Fritze studied Evangelical Theology in
Halle (Saale) and
Marburg. He sat his first theological exam in the
Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg in 1896, and his second exam in the
University of Marburg in 1898. He then did military service from 1889 to 1890. He became an assistant preacher, and later "second pastor" in the
Belgian Mission Church in
Charleroi, where he ordained on 30 September 1900. After four years he returned to the Prussian Provincial Church in
Saxony, where he made up the
vicariate. After a year he was elected as a pastor in the parish of
Nordhausen. In 1905 he married Katharina Havelaer from
Haarlem in the
Netherlands; together, they had four children. In April 1916, Fritze took up the parish position in the
Trinitatiskirche in
Cologne. On 15 and 19 January 1919 he spoke in the Cologne
Gürzenichsaal to a full crowd about the then unusual topic of "The Church and Social Democracy". Georg Fritze called for an end to the church's opposition to the labour movement and at the same time criticized the
Social Democratic Party of Germany concerning its contemporary hostility to religion. As a result, a group of active religious workers became Fritze's dedicated followers. Fritze thus was a follower of
Christoph Blumhardt, who had to give up his pastorship in 1899. Along with
Erwin Eckert and
Emil Fuchs, they were the first pastors in Germany who became widely recognized as socialists. In September 1919 Georg Fritze traveled to the
Tambach meeting of Protestant theologians (which also gave rise to the so-called dialectical theology of the 1920s) and met
Karl Barth, who, like Fritze, was one of the few prominent Protestant pastors, until he was later expelled from Germany. However, Fritze remained more of a liberal theologian. Fritze only turned to dialectical theology, and in particular the ideology of Karl Barth, in the early 1930s, after Barth became active in
Bonn, which was very close to Fritze's home in Cologne. During the 1920s, Fritze also campaigned for the ordination of women; at least four women completed his time as vicars with him, which was unusual at the time. In 1928 Georg Fritze became the first pastor in the restored
Carthusian church in Cologne . In the "Carthusian parish leaves" he repeatedly warned of fascism . In December 1930, he and his colleagues from the Association of Religious Socialists in Cologne discussed the issue of violence in the resistance against
National Socialism. They were already afraid of "possibly impending struggles" and discussed whether they could be countered in a non-violent manner in principle, or whether violent conflicts should be expected and one should prepare for them. From 1933, the growing number of so-called
German Christians in Cologne communities exacerbated the conflicts. Fritze participated in the founding of the Confessing Community, which tried to evade the National Socialist appropriation of the church, but beyond that it did not have a significant anti-fascist effect. Finally, representatives of the Confessing Church also advised Fritze to distance himself from socialism and to bow to
Nazi demands. In 1938 Fritze was asked to take an oath of allegiance to
Adolf Hitler. His refusal was used as an excuse to remove him from the pastorate on 17 October 1938. After intense debates, Georg Fritze's health was severely impaired. On 3 January 1939 he died after a
stroke and
heart failure. Three days later he was buried in Cologne's South Cemetery. ==Legacy==