And the witnesses were silent: the Confessing Church and the persecution of the Jews

‘‘Gerlach tenaciously pursues evidence of anti-Jewish attitudes among Confessing Church leaders, and he ties these attitudes to their Christian suppositions. This helps to establish the overlap of Christian and racial antisemitism. It also helps us understand how the antiJewish policies of Nazi Germany could evoke so little opposition, so much acceptance, and, in many cases, such ready participation. This book is an important contribution to a very important trend in the historiography of modern Germany.’’ — Robert P. Ericksen, coeditor of Betrayal: German Churches and the Holocaust. An endlessly perplexing question of the twentieth century is how ‘‘decent’’ people came to allow, and sometimes even participate in, the Final Solution. Fear obviously had its place, as did apathy. But how does one explain the silence of those people who were committed, active, and often fearless opponents of the Nazi regime on other grounds — those who spoke out against Nazi activities in many areas yet whose response to genocide ranged from tepid disquiet to avoidance? One such group was the Confessing Church, Protestants who often risked their own safety to aid Christian victims of Nazi oppression but whose reponse to pogroms against Jews was ambivalent. Wolfgang Gerlach is a retired pastor in the Evangelical Church of Germany. Victoria J. Barnett is a consultant for the Department of Church Relations at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and the editor of Bystanders: Conscience and Complicity during the Holocaust. University of Nebraska Press Lincoln NE 68588-0484 www.nebraskapress.unl.edu

And the Witnesses Were Silent The Confessing Church and the Persecution of the Jews by wolfgang gerlach translated and edited by v i c t o r i a j. b a r n e t t

University of Nebraska Press Lincoln and London

This publication is a slightly revised version of the German original, Als die Zeugen Schwiegen, which was published in 1987 and 1993. This volume was published with the support of a generous grant from the Cleveland Foundation to the Department of Religion at Case Western Reserve University as part of a project on Jewish-Christian relations directed by Professors Susannah Heschel and Eldon Jay Epp. ∫ 2000 by the University of Nebraska Press. All rights reserved. Manufactured in the United States of America ! Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gerlach, Wolfgang. [Als die Zeugen schwiegen. English] And the witnesses were silent: the Confessing Church and the persecution of the Jews / by Wolfgang Gerlach; translated and edited by Victoria J. Barnett p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 0-8032-2165-7 (cloth: alkaline paper) 1. Antisemitism — Germany 2. Christianity and antisemitism. 3. Jews — Persecutions — Germany. 4. Bekennende Kirche — History. 5. Protestant churches — Germany — History — 20th century. i. Barnett, Victoria. ii. Title. ds146.g4813 2000 261.8%348924043%099043—dc21 99-044916

contents Preface Translator’s Note Introduction

vii xi 1

Part 1: The Defamation of the Jews, 1933–35 1. Church Responses to Early Anti-Jewish Measures 2. Early Church Statements 3. Dietrich Bonhoeffer 4. Gutachten and Synodal Resolutions 5. The Pastors’ Emergency League 6. Ecumenical Developments 7. The Aryan Paragraph and the Protestant Press 8. Early Confessional Synods

9 12 20 25 30 45 49 64 69

Part 2: The Isolation of the Jews, 1935–38 9. The Nuremberg Laws 10. A Divided Confessing Church 11. The Jewish Question after Steglitz 12. The Evangelical Church and Its Non-Aryan Members 13. Ecumenical Responses

87 89 93 100 114 130

Part 3: The ‘‘Elimination’’ of the Jews, 1938–45 14. Reactions to the November Pogrom 15. Relief Work 16. The ‘‘Godesberg Declaration’’ 17. The Aryan Certificate for Theologians 18. The Final Solution and the End of the Church Struggle

139 143 154 176 186 192

Part 4: The Legacy of the Church Struggle, 1945–50 19. Confessions of Guilt 20. The Confessing Church’s Record under Nazism

221 223 230

Notes Glossary Note on Sources Index

237 287 291 295

preface How can we reassess what happened, to keep it from poisoning us and setting a pattern for what is yet to come?—Romano Guardini This study was accepted in 1970 as a doctoral dissertation by the Evangelical Theological Faculty at the University of Hamburg. For years it went unpublished since it contradicted much of the accepted thought among veterans of the Kirchenkampf (church struggle) and leading church historians. The issues I examined were considered taboo. My critics accused me of attacking those who had witnessed courageously on behalf of the Christian confessions and principles of faith. Apparently, some time had to pass before a new generation could reexamine the accepted history of the Kirchenkampf. Few people were familiar with the documents that proved that the Evangelical Church’s record under Nazism had been less than heroic. In the early 1980s, friends in Germany, the United States, and Israel persuaded me to update the manuscript. Thanks to the editorial assistance of Professor Peter von der Osten-Sacken, director of the Institute of the Church and Judaism in Berlin, a German edition was published in 1987. A second edition followed in 1993. By the time of its publication, this study was no longer a novelty in the historiography of the Kirchenkampf. My research had long since been confirmed and supplemented by the findings of others. The significance of this volume today rests more in its collection and assessment of the documents themselves than in the intent to present something new. The title of the German edition, Als die Zeugen Schwiegen, underscored the contradictions within this ‘‘confessing’’ church. Publicly and often at great risk, it confessed sterile points of dogma, while remaining silent as Jews and ‘‘non-Aryan’’ Christians were ‘‘eliminated,’’ ‘‘removed,’’ or simply ‘‘disappeared.’’ Yet whoever confesses bears witness, and becomes a witness as well. The contemporary witness who experiences political events differs from the theological witness, who bears witness by confessing faith in word and deed. One of the problems of the church that called itself the ‘‘Confessing Church’’ was that it remained silent when it was confronted with the fate of the Jews. It became a nonconfessing and, in its confessional vii

Preface

existence, a broken church. This was evident at the very beginning of the Kirchenkampf, when some Protestants attempted to introduce an ‘‘Aryan paragraph’’ into church law and thus ensure the ‘‘racial purity’’ of the clergy. The Pastors’ Emergency League pledge, the 1933 declaration by Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Niemöller that launched the Kirchenkampf, rejected the Aryan paragraph as contrary to the confessions. Every Confessing pastor was required to sign this pledge. Yet the 1934 Barmen Declaration did not mention Jews or non-Aryan Christians, although it was the founding document for the Confessing Church and, in many churches today, has been granted the same status as the confessional texts of the Reformation. The church’s silence in Barmen characterized most of its subsequent statements as well. Thus, the church remained silent on the witness stand. At a time when the persecuted hoped for its witness, it confessed only on its own behalf. It even spoke out when silence would have been preferable—for example, when it allowed the state to use church records to confirm Aryan ancestry, thereby abetting the racist separation of Jews from non-Jews in society and in the church. Only individuals spoke out, helped and hid Jews, often at the risk of their own lives. The witnesses in the church were silent not only during the Nazi reign of terror but long afterward. Many tried to vindicate themselves by falsifying, omitting, or downplaying the record of their failures. They condemned studies like this one as arrogant, irresponsible attacks, made by people who had no idea of the pressures on Christians during the Nazi era. They argued that an adequate appraisal of the circumstances that had ensnared people under Nazism was impossible. This is a problem that confronts all contemporary historians. Nonetheless, the disadvantages in researching an era not experienced personally are offset—particularly with regard to the Nazi era—by the ability to see some things more clearly from a historical distance. This does not mean that I feel detached from the record of my church under Nazism, as a German or as a Christian. I am obligated to acknowledge the burdens of my German and Christian history—all the more so since I must assume that I, too, probably would have remained a silent witness. I, too, would have failed, either out of fear or because my perspective had been blurred by traditional anti-Judaism. As former German president Richard von Weizsäcker said during his 1985 visit to Israel, ‘‘Every German bears the legacy of the history of his people—the viii

Preface

legacy of this history in its entirety with its bright and dark chapters. He is not at liberty to ignore the dark portions. Honest remembrance gives us Germans the freedom to live up to our responsibility in today’s world. Only in this way can we master the future, after a past which no one can undo and from which no one can dissociate himself.’’ The English translation of this book is due to the efforts of Prof. Susannah Heschel from Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. Grants from the Samuel Rosenthal Center for Judaic Studies at Case Western Reserve University and the Cleveland Foundation to Eldon Epp and Susannah Heschel provided generous financial support. I am grateful to Dr. Dennis L. Slabaugh for his careful and precise work on the original translation. Doris Bergen and Robert Ericksen carefully read the manuscript and recommended that it be abridged and revised to make it more accessible for U.S. readers. Victoria Barnett took on the task of editing the translation, thereby opening the door for a wider audience. I owe deep thanks to all these scholars and colleagues for their help and interest in making this translation possible. I hope for sympathetic, critical readers and am grateful for any corrections that advance the study of the Shoah and its theological implications. wolfgang gerlach

ix

translator’s note Readers familiar with the German edition of this book will notice that numerous changes have been made for the English edition; the text has been abridged and revised. All changes were made for the sake of clarity, and Dr. Gerlach has been extraordinarily helpful in advising the editor. Editorial interjections appear in square brackets throughout the text. Authorial interjections within quoted material are set in italics within square brackets. A glossary of terms translated from the German has been added. Two terms, in particular, should be noted. Throughout this book evangelisch is translated as ‘‘Evangelical’’ where it refers specifically to the Evangelical Church of Germany or offices of that institution; it is translated as ‘‘Protestant’’ when referring to theologians, pastors, and other members of that church. The second term is Judenchristen (Jewish Christians); some documents refer to the same group of people as ‘‘non-Aryan’’ Christians. Both terms reflect the Nazi racial laws and the ideology that preceded them (latenineteenth-century church thinkers and leaders also spoke of ‘‘Jewish Christians’’). Under Nazi law, these people were categorized as nonAryan or Jewish; the degree of that designation depended on the religious ancestry of their grandparents. As Gerlach’s work shows, conversion to Christianity did not protect these people from Nazi persecution. Gerlach’s wording is followed here; Judenchristen is translated as ‘‘Jewish Christians’’ and nichtarische Christen as ‘‘non-Aryan Christians.’’ This conveys the tone of the discussion within the church, since the church viewed the situation of the Judenchristen as both racially and theologically significant. ‘‘Non-Aryan’’ and ‘‘Aryan’’ have not been enclosed in quotation marks, although the author and editor are aware that these are ideological concepts, not legitimate ones. Unless otherwise noted, all translations and page numbers of material from Eberhard Bethge’s biography Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Klaus Scholder’s two-volume The Churches and the Third Reich, and Bonhoeffer’s Ethics (Ethik) and Letters and Papers from Prison (Widerstand und Ergebung) are from the English editions of those works. A list of relevant works available in English has been appended to the bibliographical notes. xi

And the Witnesses Were Silent

introduction During the final years of the eighteenth century, the new tolerance fostered by the Enlightenment enabled Jews in Europe and abroad to attain the rights of citizens. The domestic reforms of Hapsburg monarch Joseph II in 1782 included an edict that substantially improved the Jews’ legal status. The constitutions of the United States (1787) and France (1791) contained similar provisions for the integration of Jews in civil society. In Prussia, equal status for Jews came in 1812 under Chancellor Karl von Hardenberg. Equality was relative; until the First World War, for example, it was virtually impossible for nonbaptized Jews in Prussia to become officers or professors. Having escaped or outgrown social ghettoization, Jews at the end of the eighteenth century were a major force in creating an urbane aesthetic culture, epitomized by the artistic and literary salons of Berlin. The cosmopolitan flair of these salons was new to Prussia and that much more attractive to Prussian artists and scholars. A social and spiritual melting process resulted—partly at the cost of traditional Judaism, which had preserved itself for two centuries only through a segregation that was both socially coerced and religiously chosen. With the growth of secularism, the Torah was left behind in the ghetto. For the religiously indifferent, at least, it was tempting to exchange the legacy of the Torah for the pottage of lentils represented by equal civil status. The contradictions between traditional Judaism and the new enlightened spirit seemed to be irrevocable; by challenging the heart of religious belief and launching a process of critical self-examination, the Enlightenment affected Christianity as well. Pondering ‘‘the essence of Judaism,’’ many nineteenth-century Jews could not help but conclude that they had entered a process of ‘‘religious decline.’’∞ With the Jews’ growing freedom and the public expression of their intellectual capacities, there was a powerful outburst of anti-Jewish hatred, which had never died out but only been repressed by liberal enlightened ideas. The conservative bourgeoisie, with its roots in the romantic tradition, was unnerved by the emerging new philosophies that threatened to change economic, social, and religious conditions. Because Jews themselves had proved capable of such changes, the political and cultural influence of ‘‘the Jews’’ was regarded as ‘‘subversive.’’ 1

Introduction

A number of scholarly and pseudoscholarly nineteenth-century authors began to expound anti-Semitism to their contemporaries; subsequent generations would use these writings to legitimate it.≤ Various anti-Semitic organizations were founded during the same period. The constitution of the Association of German Students (Verein deutscher Studenten), established in 1881, was receptive to anti-Jewish thinking. The Association of Anti-Semites, founded by journalist Wilhelm Marr in 1887, eventually became part of the German Anti-Semitic Union (Marr was known for his book, Der Sieg des Judentums über das Germanentum (The victory of Judaism over Germandom), in which the term ‘‘antiSemitism’’ appears for the first time). Among the founders of the German Anti-Semitic Union was the writer Theodor Fritsch, editor of the Handbook of the Jewish Question, a compendium of anti-Semitic propaganda that was used during the Nazi era. These kinds of organizations differed from the assimilation movement promoted by the followers of Adolf Stoecker.≥ Stoecker (1835– 1909), a conservative theologian and follower of Bismarck, served as chaplain of the royal court in Berlin from 1874 to 1890; he also helped establish the Protestant Inner Mission, one of the earliest church social welfare agencies in Germany. His Christian Social party, founded in 1878, was ‘‘the most important anti-Semitic organization in the conservative camp.’’∂ Stoecker’s party did not try to agitate against religious Judaism but treated the Jewish question, in Stoecker’s words, as ‘‘a social question in the spiritual and economic sense.’’∑ Stoecker considered modern Judaism, stripped of its historically religious context, an ‘‘areligious power.’’∏ Although convinced that emancipated Judaism and Christianity in Germany had led to a substantial decline in faith, Stoecker focused on denouncing the cultural and religious decline in Judaism, which, in his view, was attempting to take the Christian people down with it.π ‘‘Above all,’’ wrote Stoecker, ‘‘what drove me to this battle was indignation over the godless, anti-church activities of the Berlin Jews and the conscientious necessity to awaken the Protestant people of Berlin from their sleep.’’∫ The goal of this ‘‘awakening’’ was not just a more conscious Christianity but a decisive anti-Semitism. Such anti-Semitism extended to the highest levels of society. Kaiser Wilhelm II is said to have been among the ‘‘enthusiastic readers and correspondents’’ of the anti-Semitic British polemicist (and son-in-law of Richard Wagner) Houston Stewart Chamberlain.Ω In general, although 2

Introduction

there were certainly some voices of tolerance and reconciliation among the aristocracy∞≠ and clergy, ‘‘the future belonged to the cold fanaticism of the racial theorists. And the hot fanaticism of religious agitators drove the Christian masses into its arms.’’∞∞ After 1917, the influx of eastern European Jews into the German Reich created new problems. They came from a region already viewed by Western society as wayward, coarse, and uncivilized; the immigrants’ clothing, language, and lifestyle sparked an uninhibited and malicious campaign against all Jews. A 1917 German newspaper expressed its disdain for the new immigrants as ‘‘riffraff ’’ and ‘‘vermin,’’ ‘‘depraved’’ beings who were more like animals than humans.∞≤ Even Jews whose families had lived in Germany for generations had trouble discerning a common history, spirit, or culture with the immigrants from the East. They sensed that the anti-Semitic sneers at the immigrants were directed against them as well; as a result, German Jews themselves voiced hopes for an end to the immigration.∞≥ Assimilation had opened the doors for Jews to enter positions in the business, cultural, and political realms. In response, there were frequent references to the ‘‘foreign infiltration’’ of German culture by a ‘‘disproportionate’’ number of Jews (despite the fact that only four of the two hundred fifty government ministers during the Weimar Republic were Jewish). Terms such as overpowering and infiltration (Überfremdung) were not so much descriptions as a form of incitement; they lent a sinister undertone to discussions of the Jewish question. Posing as the stronger party, the anti-Semites who gathered in the Nazi party disguised their own inferiority by declaring the ‘‘overpowerful’’ Jews to be Untermenschen (subhuman).∞∂ In the German Evangelical Church, the ‘‘German Christians’’ [a movement that, after 1933, sought to fuse Christianity and the völkisch (ethnically nationalist) ideas of Nazism, particularly its ‘‘Aryan’’ principles] became the theological expression of such views.∞∑ In his analysis of the role of anti-Semitism in late-nineteenth-century Germany, the historian Golo Mann makes an astute observation about the dynamics of prejudice: It would not have occurred to anyone to attribute what a non-Jew did to all non-Jews. Then, too, no one attributed the valuable things that Jews did to all Jews either. But if what a Jew did was somehow negative or reprehensible, if it could be attacked in some way—that was typically

3

Introduction Jewish, that shed true light on Jewish character . . . people blithely forgot all the positive creative performances of Jews, all their contributions to scholarship, to German art, their gifts to the German language. . . . The true anti-Semite . . . is not interested at all in the truth. . . . He has certain views with which he approaches experience. When experience in some way confirms his views and prejudices, then it is welcome. When it fails to do so, he is indifferent toward it.∞∏

A number of Protestant pastors succumbed to such prejudice. After Germany’s defeat in the First World War, the church had difficulty recovering from the loss of its close ties to what it viewed as the divinely sanctioned throne of the Hohenzollerns.∞π Protestant clergy viewed the ensuing political and ecclesiastical changes as a cancerlike metastasis brought about by the Jews. During the Weimar Republic, the clergy ‘‘essentially fought for the preservation of the old church.’’∞∫ A series of study guides on the Jewish question, published during the 1920s, illustrated how susceptible pastors had become to the ideas of the racial theorists.∞Ω In one issue, a Berlin pastor summarized: ‘‘The Jews belong to the Semitic race. Compared to the Aryan race, the Semitic race is inferior. For the Aryan people, particularly for the German people, contact with them [the Jews] is fatal because of their different ways and their inferiority.’’≤≠ Writing in the same issue, another pastor declared himself a moderate and vowed to renounce all hatred. At the same time, he understood German bitterness against the Jews: ‘‘It is indisputable: the Jews have become a plague upon our people that we must fend off.’’≤∞ There were some exceptions, such as the statements of Pastor Eduard Lamparter about Christian behavior toward the Jews. Lamparter, a Stuttgart pastor, was the author of Evangelische Kirche und Judentum (The Evangelical Church and Judaism), ‘‘the best-known and most impressive church publication against anti-Semitism in this period.’’≤≤ Although he spoke of a ‘‘Jewish type’’ with ‘‘certain disagreeable traits,’’ he made an empathetic attempt to do justice to the Jewish situation.≤≥ He attributed these ‘‘certain characteristics’’ to the outcome of ghetto life, the experience of living in spiritual and social quarantine, and the long history of ‘‘fanatical pressure’’ and humiliation of the Jews. ‘‘Therefore, it is not a question of racial predisposition,’’ Lamparter wrote, ‘‘but of the consequences of serious injustice brought about by Christian society.’’≤∂ Lam4

Introduction

parter called on the church to ‘‘feel its obligation and the courage to bear witness to justice, truth, and love, against the harsh anti-Semitic injuries. It is necessary to redress past injustice and to ensure that no new injustice occurs.’’≤∑ Lamparter’s remarks, however, were an isolated exception. A 1960 study by scholar Ino Arndt reviewed the attitudes toward Judaism in the Protestant religious press during the 1920s.≤∏ There were sixty-eight Protestant Sunday papers, with an estimated two million readers (of forty million Protestants at the time); they had a significant influence on public opinion. Since these papers were not official church publications, they did not represent the institutional church, which never published any official statement on the Jewish question and anti-Semitism during the Weimar Republic.≤π Arndt’s research showed that the general public mood during the Weimar era, which blamed the Social Democrats and the Jews for the German defeat in 1918, was mirrored in the Protestant press. By 1920, terms such as racial comrade and stammesfremd (of alien stock) were already in use. Even in discussions of the Christian mission to convert the Jews (Judenmission), there was talk of ‘‘alien races’’ and the ‘‘foreign body in the life of the Volk.’’ The very concept of anti-Semitism was justified by talk of ‘‘correct anti-Semitism.’’≤∫ Terminology such as Überfremdung (infiltration) and Fremdstämmige (of alien heritage) was fueled by the immigration of the Jews from the east; in addition, three prominent corruption trials during that period led to furious polemics in the press.≤Ω Between 1925 and 1930, in the churches’ mission to convert the Jews, ‘‘the Jewish question shifted . . . from a theological question to a sociological and ethnological one.’’≥≠ The Protestant magazine Licht und Leben (Light and life) spoke of the ‘‘well-founded revulsion’’ of all peoples against the Jews.≥∞ After 1926, Protestant publications blamed the Jewish press for its disastrous influence on German life. As a ‘‘non-national minority,’’ German Jewry was accused of lacking patriotic consciousness and of widespread subversive tendencies. In December 1932, the committee for ‘‘Doctrine and Confession’’ of the General Association of Preachers in Oldenburg drafted nine theses on the relationship between Christian faith and racial research. These theses protested the elevation of racial research to a Weltanschauung (world view), a ‘‘religion based upon blood.’’ But, the committee wrote, ‘‘the church . . . will always have to pay careful attention to the results of 5

Introduction

racial research . . . the irrevocable racial rudiments of his Volk are formed and determined by the hand of the living God in history.’’≥≤ Such phrases may have been understood as a relatively harmless act of reverence toward a racist Zeitgeist (spirit of the times). Still, they were an early sign of the ambivalence within the German Evangelical Church about racial theories—an ambivalence that would prove disastrous for the church’s debate about the Nazi racial laws and their relevance, not just for church law but for interpretations of church doctrine. The hopes placed in the Nazi party were too great; Nazi slogans and programs mirrored the longings of German National loyalists. Inside and outside the churches, people made excuses for the extremism of the National Socialists, excuses that began very early, with soothing remarks about the transitory nature of certain excesses. In general, there was a readiness to wait and see what would happen: ‘‘After the end of 1930, animosity toward the Jews became stronger in the church publications. . . . In articles about the Jewish question, the rhetoric in almost all Sunday papers is far sharper than before.’’≥≥ Arndt concludes that the Jewish question had ‘‘great timeliness’’ in the Protestant religious press between 1918 and 1933 and was addressed predominantly ‘‘from an anti-Semitic point of view.’’≥∂ Under the continuing influence of Adolf Stoecker’s ideas, the close ties between Protestantism and German identity led to a nationalism that ‘‘viewed the Jews as the natural enemy of the national Christian tradition and held them responsible for the collapse of the Christian and monarchist order.’’≥∑ Arndt found that the readers of the Sunday papers—who were predominantly middle class, petit bourgeois, and rural—generally agreed with Nazi anti-Semitism. ‘‘To a great extent, this weakened the moral power of resistance in this class against the early anti-Semitic measures of the party.’’≥∏ As a result, Arndt concludes, the Protestant press bore a ‘‘strong co-responsibility—not to speak of complicity—for preparing the ground in which the National Socialist ideology could blossom’’; it had created a ‘‘caricature of Judaism that remained fixed in the imaginations of many readers of the Sunday papers.’’≥π Such caricatures could be found in numerous Sunday sermons as well. A 1933 sermon given by Basel theology professor Dr. Adolf Köberle illustrates the anti-Jewish climate fostered by Christianity and its church. Köberle used the stereotypical vocabulary of his age: 6

Introduction In addition, there is another type of Judaism: the secular, areligious Jew. He has followed the path of outrage against God to its final consequence. In his heart, he has bid farewell to the last bits of faith and reverence before God. His ideal is the spirit of the French revolution, the spirit of liberalism and materialism, Marxism and Bolshevism, but also, when possible, the spirit of unprincipled Mammonism and the unbridled greed of a Caesar-like world domination. He is everywhere where there is something to subvert, to destroy, whether it be marriage and family, love for the Fatherland or the church, discipline and order, chastity and decency, wherever there is something to gain. He is at the forefront with quick-witted mockery, with clever social gifts, with tenaciously subversive energy. An atheist is always destructive; but nowhere does the pernicious power of this attitude have such devastating effect as in the Jew, who has squandered his rich Old Testament legacy and gone among the swine. It is completely unavoidable that every people begins to defend itself against this corrosive influence. . . . The persecution and expelling of the Jews follows, and, always, the eerie words that the Jewish people took upon itself long ago on Good Friday are fulfilled anew, metaphorically and in actual fact: ‘‘His blood be upon ourselves and our children!’’≥∫

At the same time, Köberle noted: Jesus Christ is the savior of the entire world. No people and no race is so complete and pure that it does not need cleansing through Jesus’ death and resurrection. And there is no people and no race so decadent and in error that the vital power of the Gospel cannot create room for itself there. . . . We [Christians] should tremble before the serious judgmental path of God toward the mysterious fate of this people, and we should open our hearts wide for a missionary task that fights unceasingly for the soul of the Jewish people with calls to repentance and grace: Confess, Israel, the Lord your God!≥Ω

As the struggle of the German Evangelical Church with the Nazi regime began, such attitudes were widespread in the churches. These prejudices would make any genuine Christian activism on behalf of the Jews virtually impossible—despite stalwart Protestant opposition to Nazi interference in church life and despite the Confessing Church’s fight against racial guidelines for church clergy and laity. Most Christians saw the Jews as objects of either damnation or evangelization. It would be years before many honorable Christians awoke from the dream of a Ger7

Introduction

man Fatherland and saw themselves confronted, in reality, by a tyrannical Führerland. Too late, they discovered the courage to sacrifice for their neighbors, including their Jewish neighbors.∂≠ At the beginning of the Third Reich, however, even church members and leaders placed a great deal of patriotic trust in the Führer as the savior of a new Germany who had outlined his anti-Semitic program in Mein Kampf. A song written at the time by Pastor Paul Humburg, who would subsequently lead the Confessing Church in the Rhineland, illustrated the churches’ attitudes: The day breaks, the day breaks now! Young Germany stand still! Raise a true hand to the sacred vow! Germany awakens from its need, from strife and its bands; Heal yourself, my only German Fatherland! Heal yourself, my only German Fatherland! The old order wanes, the old order wanes. From the ruins of war a new spring shines! One man breaks through treason and shame; Millions follow him full of trust. His will and word sweep us to strike and act. His will and word sweep us to strike and act. The sun rises, the sun rises at morn! We arm ourselves for battle, For sacrifice despite the enemy’s hate and scorn. Come, brother, prepare; we march side by side with Adolf Hitler, Germany’s truest son. with Adolf Hitler, Germany’s truest son. To work, to work! Young Germany dares anew! Our call to battle: ‘‘Germany,’’ unto the death. The Führer calls; we rejoice, ever true! Before us the day! And our fortress is God. Before us the day! And our fortress is God.∂∞

8

part one

The Defamation of the Jews ∞Ω≥≥–≥∑

Within the ‘‘soul of the German people,’’ the groundwork for the exclusion of the Jews from German public life had been prepared sufficiently by 1933. The church could look back on a long, theologically rooted tradition of hostility toward the Jews. The state stood on the verge of consolidating its völkisch-nationalist ideas about the Nordic race and the need for racial purity into a set of governing principles. Given the general mindset of the German population, the only thing still lacking was the appropriate legislation. Some church leaders shared the state’s new consciousness. The Guidelines of the German Christian Faith Movement, published on 26 May 1932, announced: We see race, Volkstum (ethnic cultural heritage), and the nation as Godgiven orders of life, entrusted to us by God. It is God’s law that we provide for their preservation. (point 7) We view the mission to convert the Jews as a grave danger to our Volkstum. It is the point of entry for alien blood into the body of our Volk. It has no right to exist alongside the foreign missionary enterprise. We reject the mission to the Jews in Germany as long as the Jews possess the rights of citizenship and, therefore, as long as the danger of mongrelization and the danger that they can disguise their racial identity exists. . . . In particular, marriage between Germans and Jews is to be prohibited. (point 9)∞

The theological and racially ideological arguments had already converged. The underlying assumption was that there was a difference between being German and being Jewish—although civil law, at least, still recognized German Jews as citizens. ‘‘God’s law,’’ proclaimed in point 7, lacked only legal ratification. That same year, however, some critics raised their voices ‘‘against any falsification of the biblical Gospel.’’ In October 1932, the District Synod of Elberfeld [in the Rhineland] issued a protest to be read from every pulpit ‘‘against any disparagement of and disdain for the Old Testament’’ and confessed ‘‘Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, who has suffered death on behalf of all peoples, without racial distinction.’’≤ These two voices, one völkisch Christian and one biblically Christian, 11

The Defamation of the Jews

were early portents for the events of 1933. The chances for an objective and humane resolution of the ‘‘Jewish question’’ were still open. Within months, however, any such possibility vanished—in part because of the rapid implementation of Nazi racial laws, in part because of the church’s failure to protest them.

∞

Church Responses to Early Anti-Jewish Measures Despite the intense pace of Hitler’s early weeks in office, it was in his own vital interest that the policies toward the Jews, as outlined in Mein Kampf, be carried out skillfully. In retrospect, the rapid succession of events between 23 March and 1 April 1933 suggests a calculated drama. The first step was the 23 March Law for the Removal of Distress from People and State (the Enabling Act), which gave the government the right to pass laws without the Reichstag’s consent, even when these laws deviated from the Constitution.∞ This set the precedent for the next step, the 1 April boycott of the Jews, a deliberate experiment for a law that would isolate the Jews from state and society. the boycott of 1 april

Given the almost universal acclaim in Germany for the Enabling Act, it was easy to justify the boycott of the Jews as a ‘‘defensive reaction against the Jewish parasites threatening the Volk,’’ in the words of the ns-Kurier. Where there was reason to fear that the boycott would meet with protest, the Nazi press declared the government’s actions to be the acts of communists. The vandalism of the sa was played down as ‘‘revolutionary overzealousness.’’ This did not fail to have an effect among church officials and lay Christians; the fear of communism was great everywhere and needed only to be exploited skillfully by the party. The Nazi party viewed the outcome of the experimental boycott of Jewish commercial, medical, and legal practices as promising. Confronted by the staged demonstrations of the ‘‘powerful people’s movement,’’ which Hermann Göring defended by citing the ‘‘boycott and atrocity propaganda by the Jews at home and abroad,’’ protest against the boycott was limited.≤ Here and there, sheltered in diaries, a few quiet voices suffered under 12

Church Responses to Early Anti-Jewish Measures

their fainthearted church. The respected novelist Jochen Klepper, whose wife was Jewish, wrote: The silent pogrom today reached a high point with the legalization of the boycott against Jewish businesses, judges, lawyers, doctors, artists. The hatred this sows among young Jews must become terrible. Beginning of a new age? . . . But I believe in God’s mystery, which he established in Judaism; and because of that, I can only suffer under the fact that the church tolerates the present proceedings. I sense what it means to be a ‘‘servant of God.’’≥

There is little evidence of abhorrence within the church for the intensifying anti-Semitism.∂ One such response came from the Rhineland, where Wilhelm Menn, a social welfare pastor, wrote to his superintendent, Dr. Stoltenhoff: The personal persecution of people whose ‘‘guilt’’ consists of nothing more than political conviction or of belonging to a race, this persecution with the clear aim of destroying their very existence, is a slap in the face of the simplest moral judgment. It is obvious that the masses cannot be permitted for years and years to scream ‘‘To hell with the Jew!’’ without eventually succumbing to this brutal desire for persecution. And our ‘‘Christian Volk’’ rejoices. I have never doubted my people as deeply as now. Who will have the courage to say what needs to be said here? To say that the Christian Church . . . clearly characterizes it as a moral injustice, as anti-Christian, to persecute and injure individuals because they belong to a group against which it appears necessary, for some reason, to fight. Do we not owe such a statement, above all, to those Jewish people who have become Christians?∑

Stoltenhoff ’s reply exemplified the feelings of most Christians at the time.∏ He expressed ‘‘great joy at what these drastic changes have brought us,’’ even while he acknowledged a certain ‘‘concern’’ that ‘‘the individual’’ could do ‘‘next to nothing against the elemental force of this movement of our age.’’ Typical, too, was his candid animosity toward the Jews: ‘‘But I must say this openly: I can understand why the legitimate resentment, which has built up even among those who are in no way anti-Semitic, at what the Jewish-dominated press, stock exchange, theater, etc., have done to us needs an energetic outlet.’’π In Berlin, General Church superintendent Otto Dibelius felt called to 13

The Defamation of the Jews

comment on the 1 April boycott. His earlier comments, however, already revealed the inherent conflict between his nationalist, bourgeois, and anti-Semitic background and his subsequent role as a Confessing Christian in opposition to the state. In 1928, Dibelius had accused ‘‘a strong Jewish element’’ of ‘‘propelling’’ Germany’s political leadership in a ‘‘calculated and malignant’’ direction.∫ That same year, he sent an Easter message to the pastors in his district: My dear brothers! All of us will not only understand but have complete sympathy for the final motivations behind the völkisch movement. Despite the evil ring that the word has acquired in many cases, I have always considered myself an anti-Semite. It cannot be denied that Judaism plays a leading role in all the corruptive phenomena of modern civilization. God bless us Christians and our Easter proclamation!Ω

Dibelius’s commentary on the 1 April 1933 boycott appeared in the 4 April Berlin Evangelische Sonntagsblatt: ‘‘The last fifteen years in Germany have strengthened Jewry’s influence to an extraordinary degree. The number of Jewish judges, Jewish politicians, Jewish civil servants in influential positions has grown measurably. Public sentiment turns against this.’’∞≠ Meanwhile, foreign interest in the ominous events in Germany had been awakened. The tone of press and radio reports abroad was quite different from that of reports within the Reich. In Germany, however, elation about the new tough government, the national ‘‘breakthrough,’’ and the vote of confidence in the new Führer led even church leaders to criticize these foreign reports as ‘‘typical’’ statements of ‘‘inflammatory Jewish propaganda.’’ Dibelius responded to the foreign press coverage in a radio speech that was reprinted in the 6 April 1933 Reichsanzeiger: There is not one true word in the ghastly news reports about the gruesome and bloody treatment of the Communists. On the basis of these false reports, the Jewish community in several countries has begun agitating against Germany. In order to break this boycott, the German National Socialists have now initiated a boycott movement against German Jewry. This boycott has been limited, for the present, to one single day; it has proceeded with absolute calm and order. There has been only one single bloody incident, in Kiel. In Berlin and in the rest of the Reich,

14

Church Responses to Early Anti-Jewish Measures nothing of the same nature has occurred. The boycott has been lifted until further notice. The government desires to wait and see what happens in the outside world in the coming days. In addition, a government operation is under way to remove the Jews from public administration, particularly the judiciary. Jews in Germany make up not even one percent of the population. The proportions here should become again what they were previously. The Christian Church stands for chivalry and love. The Church fervently wishes that the hour may soon come when violence is no longer necessary, but in which the newly ordered life of the state allows room for love and justice. That will depend on whether the foreign agitation against Germany stops or not. For this reason, as a servant of my church, I sincerely and urgently ask my Christian friends in America to use their influence so that false news reports about Germany are no longer disseminated and believed.∞∞

On 9 April, Dibelius issued a similar statement in a Berlin church newspaper. One should not get excited, he said, about minor excesses: ‘‘Undisturbed, Jewish firms are open for business, newspapers in Jewish hands are being published without hindrance, and public calm and order prevail.’’∞≤ Dibelius blamed the uproar over the boycott on ‘‘Jewry’s international connections’’ and predicted that ‘‘when German Jewry becomes economically threatened, the overseas agitation will end that much sooner.’’ He recommended closing Germany’s eastern border against eastern Jews as a protective measure and appealed to the German ‘‘steadfastness . . . that will not succumb to an alien race.’’∞≥ Dibelius’s opinion was not just influential at the time; after 1945, he served as bishop of Berlin-Brandenburg and later became president of the Evangelical Church of Germany. How, in retrospect, did he view his earlier comments? In 1965, Bishop Dibelius, who claimed that he ‘‘never had anything to do with an aggressive anti-Semitism,’’∞∂ answered my personal inquiry: And if there are some who wish to place me in the dock together with the actual anti-Semites, then they may do so without hesitation. I have never made a secret of my attitude: as in most families of higherranking civil servants in the old Germany, there was no discussion in our home about the problem of Judaism. But one bought from Jews only in an emergency∞∑ and avoided personal contact with them as a matter of course. Not due to hostility, but because one sensed, after all, the foreignness in their nature. . . .

15

The Defamation of the Jews After 1933, the situation changed. For it goes without saying that the Protestant Christian stands by those who are treated unjustly and violated. It has always been a matter of satisfaction to me that I succeeded in saving two Jewish families through the entire period of persecution, and, indeed, at some risk to my own freedom.∞∏

Dibelius’s candor reflected both the nationalist anti-Semitism of his age and his ‘‘Christian ethics’’ concerning the persecuted. He exemplified the many Christians who did not lack the courage to stand up for the Jews but lacked insight into the consequences of anti-Jewish sentiment. The language of ideology spoke of ‘‘Jewry’’; the language of ethics focused on the individual Jew. However he later justified it, Dibelius’s attitude toward the Jews can be considered representative of German Christianity at the beginning of 1933. Dibelius was not the only church leader to respond to foreign protests against the 1 April boycott. The German Reformierte Kirchenzeitung (Reformed Church newspaper) scolded the presbytery of the AmsterdamSouth parish, which had asked the Dutch Council of Churches to protest the persecution of the Jews in Germany: ‘‘This step on the part of our friends is more than superfluous. What has happened in Germany is not the persecution of the Jews but an emergency measure, lasting only a few days, during which every act of violence has been carefully avoided. The fact that this measure was forced upon us by the behavior of the foreign Jewish press is one that no one regrets more than we Christians in Germany, and we are satisfied that, when the campaign of lies ceases, the boycott of the businesses of our Jewish fellow citizens will cease as well.’’∞π The same paper dismissed accounts that had appeared in a Scottish church paper (Scots Observer), which reported that religious persecution had forced thousands of Jews to leave Germany. In truth, wrote the Reformierte Kirchenzeitung, only east European Jews were forced into emigration, ‘‘and the only Jews emigrating voluntarily—such as Emil Cohn Ludwig, Leon Feuchtwanger, Einstein, and others like them—are those who see that, in a newly respectable Germany, they will lose their effectiveness.’’∞∫ It is difficult to form a complete picture of the 1 April boycott’s effects on the German public. The brutality of the outrages against Jews and Jewish 16

Church Responses to Early Anti-Jewish Measures

businesses was covered up by party officials; few people dared to show public solidarity with the Jews. Organized protests failed to occur. A few isolated protests emerged from the ranks of the Evangelical Church. One was sent to the Church Federation office in Frankfurt by church councilman Johannes Kübel. By keeping silent, he said, the church had become an accomplice, whereas it should have raised the loud voice of Christian conscience.∞Ω In other parts of the country, church administrations received inquiries as to whether and how the church should react to the anti-Semitic campaigns. All these protests, however, remained within the channels of internal church correspondence. Little reached the public. Church historian Klaus Scholder has concluded, correctly: ‘‘The Church as a whole remained silent. In the decisive days following April 1, no bishop, no church administration, and no synod objected publicly to the persecution of the Jews in Germany.’’≤≠ a legislative foundation for persecution

Some in Germany insisted on viewing the events of 1 April as the spontaneous action of fervent Nazis and a harmless expression of public opinion. Since the boycott was not written law, they maintained, there was no official policy of persecution against the Jews. Within one week of the boycott, however, the legislative foundation for such a policy had been laid: the Reich Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service. In contrast to the church laws that followed, this Reich law is seldom reprinted.≤∞ Because of its relevance to our subject, essential passages— including its statutes of implementation—are quoted here: Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service (7 April 1933), Section 3: 1. Civil servants who are not of Aryan extraction are to be retired; insofar as honorary civil servants are concerned, these are to be dismissed from their offices. 2. Paragraph 1 does not apply to civil servants who were already civil servants on 1 August 1914, or who have fought on the front in the world war for the German Reich or for its allies, or whose fathers or sons were killed in action. Further exceptions can be authorized by the Reich interior minister, in agreement with the responsible departmental minister, or, abroad, by the highest regional authorities for civil servants.

17

The Defamation of the Jews First Decree on the Implementation of the Law (11 April 1933), Section 2: 1. Whoever is descended from non-Aryan, particularly Jewish, parents or grandparents is considered non-Aryan. It is sufficient if one parent or one grandparent is non-Aryan. This is to be assumed particularly if one parent or one grandparent has belonged to the Jewish religion. 2. If a civil servant was not a civil servant as of 1 August 1914, he is required to prove that he is of Aryan descent, a front-line soldier, or the son or father of a soldier killed in action in the world war. Proof is to be furnished through the presentation of official documents (birth certificate and marriage certificate of the parents, military papers). 3. If Aryan descent is in question, then an expert opinion is to be procured from a specialist in racial research appointed by the Reich interior minister. Third Decree on the Implementation of the Law (6 May 1933), Section 3: 1. The stipulations for descent in section 3 also apply to the descendants of extramarital relationships. The adoption of a child does not constitute a parent-child relationship as defined by section 3. Law against the Overcrowding of German Schools and Universities (25 April 1933), Section 4: 1. During the enrollment of new students, it must be observed strictly that, among the total number attending each school and department, the number of Reich Germans who are not of Aryan descent, as established by the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service of 7 April 1933, does not exceed the percentage of non-Aryans in the population of the German Reich. The numerical proportion shall be determined uniformly for the entire territory of the Reich. 2. Likewise, in the reduction in the number of pupils and students pursuant to section 3, a commensurate relationship between the total number attending and the number of non-Aryans is to be established. In this case, a higher proportion, deviating from the numerical proportion, can be established as a basis. 3. Preceding paragraphs 1 and 2 do not apply to Reich Germans of nonAryan extraction whose fathers have fought at the front for the German Reich or for its allies, or to the offspring of marriages contracted before the effective date of this law, if one parent or two grandparents are of

18

Church Responses to Early Anti-Jewish Measures Aryan origin. Nor shall these groups be considered in the computation of the numerical proportion and the numerical relationship (established in paragraphs 1 and 2).≤≤

The laws against Jews in the professions contained the same restrictions. Since the total number of Germans working in professions outside the civil service was greater than those within it, the percentage of nonAryans exempted from the new restrictions was higher in the private sector. In 1933, 336 (47 percent) of the 717 non-Aryan judges and state attorneys could retain their positions, as well as nearly 70 percent of the 4,505 non-Aryan lawyers and 75 percent of the 45,000 non-Aryan doctors serving in the public health insurance system.≤≥ Although the proportion of non-Aryan students affected by these decrees was smaller, anti-Semitism among teachers in some schools was so virulent that the Prussian minister for culture and science, Bernhard Rust, issued a call for order in May 1933. Noting that some school directors had already ‘‘excluded students of non-Aryan descent and even citizens of foreign countries,’’ Rust announced that ‘‘such procedures are not permissible’’ and insisted that those students ‘‘unjustly excluded . . . be immediately readmitted.’’≤∂ The Reich Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service did not affect the clergy, religion teachers, or theological faculty. Yet, like the school directors admonished by Rust, there were already some Protestants who believed that the church should voluntarily comply with the new Aryan regulations. In the spring and summer of 1933, however, the German Evangelical Church had other concerns. A movement to unite the regional churches into a national Reich Church was gaining support. Different factions were maneuvering behind the scenes to select the first Reich bishop and seize the leadership of the various regional churches in the first national church elections. Underlying all these developments was the burning issue of whether the church of Jesus Christ could alter its doctrine to conform to racial ideology. The position of the German Christian Faith Movement was clear. It was now up to the rest of the German Evangelical Church to take a stand.

19

≤

Early Church Statements Despite its silence about the 1 April boycott, there were early signs that the church would resist any attempt to alter church law. On 5 May 1933 the Regional Church Government in Kassel sent a statement to the central German Evangelical Church Committee in Berlin.∞ Titled ‘‘To the Conscience of the Evangelical Church,’’ it deplored the fact that the church and its members, like professional associations and organizations, private clubs and lodges, sportsmen’s and private garden clubs, had succumbed to the pull of Nazi Gleichschaltung (the synchronization of all levels of German life to bring them under Nazi control). The authors recognized that ‘‘regulation of the ‘Jewish question’ ’’ was clearly being carried out on the basis of the 1920 National Socialist party program. From the church’s perspective, the most important section of the 1920 program was article 24, which protected religious freedom as long as it didn’t ‘‘conflict with the manners and moral sentiments of the Germanic race.’’≤ One of the first to see through article 24 had been Hermann Sasse, the former editor of the church yearbook.≥ The clear-sighted Kassel church officials agreed with Sasse and appealed to the consciences of their fellow Christians: ‘‘The Evangelical Church must be reproached strongly for not putting an end to the persecution of its own children in the faith—indeed, for giving its blessing from the pulpit to those who are working against its own children in the faith . . . and for banishing people of the same faith, with whom they joined in worship, before the church’s very doors as though they were mangy dogs.’’∂ The letter described the official party distinction between Jews and non-Aryans. Protestant or Roman Catholic Christians whose parents or grandparents were either practicing Jews or had converted to Christianity were considered non-Aryan. According to the party, even nonAryans baptized as Christians were Jewish; in the terminology of the time, ‘‘blood comes before faith.’’ The concern of the Kassel letter was limited to ‘‘members of the Evangelical Church—baptized Jews and the so-called non-Aryans.’’ The Kassel writers believed that observant Jews were being cared for sufficiently by their own religious community. Jews were still allowed to practice their faith in the synagogue; non-Aryan Christians, however, had been left on the church’s doorstep: 20

Early Church Statements Why is it [the Scripture] not valid for those who are Jews according to birth and belief ? Because these Jews, in contrast to the non-Aryans and baptized Jews so degraded today, have one genuine consolation: they can pray to their God in their church. They have a religious community that helps them bear their trial. In the prayer that their priests taught them, they can call upon their God to whom their fathers prayed in difficult times. Though the material and spiritual injury endured by these German citizens—banished and rendered second-class human beings because of their blood—be ever so great, they have the right and the opportunity to pray to their God. They have their communion before God; they have their holy sanctuary in their temple, in which they can pray. . . . They trust in the foundation of their faith. With the non-Aryans, it is different. Like the Jews, they are excluded from the ranks of ‘‘full’’ citizens of the state. But in the church to which they belong, they seek consolation in vain. . . . The Evangelical Church to which they belong, the faith in which they were baptized, confirmed, and married—the church that wanted to prepare them for the path to God—that same church expels them by meekly tolerating their expulsion from the ranks of fellow believers. . . . God is held up as the partisan defender of a group defined by blood. Where shall the Protestant ‘‘non-Aryan’’—where shall the Protestant Jew find hope in faith?∑

The Kassel writers called their church government to account because it had declared its solidarity with the party and the state and sought racial separation instead of confirming the bonds of faith. Finally, the Kassel writers attempted to arouse the church’s conscience on behalf of the Jewish and non-Aryan brethren: Despised and proscribed—betrayed by their own church—robbed of their God—they also stand before the collapse of their material existence. Not—because they may have worked against God; not—because they may have revolted against the state, against Volk and Fatherland; not—because they were criminals and deceivers; not—because they were political enemies of other comrades, but only because their own brothers and sisters in the faith expelled them from God’s promised community due to a drop of blood, and disowned the confession of their Evangelical Christian faith—because their Führer, because their church, encouraged them to do so.∏

21

The Defamation of the Jews

One week after the Kassel petition, in the Niederdeutsche Kirchenzeitung, the Young Reformation Movement published its principles regarding the reorganization of the Evangelical Church. The seventh point stated: ‘‘We confess our faith in the Holy Spirit and, therefore, we reject as a matter of principle the exclusion of non-Aryans from the church; for this is based upon a confusion of state and church. The state has to judge; the church has to save.’’π One response to this statement came from a non-Aryan Christian, a district court director named Sello; his statement illustrated the perspective of someone directly affected by the new measures.∫ Sello distinguished between those ‘‘born’’ into the church and those who had been baptized as converts or in the attempt to seek refuge. In light of the increasing numbers of ‘‘illicit baptisms,’’ he warned, the church must be wary of ‘‘opportunistic proselytes’’! Yet the church could not treat nonAryan members who had been baptized as infants differently from its Aryan members. This was particularly important since ‘‘the break with Judaism has not only a religious effect, but, for devoutly religious people, means separation from the Jewish community, which likewise has its roots in congregational life.’’ Sello assumed that only the state was trying to implement the Aryan paragraph; he failed to see that the church had already fallen into a maelstrom of complicity with state-decreed hostility toward the Jews. Amid the general euphoria of the early months of National Socialism, the Kassel statement went unheard. In contrast, the Young Reformation Movement, because of the prominent names associated with it,Ω could count on more attention, particularly since a ‘‘theological truce’’ still prevailed within its ranks.∞≠ Nonetheless, the multitude of groups, associations, brotherhoods, and assemblies paralyzed the willingness of many individual Christians to make a decisive commitment. In the end, the different movements neutralized one another. Of the various statements published on the question of the non-Aryan Christians in 1933, some were clear and unmistakable. Old Testament scholar Wilhelm Vischer delivered an important lecture before the Conference of Brethren in Lippe on 30 April 1933. The organizers of the conference had asked: ‘‘Does the Old Testament still have guiding significance for Christians at present?’’ Protesting the very notion of separating the New Testament from the Old, Vischer replied: ‘‘The tribe of the Jews from which Jesus comes . . . cannot become one nation like the other 22

Early Church Statements

nations, even after the Crucifixion of Jesus. The history of the Jews is a special mystery of God. With the Jews, God desires to fulfill the work of reconciliation begun with the calling of Israel (Rom. 9:11). The Jewish question is therefore not a racial question, but a question about God.’’∞∞ Although Vischer could have confined himself to an Old Testament analysis of the question (as most of his Old Testament colleagues did at the time and later), he did not evade the Jewish question. He even appended a short article, ‘‘On the Jewish Question,’’ to his remarks, since ‘‘a participant at the Conference of Brethren had suggested that I could have kept this offensive addition to myself in an otherwise so edifying lecture on the enduring significance of the Old Testament.’’ In this appendix, Vischer elaborated on his remark that the Jewish question concerned the mystery of God, which human beings could not unveil by escaping into intrinsically racist solutions that could only lead ad absurdum. Vischer noted: Does not the hatred that breaks forth repeatedly from both sides . . . indicate that the roots of the Jewish question lie deeper than in racial distinctions? Whoever wanted to insist that the Jews might be a race distinct from the Germans and, therefore, that the Jewish question might be a racial question would be arguing as facetiously as a husband who, in experiencing difficulties with the wife joined to him in wedlock, now wants to claim that he is experiencing the woman question because his wife is a woman. . . . The relationship of the peoples of the world to the Jews is something fundamentally different from, for example, the relationship of white Americans to the Negroes.∞≤

Several other noteworthy statements from 1933 show that Vischer’s perspective was shared by others in the church. An Appeal from Student Youth demanded ‘‘that everyone, without distinction as to status and race, can be a member of the church.’’∞≥ The Testimony and Confession of Westphalian Pastors—with one hundred signatures, headed by that of Pastor Ludwig Steil (who later died in Dachau for his opposition to Nazism)— repudiated ‘‘the equation of the mission to the Jews with the mission to the Gentiles, because of Israel’s position in salvation and eschatological history,’’ and condemned ‘‘every division of the church that seeks the separation of Jewish Christians from . . . Gentile Christians.’’∞∂ The Tecklenburg Confession observed that the German Christians’ theological treatment of non-Aryan Christians undermined the validity of the sacra23

The Defamation of the Jews

ments: ‘‘Through the exclusion of Jewish Christians from the German church after they have given up their fatherland for the sake of Christ, the sacrament of baptism is distorted and destroyed. In the wish to admit those who are racially different only as ‘guests’ to the Eucharist, this sacrament is destroyed as well.’’∞∑ Despite these various proclamations, most within the church were preoccupied with ‘‘church matters’’ and dealt only marginally with the church’s Jewish members and the Jewish question. Nonetheless, two eminent professors spoke out: Martin Buber to his fellow Jews, and Professor Hans Ehrenberg (who, as a non-Aryan, would himself fall victim to the Aryan paragraph) to Christians. At a time when ‘‘German Jews . . . are confronted by the universal fate of the Jews,’’ Buber summoned his fellow believers ‘‘to face this confrontation faithfully, that is, through suffering. . . . What happens to us, even if it strikes us in our very marrow, is not decisive. What is decisive is how we conduct ourselves with regard to it, what we make out of it, what it makes out of us.’’∞∏ Buber insisted on ‘‘loyalty to our calling,’’ a commitment to ‘‘solidarity with the One who cannot be named, dependence on the One who binds. . . . The important fact, that this hour is a test for Christianity, has nothing to do with us; what matters to us is that it is an ordeal of fire for Judaism.’’∞π In his ‘‘Seventy-Two Guiding Principles on the Jewish Christian Question,’’ Hans Ehrenberg acknowledged that the times were trying for Christianity as well.∞∫ The Bochum pastor, author of important scholarly Gutachten (expert opinions), especially on the topic of the ‘‘Church and Israel’’, had influenced the Confession of Westphalian Pastors mentioned above.∞Ω Now he successfully reminded the Reformation church of the relation between Judaism and Christianity. Jews and Christians, he wrote, were interrelated and dependent on each other, for better or worse [sic]. Christianity was a question for the Jew; Judaism was a question for the Christian. If the conflict inherent in these questions was detached from Buber’s ‘‘One who cannot be named,’’ the point of reference for each tradition was lost. If Jews and Christians replaced their differences of belief with hatred, or temporarily united in common cause against a third party (the non-Aryan Christian), then the guilt of both would be immeasurable. Ehrenberg’s theses appeared in the summer of 1933—shortly before the bitter debate about the Aryan paragraph broke out within the Evan24

