Werner Pelz was born into a non-practising Jewish family. He became a refugee from Hitler's Germany while in Britain in 1939. During the war his family perished at Auschwitz. He elected to do labouring work in Australia and arrived on the troopship Dunera, working in labour camps at Tatura and Hay before his release and return to Britain in 1942. After the war, he became an ordained minister in the Church of England in 1953 but became disillusioned. In 1963 he and his wife published a theological critique, God is No More, for which he became well known. His autobiography, Distant Strains of Triumph, was published the following year.
In 1964, he travelled to Israel making a documentary for the BBC and living on a Kibbutz for a short time. In the late 1960s Pelz continued working as a broadcaster and participated in various social movements, including the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. At the age of fifty he separated from his wife and returned to study at the University of Bristol. He was awarded a doctorate in sociology which was published by Routledge in 1974 as The Scope of Understanding in Sociology. As a result of his pioneering analysis, he was offered and accepted a lectureship at La Trobe University. In 1973 he returned permanently to Australia, moving to Melbourne with his second wife and becoming a highly successful and inspirational teacher for fourteen years until his retirement in 1986. He continued his association with the university as a guest lecturer and in 1987 a series of lectures, Rumours of Hope, was recorded by the ABC's religious program. He published autobiographic and historical fiction and was a translator of German religious verse.
Source: Vale: Dr Werner Pelz (Dr Phillip Ablett) Sofia (Sea of Faith in Australia Inc.) website, http://www.sof-in-australia.org
