Wilhelm Seehase played a major role in shaping the deaconry in Schleswig-Holstein /
After retirement, he added more than 25 years of voluntary work nationwide and internationally

Rendsburg (prs). It has been five years since Deacon Wilhelm Seehase celebrated his 90th birthday in the chapel hall of the Rendsburg Martinshaus. It was important to him at the time to once again bring together his long-standing companions for a festive and joyful occasion while his health still allowed it. It was indeed a day of thanks and shared memories: to the great joy of the guest of honour, more than 60 well-wishers came – family, relatives and friends, including many people who had accompanied him on his journey through life. Prof. Dr. Klaus Hildemann looked back on the years they had spent together on the board of trustees and on the board of directors of the Theodor Fliedner Foundation in Mülheim an der Ruhr. Kai-Gunnar Rohwer, commercial director of the Diakonisches Werk Schleswig-Holstein, paid tribute to the achievements of his predecessor between 1965 and 1994. of the Förderverein für die Erhaltung technischen Kulturgutes (Association for the Preservation of Technical Heritage) founded by Wilhelm Seehase, Dipl.-Psychologe Ulrich Kruse, Flensburg, conveyed birthday greetings on behalf of the members. Dr Mathias Freiherr von Bredow, second chairman of the Stiftung Seemannshilfe (Seafarers' Assistance Foundation), finally recalled the joint efforts for the welfare of seafarers in the ports of Estonia from 1992 to the present day.

Wilhelm Seehase passed away on 30 January 2025 in his hometown of Fockbek. All those who knew him and were connected to him in one way or another will now sorely miss him. His decades of voluntary work will continue to bear fruit and is also an obligation.

Wilhelm Seehase, who was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit, has tirelessly focused on a wide range of voluntary activities since his retirement as managing director of the Schleswig-Holstein Diakonisches Werk in 1994. He has left his mark not only in the northernmost federal state, but throughout the country and in other European countries. There is hardly an organisation in the fields of church, deaconry and social work in which the ‘networker for charity’ would not have a special name. Three foundations alone were established in Schleswig-Holstein and Berlin on his initiative. The number of his voluntary commitments is large and extends far beyond the national borders to Estonia.

Wilhelm Seehase began his full-time career in the youth welfare office in Hamburg after training as a deacon in the early 1950s and then graduating from the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Dortmund as a social worker. He then held various management positions in the Landesverband der Inneren Mission e.V. (State Association of the Inner Mission) and the Diakonie-Hilfswerk Schleswig-Holstein (Diakonie relief organisation in Schleswig-Holstein). From 1965 to 1994, he was managing director of the Diakonisches Werk in Rendsburg.
The venue for the birthday party, the Martinshaus, was a symbolic place. The fact that the building became the property of the Diakonisches Werk Schleswig-Holstein in the 1970s and is still its headquarters today is one of his many initiatives that have left their mark not only on the northernmost federal state. When the opportunity arose, the managing director used his contacts in local politics to prevent the takeover of the property by other interested parties, thus enabling the permanent acquisition.

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Thanks to the work of the ‘Seehase’ over many years, the Diakonie is now the largest welfare organisation in Schleswig-Holstein. Around 48,000 full-time employees work in more than 1600 facilities and programmes. In addition, many thousands of volunteers are involved. The Diakonisches Werk Schleswig-Holstein is the umbrella organisation of the ‘Diakonie between the seas’. In 1957, the Inner Mission and the Relief Organisation merged under the name ‘Inner Mission and Relief Organisation of the EKD’. The founding of the ‘Diakonisches Werk der EKD e.V.’ in 1975 formally dissolved the EKD Relief Organisation. As managing director, Seehase played a major role in shaping the structural changes and left behind a strong and sustainable organisation when he retired. But that was not all: as early as 1972, he joined forces with other prominent figures in the field of deaconry to found the independent association Norddeutsche Gesellschaft für Diakonie e.V. (NGD), which was able to establish a further comprehensive network of social institutions within a short period of time thanks to unbureaucratic decision-making processes.

Seehase did not limit his professional and voluntary activities to successful and creative work in many long-standing organisations and associations within and outside the field of church and deaconry, in which he was involved. On his personal initiative, a number of new associations and notable foundations have been established in recent decades, such as the Schleswig-Holstein Evangelical Youth Welfare Foundation, Rendsburg, the German Lutheran Seamen's Mission Foundation, Rendsburg, and most recently the Seemannshilfe Foundation, Berlin, which looks after seafarers in the Baltic Sea region, with a current focus on Estonia, providing help and advice there.

The deceased did not only understand Christian charity as a personal commandment towards his fellow human beings. He also applied this principle to the numerous associations and initiatives that he has filled with life over the past decades. Even seemingly mundane hobbies, such as his enthusiasm for old model railways, he always imbued with an additional aspect of humanity. A typical example is the Förderverein für die Erhaltung technischen Kulturgutes e.V. (Association for the Preservation of Technical Heritage), which he has significantly influenced. Its members regularly organise railway weekends at various senior citizen facilities throughout Germany, enabling many old residents to take a trip down memory lane to their childhood and youth, when tinplate locomotives and wagons whistled as they rattled along old pre-war tracks. But it is not only the nostalgic toy trains that are in working order thanks to Wilhelm Seehase's initiative, but also the full-size vintage cars made of sheet metal with ‘H number plates’, which still attract admiring glances from drivers and passers-by today.

Mathias v. Bredow