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

gelical Church. Proposed by the German Christians and their supporters at the September 1933 National Synod, the Aryan paragraph barred everyone ‘‘of non-Aryan extraction, or [who] is married to a person of non-Aryan extraction,’’ from the ministry. ‘‘Non-Aryan extraction’’ was defined according to the ‘‘provisions of the Reich laws’’ that excluded non-Aryans from the civil service. The controversy over the Aryan paragraph ignited the German church struggle (the Kirchenkampf ) and threatened to split the German Evangelical Church. Today, some scholars find it ‘‘inconceivable’’ that, ‘‘after his [Ehrenberg’s] pioneering witness, there could be any debate about the Aryan paragraph at all. It is inconceivable that the Confessing Church, with this document in hand, . . . was unable to find a saving word for Israel.’’≤≠ Ehrenberg had set the standard for his church in thesis 59: ‘‘The church of the Reformation in Germany stands or falls in 1933 on the temptation to separate the Jewish Christians—completely or in part— from itself. In the final phase of the church conflict, the Jewish Christian question will be the symbol and heart of that conflict.’’≤∞

≥

Dietrich Bonhoeffer As early as 14 April 1933, Bonhoeffer wrote his friend Erwin Sutz that ‘‘the Jewish question has caused the church no end of trouble; here, the most sensible people have lost their heads and their entire Bible.’’∞ His words may have sounded arrogant at the time, but events were to prove Bonhoeffer correct. It is difficult to measure how much Bonhoeffer’s public stand and attitudes toward the Jews were motivated by personal considerations. Two of those closest to him—his brother-in-law, Gerhard Leibholz, and his friend and colleague Franz Hildebrandt—were non-Aryan. Leibholz was threatened by the state’s anti-Jewish legislation; Hildebrandt would be affected by the church measures. Bonhoeffer’s own personality probably helped him become free of prejudice to a breathtaking degree.≤ As a result, he became increasingly isolated from his friends and his church over the years. Emotional and theological prejudices led ‘‘the most sensible people’’ to lose ‘‘their heads and their entire Bible.’’ Even before the 1 April boycott of the Jews, Bonhoeffer had worked on 25

The Defamation of the Jews

six theses about the problem of the church and the Jews; these were written for the Berlin church study group led by Pastor Gerhard Jacobi.≥ Bonhoeffer used the definition of Jewish Christianity that had originated with Paul: since the ‘‘people’’ of Israel had been established by the ‘‘Law of God,’’ not by race, one could not become a racial Jew. Bonhoeffer concluded that one could become a Jew only through acceptance of the Law: ‘‘Thus, from the perspective of the Church of Christ, it is not the people of Jewish race baptized as Christians who belong to Jewish Christianity; rather, the Jewish Christian is one who lets membership in the people of God, the Church of Christ, be determined by compliance with a divine law. In contrast to this, Gentile Christianity recognizes no precondition for membership in the people of God, in the Church of Christ, other than the call of God through God’s Word in Christ.’’∂ By analogy, the Jewish Christian ‘‘prototype’’ would ‘‘be realized at the point’’ where the church made membership contingent on divine law— or one proclaimed as divine, such as the law of ‘‘racial unity.’’ Any ecclesiastical community that excluded members who did not satisfy a racial law would have to be designated ‘‘Jewish Christian.’’ According to Bonhoeffer, a strict Aryan German Christian pastor who sought to exclude non-Aryan Christians from the church inadvertently made himself a Jewish Christian. The 1 April boycott interrupted these reflections. Through his brotherin-law, Reich Judicial Counselor Hans von Dohnanyi, Bonhoeffer learned of the impending legislation concerning non-Aryans.∑ He revised his theses, adding a preface in which he explored the church’s responsibilities for the state’s actions and the consequences of this with regard to the Jewish question. This introduction became known as the essay ‘‘The Church and the Jewish Question.’’∏ Bonhoeffer stressed the church’s ‘‘unconditional obligation to the victims of every social order, even those who do not belong to the Christian congregation.’’ The ultimate action possible for the church consisted of ‘‘not only binding up the wounds of the victims under the wheel, but stopping the wheel itself.’’π Bonhoeffer did not know that one day this wheel would crush him. ‘‘His energies were wholly absorbed in combating the Aryan clause. For he believed that only if everything were risked would a message worthy of proclamation reveal itself.’’∫ It was Bonhoeffer’s first public statement in the Kirchenkampf, on an 26

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

issue where he believed classical church dogmatics had to be challenged or even reformulated by ethical appeals. Church action (to do good to everyone or to stop the wheel itself, instead of treating the symptoms by binding up the victim’s wounds) took precedence over academic disputes. Coming from an unknown twenty-seven-year-old assistant professor, such a position was unlikely to earn applause from the princes of the church or be heard in congregations. The crucial point of ‘‘The Church and the Jewish Question’’ was that Bonhoeffer (in part 1) was concerned about the Jews in general, not just the non-Aryan Christians. To Bonhoeffer’s great regret, the Confessing Church would confine its concern to the plight of the latter. Because of the salvation-historical and missionary aspects of Christian attitudes toward the Jews, Bonhoeffer believed this was a status confessionis: ‘‘The conversion of Israel: that is to be the end of the period of suffering for this people. From here the Christian church sees the history of the people of Israel with trembling as God’s own, free, fearful way with His people. The church knows that no nation in the world can be finished with this mysterious people, because God is not yet finished with it. Each new attempt to ‘resolve’ the ‘Jewish question’ is thwarted by the salvationhistorical significance of this people; still, such attempts must be undertaken again and again.’’Ω After these preliminary reflections, Bonhoeffer was well prepared to speak on the Aryan paragraph at a large assembly of students at the University of Berlin on 22 June (the topic was ‘‘The Struggle for the Church’’).∞≠ He was preceded by Professor Cajus Fabricius (a systematic theologian and German Christian) and Student Pastor Ernst BronischHoltze. Fabricius stated that ‘‘resistance against Judaization’’ was part of ‘‘maintaining the purity of the German Gospel.’’ Compared with the New Testament, he said, the Old Testament had only secondary significance. ‘‘The Jewish question in the church, however, is of less importance than in the state: ‘The handful of Jews will be dealt with, sure enough.’’’ After Bronisch-Holtze interjected that the Aryan paragraph invalidated ‘‘the baptismal vow,’’ Bonhoeffer (citing Rom. 14) noted the contrast between those of weak faith and those of strong faith. ‘‘Strong is he who ejects no one; weak is he who puts a fence around the congregation. Those today who are weak in faith need a racial law.’’ The strong must be watchful, ‘‘for it is precisely the weak who are the aggressors.’’∞∞ In August 1933 Bonhoeffer worked in ‘‘happy collaboration’’∞≤ with 27

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Hermann Sasse in Bethel, drafting a confession intended to serve as a theological foundation for the confessional groups at the National Synod at the end of September. A passage on the Jewish question was also to appear; to Bonhoeffer’s elation, Old Testament scholar Wilhelm Vischer supplied the first draft.∞≥ Section 6.6 of the first draft of the Bethel Confession was entitled ‘‘The Church and the Jews.’’ Although it concerned only non-Aryan Christians (referring to Jews only insofar as they were ‘‘to be called to conversion, and those who believe baptized in the name of Jesus Christ’’), the document emphatically rejected the formation of non-Aryan Christian congregations. Otherwise, ‘‘a racial law would block entry to the church and such a church would itself become a legalistic Jewish Christian community.’’∞∂ Pastor Fritz von Bodelschwingh, director of the Bethel institutions, urged that this initial draft be approved by twenty experts.∞∑ (Among the more conservative Protestants who opposed the German Christians, Bodelschwingh was a respected leader; he was their candidate for Reich bishop in the synodal elections of May 1933.) Bodelschwingh’s recommendation annoyed Bonhoeffer. He foresaw that little would be left of the original draft, given such a diverse group of consultants, and that the impending National Synod would be long over by the time final editing was complete. Both these fears were realized, and Bonhoeffer finally withdrew his endorsement of the radically altered final version, particularly because the content and tone of ‘‘The Church and the Jews’’ had been radically revised.∞∏ Although the final version retained the passage that ‘‘through the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ . . . the barrier between the Jews and Gentiles is broken down,’’ the Christians still appeared as God’s more favored, better children. Nothing remained of the concept that God had preserved and was especially faithful to ‘‘a ‘holy remnant’ of Israel.’’ The tone of the final version was negative, not positive: God was no longer devoted to Israel; it was more a case of not ‘‘rejecting’’ Israel. The Jewish convert to Christianity entered ‘‘the true Israel’’ and ‘‘separates himself from his unbelieving people.’’ The non-Aryan Christian had no inherent right to membership; instead, the Christian community chose to ‘‘grant’’ this ‘‘right’’! There was no longer an explicit position regarding non-Aryan Christian congregations. The sharpest statement in the first draft had fallen victim to the final editing: ‘‘Christians descended 28

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from the Gentiles must sooner subject themselves to persecution than abandon in any respect—either of their own free will or through coercion—the ecclesiastical brotherhood with Jewish Christians, established through the Word and the sacraments.’’∞π The Bethel Confession was the first failed test in the struggle against the state and the church loyal to that state. Already, the ranks ‘‘of older and younger theologians could no longer be kept together.’’∞∫ They had been unable to reach an unequivocal position that opposed the Aryan paragraph not only in the church but in the state. All of them rejected a radical version of the Aryan paragraph, ‘‘but not, unfortunately, the ‘mild form’ as well.’’∞Ω Bonhoeffer did not consider abandoning his ‘‘unconditional opposition to the church’’ that neither desired nor would enter a total ‘‘solidarity with Jewish Christian pastors.’’≤≠ On the other hand, he was forced to realize ‘‘that I would find myself incomprehensibly in radical opposition to all my friends.’’≤∞ This made his decision to go to London (in October 1933) that much easier: ‘‘A further signal for me was the almost total lack of understanding for the Bethel Confession, on which I had collaborated really passionately.’’≤≤ Bonhoeffer would find this understanding in the ecumenical world. The conflict illustrated, however, that the early claims of Kirchenkampf scholars that ‘‘the’’ Confessing Church ‘‘never capitulated’’ on the Aryan paragraph were erroneous.≤≥ Bonhoeffer still did not believe that the struggle on behalf of the Jews was lost. In August, he drafted a leaflet, ‘‘The Aryan Paragraph in the Church.’’ He immediately sent it to synods and congregations, hoping to influence the Berlin-Brandenburg Synod on 24 August and the General Synod on 5–6 September.≤∂ Printed in bold type, the leaflet was modeled on Hildebrandt’s ‘‘Leaflet for the Church Election’’ from the summer of 1933.≤∑ Bonhoeffer’s leaflet outlined the consequences of his April theses: since ‘‘the exclusion of the Jewish Christians from the ecclesiastical community . . . destroys the substance of the Church of Christ, there is but one way to serve the truth in a church that implements the Aryan paragraph in this radical form, and that is, namely, to leave it. This is the last act of solidarity with my church, which I can serve in no way other than with the whole truth and all its consequences.’’≤∏ Bonhoeffer repeated his argument from April that when ‘‘the freedom of the Gospel is falsely made law, the demand of the weak becomes the prevailing law of the church.’’ If the state’s civil service law were applied 29

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to civil servants in the church, he continued, the office of ministry would become a privilege, which would threaten it profoundly. Any ministry based on privilege must necessarily lead a pastor who served the truth to resign his office. Bonhoeffer’s third point was that the 11 July 1933 Reich Church Constitution, with its silence about the expulsion of non-Aryan students from the universities, had virtually abandoned a new generation of nonAryan Christian theologians. Bonhoeffer urged his readers to protest through sermons and by opening ‘‘new doors to the ministry for Jewish Christians. If it [the church] does not do this, then it makes itself responsible for the entire Aryan paragraph.’’ With his public and implacable demands, Bonhoeffer stood alone.

∂

Gutachten and Synodal Resolutions At the 24 August provincial synod in Berlin, the opposition group led by Berlin pastor Gerhard Jacobi was unable to prevent the adoption of the state Aryan guidelines for church officials. This set the stage for the events of the Prussian General Synod, which convened in Berlin on 5– 6 September 1933. After a tumultuous vote, this ‘‘Brown Synod’’ (many of the delegates wore their brown sa uniforms) passed the Law Concerning the Legal Status of the Clergy and Civil Servants in the Church—the Aryan paragraph.∞ This law excluded from church office every minister and civil servant ‘‘of non-Aryan extraction, or [who] is married to a person of non-Aryan extraction.’’ ‘‘Non-Aryan extraction’’ was defined according to the ‘‘provisions of the Reich laws.’’ At the Brown Synod, the church’s general superintendents decided not to dismiss people already in office but voted to refrain from employing ‘‘non-Aryans’’ (or those married to ‘‘non-Aryans’’) in the future. When Westphalian church president Karl Koch rose to read a dissent on behalf of the opposition group Gospel and Church, he was ‘‘literally shouted down.’’≤ With that, Koch and his group left the hall; as a result, none of the Gospel and Church members was named a delegate to the National Synod in Wittenberg on 27 September. The radical opposition (Bonhoeffer, Hermann Sasse, and Martin Niemöller) could have become resigned and retreated into private exile. Instead, their struggle really began, although differences of opinion 30

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about strategy remained. Bonhoeffer viewed the Aryan paragraph as the signal for a church schism. This conviction, shared by his friend Franz Hildebrandt—that the battle lines should be drawn along the front marked by the Aryan paragraph—won little support from the other dissidents led by Jacobi and Niemöller.≥ This group asked: Was such a stand worthwhile? Since the Reformation, Jewish or half-Jewish descent had been established among sixtythree pastors in Germany.∂ Thirty-seven of these pastors were alive in 1933: twenty-nine were in office and eight had retired. Thus, the Aryan paragraph applied to fewer than 2 percent of the nearly eighteen thousand Protestant pastors in Germany. Of the aforementioned twenty-nine pastors, seventeen belonged to the regional Old Prussian Union Church. Of these, eleven already held office before 1 August 1914 or had been soldiers during World War I. Because of the exemptions that applied to these eleven men, the Aryan paragraph applied to six clergy in the Old Prussian Union Church (those married to non-Aryan women were not included in these numbers).∑ Did this hardly visible number of non-Aryans, insignificant in light of far more serious questions, justify this effort? Didn’t Bonhoeffer have to be admonished to show moderation here? Since his own stake in the matter was personal (the fate of his brother-in-law Gerhard Leibholz and his friend Franz Hildebrandt), some colleagues believed that Bonhoeffer should have relented and abandoned ‘‘his non-Aryans’’ as a negligible quantity. But Bonhoeffer saw through the game being played. The state had never required the introduction of an Aryan paragraph in the church. The delegates to the Brown Synod did not just have their eye on the few non-Aryan clergy; their goal was a Gleichschaltung that would eventually ‘‘eliminate’’ all non-Aryan church members. Theologically and strategically, Bonhoeffer and Hildebrandt considered an ‘‘exodus’’ from the church to be more effective than a hesitant wait to see what happened next.∏ The day after the general synod, Bonhoeffer sent a telegram to the general secretary of the ecumenical World Alliance in Geneva, seeking support: ‘‘Aryan paragraph now in action, please work out memorandum against this and inform press at once.’’π In letters to Hermann Sasse and Karl Barth, Bonhoeffer conveyed his intention to leave the Evangelical Church because of the Aryan para31

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graph. Sasse replied that he considered such a step to be prudent and necessary only if as many pastors as possible decided to withdraw, not only from the Old Prussian Union but from the ‘‘so-called Lutheran churches’’ as well.∫ In addition, he wrote, they ought to wait until the National Synod (in Wittenberg on 27 September) to see how the other regional churches would react.Ω Sasse added that he had already placed the church’s Aryan law on the agenda of his next faculty meeting.∞≠ Karl Barth answered immediately by return post. To Bonhoeffer’s surprise, he too advised waiting. In principle, Barth did not rule out the necessity of leaving the church, but not yet! They could leave the sinking ship only as the ‘‘last ones . . . that may only be ultima ratio for us. . . . Perhaps the unholy doctrine that now governs the church must unfold first in other, even worse deviations and falsifications. . . . Then it might be the case that the confrontation will occur at an even more central point.’’∞∞ Karl Barth hardly lacked the courage to protest where it seemed necessary; but even he did not yet see the significance of the Aryan paragraph for non-Aryan Christians, and thereby for the church, the Confessing Church and its great confessions that he helped formulate. ‘‘It does not yet appear that they will go so far as to exclude non-Aryans from church membership,’’ Barth wrote Bonhoeffer.∞≤ Nonetheless, in the first issue of Theological Existence Today, Barth acknowledged, ‘‘If the German Evangelical Church were to exclude the Jewish Christians or treat them as second-class Christians, it would have ceased to be a Christian church.’’∞≥ Barth expected the enemy to penetrate the church’s territory at another ‘‘even more central point,’’ where it would be important to protest and confess. But he did not believe that the church already stood at that point where action was required. ‘‘Later we will have no need to regret a highly active, polemical wait even here,’’ he wrote Bonhoeffer; ‘‘it will be worth it if we resolve under no circumstances to think tactically, but, as much as we are capable, to think spiritually.’’∞∂ In addition to sending his telegram to Geneva, Bonhoeffer worked with Martin Niemöller on a new declaration. After collecting other signatures, they sent the statement to Bodelschwingh for further distribution: 1. According to the confession of our church, the church’s teachers are bound only by the rules governing vocations. The Aryan paragraph of

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Gutachten and Synodal Resolutions the new church civil service statute creates a law that contradicts this fundamental confessional principle. It proclaims as church law a situation that is unjust according to the confession, thereby violating the confession. 2. There can be no doubt that the ordained clergy who are affected by the civil service law continue to possess the full right freely to proclaim the Word and administer the sacraments in the Evangelical Church of the Old Prussian Union, which stands upon the Reformation confessions, as long as they are not deprived of the rights of the spiritual office by a formal procedure. 3. Whoever agrees to such a breach of the confession thereby excludes himself from the community of the church. We therefore demand that this law, which separates the Evangelical Church of the Old Prussian Union from the Christian Church, be repealed without delay.∞∑

Bodelschwingh’s response was to water down the declaration considerably. Calling on several colleagues for support, he reworded point 1 to leave open the question of ordaining non-Aryans in the future. Bonhoeffer’s demand for the law’s repeal was rephrased as an ‘‘urgent request,’’ and, fearful of a church schism, Bodelschwingh sought to delete the first sentence of point 3 entirely.∞∏ The Bonhoeffer-Niemöller declaration paved the way for two further steps. On 12 September, Niemöller sent out the first Pastors’ Emergency League pledges, which paraphrased the three points of the declaration sent to Bodelschwingh and committed the signers to stand by those being persecuted. Bonhoeffer’s appeal ‘‘To the German National Synod’’ was written two weeks later.∞π In it, he implored the National Synod to repeal ‘‘regional church laws in conflict with the confession’’ (in particular the Aryan paragraph) without delay. Both declarations found widespread resonance. As Martin Niemöller wrote in a 21 September letter, the Young Reformation Movement’s campaign had already obtained thirteen hundred signatures for the Emergency League pledges.∞∫ By 27 September, the twenty-two people from Berlin who signed Bonhoeffer’s ‘‘To the German National Synod’’ had been joined by two thousand supporters.∞Ω This number rose to six thousand by the end of the year. This astonishing gain in support for the group that soon became the ‘‘Pastors’ Emergency League’’ was helped by the decisions of the 6 Sep33

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tember general synod. The outcome of this synod quickly led clergy from various provinces and districts to unite, realizing that collective protests would be more effective. On 11 September 1933, the Rhineland Brotherhood responded, taking a ‘‘position on questions of the present day’’: From the perspective of our church’s confession, the church civil service law is intolerable in form and content (Gleichschaltung with state civil servants, exclusion of Jewish Christians). . . . we practice spiritual resistance (the nonviolent resistance of the Word and of love) (a) through the protest of collective, public confessions from the pulpit; (b) through public advocacy on behalf of those affected; (c) through charitable aid . . . for those affected.≤≠

Another protest came from the Sydow Brotherhood. Led by its speaker, Barmen pastor Georg Schultz, it announced: The civil service law and the Aryan paragraph did not stem from an ecclesiastical but from a political spirit. This is confirmed by the exclusionary provisions of the law. This state of affairs also justifies fears that interpretation and application of the law will be politically motivated, and its vague wording strengthens this anxiety. The church certainly has the right to demand of its pastors their declaration of loyalty to the state in which it lives. We hereby give it. But, bound in conscience to God’s word, which in the church of the Gospel allows only evangelical standards for evaluating the holders of church offices, we must reject the present law. . . . The Aryan paragraph violates the church’s confession in that it sets arbitrary limits on the forgiving and renewing power of the divine word and of the Holy Spirit that calls us. If the paragraph is applied to clergy already ordained, the significance of ordination is nullified for us all. In point of fact, the state does not require the Aryan paragraph in the church, as the Reich Church Constitution and the Concordat with the Vatican demonstrate. Existing state and church laws already offer sufficient protection against alien control of pastoral and civil service in the church. Therefore, we demand the withdrawal of the paragraph, and we will reject all measures pertinent to its enforcement.≤∞

The statement from the Rhineland Brotherhood promised full involvement on behalf of those persecuted. In contrast, the Sydow resolution, 34

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for all its confessional enthusiasm, showed a certain reserve toward those threatened by the Aryan paragraph. Concern for their plight was secondary to the danger of ‘‘alien control,’’ which the state had averted. Several other statements convey the tone of the church debate throughout Germany about the Aryan paragraph in the weeks before the National Synod. On 14 September, twenty-five pastors from Nuremberg urged Bishop Meiser to protest the introduction of the Aryan paragraph.≤≤ In a letter of 21 September 1933, the moderate German Christian clergyman Girkon and President Otto Koopmann of the Reformed Church in Aurich appealed to Reich Bishop Ludwig Müller to use the authority of his office to prevent the introduction of the Aryan paragraph in the German Evangelical Church.≤≥ Their appeal to his ‘‘benevolent pastoral understanding’’ for their concerns was not on behalf of those affected, however, for they affirmed ‘‘from deepest conviction and with a whole heart . . . Adolf Hitler’s national state and the German Evangelical church.’’ They viewed the Aryan paragraph as ‘‘an act of Volkcentered defense’’ against ‘‘dangerous foreign control of German blood’’; still, it posed a threat to ordination and their pastoral ‘‘office.’’ The Aryan paragraph, they wrote, ‘‘abolishes the difference between spiritual and worldly office, and denies the significance of ordination as a divinely granted mission. . . . [It] is an encroachment upon the status of faith that alone gives us the courage and the strength to be pastors.’’≤∂ This interpretation of the pastorate clearly placed more importance on defending the spiritual status of ordained clergy than on protecting young non-Aryan theologians, who were still excluded from the ‘‘privilege’’ of ordination. In his August 1933 leaflet, Bonhoeffer had addressed the significance of such privileges in the church: ‘‘Those who remain privileged, unaffected by these measures, will prefer to stand together with those brethren with fewer rights than to make use of the privileges of the church. For this reason, they will see that the only service they can still perform for the church is to renounce the ministry that has become a privilege.’’≤∑ A somewhat different response came from Westphalian president Koch, who, as leader of the Young Reformation Movement, had walked out of the Brown Synod in protest—precisely because of the Aryan paragraph! Koch, too, sent a letter to Reich Bishop Müller a week before the National Synod. Like Girkon and Koopmann, Koch contended that ‘‘belief in a divinely sanctioned spiritual office may be violated when the 35

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church deprives of office someone whom it has ordained and called to the ministry for reasons unrelated to the personal guilt of the affected clergy.’’≤∏ Yet Koch’s labored explanation of the church’s previous treatment of non-Aryan Christian pastors illustrated how difficult he found it to take a clear stand on their behalf. The church viewed conversion, wrote Koch, as ‘‘a demonstration of the sovereignty of the grace of God, who calls whomever he desires.’’ The opening of the ministry to those ‘‘of Jewish or half-Jewish descent, who were already baptized as young children . . . was one of the consequences of the Jewish emancipation, for which the Enlightenment prepared the way.’’ Koch acknowledged ‘‘the blessing’’ of God’s gift of Jewish Christian ‘‘messengers and teachers of the Gospel,’’ and it had not escaped him that the Reich law did not apply ‘‘to civil servants, employees, and workers of the religious societies subject to public law.’’≤π Still, he added, if a congregation ‘‘can no longer hear the word of God because it is proclaimed by a pastor of non-Aryan or nonpure Aryan blood, then the only course open to the church is to request such pastors to relinquish their ministry for the sake of love, and, through such an expression of Germanic sentiment, to honor the way of God.’’≤∫ These unambiguous reservations about non-Aryan Christians (and even more about Jews) were hardly in harmony with the Pastors’ Emergency League pledge. That pledge had intended that those unaffected by the Aryan paragraph were to suffer—for the sake of love—on behalf of those affected, not that the persecuted (for the sake of love!) were to suffer out of sympathy with those spared de natura. Professor Dr. Rudolf Hermann raised this point in a letter to Koch, appealing to the Westphalian church president in ‘‘deep concern and agitation.’’≤Ω Hermann could not comprehend how Koch’s support for Jewish Christian pastors could be consistent with a ‘‘request’’ to those pastors to seek retirement.≥≠ ‘‘A church based upon the New Testament, a book in which there is not a line that was not written, probably or certainly, by ‘Jewish Christians,’ ’’ contended Hermann, could not bar converted Jews, their descendants, or spouses from the pastorate. ‘‘Any such ‘request’ that a bishop would make of such a pastor to resign his office ought to meet with a counter-request from the group ‘Gospel and Church.’ ’’ Hermann concluded that ‘‘the Aryan paragraph is worse than anything that has been brought upon the church by the German Christians.’’ 36

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The struggle within the church over the Aryan paragraph had intensified. On 22 September, five days before the Wittenberg meeting, leading members of the various church factions met.≥∞ Representing a wide theological spectrum, they included the German Christian pastor Girkon; the Westphalian Pastors’ Emergency League (pel) pastors Ludwig Steil, Karl Lücking, and Hans Ehrenberg; Siegfried Knak, director of the Berlin Mission; and New Testament scholars Wilhelm Brandt, Ernst Lohmeyer, and theologian Rudolf Bultmann. In the discussion, Brandt and Bultmann cited the Aryan paragraph’s contempt for baptism and its denial of salvation history (although Bultmann still conceded the state’s right to do ‘‘what it considers proper for the sake of the Volk’’). Girkon refuted this, arguing that the salvationhistorical consequence of Israel’s election would not be restricted if Jewish Christians belonged to their own ‘‘church body.’’ Israel was not an inferior race, he said, merely a ‘‘different race.’’ Because ‘‘individual, Volk-centered churches’’ were necessary within the universal Christian Church, the establishment of non-Aryan Christian congregations did not contradict Rom. 9–11. The only real issue, Girkon suggested, was that this be carried out as inconspicuously as possible: ‘‘The dismissal of a number of pastors would arouse a considerable public scandal.’’ Knak’s experiences in mission work led him to plead for a separate non-Aryan Christian congregation.≥≤ The non-Aryan Christian, he argued, should have access to all offices of the church, yet the ‘‘rite vocatus’’ of church office was based on certain rules that were subject to changing times: ‘‘The interests of race must be inserted into this rule.’’≥≥ Knak believed that the ministry was threatened by a ‘‘Jewish Christian inundation’’ and concluded that the Aryan law could be applied to pastors of a Volkskirche (people’s church), as an expression of the church’s ‘‘solidarity with the Volk that is struggling for its existence.’’≥∂ Hans Ehrenberg suggested that the discussion was going in circles because of the complete lack of clarity about the concept of what was ‘‘foreign’’ in the Jew. If this ‘‘foreign nature’’ were misunderstood, ‘‘we could not reach consensus.’’ Yet, he stressed, the non-Aryan Christians belonged to the church, and thereby to the German church, because ‘‘the cross crucifies Jewish and German blood. The crucified belong together. . . . We are all a church of redeemed sinners, that is, of strangers who have been called.’’ Those present finally agreed on two minimal demands: non-Aryan 37

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Christians could not be denied the Eucharist, and non-Aryan Christians already serving as pastors were to be left in office. Even a discussion in which three New Testament scholars had participated could not achieve clarity; it showed how unprepared the church was for any confrontation with the Jewish question at the congregational, leadership, and academic levels. The theological faculties at the universities of Marburg and Erlangen produced two decisive—and very different—responses to the Aryan paragraph. In anticipation of the National Synod, the church leadership in Hessen had sought the ‘‘solemn and responsible guidance’’ of experts on both faculties about the Aryan paragraph and its consequences for the entire German Evangelical Church.≥∑ The Marburg Gutachten, dated 20 September, was approved unanimously by the entire theological faculty. It based its arguments on the New Testament; three sentences formed the foundation of its opinion about the Aryan paragraph: ‘‘It is indisputable that the message of Jesus Christ as the Savior of the world is directed to all peoples and therefore to all races as well, and that, accordingly, all who believe and are baptized upon this foundation belong to the Church of Christ.≥∏ Among themselves, the members of the church are brethren. The concept of brotherhood rules out all legal inequality as well as all avoidable estrangement in earthly relationships.’’ On these grounds, the Marburg faculty rejected the notion of separate non-Aryan Christian congregations. Since the New Testament opposed racially based, apartheid-like thinking, the Jew converted to Christ and baptized in his name was ‘‘for the church no longer a Jew’’ but a Christian: ‘‘Up to now, the entire history of the church, and the civil and canonical laws of all nations, have not recognized the concept of the Jew in a racial sense, but exclusively in a confessional sense: that is, the Jew does not acknowledge the Christ of God in Jesus.’’≥π In contrast to civil regulations,≥∫ the church could ‘‘not surrender its unity . . . to which all believers are baptized through the one Spirit.’’≥Ω This unity was true for the invisible and the visible church; legal conclusions or justifications were not to be drawn from the church’s shortcomings: ‘‘To tolerate imperfection in the church as anything but weakness— and it will not be claimed that the deprivation of the rights of Christians of Jewish lineage in the German Evangelical Church is so intended— makes a virtue out of the lack of faith and love, separates the Gospel 38

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from the lordship of God, and repeals the justification of sinners by grace in faith.’’∂≠ The Marburg professors criticized the classification of race and nationality as orders of creation that compelled church constitutions to provide for special rights for those of other races. In a ‘‘true order of creation,’’ faith recognized only ‘‘God’s own reign over all whom He has created, and His redeeming judgment of sins, to which all are subject.’’ Unanimously rejecting the Aryan paragraph, the Marburg faculty declared: ‘‘Whoever does not desire to recognize, along with the Apostles and Reformers, the full unity between Jewish and non-Jewish Christians in the church, as was impressively articulated in the Letter to the Ephesians in the New Testament, and does not desire to realize it fundamentally in the church’s constitution, deceives himself when he confesses that, for him, the Holy Scripture is God’s Word and Jesus is God’s Son and Lord of all human beings.’’∂∞ The very title of the Erlangen Gutachten illustrated its contrast to the Marburg document. The Marburg faculty took a position called the ‘‘Aryan Paragraph in the Church’’; in Erlangen, two Lutheran systematic theologians composed the ‘‘Theological Opinion on the Admission of Christians of Jewish Origin to the Offices of the German Evangelical Church.’’ The Erlangen faculty had asked theologians Paul Althaus and Werner Elert (who were not members of the Erlangen faculty) to write the opinion. Althaus’s and Elert’s earlier writings help explain why the Erlangen opinion was markedly different from the Marburg one. The previous records of both men reveal anti-Jewish resentment and a markedly völkisch and ‘‘German’’ understanding of the Volkskirche.∂≤ A 1914 essay, in which Elert venerated the mystic Jakob Böhme as possessing a ‘‘piece of the soul of Faust, with which only the German soul can sympathize,’’ illustrated Elert’s enthusiastic nationalism.∂≥ Such sentiments, joined by Althaus’s animosity against ‘‘Jewish nationality,’’ contributed to the tone of the Erlangen ‘‘theological opinion.’’ Paul Althaus’s early views on the relationship between ‘‘church and nationality,’’∂∂ presented at the second German Evangelical Church Convention in Königsberg on 17 June 1927, were also revealing: Irrespective of what has just been said about anti-Semitic Pharisaism and the corruption and adulteration of nationality by the Germans

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The Defamation of the Jews themselves, the church must see and respond to the Jewish threat . . . the issue here is not hatred of the Jews—there is consensus here, especially with respect to serious Jews—the issue is not blood or the Jewish faith, but rather the threat of a corrupted and corruptive big-city spirituality, represented primarily by those of Jewish nationality. The churches must point out those powers that repeatedly hinder the soul-searching and purification of our people. Only when the church calls things by their proper names will it have the inner authority for effective pastoral care of anti-Semitism.∂∑

Such lectures were hardly suitable for defying the smoldering hatred of the Jews. Althaus might have been refuting a ‘‘militant anti-Semitism’’ (as Dibelius had called it), but, consciously or unconsciously, he was committed to a latent anti-Semitism so as to curb the ‘‘corruptive spirituality’’ of Judaism (hence the curious idiom ‘‘pastoral care of antiSemitism’’). The basic message of the Erlangen Gutachten was that Christian churches throughout the ages had made ‘‘admission to their offices contingent upon the fulfillment of certain preconditions on the part of the applicants,’’ including ‘‘biological features of age, gender, and physical suitability,’’ in addition to citizenship. Thus, an additional requirement ‘‘for Aryan extraction’’ called for a theological evaluation of the authority and effect of the relationship ‘‘of the Christian churches to the differences between peoples.’’∂∏ Although ‘‘no one’’ could be excluded ‘‘from the universal validity of the Gospel,’’ ‘‘biological and social differences’’ remained. ‘‘The biological link to a certain Volk, which is a fate we cannot escape, must be acknowledged by Christians in conviction and act’’: ‘‘According to Reformation doctrine, in contrast to Roman Catholic doctrine, the external order of the Christian church must correspond not only to the universality of the Gospel, but also to the historic-völkisch classification of Christian people.’’ From this perspective (in contrast to the Marburg opinion), civil legislation against non-Aryans obviously allowed for church adoption of the Aryan paragraph: Point 5. Today more than ever, the German Volk regards the Jews as an alien nationality.∂π It has recognized the threat that emancipated Jewry poses to its way of life, and it defends itself against this danger with special legal provisions. In the struggle for the renewal of our Volk, the

40

Gutachten and Synodal Resolutions new state excludes men of Jewish or half-Jewish extraction from offices of authority. The church must acknowledge the fundamental right of the state to such legislative measures. It knows that it is called, in the present situation, to new reflection on its task of being the people’s church of the Germans. Inherent in this is the reassertion of the fundamental principle of völkisch solidarity of officeholders with their congregations, and this applies to Christians of Jewish extraction as well. For the position of the church in the life of the Volk and for the fulfillment of its task, the filling of its offices in the present situation with those of Jewish descent would constitute a heavy burden and hindrance. The church must therefore demand the restriction of Jewish Christians from office. This does not question or limit their full membership in the German Evangelical Church, just as little as would be the case among other members of our church who, in some way, do not meet the requirements for admission to the offices of the church.

Thus, the Erlangen opinion equated non-Aryan Christian applicants for the ministry with Aryans whose ‘‘biological features’’ (age, gender, and physical disability) excluded them from the pastorate. The nonAryan Christian was to receive the treatment that church agencies reserved for an Aryan Christian who, because of tuberculosis or a speech impediment, was considered incapable of coping with the ministry.∂∫ The plea for special legal provisions—which, of course, emphasized the exclusionary nature of the regulation—referred ‘‘primarily to clergy and officeholders of Jewish or half-Jewish extraction already in office’’ (point 7), where dismissal might damage ‘‘the particular nature of the ministry, and the call and ordination to it.’’ But even here, the Erlangen writers considered dismissal to be conceivable and justified—for instance, in cases of ‘‘the breakdown in the relationship of trust between pastor and congregation.’’ Despite such ‘‘mitigating’’ restrictions, the Erlangen opinion was a statement adapted to the hyper-German, völkisch zeitgeist. In addition to the Marburg and Erlangen opinions, a third independent scholarly Gutachten was sent to the National Synod. Twenty-two scholars, mainly New Testament specialists, sent a petition entitled ‘‘New Testament and the Question of Race.’’∂Ω At first glance, this petition appeared similar to the Marburg opinion, but the difference between the two was so pronounced that three of the signers withdrew their signatures in indignation one month later, protesting the notion ‘‘that an 41

The Defamation of the Jews

official activity in the congregation might be subject to regulation according to membership in a Volk or race.’’∑≠ Only a few days after the Erlangen Gutachten was issued, the dean of the Erlangen Theological Faculty, Hermann Strathmann, raised the clearly rhetorical question, ‘‘Can the Evangelical Church continue to sustain persons of non-Aryan extraction in their offices?’’ ∑∞ For Strathmann, the decisive factor was ‘‘the reawakened völkisch self-assurance, which regards Jewry not just as a foreign element in our midst, but also, because of its notoriously corruptive influence on the thought, will, and morale of our Volk, as a danger threatening its very nature and life.’’ The command to love prohibited the exclusion of non-Aryan Christians from the church; love must overcome ‘‘the inhibitions coming from völkisch self-assurance’’ harbored by Aryan Christians against nonAryans. Nevertheless, Strathmann noted, ‘‘nothing has been said about the admission of Christians of Jewish origin to the ministry’’; and a prerequisite for a fruitful ministry was ‘‘that the holder of the pastorate belongs to the Volk among whom he works.’’ Strathmann could not escape the vicious circle of the anti-Semitic spirit of the time: ‘‘One factor that truly threatens a minister’s effectiveness in preaching and pastoral care in Germany today is membership in the Jewish race, because of the reawakened consciousness of the Volk.’’∑≤ Still, having made its bed with the non-Aryan clergy, Strathmann suggested, the church now had to lie in it. Quite apart from the ‘‘demand . . . that the community of faith and of love suffers and overcomes these inhibitions [that is, against non-Aryan clergy], it would contradict absolutely the command of love if the church wanted these men to atone for its own past mistake, in an age of a not-yet-reawakened national consciousness, of admitting them to the ministry.’’ Moreover—what evil really could come of it? ‘‘Even from a civil völkisch viewpoint, the further activity of these men will be tolerable, since, given past experience, there is no danger of a corruptive influence upon the Volk emanating from them.’’ Yet this ‘‘danger of a corruptive influence’’ did exist among future applicants for church offices. In order not to endanger the effectiveness of efforts ‘‘to win some for Christ if possible everywhere (1 Cor. 9:20),’’ Strathmann concluded ‘‘that the church, with regard to its Jewish Chris42

Gutachten and Synodal Resolutions

tian members, must expect and ensure the greatest possible restraint with respect to entry into the offices of the church.’’∑≥ Three weeks had passed since the Brown Synod of 6 September. Pastors and professors had spent these weeks in meetings and discussions, writing Gutachten and protest petitions, in order to influence the decisions of the upcoming National Synod in Wittenberg in one way or another. Yet what good could come from Wittenberg now? By walking out of the Berlin General Synod in protest, the Young Reformation Movement had maneuvered itself out of the Wittenberg discussion. The Gutachten and other petitions were so insipid that no one expected them to lead to any essential revisions of the 6 September resolutions. There was no one in Wittenberg to make an energetic case for the Marburg opinion. Finally, the events of the Brown Synod had created such a stir, even abroad, that the Foreign Office had stepped in and insisted that the Aryan paragraph not be dealt with at all at Wittenberg, much less ratified in its present form.∑∂ With that, the matter of the non-Aryan Christians had been temporarily put on ice. Even Bonhoeffer, who had just returned from the World Alliance meeting in Sofia (15–20 September), was unable to change anything. It was not enough that two thousand pastors had joined the first twenty-two signers of Bonhoeffer’s petition, ‘‘To the National Synod of the German Evangelical Church in Wittenberg.’’∑∑ In Bonhoeffer’s view, the National Synod in Wittenberg had to be forced to take a stand on the central concern of his document: the Aryan paragraph.∑∏ Bonhoeffer, who hated any delay when dealing with momentous decisions, had his father’s chauffeur drive him, Franz Hildebrandt, and Gertrud Staewen to the city of Luther.∑π In the back of the car was a package of handbills, ‘‘To the National Synod.’’ After Bonhoeffer had followed ‘‘the ceremony from a corner of the Castle Church’’ as an uninvited observer, he realized that Reich Bishop Müller’s official report had not said a word about Bonhoeffer’s petition or the Marburg and Erlangen documents, nor had Müller proposed any discussion of the Berlin General Synod.∑∫ Bonhoeffer and Hildebrandt composed a telegram to Müller around noon, demanding a discussion of the Aryan paragraph that afternoon; it was unsuccessful. Bonhoeffer did not shrink from repeating the Wittenberg sensation of 1517. For Luther, the church had sinned against the Holy Spirit through 43

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the practice of indulgences; for Bonhoeffer, it offended the Holy Spirit by the Aryan paragraph. Luther (according to tradition) had been content with a single placard on the door of the Castle Church; Bonhoeffer transformed whole streets into billboards. He, Hildebrandt, and Staewen posted the handbills on the trees. In response, the German Christian newspaper Evangelium im Dritten Reich reported: ‘‘Impossible though it may seem, it is true: the enemy is making his presence felt. Appeals without any printer’s name, minutes, communiqués, details, etc., are being circulated. But unerringly and surely, our leaders will take steps.’’∑Ω Inside the Wittenberg meeting, there was no mention of Bonhoeffer’s action. But, as Pastor Fritz Loerzer (deputy Reich director of the German Christians) acknowledged during the synod: ‘‘This calm is the calm before the storm.’’∏≠ It was a calm achieved by deliberately ignoring the Aryan paragraph, whose ‘‘contradiction of the confessions’’ was not even mentioned by the regional churches outside the Old Prussian Union Church. Although the Lutheran regional churches of Bavaria, Württemberg, and Hannover had not yet been affected by Nazi measures, their bishops (Meiser, Wurm, and Marahrens) remained silent at the synod to preserve ‘‘calm.’’∏∞ The outcome of the Wittenberg meeting, according to Bonhoeffer and Hildebrandt, was nothing less than ‘‘disastrous— precisely because it had produced nothing that was not predictable.’’∏≤ This silence, when protest still was possible, was to have disastrous consequences; the memory of it would be evoked twelve years later in the Stuttgart Confession of Guilt. There was no longer much readiness among Bonhoeffer’s friends to treat the Aryan paragraph as a status confessionis, with all the consequences. There were no resignations from the ministry—such actions were postponed ‘‘for an indefinite period.’’∏≥ Bonhoeffer saw no chance of a credible engagement in the church within Germany; he took a position in England, deciding that ‘‘it was time to go into the desert for a while.’’∏∂ Franz Hildebrandt was determined to follow his friend. A few days later, in a resigned letter to Martin Niemöller, he turned down an offer to work in the Pastors’ Emergency League.∏∑ But he stayed after all, until Niemöller’s arrest in summer 1937.

44

∑

The Pastors’ Emergency League Inspired by the Bonhoeffer-Niemöller declaration to the National Synod, opposition to a church Aryan paragraph grew steadily. Under Niemöller’s guidance, the opposition founded the Pastors’ Emergency League in October. It was governed by a Council of Brethren; its ‘‘constitution’’ was based on the Emergency League pledge: To the best of my ability, I acknowledge my responsibility for those who are persecuted for the sake of this confessional position. Through this commitment, I attest that the application of the Aryan paragraph in the church is a violation of the confessional position.∞

The early drafts of the Emergency League pledge reveal the theological development of this solidarity. With its vow ‘‘not to neglect prayers of intercession for the brethren, and, wherever possible, to render assistance to them in their distress,’’ the first draft expressed solidarity with persecuted non-Aryans between the lines.≤ The second draft, which came from a Westphalian congregation, cited 2 Sam. 16:17: ‘‘Is this your kindness to your friend? Why did you not go with your friend?’’≥ It listed ‘‘Ten Commandments of Holy Scripture’’ as the foundation for the Emergency League pledges; Matt. 22:37–39—the commandment to love one another—was the third commandment. Yet there were already indications that this challenge was too great for most Christians. ‘‘General public sentiment’’ kept most from recognizing how virulent and destructive the Aryan paragraph’s challenge to Christian conscience really was. Those who resisted the Aryan paragraph were more threatened by their church than by the state: in midNovember 1933, church authorities twice dismissed (and subsequently reinstated) pastors Martin Niemöller, Eitel-Friedrich von Rabenau, and Kurt Scharf.∂ At a meeting of the Reich Directorate of the German Christians on 27 October, Reich Bishop Müller emphasized the importance of merciless enforcement of the Aryan paragraph.∑ Two weeks later, the German Christians’ rally in the Berlin Sports Palace finally aroused opposition among those who had been silent. The rally was an early turning point in the church struggle. Before an enthusiastic crowd, German Christian leaders openly called for the deletion of the Old Testament from the 45

The Defamation of the Jews

Bible and an ‘‘Aryan’’ revision of the New Testament and Protestant liturgies. For the first time, many Protestant leaders realized how radical the German Christians really were; German Christian membership dropped dramatically after the rally. Even at the Berlin rally, however, it was ‘‘remarkable that it was not this resolution [that is, the demand for an Aryan paragraph and for the establishment of a separate church for nonAryans] that provoked the greatest furor, but the preceding speech by regional party chairman Dr. Reinhold Krause.’’∏ People throughout Germany worked to rescind the Aryan paragraph in the church. A group of Breslau clergy declared ‘‘that Protestant Christians of foreign blood may not be excluded from the communion of an Evangelical church.’’π In a statement that did not explicitly mention the Aryan paragraph, Karl Barth challenged the notion that the Reformation corresponded to German national character: ‘‘It was, and is, as suitable or unsuitable for the Germanic race as it is for every other race.’’∫ The United Evangelical parish in the town of Unterbarmen condemned the Aryan paragraph as worldly, since it disregarded baptism and violated ordination.Ω The Reformed congregation in Oberfischbach resolved that ‘‘a church Aryan law contradicts the sovereignty of the Holy Spirit.’’∞≠ Individuals spoke out as well. In November, Karl Bernhard Ritter from Marburg offered another version of a Pastors’ Emergency League pledge; somewhat sharper than Niemöller’s version, it condemned the Aryan paragraph as ‘‘an especially flagrant violation of Scripture and confession.’’∞∞ Systematic theologian Heinrich Vogel published ‘‘Eight Articles of Evangelical Doctrine,’’ in which he condemned ‘‘the banishment or deprivation of the rights of Jewish Christians,’’ since it was ‘‘not . . . the Jews alone, but all peoples of the world, even we Germans, . . . [who are] implicated in the cross of Christ.’’∞≤ The Holy Spirit, wrote Vogel, could not be tied to ‘‘the principle of racial politics.’’ Yet even those who opposed the Aryan paragraph were not free of antiSemitic sentiment. No one epitomized this as clearly as the cofounder of the Emergency League, Martin Niemöller. As a decorated World War I hero and outspoken patriot, Niemöller seemed almost predestined for the conflict between German patriotism and Christian faith that he faced under Nazism. After 1945, he was one of the few veterans of the Kirchenkampf who showed courage and honesty in facing their own past. In an October 1963 46

The Pastors’ Emergency League

television interview with German journalist Günter Gaus, Niemöller spoke about his early prejudices against the Jews: Gaus: In the [Niemöller’s] trial early in 1938, you fearlessly defended your Evangelical standpoint against the Aryan paragraph. But you also said that, as a former officer and the son of a Westphalian farmer, you could be believed when you said that you certainly did not like the Jews personally. Does this statement bother you today? Niemöller: Yes, of course, it bothers me—that was also a part of tradition. In my native Tecklenburg, there were many farmers who were in debt to Jewish moneylenders and livestock traders. At that time, the mood in this area was not systematically anti-Semitic, but it was intuitively and traditionally so, and I never especially questioned it. And in the Wehrmacht of 1910, there was also this certain reserve toward Judaism. Today, I regret that very much. But at that time, it was not at all clear to me what only dawned upon me later in the concentration camp: that, as a Christian, I must conduct myself not according to my sympathies or antipathies, but must see in each human being, even if he is unsympathetic to me, the fellow human being for whom Jesus Christ hung on His cross as much as for me. This simply precludes any form of rejection and action against a group of human beings of any race, any religion, any skin color. Gaus: Is this something you realized later? Niemöller: This is something I realized later.∞≥

Niemöller was determined to sign Bonhoeffer’s 7 September declaration and to include some of the radicality of Bonhoeffer’s protest in the Pastors’ Emergency League pledge.∞∂ But in the weeks and months that followed, Niemöller was under growing pressure to consider whether the opposition’s energies should be employed at a ‘‘more central’’ spot— as, undoubtedly, Barth thought they should be. With Bonhoeffer’s departure for London, Niemöller’s situation was that of the old submarine commander and soldier. More a front-line warrior than a staff intellectual, he had lost his chief planner and mastermind. He found these qualities in Karl Barth. The initial reserve between the two men was soon replaced by mutual appreciation. By 1934, Niemöller had developed a liking for Barth’s ‘‘theology of the Word,’’ and Barth saw a good chance for a Confessing Church in Niemöller’s organizational talent and combative spirit.∞∑ 47

The Defamation of the Jews

The question remained: How should those committed to the Emergency League interpret and carry out the four points contained in its pledge? Which was more important: the general confession (points 1 and 2) or the specific acts of being responsible for the persecuted and resisting the Aryan paragraph (points 3 and 4)? In October and November 1933, many colleagues could no longer evade this question. The various factions pressed Niemöller to take a position specifically on the Aryan question, although the Emergency League pledge had been formulated in such a way that its four points could not be taken separately, but only in reference to one another. How could Niemöller ease the plight of his Emergency League brethren as long as he was ambivalent himself ? Before the final passage of the Emergency League pledge on 20 October 1933, he had emphasized that ‘‘the position regarding the Aryan paragraph is decisive for the church today. Here the status confessionis exists. The task of the church is to say today what communio sanctorum is.’’∞∏ On the other hand, he ‘‘did not disguise the fact that he would greatly have preferred to consider the Aryan clause as adiaphoron.’’∞π On 2 November, Niemöller published his ‘‘Principles Regarding the Aryan Question in the Church.’’∞∫ He characterized ‘‘the establishment of a Jewish Christian Church . . . [as] a utopia’’ and protested against ‘‘a church law that excludes the non-Aryans or non-pure Aryans, so far as they belong to the Jewish people, from the offices of the church.’’ But— and here his weaknesses become evident— this recognition [that is, that the Christian community has to take itself seriously] demands of us a high measure of self-denial, as a people that has had much to bear under the influence of the Jewish people, so that the wish to be freed from this demand is understandable. . . . The question . . . [can] be dealt with only in such a way that, on the basis of 1 Cor. 8, we may expect that clergy of Jewish descent exercise restraint so as not to offend. It would be unsatisfactory for a pastor of non-Aryan descent to hold office in the church administration or an especially prominent position in home missions.∞Ω

This statement weakened points 3 and 4. It also encouraged Emergency League members, when confronted by the real problems posed by the Aryan paragraph, to make a virtue of verbal confession while avoiding concrete action. The wording of the Barmen and Dahlem declarations the following year are incontrovertible evidence of this. 48

Ecumenical Developments

One result of this weakened position was the considerable modification of the original Bethel Confession—against the wishes of Bonhoeffer, Vischer, and others. Niemöller finally published it in November 1933, under the title ‘‘The Confession of the Fathers and the Confessing Congregation.’’≤≠

∏

Ecumenical Developments The events of 1933 and their effects on the Confessing Church’s subsequent position toward the Jews cannot be understood without some consideration of concurrent developments in the ecumenical world.∞ The German church opposition had refused to heed Bonhoeffer’s repeated pleas to regard the Aryan paragraph as a danger not just to the church but to the state and society in general. Such shortsightedness existed on the ecumenical level as well. In particular, tension developed between the German Evangelical Church Federation (the Kirchenbund) and foreign and ecumenical organizations, which issued early warnings about the anti-Jewish excesses in Germany. To a great extent, this tension was due to the strong nationalistic loyalties of the German Evangelical Church. German hopes for a renewed and powerful German state had been intensified by the shame of the 1918 defeat (symbolized by the Versailles Treaty) and the failures of the political system that followed. In 1933 German churches acquiesced to the Nazi state’s anti-Jewish laws and campaigns rather than allow foreign meddling in plans for a national future that seemed full of promise. Church leaders conformed to the arguments and language of the state in good faith. They believed that things weren’t so bad; therefore, it was important to protest against the ‘‘horror stories’’ in the foreign press. When, for example, Berlin pastor and ecumenical leader Friedrich Siegmund-Schultze wrote Breslau Church Superintendent Otto Zänker in April 1933 that he was troubled ‘‘by the public disturbances in Breslau,’’ he received a soothing reply: Only three cases of beatings have become known, and all three are of such a nature that there appear to be no grounds for leading figures to take a collective stand against the government. . . . Everything remained very calm, except, naturally, for gatherings in front of the houses of

49

The Defamation of the Jews reviled Jewish store owners. . . . I assume that more cases have occurred than have come to my ears. But they are not of a kind to justify any action on my part. On the contrary, I fear that action . . . would only provoke the government and its low-level offices even more, which could then easily lead to renewed rumors abroad of atrocities.≤

