My father, Michael Halliwell, who has died aged 96, was a Church of England clergyman in Jersey who devoted much of his life to promoting Anglo-German friendship.
His mission derived largely from his childhood in Jersey, where he was born to Arthur, a surgeon, and his wife, Dorothea (nee Goode). An idyllic childhood there was shattered in 1940 when the children and their mother were evacuated to Somerset to avoid the German occupation during the second world war.
In 1946 Michael began to study French and German at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, and the following year he joined a university exchange trip to Cologne. Devastated by the destruction and poverty he saw, he committed to working for Anglo-German reconciliation.
After graduation he worked as a teaching assistant at Holmewood House school near Tunbridge Wells in Kent, before going to Ely Theological College from 1952-54, leading to ordination in 1955.
He was a curate at St Mary the Virgin church in Welling, south-east London (1954-57) and then at St Alban’s church in Bournemouth (1957-59), after which he worked at the Church of England Council for Inter-Church Relations (1959-62), visiting churches behind the iron curtain.
Michael then worked as a chaplain at the British embassy in Bonn (1962-67), preaching at a ceremony at the Hindenburg Park memorial in Cologne during a joint “friendship” operation of German and British naval serviceman. Colleagues in Bonn included the future head of the Secret Intelligence Service (now MI6) Dickie Franks and David Cornwell, later known as John le Carré.
From 1967-71 he was vicar of St Andrew’s church in Croydon, before returning to Jersey as rector of St Brelade’s, where German visitors calling to enquire about relatives buried in war graves were welcomed in their own language and invited in for coffee, with an explanation that the bodies had been relocated to France in the 1960s.
In 1975, the 30th anniversary of the trials in Nuremberg, he led a party of islanders to help build a church for a community in that city; the pastor was a friend from Michael’s time living in Bonn.
Later Michael established a relationship with the mayor of Bad Wurzach, the German town to which about 600 Jersey residents had been deported during the occupation. His patient approach paved the way for Bad Wurzach to be twinned with St Helier in 2002.
A desire to create unity was also evident in Michael’s work to build links between all faiths, including by establishing Communicare, an ecumenical centre based at St Brelade’s.
He retired from St Brelade’s in 1996. In 2024 he was awarded the Bailiff of Jersey’s Silver Seal, as well as the German embassy’s German-British Friendship award for his devotion to reconciliation between Jersey, the UK and Germany.
Michael’s wife, Susan (nee Nicholson), whom he married in 1961, died in 2022. He is survived by their five children, 12 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
