Otto-Siegfried Freiherr von Bibra

Otto-Siegfried was a Lutheran pastor in Nuremberg and later a professor of Theology at a private institution by Basel in the south-west corner of Germany. His wife (recently deceased, July 11, 2020) was a very popular leader in religious circles. Other than the church, his other passion was Burg Bibra which he inherited during the East German period from his father who lived there. She spear headed its restoration and new life as a retreat center when Otto-Siegfried passed away shortly after the wall came down.

Otto-Siegfried Friedrich Willibald Freiherr von und zu Bibra was born in Nuremberg in 1914, the son of a Prussian officer. He studied law and political science in Würzburg, Königsberg and Munich. But then he switched to theology and studied in Erlangen and Tübingen. Since 1939 he worked as an evangelist in many places, but especially in central Germany. In the area of ​​the Bavarian regional church he worked for many years as a pastor in Egloffstein (Franconian Switzerland) and at St. Sebald in Nuremberg. From 1972 he taught as a professor in Basel at the Free Theological Academy until his retirement in 1992.

I visited him and his family in 1969 for the first moon landing as I believe we had no television at Brennhausen at time. We stayed at the beautiful manse next door to St. Sebald where he was pastor.