In March 1933, Dr. Hermann Kapler (president of the German Evangelical Central Council and co-chairman, with British bishop George Bell, of the Ecumenical Council for Practical Christianity) appealed to his ecumenical colleagues to use their influence to stop anti-German rallies based on false reports.≥ Kapler argued that press reports of American church protests against the ‘‘alleged’’ persecution of the Jews in Germany would greatly harm cooperation among the churches.∂ VicePresident Hermann Burghart of the Evangelical Central Council in Berlin (he was also chairman of the German section of the World Alliance for Promoting International Friendship through the Churches) warned American members of the World Alliance against ‘‘giving credence to the fabricated reports about alleged acts of terror against Jews in Germany.’’∑ And, in the Berlin newspaper Tag, Superintendent Otto Dibelius wrote: ‘‘We read with displeasure that Dr. Manning, the Anglican bishop of New York, together with American Jewish representatives, intends to protest against the so-called persecution of Jews in Germany. We must ask the bishop from what sources he draws his knowledge, and whether he may really allow himself an objective judgment over the events in Germany. No German church has asked any other church in the world to comment on the circumstances in Germany. . . . How does an Anglican bishop in New York come to make himself the protector of German Jewry?’’∏ Increasingly, German church leaders and church organizations grew uneasy about church protests abroad. Reich ymca Superintendent Erich Stange and Bishop John Nuelsen of the German Methodist Church worried that foreign ‘‘atrocity propaganda’’ would threaten the new churchstate relations in Germany.π Such fears led senior church officials, although they objected to the German Christians, to surrender to state aims before the Nazi state ever requested church compliance. Church leaders reluctantly tolerated and even defended the Nazi party’s antiJewish actions and thus waived any chance of obtaining a special status for Jewish Christians. The ecumenical protests continued. French ecumenical leader Henri50

Ecumenical Developments

Louis Henriod informed Kapler that three thousand German Jews had entered Switzerland by the beginning of April 1933. Two other European ecumenists contacted August Schreiber, a member of the church consistory in Berlin who worked in the Church Foreign Office, demanding a ‘‘statement from German church circles in light of the boycott undertaken by the German government against the Jews.’’∫ In a letter to Kapler on 8 April 1933, Schreiber bemoaned ‘‘the appalling ignorance’’ among the Americans, Swiss, Dutch, and others about conditions in Germany. ‘‘We remain the most hated nation in the world,’’ Schreiber wrote. ‘‘But we must defend ourselves.’’Ω In a ‘‘confidential’’ two-page report, he sent Swiss ecumenical leader Adolf Keller his own interpretation of ‘‘how . . . the atrocity propaganda against the alleged German persecutions of the Jews’’ had come about. In the process of state reorganization, Schreiber wrote, it had been necessary to reshuffle positions on a widespread scale. Jews had been dismissed not for racial reasons but because of their party status. Unfortunately, people abroad had other opinions, but ‘‘foreign countries have no idea to what extent for decades . . . Jewry exerted a corruptive influence in Germany, through the press, theater, and film.’’ Jewish emigrants abroad were defaming Germany with propaganda that distorted the true state of affairs: ‘‘Reich Chancellor Hitler has said clearly before the entire world that abuses have occurred in the ‘German revolution.’ But never before has a great state revolution taken place with such modest losses of life and property.’’∞≠ Criticism of events in Germany came not only from foreign churches but from German-speaking congregations abroad that were affiliated with the German Evangelical Church. Following a 3 April meeting of the board of the Federation of Churches and Protestant Associations in Geneva about ‘‘persecution in Germany,’’ Pastor Otto Fiedler, on behalf of the board of the German Lutheran Church in Geneva, asked the Evangelical Church Federation what the church intended to do against the numerous anti-Jewish measures. Not least of all, he wrote, the reputation ‘‘of our German Protestant people here in Geneva’’ was at stake. On 10 April, the Church Federation in Berlin replied, describing German efforts to condemn the ‘‘atrocity propaganda’’ and prevent exaggeration about possible ‘‘excesses’’ and asking for more understanding for Germany abroad.∞∞ On 5 April, Pastor V. A. Günther of the German Evangelical congregation in Oslo reported to the Evangelical Church Council in Berlin that ‘‘in 51

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Norway, a Jewish question does not exist.’’ There were few Jews there, and these were ‘‘completely assimilated. . . . Christian groups are of the opinion that any kind of persecution of the Jews contradicts the spirit of Christianity. This opinion is supported all the more by the generally humanitarian sentiments of the Norwegian people, among whom the idea that one must respect other people is very prevalent.’’ Günther noted that Pastor Hanns Lilje (general secretary of the Lutheran World Federation at the time), when asked during a lecture in Oslo whether ‘‘from the Christian point of view the boycott of the Jews in Germany can be explained in any way,’’ had been unable to give an adequate answer. ‘‘We realized,’’ wrote Günther, ‘‘that the self-evident assumption behind this question was that this really was impossible.’’∞≤ On 10 April, the Dutch Church Council for Practical Christianity requested a statement from the German Church Federation about the boycott of the Jews. Elsewhere, the leading Waldensian weekly newspaper, La Luce (The light), published a front-page protest against conditions in Germany. ‘‘With all our energy, we lodge a protest’’ against Hitler’s ‘‘barbarian doctrine . . . and methods more suitable for the jungle.’’ In Berlin, Schreiber expressed his displeasure at this candid language by paraphrasing the newspaper’s motto, ‘‘Lux lucet in tenebris’’ (Light shines in darkness), commenting that the Waldensians’ article ‘‘contains more Tenebrae than Lux.’’∞≥ Pastor Walcher of the German Evangelical congregation in Rome, however, succeeded in hoodwinking the La Luce editors. Walcher protested that the foreign reports about Germany were false, citing as ‘‘evidence’’ the official German church telegrams to foreign and ecumenical church organizations. On 19 April, La Luce withdrew its protests against Germany, since Walcher had ‘‘fully and completely’’ refuted such charges. There was great satisfaction about this in Berlin and with La Luce’s concluding sentence ‘‘that the influential and true Protestant churches of Germany will not hesitate to oppose all religious persecution, in the name of their Christian convictions.’’ The German Evangelical congregation in Lisbon remained more clearsighted. In an ironically worded letter to the Central Church Council in Berlin, the Lisbon congregation regretted ‘‘the exaggerations in the press about the cruelties that have purportedly been done to the Jews in Germany.’’ Noting that there had been no official denial of these reports, ‘‘we would like to express our deep regret about this to you and to demonstrate our sympathy with God’s chosen people.’’∞∂ 52

Ecumenical Developments

The Swedish Protestant Church was particularly concerned about events in Germany. Bound by their common religious heritage, the Swedish and German churches had worked together in the renaissance of research on Martin Luther. Söderblom’s work had awakened a strong ecumenical interest, and the Swedes were vitally committed to continuing and deepening their good relations with German Protestantism. In 1932, Söderblom’s successor, Archbishop Erling Eidem, had received honorary degrees from the universities in Tübingen and Halle-Wittenberg. Despite this, the German Church Council did not want Eidem meddling in the Jewish question.∞∑ As the leader of the Swedish Ecumenical Commission, Eidem had sent a warning (on 3 April) to the Church Council in Berlin. His conciliatory tone drew criticism in the Swedish press.∞∏ Eidem expressed regret over false news reports but could not conceal his deep concern about anti-Semitic tendencies in Germany: ‘‘We pray and hope that the German Evangelical churches will find it possible, with God’s help, to work successfully for genuine Christian principles. . . . ‘The more hatred there is, the more love there should be.’ ’’∞π Eidem’s regret about ‘‘false’’ news reports can only be interpreted as a benevolent gesture, for he was too well informed about the German situation by the Swedish pastor in Berlin, Birger Forell, to have been justified in expressing sympathy for a Germany ‘‘unjustly treated’’ by supposedly untrue press reports.∞∫ Throughout April 1933, the Berlin Central Church Council—the highest council of the Evangelical Church in Germany—had been besieged by inquiries and protests from the ecumenical world and from Germany’s own overseas congregations. The matter had reached such an extent that it could no longer be settled by replies from low-level officials like Schreiber. On 25–26 April, the Church Council called a meeting to discuss the ‘‘treatment of the Jewish Question.’’∞Ω Two documents served as the basis for their discussion: a private theological study, ‘‘The Church and the Jewish Question in Germany,’’ and a document prepared by the regional church of Baden, ‘‘The Evangelical Church and Its Jewish Christians.’’ the church council meeting

These two documents laid the foundation for a discussion in the Church Council and the memorandum it subsequently sent to the German churches.≤≠ The first document, ‘‘The Church and the Jewish Question in Germany,’’ was a summary of the arguments that theologian Walter 53

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Künneth published the following year in ‘‘The Jewish Problem and the Church’’;≤∞ it is likely that Künneth wrote the document examined by the Church Council.≤≤ Künneth’s tone was pragmatic: the issue raised by the Jewish question, he wrote, was not how Christians should conduct themselves toward those afflicted by the racial laws but how the church’s actions in this matter could best preserve ‘‘the dignity of the church.’’ Künneth believed that state measures to restrict Jews were necessary ‘‘to protect the German people.’’ Within this context, the church’s task was to ‘‘ensure that the exclusion of the Jews as a foreign body in the life of the Volk does not occur in a manner contrary to Christian ethics’’ and to protest ‘‘any kind of violent persecution of the Jews which damages the reputation of the national state.’’ At the same time, church actions had to be based on ‘‘Christian love, not to be confused with the liberal concept of humaneness.’’ The right of the church to evangelize and convert Jews ‘‘must remain unimpaired’’; indeed, through ‘‘the now historic bond between Christian faith and Germanness,’’ Jewish converts to Christianity could be more easily integrated into German culture.≤≥ The Baden church document, ‘‘The Evangelical Church and Its Jewish Christians,’’ emphasized the church’s responsibility for Jewish Christians: Our Evangelical church is magnanimous enough for all who are in distress of any kind. . . . Our church, of course, is not able to guarantee them legal rights; but, within its own sphere, our church will show complete brotherly love and compassion toward those among our members who are willing to assimilate themselves into the German national character, that is, in accordance with Volk and race. The church expects, of course, that these foreign brothers and sisters in the faith [will] seriously attempt to discard those qualities inherited from their fathers that are foreign to what is German, to integrate themselves into our Volkstum (the heritage of our people), and to exercise restraint in public life, so as not to hinder the practice of brotherly love or disturb the present community of life and faith.≤∂

The minutes of the Central Church Council meeting revealed serious dissent within the council about the merits of both declarations. Distressed by the plight of Jewish Christians, Baron Wilhelm von Pechmann, a prominent lay leader in the Evangelical Church, proclaimed his astonishment that neither document offered a word of consolation or pro54

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tection for those affected by the Aryan laws. (Pechmann was so dismayed by the outcome of the meeting that he resigned from all church offices in protest.)≤∑ The meeting could not adjourn, he declared, ‘‘without such a statement,’’ continuing that such a statement was important to foreign churches with ecumenical ties to the Church Federation.≤∏ The president of the Baden church, Dr. Klaus Wurth, conceded that perhaps the church should acknowledge ‘‘that the Jewish Christians are our brothers and have a right to the New Testament.’’ But he worried ‘‘that individual sentences, taken out of context, can be used against the church’’ and concluded that the Church Council could make such a declaration clear in private discussions but not publicly. Church president Kapler reported on his attempts to intervene in the Jewish question with the highest government authorities. Of course, he noted, during his interview with Hitler, ‘‘I didn’t mention the Jewish question as such!’’ The outcome of Kapler’s attempts to mitigate some individual cases remained uncertain; and he acknowledged that the Baden document, whose remarks were confined to the Jewish Christians, did not address the problem adequately. The church, for example, would have to protest ‘‘should the attempt be made to exclude Jewish Christian children from Christian schools,’’ but he questioned ‘‘whether the church, with respect to religious matters, has the right to ask the state, on behalf of Jewish Christians, to disregard racial aspects when filling government positions.’’ Several of those present opposed any public church position on the matter. One, Dr. Michaelis, saw no offense against God’s word if ‘‘Jews were treated differently than Germans in their relationships to the state’’ and warned that, ‘‘considering the tremendous danger in which it [the church] presently finds itself, it is muzzled.’’ Several other bishops present agreed. The church could not oppose the state, Mecklenburg bishop Rendtorff noted; after all, it had just ‘‘gratefully welcomed the fact that there is finally a strong authority again.’’ Pechmann persisted, suggesting a resolution on behalf of all members of our church irrespective of racial heritage . . . precisely those members who are completely or partially of Jewish descent. We sympathize with them and we will intercede for them to whatever extent is possible. We seriously warn representatives of public authority, when redressing grievances, not to overstep the boundaries established by the commandments of justice and Christian love.

55

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Pechmann predicted a ‘‘grateful sigh of relief ’’ from many Christian homes ‘‘if the Church Council speaks a courageous word from its conscience.’’ Only Rendtorff, however, joined Pechmann in pleading for a public statement. Because of his ecumenical contacts through his organization’s overseas work, Rendtorff feared serious reactions to the German treatment of the Jews. The outcome of the meeting was a resolution that, though public, was not intended to be proclaimed too loudly: a church promise of ‘‘sympathetic intercession’’ for ‘‘members of the Jewish race . . . within the limits of what is practically possible.’’ An official church memorandum based on this resolution appeared in mid-1933.≤π Its tone exemplified the ambivalence and caution that had marked the Church Council meeting. The memorandum defended the validity of German resentment against the Jews, stating that ‘‘antiSemitism is merely the other side of deep reflection about German character, with the intention of shaping the German mind and German fate in accordance with this character.’’≤∫ It described the anti-Jewish measures of the German state as ‘‘understandable’’ and the boycott of Jewish businesses as a mark of ‘‘German discipline.’’≤Ω The real issue was not the ‘‘persecution of the Jews with the goal of economic and personal extermination’’ but ‘‘a protective measure for the safeguarding of the German Volk. A struggle against the Jewish religion or the free practice of Jewish culture is not occurring at all.’’ The memorandum created an alibi for the church to say little or nothing at all about what was happening, and it included a church declaration of loyalty to the ‘‘Order of the Party Leadership of the nsdap [National Socialist German Workers’ Party] from 28 March 1933.’’≥≠ The church’s task, according to the memorandum, was to mitigate the severity of state measures, above all to ‘‘look after the suffering Jewish Christians . . . through the practice of brotherly love. Already, much of this nature—in many cases quietly—has occurred.’’ The memorandum concluded that ecclesiastical and theological doctrine had ‘‘not dealt seriously and deeply enough with the Jewish question in recent decades.’’ Churches at home and abroad had been guided by ‘‘humanitarian aspects’’ in a question that could be approached only ‘‘from the depth of the Gospel . . . theologically, really, from the perspective of the Word of God.’’≥∞ On 7 June 1933, Church Councillor Dr. Johannes Hosemann sent the 56

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memorandum to prominent ecumenical leaders. One week later, the memo was sent to sixty-one German Evangelical congregations abroad,≥≤ with a request that it not be released or quoted directly to the press.≥≥ Although the document had been sent ‘‘to the agencies of the German Reich abroad . . . by the Foreign Office,’’ it was to be treated confidentially! Little is known about the resonance that the memorandum found among its recipients. ‘‘It hardly made any impression’’ on Swedish archbishop Eidem.≥∂ In a 15 June letter to Hosemann, Bishop Bell of Chichester expressed his joy ‘‘to have the memorandum.’’≥∑ In view of his numerous protests that same year against the German treatment of the Jews, however, it must be concluded that Bell had not yet read the memorandum but was confirming its receipt; he expected a position in line with his own ideas, not suspecting that here was a Danaean gift. ecumenical relief work

During 1933, the Central Church Council’s approach to the ‘‘Jewish question’’—like that of the church opposition that became the Pastors’ Emergency League—was basically theoretical. The humanitarian appeals made by Pechmann and Bonhoeffer were silenced in a ‘‘brotherly’’ fashion with ‘‘theological’’ arguments. In the ecumenical world, however, energetic relief activities had begun. Friedrich Siegmund-Schultze was at the forefront of the German efforts.≥∏ In June 1933, the Gestapo deported the well-known Berlin sociologist and pastor for his open support of Jews; in Switzerland, he used his extensive ecumenical contacts to establish an effective aid campaign.≥π Siegmund-Schultze believed that the exiles needed special support. Members of the religious Jewish community were aided by the Central Committee of German Jews for Aid and Rehabilitation. Under Rabbi Leo Baeck’s leadership, this was the umbrella organization for all the Jewish relief agencies in Berlin—the Central Welfare Agency of German Jews, the Relief Association of German Jews, and the Central Agency for Jewish Economic Aid.≥∫ The Evangelical Inner Mission and Roman Catholic Caritas Association had ‘‘explicitly acknowledged’’ their responsibility for Protestants and Roman Catholics of Jewish descent. But these various relief activities were all ‘‘completely private’’; as a result, the Reich Association of Christian German Citizens of Non-Aryan or Non-Pure Aryan Origin had been founded in Berlin to represent the interests of church members there. 57

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For emigrants, however, there was no organization that provided relief on a larger scale. Committees had been formed in Holland, Switzerland, England, and France, but they were hardly in a position to improve the general situation of the emigrants. The situation of those who had emigrated or were seeking to emigrate was rendered considerably more difficult by the fact that ‘‘numerous states . . . had limited the rights of Jewish citizens in comparison to others’ rights even before the German action against the Jews. Faced with the onset of Jewish immigration, many states or their authorities took measures against [ Jewish] naturalization or permanent residency.’’≥Ω By mid-1933, almost fifty thousand people of Jewish origin were wandering through Europe in search of a place to live. Christian emigrants were especially affected, since they received no assistance from foreign Jewish congregations, and Christian German congregations abroad were ‘‘naturally incapable of extensive assistance.’’ For this reason, Siegmund-Schultze believed that only an influential international committee could make assistance possible. ‘‘Such work,’’ he said, ‘‘would render that service to our neighbor which is a consequence of our faith’’: For these reasons, the German member association of the World Alliance for Promoting Friendship through the Churches took the initiative in the formation of an international relief committee for the emigrants, after thorough discussion of the possibilities and after consultation with official authorities. . . . The participation of high-ranking church leaders from various countries, Protestant and Catholic, is assured. Likewise, the leaders of the Jewish religious community in Germany and other countries have expressed their willingness to accept the invitation from Christian groups to participate in the formation of such a committee.∂≠

On 15 June, Lord Dickinson, the London president of the World Alliance, was informed by Dr. Burghart (chairman of the German World Alliance office) that preparations in Geneva should begin ‘‘at the end of this month.’’ An office was to open in July in Amsterdam, with its work to begin in October 1933.∂∞ A detailed review of the ecumenical relief activities for the Jews goes beyond the scope of this study.∂≤ The foundation for these activities was laid at the ecumenical conferences in Sofia and Novi Sad in September 58

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1933; relief activities intensified after the 1935 Nuremberg Laws. Generally speaking, the relief efforts of the World Alliance reached a remarkable level, helped by Siegmund-Schultze’s contacts with the relief agencies in various countries.∂≥ Had a few years of preliminary ‘‘theological’’ discussions been allowed to slip by until it was too late, this relief work would have been impossible. Frank Ritchie from the United States, Lord Dickinson and Bishop George Bell of Chichester from London, Swedish archbishop Eidem from Uppsala, Norwegian bishop Ammundsen from Haderslev, Pastor Marc Boegner from Paris, and Bishop Irenaeus from Novi Sad led the World Alliance’s efforts. In Germany, Dr. Burghart, Pastor Hermann Maas, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer collaborated on the project. They were joined by Roman Catholic prelate Wienken (director of the German Caritas Association) and Dr. Hans Lamm and Rabbi Leo Baeck from the Jewish community. Supported by Superintendent Martin Albertz, Maas maintained ties to the Confessing Church. The declarations that began to emerge from the ecumenical world were as significant as its relief efforts. From 9 to 12 September 1933, the Executive Committee of ‘‘Life and Work’’ convened in Novi Sad, Yugoslavia. It could hardly remain silent about the Brown Synod that had ended three days before, but the German Evangelical Church delegation was led by Bishop Theodor Heckel, who ‘‘had failed to draw conclusions from the Brown Synod with regard to his official position’’ and had no affection for the church opposition.∂∂ Particularly after 21 February 1934, when Reich Bishop Müller named him bishop in charge of the newly established Church Foreign Office, Heckel viewed his task as ‘‘to bring the tossed ship of the church in Germany, along with its congregations abroad, through the reefs.’’∂∑ In Novi Sad, Heckel completely ignored the outcome of the Brown Synod and the related issue of the treatment of the Jews. His remarks about the German church situation failed to satisfy French church leader Wilfred Monod.∂∏ The lively debate that ensued ended in two resolutions, both introduced by Bishop George Bell; for the first time at an ecumenical conference, the Germans went on record as dissenting.∂π First, the conference expressed ‘‘grave anxieties . . . in particular with regard to the severe action taken against persons of Jewish origin and the severe restrictions placed upon freedom of thought and expression in Germany.’’∂∫ Bell sent this statement to the London Times, which printed it on 4 October 1933. Second, as chair of the meeting and president of the 59

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Ecumenical Council, Bell was asked to write a letter to the interim leadership of the German Evangelical Church expressing ‘‘the concern of the committee members and the churches they represent about these restrictive measures.’’∂Ω In writing this letter, Bell was advised by Bonhoeffer, who was able to lessen Heckel’s influence and correct the information being conveyed. Even in ecumenical circles, however, Bonhoeffer’s views were by no means widely held and had only minor influence. Except for Bishops Bell and Ammundsen, most ecumenical leaders avoided jeopardizing the contacts with Heckel’s office.∑≠ At the executive committee meeting of the World Alliance for Promoting Friendship through the Churches in Sofia (15–20 September 1933), the church’s language was clearer than it had been at Novi Sad.∑∞ In Novi Sad, Heckel had prevailed; in Sofia, it was Bonhoeffer who (as honorary youth secretary and invited speaker at the upcoming Fanö conference in 1934) represented the German church, along with Prof. Julius Richter.∑≤ Bonhoeffer had done preliminary work on what he saw as the most important point on the agenda—‘‘Racial Minorities.’’ The night before the conference, he attended a gathering of several European and U.S. ecumenical leaders and appealed forcefully to the consciences of those present to address the Aryan paragraph. As he wrote Siegmund-Schultze on 6 November 1933: ‘‘I spoke quite openly about the Jewish question, the Aryan paragraph in the church, the General Synod . . . and found much sympathy.’’∑≥ After the subsequent plenary discussion about the Jewish question, the following resolution was adopted, with Bonhoeffer’s help: ‘‘We especially deplore the fact that the state measures against the Jews in Germany have had such an effect on public opinion that in some circles the Jewish race is considered a race of inferior status. We protest against the resolution of the Prussian Synod and other synods that apply the Aryan paragraph of the state to the church, putting serious disabilities upon ministers and church officers who by chance of birth are nonAryan, which we believe to be a denial of the explicit teaching and spirit of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.’’∑∂ With some difficulty, Julius Richter, who was anxious about the possible displeasure of authorities at home, persuaded Bonhoeffer to accompany him to the German embassy in Sofia ‘‘to assure them that nothing is being directed against the German government as such.’’∑∑ Even Siegmund-Schultze was somewhat alarmed by the resolution. He 60

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feared for the future security of Richter and Bonhoeffer in Germany and for the continued success of the World Alliance’s relief activities. This was why they had agreed before the Sofia meeting not to draft any resolutions, so as not to ‘‘browbeat’’ either the German state or the German Church Federation. Now, since the plenary session had decided to ignore this agreement (largely at Bonhoeffer’s insistence), Bonhoeffer emphasized to Siegmund-Schultze that Henriod had initiated the evening meeting with ecumenical leaders.∑∏ It was understandable that Siegmund-Schultze, in the final issue of his journal Eiche (The Oak; it was banned soon thereafter), reported on the Sofia meeting in ‘‘an account dressed up with much goodwill’’: During the Sofia conference, however, the executive committee overrode this agreement, and wrote a resolution on the racial question with regard to the German church’s position. The representatives of the churches of the great powers declared that it would mean the end of the World Alliance’s work if one of its councils, meeting this year, failed to take a position on this question of such import to all of Christianity. Thus, the German representatives who participated in the session were unable to prevent a resolution from being composed. They saw to it, however, that this included no criticism of their nation’s government, and that it was only a statement about church measures that were controversial within Germany as well. It would not be fair if we wanted to conceal this resolution in Germany.∑π

On 6 November 1933, Bonhoeffer informed the worried SiegmundSchultze that he considered the resolution ‘‘good and justifiable’’ and that he could not retreat from it. Since he had information that the church government in Berlin possessed a copy of the resolution anyway, Bonhoeffer believed: ‘‘I really don’t think we need be afraid of spreading it about as much as we can. Junge Kirche (Young Church), too, ought to publish the text.’’∑∫ Bonhoeffer was more preoccupied with ecclesiastical difficulties than political ones. The Sofia resolution very nearly prevented his assignment to London; indeed, as Bonhoeffer wrote Siegmund-Schultze, the ‘‘terrible furor’’ at the Spiritual Ministry in Berlin had almost led to Heckel’s own ‘‘downfall.’’∑Ω Heckel could strengthen his position only by sending a letter to all German pastors abroad, giving his version of the ecumenical events in September: ‘‘In difficult discussions, the German delegation hindered 61

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all attempts at a detailed statement of the Executive Committee [that is, in Novi Sad] . . . so that, finally, the attached vague resolution was accepted.’’∏≠ With support from the German Christians, Heckel committed the German pastors overseas to loyalty toward state and church: ‘‘The German Christians . . . can claim for themselves the merit of having taken charge of the creation of the new with particular fervor.’’ The Aryan paragraph, which had been suspended on November 16, was not dead: ‘‘It can be expected that appropriate, albeit milder, provisions will be included in any planned legal guidelines for the German Evangelical Church.’’ It was important to ensure that there be no church demonstrations abroad— especially ‘‘in former enemy countries,’’ which ‘‘in the eyes of the German people [have] to a great extent lost the moral right to judge the German circumstances.’’∏∞ On 23 October 1933, Siegmund-Schultze wrote Bishop Bell of the difficulties that had arisen for relief work as a result of the ecumenical meetings.∏≤ He noted that the reorganized German church leadership favored the German Christians, who had gained significant representation on most regional church governing councils in the July 1933 church elections. This would soon affect the composition of the German delegation to the World Alliance as well. As a result, foreign agencies would have to take the initiative in matters concerning Jewish relief, which up until then had come strongly from Germany. The work begun in Amsterdam had come to a standstill, since Holland had grown cautious due to the ‘‘difficulties that arose in Germany and America.’’ It was absolutely necessary that these efforts be continued, Siegmund-Schultze told Bell: ‘‘The fact that non-Aryans who belong to the Jewish religious community are suffering in a Christian state, and even with the support of the Christian church, makes it seem desirable to me that Christians also do something to help the members of the Jewish religious community who have fallen into distress.’’∏≥ The voices from abroad did not fall silent; their pressure on the German church leaders continued. The Copenhagen Dagens Nyheder had published an interview with Prof. Emanuel Hirsch about the Aryan paragraph, in which Hirsch defended the German Christian perspective, drawing shocked reactions throughout Denmark.∏∂ A similar response was reported in a 10 October letter to Heckel from the pastor of the German congregation in Stockholm, following a lecture there by Prof. 62

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Johannes Hempel of Göttingen. The letter added that the protest of the two thousand clergy in Wittenberg had been noted with joy in Sweden.∏∑ In the 11 October Norwegian Aftenposten and the 14 October church newsletter Lutersk Kirkentidende, Oslo church historian Ivar Welle wrote about his three-week journey through Germany, which had led him to sympathize with the church opposition.∏∏ In a 17 November 1933 letter to August Schreiber, S. Parkes Cadman (who directed the U.S. office of the Universal Christian Council for Life and Work) observed: Colleagues of mine were assured this summer in Berlin by official representatives of the churches that the (German) policy could be described as one of ‘‘humane extermination.’’ . . . Frankly speaking, the Christians of America cannot conceive of any extermination of human beings as ‘‘humane.’’ They find it even more difficult to understand how churchmen in any land at any time can deliberately lend their influence to the carrying on of such policy. . . . Yet we have been forced to observe that, even before the revolution, when freedom of speech was still a reality in Germany, there were no protests that reached us from churchmen in Germany against the violent anti-Semitism of the National Socialists. Since then we have had a great number of apologies for the situation, but no official and few personal statements that seem to recognize the moral factors involved.∏π

Cadman was responding to Schreiber’s defense of the German antiJewish policies, following the publication of a petition in the New York Times on 26 and 29 May 1933, which had been signed by twelve hundred American clergymen from twenty-six different denominations. After Cadman’s reply, Berlin Church Councillor Wahl considered further correspondence with the U.S. church leader ‘‘no longer advisable.’’∏∫ Referring to the temporary suspension of the Aryan paragraph, the lord bishop of Gloucester (who chaired the Commission of the Church of England for Foreign Relations) argued in a 30 November letter to Reich Bishop Müller ‘‘that Christians of Jewish origin, despite racial differences, absolutely remain our brothers in Christ, with whom we stand in the communion of the Word and the sacraments.’’∏Ω Dr. Hanns Lilje, general secretary of the German Christian Students’ Association and vice-president of the Christian Student World Alliance, reported about his lecture tour through Sweden in November 1933: 63

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‘‘Even in the matter of the Jewish question, which is difficult to make understandable in foreign countries, I found a sympathy that truly surprised me. I repeatedly found that students had dealt intensively with the fundamental aspect of this question and, therefore, expressed a very extensive and objective endorsement of the German government’s actions in this area. This appears to be a point where the German authorities’ persistent efforts at clarification have been effective.’’π≠ Plaintively, Lilje noted that the reaction in Sweden ‘‘with regard to the Aryan paragraph [is] as negative as before. . . . Yet, occasionally I have found open-mindedness in this area, too.’’ His ‘‘overall impression’’ was that the Swedes ‘‘(have) recognized the historical magnitude of our Chancellor and the purity of his desire. I am of the firm conviction that the good and fair judgment about Germany will win out in the foreseeable future.’’π∞

π

The Aryan Paragraph and the Protestant Press the early impact of the aryan paragraph

After mid-November 1933, it appeared that the church opposition’s desperate efforts to abolish the Aryan paragraph (in the church, at least) had not been entirely in vain. The excesses of the 13 November German Christian Sports Palace rally, especially a wildly anti-Jewish speech by Berlin regional party chairman Dr. Reinhold Krause, led Reich Bishop Müller to suspend the Aryan paragraph. It was a demonstrative attempt to disassociate himself from the chaotic events in Berlin and save his job. Müller’s unexpected move deferred (‘‘until the announcement of a German Evangelical Church law’’) the implementation of all laws affecting the legal status of clergy and church civil servants that had been passed by the individual regional churches after 1 January 1933.∞ Because this dismissed all pending actions against non-Aryan pastors, many in the church opposition concluded that their efforts on behalf of these colleagues had succeeded and were no longer necessary. This assumption proved to be false, as one example illustrates. In a letter to the Reich bishop on 11 October 1933, Breslau pastor Ernst Hornig protested the application of the Aryan paragraph to ordained clergy, in particular the termination notice given Pastor Friedrich Forell.≤ Hor64

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nig wrote that Forell’s great merits made it incomprehensible that he should be the only Prussian clergyman dismissed because of the Aryan paragraph; others had been retained ‘‘under similar circumstances.’’ Hornig requested the ‘‘unconditional’’ guarantee of Forell’s pension, along with a promise of his possible ‘‘return to church service in Silesia.’’ Hornig received no reply until 4 January 1934, when the Aryan paragraph was reintroduced in the church. In its response, the Evangelical Central Church Council consented to Forell’s petition for premature retirement (as though Forell had ever requested retirement!) and guaranteed his pension. ‘‘Pastor Forell presumably will enter into the service of the Swedish Society for Missions to Israel. We consider the matter hereby settled.’’≥ The council’s letter revealed the church bureaucracy’s true colors as an adversary of the ‘‘Christian love’’ so often aspired to. Forell’s case was ‘‘settled’’ by aligning the church’s decisions with state laws. At the time Hornig’s letter arrived at the Central Church Council in Berlin, the suspension of the Aryan paragraph was imminent, and any further assurances were superfluous. But, since Müller had only suspended the Aryan paragraph, not annulled it, the church simply waited for the suspension to expire before it ‘‘settled’’ Forell’s case with a gesture of Christian accommodation. There may have been other such cases, particularly after the Aryan paragraph was repealed again in April 1934. The entire situation illustrated the bankruptcy of the church leadership. Junge Kirche, the journal of the church opposition, commented that the Aryan paragraph had become ‘‘almost a ‘shibboleth’ in the church struggle. How has the church government behaved? Just observe: (1) The law is passed (resolution of the General Synod of the Regional Churches of the Old Prussian Union from 6 September 1933). . . . (2) The law is repealed (16 November 1933). . . . (3) The repeal is repealed (Reich bishop decree of 4 January 1934). . . . (4) The repeal of the repeal is repealed (sec. 1 of the Church Law for the Pacification of the Situation in the Church, 13 April 1934). . . . (5) The repeal of the repeal remains in effect (sec. 4 of the same law).’’∂ The Reich bishop’s intellectual and spiritual confusion was matched by the contradictory attitudes within the Pastors’ Emergency League. On the one hand, the pel stressed the necessity of protecting ordained nonAryan clergy from the Aryan law; on the other hand, it proclaimed its readiness, in the wake of völkisch euphoria, to guard the ministry against 65

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‘‘Jewish foreign infiltration.’’ The victims of this ambiguity included theology students affected by the quotas established in the 25 April 1933 Reich Law against the Overcrowding of German Schools and Universities [see chapter 1], which restricted the number of non-Aryan students to the percentage of non-Aryans in the German population (exempting sons of World War I veterans).∑ Encouraged by the pel‘s silence and passivity, the Reich bishop was emboldened in his ‘‘merciless implementation of the Aryan paragraph,’’ as another case illustrates.∏ In a letter to the Reich bishop on 15 October 1933, retired lieutenant commander Walter Schmidt-Henrici requested an exemption for his son, Gerhard, who was ‘‘not pure Aryan’’ (his mother was a converted Jew) and had been forced to leave the theological college in Halle after studying for three semesters.π On 3 November 1933, Prof. Hans Michael Müller replied, on behalf of Bishop Müller, that ‘‘everyone concerned’’ had taken Schmidt-Henrici’s case ‘‘very much to heart.’’ The Reich bishop was ‘‘enormously distressed’’ by SchmidtHenrici’s plight, and the church’s delay in replying (over two weeks had passed) showed that the case had truly ‘‘torn the hearts’’ of those involved. Rejecting an exemption, Müller concluded in cynical consolation: ‘‘As people of faith, we can only beseech God that even this fateful blow, which for your son and yourself at first seems utterly incomprehensible and hostile, may work for the best into an act of providence, such as only God can give.’’ On 24 November (after the Aryan paragraph had been suspended, although there was no statement regarding the status of theology students), Professor Müller rejected an appeal by SchmidtHenrici, replying that he had nothing new to add. ‘‘The church does not possess the omnipotence of God; therefore, it cannot be made liable for the hardships and sacrifices that arise from necessary historical developments, where the church itself feels powerless.’’∫ german press commentaries

The commentaries in the Protestant press at the time give another picture of the response to the Aryan paragraph in non–German Christian circles.Ω In his study of the topic, religious journalist Gerhard Stoll cited the statements of Wilhelm Laible, editor of the Allgemeine EvangelischLutherisch Kirchenzeitung (General Protestant-Lutheran Church newspaper), as typical ‘‘of many statements in the early phase’’ during 1933. In August 1933, Laible wrote: 66

The Aryan Paragraph and the Protestant Press Many wrestle in vain to achieve a balance between the völkisch-national ideal and the Christian-ethical demand. . . . It will be the task of all legal thinkers to mitigate the hardships, so far as possible, without becoming weak or challenging the fundamental necessity [of these measures]. Likewise, all those with a sense of integrity are called to see sternly to it that this struggle, which is necessary for the sake of our people, is not undermined by so-called Christians who use this opportunity to thwart their troublesome opponent. . . . But, of course, we may not become soft either! Our weakness should not allow the continuation of a development that has proved to be misguided for the German and for the Jewish people. It is hard when civil servants, teachers, professors who are guilty of nothing more than being Jews have to move aside. It is hard when Germans who . . . have been accustomed to being citizens with equal rights for a hundred years must find themselves again in the role of foreigners. But never should such considerations lead to sentimental weakness and paralysis.∞≠

Although not a German Christian publication, the Westphalian Protestant Sunday paper, Friede und Freude (Peace and joy) expressed its antiSemitism by ridiculing Albert Einstein: ‘‘It is not necessary to say anything more about Mr. Einstein. At the time he advanced his theory of relativity, he achieved only limited renown, despite the feverish efforts of his Jewish friends; for there were physicists of non-Semitic origin whose service to science was substantially greater, even if they did not surround themselves with such ballyhoo; but, now, Professor Einstein has reached his goal: he has become immortal—immortally ridiculous!’’∞∞ Stoll discovered some statements in defense of the Jews, but these were ‘‘very cautious . . . compared with the patriotic and obstreperous anti-Semitism’’ that dominated the Protestant press. One advocate was Karl Ludwig Schmidt, a colleague and friend of Karl Barth who had to leave Germany because of his membership in the Social Democratic party. In a famous public dialogue with Martin Buber in Stuttgart, Schmidt overestimated the genuine solidarity of ‘‘many’’ Christians with the Jews when he declared, ‘‘in the name of many Protestants, an appreciative, brotherly sentiment toward Jewish believers and fellow citizens.’’∞≤ Schmidt’s words were an ‘‘attempt to be allowed to understand you as Jews, you who, as our brothers, live together with us, must live together with us, should live together with us—as it is in the entire world, so also in our German Fatherland.’’∞≥ 67

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Another defense appeared in the Deutsches Pfarrerblatt (German pastors’ paper), where an article against the Aryanization of Jesus and the denigration of the Bible as a ‘‘Jewish book’’ noted that the biblical authors, almost without exception, had been Jews.∞∂ Thus, the writer contended, the term ‘‘Jewish book’’ was a defamation not of the Jews but of the Bible itself. One journal that was unafraid to defend the Jews was Eiche, edited by Friedrich Siegmund-Schultze.∞∑ Another was Christliche Welt (Christian world), whose editor, Hermann Mulert, wrote after the April 1933 boycott of the Jews: ‘‘Anti-Semitism today often takes forms on the streets that definitely are not in accord with the intent of the fathers of the national movement of our day, forms that the representatives of Christianity must oppose in the name of reason, justice, and humanity.’’∞∏ Theologische Blätter (Theological pages) and Junge Kirche were somewhat more outspoken in their attempts to defy the church’s anti-Semitism. Zwischen den Zeiten (Between the times) and Reformierte Kirchenzeitung (Reformed Church paper) were also part of the ‘‘defensive front against the penetration of völkisch-racial ideas into the church.’’∞π Numerous periodicals, however, defended the völkisch zeitgeist. One such paper, Licht und Leben, revealed its anti-Semitic and pro-Nazi sympathies in an article entitled ‘‘Christian Pulpit Monitored by Synagogue’’ (originally entitled ‘‘Israel the People of God? Or the People of Satan?’’).∞∫ In other issues, Licht und Leben welcomed the National Socialist actions against the Roman Catholics and the German Jewish press. After the surrender of Roman Catholicism, with its internationalist political and religious tendencies, one foe remained: ‘‘Gilded internationalism, namely Jewry. Now this is a particularly hard nut to crack, and it is doubtful whether National Socialism can come away without some bruises. To be sure, it is clear to us that anti-Semitism is justified, because Jewry has behaved too impudently even in Germany; but, this anti-Semitism must remain within the limits shown in the Bible.’’∞Ω In June 1933, Licht und Leben published a statement on the Jewish question by Pastor Dr. Walter Michaelis which the editors noted might ‘‘astonish many a reader’’ because of its ‘‘humanitarian’’ demands: ‘‘We do not rack our brains over the question Jew or half-Jew. We simply declare: there is no biblical objection against containing the Jewish influence and assessing it as non-German. Rather, we are of the opinion that this lies within the lines of the divine plan. . . . Our concern, however, 68

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must be that this path is followed without violating humaneness. Here, too, it is important to watch and pray that this legitimate struggle does not renounce its humanity and, through that, bring guilt upon our people.’’≤≠ Stoll concludes that ‘‘the overwhelming majority of the Protestant press in 1933 offered no serious resistance to the anti-Semitism of the Third Reich.’’ On the contrary, during the early period of the Nazi campaign against the Jews, ‘‘patriotic delusion, nationalistic exuberance, anti-Jewish resentment’’ led it to speak the same language as the Nazis.≤∞ ‘‘In the second phase, as anti-Semitism gained ground in the Evangelical Church, differences do appear between explicitly German Christian church groups and the conservative and more confessional groups, but only in exceptional cases does this lead to a clear disassociation from National Socialist racial agitation in the church. On the whole, one can’t avoid seeing the Protestant presses’ failure here.’’≤≤ Nonetheless, there were isolated instances of real courage. On 14 October 1933, the Breslau weekly paper Evangelischer Ruf (Evangelical call) published a provocative piece in large letters on the title page: vision Worship service. The opening hymn has died away. The minister stands at the altar and begins: ‘‘Non-Aryans are requested to leave the church!’’ No one moves. ‘‘Non-Aryans are requested to leave the church!’’ Again, all remain still. ‘‘Non-Aryans are requested to leave the church!’’ Then Christ climbs down from the cross on the altar and leaves the church.≤≥

∫

Early Confessional Synods the aryan paragraph

The final months of 1933 brought renewed debate about the Aryan paragraph among theologians and at church synods. Rudolf Bultmann defended the Marburg Gutachten against Georg Wobbermin, the ‘‘psychologist of existential religion.’’∞ Using arguments similar to Bultmann’s, Georg Merz protested the introduction of the Aryan paragraph in the church—although he gave the state the prerogative to forbid Jews ‘‘entry into the natural Volk,’’ for ‘‘Volk-political considerations.’’≤ 69

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On 10 December 1933, after a report by Evangelical Central Councillor Dr. Walter Grundmann, the sixteenth Evangelical-Lutheran Synod of Saxony unanimously accepted ‘‘Twenty-Eight Theses of the Saxon People’s Church on the Internal Organization of the German Evangelical Church.’’≥ It demanded an Aryan paragraph for the church; the Saxon theses were adopted by the regional church council and synod of Schleswig-Holstein, by the regional churches of Braunschweig, Oldenburg, and Mecklenburg, and by the German Christians.∂ In a Gutachten requested by fifteen Saxon superintendents (dated 28 December 1933), the theology faculty in Leipzig took a relatively mild stand against the Saxon Theses. The Leipzig scholars observed that the Reich bishop’s (temporary) repeal of the Aryan law proved that this was ‘‘a difficult problem. . . . Hasty solutions confined to the regional church level are in the interests neither of the church nor of the state.’’∑ In June 1934, Junge Kirche published the ‘‘Principles of the Rhineland Brotherhood of Pastors against the Twenty-Eight Theses.’’∏ Addressed to the Reich government, this document described the church Aryan paragraph as ‘‘a false doctrine that destroys the very essence of the church. A church that adopts the Aryan paragraph has become a Judaistic, völkisch sect and will share the fate of all Judaistic sects: disintegration and relapse into sub-Christian piety, that is, paganism.’’π On behalf of the theological faculty in Berlin, Dean Reinhold Seeberg responded to the Rhineland Brotherhood document. Seeberg defended the Saxon theses, arguing, ‘‘The ‘essence of the church’ would be destroyed only if it were said that a non-Aryan has an inferior Christianity or if he were kept out of the Christian church. Here, however, we are speaking only about the exercise of an ecclesiastical office. It is obvious that such an office is not to be recommended for a non-Aryan in the future and will hardly be sought.’’∫ With the beginning of 1934, the tone of the debate about the Aryan paragraph and its implementation changed. Discussion began to focus more on retaining the Old Testament; Christians of Jewish descent were defended with generalized rejections of ideological racism. This new emphasis was apparent at the Westphalian Provincial Synod and Confessional Synod, both of which met in Dortmund on 16 March 1934. In a statement about the Saxon theses, the president of the Rhineland Confessional Synod expressed concern about the threat to the 70

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Old Testament. He did not mention the Aryan paragraph, which the Rhineland Brotherhood still considered a threat to the substance of the church. Discussion of the so-called Jewish question had taken a new form: protest against contempt for the Old Testament. It was an unmistakable sign that the last half of the Pastors’ Emergency League pledge (which explicitly opposed the Aryan paragraph and promised ‘‘shared responsibility . . . with those who are persecuted’’) had been sacrificed to a stronger emphasis on the first half (which promised to defend the ministry and its ‘‘confessional position’’). Scripture and confession moved into the foreground. This shift was not necessarily linked to the Law to Restore Order in the German Protestant Church (the so-called Muzzle Law of 4 January 1934). This decree permitted a quick resolution of the Aryan question, which led Reich Bishop Müller to reintroduce the church Aryan paragraph the same day. But the more volatile question, even in the Pastors’ Emergency League, was whether the Aryan paragraph was the worst threat posed by the anticonfessional tendencies of the German Christians, or whether other, more important issues violated the Christian confession. Even Martin Niemöller, who was not intimidated by the Muzzle Law, underscored his November 1933 statement on the Aryan paragraph by giving his ‘‘personal opinion’’ that Jewish officeholders could be expected to show restraint.∞≠ Given such a weakening of the Pastors’ Emergency League pledge, it was hardly surprising when some Emergency League members timidly asked civil authorities how they should respond to a questionnaire sent from the Reich Church requiring certificates of Aryan ancestry from candidates for the ministry.∞∞ On 2 November 1933, Niemöller’s first newsletter to Emergency League members had recommended that they not respond to the questionnaire.∞≤ Several months later, circumstances had changed so much that a regional Emergency League was seeking the state’s support against Reich Church decrees. Reich Minister Wilhelm Frick replied that he took the ‘‘grave misgivings of a dogmatic nature’’ against a church Aryan paragraph seriously. In a swipe at the Reich Church, he remarked: ‘‘If, in the laws and ordinances, a strong public interest in the elimination of non-Aryan influences has played a role, it still overshoots the mark if the principles of section 3 are indiscriminately and uncritically transferred to areas for which they are not intended, as has occurred in many cases. . . . Such endeavors fail to recog71

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nize that there are also limits that must be observed in Aryan legislation, and that the government has repeatedly and emphatically rejected these endeavors as well.’’∞≥ Unimpressed, the Reich Church government decided to reintroduce the Aryan paragraph on 4 January. That same day (although he hardly could have known that the suspended Aryan paragraph had just been reenacted), Karl Barth delivered his lecture entitled ‘‘Confession of the Free Church Synod,’’∞∂ which became the foundation for the Barmen theses several months later. Barth’s lecture was the last decisive public statement against the Aryan paragraph for some time: As far as its message and its character are concerned, the church of Jesus Christ is one and the same in different times, races, peoples, states, and cultures. The right of ecclesiastical diversity stands or falls here upon the church’s compatibility with the unity of its message and character. With that, the view is rejected: As though it were compatible with the unity of the message and character of the church to limit membership and aptitude for service to members of a certain race. Unity. The accusation of humanitarian egalitarianism isn’t accurate here. It won’t do to see diversities [among peoples] as a special revelation from God. These diversities stand under the one message and are measured against the one standard. No form of the Aryan paragraph can be made compatible with it.∞∑

The declaration of the Reformed confessional synod (held in Barmen in January 1934) did not include Barth’s remarks on the Aryan paragraph.∞∏ It was the beginning of a pattern that became more striking in subsequent declarations and confessions, which failed to mention the Aryan paragraph. It was left up to each individual to decide where a declaration defended the Old Testament and opposed a racially determined faith. Once the seed of a ripening opposition, the Aryan paragraph had become a fruit that was better left untouched. If it were to avoid complete fragmentation, the church opposition had to find a stronger foundation for withstanding future, even worse confrontations. In its efforts to consolidate its strength and create a strong public image, the Confessing Church no longer attached such importance to attacking the Aryan paragraph as a violation of the confession and a threat to the essence of the church. It had no desire to prolong or intensify the discussion on this point. 72

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The draft for the new ‘‘Guiding Principles of the Pastors’ Emergency League’’ was watered down.∞π The original Emergency League pledge was unrecognizable in the new version: . . . Volk and Fatherland, Blood and Race can be interpreted properly and recognized as God’s gift and task only on the foundation of this Word of God. We reject the doctrine that sees Volkstum and Race as the standards for the validity of the biblical revelation. Membership in the church is not dependent upon Blood and Volkstum, but rather upon baptism and faith.

In 1934, this draft (a vestige of the Emergency League pledge that had aroused such hopes six months earlier) offered little comfort to nonAryan Christians or much threat to their persecutors. The confessional movement had a new theme: the church must become the church again. This demanded collective theological reflection and a renaissance of ‘‘pure doctrine,’’ which, based on the foundations of Scripture and the Reformation confession, would be in the position to resist the powerful pseudochurch. barmen and its aftermath

Thus, led by the words of Karl Barth, the first confessional synod at Barmen (29–31 May 1934) proclaimed a ‘‘Theological Declaration’’ that rejected the German Christians. At the Dahlem Confessional Synod in October 1934, the Confessing Church born in Barmen established its own ‘‘Provisional Church Administration of the German Evangelical Church.’’∞∫ The declarations of 1933 had shown that dogmatic reflection about the church’s essential identity could not simply ignore the non-Aryan Christians. As late as June 1933, Barth unconditionally rejected ‘‘the spirit and the letter’’ of German Christian doctrine in an essay (which became the basis for Theological Existence Today). He declared his opposition in point 6: ‘‘The communion of those belonging to the church is not determined by blood or, therefore, by race, but by the Holy Spirit and by baptism. If the German Evangelical Church would exclude the Jewish Christians or treat them as second-class Christians, it would cease to be a Christian church.’’∞Ω Yet one searches the Barmen theological declaration in vain for an explicit inclusion of non-Aryan Christians in the church as the complete Body of Christ—and the Barmen document was the constitutive declara73

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tion of the Confessing Church. Such a statement would have fit in the third thesis of the Barmen Declaration: But let us be righteous in love and grow in every respect to Him who is the head, Christ, from whom the entire body is joined together (Eph. 4:15–16). The Christian congregation is the congregation of brethren, in which Jesus Christ acts in the present as Lord in the Word and the sacrament through the Holy Spirit. With its faith as well as through its obedience, in its message as well as through its order, it must witness in the midst of the world of sin as the church of the blessed sinners to the fact that it alone is His property, that it lives and desires to live alone from His comfort and from His direction, in expectation of His appearance. We reject the false doctrine that the church may be permitted to abandon the form of its message and its order at its discretion, or in response to the fluctuation of prevailing ideological and political convictions.

