenwaldkreis in Hesse, Germany, 28 km northeast of Heidelberg. The region around Beerfelden has for touristic reasons been dubbed the Beerfelder Land.-Location:...

 - 13 February 1971) was a German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 theologian.

A religious socialist

Religious socialism

Religious socialism is a term used to describe forms of socialism that are based on religious values.Religious Socialism is also the title of a journal published by the Religion and Socialism Commission of the Democratic Socialists of America, a member of the Socialist International.Several major...

, Fuchs was one of the first Lutheran pastors to join the Social Democratic Party of Germany

Social Democratic Party of Germany

The Social Democratic Party of Germany is a social-democratic political party in Germany...

. As a devoted pacifist, he later joined the Religious Society of Friends

Religious Society of Friends

The Religious Society of Friends, or Friends Church, is a Christian movement which stresses the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. Members are known as Friends, or popularly as Quakers. It is made of independent organisations, which have split from one another due to doctrinal differences...

 (Quakers). He was a Fellowship holder at Woodbrooke College (now Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre

Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre

Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre is a Quaker college based in the Selly Oak area of Birmingham, England.The only Quaker Study Centre in Europe, it was founded by George Cadbury in 1903 and occupies his former home on the Bristol Road. Woodbrooke's first Director of Studies was the biblical scholar J...

), Selly Oak

Selly Oak

Selly Oak is a residential suburban district in south-west Birmingham, England. The suburb is bordered by Bournbrook and Selly Park to the north-east, Edgbaston and Harborne to the north, Weoley Castle and Weoley Hill to the west, and Bournville to the south...

, Birmingham

Birmingham

Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...

 during 1934-5.

Fuchs was both a committed Christian and socialist and wrote numerous books on the relationship of Marxism

Marxism

Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...

 and christianity

Christianity

Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...

. In 1958 Fuchs became honorary member of the East German CDU

Christian Democratic Union (Germany)

The Christian Democratic Union of Germany is a Christian democratic and conservative political party in Germany. It is regarded as on the centre-right of the German political spectrum...

, that was part of the East German government

National Front (East Germany)

The National Front of the German Democratic Republic was an alliance of political parties and mass organisations in East Germany...

 and pursued a pro-communist course. On 9 February 1961 Fuchs was member of a Christian commission that was charged with discussing the issues of state and church with the GDR leader Walter Ulbricht

Walter Ulbricht

Walter Ulbricht was a German communist politician. As First Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party from 1950 to 1971 , he played a leading role in the creation of the Weimar-era Communist Party of Germany and later in the early development and...

. Since then Emil Fuchs engaged for normalisation of relations between the state and church in East Germany. Though a loyal GDR supporter Fuchs occasionally opposed the party line: he was against the persecution of the Young Congregations (Junge Gemeinden) in 1950s and when conscription

Conscription

Conscription is the compulsory enlistment of people in some sort of national service, most often military service. Conscription dates back to antiquity and continues in some countries to the present day under various names...

 was introduced in East Germany, he managed to persuade the communist leadership to allow an alternative for armed service. Men who refused usual service in the army could accordingly serve as 'construction soldiers' (Bausoldaten), who, as evident from the term, did mostly construction tasks.

In 1906 he married Else Wagner (1875–1931), who later committed suicide. They had four children: Elisabeth (1908–1938, suicide), Gerhard (1909–1951), Klaus

Klaus Fuchs

Klaus Emil Julius Fuchs was a German theoretical physicist and atomic spy who in 1950 was convicted of supplying information from the American, British and Canadian atomic bomb research to the USSR during and shortly after World War II...

 (1911–1988) and Kristel (b. 1913).
As their father, Fuchs's children supported socialism. His son Klaus Fuchs

Klaus Fuchs

Klaus Emil Julius Fuchs was a German theoretical physicist and atomic spy who in 1950 was convicted of supplying information from the American, British and Canadian atomic bomb research to the USSR during and shortly after World War II...

, a physicist, was an atomic spy, convicted of supplying information from the British and American atomic bomb research to the USSR during, and shortly after, World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

.

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