“I am sure that there will be others who like me will be saddened to hear that Dorothee Soelle died suddenly today. She died of a heart attack. I am told by Beverley Harrison, who was told by Carter Hayward, that her death came at a protest event against US Middle Eastern policy, where she was to read her poetry. Beverley comments “so those of us who grieve for her can at least rest with the knowledge that she left us, as always, resisting the madness that surrounds us. May she rest in peace and rise gloriously.” What a woman she was — I shall miss her so much.”
For those who may not know:
Dorothee Soelle studied philosophy, theology, and literature at the University of Cologne and served as Professor of Theology at Union Theological Seminary in New York City from 1975 to 1987.
Among her most influential writings are Christ the Representative (1967), Suffering (Fortress Press, 1975), To Work and to Love (1984), Theology for Skeptics (Fortress Press, 1994), and The Silent Cry: Mysticism and Resistance (Fortress Press, 2001). Fortress Press published her memoir, Against the Wind: Memoir of a Radical Christian, in 1999.
Soelle was a peace and ecological movements activist and lived in ‘retirement’ (thugh hardly retiringly) in Hamburg, Germany.