Karl Barth apparently formulated the third Barmen thesis solely on the basis of Eph. 4:15b–16a. In the process, Barth even reworded Luther’s translation, ‘‘to be truthful,’’ with a more active word [Recht schaffen], so that Eph. 4:15a can be understood almost as a summons: ‘‘But let us establish justice in love!’’ In any case, Barth’s translation provided an excellent springboard for an appeal to create and do something—but this potential was not realized. The compelling question is whether Barth, at this critical point, sacrificed the righteous creation in love to the righteous act of being in the Body of Christ. Barth would have said that the two belong together. But the first aspect had fallen de facto under the table; the other remained on the table and on the agenda. Barth’s exposition was abstract and dogmatical instead of concrete and ethical. This was exactly where Bonhoeffer offered a counterpoint—the melody of ethics that seems absent from Barth’s harmony of dogmatics. Or was it simply impossible in Barmen to win a consensus for such a correlation between ‘‘theological existence’’ and an ethical agenda? Would the participants and observers in Barmen have viewed an appeal that defined Christian love as justice for the persecuted as too concrete, too detailed, or, indeed, too monomaniacal? Perhaps a cry on behalf of the Jews would not have served the institutional church, but it would 74

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have served the Body of Christ. And wasn’t Barth’s fervent subject precisely this Body of Christ as the community of theological existence? Addressing the task of this Body of Christ—of the church—Barth wrote: ‘‘The church does not at all have to serve human beings or, therefore, the German people. The German Evangelical Church is the church for the German Protestant people. But it serves the Word of God alone. It is God’s will and work if, through His Word, human beings and, thereby, the German people are served.’’≤≠ In other words, Barth insisted on a very specific order of importance: proclamation (the service to God’s Word) came first, and then action (that is, allowing the Word of God to work by serving human beings). The idea that the will of God was transparent in human action was a view that Barth rejected as an attack on his theory of revelation, for we are charged primarily with ‘‘serving the Word of God in this people.’’≤∞ ‘‘We sin again not just against God, but against our people as well, when we permit this priority to be assailed at even the most insignificant point.’’≤≤ In the final analysis, Barth’s concern was the restabilization of the church (albeit a renewed church). His merit lay in the establishment of dogmatic truth as the basis for a timeless and independent validity, for all time and particularly for that present time. For ‘‘that which under no circumstances may occur now is this: that we, in zeal for what we consider to be a good cause, lose our theological existence. Our theological existence is our existence in the church and, indeed, as preachers and teachers called in the church.’’≤≥ Bonhoeffer, however, considered an unqualified stand for the non-Aryan Christian brethren, or possibly even for all persecuted Jews, to be a good cause—and intended to gain his theological existence precisely through this! Despite the Barmen theses’ historical significance, important questions remain, based on our insights a half century after Barmen. Criticism of Barmen is not so much moral condemnation as it is a simple recognition that the discussion about the Barmen Declaration continues. In Barmen, for the first time since the Reformation, German Protestants sought to speak with one voice and one confession. Their desire for unity exceeded their willingness to risk letting the entire synod (to the malicious glee of the German Christians and the National Socialist party) disintegrate in controversy about the treatment of the non-Aryan Christians or the Jews. In the turbulent debate, Wilhelm von Pechmann’s resignation from the church two months earlier and his farewell letter to 75

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the Reich bishop (printed in the April 1934 issue of Junge Kirche) were forgotten. The constitutional president of the German Evangelical Church Convention from 1924 to 1930 had left the church! It was not mentioned in Barmen. In a long letter, Pechmann wrote: ‘‘Now as you well know, I have protested frequently and repeatedly since April of last year against the rape of the church, against its lack of strength to resist, and against its silence in the face of much injustice and in the face of all that misery and heartache that . . . has entered numerous ‘non-Aryan’ hearts and homes, Christian and Jewish. But, until now, I have protested only with words . . . and always utterly in vain. It is time to go one step further, that is, to protest by resigning from a church that ceases to be a church.’’≤∂ Pechmann’s letter was addressed to the leaders of the German Evangelical Church. But was he not also addressing the church opposition when he lamented ‘‘the lack of strength in resistance’’ and the ‘‘silence’’ about the misery in ‘‘non-Aryan homes’’? After all, Pechmann had the chance to join the Confessing Church. He did not do so but joined the Free Lutheran Church instead.≤∑ Wilhelm Niemöller astutely observed, ‘‘There will remain some things to atone for in the case of Pechmann.’’ As Niemöller implied, Pechmann’s voice was absent in Barmen—as a voice that could have spoken for the Jews.≤∏ In Barmen, the Confessing Church had severed itself from the issue that had brought it into being—the Aryan paragraph. From that point on, the Aryan paragraph would no longer be an intrinsic part of the Confessing Church, a status confessionis, but could be treated as a separate question. This abandoned the non-Aryan Christians to an isolation from which deliverance (or reintegration into the church) was almost impossible. This was precisely the German Christians’ goal: once the non-Aryan Christians were separated from the Christian community, it would be fairly easy to eliminate the non-Aryan Christian congregations en bloc from the body of the German people. Increasingly, the energies of Confessing Church leaders became tied up in organizational, legal, and practical matters. Resistance against the establishment of separate non-Aryan Christian congregations was waning, even if the church had not yet fallen completely silent. One individual who continued to raise the issue—albeit for purposes of evangelization—was Pastor Gerhard Jasper of Bethel, who later actively helped persecuted non-Aryan Christians. Jasper ‘‘had been raised’’ 76

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to hold many of the völkisch prejudices against Jews and non-Aryan Christians.≤π At the same time, as a pastor active in the proselytization of Jews, he strove to win back ‘‘those gone astray’’ to the true theology. Both tendencies led to a strict refusal to let the non-Aryan Christians be broken away from the Body of Christ. In a 1934 book, Jasper noted that the ‘‘Jewish Christian’’ congregation, ‘‘as the congregation faithful to the Law,’’ had ‘‘never called longevity its own.’’≤∫ Focusing on the special nature of the ‘‘Jewish Christians,’’ instead of on Christ alone, had led to ‘‘the danger of weakening the basic New Testament truths.’’ A sectlike separation, which would damage the rest of the church, would be unavoidable. Moreover, Jasper wrote, it was wrong to assume that ‘‘Jewish Christian’’ congregations facilitate ‘‘the evangelization of the Jews. . . . The Jews themselves would deem the Jewish Christian solution a compromise. Halfway methods do not win over the polarized and eccentric Jewish person.’’≤Ω It was a fact that ‘‘most Jews were won to the Gospel by Gentile Christians, not by Jewish Christians. This substantiates Paul’s view (Rom. 11:11 ff.) that the Jews are aroused to ‘holy jealousy’ primarily through the Gentile Christians.’’≥≠ Israel was the ‘‘thorn of conscience for the Christian congregation,’’ wrote Jasper, and the church would be guilty if it refused to provide room for its non-Aryan Christian members. How could the evangelization of Jews be continued ‘‘if we can offer the Jewish Christian no home in the church?’’≥∞ ‘‘The mission to the Jews requires not only our prayers, appeals not only to our sense of sacrifice [sic], but demands that . . . through our manner, we either arouse the Jews to blessed jealousy or . . . offend them because we are not able to overcome ‘a shudder,’ as Stapel puts it, when face to face with them.’’≥≤ Jasper agreed with Gerhard Kittel≥≥ that, ‘‘in consideration of the present völkisch sentiments,’’ it was legitimate to ask non-Aryan Christians to refrain from holding pastoral office.≥∂ Still, ‘‘considerations for the attitude of the Volk’’ could not affect the Christian love ‘‘shown toward Jewish Christians. . . . The confession may require that precisely this ‘skandalon’ be prominently displayed.’’ Jasper’s words evoked the earlier polarity between Bonhoeffer and Niemöller in the debate about the Bethel Confession. Bonhoeffer believed that Gentile Christians had to bear the skandalon [i.e., the ‘‘scandal’’ of Jews in the church] of the Cross (‘‘which today creates for itself a symbol in Jewish Christianity’’)≥∑ for the sake of their love for the non77

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Aryan Christians. Niemöller demanded that non-Aryan Christians voluntarily stand aside, for the sake of their love for the Gentile Christians. An anonymous petition that circulated in the Bavarian regional church took a more unequivocal stance about ‘‘Jewish Christian congregations.’’≥∏ Citing Barth, it rejected ‘‘all measures directed against Jewish Christians (also, for example, the Aryan paragraph for pastors)’’ as ‘‘contrary to the confession.’’≥π Observing that the Roman Catholic Church ‘‘remarkably’’ did not demand such measures, the petition concluded that non-Aryan Christians deserved the church’s resolute protection; pastors who failed to offer open resistance would be breaking their ordination vows. Surprisingly, a similar position opposing the formation of non-Aryan Christian congregations emerged in 1934 from a German Christian group.≥∫ This document emphasized that ‘‘the universality of salvation’’ applied to non-Aryan Christians as well; they could not be excluded from German churches, despite the ‘‘diversity common to nations.’’ More significant was the German Christian reference here to Paul’s words in Galatians: that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek. Even converted Gentile Negroes and Chinese ‘‘are always our brethren in the church.’’ The ‘‘Jewish Christians’’ had to ‘‘remain in the churches of their countries of residence. Differently from the state, we now say: Not as guests, but as brethren.’’≥Ω Aside from such isolated voices, there were no demonstrations of solidarity with the non-Aryan Christians in 1934. Even the final reintroduction of the Aryan paragraph in August 1934 failed to provoke much reaction.∂≠ Perhaps, after all the previous suspensions of the Aryan paragraph, its reintroduction was not taken seriously within the Confessing Church. Perhaps, too, most people had simply tired of the subject. But the consequences of the Aryan paragraph’s implementation quickly became evident. German Christian church administrations began to discipline, suspend, and transfer pastors.∂∞ Early in 1934, the Saxon regional church disciplined Pastor Joachim Wach because of his racial heritage (his grandfather, a prominent lawyer, had been married to a granddaughter of the composer Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy). Suspended from office after January 1934, Wach was transferred in September to an auxiliary deaconate. He was not formally installed, however, and as a result received no salary.∂≤ Although they remained officially silent on the matter of the non78

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Aryan Christians, the regional Councils of Brethren quietly continued to help individuals. But it did not seem prudent to make energetic public statements, although their position had been strengthened through the establishment of their own church government (the Provisional Church Administration) at the Dahlem Synod in October 1934. The German Christians held powerful positions in a number of regional churches. If the Confessing Christians were to retain the few posts remaining to them, they had to be cautious. There were still a few determined individuals, such as retired Frankfurt Church counsel Dr. Johannes Kübel, who did not hesitate to take a public stand on behalf of the non-Aryan Christians. As he informed the Frankfurt Council of Brethren, the Gestapo tried to prevent him from delivering a lecture entitled ‘‘The Struggle for the Freedom of the First Christian Congregation’’ to the Frankfurt Reich Association of NonAryan Christians.∂≥ Viewing Kübel’s prepared remarks as church politics, the Gestapo banned the lecture; Kübel tried to read selected New Testament passages instead. The Gestapo then demanded that he submit the passages in advance. Kübel resisted this unreasonable demand by asking whether the Holy Scripture had ‘‘the right to be heard . . . always and everywhere.’’ The Gestapo replied that, ‘‘Because it concerns non-Aryans, this is a special case and the State Police must know which biblical passages are read.’’∂∂ Appealing to the Council of Brethren, Kübel requested it ‘‘to resolve the question once and for all: In proclaiming the Word, is the Evangelical Church free only within the walls of the church, and is the Gestapo lord over the Word of God?’’ He also protested police censorship of his lecture and asked for ‘‘a fundamental decision’’ on the matter by the Provisional Church Administration. No reply to his letter seems to exist, but it was already too late for any ‘‘fundamental decision’’ about such matters. In the period that followed, the Confessing Church offered only indirect public support for ‘‘its’’ non-Aryan Christians. It confined itself to fighting against racially determined Christianity and to warning against the elimination of the Old Testament. One example was the ‘‘Fundamental Position of the Provisional Leadership of the German Evangelical Church on the Question of Neopaganism,’’∂∑ which explicitly condemned German Christian attempts to eliminate the Old Testament from the biblical canon and to defame Paul as a ‘‘falsifier of the pure doctrine of Jesus.’’ Another example was the February 1935 Provisional Church 79

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Administration proclamation addressed to parents of schoolchildren, warning them to fight the neopagan demand in the schools that the Old Testament be removed from religion classes.∂∏ One of the best-known church statements from this period was the ‘‘Resolutions of the Confessional Synod of the Protestant Church of the Old Prussian Union.’’∂π In March 1935, the police arrested and briefly detained almost 715 pastors in the Old Prussian Church to prevent this statement from being read in the pulpits.∂∫ The ‘‘Resolutions’’ threw the gauntlet before the neopagan, anti-Christian religion supported by the state: ‘‘We see our people threatened by a deadly danger. The danger exists in a new religion. . . . In it, the racist-völkisch ideology becomes myth. In it, blood and race, Volkstum, honor, and freedom are turned into idols. . . . Whoever makes blood, race, and Volkstum the Creator and Lord of state authority in place of God undermines the state.’’∂Ω After the 715 pastors were released, several leading church agencies wrote Reich Interior Minister Frick: ‘‘We rejoice at all that has grown in German history out of blood and soil, and see race as a gift from the Creator that we honor and love, and which imposes great obligations upon us. But if religion should be merely a product of blood and soil, then the sources of the Spirit, which exist far above time and history in another world, are denied.’’∑≠ As such statements illustrate, the claim that ‘‘there was not, in general, complete silence in the Confessing Church on the Jewish question’’ during 1934 and 1935 is problematic.∑∞ The battle on behalf of the Jews (which, for the church, usually meant the non-Aryan Christians) had been abandoned long before. Most Christians found themselves in retreat. In both Barmen and Dahlem, there was a sense that the church had to consolidate new positions and gather its forces, in order to take the offensive in 1935. Most church leaders felt that their very institution was under attack. The church opposition had considered the Aryan paragraph to be a profound contradiction of the confession, but this recognition had faded in importance. It was no longer as important to protect the non-Aryan Christians from the Aryan paragraph as to defend the church and its proclamation, in light of the attacks on the Holy Scripture of both Testaments. The Old Testament itself was now at stake, as well as the ‘‘over-Judaized’’ pericopes in the New Testament. By September 1935, the struggle on behalf of the non-Aryan Christians had turned into a revolt against a brown-tinged Marcionite renais80

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sance. The crucial point was no longer the Aryan paragraph’s disparity with the confession but neopaganism’s contradiction of scripture. Little thought was given to the fate of non-Aryan Christian pastors and lay Christians, despite Westphalian church president Karl Koch’s reminder that ‘‘God has placed us in fellowship. If one member suffers, then all members suffer.’’∑≥ the meusel memorandum

In the months before the Nuremberg Laws, one of the most important documents on behalf of non-Aryan Christians was the memorandum written by Marga Meusel, director of the Protestant district welfare service in Berlin-Zehlendorf. Berlin superintendent Martin Albertz had asked Meusel to write the statement, which he sent to Westphalian leader Koch and other Confessing leaders.∑∂ ‘‘Since the Jewish Christian question has become of immediate interest to us in Germany, our church’s obligation toward our members of non-Aryan blood concerns me especially,’’ wrote Albertz. ‘‘I do not need to point out to you how much material and spiritual distress afflicts these Christian brothers and sisters.’’∑∑ Bodelschwingh had advised Albertz to turn to the Provincial Board for Inner Mission, where his concerns met with understanding but no action. Now Albertz hoped to raise the issue of ‘‘the Confessing Church’s responsibilities toward Protestant non-Aryans’’ at the upcoming confessional synod in Augsburg.∑∏ Albertz believed that the synod would have to assume these responsibilities itself or charge the Provisional Church Administration or its Presidium with the matter. Practically, he thought that ‘‘here in Berlin, a start could be made by offering counseling and spiritual care, in connection with a larger Protestant institution or association, under the direction of a very suitable person, who herself is nonAryan and brings good qualifications and a special interest in the work.’’ Explicitly citing the Marburg opinion, which had opposed the exclusion of non-Aryan Christians from church membership or office, Meusel’s memorandum asked the Confessing Church to ‘‘draw the practical conclusions from this and finally speak the redeeming word to its non-Aryan brethren. Then it [the church] must take on their distress and seek to help them, whatever the external consequences.’’∑π Meusel sought both ‘‘spiritual and material aid’’ for non-Aryan Christians. Spiritual aid was rooted in the professed solidarity of all within the committed community of the Christian faith. This understanding would 81

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automatically lead to ‘‘material aid’’ in the form of appropriate action. Meusel was addressing specific issues that had arisen in Berlin, including the establishment of special ‘‘church [ job] training centers for nonAryan Christians,’’ which she rejected on the same grounds that the church had to reject the formation of separate ‘‘Jewish Christian’’ congregations. She appealed to the Office of Inner Mission and, by extension, to the entire Confessing Church: ‘‘If the Inner Mission, as it has declared,∑∫ remains loyal to the Confessing Church, then it must support this work. There must be a separation between it and those institutions engaged in works of Protestant charity that do not do this. One cannot remain loyal to the Confessing Church and then simply rule out the demands of the Gospel that are not pleasing.’’∑Ω Despite Meusel’s courage, the statement might have been more effective had it not been confined to the question of Christian responsibility in the church sphere but, given the treatment of all Jews, had appealed to the conscience of the state as well. But everyone, including the writers of the Marburg Gutachten, had conceded the autonomy of the state on this point—perhaps in the quiet hope that the state, for its part, would recognize the church’s autonomy in its own sphere.∏≠ The Lutheran attitude toward the government, based on Rom. 13, prevented the church from assuming the role of public social guardian (as Bonhoeffer, in lonely isolation, had demanded). This was reflected in Meusel’s memorandum: ‘‘For this reason, the work on behalf of the Protestant nonAryans may not occur as opposition against the state, nor may it lead to such an attitude. This would not only be unjustified from the perspective of the Gospel, but would offend God’s command. Every appearance of the Inner Mission’s work as a possible ‘reaction’ must be avoided. On the contrary, it must be pointed out again and again that we are obligated to obey the state, even when we suffer personal harm through its orders.’’∏∞ There was a reason for Meusel’s appeal to the Inner Mission. In August 1935, the director of the Protestant Charitable Service in Zehlendorf had met with Martin Niemöller to discuss the question of aid to Protestant non-Aryans.∏≤ In contrast to Niemöller, who believed that Christian love made it a duty to give such individuals ‘‘work in church organizations,’’ the Zehlendorf director contended ‘‘that the church, including the Inner Mission and other institutions, cannot avoid the application of legal aspects along with the Christian notion of love. It cannot be permitted 82

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that . . . non-Aryans are pushed into Christian service organizations, eventually into the pastorate as well, in such numbers that a pronounced foreign infiltration develops . . . care must be taken that the Christian organizations do not become collection centers for such people who do not find employment elsewhere.’’∏≥ Given such views, Albertz could not exactly count on effective support; nor was the response from another Berlin church charity, the City Mission, encouraging. Its director, Pastor Hans Dannenbaum, had written an essay that made no secret of his animosity toward the ‘‘Jewish spirit.’’ A certain sympathy with the fate of the Jewish people, and the hope for Jewish conversion to Christianity, induced Dannenbaum to write what sounds like an involuntary preview of the ovens in Auschwitz: ‘‘ ‘He cannot repent of God’s election and call!’ God saves this people for a last, and one of the greatest, deeds of world history. Purified in the oven of suffering—and who knows through what bloody tribulations anti-Semitism will yet hound this people!!—it becomes ripe for conversion. And if this people, standing under the curse, still has such capability, then how marvelous must be its blessing for the world when it once again will be received by God in grace! And the day will come someday.’’∏∂ Ironically, Dannebaum’s essay was attacked in the Völkischer Beobachter (People’s Observer) for even suggesting that the Jews might one day be redeemed.∏∑ Under fire, the City Mission director eventually distanced himself from his remarks, assuring his critics, ‘‘I can only declare in public that the City Mission, mindful of its founder, Adolf Stoecker, still considers the removal of every influence of the Jewish spirit from the life of the German Volk one of the most important tasks of state leadership, and this is supported by us in the spirit of Christianity.’’∏∏ Although a few Christians acknowledged the distress of those being persecuted, few non-Aryan Christians found help or refuge in the Confessing Church.∏π Some Nazi officials thought otherwise, however. On 14 June 1935, Gauleiter (Nazi regional director) Wilhelm Kube, a founder of the German Christians and chief president of the Kurmark region, wrote: ‘‘Additional accomplices of the Jews are the groups in the confessional front, which continue to have the impudence today to describe the Jews to us as a ‘chosen people.’ ’’∏∫ It is not clear whether Kube ever read Marga Meusel’s paper, but he attacked the Confessing Church several months later in an article entitled ‘‘Public Enemies’’: 83

The Defamation of the Jews Next to the reactionaries, public enemies are those ecclesiastically disguised groups that repeatedly sow discord among the Volk and who arrogantly upbraid the authority of the National Socialist state. . . . It needs no special emphasis that the Jew is to be considered and treated as a public enemy of the Third Reich. It is indisputable that the Jew has his theologically disguised bodyguard in the confessional front.’’∏Ω

Shortly before the Nuremberg Laws were passed, Marga Meusel wrote an appendix to her memorandum, intended as a working draft for the Confessing Church synod meeting in Berlin-Steglitz from 23 to 26 September.π≠ Owing to the critical situation following the passage of the Nuremberg Laws, she expanded her remarks, altering her position on church obedience to governmental authority.π∞ The first memorandum had acknowledged the legitimacy of requiring that Christians obey the state; now Meusel argued for a different kind of obedience. She affirmed the ‘‘Statement to the Authorities’’ (‘‘Wort an die Obrigkeit’’) passed by the Augsburg Confessional Synod (4–6 June 1935): ‘‘With respectful seriousness, however, we must note that obedience may not be rendered in contradiction to God’s command.’’π≤ Meusel portrayed the desperate situation of the non-Aryans using individual examples, particularly cases of defamation by children (‘‘it is Christian children who do this, and Christian parents, teachers, and pastors who let it happen!’’). She also noted the attacks on marriages with one non-Aryan partner: ‘‘The church is wont to publish the banns of engaged couples with the words that they desire to enter into the holy state of marriage. Can it allow the state of marriage to be slandered in this way?’’ She decried the critical economic situation facing those affected by the increasingly severe Aryan laws, which now threatened to abolish even the most meager livelihoods. Nuremberg had annulled the original exemptions for children of World War I veterans. Giving a few examples to characterize the critical situation, Meusel concluded ‘‘that it is not an exaggeration to speak of an attempt to exterminate Jewry in Germany.’’ As early as 1933, an English visitor to Germany had characterized the situation quite correctly: ‘‘It is not shooting in the streets that makes this revolution so terrible, but the slow poison in the homes.’’π≥ ‘‘At first, this devastating statement was reported from Sweden: ‘The 84

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Germans have a new god; it is race, and to this god they bring human sacrifice,’ ’’ wrote Meusel in her memorandum: ‘‘Who dares to say that this is a lie? How shall we one day answer the question: where is your brother Abel? There will be no other answer left even for us, even for the Confessing Church, than the answer of Cain.’’π∂ She concluded by imploring the participants of the Steglitz Synod: What is to be done? Should the refugees starve? But who recognizes the obligation to help them? Who feeds the hungry, clothes the naked, visits the prisoners? Who does good to everybody, even if it is only to their fellow believers? Why must one always be told from the ranks of non-Aryan Christians that they feel forsaken by the church and the ecumenical world? That Jewish persons and Jewish aid organizations help them, but not their church? That they would not have to worry about their Catholic members, for these would not perish, because the church cares for them, but that one can only say about the attitude of the Protestant Church: Lord, forgive them, for they know not what they do? Why does the Catholic Church employ non-Aryan doctors and nurses where it can—but the Protestant Inner Mission has the Aryan paragraph? . . . What should one say in response to all the desperate, bitter questions and accusations: Why does the church do nothing? Why does it tolerate this unspeakable injustice? How can it repeatedly make jubilant declarations to the National Socialist state, which are political declarations directed against the lives of some of its own members? Why does it not protect at least the children? Should then everything that is absolutely incompatible with the humanity so despised today be compatible with Christianity? And if the church can do nothing in many cases because of the threat to its own existence, why does it not at least admit its guilt? Why does it not pray for those who are afflicted by this undeserved suffering and persecution? Why are there not worship services of intercession, as there were for the imprisoned pastors? The church makes it bitterly difficult for one to defend it. . . . Judaism believes that God is calling it back in this time. It lives from this faith and from it derives the strength for martyrdom. And we know that God is calling us back, through the judgment poured upon the church and the people. But we are seized with cold dread when there can be people in the Confessing Church who dare to believe that they are justified, even called, to proclaim to the Jews that God’s judgment

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The Defamation of the Jews and grace are present in the current historical events and in the suffering that we have brought on them. Since when does the evildoer have the right to pass off his crime as the will of God? Since when is it anything other than blasphemy to assert that it is the will of God that we commit injustice? Let us take care that we do not hide the outrage of our sins behind the holy shrine of the will of God. Otherwise, it could well be that the punishment meted out to the desecrators of the Temple might befall us, too, that we would have to hear the curse uttered by the One who braided the lash and drove them out.π∑

None of the previous declarations and protests of the Kirchenkampf— much less any of the statements from the synods—had made such an outraged indictment. No one had spoken with such fiery words or such passionate commitment.

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part two

The Isolation of the Jews ∞Ω≥∑–≥∫

The foundation had been laid for the next phase of the persecution of the Jews.∞ Hitler’s political success at home and abroad allowed him to pursue his policy toward the Jews without any fear of repercussions. He had numerous followers who had waited a long time to win their spurs by resolving the ‘‘Jewish question.’’ Nazi propaganda, including a special Der Stürmer issue on ritual murder, helped pave the way.≤ On 15 September 1935, at the Reich Party Convention of Freedom, the so-called Nuremberg Laws—‘‘the most devilish body of laws known to the history of Europe’’—were announced.≥

Ω

The Nuremberg Laws The purpose of the Nuremberg Laws was twofold. The Reich Citizens Law isolated the Jews politically; the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor isolated them socially. The Reich Citizens Law distinguished between ‘‘citizens of the Reich . . . of German or kindred blood’’ and mere German nationals—that is, citizens of mixed nationality without equal rights. The Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor prohibited marriage between Jews and Aryans under the threat of imprisonment. In cases of extramarital intercourse between Jews and nationals of German or kindred blood, the man involved was subject to a prison sentence or forced labor. Jews were prohibited from employing female Aryans under the age of forty-five years in households and from displaying the Reich and national flags. Violations were to be punished by a prison sentence or fine. The first amendment to the Reich Citizens Law, dated 14 November 1935, distinguished more specifically between Reich citizens and state citizens. Paragraph 4 stated: ‘‘A Jew cannot be a citizen of the Reich. He has no right to vote in political affairs; he cannot hold public office.’’∞ All non-Aryan civil servants had to retire (this invalidated the previous exemption for front-line soldiers). Veterans of the front were ensured a pension of ‘‘the full amount of the most recently drawn salary and fringe benefits . . . until they reach retirement age,’’ although those who had not served for at least ten years were excluded. 89

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It was now necessary to define legally who was a Jew (the term ‘‘Jew’’ had not appeared in the 15 September Reich Citizens Law).≤ The term ‘‘Jew’’ was used legally for the first time (the term previously used was ‘‘non-Aryan’’). ‘‘The notion of German or kindred blood . . . should replace the previous notion of Aryan extraction,’’ since ‘‘Aryan’’ was insufficient ‘‘to indicate what ought to be indicated.’’≥ In the 14 November amendment, for the first time, those previously denoted ‘‘non-Aryans’’ were divided into ‘‘Jews’’ and ‘‘half-breeds.’’ NonAryans with two Jewish grandparents were ‘‘first-degree half-breeds,’’ or half-Aryans. Non-Aryans with one Jewish grandparent were ‘‘seconddegree half-breeds,’’ or three-quarter Aryans. Non-Aryans with three or four Jewish grandparents were considered Jews, as were ‘‘first-degree half-breeds’’ married to Jews or members of the Jewish religion as of 15 September 1935. In contrast to half-breeds, full Jewish ancestral identity was determined primarily on a religious basis: ‘‘A grandparent is considered unquestionably a full Jew if he has belonged to the Jewish religious community.’’∂ The 14 November First Decree to the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor observed this definition of Jews and half-breeds. The 14 November law also regulated marriages between Jews and half-breeds. Marriages between ‘‘second-degree half-breeds’’ and Jews were forbidden (section 2).∑ Marriages between those ‘‘of German blood’’ and first- or second-degree half-breeds required the permission of the Reich interior minister and the deputy of the Führer (section 3.1)— which was seldom granted.∏ Marriages between ‘‘second-degree halfbreeds’’ ‘‘should not be contracted’’ (section 4). Marriages between Jews and ‘‘first-degree half-breeds’’ were permitted, although the half-Aryan spouse was considered a Jew through the marriage, and any offspring were considered Jewish as well. Finally, to protect ‘‘German blood and honor,’’ this decree regulated the employment of temporary workers of German blood in Jewish households; only those who had completed ‘‘the thirty-fifth year of age by 31 December 1935’’ were allowed to remain in previously existing employer-employee relationships (section 12.3).π Thirteen statutes of implementation for the Nuremberg Laws were eventually passed. These included a ban on the ‘‘disguising of Jewish names.’’∫ After 1 January 1939, Jews had to take ‘‘an additional given 90

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name, namely, the name Israel for males and the given name Sara for females.’’Ω Three years later (5 October 1938), another provision invalidated all the passports of Jews still living within the Reich.∞≠ Passes could be revalidated only with a special stamp from the Reich interior minister that identified the passport holder as a Jew. After this, Jewish passports and identity cards (an identity document issued by the domestic police after 22 July 1938, which was optional for German nationals and required for German Jews) were stamped with a red J. The thirteenth and final implementation provision, issued on 1 July 1943 (by which time the Reich was virtually ‘‘free of Jews’’), ‘‘proscribed the Jews completely, placed them at the mercy of the police, and denied them any access to the courts.’’∞∞ The notorious Nazi propaganda newspaper, Der Stürmer, used Old Testament texts to introduce some of the racial laws to the public. The front page of its issue on the Nuremberg Laws reprinted the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor.∞≤ At the top was the banner headline, ‘‘Ezra the Savior of the Jewish People’’; below, in a commentary on the Nuremberg laws, was the heading, ‘‘Adolf Hitler, New Creator of the German Volk.’’ At the bottom, in large letters, stood: ‘‘The Jews Are Our Misfortune!’’ The biblical references must have led naive readers to view the Nuremberg Laws as the conclusive fulfillment of the scriptural prophecies. Readers who did not think much of the Old Testament could be counted on to venerate Goethe, who was cited as a ‘‘witness’’ who flew ‘‘into a passionate rage over the new Jewish law that allows marriage between two partners of kindred faith’’; in parentheses was the comment, ‘‘Goethe speaks of those of kindred faith because he did not recognize the Jews as a race!’’ Der Stürmer also quoted a Canadian nationalist: ‘‘To hate the Jews is not immoral at all, but can best be characterized as pious hatred, which seems justified in every Christian.’’ The headline was ‘‘To hate the Jews is a Christian duty!’’ Many Germans viewed the excesses of the Nuremberg Laws as a trivial matter. From the beginning, Hitler’s anti-Jewish policies were given the appearance of legality, underscored by Reichstag legislation that explicitly gave the state the right to sharpen the individual laws. On 15 September, minutes before the parliamentary vote that passed the Nuremberg Laws, Hitler declared to the Nuremberg Party Convention: 91

The Isolation of the Jews Should this action (Hitler had just referred to renewed Jewish ‘‘boycott propaganda’’ against Germany) not lead to very determined, widespread defensive reactions by the indignant population, the only remaining route is a legislative resolution of the problem (cries of ‘‘bravo’’ and applause). The German Reich government is guided by the notion that it might still create a unique secular solution that will make it possible for the German people to find a tolerable relationship to the Jewish people. Should this hope not be fulfilled, and Jewish agitation in Germany and abroad persist, the situation will be reviewed again. The body of Nuremberg Laws ‘‘is the attempt at a legislative resolution of a problem that, in the case of repeated failure, ought then to be transferred by means of law to the National Socialist party for the Final Solution.’’∞≥

After the Reichstag unanimously approved the laws and ‘‘the renewed storm of applause had subsided, the Führer stepped to the balustrade of the gallery and directed the following concluding words to the house’’: ‘‘My dear Representatives! You now have approved a law whose significance will be recognized in its entirety only after many centuries. See to it that the nation itself does not offend against the way of the law. See to it that our people itself changes the way of the law!’’∞∂ The German people, whom Hitler characterized in the same speech as ‘‘the united Volk of brothers, free from the reciprocal prejudices and inhibitions of past times,’’ could now take confidence in a body of laws that proclaimed that Germany was ‘‘healthy’’ again and its institutions entirely in order. Initially, this attempt to preserve domestic stability and give the appearance of such stability abroad gave Jews a certain grace period in the sectors of economics and sports. In light of its four-year plans and emphasis on rearmament, the German economy could not afford a recession or a restriction of exports. Both were possibilities if the Nazi government expropriated Jewish-owned industries.∞∑ Moreover, the German government wanted to postpone the removal of the Jews from competitive athletics until after the 1936 Olympic Games. The detested international community (for whose sake all ‘‘Jews Not Welcome’’ signs had been removed from the entrances to towns, bathing facilities, cafés, businesses, and Der Stürmer kiosks during the Olympic Games in Bavaria and 92

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Berlin) had a decisive influence on the Nazi Jewish legislation, particularly in the timing of the Nuremberg Laws.∞∏ We turn now to the reactions in the Confessing Church to the Nuremberg Laws.

∞≠

A Divided Confessing Church The Confessing Church’s response to Nazi racial laws was marked by growing disagreement among its leaders about what direction the church should take.∞ Their unanimous hostility to the German Christians no longer compensated for their other differences, particularly those rooted in the theological traditions of the various regional churches. These theological differences were underscored by the different circumstances facing each regional church after 1933. Of the twentyeight regional churches, three—the Lutheran churches of Hannover, Bavaria, and Württemberg—remained ‘‘intact’’ after the July 1933 church elections. These churches continued to be governed by their powerful bishops (Marahrens of Hannover, Meiser of Bavaria, and Wurm of Württemberg). In most of the other regional churches, however, the German Christians gained enough administrative seats in the church elections to make life difficult for those who opposed them. These churches were torn by quarreling factions of German Christians, Pastors’ Emergency League members, and moderate members who viewed both other groups as extreme. In some churches, Confessing Christians set up parallel church councils or governments (for example, the Provisional Church Administration established at the 1934 Dahlem Synod, and the local and regional Councils of Brethren) and either ignored or fought the established church authorities. This was the case in much of the Church of the Old Prussian Union (which included the regional churches of Westphalia, Berlin-Brandenburg, and the Rhineland). In Westphalia, for example, church president Karl Koch represented the Confessing Church and ignored the elected German Christian Church Consistory in Münster as best he could. The unanimity achieved at Barmen had transcended regional and confessional lines. Even the bishops of the intact churches initially attended Confessing synods and were members of the Provisional Church Admin93

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istration. Increasingly, however, the conservative Lutheran bishops disagreed with their more radical colleagues in the Pastors’ Emergency League. In October 1935, the state stepped in. In an attempt to bring order to the increasingly divided German Evangelical Church, Reich Minister of Church Affairs Hanns Kerrl convened the Reich Church Committee. This committee included the prominent bishops of the intact churches and was led by the seventy-five-year-old retired general superintendent Dr. Wilhelm Zoellner.≤ The intact Lutheran churches and the Councils of Brethren in the divided Lutheran regional churches supported the Reich Church Committee; the regional churches with a more Reformed theological tradition (such as the Rhineland church) viewed it as a wolf in sheep’s clothing. These divisions led to the final split within the Confessing Church. At the fourth confessional synod in Bad Oeynhausen (17–22 February 1936), the first Provisional Church Administration of the Confessing Church, which had been chaired by Hannover’s Bishop Marahrens, resigned. The second Provisional Church Administration, appointed by the Reich Council of Brethren, represented the more radical line. In supporting the establishment of the Reich Church Committee, the intact church leaders had hoped to keep Confessing Christians, the German Christians, and the ‘‘middle’’ together, thereby preventing a church schism. The German Christians were so radical, however, that there was never much chance that the committee would succeed in calming internal church tensions. State restrictions, particularly on the committee’s ecumenical freedom, eventually led Zoellner to resign. The committee was dissolved in February 1937.≥ In the fall of 1935, the different factions continued to debate the Confessing Church’s proper course under Nazism. In the wake of the Nuremberg Laws, it was not surprising that the delegates to the Steglitz Synod avoided any position that might generate more controversy. It was one more instance of the Confessing Church’s hesitation to speak or act on behalf of the Jews. the steglitz synod

At the Augsburg Synod in May 1935, Reformed Berlin superintendent Martin Albertz had urged Westphalian church president Koch to remind the synodal delegates that ‘‘many thousands of Protestant non-Aryans . . . have long awaited a word from the Confessing Church.’’∂ Albertz cited 94

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Marga Meusel’s first memorandum, ‘‘On the Responsibilities of the Confessing Church toward Non-Aryans.’’ The Augsburg Synod, however, was characterized by its ‘‘silence and staying on the sidelines’’ regarding the plight of non-Aryans.∑ In his farewell letter to Pastor Hermann Hesse, Karl Barth (who had accepted a professorship in Basel) arrived at the verdict that the Confessing Church ‘‘still has no heart for millions suffering under injustice. It still has found nothing to say on the simplest questions of public honesty. It still speaks—when it speaks—always and only on its own behalf.’’∏ In September 1935, everything depended on how the Confessing Church would react. Would it find a way out of its irresolute silence or would it fall into paralysis and lethargy, missing a chance that could never be recovered? The delegates in Steglitz had Marga Meusel’s second expanded memorandum,π as well as a petition from university chaplain Ernst Bronisch-Holtze on behalf of several Berlin colleagues: What has the Provisional Church Administration done and what does it intend to do with regard to the state’s policy toward the Jews, above all, about the mission to the Jews and the treatment of baptized Jews and their families? In our circles in Berlin, such despair over the Confessing Church’s position has emerged that statements have been heard such as: If the Confessing Church does not register its veto against the present treatment of the mission to the Jews, then we can no longer assume that the Confessing Church has the living power it needs in order to be effective, from the perspective of the Gospel and the command to evangelize, and from the perspective of the Apostle Paul’s position.∫

Bronisch-Holtze sought a synodal response to the Gestapo’s confiscation of the September issue of the Berlin Missionsblatt, which had cautiously emphasized the church’s responsibilities to the Jews. The Gestapo had notified editor Siegfried Knak that his article went ‘‘against state policy in the Jewish question.’’ ‘‘The Provisional Church Administration,’’ wrote Bronisch-Holtze, ‘‘cannot evade the issue of state policy toward the mission to the Jews.’’Ω The Provisional Church Administration, however, had strong misgivings about putting the matter on the Steglitz agenda. Bavarian bishop Meiser, who was especially influential in the preparations for the synod, never made a public statement about the Jewish question during the Third Reich.∞≠ He may have been intimidated by Nazi party hostility to 95

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an article he had written in 1926, where he listed five ‘‘commandments’’ for Christian behavior toward Jews. He suggested that Christians should first ‘‘greet the Jews with friendliness; second, bear them with selfdenial; third, strengthen them through hopeful patience; fourth, invigorate them with true love; and fifth, save them by means of persistent prayer.’’∞∞ On 13 September 1935, at the Provisional Church Administration meeting about placing the Jewish question on the agenda of the upcoming synod, Meiser stated: ‘‘I would like to raise my voice against a martyrdom that we bring upon ourselves. I look with some concern at the upcoming Prussian synod if it desires to broach such things as, for example, the Jewish question.’’∞≤ On 24 September (the day after the synod began), the Steglitz Synod was burdened further by the announcement of Hitler’s Law for the Securing of the German Evangelical Church, which provided for state intervention in the church administrations of the Old Prussian Union churches.∞≥ (This set the stage for the creation of the Reich Church Committee the following month.)∞∂ It is unlikely that the timing of this law was coincidental. Indeed, the Steglitz Synod encountered outright state disapproval. Ministerial councillor Julius Stahn, deputy without portfolio for Reich Minister Kerrl, attended the opening session and spoke. It was the only time that a state representative made a statement at a confessional synod during the Kirchenkampf: ‘‘I state the fact that the Reich Minister does not send his greetings to this conference. The Reich Minister would very much prefer to have seen the conference not take place. . . . So, ladies and gentlemen, wherein do you now see a special reason to confess Christianity once again in such a synod?’’∞∑ Citing Jesus Sirach 23:7 (‘‘Dear children, learn to hold your tongue; for whoever does so will not make a mistake with words’’), Stahn advised that Scripture contained ‘‘words that counsel silence.’’∞∏ Stahn’s speech met with loud demonstrations of displeasure, underscored by the heckling of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his Finkenwalde seminarians. Thanks to Bonhoeffer’s ‘‘lightning-fast decisiveness,’’ the Finkenwalde group had appeared on the guest benches. Franz Hildebrandt had called Bonhoeffer from Dahlem (where Hildebrandt served as assistant to Martin Niemöller) ‘‘and sounded the alarm, because in the preparation for the synod . . . the idea had come up of a favorable clause on the just-enacted Nuremberg Laws.’’∞π The Steglitz Synod wanted to 96

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eliminate the Aryan paragraph from the church. Still, the synod was also considering a motion that explicitly conceded the state’s right to make laws in its own sphere; this would have been tantamount to a sanction of the Nuremberg Laws. In the event of such ‘‘a concession to the new laws,’’ Hildebrandt told his colleague Martin Niemöller, he would immediately resign his office in the Pastors’ Emergency League.∞∫ This time, Bonhoeffer no longer stood completely alone. Martin Albertz and theologian Heinrich Vogel shared his criticism of the June 1935 Augsburg Synod for its silence on the Jewish question. Albertz had taken a clear position by encouraging Marga Meusel to compose her memorandum. Vogel fearlessly placed himself at the forefront of the debate about the Jewish question with a report that was central for the resolutions that followed;∞Ω Vogel’s report was ‘‘censored, of course, by Koch.’’≤≠ Vogel argued that the church could not ‘‘make the administration of the sacraments dependent upon standards that are not established in the Word of Holy Scripture. . . . Whoever holds the baptism of Jews against the church, as a betrayal of Christ, blasphemes the sacrament of holy baptism.’’≤∞ The resolutions passed by the Steglitz Synod did not include the feared concession to the Nuremberg Laws. Still, the synod’s silence about the sufferings of non-Christian Jews was ‘‘embarrassing.’’≤≤ Marga Meusel’s document was not placed on the agenda. Another statement on behalf of the Jews was included in the first draft of the synodal declaration but was struck from the final text:≤≥ ‘‘As little as the church can deny baptism to the Jews, so little is it released from Jesus Christ’s commandment to love the unbaptized Jew. We owe our salvation alone to God’s unfathomable love, which knows no barriers. Nor are there any barriers to the love that we, as His own, must witness to in the world, through word and deed.’’≤∂ In Heinrich Vogel’s words, the final statement passed at Steglitz contained only ‘‘a minimum of a minimum’’ of what needed to be said. Martin Niemöller concurred, insisting that the protocol register ‘‘that for me, in any case, this resolution . . . is in no way satisfactory.’’≤∑ What resonance did Marga Meusel’s memorandum find at the Steglitz Synod? Meusel had hoped that the church—late, much too late, but better too late than not at all— might say a word in this matter. For the church, the issue is not a tragedy that simply occurs, but the sin of our people and, since we are members of this people and responsible before God for our people, the issue is our sin.

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The Isolation of the Jews To the present day, the church has not found this word. Today, we approach matters on the foundation of Good Friday and Easter. We find comfort in the fact that the Lord of the church has borne the sins of the world. But are we permitted to do this, we who, with open eyes, let ourselves be chained anew every day to this sin of our people, without defending ourselves? At no time can the church live otherwise than on the basis of the forgiveness of sins. But how should it hope for forgiveness when, day after day, it abandons its members in this desperate distress, tolerates the mockery of all God’s commandments, and, indeed, does not even dare to acknowledge public sin, but—stays silent?≤∏

Meusel hoped that her concerns were ‘‘shared most urgently by many members of the Confessing Church,’’ but existing documents do not suggest this was the case. The protocol of the meeting gives no evidence that her memorandum met with any response. Even Vogel’s report does not give the impression that he had read the Meusel paper beforehand. And the protocol indicates that Martin Albertz attended the synod, but, apparently, not once did he request permission to speak. How was the Steglitz Synod judged, at the time and today? On 5 October, Pastor M. Stallmann circulated his ‘‘Observations and Impressions’’ as an observer (and nondelegate) to the synod.≤π Apparently unaware of Meusel’s memorandum, he expressed regret that far too little had been said ‘‘about the neglect and falsification of the doctrine of baptism’’ throughout the church; this, he wrote, was far more important than discussing the baptism of Jews. Nonetheless, he made a pertinent observation: ‘‘What kind of helplessness is revealed when the church permits its word to be determined by the manner in which the questions of the times are put? What kind of a church is it that sees its task as ‘saying a word’ about all things possible?’’≤∫ The synod’s helplessness was evident in the embarrassment of ‘‘hearing delegates ask, What does ‘one’ really want of us?!’’≤Ω Bishop Meiser had already posed the question ‘‘to certain groups’’ at the 13 September Provisional Church Administration meeting in Berlin: ‘‘What do you really want?’’≥≠ Both Meiser and Hannover’s Bishop Marahrens viewed the Steglitz Synod with great skepticism. Meiser had voiced his misgivings at the Provisional Church Administration meeting; Marahrens had signaled his own extreme distance toward the planned synod in advance, in his weekly newsletter.≥∞ 98

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Although the Steglitz resolutions, passed in the presence of a state representative (Julius Stahn), upheld ‘‘the independence of spiritual decisions,’’ a disappointed Bonhoeffer returned with his seminarians to Finkenwalde.≥≤ ‘‘To Bonhoeffer, the synod was a vital opportunity that had been thrown away.’’≥≥ He correctly concluded that the newly issued Law for the Securing of the German Evangelical Church had forced the synod to deal with questions about the existence of the church (fiscal autonomy and state recognition), instead of struggling to speak up for the persecuted.≥∂ The Steglitz Synod failed to show solidarity with the persecuted and to demonstrate to Confessing Church congregations, who were not so much ‘‘confused’’ as merely waiting, ‘‘whether the Church of Jesus Christ . . . would be ready to ‘confess’ in accordance with its duty. It was not ready.’’≥∑ Instead of striving for a legitimacy based on solidarity with the persecuted, the church retreated by fortifying its legal positions. For Bonhoeffer, Steglitz was ‘‘less a victory than a defeat.’’≥∏ In October 1935, only weeks after the Nuremberg Laws and the Steglitz Synod, the Confessing Church published a special newsletter ‘‘for members of the Confessional congregations only.’’≥π The newsletter showed the degree to which the Confessing Church had lost (or never achieved) the vision and energy necessary for assisting the Jews. It cited Königsberg German Christian bishop Fritz Kessel, who had promised to build a national community based ‘‘upon the foundation of a Christian faith corresponding to the German racial soul and, above all, radically purged of the entire Jewish spirit.’’≥∫ But the Confessing newsletter chose to focus on the ‘‘inner development’’ of its mission: The great hour of the Confessing Church has arrived! Not an hour for taking power. Not an hour for calculating future church policy. But an hour of the greatest responsibility! The Confessing Church will now devote all its energy to the inner development of the congregations: the shaping of the worship service in the spirit of the Gospel, the revival of the Bible in the congregations, the inclusion of youth through the Word of Jesus Christ, the formation of a new spiritual community among pastors, the redevelopment of the great works of Christian love and Christian faith. It will watch over the purity of Protestant proclamation and not grow weary of sharpening congregational consciousness of what is at stake in the church of Jesus Christ. . . . What is now at stake is the soul of the German people. . . . What does it mean to be a disciple of Jesus in an era of tremendous

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The Isolation of the Jews decision, if not the open confession of a true church under the Word of God?≥Ω

The newsletter also mentioned the red cards that signified Confessing Church membership. But its emphasis was on their pledge for the ‘‘Renewal of the Church through the Gospel.’’ The other commitment printed on the red cards—to reject the confessionally antithetical Aryan paragraph—had been reduced to fine print. As Wilhelm Niemöller observed after 1945: ‘‘It is an old experience for Christianity: willingness to confess is no guarantee that one is permitted to confess precisely at that point where one would like to confess. Protestant Christianity in 1933 and 1934 would have liked to ‘confess’ this or that. But it was uneasy that it was questioned precisely with respect to the Aryan paragraph. . . . It did not suit Christianity that, in the age of anti-Semitism, it was called to confess the one who ‘has made us both one’ (Eph. 2:14).’’∂≠

∞∞

The Jewish Question after Steglitz What was left unsaid in Steglitz was not addressed in its aftermath. There would never be much support within the Confessing Church for leading a protest against Nazi racial policies. A few statements, such as the ‘‘Resolutions of the First Synod of the Confessing Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Saxony,’’ appealed to Christians’ moral obligations toward their neighbors: ‘‘Our neighbor is that person who is dependent upon us in a special way, not only our relative and friend, our employer or employee, but also the stranger whose need God places before our feet. As Christians, we have to practice love irrespective of person and without consideration for our own benefit or injury.’’∞ The Provisional Church Administration, however, was more concerned with putting its own house in order. Preoccupied with establishing its legitimacy, it felt no obligation to show solidarity with the Jews and non-Aryan Christians. This was evident in its September 1935 memorandum ‘‘on the question of Evangelical religious instruction in vocational, middle, and upper-level schools.’’ With respect to the racial question, the memorandum demanded ‘‘the minimum of a minimum’’ of Protestant religious teachers: 100

The Jewish Question after Steglitz Since, according to the doctrine of the Evangelical Church, the natural bonds of race, Volkstum, homeland, and history should be respected and nurtured as a gift from God the Creator, the teacher of religion will pass on to his students, without misgivings, all the knowledge that he has acquired by means of careful study in the questions of racial doctrine. On the other hand, he will reject calmly but resolutely all attacks against the Old Testament, parts of the New Testament, the person of Jesus, the Christian sacraments, and the fundamental doctrines of the church— whether from students, parents, or colleagues—that are based upon the current racial mysticism and racial religion.≤

The churches still displayed a remarkable degree of confidence in the National Socialist state. Prof. Martin Rade, editor of Christlicher Welt, wrote an article about the Nuremberg Laws, ‘‘On the German Jewish Legislation,’’ which reflected the attitudes of many in the Evangelical Church.≥ Depicting the Nuremberg Laws as the basis for a positive solution to the Jewish question, Rade had no reservations about entrusting the Jews and ‘‘half-Jews’’ completely to the state. Since the Nuremberg Laws did not regulate ‘‘public practice with regard to ‘half-Aryans’ ’’ (the law referred only to ‘‘full Jews’’), noted Rade, this unresolved problem had to be solved by the state and the church. The treatment of ‘‘halfAryans’’ was becoming acute, for example, in the schools. Reich Minister Rust planned to organize special Jewish schools, not only for children belonging to the Jewish religion but for all racially Jewish children. Only here, with respect to ‘‘Jewish Christians,’’ was Rade interested in their inviolable rights. In his view, it was permissible for the state to deal with full Jews in whatever manner it considered proper, but baptized Jews had a claim on state-guaranteed immunity. His argument depended on the illusion that the church would remain safely ensconced in the lee of state-ensured invulnerability, even amid future political and ideological storms. ‘‘Half-Jewish or half-Aryan’’ children baptized as Christians, with ‘‘Christian parents,’’ deserved ‘‘the consideration of the church’’; it was impossible for these children to be sent to a ‘‘Jewish-Mosaic confessional school.’’ Rade deluded himself with the hope that a ‘‘reasonable understanding’’ on this point could be reached with the state. He also expressed confidence that the state would continue to guarantee the possibility of the conversion and baptism of Jews. This right had been confirmed, he said, in various issues of the German Christian pub101

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lication Positives Christentum. It did not concern Rade if the baptism of Jews were approved only under the proviso ‘‘that the racial labeling of the Jews be carried out by the state’’! The possibility and practice of the baptism of Jews remained ‘‘necessary for our Christian religion.’’∂ Yet the best solution for the ‘‘half-Aryans,’’ wrote Rade, was emigration. Where this was not possible, the Sermon on the Mount required that Christians treat the ‘‘alien people’’ as a ‘‘guest people’’: ‘‘Not only out of our goodness as Christians, but for the sake of our honor as Germans.’’ He concluded with the conviction that the state’s adherence to section 24 of the Nazi Party Program (which guaranteed religious freedom) would ensure such freedom for German Jews as well. Rade’s article elicited a response from Wilhelm von Pechmann, the former president of the German Evangelical Church Convention, who had left the church in 1933 because of its fainthearted attitude toward the Aryan paragraph.∑ In a letter of 18 November 1935, Pechmann expressed astonishment at Rade’s naive appraisal of the Jewish situation. He could not imagine how Rade could pretend to be so blind about the actual situation: ‘‘The material and spiritual distress into which the socalled non-Aryans are being surrendered, without any distinctions, is heartbreaking. . . . I can’t conceive that you don’t feel and judge all this as I do.’’∏ Rade replied immediately and apologetically, noting that he had ‘‘to reckon with the present-day public’’ and that he was involved in tremendously difficult ‘‘work on behalf of the half-Aryans.’’π Pechmann’s letter was his first statement since withdrawing two and a half years earlier from the church stage. He expressed ‘‘deep distress’’ at his isolated position at the church committee meeting on 26 April 1933. The loneliness he expressed evoked Bonhoeffer’s earlier statement: ‘‘I felt as though I found myself, in an incomprehensible way, in radical opposition to all my friends; with my views on the matter, I fell more and more into isolation, although I stood, and remained, in the closest relationship with people personally.’’∫ Meanwhile, the Reich Church Committee had assumed the role of mediator in the treatment of the Jewish question. In the Reformed Church of Hannover, a working committee tied to Confessing groups in that region applied for permission to read a proclamation on the Jewish question from the pulpits. After a meeting of its executive board, the Evangeli102

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cal Reformed Church Council turned the request down on 7 November 1935.Ω Despite an offensive Der Stürmer article, the evidence was ‘‘undeniable’’ that the government sought ‘‘to regulate the problem of the Jewish question in a legal and just way.’’ Anything that was necessary had already been said; furthermore, the church had not been ‘‘a disinterested observer.’’∞≠ The Church Council cited a Reich Church Committee statement that confessed the ‘‘Savior and Redeemer of all peoples and races’’; ‘‘it is not as though the church up to now has remained silent on these matters.’’∞∞ Indeed, the Reich Church Committee had not remained silent. In its proclamation ‘‘to the people of the Evangelical Church,’’ it had confessed: ‘‘We affirm the National Socialist formation of the Volk on the foundation of race, blood, and soil.’’∞≤ Even the venerable Dr. Zoellner, who headed the Reich Church Committee, had lent his good name to this statement. Given this situation, Superintendent Carl Schweitzer of Wustermark, who was affected by the Aryan paragraph and later forced to emigrate, could expect little from his letter of 19 December 1935 to Zoellner.∞≥ Schweitzer implored the Reich Church Committee ‘‘not [to] close its eyes any longer to the ever increasing internal distress of the non-Aryan Christians affected by the new laws’’ and asked the committee finally to ‘‘complain to the state authorities.’’ ‘‘Further silence on this would burden the German Evangelical Church with a guilt unanswerable before the Lord of the church.’’ Only two years before, the Aryan paragraph had been regarded as profoundly ‘‘contrary to the confession.’’ Those days were long forgotten. It no longer seemed remarkable when Bishop Wurm of Württemberg, responding to the question, ‘‘What does it mean today to stand upon the ground of the Confession?’’ did not once mention the situation of the Jews but merely joined the chorus of those who sought to protect the Old Testament against a faith ‘‘of the blood or the racial soul.’’∞∂ But the topic of ‘‘the Jews’’ was not just silently ignored. A number of theologians addressed the issue, and their reflections showed how much the mainstream theology of the time prevented any solidarity with the Jews. Two particularly odd commentaries came from leaders of whom something else might have been expected: the renowned Tübingen professor 103

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Adolf Schlatter and Wilhelm Halfmann, spiritual director of the Confessing Church in Schleswig-Holstein from 1936 to 1937 and (after 1946) bishop of Holstein. As early as 1930, Schlatter had seen the Christian necessity of seeking, ‘‘along the path of Jesus, association with the Jews. Admittedly, we have ecclesiastical goals in this’’: ‘‘But our great concern must remain that, in our dealings with the Jews, we stay on the path and in the service of Jesus. We can judge for ourselves when and how that occurs. For a large portion of the New Testament shows us the struggle of Jesus and his messengers with the Jews.’’∞∑ The ‘‘ecclesiastical goals’’ had changed by 1935, however, and Schlatter was moved to write a monstrous libel against ‘‘the’’ Jews.∞∏ The Tübingen theologian, a noted Hebraist and New Testament scholar of some standing, now viewed Judaism as an ally of the anti-Christian Nazi state in the struggle against Christianity: Today, the rabbi can say proudly: ‘‘Look how the situation in Germany has changed; of course, we are despised, but only because of our race; until now, we were alone in striving for the madness preached at Christmas, that Christ has come, to disappear from the public consciousness; now, however, there are those who struggle with us, those to whom the instruction of the German Volk is entrusted. . . .’’ . . . It cannot be denied that, in the German Reich, the situation for his [the Jew’s] ideology was never so favorable as now. He [the Jew] can only rejoice when the celebration of the re-ascending sun supplants Christmas, and when it is impressed upon young people that their sole confession from now on is that they are Germans, because the name ‘‘Christ’’ has become meaningless for them.∞π

