The theologian Margot Käßmann ends her column at the "Bild am Sonntag". Since Pentecost 2014, she had regularly commented on everyday topics from a Christian point of view, including the coexistence of generations, the situation of women and children, and health care. This resulted in 454 contributions.
The former Bishop of Hanover and former Chairwoman of the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany is now taking her 65th birthday on June 3 as an opportunity to end the column.
"It was a pleasure for me to be able to write the column and to give you a Bible verse every week," the theologian writes to her readers. In her last column on Pentecost Sunday, Käßmann also justified her cut with the "constant criticism" that increasingly burdened her.
"Anyone who expresses an opinion today is immediately pilloried, insulted and defamed by those with a different opinion," she writes. "The culture of discussion is absolutely brutalized by the so-called social media. People lack any decency, they snot their rejection into the keys in a personally insulting way without being addressed." She likes to discuss. "But not in a defamatory way. I don't have to do that to myself anymore."
In addition, she now wants to make room for younger people, Käßmann told the Evangelical Press Service. As a result, she will now also hand over other tasks. For example, she has cancelled invitations to political talk shows, and she will also end her two podcasts at NDR and the Droemer Knaur publishing group, as well as resign from her honorary post as an ambassador for the children's charity terre des hommes and resign from various boards of trustees.