Schlatter equated Judaism with the ‘‘Nordic racism’’ of Nazism and the Nazi understanding of community as an ‘‘association’’ formed by ‘‘the compulsion of the blood.’’ National Socialism was the enemy of both Judaism and Christianity, he argued, and the Old Testament would necessarily fall with the New: ‘‘If the promise of Jesus is dead, one cannot believe in the promise of the prophets.’’∞∫ He concluded: ‘‘It is possible, of course, that the Jew initially will gain a powerful victory over us; but this victory will not be final. For the Jew has not brought faith in God into the world, and just as little can the Jews and their partners destroy it. They cannot do this because they are not able to undo the fact that the Christ has come into the world.’’∞Ω 104

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Fifty thousand copies of Schlatter’s text were distributed. On 27 February 1936, it was criticized in the weekly Vienna paper Gerechtigkeit (Justice): ‘‘Dr. Schlatter is a defender of the Confessional Church against National Socialism. Thus he is an opponent of the present regime in Germany. Does he really believe that he can struggle successfully if he mocks, ridicules, and slanders other victims of National Socialism who are persecuted, tormented, and oppressed even more than the Protestants loyal to the confession?’’≤≠ Like Schlatter, Wilhelm Halfmann was more concerned about the retention of the Old Testament and the future of the church than the existence of the Jews.≤∞ He believed that the ‘‘Jewish question’’ was no longer a ‘‘political-social’’ issue but an ideological and, ultimately, a religious question: ‘‘The defensive struggle against Judaism has become an attack of unparalleled severity upon the Old Testament; but the attack upon the Old Testament has become an attack upon the whole Bible, and the attack upon the Bible an attack upon the Christian Church in general.’’≤≤ Halfmann noted that, ever since John the Baptist asked whether Jesus was the Messiah, there had been an unresolved difference between Judaism and Christianity. Because of this, Judaism could not be understood solely as blood and race: ‘‘No, its deepest essence is its anti-Christian decision.’’≤≥ Citing Schlatter’s libelous text, Halfmann argued that, because of a ‘‘legitimate’’ Christian anti-Semitism, it was not the church’s duty ‘‘to interfere in the state’s Jewish legislation’’: Far more, we of the church must say, based upon almost two thousand years’ experience with the Jews: the state is right. It is attempting to protect the German people . . . with the approval of the Christian church. . . . Whoever decided against Christ has made the same decision as Judaism. . . . What a monstrous reversal of the fronts is occurring today: because they are enemies of Christ, opponents of the Jews become partners of the Jews; because they fight against Christ, German people join the same front with Jewish-led Bolshevism! In the process, they become mired in the most terrible accusation that has ever slandered Christianity in Germany: Christianity is in bondage to the Jews.≤∂

The solution of the Jewish question was up to God. The four-thousandyear history of this people showed that it could not be eradicated with the sword, he said: ‘‘We believe that all political means, as temporarily 105

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necessary as they might be, are not capable of solving the Jewish question. This people must go its own way until God Himself solves the Jewish question.’’≤∑ Similar theological perspectives emerged in other statements in 1936.≤∏ Pastor Erich Gross of Essen-Borbeck produced an essay entitled ‘‘The Jewish Question in Light of the Bible,’’ writing that Judaism needed periods of great affliction for its purification: ‘‘Thus, for the Jew, the German racial laws of the Third Reich have once more illuminated, like a bolt of lightning, a section of his thorny path through the world. They have become for him a genuine call to reflection, indeed, to repentance.’’≤π Alfred de Quervain, lecturer at the school of theology in Elberfeld, reminded the Christian community of its responsibility toward the people of Israel. In an April 1937 Gutachten≤∫ requested by the Old Prussian Union Council of Brethren, Quervain wrote: ‘‘If the congregation (of Christ) diverts its sight from Israel, then it is no longer the church of Jesus Christ; something will be absent from its witness or the form of the congregation. Israel is given to the congregation as a warning, so that it might not follow the path of Israel; as a sign that God will do something still greater; as a sign that the Kingdom of God has not yet arrived in its glory. Israel remains as the scandal, and the church cannot simply explain, discuss, and clear this scandal away.’’≤Ω Quervain held Israel up as a warning to the church. But he also admonished the church to bring the straying sheep of Israel back into the fold of Christianity, for only there could the chosen people find salvation and peace. Israel must be made to understand ‘‘that there is only one deliverance for this people, namely the return to the church, to the congregation of Jesus Christ, the faith no longer in its own life, but rather in its head, its king, Jesus Christ.’’≥≠ But the visible church hardly offered the Jews a refuge. Herein lay the arrogance of evangelism: playing with the fire of its claim to absolute truth, Christianity placed itself in a light that would ‘‘illuminate’’ the Jews if they became Christians but consume them if they remained Jews! Quervain’s assurance that Jewish ‘‘apostasy’’ had caused the fate of the Jews was astonishing, as was his belief that ‘‘God’s will’’ had merged in such an extraordinary fashion with the German need not to be ‘‘infiltrated by foreigners’’: ‘‘God, however, intercedes for His apostate people. It is His will that they remain, as a sign established by Him. Where a 106

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people defends itself against the danger of foreign infiltration, in the fear of God, in the faith in the triune God, there this resistance will not be one founded upon an ideology. . . . The confession of faith creates the necessary distance to Judaism. The confession of faith recognizes that which is in opposition; but this distance based upon faith does not abrogate charity.’’≥∞ It was surprising how often these theological writings proclaimed ‘‘charity’’ as their goal. In a theology characterized by reservations toward Judaism, ‘‘charity’’ had become the search for a dubious alibi rather than the credible consequence of a Christian position. Still, a few Confessing Christians continued to advocate genuine solidarity with the Jews. In May 1936, Marga Meusel appealed once more to the Confessing Church, quoting a Provisional Church Administration statement that ‘‘because Christ pleads for us before the Father, we cannot permit the honor of the defenseless to be trampled into the dust.’’≥≤ During the same period, the new, more radical members of the second Provisional Church Administration wrote a document that soon achieved unintended renown at home and abroad: the May 1936 memorandum to Hitler.≥≥ The memorandum objected to the concepts of ‘‘blood, race, Volkstum, and honor’’ as ‘‘eternal values’’ and protested the incitement of hatred against the Jews: ‘‘If, in the framework of National Socialist ideology, an anti-Semitism is forced upon the Christian that obliges him to hate the Jews, then the Christian commandment to love one’s neighbor stands in opposition to this. It is a particularly oppressive conflict for the members of our Protestant congregations when they, in accordance with their duty as Christian parents, must combat the invasion of these anti-Christian ideas among their children.’’≥∂ The memorandum timidly protested the state pressures on Christian congregations. It failed to speak out against all forms of anti-Semitism, including those within the Confessing Church. The document seemed less concerned with defending Jews and non-Aryan Christians than with protecting members of Protestant congregations from an ‘‘especially oppressive conflict of conscience.’’ Despite its cautious wording, however, the memorandum (particularly after its publication in the foreign press) provoked a vehement reaction from Nazi authorities. Several of those involved were arrested, and Friedrich Weissler, a Jewish lawyer who worked with the Confessing Church, was taken to Sachsenhausen and murdered. 107

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As the state’s brutal response to the publication of the memorandum illustrated, any Christian advocacy on behalf of the persecuted Jews had become more dangerous. The Provisional Church Administration felt trapped between the state and the German Christians, and feared the consequences for the church. The Provisional Church Administration’s next major statement, a pulpit proclamation issued on 23 August 1936, completely avoided the issue of anti-Semitism and the Jews.≥∑ Between 1935 and 1937, discussion of the Jewish question was particularly influenced by Alfred Rosenberg’s Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts (Myth of the Twentieth Century, published in 1930) and Protestantische Rompilger (Protestant pilgrim to Rome, published in 1935).≥∏ In 1937, the churches in Kassel prepared a response to Protestantische Rompilger, to be read from their pulpits; despite its mildness, it was prohibited by the Gestapo.≥π At the 1937 commemoration of the Reformation, the triumvirate of Bishop Marahrens (representing the leaders of the German regional churches), Pastor Fritz Müller of Dahlem (speaking for the Provisional Church Administration), and Thomas Breit (for the Council of the Protestant-Lutheran Church of Germany) also issued a declaration against Protestantische Rompilger.≥∫ None of these statements, however, did more than object to state and ideological encroachments into the realm of the church. In general, the church statements made between 1935 and 1938 illustrated the consequences of the church’s 1933 concessions to the state Aryan laws. The church was beginning to grasp the state’s real aim: having ‘‘solved’’ the Jewish question, it intended to solve the church question as well. The Reich Church Committee had failed to fulfill its mandate ‘‘to bring them [the Confessing Church and the German Christians] together around one table.’’≥Ω On 12 February 1937, the state’s Ministry for Church Affairs dissolved the committee and, at the same time, intensified the pressures on non-Aryan Christians. At an assembly of the regional church committee chairmen on 13 February 1937, Reich Minister Kerrl announced categorically that ‘‘the church must be purged of subjects who work against the state. The civil service laws will be applied to the pastors. Jews will no longer be pastors.’’∂≠ Otto Dibelius responded publicly to Kerrl with a stinging letter that led to charges against him. ‘‘For the relationship between the Evangeli108

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cal Church and its Ministry [the Ministry for Church Affairs],’’ wrote Dibelius, ‘‘this speech represents approximately what the Sports Palace assembly of November 1933 represented for the relationship between us and the German Christians: the veil that disguised reality from many eyes until now has been rent apart; the contradictions are clear.’’∂∞ Such forthrightness might have led to a clear statement about Kerrl’s policy against non-Aryan Christians. Yet Dibelius only emphasized the church’s claims (which Kerrl found monstrous) that Jesus and Paul were Jews and that salvation came from the Jews. Dibelius could not recall ‘‘whether, in earlier times, the preaching of the Evangelical Church had somehow emphasized these things,’’ but the church had to defend itself against any attack on the Scripture and its proclamation. ‘‘Here is the point at which the church must and will offer resistance.’’∂≤ Dibelius said nothing about a church Aryan paragraph, which Kerrl’s speech had demanded. The fate of the Jews was not mentioned. On 15 February, Hitler’s Election Decree implied that free church elections might be held to form a general synod. When this failed to materialize, the Provisional Church Administration expressed vehement indignation at the reprisals suffered by Confessing Church pastors and lay members at the hands of the state police. Several letters were written to the Führer’s deputy, Rudolf Hess.∂≥ In a letter of 1 April 1937, the Provisional Church Administration protested the Gestapo arrest and interrogation of a Hamburg parish worker who had been charged for his interpretation of Rom. 11 as well as his statement ‘‘that Jesus is not an Aryan, but a Jew’’: ‘‘How do the responsible state authorities justify the fact that a church employee is called a friend of the Jews or a slave of the Jews in the concentration camp, and is told that the best thing would be to get him off humanity’s back?’’∂∂ But the Nazi state was growing stronger and less inhibited. It no longer sent written replies to church protests. The Confessing Church was coming under fire, and its declarations met with a new response. Numerous arrests began to take place (including the arrest of Martin Niemöller on 1 July 1937). The state had run out of arguments; its true intentions were unmasked, even to the gullible. It was an illusion for the Confessing Church to appeal to the often cited article 24 of the Party Program (which supposedly protected religious freedom)—as it did in its letter to Rudolf Hess. Even in its May 1936 109

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memorandum to Hitler, the Provisional Church Administration showed a trusting confidence in the totalitarian system, lamenting that things had reached the point where ‘‘leading personalities in the state and the party have interpreted the words ‘Positive Christianity’ arbitrarily.’’∂∑ But Hermann Sasse, editor of the church yearbook, had foreseen this in 1932, when he warned that the explicit emphasis in article 24 on the ‘‘public good before private interest’’ opened the door for state arbitrariness.∂∏ It was not necessary to interpret article 24 ‘‘arbitrarily’’ to eradicate the church. Reich Administrative Director Derichsweiler had actually explained the party’s true intentions to the Provisional Church Administration. In the memorandum to Hitler, the church leaders repeated Derichsweiler’s ominous words that the ‘‘ ‘Positive Christianity’ of the Party Program was a phrase employed to disguise the truth, just as one withholds the whole truth when facing a sick person.’’∂π A widely distributed statement from the May 1937 confessional synod in the Rhineland shows how the Confessing Church viewed its situation at that point.∂∫ The Rhineland statement refuted the German Christian demand for separate non-Aryan Christian parishes: there was no possibility, ‘‘according to the New Testament, to apply state racial laws as the standard for membership in the church.’’ In its third resolution, the synod spoke ‘‘to the persecuted’’ and admonished its congregations to pray for them and be mindful of those who ‘‘are deprived of their freedom in prison or in a concentration camp.’’ ‘‘We are bound together by love: ‘If one member suffers, then all members suffer with him.’ ’’∂Ω Could the name of a non-Aryan Christian finally be included on the list of those to be prayed for by the churches? A statement from this period by Martin Rade (who had apparently undergone a radical change since his defense of the Nuremberg Laws) indicated that individual congregations did indeed include non-Aryan Christians in their intercessory lists.∑≠ Three other theological opinions from 1937 indicate the hopeless confusion among theologians who tried to solve the Jewish question with racial interpretations or by isolating it from the Old Testament. The journal Deutsche Kirche explained in April 1937 why the church had to reject the idea of race: 110

The Jewish Question after Steglitz Christian baptism, of course, nullifies all racial origin. The Jew ceases to be a Jew; the Teuton ceases to be a Teuton. For Christianity, ‘‘race’’ is no longer a moral concept. Christianity knows only one people and race that matters before God. The Jewish people! It is the only religious people on earth. The God of the Old Testament made His covenant with it. Through that, all other peoples and races are of subordinate rank. Christianity knows no other God than the one who revealed Himself in the Old Testament and transferred His covenant to the new covenant people, the new Israel, the people of the church brought together in the supranatural community of Christ. . . . The integration into this covenant people of the New Testament rigorously requires the detachment and separation from one’s own race and Volk.∑∞

The statement interpreted the rite of baptism as a genetic recasting of the baptized person—all within the framework of a racial worldview in which all non-Jewish ‘‘peoples and races . . . are of subordinate rank.’’ Yet its understanding of baptism was flawed: although it is correct that ‘‘race’’ has no inherent meaning within Christianity and that baptism is not a racial privilege, it can hardly be claimed that baptism ‘‘nullifies all racial origin.’’ The command to baptize ‘‘all peoples’’ in Matt. 28:19 acknowledges all peoples and races as worthy and capable of baptism; it does not affect the baptized individual’s racial heritage. By leaving behind one’s own race and people, eventually even one’s family, the baptized person enters a new existence in the supranatural community of Christ. A second statement came from theologian Gerhard Kittel. Kittel attempted to transpose Judaism’s inimitable unity of Volk and faith, based on its covenant with God, to the supposed necessity for Volkstum and faith in the German Volk that was ‘‘struggling for its existence’’:∑≤ Even we who stand upon the ground of the Holy Scripture can protest earnestly and energetically against the notion that genuine biblical faith and thought might ever stand in the way of the legitimate demands of genuine biological thought, which result wherever a Volkstum struggles for its existence. . . . National Socialism was the first to radically eliminate the connubiality between Jews and non-Jews. Adolf Hitler has taught the German people anew (to) listen to its genuine instincts and (to) feel good about it. In no way is this barbarity or cruelty, or unreasonable toward the Jews, as those almost everywhere in the world say about us; rather, it is

111

The Isolation of the Jews primarily a return to the norms of nature and thus to a genuine and true culture. Second, as our historical findings conclusively show, it is the salutary compulsion for assimilated Judaism to return to its own genuine foundations and ancient laws.∑≥

The supranaturalism of the statement in Deutsche Kirche spiritualized the ‘‘community of Christ’’; the natural bonds of the newly converted were obliterated through baptism. Kittel, in turn, was advocating a naturalism that would vitalize the community of the Volk; the precondition for membership in the Volk was Christian-völkisch faith. Both demands attempted to remove the Jewish question from the Christian world— either by drowning the Jews in Christian baptism or through a complete Christian dissociation from Jewish nationality and faith that would bring the Jews to themselves. A third statement, a September 1937 essay by Gerhard Schmidt, illustrates that Confessing Christians who fought to retain the Old Testament did not necessarily hold pro-Jewish attitudes, even theologically.∑∂ Referring to Luther, Schmidt characterized ‘‘the fusion of the Jewish question with the things of the Old Testament’’ as a ‘‘false path’’: ‘‘Exactly at the point where Martin Luther∑∑ criticizes the insolence and impertinence of contemporary Jews, he commits himself with all his power on behalf of the Old Testament and its character as revelation. . . . He does not reject the Old Testament because of the Jews, but rather the other way around: Because of the Old Testament, he rejects the Jews.’’∑∏ With this text from Luther, Schmidt, a Confessing pastor and contributor to Junge Kirche, sacrificed the Jews in order to save the Old Testament. The Nazi state, he wrote, intended to destroy the Jews in order to liquidate the Old Testament as well. That same year, ‘‘the city of Nuremberg presented a copy of the rare edition of Luther’s text ‘On the Jews and Their Lies,’ published in the year 1543 with a frontispiece by Lucas Cranach, to the Gauleiter Julius Streicher in honor of his birthday.’’∑π The Confessing Church had protested too quietly or not at all and had failed to interfere with state treatment of the Jews. Ironically, the 4 April 1937 issue of Nationalkirche (National church), edited by Thuringian German Christian leaders Leffler and Leutheuser, compared the Confessing Church to Der Stürmer: ‘‘They are united in their radical rejection. The one [Der Stürmer] for anti-Jewish reasons, the other [the Confessing 112

The Jewish Question after Steglitz

Church] for anti-Christian reasons. Common to both is the anti-Christian attitude, the hostility toward Christ, [who is] the anti-Jew and Liberator of the human soul to God.’’∑∫ The German Christian slogan during the 1937 church elections echoed this tone: ‘‘We fight for the Jew-free German Evangelical Reich Church.’’∑Ω This slogan, announced German Christian leader Wilhelm Rehm, was not an attack on the Old Testament: ‘‘When we demand the Jew-free church, then we do not speak about the Bible, but rather about the church. With that, we mean not just the removal of racial Jews or Jewish half-breeds from the pulpit and the church, but the removal of all creatures who can be considered, according to their inner attitude, as completely Judaized.’’∏≠ In response to an inquiry from Junge Kirche, Rehm defined what he meant by the ‘‘Judaizing’’ of the church, concluding: ‘‘What we want is the clear separation from the Jew in the German Evangelical Church. Whoever among the pastors does not want this separation or does not want to go along should draw the consequences, and become a member of the new Jewish-Christian church to be established. With his internally Judaized mental attitude, he cannot minister to the soul of a German individual.’’∏∞ The Confessing Church’s situation was so precarious that Junge Kirche made only a subdued response to Rehm’s remarks: ‘‘Is it possible that a genuine separation and purification in the Evangelical Church can be brought about with this suggestion? We do not share this view, because the decisive ecclesiastical question is ignored with such formulations. The decisive ecclesiastical question is the question of doctrine and heresy, as was emphasized by the Reich Confessional Synod in Barmen.’’∏≤ Since the Barmen Confession had taken no position on Jews and nonAryans, those persecuted could hardly depend on the Confessing Church to protect them. In the same issue of Junge Kirche, the editors tried to downplay Rehm’s demand for a ‘‘Jewish-free church’’ by noting the small percentage of Jews among Protestant pastors: ‘‘It has been shown that, among the Protestant pastorate, 0.3 percent are not Aryan, in the sense of the Reich civil service law (that is, including grandparents). The number of full non-Aryans is a fraction of this already extremely small number.’’∏≥ Four years before, the Aryan legislation in the church had been a confessional question. Now it had been reduced to a question of percentages. In late 1937 and early 1938, statements on the Jewish question ceased 113

The Isolation of the Jews

almost completely. This was not surprising in light of the intensification of state reprisals against the Confessing Church. The voices of those who might have wanted to speak out had been silenced behind prison walls.∏∂ In despair, those who still could speak had to ask whether their congregations would not be helped more by whispers behind the closed doors of a parsonage than by an inaudible scream behind bolted prison gates. The path had been paved for the situation that followed the socalled Kristallnacht: those condemned to silence were transformed into clandestine helpers. Having missed the moment in which it was possible ‘‘to stop the wheel itself ’’ with boldness and determination, the Confessing Church’s only recourse in the Jewish question was now secretly to bind the wounds of ‘‘the victims under the wheel.’’∏∑ It would be incorrect to conclude that the Confessing Church did nothing simply because nothing can be found in the records. On the contrary, only after it was forbidden to speak out did the church—which so often had spoken too much, too long, and too indirectly—finally begin to help people. Once it was persecuted itself, the church began to reflect on its nature and its task, thereby moving toward becoming a ‘‘true’’ church.

∞≤

The Evangelical Church and Its Non-Aryan Members ministry to non-aryan christians

Throughout the Kirchenkampf, individual pastors faced conflicts in ministering to non-Aryans. As early as 1933, ‘‘two cases concerning the behavior of the church toward Jews’’ caused ‘‘difficulties’’ for the pastor of St. Gertrud’s in Hamburg, Walter Uhsadel.∞ The first case concerned a Christian woman who desired to wed a Jew in a church ceremony. She had been turned down in Berlin, although a church official there had told her that marriage between a Christian and a Jew would be possible in Hamburg. Now Uhsadel had caused bitter disappointment with his refusal to perform the wedding. In the second case, a Jewish banker had requested baptism. The events of April 1933 led Uhsadel to point out to the banker that, in case he hoped ‘‘to eliminate difficulties in his situation as a Jew, his baptism would be impossible and . . . useless.’’ The banker replied that ‘‘he was ‘really a Christian,’ that throughout his schooling he had never had Jewish but 114

The Evangelical Church and Its Non-Aryan Members

Protestant religious instruction, and that his children had been baptized and educated as Christians.’’ The pastor wrote his bishop, ‘‘What should I do? Should I instruct the old gentleman of sixty-six after all? Would it not be good if in Hamburg we would entrust several older and especially suitable gentlemen with the instruction of converts and proselytes?’’≤ Hamburg bishop Schöffel’s reply was terse. In the first case, a church order already stated that only weddings with two Christian partners could be performed. A non-Christian partner (whether Jewish, Moslem, atheist, or whatever) could be baptized and accepted into the Protestant church before the wedding. (Uhsadel’s letter to Schöffel had not mentioned such an offer.) Should the Jewish partner reject baptism, the wedding had to be refused, according to church regulations. In both cases, however, Uhsadel clearly assumed that he should treat applicants of Jewish origin differently from other non-Christians. It is unlikely that Uhsadel (who had been in the ministry for seven years) faced the question of adult baptism for the first time in 1933. Why, then, did he resist giving the sixty-six-year-old Jewish banker several hours of baptismal instruction? Why did he wish to evade his specific duty—the pastoral care of an individual (in this case, an accomplished professional man who was not indifferent to the church)—by delegating the matter? Schöffel responded that he would prefer ‘‘to leave these things for the time being up to the parishes,’’ since ‘‘such personal cases like the one taken to you . . . can really only be dealt with personally in the parishes. . . . However that may be, I request you to accept this gentleman.’’≥ In another early case, an official from the German Evangelical Church Chancellery defended Württemberg bishop Wurm against a written attack from Nazi party leaders in Stuttgart. Wurm had defended the baptism of Jews. Such baptisms, the chancellery official argued, posed a threat only ‘‘if through the Christian churches’ reception of Jews, the Jews who become Christians are technically conferred a civil status equal to that of the Christian Aryan comrades of the Volk, thus encouraging a further mixing of the races.’’ Since this danger was ‘‘to a large extent eliminated, partly through civil provisions, partly through public opinion,’’ he could not share the party’s reservations against the baptism of Jews.∂ The Bavarian regional church also came under early pressure on the issue of ministry to non-Aryans. Nuremberg and Munich were Nazi party strongholds, and the Nuremberg-published Der Stürmer had an espe115

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cially high number of subscribers there. Der Stürmer∑ published vehement attacks on the head preacher at St. Sebald’s in Nuremberg, Christian Geyer, and the auxiliary dean of St. Lorenz, Pastor Brendel, after Geyer baptized and married Communist leader Kurt Eisner’s daughter.∏ Brendel not only baptized some Jewish children but employed their father as custodian of St. Lorenz Church. In Magdeburg, Pastor Carl Zuckschwerdt was vilified in Der Stürmer in August 1935, after baptizing a Jew. Although Zuckschwerdt’s congregation stood behind him, Bishop Friedrich Peter, a German Christian, advised his colleagues in Magdeburg to distance themselves from him. In response, the Saxon Council of Brethren circulated the facts of the case in a letter to Confessing Church members, announcing that the Council of Brethren intended to protect Zuckschwerdt.π The council also sent a protest letter and filed a criminal complaint against Der Stürmer ‘‘because of libel against Christian baptism and the defamation of Pastor Zuckschwerdt.’’ Citing a sermon by Luther, the baptismal command in Matt. 28:19, and Jesus’ words ‘‘to Nicodemus, the Jew with a national consciousness,’’ in John 3:16, the Saxon Council of Brethren defended its right and duty to baptize Jews.∫ The Nuremberg Laws put new wind into the sails of Der Stürmer’s antiJewish agitation. Der Stürmer attacked Bielefeld pastor Karl Niemann as one who, ‘‘in clerical garb, encourages racial defilement by the Jews.’’Ω Niemann had baptized a local chemist, Dr. Ernst Goldstein, and officiated at his wedding. Emphatically refuting Der Stürmer’s attack, the presbytery of Niemann’s church defended him: ‘‘Pastor Niemann has acted conscientiously in executing his office as a servant of the church. This is also with respect to the subsequent church consecration of the marriage, all the more since there was no violation of the civil laws proclaimed at the last Nuremberg Party Convention.’’∞≠ On 14 November 1936, Reich Minister for Church Affairs Hanns Kerrl complained to the German Evangelical Church that Pastor Günther Harder had ‘‘baptized a full Jewish woman’’ in Fehrbellin, ‘‘about which great exasperation prevailed in the entire population. Harder deemed it necessary to announce the baptism of this Jewish woman from the pulpit on Sunday, 19 July.’’∞∞ Furthermore, Kerrl noted, Harder tolerated the membership of the woman’s two half-Jewish children in the Fehrbellin church choir. Since the ‘‘extremely detrimental experiences with the baptism of Jews’’ were as well known to Harder as to the Reich Church 116

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Committee, Harder should possess enough political tact to keep such things ‘‘as inconspicuous as possible.’’ The Council of Brethren tried to make it easier for pastors to minister to non-Aryans by ordering the establishment of parish registers in the churches.∞≤ Pastors whose seal of office had been revoked could record the pastoral services they performed in the parish register of another congregation and have them notarized by one of the pastors there.∞≥ On 3 August 1937, Nazi District Court V in Berlin, in agreement with the Supreme Party Court, declared that there could be no legal consequences against a pastor who baptized non-Aryans: ‘‘As a pastor, he is obligated to perform the baptism of Jews, if he is convinced of the integrity of the one receiving baptism.’’∞∂ This did not prevent the German Christian–governed regional church of Thuringia from issuing an order, soon after the Kristallnacht, that ‘‘ministry to non-Aryans is ruled out for clergy of the Thuringian Protestant Church, as a matter of course. This notice is to be brought to the attention of the pastors insofar as it still should appear necessary.’’∞∑ This order was the preliminary form of the law on the ecclesiastical status of Protestant Jews that was later passed by the regional churches of Thuringia, Mecklenburg, Saxony, Anhalt, and Lübeck.∞∏ In the fall of 1938, Dr. Erwin Reisner, who worked in the Grüber office in Berlin (which offered help to Jews and non-Aryan Christians), submitted a ‘‘Theological Opinion on the Applicable Legal Provisions for the Given Names of Jews or Non-Aryans.’’∞π Reisner was responding to what he saw as the usurpation of church authority by the state’s Second Decree on the Implementation of the Law on the Modification of Family Names and First Names, enacted on 17 August 1938.∞∫ In condemning the law, Reisner concluded that there was a theological relationship between the sacrament of baptism and the legal giving of a name. This understanding had existed originally, he maintained, but had been surrendered by the church. As a ritual of rebirth, baptism required the giving of a name independent of human law and guided by the call and demand of God (Isa. 43:1). Accordingly, each baptized Christian must carry a Christian name given by the church at baptism, which reflected the mutual relationship between that individual and God. But, since the church had long dispensed with this practice, it could ‘‘hardly comment fundamentally’’ on the civil law ‘‘until it has restored order within itself and has radically revised the practice of name-giving. 117

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Here, there are probably only two possibilities: either giving a name to the baptismal candidate is dispensed with completely and left to the secular authorities, or the giving of names is placed completely under the sacrament.’’ As long as the church ‘‘does not resolutely stand by this strict point of view, there is no reason why one should deny recognition to the names prescribed by the state.’’ Reisner added (and who can say whether this was a wink at the Jews or at the state?): Moreover, there exists no reason whatsoever to reject the names prescribed or authorized by the law for non-Aryans, as long as the names in question are biblical names. These names certainly are intended by the legislators as a kind of branding and stigma, but what is disgrace and shame in the eyes of human beings can be the highest tribute in the eyes of God; the one, for example, who is permitted to bear the name ‘‘Israel’’ or ‘‘Sara’’ is, without doubt, honored and treated with distinction by God. It is undoubtedly no accident that precisely these two names, Godgiven names, are the words of God, and therefore they are a judgment against those today who misuse them for their own ends.∞Ω

Once the church had clarified its position, Reisner wrote, it would have a good foundation for resisting the state demand that the church distinguish Aryans from non-Aryans: for ‘‘by one spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks’’ (1 Cor. 12:13). In addition to the cases publicized in Der Stürmer, there were probably a number of unrecorded baptisms of Jews by Confessing Church pastors until 1938.≤≠ The church continued to baptize Jews until Germany was declared ‘‘free of Jews’’ in 1942.≤∞ Although the marriage and baptism of non-Aryans inspired malicious tirades, it was still possible to conduct these rites secretly. This was more difficult for funerals, although the ban on the burial of non-Aryans in community cemeteries was never made law.≤≤ Still, some individual Confessing Church pastors tried to conduct church funerals for non-Aryan Christians in public cemeteries. On 10 November 1936, a retired pastor filed a complaint with the regional church council of the Evangelical Church of Kurhessen-Waldeck, stating that Fulda city authorities had forbidden him to bury the distinguished merchant and non-Aryan Christian Justus Jacobsen in the city cemetery. ‘‘A full member of the Evangelical Church is denied acceptance in a mu118

The Evangelical Church and Its Non-Aryan Members

nicipal cemetery,’’ he protested, ‘‘while any tramp frozen to death in a drunken stupor in a ditch by the side of the road will find his burial place in this cemetery.’’≤≥ In April 1939, the Bavarian regional church councillor lodged a complaint with the lord mayor of Munich because non-Aryan Christians had been denied burial in municipal cemeteries.≤∂ In a case reported by Martin Rade, a non-Aryan Christian woman was unable to find a resting place in the public or the Jewish cemetery: ‘‘Non-Aryans are not given a burial place in the public cemetery. We appealed to the local Jewish congregation, since her husband was an architect for it and is buried there, but received a negative reply, because Mrs. H. was a baptized Jew—an Aryan Christian would have been accepted, but not an apostate! What a situation!’’≤∑ Only through the personal intervention of Rabbi Leo Baeck could the woman’s wish to be buried beside her husband be fulfilled. Presumably, there were other pastors like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who later expressed great remorse for his failure to perform a service for a non-Aryan. Bonhoeffer’s refusal to perform the funeral of the non-Aryan father of his brother-in-law, Gerhard Leibholz, fell within the formal guidelines of the church, since the fact that the elder Leibholz had not been baptized could have been taken as his own final decision, superseding the wishes of Bonhoeffer’s sister and brother-in-law for a Christian burial. Bonhoeffer’s general superintendent in Berlin ‘‘advised him strongly against taking a funeral service for a Jew at this particular time.’’≤∏ Bonhoeffer concluded that extraordinary times demanded extraordinary action. Evidently, the little phrase ‘‘at this particular time’’ in the superintendent’s reply acquired special significance for Bonhoeffer. He had failed a Jew during a period marked by anti-Judaism, precisely when symbolic acts were required. In November 1933, Bonhoeffer wrote to his brother-in-law: ‘‘I am tormented by the thought . . . that I didn’t do as you asked me as a matter of course. To be frank, I can’t think what made me behave as I did. How could I have been so afraid at the time? It must have seemed equally incomprehensible to all of you, and yet you said nothing. But it preys on my mind . . . because it’s the kind of thing one can never make up for. So all I can do is to ask you to forgive my weakness then. I know now for certain that I ought to have behaved differently.’’≤π Bonhoeffer suffered under his sin of omission. The other examples given here show that many of his colleagues cited church and state reg119

The Isolation of the Jews

ulations to avoid having to minister to non-Aryan Christians. But Bonhoeffer had stood alone in demanding that the church take up the cause not just of non-Aryan Christians but of all persecuted Jews. His failure to act in this one instance strengthened his resolve to be consistent elsewhere. non-aryan church musicians

In 1954, Oskar Söhngen, former music consultant and member of the Berlin Evangelical Central Council, reviewed church officials’ response to the Reich Chamber of Music’s attempts to remove non-Aryan church musicians from cultural and church life.≤∫ Söhngen’s study was based primarily on a July 1936 letter from the Berlin Evangelical Central Council to the president of the Reich Chamber of Music.≤Ω An examination of the documents used by Söhngen requires several crucial additions to his version of events. The Berlin Central Council letter (with which Söhngen, in his capacity as musical expert for the consistory, was involved) expressed astonishment that in the fall of 1935 the Reich Chamber of Music had barred a number of non-Aryan church musicians from continued membership in the chamber.≥≠ At the time, the council noted, ‘‘the agreement of 23 January 1936 between the German Evangelical Church and the Reich Chamber of Music, which declares in section 1.3 that measures taken by the Reich Chamber of Music against professional musicians are authorized only in agreement with the responsible agency of the regional church, had not yet been concluded.’’≥∞ The Reich Chamber’s actions led the Evangelical Central Council to confer with the Reich and Prussian officials for church affairs, as well as with the regional church council of the Old Prussian Union. After consulting with these bodies, the Evangelical Central Council tried ‘‘to outline the following aspects which have determined our position.’’ These aspects revealed a certain duplicity. On the one hand, the Evangelical Central Council charged that the Reich Chamber of Music’s intrusion into church affairs was ‘‘of a fundamental nature’’—thus implying that the church was prepared to defend its non-Aryan musicians. On the other hand, the council agreed to confirm which church musicians were ‘‘full- , half- , and quarter-Jews.’’ ‘‘The number of non-Aryan church musicians in the Evangelical Church of the Old Prussian Union is infinitely small,’’ the council noted: ‘‘According to the present investigations by the Reich Chamber of Music, it totals 7. We do not need to explain what 120

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this means in view of a total number of over ten thousand (full-time and avocational) church musicians.’’≥≤ As Söhngen later wrote, there was ‘‘no serious practical threat to church music work for the very reason that the number of non-Aryans employed as church musicians was minimal.’’≥≥ The Church Chancellery jubilantly informed the Reich Chamber of Music that ‘‘only nineteen Jews and half-Jews in all’’ among the ten thousand Jewish musicians in Germany were ‘‘active in the area of church music or of organ performance.’’≥∂ These nineteen musicians included twelve full Jews, one Jew with three Jewish grandparents, and six half-Jews.≥∑ Of the twelve full Jews, nine were not employed by the Evangelical Church. About half of them ‘‘had been active as organists, choir directors, or cantors in synagogues.’’ The tenth full Jew lived in Switzerland and it was ‘‘fairly certain that he has not been employed by a Protestant congregation.’’ ‘‘Thus, only two full Jews remain who served Protestant congregations in 1933, in Cologne and in Königsberg (Prussia). Both were retired years ago. . . . Of the six half-Jews, only four were employed in the service of a Protestant congregation in 1933; two of these left office years ago.’’≥∏ The Church Chancellery’s letter concluded: ‘‘Thus, of the total number of nineteen Jews and half-Jews performing organ or church music, only two or three Jews and four half-Jews were active in church music within the Evangelical Church during 1933. If one compares this to the fact that many thousands of men and women are employed as church musicians in German Evangelical congregations, then it can be said that church music in the Evangelical Church has kept itself almost completely Judenfrei (free of Jews). This characteristic distinguishes it from nearly all branches of public music in the years before the national revolution.’’≥π As this letter illustrates, Söhngen’s later assertion that the Evangelical Central Council had treated the matter as one of ‘‘fundamental significance’’ was scandalous.≥∫ The chancellery had boasted of its Judenfrei church music. Although the church expressed ‘‘astonishment’’ at the Reich Chamber of Music’s measures, its words indicated approval for the principles behind those measures.≥Ω Thus, the Evangelical Central Council was more interested in protesting ‘‘on principle’’ against outside intervention in the church than in protecting the few non-Aryan church musicians: 121

The Isolation of the Jews The Evangelical Church believes it has demonstrated that it not only accedes to the requirements for the racial renewal of our German people, but is prepared to collaborate enthusiastically. In agreement with the Reich and Prussian Minister for Church Affairs, we must, however, point out that if the application of the Aryan paragraph in the church becomes a matter of consideration at all, then the scope and limitations of this application are set by the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service of 7 April 1933, and the Reich Citizens’ Law of 15 September 1935, in conjunction with the First Decree to the Reich Citizens’ Law of 14 November 1935. We do not see ourselves in a position to consent to an implementation of the Aryan paragraph in the church that goes beyond the scope of these laws.∂≠

Yet the church at one point ordered the suspension of the seven nonAryan church musicians, which Söhngen later explained as having only ‘‘hindered those musicians affected in the public practice of their profession.’’∂∞ It later tried to rescind these suspensions, since ‘‘according to the first provision of the Reich Citizens’ Law they still qualified as citizens.’’∂≤ The Central Council’s main concern, however, was that the state did not challenge the church’s jurisdiction in other areas. The position taken in the July 1936 letter had immediate repercussions for non-Aryan church musicians, who were barred from the Reich Chamber of Music in ‘‘Königsberg (Prussia), Berlin-Friedenau, Cologne-Nippes, Eberswalde, Offenbach (Main), Jever, Brandenburg, and Berlin’’∂≥ and in Mecklenburg,∂∂ Zittau, and Bremen. In Saxony, the regional church government supported the Zittau church council’s prohibition of a performance of the Bruckner E-Minor Mass, since the director of the Zittau People’s Chorus, Bernhard Seidmann, was non-Aryan.∂∑ On 20 October 1936, the regional church government of Saxony informed the Evangelical Church Consistory that there were no longer any non-Aryan church musicians in the Saxon church. In an isolated contrast, the president of the Evangelical Church in Bremen joined the congregation at St. Michael’s there in supporting its organist, Friedrich Blankenburg, after the Reich Chamber of Music ruled that Blankenburg could not continue.∂∏ In general, the National Socialist authorities did not pursue the issue of non-Aryan church musicians intensely. Had it not been for the compromises of the Evangelical Central Council, a few non-Aryan church musicians might have retained their positions until the end of the Third Reich.∂π 122

The Evangelical Church and Its Non-Aryan Members organizations for converted jews

The Reich Association of Christian German Citizens of Non-Aryan or Non-Pure Aryan Descent (usually referred to as the Reich Association of Non-Aryan Christians) was founded in 1933, soon after the onset of state persecution of the Jews. In 1936, the intensification of anti-Jewish policies led the Reich Association of Non-Aryan Christians and similar smaller organizations to form one large federation, which was approved by the responsible office in the Reich Propaganda Ministry in agreement with the Gestapo.∂∫ The new association was called the Paulusbund (Association of Paul: Alliance of Non-Aryan Christians). By 1936, the Paulusbund, founded by Dr. Richard Wolff and subsequently directed by Dr. Heinrich Spiero, had approximately eighty thousand members. The organization claimed to continue ‘‘early Christian traditions,’’ combining a sense of joyous Gnostic revival with an ardent, idealistic love of all things German.∂Ω At a 1936 Advent celebration, Erwin Goldmann, leader of the Stuttgart branch, described how the Paulusbund saw itself: We are people for whom the path to Christ is an act of holy experience, emerging from the deepest necessity. We, too, see our promise and hope in Him, the hero of divine light, of love, of self-mastery, and of selfsacrifice. We are no Bolsheviks, but, in the spirit of our brothers who fell fighting the enemy, are prepared at any time to risk our lives for Germany once again in the struggle against the murderous Red rabble. . . . The shields of honor of our families, whose roots are in the German soil, are undefiled by the filth of the world’s parasites. We are aware of the significance of the given natural tendencies [Uranlage] of each individual and Volk, but we are also convinced that individuals and peoples . . . inspired by superior ideas and complete devotion to the fulfillment of great tasks, can regenerate.∑≠

The name Paulusbund was inspired by the example of the Apostle Paul, whose ‘‘readiness for self-sacrifice must always be an especially heartfelt duty for us as well.’’ It was also important to be ‘‘willing to sacrifice for faith and homeland,’’ and Goldmann concluded: ‘‘In the new year, too, our German Christmas faith shall ever again let the two most important signs for the direction of our life shine brightly before us: The heavenly sign—Christ on the Cross; the earthly sign—Mother Germania over the German Rhine. ‘Fate compels; loyalty decides!’ ’’∑∞ 123

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The Paulusbund existed for only six months. In 1937, with the consent of the Reich Interior Ministry and the Gestapo, Reich Culture Administrator Hans Hinkel ordered all ‘‘full and three-quarter Jews’’ who had been baptized as Christians to leave the organization. They were given the option of joining the Jewish Cultural Alliance. The Paulusbund was renamed the ‘‘Association of 1937,’’ and only baptized ‘‘half-breeds’’ were permitted to belong to it.∑≤ The Association of 1937 was directed by attorney Dr. Friedrich-Karl Lesser; other non-Aryans remained under the jurisdiction of Spiero’s office. Neither group offered genuine refuge for those persecuted by the Nazis. In a letter to Martin Niemöller, Marga Meusel expressed skepticism toward these groups: ‘‘If I may be allowed to express a judgment: one can’t send anyone to these places.’’∑≥ The status of the Society for the Promotion of Christianity among the Jews (Mission to the Jews of the Berlin Regional Church) was different.∑∂ With a century-old missionary tradition, it was considered a special center for the Christian mission to the Jews. Nazi authorities found it so offensive that they tried to remove it completely from the sphere of church activities in 1936. The Berlin chief of police asked the group point-blank ‘‘whether and when the society will decide on its dissolution.’’∑∑ The society responded that its committee had decided not to disband: ‘‘It sees support for its tasks in Point 24 of the nsdap party program.’’∑∏ The Evangelical Chancellery tried to protect the society in a rather dilatory fashion, informing the Berlin chief of police that ‘‘the Reich Church Committee, which is appointed for the pacification and reorganization of church conditions, requests you to refrain temporarily from intervention, since the question of the baptism of Jews will be regulated anew, in agreement with the state, in the reorganization of the church.’’∑π The Provisional Church Administration defended the society more emphatically, noting that the organization had existed since 1822, held corporation rights granted by the state, and was ‘‘involved in ecumenical cooperation.’’∑∫ Shortly thereafter, the Provisional Church Administration asked its regional church governments and Councils of Brethren to let representatives of the society speak on the mission to the Jews at meetings and pastors’ assemblies.∑Ω The letter noted that questions dealing with baptismal practices and the instruction of converts were less important than ‘‘pointing out . . . the insoluble connections between Protestant Christianity and the people of the Old Testament revelation, 124

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connections that have vanished completely from the minds of a large number of our people.’’ Such educational work was all the more necessary, the letter stated, since the Reich Church Committee wanted legally to alter the practice of baptism. The Provisional Church Administration’s efforts to defend the group proved unsuccessful. In 1939, the Berlin Evangelical Consistory stabbed it in the back by sending an extraordinary letter to the society: Under the present circumstances, we intend an immediate reordering of the care of Jews who have entered a relationship with the Evangelical Church through Christian baptism. We request your early reply to the following questions: 1. What, at the present time, is the size of your organization and the area it covers? 2. Would you be in agreement with a change in the name of your organization, for example, to: ‘‘Society for the Pastoral Care of Jewish Christians’’? 3. Would you be prepared, according to guidelines that would be issued by the Evangelical Consistory, to assume the care of Protestant Jews for the area of Greater Berlin? How large is the number of these Protestant Jews to be estimated?∏≠

The implication that non-Aryan Christians’ ‘‘relationship’’ to the Evangelical Church (which it clearly regarded as a nuisance) existed solely through baptism degraded baptism to a formal legal act, divesting it of its sacramental character. Strictly speaking, non-Aryan Christians no longer had a right, according to the consistory, to be members of the church (even members ‘‘in the Body of Christ’’!) through baptism. They were merely an appendix in the Body of Christ, which could be removed without any harm to the church. Thus, it was appropriate, ‘‘under the present circumstances,’’ to eliminate the non-Aryan Christians like appendixes, using the scalpel of bureaucratic decrees. This was evident in the letter’s second and third points. The society was to dispense with the baptism of Jews to ensure that no more non-Aryan Christians could ‘‘enter into a relationship to the Evangelical Church.’’ Under a new name, it was to limit itself to the ‘‘pastoral care’’ of non-Aryan Christians. 125

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On 20 February 1941, the Provisional Church Administration informed its affiliated church governments and the regional and district Councils of Brethren that the society had been dissolved and prohibited by a Gestapo decree.∏∞ the fate of the non-aryan pastors

After 1936, the Confessing Church’s earlier failure to protest and act on behalf of those affected by the Aryan paragraph took its bitter revenge. The systematic nature of Nazi Jewish policies meant that ‘‘cleansing’’ actions for the sake of a ‘‘Jew-free’’ Germany, once fulfilled in the civil sector, would be implemented in the church. The Aryan paragraph, although finally ratified in 1934 by German Christian leaders, was not yet official practice in most regional churches at the beginning of 1936. Still, in its treatment of non-Aryan pastors— despite its goal of preserving peace within the churches—the Reich Church Committee wanted to retain the state’s goodwill. In May 1936, the Reich Church Committee sent an inquiry ‘‘to the highest agencies of the Evangelical regional churches’’ about the number of pastors defined as non-Aryan under the civil service law.∏≤ The Council of Brethren of the Confessing Church in Berlin instructed its pastors not to reply. The Provisional Church Administration announced: ‘‘We see no ecclesiastical reason for replying to an inquiry concerning the racial membership of church professionals, whose offices rest solely upon baptism and the commission from the congregation.’’∏≥ During this period, the Hannover regional church confronted the serious issue of what it intended to do about its non-Aryan pastors. Hannover’s bishop, August Marahrens, faced the question reluctantly, hoping evidently that it would resolve itself. A 1933 verdict by a local court had invalidated the law regulating the legal status of ministers and church civil servants.∏∂ This confirmed Marahrens’s view that ‘‘the Aryan paragraph for clergy in the regional church of Hannover’’ was ‘‘finished.’’∏∑ But it could not have escaped even Marahrens that, in the final analysis, the fate of his non-Aryan colleagues depended not just on a legal decision but on his own theological decision as well. Marahrens (who had once spoken of his ‘‘gratitude’’ to ‘‘our Führer’’) tended toward neutrality in church matters.∏∏ He sought primarily to please everybody and, as Karl Barth once observed, ‘‘always did business precisely with whoever at the moment has the most to offer him in maintaining his historical 126

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importance.’’∏π Five years later, the Swiss Protestant Press Service noted: ‘‘When, from the Christian standpoint, things in Germany went from bad to worse, he (Marahrens) remained silent in face of race hatred and pogroms, of wholesale falsehoods and expropriations, of the arrest without trial of thousands of men to be tortured and murdered in Concentration Camps. But Bishop Marahrens continued to praise the Führer for his constructive work. . . . He hoped to be able to prevent the worst.’’∏∫ Even Eberhard Klügel, author of a reverent book about Marahrens, was at a loss for words about his bishop’s position on the Jewish question.∏Ω With respect to the Aryan paragraph, Marahrens vacillated between supporting the Marburg and Erlangen opinions. He gave the ‘‘historicvölkisch division of the Christian peoples’’ priority over the universality of the Gospel, thereby conceding any chance for his church to be influential on the matter.π≠ Marahrens found a sympathetic supporter in Paul Leo, a non-Aryan ‘‘showpiece pastor’’ in the Hannover church.π∞ In June 1933, Marahrens commissioned a Gutachten from Leo. Leo, who viewed the German Volkskirche as a union of cultic community and Volkstum, believed that a quota ‘‘corresponding to the numerical proportion of Jews . . . for the employability of Jews in the service of the church’’ was justified.π≤ Klügel praised Leo’s ‘‘objectivity’’ in acknowledging that Jewry had inflicted ‘‘certain damages to the Christian-formed culture’’ of the German people and that the Jew ‘‘would have to recognize the actions of the authorities as long as they did not enslave his conscience.’’π≥ In his position in the Jewish question, Marahrens referred only to these tentative sentences from Leo’s Gutachten. The bishop allowed Leo to wait in vain ‘‘for a public statement on the Jewish question,’’ which Leo had requested urgently. After 1934, when Leo was dismissed from his position as a prison and medical chaplain, the only position he was offered was that of associate pastor in an Osnabrück congregation.π∂ One other non-Aryan colleague in the Hannover church, Bruno Benfey, already had been removed from office. Still, as late as November 1937, Leo appeared oblivious to the actual situation: ‘‘The church to the present day has not allowed itself to make any kind of fundamental distinction among the baptized between those baptized from Judaism and the rest. . . . Like before, those baptized from Judaism have a full, uncurtailed right of membership in the Confessing Church.’’π∑ In the summer of 1938, facing hostility from national and local offices 127

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of the Nazi party, Leo complied (‘‘with a heavy heart’’) with the request of his regional church and went into ‘‘temporary retirement.’’π∏ There is no evidence that Marahrens intervened on Leo’s behalf. On 10 November 1938, Leo was taken to Buchenwald and released only after the intervention of other pastors and his church superintendent. In February 1939, he emigrated to Holland and eventually came to the United States, where he became professor of New Testament in Dubuque, Iowa. He died in 1958. Leo was only one of several non-Aryan pastors who lost their positions in the Hannover church.ππ The other prominent case was that of Bruno Benfey in Göttingen.π∫ Son of a Jewish-Christian family that had lived in Göttingen since 1809, Benfey became pastor of the St. Marien church there in 1927. He took an early interest in ecumenical work, joining the World Alliance and the International Fellowship of Reconciliation. HalfJewish and with international connections, he soon became a target of the Nazis in Göttingen. In particular, Benfey came under attack in his own parish from the other minister there and the German Christians on the parish council. The response of authorities on the regional church level was to seek a solution based on ‘‘pastoral pressure’’ that would remove Benfey from the parish.πΩ Disciplinary proceedings were begun against Benfey in November 1936. When he led the worship service on 8 November 1936, demonstrators stood outside the church with signs warning parishioners to stay away, and a small group of protesters walked out of the service when Benfey approached the altar. Following the service, Benfey, his wife, and supporters were followed home by demonstrators shouting anti-Semitic slogans. The parish members who supported him sent a letter to regional church leaders: To avoid any misunderstandings, we members of the St. Marien congregation emphasize that of course we stand wholeheartedly on the foundation of the National Socialist state . . . and recognize the validity of its laws—including the Aryan paragraph. But we oppose it when these laws passed within the realm of the state are forcibly applied in the realm of the church, where they don’t belong. . . . We ask that the regional church government not abandon us in fighting this antiChristian spirit.—Heil Hitler.

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It was part of the inconsistencies of the age that the authors of this petition could simultaneously give the ‘‘Hitler greeting’’ with ideological conviction and express Christian conviction in trying to protect their Jewish-Christian neighbor. Benfey was arrested and taken into ‘‘protective custody.’’ The Hannover regional church issued a warrant against those who had disturbed the service and sent a protest to the Reich Ministry for Church Affairs. At the same time, church leaders saw ‘‘no possibility for a new placement’’ for Benfey.∫≠ Like Leo, Benfey was arrested in November 1938 and taken to Buchenwald. At the invitation of the ecumenical movement, he was able to emigrate to Holland with his wife; he remained in Holland throughout the war. With the support of most parish members, he returned in 1946 to St. Marien in Göttingen, remaining there until his death in 1962. Throughout Germany, pastors discovered that they could expect only limited support from their church leadership. In Westphalia, Pastor Hans Ehrenberg (a former philosophy professor and author of the renowned ‘‘Seventy-Two Theses to the Jewish-Christian Question’’ in 1933) was the target of crude attacks in Der Stürmer that drove him to ask for early retirement in 1937.∫∞ Although the Westphalian Council of Brethren, Ehrenberg’s six colleagues in his parish in Bochum, and the parish itself stood behind Ehrenberg, his regional church (including Westphalian church president Koch) did not. The announcement of Ehrenberg’s departure by his colleagues conveyed their own disappointment in their church leadership: ‘‘The sense of this struggle was not to keep the pastor in his position, but to take seriously the sacrament of baptism and the vocation to the ministry. When Pastor Ehrenberg leaves his ministry now, this is because the church was unable to stand up for him and his district to the extent that was necessary.’’∫≤ Ehrenberg’s apartment was destroyed in the November 1938 pogrom, and Ehrenberg was arrested and taken to Sachsenhausen. After several weeks he was released and emigrated to England.∫≥ Albert Schmidt, one of his colleagues in the Bochum parish, did not hesitate to publicize what had happened. He continued to pray publicly for Ehrenberg in the services—an act for which Schmidt himself was imprisoned.

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∞≥

Ecumenical Responses ‘‘From the beginning, the Confessing Church’s struggle has been carried out with the intense sympathy of the Christian churches outside Germany,’’ Dietrich Bonhoeffer observed in 1935. ‘‘This has been noted with suspicion and condemned in political and church circles.’’∞ For the German Evangelical Church, any kind of foreign connections reeked suspiciously of a defeatist conspiracy, and most church leaders rejected any kind of ‘‘foreign interference’’ in domestic German affairs. Church leaders and the Church Foreign Office differed strongly with those in the Confessing Church on how the Jewish question should be addressed in ecumenical assemblies.≤ The 1934 ecumenical conference in Fanø, Denmark, declared its solidarity with the Confessing Church, underscoring this by electing Bonhoeffer and the absent Confessing synod president Karl Koch to the Ecumenical Council for Life and Work ‘‘as consultive and co-opted members.’’≥ Nonetheless, as time passed, Bishop Theodor Heckel, head of the Church Foreign Office,∂ succeeded in enhancing his own reputation, neutralizing the Confessing Church, and hoodwinking foreign ecumenical leaders about the true state of affairs in Germany.∑ In Fanø, Heckel argued that the Jewish question was not his responsibility.∏ One year later, he assured the Executive Committee of the Ecumenical Council for Practical Christianity in Chamby-sur-Montreauxπ that the Jewish question ‘‘was being dealt with much more openly in Germany than a year ago, and that plans that had been put in hand by the Reich Church were on the way to fulfillment.’’∫ A few days earlier, the World Alliance for Promoting International Friendship through the Churches also convened in Chamby.Ω At the preliminary session, Pastor Hermann Maas of Heidelberg gave remarks entitled ‘‘The Question of the Christian Non-Aryans.’’∞≠ He deliberately confined himself to the situation of non-Aryan Christians—‘‘not because I . . . have not seen the distress (of the Jews). But that would lead us on forever, and cause us to overlook the problem of the Christian non-Aryans, which has been ignored far too long.’’ The number of those affected, he said, ranged between two hundred fifty thousand (‘‘far below reality’’) and two million (this was before the passage of the Nuremberg Laws). The figure suggested by ‘‘the political Racial Office is approximately one and 130

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a half million.’’ Of these, 85 to 88 percent were Protestant and only about 12 percent Roman Catholic. Maas believed the ecumenical movement faced three issues. The first was the educational problem. Barred from the universities, young people faced ‘‘enormous retraining and upheaval.’’ Maas recommended establishing boarding schools on the colonial school model, providing instruction in modern languages and ‘‘preparatory training for agricultural work and settlement.’’ This required that churches in the ecumenical movement establish ties with the educational ministries in their countries. Second was the issue of emigration. Maas pleaded for the creation of secure job opportunities for emigrants and the purchase or donation of land for their resettlement. The third problem was specifically ecclesiastical. The church, Maas said, could not let itself be moved by political animosities; its mission was to care for those who had been injured or were in danger. The Gospel’s message must ‘‘protect against despair, and the faith in election as shown in the passage from Rom. 8:24–11’’ must ‘‘remain the point of departure and the goal of all work, all aid, and all willingness to accept assistance.’’ Maas called for a committee that would seek the support of the Reich government and establish contacts with foreign church and governmental agencies, the Roman Catholic Church, and the political relief campaign. The committee could assist in setting up and coordinating counseling centers and also work ‘‘toward the acquisition of land and the organization of farms’’ for the resettlement of refugees. Noting that substantial aid for Jewish non-Aryans had been raised through collections and donations, Maas asked: Was it ‘‘impossible for the Christian church . . . to stand up for its own members, the Christian non-Aryans?’’ ‘‘When God calls us, may our only reply be our weak-spirited ‘Impossible’? We have a great God and a true Savior. So nothing is impossible.’’ Maas’s suggestion for a relief committee was not a new idea. In 1933, Siegmund-Schultze had set up a relief project in Switzerland for the racially and politically persecuted. He had successfully gained the interest of government agencies, including the Reich Interior Ministry and the Foreign Office. At that point, the German branch of the World Alliance for Promoting International Friendship through the Churches had also suggested the establishment of a general church relief agency 131

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for German emigrants. Only the general secretary of the U.S. World Alliance office expressed misgivings. This temporarily stalled plans for an ecumenical committee on German refugee relief, and the first committee meeting, planned for 1 July 1933, was canceled.∞∞ After the passage of the Nuremberg Laws, however, the question of aid to non-Aryan Christians became increasingly urgent. Compared with many Jews, most Christian non-Aryans had no foreign contacts of any kind. In Germany, there were more than twice as many non-Aryan Christians as there were religiously observant Jews. A sense of helplessness developed in the various relief agencies as immigration regulations in the nations bordering Germany became more restrictive. This led Siegmund-Schultze to request World Alliance help in expanding the newly established central ecumenical agency for German refugees, which had its temporary headquarters in Geneva. ‘‘The responsible church agencies in the European countries and in the United States of America support these relief agencies,’’ SiegmundSchultze noted.∞≤ The director of the Reich Church Committee, Dr. Wilhelm Zoellner, was invited to London for the constitutive meeting of the International Church Relief Commission for German Refugees. Skeptical about any international campaign that might patronize the German church, Zoellner expressed astonishment that he had been informed of these plans at such a late date, whereas the representatives of the Confessing Church had been contacted much earlier.∞≥ He would have to ‘‘review carefully’’ the question of German Evangelical Church participation ‘‘in the commission’s work’’∞∂ and suggested that all further communications be sent via the Church Foreign Office.∞∑ Heckel and Zoellner were united in their suspicion of foreign church intervention.∞∏ Nonetheless, a German representative attended the constitutive meeting of the Relief Commission on 31 January 1936. Together with Siegmund-Schultze (who was the temporary director), Hermann Maas participated in the London meeting ‘‘on behalf of the German Confessional Church and the German Council of the World Alliance.’’∞π At Bell’s suggestion, Danish bishop Valdemar Ammundsen chaired the commission. The meeting focused on two issues. The first was the necessity and possibility of aid, especially to non-Aryan Christians. Siegmund-Schultze reported on their situation, and Hermann Maas drew additional attention to the plight of children, the lack of funds for new schools, and the 132

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issues confronting emigrants. Second, the group discussed the appointment of a new director, since Siegmund-Schultze wanted to step down after 31 March 1936.∞∫ The Ecumenical Council convened in Chamby from 21 to 25 August 1936. It was the only ecumenical conference where Germany was represented by delegations from the German Evangelical Church and the Confessing Church.∞Ω A lively debate about the Jewish question arose. Bishop Bell, who had mediated for days among Zoellner, Dibelius, and Koch with some success, moved that the plenary session refrain from adopting a resolution on the matter, since ‘‘it was not possible to adopt a resolution adequate to the situation and with due justice both to the necessities of the case and to the rights of members of the Council specially concerned.’’≤≠ He suggested letting the Administrative Committee handle the question, particularly with respect to the matter of non-Aryan schoolchildren in Germany. The caution and consideration with which the Germans were treated in Chamby was due in part to the situation in Germany (precarious for the Confessing Church and embarrassing for the Reich Church Committee) following the indiscreet publication of the church’s memorandum to Hitler in June 1936. The German church was scrambling to undo the damage, but even a statement read from the pulpits of German churches on 23 August, which was mostly silent about the memorandum’s criticism of anti-Semitism and the concentration camps, did little to improve the church’s situation.≤∞ In Chamby, Zoellner and Dibelius urged the assembly not to go beyond Bishop Bell’s ‘‘explanation, so well-considered and evading the dangers in such a skillful manner and, yet, adhering to that which is essential.’’≤≤ Bell had said: ‘‘The Ecumenical Council has directed its attention to the fact that the churches are most moved by the distress of those who, in various parts of the world, suffer because of their faith, their nationality, or race. In deep sympathy with these sufferers, the Council calls upon the Administrative Committee to consider seriously what steps can be undertaken to relieve and to heal the present distress.’’≤≥ Bishop Heckel was isolated in Chamby. The delegates from the Confessing Church were in the majority, and the other official German delegates (Hanns Lilje, Prof. Martin Dibelius, and Erich Stange) felt an obligation to their Confessing colleagues. Of the non-German ecumenists, Bishop Bell (who played a decisive role in Chamby) was least inclined to favor the 133

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Church Foreign Office, and the French delegate refused even to sit at the same table with Heckel.≤∂ Although one of the topics discussed in Bonhoeffer’s presence was ‘‘his’’ theme—the treatment of the Jewish question—he did not speak during the official negotiations. Had the composition of the German delegation and the attempted arrangements between the Confessing Church delegates and the Reich Church Committee led him to become resigned? Some weeks later, he wrote French ecumenical leader Henriod that his silence in Chamby was ‘‘not entirely without reason.’’≤∑ The next significant ecumenical meeting, the World Conference of Churches of the Ecumenical Council for Practical Christianity (Life and Work), convened 12–26 July 1937 in Oxford to deliberate on the theme of ‘‘church, community, and state.’’≤∏ In a message to the Christian churches, the conference bluntly addressed the racial question, revealing the German lack of participation; neither the Confessing Church nor the German Evangelical Church was represented in Oxford.≤π The Oxford Conference formulated ‘‘certain principles that Christians everywhere should seek to have incorporated in the sentiments and public policies of their nations and communities’’: 1. The recognition of the value of every human being as a person. 2. The right of every individual, of every race, color, or present status, to the conditions essential for life as a person, to education, to vocational opportunity, recreation, and social intercourse. 3. Full participation in fellowship and leadership for members of a less advanced people as they prove their ability. 4. Active cooperation and fellowship among leaders of different racial groups. 5. Recognition by the community of its responsibility to less privileged persons of whatever race or group, not only for their assistance and protection, but also for special educational and cultural opportunities. 6. The necessity of such economic and social change as shall open the way to full opportunity for persons of all races. However, it is as members of the church of Christ that Christians bear the heaviest guilt for the present situation. And here is their greatest

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Ecumenical Responses obligation and opportunity. . . . God calls the church to implacably oppose racial pride, racial hatreds and persecutions, and the exploitation of other races in all forms, and to utter its word unambiguously, both within and outside its own borders. It is especially necessary at this time that the church, throughout the world, bring every resource at its command against the sin of anti-Semitism. In their private lives and in their churches, Christians should take the lead in developing greater sympathy for those who are in need owing to unequal opportunity, those who are excluded by prevailing community customs and sentiments, or those who suffer persecution, anger, and contempt because of their race. . . . Christians must expect to sacrifice popularity in loyalty to Christian insight and love.≤∫

This appeal to world Christianity had no effect on the refugee conference in Evian-les-Bains (6–15 July 1938). Thirty-two states had sent representatives to this international conference, which was intended to deal specifically with the reception of persecuted Jews from Germany and annexed Austria. Various emigrant groups and the Jewish communities from Nazi-dominated territory were represented. The conference foundered on the majority’s refusal to agree to liberal immigration terms. Various motives—political ignorance, a lack of information about the true predicament of the Jews, lethargy, and disinterest—were responsible for the failure of the conference. In the final analysis, the attempts of individual ecumenists in the Confessing Church to aid the persecuted non-Aryans through their contacts with foreign churches failed because the ecumenical world sought to remain impartial toward the Confessing Church and the German Evangelical Church. This only led to increased rivalry between the two German groups. The Confessing Church suffered under its lack of recognition in the protocols of the ecumenical councils, and the German Evangelical Church felt patronized by the ecumenical world through foreign interference in its affairs. Because the ecumenists did not want to anger either faction, both groups felt slighted.≤Ω The damage to the Confessing Church was greater, however. The German Evangelical Church, particularly its Foreign Office, was more interested in seeing the Confessing Church disappear from foreign circles than it was in maintaining those contacts itself. The impediments to the Confessing Church increased as the situation gradually turned to the 135

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advantage of the official German church; ‘‘Heckel and his representatives could be sure of their passports and foreign exchange, whereas trips to foreign countries for representatives of the Provisional Church Administration became a more and more difficult problem.’’≥≠ Accordingly, official church pressures on the Confessing Church increased. In 1938, the Church Foreign Office attempted to discipline ecumenical veteran Max Diestel, a Berlin church superintendent and Confessing Church pastor, for his controversial speeches at an ecumenical conference: I request, by order of the Reich Minister of Church Affairs, that notification be made through the competent council to Superintendent Diestel, Berlin-Lichtenfelde . . . that the declaration that Superintendent Diestel made in the name of the German Delegation in Larvik on the resolution of the international council of the World Alliance for Promoting Friendship through the Churches concerning non-Aryan refugees from Germany has displeased the Reich Minister of Churches most strongly, and cannot in any manner be considered adequate. Concurrently, I request that the person named above [Diestel] be advised that, before all journeys abroad, insofar as they relate to church affairs, he shall establish contact with the Church Foreign Office of the German Evangelical Church.≥∞

The letter reflected the Church Foreign Office’s resentment of Diestel’s independence and its chilly relations with the German branch of the World Alliance. This resentment was matched by the Foreign Office’s outspoken declarations of loyalty toward the state. When Hitler approved a subsidy of twenty thousand marks for German Protestant work in Palestine, Heckel expressed thanks to ‘‘my Führer’’ for the ‘‘magnanimous contribution,’’ which, because of ‘‘the oppressive misery and the tasks with which the German parish in Jerusalem is confronted because of England’s brutal policy . . . (constitutes) wonderful support. But it means even more. In this contribution from your hand, we see a token of that profound generosity which is always extended to those who live in misery and need, and is a sign of encouragement, in a German outpost’s struggle for existence, to stand valiantly and bravely for the honor of the Reich and its Führer.’’≥≤ The ‘‘magnanimous contribution’’ from the Reich chancellor’s ‘‘personal funds’’ was a direct subsidy to those forces trying to impede the 136

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immigration of Jews to Palestine. The Protestant parish in Jerusalem was no longer just a center for the evangelization of Jews in the Holy Land; it had become an outpost of greater Germany, which was united with Arab Christians in the struggle against Judaism.≥≥ Heckel agreed with the Reich government that German interests in Palestine were looked after by the Führer, and the ‘‘Christian’’ ones by his English colleague, the bishop of Winchester.≥∂ The subsidy from the Führer’s personal funds was of no use to persecuted Jews or even to non-Aryan Christians. According to Heckel, the ones who ‘‘live in misery and need’’ in Palestine were not the Jewish refugees but rather Christians burdened by Jewish immigration! From the perspective of those abroad, the question of home church contributions and collections for those persecuted owing to racial origin became all the more urgent. Franz Hildebrandt,≥∑ who had rescued himself in 1937 by emigrating to London on short notice, posed this question to Bishop Marahrens: In the Sunday newsletter, which our local congregation≥∏ has received for some time now, I read . . . that, in all the congregations of the Protestant Lutheran regional church of Hannover, a collection for the alleviation of the distress of the Sudeten German brethren has been made. May I take the liberty of following this point further with a question: during the last five years, has the regional church of Hannover taken a similar collection for the alleviation of the distress experienced by the non-Aryan brethren in and outside Germany?

Hildebrandt noted the ‘‘unspeakable misery’’ that he encountered daily: I easily could send you a number of requests for help (from within Germany), the repetitive tenor of which is a simple: ‘‘Save us from committing suicide.’’ A small and poor congregation here on the outside stands helpless before such cries for help. The ecumenical world does what it can, but that is a drop in the bucket. . . . ≥π What is really being done in the churches at home for their baptized members who are suffering because of their racial origin? . . . May I at least ask whether the solidarity displayed for the Sudeten German brethren in the church’s prayers . . . has ever been expressed— explicitly—toward the non-Aryan Christians? I can hardly believe that the spiritual leadership of an Evangelical Lutheran Church can justify

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The Isolation of the Jews its silence about this suffering before the Lord and the confession of the church. How splendid it would be for all those affected and, not least of all, for the cause of our church at home and abroad if you, Bishop, would dispel the doubt that oppresses us with a clear statement!

Marahrens replied that unfortunately he could not express any written opinion on the questions raised by Hildebrandt. With the pat phrases typical of a shoulder-shrugging official, he added, ‘‘I am thankful that you have so earnestly indicated the concern that moves you and us. With a sincere wish for God’s care . . .’’≥∫ A few days later, the Reichskristallnacht broke over Germany; its hellish brightness cast a murderous light on the last chapter of the fate of the Jews.

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part three

The ‘‘Elimination’’ of the Jews ∞Ω≥∫–∂∑

National Socialist policies had successfully expelled the Jews from German society. Only a signal was needed for the final stage of the persecution of the Jews. If this phase were to differ from the previous one that used legal mechanisms to denigrate and isolate the Jews, it would be necessary to mount efforts on an entirely different scale. Hardly anyone at the time could have foreseen the final consequences; the Nazis were planning something different from anything that had been done before. Nazi propaganda now had to prepare the Germans for the unimaginable. The German language itself was skillfully revised to destroy any remaining scruples about genocide. In retrospect, some of the terminology helps explain how it was possible for a policy of such unprecedented cruelty to succeed. The language of mathematics spoke of calculations needed for the ‘‘reckoning’’ with the Jews; bureaucratic organization provided for the ‘‘disposal’’ of the Jewish question; and the laws necessary for all this signified the ‘‘perfection’’ of government policies—a term that created an ethical alibi for those involved. Linguistically borrowing from the spheres of arithmetic, bureaucracy, and ethics, the process that led to the ‘‘final solution’’ of the Jewish question after 1941 was begun. The term final solution would ultimately eclipse the darkest Jewish apocalyptic, and it took place under the pretense of legality. On 12 November 1938, Jochen Klepper wrote in his diary: ‘‘The morning paper. Dr. Goebbels: ‘Germany will respond to Grynszpan’s shots legally, but mercilessly.’ ’’ And, on 14 November: ‘‘Yesterday a new speech by Goebbels: The Jewish question is being solved for good.’’∞ the reichskristallnacht

Hitler wagered that the Western powers, although ‘‘poisoned by international Judaism,’’ would scarcely be willing to wage war on behalf of Jews in Germany.≤ He was encouraged by the September 1938 Munich agreement in which Neville Chamberlain and Edouard Daladier, eager to preserve the peace, had offered yet another small nation to the Reich chancellor. The Evian conference in July 1938 had demonstrated the international lack of interest in the fate of German Jews to Hitler’s greatest satisfaction.≥ Thus, Hitler was free to intensify his Jewish policy without fearing 141

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serious foreign intervention. He still needed a certain number of Jews in Germany to use as hostages in political or economic deals; it was no coincidence that the decree affecting passports appeared one week after the Munich accords.∂ This decree halted the issue of new passports to Jews and declared those previously issued invalid; the passports became valid again only after they had been marked with a J, identifying the holder as a Jew. On the other hand, it was important to get rid of the Jews from the east. Sixty thousand Jews with Polish citizenship now resided in Germany. On 6 October 1938, Poland, in anticipation of the German deportation of Polish Jews, declared the passports of Poles living abroad invalid. The appropriate documents had to be filed in Poland to obtain a special stamp before 29 October; whoever failed to do this became stateless overnight. Hitler’s ‘‘Jewish expert,’’ Reinhard Heydrich, used the night of 28 October to move seventeen thousand Jews, due to become stateless in a few hours, across the Polish border. When the border was discovered to be closed, these people, most jammed into trucks, were driven into the fields. A catastrophe of tremendous proportions was avoided only after the American Joint Distribution Committee found places in Polish cities for most of the survivors. Among the victims of these first mass deportations were the parents of seventeen-year-old Herschel Grynszpan, who learned of this during a visit with his uncle in Paris. Grynszpan went to the German embassy on 7 November, planning to murder ambassador Graf Welczek. As Legation Counselor Ernst vom Rath came to meet him, Grynszpan shot him on the staircase of the embassy. A gift had fallen into the laps of Hitler and his followers; the assassination was a welcome pretext to initiate severe anti-Jewish measures. On 9 November, Goebbels gave a virulently anti-Jewish speech at the fifteenth anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch of 1923, referring to the 1936 murder of Wilhelm Gustloff, leader of the Swiss National Socialist Party.∑ The same evening, news of vom Rath’s death was circulated to all important party offices—along with Goebbels’s order, approved by Hitler and subsequently put into action by Heydrich: ‘‘Upon command of the Group Leader . . . all Jewish synagogues within the brigade are to be blown up or set on fire immediately.’’∏ The party considered this ‘‘rehearsal’’ for the Final Solution a complete success.π On 11 November, Heydrich reported to Göring that 191 syna142

Reactions to the November Pogrom

gogues had been set on fire and 76 additional synagogues completely demolished. Eight hundred fifteen businesses had been destroyed and 29 set on fire, and 171 houses had been either burned down or plundered and wrecked. (These figures, which Heydrich himself estimated as far too low, were revised; later research, for example, listed 7,500 plundered businesses.) Half the nearly twenty thousand arrested Jews were taken to Buchenwald. By 11 November, thirty-six people were dead and thirty-six seriously injured.∫ Following the tradition of using pogroms against the Jews for personal enrichment at the expense of the victims, Göring took the opportunity to satisfy his passion for art collections and to revive his Four-Year Plan.Ω Göring’s 12 November order for a ‘‘penance payment’’ imposed a payment of one billion Reich marks on German Jews. In addition, the damage resulting to businesses and apartment houses was to be cleared away immediately by the Jews at their own expense, and any insurance claims by Jews were to be confiscated in favor of the Reich.∞≠ Art works, real estate, securities, and jewels as well as ‘‘all Jewish businesses’’ were ‘‘to be seized and sold to non-Jews, whereby the owners are to receive only the bookrate credit, at a fixed rate of interest.’’∞∞ These brief descriptions can scarcely portray the extent of this orgy of organized bestiality; they serve here as an introduction to the reaction of the German Evangelical Church and its members.

∞∂

Reactions to the November Pogrom The Confessing Church was increasingly at risk. Its members had been immobilized by numerous arrests and bans on travel and speaking. Forced to improvise, the church had to rely on the techniques of underground organization and action. The previous period of church discussions and resolutions had led to sharp divisions within the Confessing Church about its position toward the Jews. Now the church had entered a period in which only very small groups or, more frequently, individuals were capable of offering help to the persecuted. As political pressure grew stronger in the late summer of 1938 (two and a half months before the so-called Reichskristallnacht), a new edition of the Pastors’ Emergency League pledge appeared. Point 3 had not 143

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been changed one iota: ‘‘In such a commitment, I bear witness to the fact that the implementation of the Aryan paragraph in the sphere of the church violates the confessional position.’’∞ In 1933, this sentence had been viewed by some as an easy burden and by others as an adiaphoron. Only a few had regarded it as the central issue at stake. Now, in these more dangerous times, it became a thorn in the flesh of the church. Assistance to Jews was made more difficult by intensified anti-Jewish legislation, the Gestapo’s increasingly sophisticated spying on the churches, and the military conscription of pastors that began in September 1939.≤ Belatedly mobilized, many Christians now discovered that their options for defending the Jews had become much more limited. In some cases, Protestant rectories were targets of destruction during the November 1938 pogrom. A few pastors fell victim to gangs of sa members who, enraged that there were no Jews in their towns, vented their energies against representatives of the church. Between 10 and 13 November, two rectories in Nassau-Hesse, one in the Rhineland, and two in Bavaria were attacked. These were not assaults on pastors suspected of pro-Jewish attitudes but simply the consequences of antiSemitic fervor that, in the absence of its intended victims, sought a new outlet.≥ The pastors who were singled out were called racial epithets such as ‘‘Jew-dog,’’ in a transposition of anti-Jewish invective to people who had no relation to Jews at all.∂ By their own accounts, these pastors did not know why this was happening to them.∑ Bonhoeffer’s 1933 prediction that the church would eventually suffer the same treatment it had allowed to befall the Jews had come true. There were other pastors, however, who courageously broke the general silence maintained by both the German Evangelical Church and the Provisional Church Administration and dared to show public solidarity with the persecuted. On 16 November, exactly one week after the Kristallnacht, Christians throughout Germany gathered to worship on the annual Day of Repentance. The address given by Pastor Julius von Jan of Oberlenningen near Kirchheim–Teck has become the most famous sermon delivered on that day. Von Jan preached on the lectionary text, Jer. 22:29: ‘‘O land, land, land, hear the word of the Lord!’’ With the assassination in Paris and its aftermath in mind, von Jan cried out to his congregation: 144

Reactions to the November Pogrom . . . But who would have thought that this one crime in Paris could result in so many crimes here in Germany? Here we have been repaid for the widespread break away from God and Christ, for this organized antiChristianity. Passions are unleashed; God’s commandments are despised; houses of worship that were holy for others have been burned down with impunity; the property of strangers robbed or destroyed. Men who served our German people faithfully and performed their duty conscientiously were thrown into concentration camps simply because they belonged to another race. This injustice may not be acknowledged from above—but the sound common sense of the people feels it distinctly, even if no one dares to speak about it. And we, as Christians, see how this injustice incriminates our people before God and must bring new punishments upon Germany. . . . What a person sows, so he will reap! Indeed, it is a dreadful seed of hatred that is now being sown. What a dreadful harvest will grow from it, if God does not grant us and our people the grace for honest repentance.∏

Nine days later, a band of hired thugs drove up to the Oberlenningen rectory, assaulted von Jan, and took him to the Kirchheim jail. After four months’ imprisonment, he was deported from Württemberg and given a position in Bavaria as a parish administrator. A year later, at a judicial hearing in Stuttgart (similar to those held before the notorious Nazi People’s Court), he was sentenced to sixteen months’ imprisonment. After five months, von Jan was released and given three years’ probation. He then held office near Passau and returned to Oberlenningen after serving as a soldier in September 1945.π The Württemberg church leadership and von Jan’s neighboring colleagues intervened considerately on his behalf and that of his family. The church leadership, however, would not publicly condemn the pogroms.∫ The regional Council of Brethren announced that it would issue a statement if the bishop would place his authority behind it; when this was not forthcoming, the council remained silent. A few people planned to distribute copies of von Jan’s sermon, along with a recommended intercessory prayer, to Confessing Church pastors. The prayer characterized von Jan ‘‘as a faithful and conscientious preacher and counselor’’ who bore ‘‘a clear, powerful witness, entirely justified by the Bible, in the Repentance Day sermon against the sin of our people in the outrages against the Jews.’’Ω It is not known whether 145

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the prayer was actually read in the congregations and what response it received. Although the von Jan incident was the most prominent case, several other Repentance Day sermons protested the events of 9 November.∞≠ In Dahlem, Helmut Gollwitzer’s sermon exemplified the political dimension of preaching; he preached between the lines but clearly enough for everyone to understand.∞∞ Basing his sermon on Luke 3:3–14, Gollwitzer asked: What do we expect of God if we come to Him now and sing and read the Bible, pray, preach, confess our sins . . . ? He truly must loathe our impudence and temerity. . . . Whoever can no longer confess his guilt before God cannot confess it easily any longer before human beings. Here, then, begins the madness, the persecution complex, that must demonize the other in order to idolize itself. . . . Today, we are acquainted enough with the self-loathing we feel where Evil is not just evil, but is repulsively disguised as morality; where base instincts, hatred, and vindictiveness conduct themselves as something great and good. . . . All of us together are burdened by guilt. . . . We are all participants in this, the one through cowardliness, the other through the indolence that steers clear of everything, through the silent ignorance, the silence, the closing of the eyes, the inertia of the heart that becomes aware of anguish only when it can be seen clearly. . . . Our own complicity is evident, as human beings who love their own lives and themselves, and have just enough love left over for God and their neighbor as can be dispensed without effort and bother. . . . Open your mouth for the speechless (Prov. 31:8) and for the cause of all who are forsaken. . . . God wants to see deeds . . . precisely from those who have escaped with the aid of Christ.

Gollwitzer concluded, ‘‘Our neighbor now waits outside, destitute, unprotected, without honor; hungry, hunted, and harried by fears for his naked existence, he waits to see whether the Christian community has really celebrated a day of penitence today. Jesus Christ is waiting for this! Amen.’’∞≤ Gollwitzer carefully weighed his words in order to preserve his future ability to speak out in the totalitarian system, and the Gestapo took no measures against him. Assaults on rectories occurred almost exclusively 146

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in smaller towns, which suggests that the sa and ss avoided such attacks in cities, where they would have created a considerable stir. The number of pastors who preached or prayed on behalf of the Jews on Repentance Day, 1938, is unclear.∞≥ Even in the Confessing Church, most kept quiet about the Kristallnacht.∞∂ The few exceptions, like Pastor von Jan, ‘‘triggered nothing short of a shock.’’∞∑ Out of caution, some daring sermons were not even written down; others were locked up and hidden, coming to the light of day only years later (in the case of a sermon by New Testament scholar Günther Bornkamm).∞∏ Bornkamm had preached about ‘‘the fury of hate and the unrestrained savagery that have broken loose in our people in these days, and are causing the most profound destruction.’’∞π And Bonhoeffer? Could not a clear statement have been expected from him? It was probably during this period that he made his famous remark, ‘‘Only he who cries out for the Jews may also sing Gregorian chant.’’∞∫ Bonhoeffer was resigned about the Confessing Church’s failure to deal with the Jewish question and, in 1938, was particularly distressed by the controversy about the loyalty oath. (The Confessing Church was divided over whether pastors could swear a loyalty oath to the Führer; most eventually did, to Bonhoeffer’s disappointment.)∞Ω All this had increased his sense of estrangement from the Confessing Church. Still, it cannot be said whether he ‘‘sang Gregorian chant’’ during this period. His 3 December 1938 sermon on confession and repentance, intended to prepare his students for the Eucharist, sounded more like the pietistic appeals of an evangelist preacher than a modern sermon on repentance.≤≠ In any case, Bonhoeffer did not cry out but only underlined Ps. 74:8 in the Bible that he used for prayer and meditation: ‘‘They have burned all the meeting places of God in the land.’’ In the margin, he wrote: ‘‘11.9.1938’’; and, in a letter to his Finkenwalde colleagues, he indicated that his current thoughts were centered on such biblical passages.≤∞ Some church leaders supported the pogrom. On 23 November 1938, Thuringia’s Bishop Martin Sasse distributed a compilation of the relevant antisemitica extracted from Luther’s slanderous text ‘‘Von den Juden und ihre Lügen’’ (On the Jews and their lies).≤≤ In the preface, the bishop exulted, ‘‘On 10 November 1938, Luther’s birthday, the synagogues in 147

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Germany are burning,’’ and he recommended the works of the ‘‘greatest anti-Semite of his time,’’ who had warned ‘‘his people against the Jews.’’ In Württemberg, Bishop Wurm commented on the events of 9 November in a way that he ‘‘later bitterly regretted.’’ (After the war, he wrote that his silence about the persecution of the Jews would haunt him for the rest of his life.)≤≥ Wurm’s official response to von Jan’s sermon was hardly a defense.≤∂ Although the church could not neglect prophetic preaching, Wurm wrote the deaconates, it was ‘‘self-evident that the servant of the church, in such preaching, must avoid everything that is tantamount to inadmissible criticism of actual political events.’’ In an era when hostile parties could politically exploit even purely religious comments, every evangelist had to take heed ‘‘whether his remarks and prayers really have a spiritual and not a demonstrative character, whether they truly have those present in mind, and not, perhaps, outsiders, whether they have as their goal a presentation of the genuine Gospel . . . and not a critique of all kinds of incidents and circumstances.’’ Pastors had to avoid loading a sermon ‘‘with political and church political remarks that certainly inspire the pastor but hardly the listeners.’’≤∑ In a remark unmistakably directed at von Jan, Wurm noted that ‘‘if, from the perspective of the state or the church, a pastor gives justifiable cause for complaint, then the criminal prosecution authorities and the church supervisory boards are required to call the responsible person to account. The indignation expressed by the Christian community against lynch justice and acts of terror, as described above, is completely justified.’’≤∏ Wurm concluded that he had ‘‘noted what the Evangelical Church has to say about recent events in a letter to an appropriate authority of the Reich.’’ Wurm’s final sentence referred to his letter to Reich Justice Minister Franz Gürtner.≤π It was not worded as a protest against the November pogrom but offered ‘‘some thoughts on the present situation in Germany, based upon the distress of a Christian and German conscience . . . directed to an appointed custodian of law and the concept of law in our Fatherland’’:≤∫ For the Evangelical Church and its clergy, a particularly difficult situation is created by these facts [that is, the recent acts of terror]. On the basis of many years’ experience, I may say that there is hardly any class that has kept itself so free of the specifically Jewish character, and that has

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Reactions to the November Pogrom furnished so much evidence of its readiness to serve Volk and Fatherland, as the Protestant pastorate. As much as anyone else who loves the Fatherland, it is deeply grateful that Germany has a completely different status today than twenty years ago. It knows that this would not have been possible without the Führer and National Socialism. But it cannot forget the words of Jesus: For what will a man be profited, if he gains the whole world, and forfeits his soul? . . . Sooner or later, transgressions against the commands of God must have their revenge. Because we wish to spare our people from having to endure later the same humiliations and sufferings to which others now are exposed, we lift up our hands before our people to intercede, admonish, warn, even when we know that, because of this, we are called slaves of the Jews and are threatened by measures similar to those that have been used against the Jews.≤Ω

The letter included the words that Wurm later ‘‘bitterly regretted’’: ‘‘In no way do I dispute the right of the state to resist Judaism as a dangerous element. Since my youth, I have held the judgment of men such as Heinrich von Treitschke and Adolf Stoecker on the corruptive effect of Jewry in the religious, moral, literary, economic, and political spheres to be correct, and, as director of the city mission in Stuttgart thirty years ago, I led a public and not unsuccessful struggle against the Jewish intrusion into the welfare system.’’≥≠ Any attempt to judge Wurm’s letter raises difficult questions. Is it possible that Wurm meant these anti-Semitic statements only as a strategic benevolent gesture, to preserve the Christians and their church from the flames of terror? Or was he a sincere anti-Semite, for whom the outrages against the Jews went too far but who still, in his heart, felt a certain affinity for the state’s policy toward the Jews? The record supports the latter interpretation. Had Wurm’s heart been with the Jews, he would have supported Julius von Jan with all the authority of his bishop’s office and with the courageous determination that he demonstrated several years later in his public protests against the euthanasia measures and in his 1943 public condemnation of Germany’s ‘‘ruthless war.’’ Instead, Wurm officially abandoned von Jan, assuring Justice Minister Gürtner that he had urged ‘‘the Protestant pastors of our regional church . . . to avoid everything that, in such a volatile atmosphere, can be regarded as inflammatory.’’≥∞ Remarks by another prominent churchman revealed anti-Jewish reser149

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vations and Lutheran loyalty toward authority. After a journey through the United States at the time of the November pogrom, Dr. Hanns Lilje, general secretary of the Lutheran World Federation (and a member of the Confessing Church), wrote his political impressions.≥≤ ‘‘In November and December,’’ he wrote, ‘‘the recent German events, above all the Jewish question, occupied the minds of the people completely.’’ Lilje attributed the protests in the United States to ‘‘the manipulation’’ of public opinion, ‘‘which obviously rested in the hands of Jewish groups.’’ Asked why the German churches had not protested against the Nazi regime, Lilje replied ‘‘with the counter-question: Against what should the church protest, perhaps against the halt in unemployment? On such a matter, of course, the church would have grounds only for gratitude and unanimous approval.’’≥≥ As Lilje’s remarks indicate, there was a wide spectrum of opinion within the Confessing Church. At a time when Martin Niemöller had already served one and a half years of his sentence as the personal prisoner of the Führer, Lilje was kowtowing to the National Socialist regime. The Confessing Church was still torn by the controversies over the September 1938 prayer liturgy and the loyalty oath.≥∂ As a result, the Confessing Church failed to criticize publicly Lilje’s declarations of loyalty, and its official organ, Junge Kirche, published not a word about the Kristallnacht.≥∑ The German Christian newspaper Deutsche Gemeinschaftsblatt, in contrast, didn’t hesitate to justify the acts of terror as consistent with the policies of the Führer.≥∏ One month after the November pogrom, the Confessing Church gathered in Berlin-Steglitz for an Advent church conference. The conference was anything but peaceful. After exhausting meetings, the delegates agreed on a statement about the events of November.≥π They declared the church to be ‘‘stricken most grievously’’ by these events; the resolution that was passed, however, focused not on the persecuted Jews but on those Christians suffering on their behalf: ‘‘Others, even in the face of the offenses against the Jews, have preached the Ten Commandments of God with seriousness, and have been persecuted for this. . . . We must therefore, in the name of Christ, maintain here that the church has to preach repentance and grace to the whole Volk.’’≥∫ Still, the Confessing Church departed slightly from its previous habit of mentioning only non-Aryan Christians. Although an introductory 150

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statement noted that ‘‘many among you are deeply dismayed by the fate of our fellow believers in the Christian faith among the Jews,’’ the statement cited biblical verses that witnessed to the universality of God’s love and the necessity of assistance for all people: ‘‘God desires that all human beings be helped and that they come to the knowledge of the truth’’ (1 Tim. 2:4). Confessing Christians such as Berlin pastor Wilhelm Jannasch were unsuccessful in moving the conference toward a more outspoken statement. Jannasch wanted the church to issue a statement condemning the persecution of the Jews.≥Ω But this did not happen. Two other protests against the November pogrom came from allies of the Confessing Church in Switzerland. Wilhelm Vischer, who had helped write the Bethel Confession, wrote a bitterly sardonic revision of the Ten Commandments according to the new values proclaimed by ‘‘the enemies of the Jews.’’∂≠ And Karl Barth lectured on the issue that he had not held to be ‘‘central’’ in 1934 at Barmen: ‘‘How is it possible that our Christian ears do not ring, considering the significance of this misery and wickedness? What would we be, what are we then, without Israel? Whoever rejects and persecutes the Jew, rejects and persecutes the one who died for the sins of the Jews and only thereby for our sins. Whoever on principle is an enemy of the Jews declares himself on principle, even if he would otherwise be an angel of light, an enemy of Jesus Christ. AntiSemitism is a sin against the Holy Spirit. For anti-Semitism means a rejection of the grace of God.’’∂∞ From the silence ‘‘of even the best in the Confessing Church,’’ Barth inferred that the Confessing Church did not understand how late it was, even after the Kristallnacht: Has the persecution in November of the Jews (and Jewish Christians) been understood by the Confessing Church as the sign that it obviously has been? . . . These events had led to such a pass that the baptism of Jews is forbidden by the church today. Practically, individual Christians have done more for the persecuted Jews in congregations throughout Germany (as well as a special, efficient organization created for this purpose)∂≤ than may be known in public and abroad. Of course, many of the best in the Confessing Church still refuse to acknowledge that the Jewish question, and the political question as such, has become a question of faith today.∂≥

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The hour was indeed late. But had it not been later, even four years earlier, than Barth had wanted to believe? emigration

There were three waves of Jewish emigration from Germany, each in direct response to a new level of state persecution. Some Jews recognized the signs of the times early and saw emigration as the only response. In 1931, the optician Richard Polnauer became the first Jewish citizen of Stuttgart to leave the Swabian metropolis; the reading of Mein Kampf had warned him in time.∂∂ The size of each stage of emigration can only be estimated. Hans Lamm estimated the first wave in 1933 as involving ‘‘tens of thousands of German Jews’’ who were responding to the Jewish voices warning of the impending horrors.∂∑ Soon after the events of April 1933, Rabbi Leo Baeck said, ‘‘The thousand-year history of German Judaism is at an end.’’∂∏ On 16 October, the Stuttgart Jewish ‘‘Community Newspaper’’ published a proclamation from the newly founded Reich Agency of the Jews in Germany, recommending emigration as a final recourse.∂π The major wave of emigration, however, began in the fall of 1938. The Law on Passport and Identification Affairs was enacted on 5 October 1938. Its provisions invalidated the passports of all Jews in the Reich and required Jews to indicate their racial affiliation when applying for an identification card on or before 31 December 1938.∂∫ Many understood this as an urgent signal to leave; the most serious alarm, of course, was the Kristallnacht.∂Ω Studies suggest that more than one hundred thousand German Jews emigrated between the beginning of 1938 and the spring of 1939.∑≠ The decision to emigrate did not guarantee a secure future. Even emigrants who were successful in leaving Germany were dependent on the assistance of their host countries. There were many heartrending tragedies. Bishop George Bell’s biography reveals his lonely efforts on behalf of the German-Jewish refugees in his own country, where the assistance offered to the first influx of refugees was woefully inadequate.∑∞ Throughout the world, only the Quakers and Jewish organizations proved to be helpful. Bell lamented his church’s utter disinterest in the refugee problem—a lack of interest that, as in Germany, was all the more conspicuous when contrasted with the commitment shown by some individual Christians. He was dismayed by ‘‘the apparent apathy with which the fate of 152

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the Jews and the non-Aryan Christians is being regarded by the people of the British Empire. . . . The non-Aryans can no longer be called ‘refugees,’ for they have as yet no countries of refuge.’’∑≤ Shanghai was the only spot on the globe where the refugees did not confront bureaucratic difficulties and could feel secure if they had the financial means. Only when the support of the mostly destitute German refugees became problematic did the Japanese enact more stringent emigration requirements. And, after Hitler dismissed Reichsbank president Schacht in January 1939, the project to plan and finance long-term Jewish emigration, which Schacht had set up together with an international relief commission, was abandoned.∑≥ It is correct that emigration was ‘‘allowed’’ even after the war began; ‘‘as many as thirteen thousand Jews from the Old Reich and others from the annexed territories’’ succeeded in fleeing Germany after September 1939.∑∂ But it is questionable whether the term emigration describes a situation in which the essential concern was escape and the very preservation of life. Throughout the period, the most important thing for ‘‘emigrants’’ was to leave Germany, even when this required paying a large ransom.∑∑ Even before the war, it was tremendously difficult to obtain an entry permit from foreign countries. The July 1938 refugee conference in Evian-les-Bains made the international lack of interest in Jewish refugees clear. An entry in Jochen Klepper’s diary illustrated the desperate situation in which so many people determined to emigrate found themselves: ‘‘The Meschkes have received a negative reply from Sweden. In every case of people close to us, we now see the same: emigration is thwarted. Ilse [Meschke] writes desperately.’’∑∏ The failure of their efforts to emigrate drove many desperate people to suicide.∑π With the onset of the third phase of emigration, the time had come for non-Aryan Protestant pastors to leave Germany as well. In 1936, it was still possible for pastors who had been ostracized by their congregations and forsaken by their superiors to find refuge in some remote spots.∑∫ But Bonhoeffer’s friend Franz Hildebrandt, who had been assigned to help Martin Niemöller in Berlin–Dahlem, had ‘‘to retreat head over heels’’ after Niemöller’s arrest on 1 July 1937.∑Ω Because of its contacts with Bonhoeffer and Julius Rieger, the German congregation in London took Hildebrandt in. As a result, the Church Foreign Office in Berlin repri153

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manded the London parish and imposed financial restraints on it—a special sign of the ‘‘interest’’ that Heckel’s office showed in the wellbeing of German pastors who were persecuted because of their ‘‘racial’’ origin.∏≠ On 16 June 1939, the Provisional Church Administration issued an ‘‘order concerning the emigration of non-Aryan pastors or pastors related to non-Aryans, auxiliary preachers, and theologians in training.’’ The order ‘‘emphatically’’ encouraged them to emigrate: Brethren with one or two grandparents who are non-Aryan, or who are related to non-Aryans, must continue to practice their church service in Germany. . . . Should difficulties arise in their exercise of office, then it is the business of the responsible denominational church government to intercede. . . . Should this assistance fail, the brethren are requested to turn to us. Each individual case will be examined carefully by us. . . . Should emigration appear necessary, we will issue the church’s permission for departure. It is recommended that churches abroad accept into their ministry only those brethren who submit a certification that we deem their emigration necessary.∏∞

In England, Bishop Bell of Chichester succeeded in helping approximately thirty non-Aryan pastors find professional employment there.∏≤ Various sources give different numbers of those affected.∏≥ The majority found church positions through the mediation of ecumenical leaders Henry-Louis Henriod, Willem Visser’t Hooft, and Bishop Bell.

∞∑

Relief Work the grüber office

Despite Marga Meusel’s efforts, the First Provisional Church Administration of the Confessing Church had not taken a position supporting those affected by the Aryan paragraph, along the lines of the original Emergency League pledge. With the February 1936 dissolution of the first Provisional Church Administration and the establishment of the second Provisional Church Administration, the chances for such a stand improved. Superintendent Martin Albertz, who replaced Bishop Marahrens as chair of the Provisional Church Administration, soon founded the De154

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partment for Christians of Jewish Descent.∞ Albertz’s secretary, Charlotte Friedenthal, was affected by the Aryan paragraph herself and became an enthusiastic coworker. In his efforts to establish and expand foreign contacts, and to link them to proposed aid projects, Albertz received practical and personal support from Pastor Hermann Maas, who had been active in relief work for non-Aryans for years.≤ Maas was probably responsible for Albertz’s first contacts with George Bell and with Prof. Adolf Keller in Geneva.≥ In the summer of 1938, Maas gave a lecture, ‘‘The Confessing Church and the Jewish Question,’’ to leading figures of the Confessing Church in Berlin, arguing that the Jewish question was of central importance to the Confessing Church.∂ In his summary, however, Maas succumbed to antiJewish jargon: ‘‘The church does not need to assure the state of the obvious, such as its agreement with the struggle against corruption; that is beneath its dignity [sic]. But it will fight all the more clearly, surely, and radically against all the cruelties, injustices, lies, and hardships that arise from false motivation in the Jewish question. And it will do penance for its omissions, its silence so far, and its false ‘Yes.’ ’’∑ In the discussion that followed, Maas proposed the establishment of a central relief office. He was willing to direct the office if it were set up in Heidelberg, but the consensus was that a central office needed to be in a more central place. Berlin, where so many non-Aryan Christians had gone anyway, was the obvious location. Pastor Heinrich Grüber was willing to assume the task.∏ Grüber was uniquely qualified. The son of a Dutch mother, he had studied at the university in Utrecht, was fluent in Dutch, and had good contacts with the Dutch community and embassy in Berlin. Even before 1938, he was familiar with the specialized aspects of emigration to Holland.π Now he was to establish the relief measures that Albertz and Maas had demanded for years. The ‘‘Grüber office’’ was not set up ‘‘thanks to Grüber’s initiative’’ but was explicitly commissioned by the second Provisional Church Administration.∫ It was initially tolerated by the Gestapo and other Reich authorities as an agency for the care of emigrants.Ω State authorities were anxious not to furnish additional material for anti-German propaganda overseas by stopping emigration on principle, particularly after the Kristallnacht. Only after the war began were such considerations no longer necessary. 155

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The responsibilities of the Grüber office included advising people on emigration (this included an evaluation about the urgency of emigration in each particular case, since the international community, even at this stage, showed no readiness to rescue the countless innocents threatened with death) and helping place household employees abroad. In addition, it offered social assistance (particularly to the elderly, invalids, and disabled war veterans; this probably included the provision of clothing and medicines); legal advice (the details about many anti-Jewish laws were not made public, and Jews were barred from subscribing to or purchasing newspapers); educational support for Protestant children who could not attend public schools because of their racial heritage; and general ministry. One of the first coworkers in the Grüber office was Pastor Adolf Kurtz from the Apostles’ Church in Berlin; Kurtz ministered to the needs of non-Aryans in the greater Berlin area.∞≠ Pastor Fritz von Bodelschwingh in Bethel looked after the welfare work, assisted by Pastor Paul Braune of Lobetal.∞∞ The costs of the Grüber office were calculated initially at eight hundred Reich marks per month; the Berlin City Synod and the General Association of Evangelical Congregations in Berlin were requested to contribute three hundred Reich marks each.∞≤ The organization of such a relief agency was long overdue, and the Grüber office’s responsibilities expanded rapidly. By May 1939, it had more than twenty-one subsidiary offices among nearly all the regional churches.∞≥ Thuringia, the first regional church proudly to announce itself completely Judenfrei, was not among them. Nor was the church of Hannover—a fact that does not exactly lend credibility to Klügel’s apologetic claim that Bishop Marahrens ‘‘always advocated that pastors be obliged to care for ‘non-Aryan’ members of the congregation just exactly as they would for all others.’’∞∂ Cooperating with the Grüber office’s well-developed network of regional centers, Pastor Adolf Freudenberg (acting as the Grüber office’s representative abroad) tried to improve the chances for emigration—first from his London office and later in Geneva.∞∑ An advisory board, which included Superintendent Albertz, Pastor Paul Braune, a representative from the Interior Ministry, and lawyer Dr. Heinz Arnold, offered spiritual, legal, and organizational support.∞∏ The Berlin office and its regional subsidiaries maintained regular contacts with each other. Often on short notice, the Grüber office called 156

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meetings of its representatives in the regional churches to make decisions and respond to new or impending laws. At one such meeting, guidelines were drawn up for a cooperative effort between Roman Catholic and Protestant church relief agencies and the Reich Association of Jews in Germany.∞π The Grüber office’s cooperation with the Roman Catholic relief organization (the Raphael Association, chaired by Bishop Berning) and the Reich Association of the Jews in Germany (led by Leo Baeck and Ministerial Councillor Hirsch) got off to a good start. The Protestant and Roman Catholic relief organizations had already contacted the Reich Association of Jews in Germany in March 1939, although the Jewish association was not legally constituted until 4 July 1939 (according to the tenth statute of the Reich Citizens’ Law).∞∫ The state planned to transform ‘‘the Reich Association of Jewish Relief Organizations of the Old Reich into an official Jewish bureaucracy, under the control of the commander of the Security Police and of the sd [Security Service],’’∞Ω thereby separating Christian non-Aryans from church aid agencies, since the new organization would include all Jews, whatever their confession. But the state’s calculations had not taken human emotions into account, and its decree was not enforced everywhere or with the same radicalness the state had intended. ‘‘The most ruthless were the ss offices in Nuremberg, Breslau, and Kassel, while the departments in Hamburg and Bremen occasionally managed to enforce the measures ordered in a more humane manner.’’≤≠ Government councillor Ernst vom Rath, father of the murdered Paris embassy secretary, had been entrusted with the leadership of the Jewish office at Berlin police headquarters. With this appointment, the Nazis hoped to have a true anti-Semite at the controls in Berlin. Vom Rath, however, was a committed Christian and knew Grüber from earlier years; he had no illusions whatsoever about his son’s murder and the National Socialists’ expedient manipulation of it. His skillful strategy to help the Grüber office could not remain hidden from party functionaries for long. A younger government councillor, Hennig, whose enthusiasm for the National Socialists had led him to join the ss while he was still a student, was named assistant to vom Rath. Yet even Hennig secretly thwarted the expectations of his superiors by judiciously helping the Grüber office where possible.≤∞ The Reich Association and the two central Christian relief organizations agreed that church relief agencies should continue to care for 157

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Christian non-Aryans. This was the basis for Martin Albertz’s request in July 1939 that regional church governments and Councils of Brethren ‘‘see to it, in conjunction with the Grüber office, that homes for the aged and rehabilitation centers are created’’ and that ‘‘in the schools taken over and maintained by the Reich Association . . . Christian children receive instruction in the Christian religion.’’ He also urged them to create Christian schools in the major cities that could also accommodate children from rural areas. All relevant questions were to be addressed to the Grüber office or its regional offices.≤≤ The regional churches and their aid offices maintained constant contact with the Grüber office. Beyond this, much depended on their own creativity and initiative. In September 1938, at Grüber’s suggestion, the Bavarian Regional Church Council set up a subsidiary office in Nuremberg to help non-Aryans in Bavaria.≤≥ Bavarian bishop Meiser, who financially subsidized the relief offices in Nuremberg and Munich, spoke early in 1939 with Laura Livingstone (Bishop Bell’s sister-in-law) and in mid1940 with Grüber.≤∂ The director of the Munich office, Pastor Johannes Zwanzger, reported on his work in August 1945: ‘‘The circle of those cared for grew into the hundreds over the years. Until the outbreak of the Second World War, the emigration question naturally stood in the foreground. Of those under my care, forty-eight could emigrate before the outbreak of the war; afterward, only seventeen were able to, the last in September 1940. A small number, seen as a whole, but behind it stands an enormous amount of effort, paperwork, setbacks, and disappointments. But it is sixty-five rescued human lives.’’≤∑ Few documents about individual cases remain, and it is almost impossible to trace all the individual cases in which the Grüber office tried to help people. Despite the Gestapo’s limited tolerance for the office’s activities, Grüber attempted (even if he could not achieve) the impossible. After 1940, his office’s room to maneuver steadily decreased. The fate of Renate Klepper, the younger of Jochen Klepper’s two stepdaughters, is an example.≤∏ In 1940, Klepper noted the ‘‘distressing rumors about the evacuation of Jews. Grüber and Gollwitzer both very loyally look after Renerle, but without any hope.’’≤π Two days later: ‘‘Hanni and Renerle with Pastor Grüber . . . who has offered his services so willingly, if without hope.’’≤∫ Grüber tried to help Renate Klepper emigrate to Switzerland, but Klepper learned from a secretary of the Swiss Council of Brethren that ‘‘considering the general arrangements, there is nothing to be done 158

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for Renerle, ‘since the case is not interesting enough’ to justify breaking the rules . . . the petition has been as good as rejected by lower-level officials. After Easter, Pastor Grüber will travel to Switzerland and wants to learn whether the action can be moved along ‘from above.’ ’’≤Ω After Grüber’s efforts failed, Birger Forell and Klepper’s friend Kurt Meschke brought a last glimmer of hope to the Klepper house.≥≠ In the end, however, all attempts to help Renate Klepper emigrate failed; on 11 December 1942, after she and her mother received their deportation orders to the east, all three Kleppers committed suicide. Until early 1940, Grüber’s work was virtually unhindered, albeit never without risk. Along with the office’s legal work, it had begun illegal activities, the most dangerous of which was the forging of passports. After the first mass deportations of Jews from Stettin and the rest of Pomerania to Poland in February 1940, Grüber attempted to intervene with higher government and party officials. This brought a blunt reprimand from the Gestapo and led to closer police observation of the Grüber office. Still, the office was able to send large shipments of medicines to the Polish collection centers for Jews being deported.≥∞ On 19 December 1940, Grüber was arrested and taken to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp and later to Dachau. A colleague, Werner Sylten, continued to run the office.≥≤ Although Sylten had been instructed by the state to dissolve the Grüber office, he informed the Evangelical Central Council in Berlin that the Gestapo had ‘‘no objections to the office’s being continued by the church, with the exception of technical counseling in emigration matters, which the Reich Association of the Jews is to assume.’’≥≥ On 27 February 1941, Sylten was arrested and taken to Dachau. The Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Central Security Department) and the Gestapo headquarters in Berlin did not respond to the church’s inquiry about the reasons for Grüber’s arrest and its duration. The church’s investigations into Sylten’s arrest were thwarted as well, and negotiations for the organization of a new relief agency for Protestant non-Aryans were unsuccessful.≥∂ On 26 September 1942, Sylten was killed in Dachau.≥∑ Only a few of the fifty-five workers in the Grüber office survived the end of the war. The numerous non-Aryans among them probably died in the gas chambers; the others were killed in concentration camps for their illegal aid activities. Grüber himself was released after two and a half years in a concentration camp.≥∏ 159

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After the Grüber office in Berlin was closed, persecuted non-Aryan Protestants depended even more on private, nonorganized help. Individual branches of the Grüber office, such as those in Heidelberg, Kassel, and Breslau, were able to continue their work under the more difficult conditions.≥π But, with the dissolution of the Berlin office, all relief work for the Jews had to be conducted secretly, at risk to the lives of all involved. The church’s relief offices had initially enjoyed the veneer of legality, if only because their help with Jewish emigration served the state’s own interests. But despite its ecumenical contacts, the church encountered considerable foreign reserve toward Jewish emigrants; the conference in Evian-les-Bains was eloquent testimony. The state’s expectations were disappointed by the church’s meager success, and the solution of the emigration question was transferred to the bestial technicians of the Final Solution. The very nature of a totalitarian regime dictated that the law of tyranny would rule out voluntary emigration and replace it with forced deportation, which began in 1941. Emigration ‘‘only’’ signified the loss of homeland, separation from family, isolation from familiar intellectual and linguistic territory; deportation meant the infernal hounding of people into mass death.≥∫ Only now did some Christians begin to wake up. In the early years of the Nazi regime, the Confessing Church had been unable to bring itself to make a unanimous statement on behalf of the Jews. Now the chance for public statements had passed. During the last four years of the reign of terror, the inaction of the church was replaced by direct, spontaneous deeds—liberated, in a sense, from theological reflection. The cellars and attics, closets and cabinets of pastors and lay Christians offered countless places of asylum for the persecuted. At considerable risk, some individuals secretly tried to help the victims of Nazism. Dr. Franz Kaufmann, a lawyer dismissed in 1935 from his government job because of his racial origin, was protected from deportation by a ‘‘privileged marriage’’ with a non-Jew; he was able to form one of the most successful rescue groups. Until 1943, the ‘‘Kaufmann circle’’ was an extensive secret operation that hid Jews, helped them go underground, and aided their escape. Kaufmann himself was killed after the group’s discovery by the Gestapo.≥Ω Not enough attention has been devoted to the fearless and imaginative activity of many women, particularly the women pastors in the Con160

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fessing Church. Gertrud Staewen, Melanie Steinmetz, Helene Jacobs, Dr. Hilde Schaeder, Elsie Steck, Maria Gerhard, Charlotte Friedenthal, Marga Meusel, Klara Hunsche, and Käthe Staritz are bound inseparably with the history of the rescue operations for the Jews.∂≠ In Württemberg, the Württemberg Society and the Confessing community offered extraordinary help for those gone underground.∂∞ The rectories of Hermann Diem, Theodor Dipper, Otto Mörike, Kurt Müller, and others became familiar stops for Jews with altered names and forged passports. Two of those rescued were Max Krakauer and his wife, who were steered through sixty-one houses until the Americans arrived in 1945.∂≤ The network among the parsonages developed to such an extent that prompt warnings of imminent searches were possible. It was not always easy to convince those seeking help of the extent to which they were at risk and to teach them the habits necessary for an underground existence. Many were simply happy to have a temporary roof over their heads. In addition to a place to stay, they needed food ration cards and false passports. Not infrequently, pastors could persuade their parishioners to surrender their ration cards. As one account described, ‘‘Naturally, members of the congregation helped, too. The whole congregation knew what was at stake and my husband once said that the gifts of frankincense, myrrh, and gold for Jesus were now food ration cards for Jews gone underground. The whole congregation rose up as one in protest when a Jewish woman doctor, who took care of the evacuation right up to the end, was supposedly barred from the worship service by a janitor.’’∂≥ Such unanimous displays of solidarity occurred only occasionally in congregations. Still, it must be assumed that there were many individual instances of assistance; even today, they are often discovered through coincidence. An item in an English newspaper, for example, led Hugo Linck to the story of five East Prussian farm women who were condemned to lengthy imprisonment because they had taken in eight Jewish neighbor children whose parents had been deported.∂∂ Leo Baeck later spoke of the anonymous instances of secret aid: To help the Jews was, at times, the only way in which a German was able to express his opposition to the Nazis. During the final years, a countess visited me every Friday in my apartment, in order to bring me vegetables, which were not available with Jewish food ration cards. Occasion-

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The ‘‘Elimination’’ of the Jews ally, I found a basket of fruit from nameless benefactors before my door. In the crowded streetcar one Sunday, an unknown man came very near to me and asked, ‘‘Is Tiergarten next?’’ Then he added in a whisper, ‘‘I’m from the country and have put a few eggs in your pocket.’’ Another time, a man on the street let an envelope fall, picked it up, and held it out to me with the words, ‘‘You’ve lost something.’’ The envelope contained a packet of food ration cards.∂∑

Because of the anonymity of such actions, no one knows whether these Samaritans were Christians or even card-carrying members of the Confessing Church. Help on a large scale came too late—who could have halted the deportation trains!—but the Confessing Church was able to prepare and ordain ‘‘a few Christians of Jewish descent’’ who served those around them in the deportations.∂∏ schools for non-aryan children

The education of non-Aryan children had been an issue since 1933. The first practical recommendations came from a Berlin gynecologist, K. A. Fiessler, who wrote a list of ‘‘suggestions for the establishment of overseas schools for Christian German non-Aryan youth’’ in 1933, intending to get financial support from the state and churches.∂π The first step was to find a site in Germany where preparatory courses for teachers and students could be offered; the leaders of the Moravian Church offered a house in Ebersdorf (in Thuringia) for this purpose.∂∫ The director of the Protestant School Association, W. Hafa, saw the purpose of the proposed schools as offering several courses each year for non-Aryan students barred from the public schools before they went abroad. This was the only way for the proposed schools to avoid competing with schools already offering continuing education, since the goal of the regime’s non-Aryan legislation affecting the schools was ‘‘to prevent educated non-Aryan men and women from entering the betterpaid, higher educated professions and competing there with German applicants.’’∂Ω Only after 1935 did the German Evangelical Church show some interest in the enterprise.∑≠ Under the name ‘‘Christian Relief Organization for German Settlements Abroad,’’ the church promised to participate in ‘‘the establishment of colonial schools in which all those things were supposed to be taught which were to help young people get ahead as 162

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settlers overseas.’’ From the beginning, the project suffered from dilatory treatment. It foundered after the state required these schools to be nonconfessional (a demand not enthusiastically supported by the German Evangelical Church). In February 1936, the Moravian Church withdrew its offer of a home for the school.∑≤ The figures in tables 1–5 offer some background for measuring the church’s response to the intersection of the educational Jewish question and the Final Solution. The terminology used here (‘‘Mosaic,’’ ‘‘Israelite,’’ and ‘‘Jewish’’) reflects the different language that was used, even at state levels, to describe Jewish religious or racial affiliation. These 167 schools had a total of 23,670 students, of which 17,834 attended elementary schools and 5,836 attended higher schools. The following summary clearly shows the migration of Jewish students from non-Jewish schools to (for the most part) newly organized Jewish schools:∑≥ Jewish schools were attended in 1933: by 9,524 students in 1937: by 18,462 students Jewish middle schools were attended in 1933: by 1,830 students in 1937: by 6,319 students.

It is no coincidence that 1937–38 was the focus of these statistics; after this date, the decrees designed to make the schools Judenfrei multiplied. The decree of the Reich education minister of 2 July 1937 provided for the establishment of special schools or classes for Jewish children, with the approval of school authorities.∑∂ Jewish teachers (or ‘‘half-breeds,’’ where necessary) were to offer instruction in these schools. The Provisional Church Administration informed church governments and the regional Councils of Brethren ‘‘that this decree already has provoked great consternation among Protestant parents of Jewish race.’’∑∑ The decree had introduced a new situation: ‘‘While there had been no obligation to attend the previously private Jewish schools, now all Jewish students would be required to attend these obviously Jewish schools.’’∑∏ In response, the Provisional Church Administration told the Reich education minister, ‘‘There are serious misgivings from a confessional point of view if children, baptized as Christians and educated in the Evan163

Table 1: Public Elementary Schools in the Reich, 1931–32 29,023 15,259 97 8,287 295

Protestant Roman Catholic Mosaic Schools with mixed student populations Collective schools

52,961

Total

Source: From Staatliches Jahrbuch (Statistical yearbook), 1934. Copy from Klara Hunsche. See also eza 611, Nachlaß Hunsche.

Table 2: Confessional Distribution of Children Attending Public Schools 4,560,362 2,702,105 28,640 10,785 6,142 168,616

Protestant Roman Catholic Mosaic Other Christian denomination Other non-Christian denomination No religious affiliation

7,476,650a

Total

a In the Staatliches Jahrbuch, the total given is 7,590,073. This difference of 113,323 possibly refers to children who attended private elementary schools.

Table 3: Distribution of Elementary Schools, 1938

Nondenominational Protestant Roman Catholic Israelite

Reich 17,150 24,261 9,639 68

Prussia 1,541 22,443 8,387 41

Total

51,118

32,412

Source: Data as of 25 May 1938, according to Deutsche Wissenschaft, Erziehung und Volksbildung (Official paper of the Reich and Prussian Ministry for Science, Education, and People’s Education), dated 20 April 1939. Copy from Klara Hunsche.

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Table 4: ‘‘Racial’’ Affiliation of Elementary Schoolchildren

German or kindred race Jewish Jewish-mixed blood Other alien race

Reich 7,577,178 10,069 10,009 2,181

Prussia 4,600,146 6,737 4,621 1,517

Total

7,599,437

4,613,021

Table 5: Jewish Schools in the Reich, 1937 76 72 14 4 1 167

Public elementary schools Private elementary schools Higher schools Schools with advanced curriculum Middle school Total

Source: Data as of 1 March 1937, according to information sheet from the Reich Association of Jews in Germany, 1937, 60. See Hans Lamm, Über die innere und äussere Entwicklung des deutschen Judentums im Dritten Reich (Munich, 1951), 185.

gelical Church, are educated in Jewish schools, which are frequently influenced by a Zionist spirit. It [the Provisional Church Administration] has pointed out that the Jewish spiritual or religious attitude that prevails in these schools is incompatible with the Christian attitude.’’∑π The Provisional Church Administration asked the church governments and regional Councils of Brethren ‘‘to attend especially to the needs of these parishioners, and to summon and help congregations and pastors to biblical reflection and evangelical action, in light of the present difficulties. . . . A general overview of the number and nature of the cases in question would be desirable.’’∑∫ On 30 November 1937, the Provisional Church Administration sent a letter to the Reich education minister explaining the decree’s direct consequences for the Evangelical Church. Signed by Martin Albertz, the letter noted the ‘‘great dismay and despair among congregations and 165

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parents, because the assumption is that even children who were baptized as Christians and educated as Protestants are now to be instructed in Jewish schools.’’ The church’s duty was to see to it that its baptized children are educated in a way that is in accordance with the gift of Holy Baptism and the duties that grow from it; it must ensure that nowhere is Christian faith suppressed, but awakened and stimulated. Whatever their race, parents are responsible before God for the Christian education and instruction of their children. In our congregations, there are Christian families of Jewish race who have always taken this obligation seriously and, despite all difficulties, feel themselves conscientiously bound to continue to take it seriously. . . . An education in Jewish schools, as suggested by the decree, would provoke intolerable discord in these Christian families; since the guiding spirit in these schools must necessarily have its roots in the Jewish or Jewish-Zionist religious attitude. Both, however, are incompatible with the Christian faith.

The letter concluded with an appeal for clarity on ‘‘whether the regulations regarding the withdrawal of Jewish children from school and their entrance into Jewish schools or collective classes shall also be applied to Jewish children of Protestant faith.’’∑Ω A copy of the letter was sent to the Council of the Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Germany, asking whether the council would support the Provisional Church Administration ‘‘and has complained or intends to complain to the state.’’∏≠ After his letter remained unanswered, Albertz addressed the Reich education minister again, declaring that his inquiry from November had acquired ‘‘heightened urgency’’: ‘‘In the meantime, a new version of the ‘curriculum guidelines’ . . . has been made public. . . .∏∞ These guidelines clearly show that the instruction in all subjects offered in these schools is sustained by the Jewish-Zionist religious attitude, which is incompatible with the Christian faith.’’∏≤ There is no record of a response from the Reich education minister. The Council of the Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Germany, however, did respond: ‘‘Precise inquiries have established that, up to the present time, there have been no occurrences anywhere along the lines feared, and, second, that the matter concerns an extraordinarily small number of children, many fewer than we had supposed. Under these circum166

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stances, we believe that it is better to take steps only if somewhere a case becomes acute.’’∏≥ After November 1938, Jewish and non-Aryan Christian children were no longer allowed to attend public schools.∏∂ Responding to the anguished inquiries of concerned parents, representatives of the Provisional Church Administration, the Berlin Council of Brethren, and the Jewish community tried to clarify the legal situation with the state authorities. The Berlin Council of Brethren, through Klara Hunsche (who directed its Department of Christian Education), issued a statement on ‘‘instruction of non-Aryan Protestant children’’ to Berlin Confessing pastors on 23 November 1938: As a consequence of the events of recent weeks, all children who are considered Jews according to the Nuremberg Laws, even those who are Protestant according to their confession, are dismissed from the public schools. . . . Under these circumstances, the possibility of private instruction exists. . . . Parents may organize themselves in school circles, and can apply to a licensed teacher to instruct the children in question. . . . It is urgently recommended that the organization of private school circles be undertaken immediately. Steps will be taken to put pressure on the appropriate agencies so that the possibility of private instruction for Christian children is maintained in the future. . . . We request information about which non-Aryan Protestant teachers in your congregations might be suitable to give such instruction.∏∑

By the beginning of 1939, some of these small ‘‘school circles’’ opened in Berlin. The largest church school was the so-called Oranienburg Street Family School, which celebrated its founding on Epiphany, January 6, ‘‘under the lighted Christmas tree’’ in Pastor Kurtz’s rectory.∏∏ Pastor Kurtz, who had a non-Aryan wife and worked with the Grüber office, had gathered nearly one thousand Confessing Christians in his congregation at the Church of the Twelve Apostles; almost a quarter of his congregation was non-Aryan. Kurtz’s ecumenical connections led to a considerable turnover among the students in Oranienburg Street, since the number of students he helped leave Germany made room for new arrivals. Almost one hundred children attended the school, which was divided into four classes and one advanced class in foreign languages. The children were taught in all 167

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subjects, even in English, which was not offered in the public elementary schools at the time. A chaplain came for the religious instruction of the few Roman Catholic children. Initially, the school accommodated children of all ages; later, only six- to fourteen-year-olds were given permission to attend the Oranienburg Street School. (At that point, older students could still attend one of the existing private Jewish schools where they could take the Abitur, the entrance examination for university study.) Hildegard Kuttner, a coworker in the Grüber office from April 1940 until the spring of 1942, taught in one of these private schools for almost four years. The Oranienburg Street Family School was directed by Margarete Draeger,∏π who later went into hiding and was eventually discovered and deported to a concentration camp. Also among the staff were Lily Wolff and Frieda Fürstenheim, both later killed in the camps. Several other staff members survived.∏∫ Pastor Kurtz, who held confirmation classes and conducted worship services, could not be the official school director since he was an Aryan, but he represented the school in its negotiations with state authorities. Initially, Grüber had nothing to do with this school; he became interested in it only after the possibilities for emigration had disappeared with the onset of the war. The school’s contact with Grüber and his office was informal, so that the school continued to exist after the arrests of Grüber and Sylten.∏Ω It can no longer be determined exactly how many of the school’s teachers were ‘‘employees of the Grüber office.’’π≠ Dr. Erwin Reisner, who was employed in the Grüber office, oversaw the school’s financial accounts. A 1939 report by Klara Hunsche, however, did not indicate that the school was financially dependent on the Grüber office.π∞ It is likely that Pastor Kurtz supported it with donations available to him.π≤ In his own memoirs, Grüber also gave the impression that the connections between his office and the Oranienburg Street Family School were more informal than is often supposed.π≥ It is also likely that the Reich Association of Jews in Germany, which was ‘‘appointed as the responsible body for all school affairs’’ in July 1939, recognized its responsibility to help the school.π∂ The house on Oranienburg Street belonged to the English mission to the Jews, and the friendly cooperation of the Jewish rector made the school’s final move to a building on August Street possible. Klara Hunsche noted: ‘‘We found capable and cooperative representatives from the Jewish school admin168

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istration in the persons of Dr. Fürst, the director of the Berlin School Department, Dr. Schäfer, and Rabbi Baeck.’’π∑ The reports of Klara Hunsche and Hildegard Kuttner indicate that the school was sustained primarily by the Confessing Church. As director of Christian Education for the Confessing Church and a staff member of the Berlin school board, Klara Hunsche (‘‘intelligent and energetic, with a never-ending kindness’’)π∏ was able to maintain contacts with the Old Prussian Union Church and the Provisional Church Administration. As a result, those involved with the school never felt isolated. A Confessing Church theologian, Prof. Günther Dehn, often visited the school with his students from the Berlin Confessing Church seminary (the Kirchliche Hochschule) for practice teaching. Confessing pastor EitelFriedrich von Rabenau, who directed the Office for Congregational Development, helped keep the school going, as did other prominent Confessing pastors. In February 1941, state officials ordered Klara Hunsche to leave the school; she refused. During the war, Nazi authorities assigned Hunsche and Confessing Church women to special Wehrmacht duties. Such assignments were designed to hinder the Confessing Church’s activities but often failed to do so: ‘‘I was removed neither from my office with the Council of Brethren nor from my work with this school, although my ‘employer’ was now the Wehrmacht. I continued to have the older children in religious instruction . . . first in my apartment and, after we were spied upon there, in a schoolgirl’s apartment that had the ‘Jewish star’ affixed to it.’’ππ On 7 July 1942, the state ordered the general dissolution of all Jewish schools; this meant the abrupt end of the Family School.π∫ One of the teachers, Lily Wolff, courageously continued to teach the schoolchildren on the grounds of the Jewish cemetery in Weissensee, until her own deportation in October 1942. charity for those who wore the yellow star

On 1 September 1941, the police ordered Jews to identify themselves publicly through the mandatory wearing of the yellow star.πΩ The state’s dream of the complete annihilation of the Jews was approaching its climax. A few days later, Katharina Staritz, a Confessing Church vicar in Breslau, wrote a statement protesting the new decree, using official stationery from the church’s city dean of Breslau. Born in 1903, Staritz was 169

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the main Grüber office contact in Silesia and oversaw church aid for nonAryan Protestants there. Her protest was accompanied by a cover letter signed by Otto Meissner, head of the dean’s office: Among the people affected by this decree are several members of our congregations, people . . . who have been loyal members of Protestant congregations for decades and who were baptized as infants, educated and confirmed as Protestants, and, thus, have never had anything to do with the Jewish religion. Many of them faithfully attend worship services. Now these people . . . must appear [in church] with the Jewish badge, as must the non-Aryan children attending children’s services, since the Jewish star must be worn as of the sixth year of age. It is a congregation’s Christian duty not to exclude them from the worship service. . . . They have the same right to a home in the church as do the other members of the congregation, and they are in particular need of God’s comforting Word. The danger exists that the congregations will be deceived by elements that are not really Christian; that they will imperil Christian honor through un-Christian behavior in the church. . . . I ask you to consider whether church officials, ushers, etc., could not be instructed . . . to watch especially for these stigmatized members of the congregation, to show them to their places if necessary, etc. Perhaps, too, special places could be designated in every church, not as a poor sinner’s bench for non-Aryan Christians but rather to protect them from being ushered out by un-Christian elements. . . . It is necessary that loyal parishioners . . . take their places on these pews beside and among the non-Aryan Christians. It can be considered whether, at least for the time being, these stigmatized Christians could . . . be picked up by parishioners and brought to the worship service, since several already have said to me that they did not know whether they could still dare to attend church.∫≠

The German Christian leadership of the Silesian church, led by Johannes Hosemann, was so outraged by Staritz’s letter that the ensuing correspondence dragged on for over half a year.∫∞ The Evangelical Consistory of the Silesian church was surprisingly late in responding.∫≤ One month after Staritz’s letter had been published, it wrote: ‘‘This letter has been issued without any contact with us, and its content is not to be approved of. We have undertaken the necessary steps in this affair, which 170

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threatens to hamper severely the church’s position in Silesia . . . and asked the regional administrations to protect church agencies against unjustified attacks.’’∫≥ The Provincial Council of Brethren of the Silesian Confessional Synod defended Staritz, asking the consistory if official ‘‘disapproval of Vicar Staritz’s letter’’ was directed at ‘‘her biblically correct position . . . or is it intended to find fault only with the form of this letter?’’∫∂ The council also criticized the consistory for distributing the letter attacking Staritz to clergy in the entire province, ‘‘without either Vicar Staritz or the assistant city dean being heard in the matter.’’∫∑ Consistorial president Dr. Hosemann did not reply directly to the Council of Brethren but wrote to Ernst Hornig, who had signed the council’s letter: ‘‘Before we answer the questions raised in your letter, we pose a counter-question: Are you and the other clergy in whose name you have written willing from now on to place yourselves under our supervision? Only in the case of an affirmative answer to this question can we expect the blessing of our regional church in responding to the unusual nature of your letter.’’∫∏ As Hosemann’s question indicates, Hornig and his Confessing colleagues in the Silesian church acknowledged only the authority of the Confessing Church leadership (the Provisional Church Administration) in Berlin. The ensuing correspondence between the regional Confessing Council of Brethren and the Silesian Consistory reflected a power struggle within the church. Hornig returned Hosemann’s letter, advising him to respond to the Provincial Council of Brethren.∫π The Provincial Council repeated its request that the Silesian Consistory respond to its protests.∫∫ The consistory’s reply only cited its exchange of letters with Hornig and concluded: ‘‘The matter is closed for us. Moreover, we assume that you have been informed of the proceedings.’’∫Ω The matter was far from closed for Käte Staritz.Ω≠ The Gestapo confiscated the remaining copies of her letter. ‘‘It was distributed to all the party offices, down to the local group leader, and in party meetings the topic of conversation became the ‘broad’ who patronizes the Jews. The consistory suspended Käte while continuing to pay her salary, but she was expected to leave Breslau. Käte’s work (ministry to baptized Jews) lies completely idle at the present time; until now, a replacement has not been provided.’’Ω∞ Expelled from Breslau, Staritz went to Marburg to be under the protection of her doctoral mentor, Prof. Hans von Soden; there she ‘‘attended 171

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lectures and found temporary employment preaching . . . and as a religious teacher.’’Ω≤ After the ss paper Das Schwarze Korps published an attack on her, she was arrested on 4 March 1942.Ω≥ She spent a month in the police jail in Kassel, two months in the workhouse at Breitenau, and almost a year in the women’s concentration camp in Ravensbrück. As a final indignity, the Breslau Consistory suspended her salary.Ω∂ On 18 May 1943, she was released on probation but remained under surveillance and had to report twice weekly to the Gestapo until the fall of the Third Reich.Ω∑ After the war, she worked in the Hessian church until her death on Good Friday, 3 April 1953.Ω∏ The reasons for her release from the concentration camp after ‘‘only’’ a year can not be established.Ωπ It is likely that Wilhelm von ArnimLützlow’s intervention on her behalf helped; Arnim, an influential member of the Old Prussian Union Council of Brethren, met with Hosemann on 30 October 1942 to appeal to the Berlin Consistory to obtain Staritz’s release.Ω∫ The conversation between the two men revealed how politically delicate Staritz’s letter had become for the church (particularly because she had written it under the city dean’s letterhead; in fact, Dean Meissner also lost his job). When Arnim asked why the consistory had not been willing to protect Staritz and Meissner, Hosemann could only reply that he was not willing to protect anyone acting in such an independent and dangerous fashion. Arnim accused Hosemann of turning it into a political matter by allowing the Gestapo to become involved and requesting action by regional political authorities. Arnim emphasized that he had come from the Provincial Council of Brethren not just to help Staritz but ‘‘to call you to repentance, to call upon you to turn back and to confess your sin of omission.’’ Hosemann countered that it was ‘‘futile to argue about the question of guilt. The difficulty of the situation at the time made any other action impossible. I must reject being made responsible for what has been made of the matter. This has not been brought about by church authorities but rather by state authorities. . . . We would be happy if she [Staritz] would get out as soon as possible. What then is to be done with her, whether she would be employed further, cannot be foreseen, in any case not in Silesia.’’ Hosemann promised that the consistory would contact the Reich Central Security Office about Staritz’s case but concluded, ‘‘It is utterly incomprehensible to me with what right you come from Berlin and enter 172

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into such negotiations with me. I find it astonishing that a representative from Berlin visits me in order to deliver a sermon on repentance.’’ Arnim responded: ‘‘I must bear the responsibility for that. In all modesty, I must say that words do not suffice for me to say it with the necessary emphasis.’’ The case of Katharina Staritz was not an entirely isolated example.ΩΩ In Bremen, one congregation’s lay leaders and its pastor, Dr. Greiffenhagen, permitted three people wearing the star to participate in a worship service in honor of the Reformation. In addition, they provided a poor non-Aryan worker’s family with the means for its planned evacuation. After the Gestapo temporarily detained the parish assistant and eight parishioners, the congregation protested vehemently to the Reich minister for church affairs and to the Evangelical Church Chancellery.∞≠≠ In Berlin, the Gossner Mission issued a statement supporting ‘‘Christian ‘wearers of the star,’ ’’ calling on the official church [to] share the Confessing pastors’ attitude toward the wearers of the star. Responding on how the civil authorities imagined the Christian church should act toward the Christian wearers of the star, Minister Kerrl’s deputy answered, ‘‘Whoever still belongs to the church probably knows what he is doing, and the civil authorities know that there are neither Jews nor Greeks in the Christian church, but only Christian brothers and sisters. Therefore, the authorities expect Christian congregations today to make no distinction between those wearing the star and those without it, insofar as those wearing the star are Christians. The authorities consider it proper for Christians wearing the star to attend worship services and Christian events.’’∞≠∞

Martin Albertz later recalled how impressive it was when Pastor Kurtz, ‘‘on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, 1942, dared to admit forty people marked with the Jewish star to the Holy Eucharist in his church, against the stated will of the Third Reich.’’∞≠≤ Dr. Ernst H. Steiner, a nonAryan Christian who was later deported to Theresienstadt, gave a similar report of a service held in the Protestant church in Berlin-Wilmersdorf. The presence ‘‘of quite a number of people decorated with this star’’ caused a ‘‘not unjustified sensation’’ in the service, ‘‘but a large number of faithful Christians who were present came up to us after the conclusion of the Holy Supper and offered us their hand in a brotherly and sisterly way, thereby demonstrating their sympathy with us in our fate.’’∞≠≥ 173

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Considerable risks faced those wearing the star and those who expressed solidarity with them. Gertrud Staewen, a Confessing Christian who worked with the Kaufmann circle to hide and rescue Jews, later described her work:∞≠∂ Now what does it look like in a group that is willing to support actively those who are persecuted? It must work illegally, with all the means available to a secret conspiracy; the total terror of the so-called Third Reich necessitates this. No written note is allowed to exist; not even an address may be written down; no telephone conversation about a meeting may be carried on; no conversation in a room without the telephone or radiator being draped. We never allowed ourselves, for example, to speak to a wearer of the Jewish star on the street. Not because something evil could happen to us through spies, but more because every Jew observed speaking to Aryans was immediately lost, without mercy. For this reason, the Gestapo always watched after the Confessing Church worship services, to see if wearers of the star went home immediately and unobtrusively, or if they stayed in the church and spoke with us.∞≠∑

Not wearing the star or wearing it loosely attached was dangerous because of the possibility of denunciation and certain deportation.∞≠∏ Still, people took this risk with varied success. Many people did risk it, including the children from the Oranienburg Street Family School who were required to wear the star; others paid with their lives.∞≠π The wearers of the star, of course, could expect no help from the German Christian church agencies. Records show that the attitude of the Evangelical Chancellery in Berlin was ambivalent at best. On 21 October 1941, the Evangelical-Lutheran Regional Church Office of Saxony (in Dresden) sent a brief letter to the chancellery: ‘‘After the legal introduction of the Jewish star in the territory of the Reich, it has become an urgent necessity to attach the following sign to churches and church meeting rooms: ‘No Admittance for Jews.’ Your approval is requested.’’∞≠∫ Another letter followed, suggesting an even better formulation for the sign: ‘‘Admittance for Wearers of the Jewish Star Prohibited.’’∞≠Ω The writer suggested that this wording would prevent any mingling between wearers of the star and the rest of the congregation, thereby avoiding any offense to pastors and parishioners as well as the danger that, if non-Aryan Christians were expelled from the church, other parishioners 174

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might leave in solidarity. Since, the letter argued, under this regulation those wearing the star would not enter in the first place, the worship service could proceed ‘‘undisturbed.’’ The chancellery gave only a vague reply on 22 December 1941: ‘‘We could not consider the affixing of prohibitory signs on churches and church meeting rooms through the authority of church agencies as an appropriate measure.’’∞∞≠ Inevitably, this meant that parishioners like Mr. Herbert Israel Arnade in Berlin received letters like this from their churches: ‘‘The Trinity parish council has decided the following: The admittance of persons who must wear the Jewish star is undesirable as long as there is no general regulation.’’∞∞∞ Arnade also received a letter from the Berlin City Synodal Association freeing him from paying the church tax ‘‘in consideration of the fact that attendance at worship services is, at present, not possible for you.’’∞∞≤ About 164,000 Jews (of the 215,000 counted in September 1939) were still living in the Reich on 1 October 1941 (the date of the ban on emigration).∞∞≥ By 1 April 1943, 14,993 star-wearing Jews and 17,375 who were not required to wear the star (so-called privileged Jews, primarily married to non-Jews) remained in Germany.∞∞∂ By then, however, it was too late for public resistance against the order to wear the star. King Christian of Denmark is said to have promised that the entire royal family would wear the yellow star ‘‘as a mark of the highest distinction.’’ Harold Flender notes the ‘‘apocryphal nature’’ of the story: Many Danes spread stories that the King and members of his family had actually worn the yellow Star of David, and by doing so caused the Germans to rescind the order that all Danish Jews were to wear the armband. Actually, none of these stories is true. . . . King Christian the 10th never made the statements attributed to him. He never wore the armband, never even said that he would wear it. Having been advised of the Danes’ intense antipathy to anti-Semitism, the Germans never attempted or even threatened to introduce the yellow Star of David in Denmark. . . . The stories are apocryphal, but they are an indication of what the Danish people wanted to believe about their king. As such, these tales reflect the attitude of the majority of the Danes toward the Jews.∞∞∑

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Like all legends, the story contains some truth. The Germans had no king; but if they had, would they have wanted such a monarch?

∞∏

The Godesberg Declaration Various statements and regulations paved the way for the Godesberg Declaration, which was announced by the German Christians in April 1939.∞ The German Christians had already disclosed their program for the complete ‘‘de-Judaization’’ of the German Volk on 14 July 1937.≤ In late 1938, the Thuringian regional church council issued two decrees.≥ The first, on 30 November 1938, prohibited pastors from ministering to non-Aryans: ‘‘We see ourselves compelled to point out that, for clergy of the Thuringian Protestant Church, conducting pastoral services for nonAryans is out of the question. . . . This directive is to be brought to the attention of the pastors insofar as it should still appear necessary.’’∂ The second decree, on 17 December 1938, tried to soothe the consciences of those who might have been troubled: The pastors of the Thuringian Evangelical Church must conduct their office in the manner required by the church’s duty toward the state and the people. . . . Given the German people’s position toward Jewry, it is out of the question for a pastor, through ministry to Jews, to offer even the slightest impression that the church . . . might hinder the state’s measures for the final elimination of Jewry from German cultural life. Any difficulties in the implementation of this basic position must be borne for the sake of the cause.∑

The Thuringian decrees heralded the subsequent Godesberg Declaration and the onset of the Final Solution, which the German Christians were fostering in the churches. By that point, there was little the Confessing Church could do. With German Christian sanction, a Berlin pastor in 1939 asked his confirmation candidates to vow to ‘‘fight as long as you live against Rome and Judah.’’∏ Nonetheless, the Thuringian church’s independent step caused some embarrassment for the Church Ministry and the Evangelical Chancellery. At a January 1939 Church Ministry meeting, Church Councillor Heinz Brunotte noted that ‘‘complete clarity about the treatment of the non-Aryans in the German Evangelical Church . . . [did] not yet’’ exist in 176

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the Church Ministry. The discussion ended with a recommendation that individual regional churches contact the Church Ministry before seeking their own solutions. The Thuringian church’s actions were criticized, and it was agreed that the German Evangelical Church should establish guidelines governing ministry to non-Aryans. It is not clear whether the Church Ministry or the Evangelical Church Chancellery officially contacted the Thuringian church. In any case, the Thuringian church passed a more extreme law in February 1939, which excluded Jews from the Thuringian Evangelical regional church, prohibited them from using church rooms and facilities, and halted the collection of church taxes from them. ‘‘No pastor of the Thuringian Evangelical Church is obliged to minister to Jews who were members of the Thuringian Evangelical Church before the effective date of this law. . . . Ministry to other Jews is not allowed.’’∫ On 1 March, the Council of the Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Germany notified its member churches and partners of the Thuringian church law: ‘‘We refrain from repeating the obvious objections to the legality of the various actions of church authorities. These objections are, of course, well known and unassailable; they have, in the meantime, become the predominant opinion.’’Ω Independent of the Lutheran Council’s call for a legal and theological review of the Thuringian laws and a similar one (passed on 13 February 1939) in Mecklenburg, a sharp protest came from two Mecklenburg pastors, who wrote to their bishop, Walther Schultz: Do you believe that these legal paragraphs can replace the substantiation that is absent in the Holy Scripture and the confessional writings of our church? Or do you believe that action by the church government does not require such justification?—The church government has no other task but the legal and administrative safeguarding of the orderly and scripturally correct proclamation of the Word. . . . Have you become aware of the impossible situation into which you bring the pastors of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Mecklenburg when you expect them to act . . . in strictest opposition to the New Testament, before which they are supposed to answer for what they do and preach; when you demand an obedience that compels them to disobey the duties assumed in the vow of ordination?

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The ‘‘Elimination’’ of the Jews Or is Jesus Christ’s baptismal command not in your New Testament?—It is, however, in that New Testament that lies upon the altars and pulpits of Mecklenburg’s Lutheran churches!—How do you want to reconcile your law of 13 February 1939 with this?—Should there be no preaching anymore in the Lutheran churches of our land on the letter to the Romans, the letters to the Corinthians, the Galatians, and Ephesians, the Acts of the Apostles, and the Gospels, all of which together stand in contradiction to your law?—Or, should the pastors of Mecklenburg act differently than they preach?∞≠ Is the Gospel that is entrusted to the Church really the joyous message of the salvation that God in Jesus Christ wants to give to all sinners—or not?—Has the Lord Christ declared His will that all human beings may be helped and come to the understanding of the truth—or not?—Has He sent His disciples into all the world, to teach and to baptize all peoples—or not? Is this the joyous message, that God excludes no one from salvation in Jesus Christ and will also have no one excluded from it through the action of human beings—or not? . . . Perhaps you assumed, when you developed this law, that the Lutheran pastors of Mecklenburg would not contradict you publicly, out of fear that this would be interpreted to their disadvantage as ‘‘friendship with the Jews’’ or ‘‘sabotage of the Jewish legislation.’’ . . . We believe that we owe it to you to declare openly and publicly that we cannot accept and keep this your law, as long as you are not able to justify it before the Holy Scripture and the confession of our church. This is what we ask of you, Bishop! . . . The holy Christian church itself asks how you wish to justify a law that assaults its innermost substance, the justification by faith alone!∞∞

The letter evoked both solidarity and irritation (‘‘a few silent handshakes in private, a few bluntly indignant postcards’’).∞≤ The only other echo came from the high church councillor in Schwerin, who protested that such impertinent and insubordinate statements had been made to a bishop and sent to clergy throughout Mecklenburg. The councillor also criticized the fact ‘‘that you take a position on the treatment of the Jewish question by the church that is unworthy of a German clergyman.’’∞≥ With that, disciplinary procedures were initiated against the two pastors.∞∂ By the beginning of 1939, legislation affecting non-Aryan Christians had been passed by the churches of Thuringia, Saxony, Mecklenburg, 178

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Anhalt, and Lübeck, thoroughly interfering with Church Minister Kerrl’s repeated attempts at church unification. But, although Kerrl may have envisioned the means toward this end somewhat differently, his task was accomplished in early April 1939, when German Christian representatives, other Protestant pastors, and laypeople drafted the so-called Godesberg Declaration. The document was initially intended as the foundation for friendly cooperation among different church groups. The core of the declaration was its third point: ‘‘What is the relationship between Judaism and Christianity? Did Christianity develop from Judaism and thus become its continuation and fulfillment, or does Christianity stand in opposition to Judaism? To this question, we reply: The Christian faith is the insurmountable religious antithesis of Judaism.’’∞∑ On 4 April 1939, immediately after the Godesberg meeting, the German Christian leaders of eleven regional churches issued a ‘‘Proclamation.’’∞∏ Explicitly based on the Godesberg Declaration, it was the first fruit of Kerrl’s project to unify the churches.∞π One of its principles literally repeated the Godesberg document: ‘‘The Christian faith is the insurmountable religious antithesis to Judaism.’’ The group proposed the ‘‘establishment of an institute for the investigation and elimination of the Jewish influence upon the ecclesiastical life of the German people.’’∞∫ One week later, the Confessing Church—through the Conference of Regional Councils of Brethren in the German Evangelical Church—responded to the Godesberg Declaration and the proclamation of the German Christian leaders.∞Ω The response was worse than ‘‘unfortunate’’:≤≠ It has pleased God to make Israel the bearer and instrument of divine revelation. This is not invalidated by the fact that the Jews themselves have become untrue to their divine purpose. As the true Israel, the Church is heir to the promise that was given to the people of Israel. . . . The Christian faith stands in insurmountable religious opposition to Judaism. This Judaism, however, exists not just among the Jews, but in all aspirations for a national church as well. It is nothing more than the attempt by natural man to fortify his religious and moral selfjustifications by combining them with a völkisch sense of mission and, in so doing, to reject Jesus as the Christ of God.≤∞

Theologically, the statement made two points. First, it declared the church to be the heir of Israel, a process that dates back to the early period of the church and, as is recognized today, is one of the roots of 179

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anti-Judaism. Second, by charging that the German Christians bore the reprehensible stigma of the Judaic legacy (‘‘in all aspirations for a national church’’), it even deprived the Jews of their Judaism. In the truest sense, the Jews had been ‘‘stripped’’ and the clothing divided up: the good pieces to the Confessing Christians, the bad ones to the German Christians. The tone of another Confessing statement (probably intended for congregations) that was issued the same day by the Conference of Regional Councils of Brethren was different: The church governments named [that is, the eleven regional churches led by German Christians] hinder people who have been redeemed by Christ from hearing the solace of the Word of God in a Christian congregation. They exclude people in need of salvation from the holy sacraments. They want to render ineffective what Christ has bought with his bitter suffering: For Christ created one holy body, the one Christian church, out of Jews and Gentiles. Once again they set up the fence that Christ broke down, and thereby turn the Christian church into a pharisaical sect. . . . We protest the transfer of political standards to church life. The men responsible for these laws have proved themselves enemies of Christ’s cross. They may exclude no one from the Christian church. . . . We ask the pastors and congregations of the churches concerned not to keep these laws, but to abandon Christian communion with all those who submit to this yoke. We would rather suffer than make ourselves accomplices in the destruction of the Body of Christ.≤≤

In quiet solidarity with the persecuted, numerous individuals and groups often assumed such suffering for the sake of Christ. An article in a German Christian publication in Saxony attacked these ‘‘incorrigibles’’: In its letter of 1 March 1939 to the regional church council in Dessau, the Confessing Church in Anhalt documents clearly and unambiguously its friendship with and bondage to the Jews. . . . A chief district pastor and sixteen active Anhalt clergymen still dare, together with six retired Anhalt clergymen and four other Confessing Church pastors removed from office pending legal action . . . to take a position in defense of the Jews. 2. This is the confessional front unmasked!

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The Godesberg Declaration 3. While intervening in this way for the Jews, they have the impudence to reproach all other clergyman in Anhalt with the worst things, namely, breaking the oath, breaking the vow of ordination.≤≥

Knowledge of events in the German churches naturally reached the ecumenical world during this period. After the proclamation from the eleven regional churches, the ecumenical council in Geneva saw itself obliged to summon Christian churches in all countries to consider with all seriousness the following testimony of Christian truth: . . . The Christian faith is the confirmation of obedience to Jesus Christ, who is the Messiah of Israel. ‘‘Salvation comes from the Jews’’ (John 4:22). The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of the Jewish hope. The Christian church, therefore, is obligated to proclaim to the Jewish people the fulfillment of the promises that have been given to it, and the Christian church rejoices at the preservation of community with those from the Jewish race who have accepted the Gospel.≤∂

Despite this rather feeble statement, which reflected the ecumenical body’s hesitation to offend the Church Foreign Office, Bishop Heckel sent a cable to the central ecumenical office in Geneva on 6 May 1939, protesting this ‘‘intolerable interference in internal German affairs.’’≤∑ In May 1939, the Provisional Church Administration sent an unusually long analysis of the churches’ situation to all German Evangelical Church pastors. There was only one sentence about the situation of the Jews (and non-Aryan Christians): ‘‘The regional churches of Thuringia, Saxony, Mecklenburg, and Lübeck have subjected non-Aryan Christians to legal provisions that destroy the unity of the Body of Christ.’’≤∏ On 21 May 1939, the Eighth Confessional Synod of the Evangelical Church of the Old Prussian Union was unable to agree on a statement on behalf of the Jews.≤π Those regional church leaders who were dubious about the Godesberg Declaration, however, remained unconvinced. On 26 May, the advocates of the Godesberg Declaration drafted a list of principles ‘‘that, in obvious accord with the Godesberg Declaration, were intended to take the ecclesiastical aspects into consideration, but were intended above all to meet with the approval of the political authorities.’’≤∫ Under the title ‘‘Basic Principles for a New Church Order in the German Evangelical Church Adequate to the Demands of the Present,’’ these principles were sent by 181

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the Reich church minister ‘‘via the Church Chancellery to the regional churches for their acknowledgment.’’≤Ω The third principle stated: ‘‘National Socialist ideology struggles with all possible ruthlessness against the political and spiritual influence of the Jewish race on the life of our people. In obedience to the divine order of creation, the Evangelical Church affirms its responsibility to maintain the purity of our people and traditions. Beyond this, there is no sharper contrast in the sphere of faith than that between the message of Jesus Christ and the Jewish religion of legalism and political hope in the Messiah.’’≥≠ On 31 May, the conference of church leaders sent the church minister a modification of its ‘‘Basic Principles,’’ which became known as the Godesberg ‘‘Variata.’’ The revision of point 3 stated: In the sphere of faith, a sharp contrast exists between the message of Jesus Christ and His Apostles and the Jewish religion of legalism and political hope in the Messiah, which even in the Old Testament is fought emphatically. In the sphere of the life of the Volk, a serious and responsible racial policy is necessary for preserving the purity of our people.≥∞

Trying to retain his control over the ‘‘reordering of the church,’’ Minister Kerrl insisted on his version at the church leaders’ conference the following day.≥≤ After a heated debate, Hannover’s Bishop August Marahrens relented; led by Wurm and Meiser, the other bishops stood firm. Marahrens’s decision was both tragic and predictable.≥≥ On 23 June Marahrens attempted to defend his position, but his statement was contradicted by a statement on 3 July from the Hannover Brotherhood of Pastors that claimed the church as the divinely chosen heir of Israel.≥∂ Marahrens had maneuvered himself into uncomfortable isolation.≥∑ On 30 June 1939, the Provisional Church Administration sent a letter to its regional Councils of Brethren and the governments of the regional churches.≥∏ Bishops Wurm and Meiser also issued a letter on 1 August 1939.≥π Both letters distanced themselves from Marahrens, whose actions ‘‘are ecclesiastically intolerable and grievously endanger the unity of the entire German Evangelical Church.’’≥∫ By the last months of 1939, the Confessing Church carried a heavy mortgage. It was by no means theologically or spiritually bankrupt. But it had been weakened by growing pressures from outside and heightened discord within its own ranks; publicly, the Confessing Church grew in182

The Godesberg Declaration

creasingly paralyzed. On 10 June 1939, President Karl Koch resigned from the Westphalian Council of Brethren. As the theological differences increased, the possibilities for the convocation of new synods diminished. The outside pressures on the Confessing Church were evident in the soaring numbers of those arrested by the Gestapo or sent into exile: the 8 August 1939 intercessory prayer list referred to 121 instances of interference in the performance of pastoral duties, 32 bans on residence, 106 expulsions from congregations, and 44 speaking bans and other calls to order.≥Ω The efforts of German Christians to remove Jewish names and symbols from church buildings were a peculiar variant in the ‘‘de-Judaization of ecclesiastical life’’ in 1939. The precedents for such demands had included ‘‘purifying the hymnal’’ in the summer of 1934, when a German Christian group in Dortmund proposed, ‘‘All hymns and liturgical passages with names and expressions such as ‘God Sabaoth,’ ‘Hosanna,’ ‘Abraham’s seed,’ ‘Jehovah,’ ‘Jacob’s salvation,’ ‘Zion,’ etc., are no longer sung in the worship service. The next goal is . . . the de-Judaization and purification of our church hymns. Our driving force is our faith in Christ, who was no Jew.’’∂≠ Early in 1939, the Reich minister for church affairs requested the German Evangelical Church’s opinion on an article referring to the ‘‘pollution of German churches by Jewish names.’’∂∞ A response prepared by German Evangelical Church lawyer Heinz Brunotte stated that congregations named after Immanuel, Jerusalem, Zion, Simon, and Tabor did not bear ‘‘Jewish’’ names: ‘‘None of the five names appears, for instance, in the list of Jewish names specified in the circular of 18 August 1938 from the Reich Interior Minister.∂≤ The newspaper Deutsches Christentum (German Christendom) overlooks the fact that these are biblically Christian names, not Jewish ones, not even Old Testament ones.’’∂≥ In the giving of names, he wrote, it was important to ask ‘‘what significance they have had for the Christian tradition. . . . It may be asserted without exaggeration that ‘Jewish names’ of Christian churches in Germany do not appear at all. Old Testament names, too, are likely to be very rare.’’ Brunotte was not aware of any church named for Moses, Abraham, David, ‘‘or the like.’’ Prima facie, Brunotte had avoided a difficult situation by cleverly referring to the interior minister’s order regarding Jewish first names. But he paid a clear price; the separation of names from their Jewish and Old Testament origin surrendered the unity between the Old and New Testa183

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ments. Brunotte sought to justify the retention of Hebrew inscriptions such as the term Yahweh but subsequently added, in the margin: ‘‘Nevertheless, the Hebrew characters, which rarely appear in the churches, could be removed without detriment.’’∂∂ Brunotte’s second draft, the ‘‘Ordinance on the Position of Evangelical Jews in the Church,’’ exemplified the course followed by the German Evangelical Church Chancellery in the treatment of non-Aryan Christians: section 1 Jews (Section 5 of the First Decree to the Reich Citizens’ Law from 14 November 1935, rgbl.I, p. 1333) cannot be members of a congregation belonging to a regional church of the German Evangelical Church. section 2 Jews baptized as Protestants, insofar as they are subjects of the state in the protective association of the German Reich (Section 1 of the Reich Citizens’ Law from 15 September 1935, rgbl.I, p. 146), belong, in guest status, to the Protestant congregation in their place of residence. section 3 Jews (sections 1 and 2) do not have the public ecclesiastical rights of congregation members. In particular, they cannot be appointed church officials or be called into a relationship analogous to that of an official; they have no active or passive ecclesiastical right to vote; they cannot hold honorary ecclesiastical offices; they cannot take active part in the work of church organizations and associations. section 4 Jews baptized as Protestants (section 2) participate in the spiritual institutions of the congregation at their place of residence, in particular in the public worship service, as guests. The service rendered by the pastor, as well as the carrying out of official acts of ministry, is granted to them under the terms of the following provisions. section 5 For official ecclesiastical services performed for Jews baptized as Protestants, as well as for baptisms of children of Jewish parents baptized as Protestants, church rooms and facilities can be used, with the provision, however, that official functions should take place in private groups. The highest agencies of the regional church shall determine the details.

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The Godesberg Declaration section 6 If a pastor refuses the granting of official services to Jews baptized as Protestants, who stand in a guest relationship to his church congregation, then these, with the approval of the highest agencies of the regional church, can choose a pastor other than their responsible pastor for the official services. section 7 Official pastoral services in accord with Section 4 are to be registered alphabetically in the parish registers of the congregation at the place of residence. section 8 In each case, irrespective of existing regional church regulations, the baptism of an adult Jew requires previous authorization from the highest agencies of the regional church. These can reserve the preparation for baptism and the baptism itself for an agency to be entrusted by it with these procedures. Baptisms performed without authorization do not establish a guest relationship with the Evangelical Church (section 2). Every Jew who has passed the fourteenth year of life is considered an adult. The regulation in Section 1 is also applied to Jewish children, both of whose parents were not baptized as Protestants before the effective date of this ordinance. section 9 A Jew baptized as a Protestant can exercise the functions of the Christian office of godparent only for a Jewish candidate for baptism. section 10 The conversion of a baptized Jew from another Christian church or sect, or the change from nonreligious status into a guest relationship with the Evangelical Church (section 2), can occur only after prior authorization through the highest agency of the regional church. section 11 Church taxes will not be collected from Jews baptized as Protestants who stand in a guest relationship to a congregation (section 2). section 12 This ordinance becomes effective on the day of its proclamation. Conflicting provisions in the regional churches are abrogated.∂∑

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Thirty years later, Brunotte tried to defend this document—one of the most prominent examples of a bureaucratic ‘‘solution’’ to emerge from the offices of the German Evangelical Church.∂∏

∞π

The Aryan Certificate for Theologians German Christian church leaders had always been more interested than the state authorities in implementing a church Aryan paragraph. After 1936, non-Aryans barred from studying theology were admitted to the church colleges established by the Confessing Church and could become ministers in the Confessing Church after taking their examinations (which were given secretly by Confessing Church members).∞ After the Godesberg Declaration, Dr. Friedrich Werner, the German Christian director of the two highest Protestant agencies (the Evangelical Central Council and the German Evangelical Church Chancellery in Berlin), sought to change this situation permanently. On 12 May 1939, the Evangelical Central Council of the Old Prussian Union Church announced that before a candidate could be accepted for theological exams, ordination, permanent employment in a parish, or service in a regional church, every theological candidate must furnish proof of his Aryan descent and that of his future wife, should he marry. To this end, the Central Council requires the questionnaire on racial descent . . . to be filled out and signed by the candidates in question, effective immediately. Where a marriage is planned, the clergyman must submit to his Consistory the announcement of the marriage, together with particulars about the descent of his future wife . . . at least three weeks before the marriage.≤

The Confessing Church now had to decide whether it would abide by the Pastors’ Emergency League pledge and the third thesis of the Barmen Declaration. After the leader of Bremen’s Evangelical Church required the Aryan certificate of all pastors under his jurisdiction (not just of future pastors, to whom the Central Council’s ordinance applied), Martin Albertz intervened.≥ On behalf of the Provisional Church Administration and ‘‘in agreement with the Conference of the Regional Councils of Brethren of Germany,’’ he called on church governments with ties to the Confessing Church, as well as the regional Councils of Brethren, 186

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‘‘to resist this suggestion (from Bremen) and not to comply with the request’’ and to warn their pastors ‘‘not to submit the documents demanded.’’∂ The letter ended with the words of the Pastors’ Emergency League pledge.∑ The Old Prussian Union Church Council of Brethren issued a clear statement soon after Werner’s announcement: ‘‘Whoever fills out the questionnaire presented by the German Christian church bureaucracy . . . helps translate the Godesberg Declaration of the German Christians into reality, and thereby contributes to the removal from the ministry of colleagues who are not of full Aryan descent or whose wives are not.’’∏ Once more united in common cause, the other regional Councils of Brethren issued similar statements. The regional Council of Brethren in Saxony announced that the Aryan paragraph and its consequences could not be permitted in the church, charging that the newly issued questionnaires represented the application of secular civil service laws to the ministry.π In the Mark Brandenburg region, the Confessing Church Council instructed its members not to return the questionnaire.∫ Enclosing a copy of Martin Niemöller’s ‘‘Principles Regarding the Aryan Question in the Church,’’ the Council of Brethren summarized: At that time, a false synod attempted to introduce the Aryan paragraph into the church by means of church law. But this was thwarted by the united witness of clergy who joined together in the Pastors’ Emergency League. . . . After six years of struggle, the church bureaucracy believes that . . . consciences have become apathetic and that this ground might be ripe for the taking. It [the consistory] does not dare make the matter public in the church; it would much rather carry it through without visible unrest. For this reason, it does not order the introduction of the Aryan paragraph in the church . . . but sends questionnaires to each individual pastor. Everyone must understand clearly that the church authorities’ action serves no statistical purpose. Whoever fills out and sends in the questionnaires . . . helps create a complete change in the nature of the ministry. . . . This apparently harmless request forces us to make a serious decision before God.Ω

Noting that ‘‘the few purely non-Aryan pastors have long been out of office,’’ the Westphalian Council of Brethren asserted that the church should at least defend its ‘‘half-breed brethren.’’ There was no doubt that 187

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the few non-Aryan colleagues were ‘‘orderly servants of the Word,’’ noted the council, adding that the younger clergy in the Confessing Church were far more at risk because many of them were ‘‘illegal’’: ‘‘They are exposed to the arbitrariness of church administrative agencies to a far greater extent than we are. We ought to lead the way for them by setting a good example, thereby making their path all the more secure.’’∞≠ In the meantime, regional churches that approved Werner’s order acted accordingly. In Hesse-Nassau, the church administration coldly dismissed Pastor Max Weber of Neckarsteinach ‘‘since you, as a halfbreed of second degree . . . are not of German or kindred blood and therefore . . . cannot become or remain a clergyman.’’∞∞ In Brunswick, two ‘‘half-breed Aryan’’ pastors fell victim to the new provisions: Pastor Dr. Niemann in Grosstöckheim, who died in the course of the controversy, and Pastor Goetze from St. Pauli, whose final transfer ‘‘into temporary retirement’’ followed, after stressful years of negotiation, on 31 March 1941.∞≤ Pastor Karl Steinbauer of Bavaria displayed exceptional solidarity with the victims of the Aryan certificate and those who opposed it. Steinbauer used a sermon on Matt. 2:13–23 to explain why he had refused to furnish an Aryan certificate in order to teach religion in the schools: This is impossible for me as a Christian and an ordained preacher of the Lord Christ. According to this racial law, the Lord Christ was not competent or capable of proclaiming His own message, and was not permitted to enter any school; this holds for the Apostles as well. For they were Jews according to the flesh, according to race. If the Lord Christ must remain standing outside the school door with His message, and His Apostles with Him, then I will stand outside the door with them. I know that only a few understand me, because only very few have thought about this. But I see the demand for this certificate not as a solitary measure but . . . in its greater context, as a further step toward the systematic isolation of the free proclamation of the Christian message. . . . If, for example, the Aryan certificate is required for active military duty, I will present it as a matter of course, but not for the purpose of securing the right to preach as an ordained preacher of Jesus Christ.∞≥

Steinbauer was arrested and imprisoned in Neu Ulm for eight weeks before his transfer to a concentration camp on 28 March 1939. 188

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The questionnaires arrived in parsonages throughout Germany. On behalf of the pastors under his charge, Westphalian church president Koch wrote a cautious letter to the German Christian–directed Evangelical Consistory in Münster (Westphalia), asking ‘‘that the submission of these questionnaires not be required at this time. The matter will lead to considerable unrest and extremely undesirable complications.’’∞∂ Many Westphalian pastors grasped the new situation; the insights gained years before in Barmen helped them know what to do. On 7 November 1939, referring to ‘‘our discussion of the Aryan question,’’ Ulrich Dähne wrote Ludwig Steil that the issue had been resolved by the third thesis of the Barmen Theological Declaration∞∑ —and at the earlier Free Reformed Synod in Barmen–Gemarke in January 1934, which declared that it was incompatible ‘‘with the unity and message of the church to limit its membership and qualifications for service to the church to members of a certain race.’’∞∏ He emphasized that the Pastors’ Emergency League pledge’s rejection of the Aryan paragraph applied to the young generation of theologians; the new Pastors’ Emergency League guidelines of 1 February 1938 confirmed this.∞π Hans Thimme, assistant to Westphalian church president Koch, tried to win his support for a declaration against the Aryan certificate, asking for a ‘‘common declaration [that] makes the unity of the Confessing Church visible.’’∞∫ The result was a memorandum entitled ‘‘The Aryan Question for the Young Generation of Theologians,’’ which the Westphalian Council of Brethren sent to the auxiliary preachers and vicars of the Confessing Church in Westphalia in Advent 1939.∞Ω The Council of Brethren suggested that clergy compare the memorandum ‘‘with the guiding resolutions of the Confessing Church from 1934, especially with the Barmen Theological Declaration, and to scrutinize it as a whole on the basis of the Holy Scripture.’’ The most important passage was point 3: ‘‘What matters is not the larger or smaller number of brethren affected by this. The authors of the provision in question aim . . . for the supremacy of the principles that they proclaimed authoritatively in Godesberg, and they want to destroy the resistance founded upon Scripture and Confession. So the question confronts all of us whether we want to follow and encourage these orders from this government, or whether, obedient to the Lord of the church, we want to resist them.’’≤≠ Those who submitted to the consistory’s demand to fill out the questionnaires ‘‘would encour189

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age false doctrine and, thereby, would become disloyal to the brotherhood of the Confessing Church and its church administration.’’≤∞ All these statements condemned the Aryan certificate, but their motives varied. Solidarity with the persecuted was not a high priority. The predominant argument against the Aryan certificate was the danger of state-church encroachment on the Confessing Church’s sovereignty; this was also the reason the Confessing Church never officially protested the Nuremberg Laws. Misgivings or resistance developed only when state laws gained ground in the church’s realm—when the Nuremberg Laws appeared in an improved and expanded edition, as it were, in the Godesberg Declaration. The state promised not to interfere with the church and, in turn, demanded that the church not interfere with the state either. It was part of the state’s tactic to isolate the church and to clear the way for the Final Solution. For the Confessing Church, the Aryan certificate raised fewer concerns about non-Aryan brethren than about possible infringements on ordination. Asked about his ‘‘attitude toward the demand for the so-called Aryan certificate,’’ Westphalian president Koch replied: This question is of particular importance because it was tied up with ordination. But the Aryan certificate can never be a precondition for ordination as such. . . . Ordination is the conferral of the right of proclamation of the Word and of the administration of the sacraments in the congregation through the congregation. . . . The minister for church affairs also recently stated . . . that affairs concerning worship and the confessions are reserved for the spiritual leadership. Ordination, however, is an affair that concerns the confessions and worship. . . . As many of you know, my opinion about the question of brothers from the people of Israel entering the ministry differs from that of many brethren. . . . I can only advise against making a confessional declaration in these matters today. Obviously, our church has not yet been granted a clear view into the biblical witness here.≤≤

Koch’s statement tacitly acknowledged that ‘‘the Spirit, based upon the Word,’’ had not yet granted an answer to the church’s ‘‘Jewish question.’’ His timid attempt to maintain distance from the ‘‘brothers from the people of Israel’’ revealed the virulently insidious anti-Judaism that prevailed. Pastor Adolf Schmidt, who with Ulrich Dähne was a trusted confidant 190

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of the illegal young Confessing pastors in Westphalia, invited Thimme to discuss the situation.≤≥ Schmidt and others had concluded that they could not remain silent ‘‘in the matter of the Aryan question. We consider it imperative that the entire brotherhood comes to the conclusion that everyone who in any way fills out and submits the Aryan questionnaire has separated and excluded himself from the brotherhood.’’≤∂ Thimme assured Schmidt of his own opposition to the Aryan certificate. He added a qualification, however: ‘‘I do not consider it right to cause our brotherhood unrest and confusion at the present time with all kind of resolutions and condemnations. . . . The important issue now is the simple, true ministry to the parishes, and I and many others are so involved in this that I will not let myself be diverted from my real ministry to a polemical level.’’≤∑ Thimme advised that further steps were ‘‘impracticable,’’ adding that it was sufficient for the time being to see that no one signed the questionnaire. The clearest statement at the time came from Heinrich Grüber: I believe that in these times the Evangelical Church must have more important things to do than offer the opportunity for the defamation of people who, according to the distinct will of the state authorities, should remain undisturbed in their work. I can see nothing in the whole procedure other than an attempt to curry favor with authorities who, in the final analysis, reject the church and would rather see its demise. . . . The official church’s treatment of pastors who are considered Jewish under the Nuremberg Laws has damaged the Evangelical Church more than is known in Germany, precisely in the eyes of impartial church leaders well disposed toward Germany. . . . Christian churches must at all times remain the conscience of the world, and they will refuse to stand by a church government that allows its measures to be dictated by opportunism instead of by a conscience bound to God. For the love of the affected brethren and responsibility toward the Evangelical Church of Germany, I cannot fill out the questionnaire, and I likewise tell all brethren who ask me to leave it undone.≤∏

Grüber’s remarks marked a new emphasis that began to spread. For the first time, the concept of ‘‘conscience’’ emerged and ‘‘love toward the affected brethren’’ was expressed. The language of dogmatics, which had 191

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sufficiently belabored the concepts of Scripture, confession, ordination, and the ‘‘true church’’ since 1933, was replaced by the language of ethics. The Pastors’ Emergency League pledge acquired a new value. In September 1940, after Confessing Church pastors throughout Germany had rejected the Aryan certificate,≤π German Christian leaders once more demanded a ‘‘certificate of descent’’ from candidates for the pastorate. President Koch responded: A considerable number of questions have arisen because of the personal questionnaire to be filled out by the auxiliary preachers. . . . The words ‘‘certificate of racial descent’’ have stirred up the entire discussion once again. I regret very much that . . . eligibility is made contingent upon the furnishing of the certificate of racial descent. . . . I object to this quite firmly. . . . Therefore, I request that the distribution of certificates of eligibility and the payment of children’s allowances not be made contingent upon the ‘‘certificate of racial descent.’’ . . . Otherwise, I do not know how I am supposed to reply to indignant questions!≤∫

With that, the Westphalian president stood clearly behind his candidates for the ministry. It is the last document in the files on the Aryan certificate.

∞∫

The Final Solution and the End of the Church Struggle With the beginning of the war, the Confessing Church’s situation changed dramatically. Emboldened by its early military successes, the Nazi state moved ruthlessly to eliminate what little opposition remained. The hardest blow against the Confessing Church was the closing of its illegal seminary (the Kirchliche Hochschule) in Berlin in the spring of 1941 and the subsequent trial, in a Gestapo court, of twenty-three Confessing leaders and teachers associated with the seminary. As a result of the trial, Provisional Church Administration leader Martin Albertz was imprisoned for eighteen months.∞ The growing number of arrests of Confessing Church pastors and leaders impeded both open resistance and private help. Some pastors’ wives were told that their husbands would be released from custody if they would leave the ministry. The most significant change, however, 192

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was the military enlistment of pastors. Of the two thousand young pastors who had passed their theological examinations in the Confessing Church, fifteen hundred were at the front by May 1941.≤ The law requiring Jews to wear the star took effect on 19 September 1941. In October 1941, the deportation trains began to roll toward the east; Auschwitz had been opened on 23 September.≥ The deportations could hardly take place in perfect secrecy, and, in any case, Confessing Church pastors and laypeople with close contacts to resistance circles were well informed. After deportations from Berlin began on 16 October 1941, various rescue efforts were begun by political resistance groups.∂ One was the daring ‘‘Operation 7,’’ initially an effort on the part of Admiral Wilhelm Canaris and Hans von Dohnanyi to save several Jewish friends.∑ Confessing Christians such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Friedrich Perels, and Wilhelm Rott (who had assumed the imprisoned Martin Albertz’s responsibilities) soon joined in. With the help of Pastor Alphons Koechlin, president of the Swiss Federation of Evangelical Churches, their intervention helped rescue Charlotte Friedenthal, a colleague in Provisional Church Administration who also worked in the Grüber office.∏ At the beginning of 1942, the finance department of the Lutheran church administration in Hannover ‘‘freed’’ baptized Jewish members from the requirement to pay church taxes, ‘‘since Jews cannot be considered members of the Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Hannover as a corporation under public law.’’π On 20 January 1942, the ‘‘Wannsee Conference’’ met in Berlin; it was the last stage in the preparations for the Final Solution of the Jewish question. The protocol of the conference tersely stated: ‘‘In the process of the practical implementation of the Final Solution, Europe will be combed through from west to east.’’∫ This was the historical context for the Church Chancellery’s short fivesentence statement, sent to the highest officials in all the regional churches, announcing its intended course on the Jewish question. the scriptum atrum of the evangelical church chancellery

On the morning of 14 December 1941, Reich Minister for Church Affairs Hanns Kerrl died. In an obituary two days later, deputy director Günther Fürle of the Evangelical Church Chancellery honored Kerrl ‘‘in the confi193

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dence that God and His Christ will also grant fulfillment in His time to the life’s work to which the last years of his life were dedicated.’’Ω On 17 December, the church leaders of Saxony, Nassau-Hesse, Mecklenburg, Schleswig-Holstein, Anhalt, Thuringia, and Lübeck announced their churches’ position on Protestant Jews. ‘‘The severest measures’’ were ‘‘to be taken against the Jews,’’ who were ‘‘to be expelled from German territories.’’ ‘‘Racially Jewish Christians have no place and no right in (the church)’’; the undersigned church leaders had ‘‘discontinued every kind of communion with Jewish Christians.’’∞≠ Evidently not wanting to remain on the sidelines, the German Evangelical Church Chancellery issued a decree two days before Christmas Eve, signed by Fürle: The breakthrough of racial consciousness in our people, intensified by the experiences of the war and the corresponding measures taken by the political leadership, has brought about the elimination of Jews from the community of us Germans. This is an incontestable fact, which the German Evangelical churches, which serve the one, eternal Gospel within the German people and live within the legal domain of this people as corporations under public law, cannot heedlessly ignore. Therefore, in agreement with the Spiritual Confidential Council of the German Evangelical Church, we request the highest authorities to take suitable measures so that baptized non-Aryans remain separate from the ecclesiastical life of the German congregations. The baptized nonAryans will have to find the ways and means to create their own facilities to serve their particular worship and pastoral needs. We will make every effort to help obtain permission for such facilities from the responsible authorities.∞∞

In the wake of the movement toward a ‘‘final solution,’’ the chancellery statement amounted to a Judas kiss. The chancellery had publicly sanctioned the path taken at Wannsee. Bishop Wurm of Württemberg was the first leader to take a position on the chancellery letter.∞≤ Having read the chancellery’s wording carefully, Wurm formulated his answer just as carefully. The result was hardly a protest letter. Wurm ‘‘gladly’’ acknowledged that the chancellery had not adopted the German Christians’ arguments, but he believed that the consequences of the chancellery letter complemented German Christian goals. The chancellery (imitating German Christian reasoning, Wurm 194

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noted) believed it could justify the exclusion of non-Aryans because of its mission ‘‘to the German people,’’ in their service to the one, eternal Gospel, but ‘‘it ought to have been said, on the basis of the Scripture and the confession, that the churches rely upon the one, eternal Gospel in their service to our people.’’ Wurm accused the chancellery of appealing not to the Gospel but to ‘‘the breakthrough of racial consciousness in our people, intensified by the experiences of the war and by corresponding measures taken by the political leadership.’’ This conclusion had nothing to do with the one, eternal Gospel. ‘‘From the Gospel’s perspective, there is no justification for the exclusion of baptized non-Aryans.’’ Referring to the chancellery’s statement that the churches could not ‘‘heedlessly ignore’’ the elimination of the Jews from the community of the German people, Wurm replied: ‘‘The Christian may not ignore any unfortunate person heedlessly. No one will want to dispute the fact that non-Aryan Christians are the unfortunates today. Are we allowed to magnify this misfortune even more by depriving them of participation in our worship services?’’∞≥ Why was Wurm so reserved in his letter to the chancellery? The rest of the letter offers the answer. Although relativized by the demands imposed by the gospel of love, his earlier anti-Semitism emerged in his historical reminiscences. ‘‘Jewry’s alien infiltration of German spiritual life and of political life during the nineteenth century,’’ Wurm wrote, had led to a ‘‘deistic belief in reason’’ that was hostile to the church. Moreover, it proved ‘‘that genuine knowledge of the Bible protects against the Jewish nature, while the struggle against the Bible can lead to the situation where one becomes, in the religious sense, the executor of Judaism, which is hostile to Christ.’’ Referring to Schlatter’s libelous text ‘‘Wird der Jude über uns siegen?’’ (Will the Jew triumph over us?), Wurm stated his obviously honest conviction: ‘‘No Evangelical church has denied the state the right to implement racial legislation for the purpose of maintaining the purity of the German Volk. In days past, the leading men of the Evangelical church—I recall Adolf Stoecker and persons sharing his views—were the first to note the dangers of alien Jewish infiltration in the economic, political, and cultural spheres, which threatens the German people.’’∞∂ Nonetheless, he said, it would not have occurred to Stoecker to sanction measures that contradicted the mission of the church and the signif195

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icance of baptism for salvation. For this reason, Wurm and the regional Central Council in Stuttgart expressed ‘‘regret’’ that the chancellery’s letter had made things more difficult for ‘‘pastors and congregations who, for reasons of conscience, cannot submit to orders from national church-oriented church administrations.’’ Wurm added ‘‘patriotic considerations’’ to his misgivings based on faith, questioning the desirability of exposing German Protestants abroad to church reprisals. He concluded with an urgent request that the chancellery withdraw its letter. The Provisional Church Administration also took a stand on the chancellery letter: Together with all Christians in Germany who stand on the ground of the Scripture and the Confession, we are compelled to declare that this request from the Church Chancellery is incompatible with the confession of the church. . . . By what right do we desire to exclude, for racial reasons, Christian non-Aryans from our worship services? Do we want to be like the Pharisees, who renounced communion with the ‘‘tax collectors and sinners’’ in the worship service and, because of this, reaped Christ’s judgment?∞∑

To be consistent, the Provisional Church Administration noted, the chancellery would have to ‘‘expel . . . all the Apostles and, not least of all, Jesus Christ Himself, the Lord of the church, because of their racial membership in the Jewish people. . . . In agreement with the letter from Bishop Wurm of 6 February 1942, we request the Church Chancellery to retract the calamitous paper of 22 December 1941.’’ The Provisional Church Administration’s tone was blunter (‘‘calamitous paper’’!) than Wurm’s; still, it agreed with him that no Protestant church in Germany contested the state’s right to pass racial laws. The Provisional Church Administration consciously refrained from criticizing the state’s ‘‘certain measures against the Jews,’’ and it expressed appreciation for Luther’s ‘‘legitimate wrath against the Jews, who defame the Christian church and undermine the morals of the Christian people.’’ Nonetheless, of course, baptized non-Aryans were ‘‘to be treated as our brethren in Christ.’’ In March 1942, the governing council of the Confessing Church in the Rhineland informed its pastors and congregations of the Fürle decree and its implementation in Hannover.∞∏ Its wording was reserved. Although similar measures had not yet been passed in the churches of the 196

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Old Prussian Union, it noted, such measures were to be expected and should be ‘‘anticipated in time’’ for the churches to respond to them: ‘‘We enclose, as an example, a well-grounded rejection of the decree, which the Provisional Church Administration of the German Evangelical Church and the Conference of the Regional Councils of Brethren have signed.’’∞π On 20 May 1942, the Spiritual Confidential Council responded to Wurm’s letter with a ‘‘personal and strictly confidential’’ reply. It attempted theologically to justify and bureaucratically to conceal the weaknesses that Wurm had uncovered in the chancellery directive.∞∫ The council insisted that the chancellery letter had been only a recommendation, that no state pressure had been applied, and that there had been no attempt to solicit the goodwill of the state. Finally, ‘‘expelling’’ or ‘‘eliminating’’ non-Aryan Christians was not the issue; they were ‘‘merely’’ asked to keep their distance from church life. Because of the war, extraordinary conditions prevailed. Just as an imprisoned Englishman could not possibly participate in a worship service in a German congregation (he would, of course, ‘‘not be able to be of one mind with us in prayer’’!), so too must participation in the worship service be denied to the wearers of the Jewish star: ‘‘Without question, Jewry is an enemy people for us Germans. Even for those Jews living in Germany, it can be assumed with certainty that they do not fervently desire a victory for German arms. How are we supposed to be able to unite in prayer for Führer, army, and Volk with those who, instead of the victory for which we ask, yearn for defeat?’’∞Ω To an unprecedented extent, the letter showed how an institution, still relatively secure in the lee of the political winds, was protecting itself by surrendering its weakest members to certain death. Because of this, Wurm was asked ‘‘to refrain from any dissemination or forwarding [that is, of this letter].’’ On 10 June 1942, Fürle himself wrote Bishop Wurm.≤≠ Once more, he explained the necessity of the chancellery decree, which various regional churches had welcomed in the meantime. Fürle’s primary concern was ‘‘the future of the German Evangelical Church’’; the end (safeguarding the church’s future) justified the means (excluding non-Aryan members from the church). After the war, Heinz Brunotte concluded that it would have been bet197

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ter for the Church Chancellery and the Spiritual Confidential Council ‘‘if they had kept quiet in December 1941, and let things take their course, rather than (with good intentions) fostering the suspicion that they, too, had wanted to participate in the German Christian expulsion of the Protestant non-Aryans.’’≤∞ bishop wurm’s letters to the state

From the ranks of the church resistance, the most fearless, insistent, and passionate protests against the state came from Bishop Theophil Wurm of Württemberg—although only after 1943. Why was he so late in finding the words to oppose the injustices against the Jews and non-Aryans? Was it because the Christian voice in him was able to overcome the anti-Semitic one only after the bestiality of deportation and murder became visible to all—that is, once the state’s despotic hatred of the Jews and its plan for their total annihilation had made personal anti-Semitism seem absurd? Might the reason be that, even after 1943, it was harder for Wurm to heed the Christian voice in himself than the anti-Semitic one? These questions arise because his anti-Jewish prejudices continued to surface in language that paralleled Adolf Stoecker’s hateful tirades. Because of this, Wurm was never able to fight anti-Semitism itself; he always attacked only its most recent manifestation. This theological impetus was evident in sermons from the 1930s.≤≤ In a 1934 sermon, Wurm tried to relieve the congregation of the irritation of Jesus’ Jewish lineage. He emphasized ‘‘the basic attitude that permitted Jesus, despite his Jewish descent, to walk ‘the straight path in everything, never with passion, always with dignity.’ ’’≤≥ After differentiating Jesus’ exemplary attitude from everything that he rejected as ‘‘typically Jewish,’’ Wurm asked rhetorically: ‘‘Should this be an attitude that might be alien to German feeling . . . ?’’≤∂ In a sermon on Luke 9:51–56, he chastised the ‘‘Jewish commercial spirit.’’≤∑ One month later, he mentioned that his regional church had been purified of all Jews.≤∏ As a result of such sentiments, Wurm was often pulled in different directions. Although he was an anti-Semitic Christian, he wrote a letter on behalf of a sixty-six-year-old individual threatened with deportation from Baden in November 1940.≤π Because he was a Christian anti-Semite, Wurm refused to agree to Pastor Hermann Diem’s request that Württem198

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berg pastors unanimously read a statement condemning the persecution of the Jews on 14 December 1941.≤∫ On 21 October 1941, the Conference of Church Leaders discussed the situation of non-Aryan Christians in light of the planned deportations. According to Wurm’s notes, the group decided that ‘‘any kind of interviews (that is, with state representatives) will be in vain. This point was also mentioned in discussions with the Catholic bishops (which took place one day later). They intended to call on Ministerial Director Kritzinger the next day . . . and asked me to join them. I explained that I had no mandate in this respect but that I would recommend enlisting the aid of the Confessing Church in Berlin. This was accepted.’’≤Ω Within a month, however, Wurm wrote propaganda minister Josef Goebbels: ‘‘Who can take pleasure in the so-called planned economic measures for the removal of the mentally ill, in the pillaging of church property, in all the measures against church and pastorates that have followed, one after the other, since the beginning of the war, in the harsh measures against non-Aryans?’’≥≠ In December 1941, Wurm wrote a memorandum to Hitler from the church leaders’ conference. He delivered it personally to the Reich Chancellery in Berlin: ‘‘Whoever now opens and deepens internal differences acts irresponsibly and in a way detrimental to the Volk. Much has occurred that could only be of use to enemy propaganda; among this, we count the measures for the removal of the mentally ill and the increasing harshness in the treatment of non-Aryans, even those who confess the Christian faith.’’≥∞ Shortly before the German defeat at Stalingrad, Wurm sent a letter to an Interior Ministry official that illustrated the inner conflict between Wurm’s Christian insight that he had to stand against the persecutors of the Jews and his admission, as a latent anti-Semite, that he could only vouch for the Jews with difficulty, in light of their supposedly selfimposed guilt. Like most anti-Semites, Wurm supported ‘‘only’’ the exclusion of the Jews, not their extermination; hence, his protest against the extermination of the Jews should not be overestimated: In circles not confined to confessional Christians, one is depressed by how the struggle against other races and peoples is being conducted. People returning from vacation are reporting the systematic murder of Jews and Poles in the occupied territories. Even those who years ago

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The ‘‘Elimination’’ of the Jews considered Jewry’s dominance in the most diverse areas of public life to be severely detrimental, at a time when almost the entire press was philosemitic, cannot accept that one people is justified in exterminating another people with measures that affect every individual, regardless of personal culpability.≥≤

Wurm recognized that such actions contradicted ‘‘the clear divine commandment and, thereby, the concept of law and legality, which are indispensable to a civilized people.’’ Despite his knowledge of the extermination camps, it did not occur to him that the plant he had so carefully helped cultivate in the wake of his teacher Stoecker had come to full bloom.≥≥ Early in 1943, Confessing Church circles learned of a proposed law that would forcibly dissolve mixed marriages (where one partner was nonAryan and the other Aryan). A version of this law had already been tried out in Berlin.≥∂ In response, the Roman Catholic bishop of Berlin, Baron Preysing, secretly sent Berlin Confessing Church pastor Wilhelm Jannasch to Cardinal Bertram in Breslau. Jannasch was to mediate a common plan of action for both churches in case the obligatory divorce of racially mixed marriages became law. The reading of a strongly worded protest from Roman Catholic and Confessing Church pulpits throughout Germany was planned.≥∑ It is not clear what came of this, since it is not mentioned in the published documents or contemporary accounts, but a draft of the statement does exist. Noting that ‘‘all of us . . . must confess that out of timidity, human fear, and a lack of wisdom and love we have remained silent in a matter on which we as Protestant Christians should have spoken long ago,’’ the statement continued, No solution can exist and be a blessing to our own people which is contrary to the revealed word and will of God. German legislation has led to such consequences. . . . If its original aim was to limit the influence of Jewry . . . today all this has become a struggle of physical annihilation against Jewry in Germany. . . . The Jew in Germany today is like the Jew in the parable of our Lord who fell among murderers on the way from Jerusalem to Jericho, and for whom one of another race, the traveling Samaritan, became the helper and savior! We deny that it corresponds to the love of neighbor demanded by

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The Final Solution and the End of the Church Struggle Christ . . . if we—in defiance of the Eighth Commandment—bear false witness against the Jews in our midst in a manner that can be explained only through the blindness of hate, and, of course, cannot be excused.≥∏

Although the combined effect of the Roman Catholic and Confessing church efforts is uncertain, the Interior Ministry law on mixed marriages did not take effect. On 12 March 1943, Bishop Wurm wrote to the minister for church affairs, expressing satisfaction ‘‘that Jews living in mixed marriages and the children resulting from these marriages experience, of late, more friendly treatment in Berlin.’’≥π Wurm asked the minister to extend this lenience to the entire Reich, requesting more latitude in allowing the baptism of Jews and ‘‘half-breeds’’ and the exemption of non-Aryan Christians from having to wear the star.≥∫ Two days later, Wurm wrote the Reich interior minister of his joy at the improved treatment of Berlin Jews: Should this be the case, and should this be the start of a change in the policy toward the Jews, no one would welcome it more than the Christian church of our people; not from any predisposition for Jewry, whose immense influence on cultural, economic, and political life was recognized as fatal by Christians alone, at a time when almost the entire press was philosemitic, but rather from the conviction that it is contrary to God’s commandments if human beings, without the verdict of a civil or military court, are deprived of their homes, their professions, their possessions, lives and marriages are torn apart. . . . The Christian churches have exercised great restraint in rejecting such things, so as not to offer fodder for enemy propaganda. They are all the more grateful if the Reich agencies themselves recognize the uselessness, indeed the danger, of the methods practiced until now in the struggle against Jewry, and draw the consequences.≥Ω

In early June 1943, the Conference of Church Leaders also dealt with the actions against the Jews.∂≠ During the meeting, Bishop Marahrens belatedly asked for approval of a petition he had sent to the Interior Ministry in the name of the conference. It is difficult to determine whether the wording of Marahrens’s petition reflected political abstinence or ignorance on the part of the church: ‘‘In taking our position, we are conscious of the fact that we are not to criticize political decisions taken by the state leadership. . . . As a völkisch-political question, the racial question must be solved by the responsible political leadership. It alone has the 201

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right to take the necessary measures for the preservation of the purity of German blood and for the strengthening of the vitality of the Volk, and it alone bears the responsibility before God and history. We, as representatives of the Evangelical Church, refuse to involve ourselves in this responsibility.’’∂∞ On the other hand, Marahrens asserted the church’s responsibility for its members and indicated that God’s commandment was violated where ‘‘the sanctity of life is not respected, marriages are destroyed, and injustice and violence is done to innocent people. . . . We consider it our duty to point this out to the state leadership. We urgently request you to do everything so that irresponsible individuals do not burden necessary political and civil measures with gross injustices, thereby placing a burden upon the conscience of our people which it cannot bear.’’∂≤ But Marahrens did not recant his belief that baptized nonAryans had to stay away from German church life—which drew criticism from others within the church opposition, including Berlin pastor Wilhelm Jannasch:∂≥ In answering your friendly letter of 9 February 1942, I unfortunately cannot spare you the disappointment that the case with Marahrens is, as I have indicated to you, really much worse. As you see from the enclosed copy, the Spiritual Confidential Council, of which Marahrens is a member, has come to an understanding with the Evangelical Church Chancellery concerning appropriate measures so that baptized nonAryans stay away from the ecclesiastical life of the German congregations. Not satisfied with this, the administration of the EvangelicalLutheran Church of Hannover sent the Chancellery letter . . . to its superintendents, asking them to observe the principle established here. . . . Judge for yourself what you must think of this friend. . . . None of this surprises me, because I have been able to watch Bishop Marahrens’s behavior for years.∂∂

On 16 July 1943, Wurm—after consulting with Bishop Meiser—appealed directly to Hitler in a letter criticizing the actions against ‘‘privileged non-Aryans’’: ‘‘After the non-Aryans within German reach have been eliminated . . . the so-called privileged non-Aryans, until now untouched, risk being treated the same way. In particular, we urgently object to measures that threaten marriage in legally inviolable families and the children of these marriages.’’∂∑ 202

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Addressing the letter to all members of the Reich government, Wurm left out every anti-Jewish proviso. At a time when it had become more difficult and dangerous to criticize the Nazi regime, Wurm’s outspokenness showed that his earlier tributes to the state efforts to solve the Jewish question had not been based on mere strategy or a lack of courage. It was simply that he had not yet completely dispensed with antiSemitic statements. Wurm’s letter found a wide hearing, even abroad (it was broadcast in Norway, among other places), perhaps because his words were a genuine appeal, in the name of all Christians, on behalf of their persecuted brethren.∂∏ As Wurm concluded: ‘‘By stating this in the name of countless Protestant Christians, we do not covet anything for ourselves. German Evangelical Christianity shares in bearing all sacrifices. It desires no privileges and no preferential treatment. It does not aspire to power and covets no dominion. But nothing and no one in the world should prevent us from being Christians and from standing up as Christians for what is right before God.’’∂π Wurm’s language grew stronger in subsequent letters. In a wartime letter to Stuttgart pastors (dated 9 August 1943), he emphasized the guilt that the German people bore because of its battle against other races and peoples: ‘‘Can we be surprised if we, too, now get a taste of this?! And if we have not approved this, yet we often have kept silent where we should have spoken!’’∂∫ The same day, Wurm wrote in protest to Bishop Marahrens. The Hannover bishop had called on Germans ‘‘to ask God to give our hearts a ruthless determination’’ in fighting the war, ‘‘devoid of all sentimentality.’’∂Ω Wurm expressed ‘‘deep dismay’’ at Marahrens’s letter. Wurm could ‘‘discern no word of the church’’ in it and wrote Marahrens that the awful present wartime situation was an expiatory judgment: There is an widespread feeling among our people that many sins that the German people have either committed or left unchallenged must now be atoned for, that Christianity must suffer as well, because it has not called injustice by its name more openly and more unanimously. Should the church now be the one to suppress such thoughts in favor of an unrestrained passion for war? . . . Church conduct that is nothing more than complete agreement with the slogans of political propaganda is perverse and reprehensible in

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The ‘‘Elimination’’ of the Jews every respect, and makes the church despicable in the eyes of friend and foe. I find it painful to write to you like this, but I cannot let an attitude, as it is expressed in this letter, remain uncontradicted. The Spiritual Confidential Council loses all trust placed in it if it does not let itself be guided at this moment by the clear witness of Holy Scripture, instead of making room for various strategic considerations.∑≠

Wurm now began to recognize that the Kristallnacht had only been the prelude for the destruction of all church life and that the church was paying for its silence at the time: ‘‘Have we not seen the houses of God that belong to the others go up in flames, and must we not now see that our own churches are being burned down?’’∑∞ On 20 December 1943, Wurm spoke on behalf of his Jewish fellow citizens for the last time, in a letter to the chief of the Reich Chancellery, Reich Minister Hans-Heinrich Lammers. After listing the manifold injustices against ‘‘half-breeds,’’ he warned against ‘‘further pursuing the process of separating these persons from the entirety of the people’’: ‘‘I must declare, not from any kind of philosemitic tendencies, but simply out of religious and ethical feeling, that we Christians perceive this policy of extermination conducted against Jewry to be a grievous injustice and an ominous one for the German people.’’∑≤ In the terror that wartime had brought on civilians, Wurm saw divine ‘‘retribution for that which has been done to the Jews’’: ‘‘The burning of the houses and churches, the splintering and crashing in the nights of bombings, the flight out of destroyed houses with a few belongings, the helpless search for a place of refuge reminds the population in the most distressing way of what the Jews had to endure on earlier occasions.’’∑≥ Wurm’s letter provoked a warning from Lammers: a handwritten letter sent to the bishop by registered mail from Lammers’s quarters on the front.∑∂ In unmistakable language, Lammers called the bishop of Württemberg to reason, warning Wurm particularly about his letter on behalf of the Jews.∑∑ Although the Reich government had treated Wurm with extreme forbearance in the past years, Lammers noted that it could not, ‘‘in the long run, tolerate statements like those in the aforementioned letters’’: ‘‘I hereby warn you emphatically, and request that in the future you scrupulously stay within the boundaries established by your profession and abstain from statements on general political matters. I urgently 204

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advise you further to show the greatest restraint in your personal and professional conduct. I ask you to refrain from replying to this letter.’’∑∏ Wurm’s existence was now so seriously threatened that he kept silent. One of his colleagues, church counsel Sautter, sent Lammers a letter noting the bishop’s services to the church and the state and requesting understanding for Wurm’s attempts to prevent an ‘‘excess’’ of injustice and suffering. According to Sautter, Wurm had been at the point of requesting Lammers’s approval for a statement ‘‘intended to appeal to Christendom at home and abroad. . . . Because of your letter, such a step will naturally not be taken.’’∑π It is possible that this letter helped save Wurm’s life. Toward the end of the war, Wurm again pressed for less abusive measures against ‘‘half-breeds,’’ writing to Reich Governor Wilhelm Murr. Referring to individual cases in Württemberg, Wurm appealed to Murr’s conscience: ‘‘Can such harshness really be justified? . . . I do not know . . . whether there is any possibility of your taking any action here. But, should you be empowered to do this, as the highest authority in our region, then I ask you to take steps. That would be a good deed.’’∑∫ It was Wurm’s final impassioned attempt to intervene with the authorities—at a late hour. the final confessional synods

The last three confessional synods considered the status of non-Aryan Christians without addressing the general plight of the Jews. In September 1942, the Confessional Synod of the Old Prussian Church Province of Brandenburg and Grenzmark met in Berlin-Lichterfelde.∑Ω It was followed by the fourth Silesian Confessional Synod (28–29 August 1943) and the final Confessional Synod of the Old Prussian Union (16–17 October 1943); both convened in Breslau.∏≠ At the Brandenburg provincial synod, the treatment of non-Aryan Christians was the first topic on the agenda. The synod arrived at the following resolution: The exclusion of non-Aryan Christians from the community of the church violates the nature of the sacrament of holy baptism, contravenes the statements of Holy Scripture in Rom. 11 about Israel according to the flesh, violates the community and unity of all Christians witnessed to by the Apostle Paul in Gal. 3:28, and infringes against the third article of the Confession of Faith.

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The ‘‘Elimination’’ of the Jews The division of the Evangelical Church into a true invisible church and a visible corporation under public law contradicts the biblical doctrine of the Holy Church. As a corporation under public law, the Evangelical Church may not consider itself bound to measures that contradict its nature as a Christian church. The exclusion of non-Aryan Christians from the community of the church contravenes Holy Scripture and the Confession and is therefore void under church law. We admonish pastors and congregations, for the sake of Christ, to maintain ecclesiastical communion with them [nonAryan Christians].∏∞

These words did not introduce new aspects to the discussion about non-Aryan Christians that had begun in 1933; the point now was action, not discussion. This brief statement can be judged only in the context of a time when most voices on behalf of non-Aryan Christians had fallen silent. The authors of this appeal made it clear that the issue was the exclusion not just of individual non-Aryans but of all Christian non-Aryans. The members of the Brandenburg Synod saw that the ‘‘special regulations’’ sought by the state (and, in the meantime, by the Evangelical Church) were a Danaean gift that would one day wreak bitter revenge.∏≤ The fourth and final general confessional synod, which met in Breslau on 28–29 August 1943, referred to the Barmen Declaration’s first three theses in its resolution on the Old Testament and the people of Israel: It is . . . contrary to this confession if the church, in compliance with the racial faith of our time, believes that the continuity between the Old and New Testaments can be abandoned, either completely or in part. . . . Wherever the church succumbs to the temptation to be ashamed of the fact that God’s revelation was first made to Israel, it denies the Lord Jesus Christ.∏≥

The Breslau Synod was somewhat less outspoken. It did not mention Jews, non-Aryans, or even the people of Israel, but only ‘‘Israel.’’ The Breslau meeting emphasized that the unity of the Old and New Testaments, and of the old and new Israel, showed that both religious communities were affected by the current crisis. The battle against Israel meant the old as well as the new Israel; both were under attack. The recognition that fate had brought Christians and Jews together was expressed in the synod’s protest against the Nazi disregard for the Ten Commandments: 206

The Final Solution and the End of the Church Struggle Wherever the church no longer dares to proclaim the Ten Commandments in the face of the sins of its era, its preaching of the forgiveness of sin loses authority and credibility as well. Wherever the church preaches God’s commandments only so far as it is certain of the approval of the earthly powers of its era, God’s claim upon the whole of our life is denied and God’s consolation in the forgiveness of all of our sins is withheld.∏∂

The twelfth and last Confessional Synod of the Old Prussian Union (16– 17 October 1943) adopted the Breslau Synod’s statement and wrote an interpretation of the Fifth Commandment∏∑ as well as a statement to the congregations for Repentance Day.∏∏ Clearly referring to the cruelty against Jews and non-Aryan Christians, point 8 stated: The concept of killing also includes the indirect kind of murder which takes from the neighbor the room necessary for life so that he no longer can live, or which fails to save him from his deadly predicament. . . . The one who destroys nascent life also kills. The concept of killing includes spiritual injury to the neighbor through words and ridicule, and every kind of defamation of the neighbor and disparagement of his person. To the concept of killing belongs the expropriation of food and clothing, the forcing of the neighbor from his social position, malicious joy, hatred, and thirst for revenge. God, however, wills that we esteem the life of our neighbor. For the sake of God’s will, this [life] is worth very much, even if it may be worth very little in the eyes of human beings.∏π

This recalled the link between the commandment to love one’s neighbor and the commandment not to kill and acknowledged that fratricide is the ultimate violation of the commandment to love one’s neighbor. Points 17, 18, and 19 of the synod declaration stated: His (the Christian’s) neighbor is always the one who is helpless and who especially needs him, and this irrespective of race, Volk, and religion. For the life of all human beings belongs to God alone. The life of the people of Israel is holy to Him. Israel, certainly, has rejected the Christ of God, but it is not we human beings or even we Christians who are called upon to punish Israel’s disbelief. We owe our non-Aryan fellow Christians the witness of spiritual communion and brotherly love. To exclude them from the congregation contravenes the third article of the Confession of Faith, the correct understanding of the sacrament of holy baptism, Gal. 3:28, and that which Rom. 9–11 teaches about Israel according to the flesh. . . .

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The ‘‘Elimination’’ of the Jews We cannot let the authorities rob us of our responsibility before God. God will demand it of us, we who kill unjustly, and the judgment pronounced against the murderer will be terrible (Rev. 21:8; 22:15).∏∫

The message of point 9, which concerns suicide, missed the point; the accusation against someone who commits suicide reveals the accuser to be an unconcerned onlooker: ‘‘Suicide is also prohibited. . . . In every kind of despair, suicide is arrogance before God. The one who commits suicide makes a judgment on his own life to which he has no right. God alone has the right to make judgment on the life of the human being. The Lord alone is judge. God alone gives and takes life.’’∏Ω Such sentences came at a time when pastors were still forbidden to provide church burials for suicides. After the Kristallnacht, Pastor Heinrich Grüber wrote about this to Bishop Bell of Chichester: ‘‘The great number of people who are committing suicide these days stand before the Christians not only of Germany but the whole world with their laments and their accusations. Whenever a suicide is brought to my knowledge, I am reminded of the lament of Martha at the grave of Lazarus, ‘If you had been here, sir, my brother would not have died.’ If a man constrained by the love of Christ would have gone to the assistance of those who were in despair, they would not have committed suicide.’’π≠ Grüber asked: What had Christians done to change the suicidal circumstances of the persecuted? Jochen Klepper became the unforgettable symbol of this question for the church. A renowned novelist and devout Christian, Klepper had married a Jewish divorcée with two daughters. His futile efforts to rescue the family ended with the suicides of Klepper, his wife, and one daughter (the other was able to reach England) in December 1942. His hymns, composed in the key of a tragic brotherhood of Christians and Jews, cannot be sung without evoking his suicide. When his wife suggested that Klepper divorce her, he expressed his scruples in his journal: ‘‘I cannot comprehend this decision. In this ‘Jewish fate’ into which God draws one there is something that I cannot deal with. The complete madness of our circumstances declares that I commit an injustice if I do not let myself be divorced from Hanni, since I could care for her better that way. . . . I do not want a career for myself that would be purchased through such means . . . It would seem to me as if one betrayed the word of God.’’π∞ Klepper agonized over what to do on behalf of his stepdaughter: to let her go to her death at Auschwitz or through suicide? 208

The Final Solution and the End of the Church Struggle For us, it is a relief that Renerle has no one but us. To move her toward suicide . . . is less cruel than to hand her over to the fate of the deportation. . . . The most terrible thing is that families, even in the deportations, are separated. In a transport from Breslau, the Aryan group who wanted to go along in the deportation was not allowed to cross the border. . . . . . . One is about to take such a terrible step, the guilt of which nothing can absolve before God. But one will not go mad in faith. . . . What a world . . . in which parents—for what does it mean to be a ‘‘stepfather’’ here?—desire the death of such a beloved child and no longer ask about the child remaining alive. . . . We want to die; but above this desire to die, as incomprehensible as it is, stands faith: ‘‘I know that my Redeemer lives.’’π≤

The Kleppers’ ‘‘final solution’’ came on 10 December 1942, after orders for the deportation of Klepper’s wife and stepdaughter had arrived: ‘‘We die now—oh, this, too, is in God’s hands—We go to our death together tonight. Above us, in our last hours, stands the image of the consecrating Christ. In His sight, our life ends.’’π≥ Point 14 of the October 1943 Prussian Synod bluntly condemned the state’s extermination measures: ‘‘The divine order does not recognize terms like ‘eradication,’ ‘liquidation,’ and ‘worthless life.’ The extermination of human beings merely because they are relatives of a criminal, are old or mentally ill, or belong to a foreign race, is not the use of the sword that God granted to authority.’’π∂ The fourth resolution of the Prussian Confessional Synod echoed the Old Testament lamentations. Intended to be read from all the pulpits on Repentance Day, the statement summoned congregations to collective repentance for what had been done and left undone—particularly for Christian silence about the persecution of the Jews: Woe to us and to our people if the life given by God is held to be of little value, and the human being, created in the image of God, is valued only according to his usefulness; if it is considered justified to kill human beings because they are accounted as unworthy of life or belong to another race; when hate and lack of charity spread. For God says: ‘‘You shall not kill.’’ . . . Let us contritely confess: We Christians, too, are guilty of the disdain

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The ‘‘Elimination’’ of the Jews and perversion of His holy commandments. We often have kept silent, we have proclaimed the unconditional validity of God’s holy commandments too little, too timidly, or not at all. . . . Therefore, we want to ask God for forgiveness for all our complicity, and we do not want to cease eagerly hearing God’s holy commandments, obeying them, teaching them joyously to our youth, and bearing public witness to them.π∑

After the war, the synod’s words would be echoed in the various confessions of guilt. the freiburg circle memorandum

After the Kristallnacht, Constantin von Dietze, a Freiburg University professor of political economy and finance, founded the opposition group that subsequently became known as the Freiburg Circle. He was joined by two fellow economists, Walter Eucken and Adolf Lampe, and historian Gerhard Ritter. As early as the end of 1938, the group had composed a memorandum, ‘‘Church and World.’’π∏ Ritter later wrote that the group continued to meet until the end of the war. ‘‘Joined by Roman Catholic theologians such as Professor Wendelin Rauch, later archbishop, [we] dealt with the Christian perspective toward National Socialism and questions concerning the political order in society.’’ππ At the request of ecumenical leaders in Switzerland, Dietrich Bonhoeffer asked the group to draft a comprehensive memorandum ‘‘intended to serve German church leaders as the foundation for the world conference of churches after Hitler’s fall.’’π∫ Gerhard Ritter drafted the main text of the memorandum. Appendix 4 (on economic and social order) was drafted by the three national economists, and appendix 5 (on the Jewish question) by von Dietze. Ritter and von Dietze were joined by two jurists, Erik Wolf (Freiburg) and Franz Böhm (Jena), who contributed the draft of appendix 1 (on the legal system). The decisive meeting about the entire text took place secretly in November 1942 at von Dietze’s home. Berlin Superintendent Otto Dibelius, the manufacturer Dr. Walter Bauer,πΩ Dr. Karl Goerdeler (former mayor of Leipzig and a member of the German resistance by that time), and Pastor Helmut Thielicke (Stuttgart), on behalf of Bishop Wurm, also attended.∫≠ The group edited and expanded the various parts of the document; appendixes on church policy (written by Dibelius) and education were added. 210

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The most significant part of the memorandum for our discussion here is appendix 5 (on the Jewish question).∫∞ Much of it revealed the tension between Christian precepts and racial thinking that permeated all church discussions about the Aryan paragraph. Stressing the centrality of love of neighbor in the Christian message, for example, the Freiburg document noted that it was nonetheless not incompatible with the community of faith if barriers remain between members of various races in daily life, as is the case in all Christian churches in the world. The task of Christian proclamation, however, is to proclaim without ceasing that these differences are of secondary significance; communion in Christ is of primary importance. According to the teaching of Holy Scripture, the Christian is obliged to consider his neighbor all those who do not belong to the Christian congregation, and to meet them in the spirit of love. . . . This obligation holds true with regard to people of other races. For the love of one’s own Volk, however, the Christian must keep his eyes open to whether close contact or even a mixing with other races might have damaging effects on body and soul. Still . . . he must always be mindful of the fact that the races and peoples are created by God with their various natural tendencies and that they all . . . stand before God in the same way—namely, as sinners—and yet, at the same time, are called into His grace. And if God punishes one people in his wrath, he does not thereby in any way give other peoples the right to feel superior. Still less does he permit any people to persecute, to oppress, or even to exterminate another. For God alone is judge of the nations. It is the task of Christianity to bring all peoples to the Gospel. This duty also exists with respect to the Jewish people, whose decisive guilt is that it resists the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, up to the present day. To accept Jews into the Christian community for other reasons, without Christian faith having been awakened in their hearts, is a sin against the church.∫≤

This passage evoked the traditional Christian preconceptions against the Jews. Two other passages of this appendix, however, broke new ground. The second part focused on the history of the Jewish community in European history and traced the development of anti-Semitism. It acknowledged German complicity in prejudice against the Jews and their persecution, noting, ‘‘The National Socialists have attained a massive following in Germany not least of all through the exploitation and 211

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further provocation of anti-Semitic sentiments.’’∫≥ It condemned the Nuremberg Laws and the Kristallnacht and noted: During the war, the persecution of the Jews in the Reich, as well as in the occupied territories, has taken on even greater proportions and far more dreadful forms since 1939. These persecutions have unmistakably been at the will of the central authorities. They led not only to innumerable forced evacuations, during which many Jews died; hundreds of thousands of human beings have been killed systematically merely because of their Jewish ancestry. Whatever number of Jews has still remained alive in Germany and in the occupied territories has been subjected to increasingly miserable living conditions, and, frequently, to intentional humiliations and torments. The full extent of such infamous deeds is hardly imaginable; in any case, it cannot be portrayed fully in objective facts or figures, since no agency has openly assumed responsibility for them.∫∂

The third part, on the possible political order of a post-Nazi Germany, recommended full reparation and restitution to the Jewish victims of Nazism, ‘‘so far as this is in any way humanly possible.’’ It also called for ‘‘severe punishment for the crimes committed against the Jews’’: Our people has an obligation to itself and in its responsibility before God to call to account those individuals who have sullied its name with blood and filth. Without restoration of law and justice, it can neither achieve a beneficial domestic order nor a fruitful life together with other peoples. Reparation is impossible everywhere where human lives were destroyed or human health is broken. Even the sufferings caused by banishment from home, family, position, and profession, and the inner agonies of those who have survived persecution and oppression, cannot be made good again. All the more must a just and appropriate indemnification be granted in all cases of the loss of capital.∫∑

Still, the group seemed to view the suffering of the Jews as part of the general suffering among Germans during the war: All sectors of the German people, after all, have sustained significant losses in their earlier standard of living as a consequence of National Socialist policy, the war, and its consequences. The injured Jews cannot be excluded from the general impoverishment that the war has im-

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The Final Solution and the End of the Church Struggle posed upon us. Their claims to indemnification should not be reduced out of stinginess or meanness; rather, for their own sake, in order not to endanger or to poison their future life together with us from the start, it is necessary to award them no special economic advantages, and not to exempt them from the general conditions of the life of our people.∫∏

None of these measures, the Freiburg memorandum stressed, ‘‘solves the Jewish question’’: ‘‘The existence of a numerically significant body of Jews within a people simply constitutes a problem that must lead to recurrent difficulties, if it is not subjected to a fundamental and largescale arrangement.’’∫π And it was here that the Freiburg group, despite its recognition of the immeasurable suffering Nazism had wrought among the Jews, was hindered by the prejudices of its own members: There is unanimity that the Jews have a claim to the free practice of their religion, to an educational system suitable to their nature, to economic activity that enables a material existence commensurate with their efforts. But there is also unanimity about the fact that every state must have the right to close its borders to returning Jewish emigrants if it considers this necessary for the sake of the entire Volk. Moreover, three possibilities for conditions in Germany are deemed worthy of discussion: (a) The state, after revoking the Nuremberg Laws, renounces all special regulations for the Jews, since the number of surviving Jews and those returning to Germany will not be so large that they still can be considered a danger for the German Volkstum. The government’s task will be to ensure that the reestablishment of the emigrated Jews in their old professions occurs with the necessary tact, so that anti-Semitic feelings are not reawakened. (b) An international agreement on the rights and duties of the Jews is created which limits itself to general principles such as have just been indicated (freedom of religion, freedom of education, economic freedom). These principles would be binding for all states. (c) The establishment of a detailed, international statute for the Jews which, perhaps, could have the following content: 1. In all the states where they are domiciled, the Jews have the status of foreigners. They may not be treated worse than other foreigners. . . .

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The ‘‘Elimination’’ of the Jews 2. The representation of the entire body of Jews is formed by a supreme council that, if possible, has its headquarters in a neutral country and can be represented in any other country through authorized representatives. 3. All who belong to the Jewish confession, as well as those who belonged to this confession earlier but have not joined another religious affiliation, are considered Jews. If Jews convert to Christianity, then they remain members of the body of Jews, as long as they have not been naturalized by the state in their homeland. 4. Jews who apply for naturalization with well-founded reasons are to be naturalized. . . . Naturalized Jews may not be subjected to any special regulation.∫∫

This contribution to the solution of the Jewish question could not possibly have found the approval of the memorandum’s initiator, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who never saw the final edited version of the Freiburg document.∫Ω Although Bonhoeffer initially viewed the Jewish question as a problem of conversion, it never occurred to him to consider Judaism a racial phenomenon.Ω≠ Because it addressed Judaism as a racial phenomenon, the Freiburg memorandum supported not only Christian antiJudaism (‘‘the decisive guilt [of Judaism] is that it resists up until the present day the revelation of God in Jesus Christ’’) but racial prejudice. It is hardly surprising that its ideas were not used in the postwar discussions on the racial question in the World Council of Churches, as originally intended. More likely, they fell under the verdict of the 1948 World Council of Churches assembly in Amsterdam: ‘‘Often we have . . . confused the Gospel with our own economic or national or racial interests.’’Ω∞ It should be recalled that the Freiburg memorandum, in contrast to other documents, was intended not for publication but as a secret basis for discussions after the collapse of Nazism. The members of the Freiburg group did not have to heed the life-threatening tyranny of a totalitarian state and, thus, did not need to write their memorandum strategically (as the Provisional Church Administration did in its 1936 memorandum to Hitler, for example). Forty years later, Helmut Thielicke, the youngest member of the Freiburg Circle, expressed dismay at its ‘‘one-sidedness,’’ which he attributed to von Dietze. Its incorporation of Nazi racial ideology, Thielicke observed, showed ‘‘a degree of dependence on the times which makes the inclusion of this appendix in the memorandum painfully embarrassing to me today.’’Ω≤ 214

The Final Solution and the End of the Church Struggle the lempp circle memorandum

The Lempp Circle was founded and led by church superintendent Carl Schweitzer until he was forced by the Gestapo to flee to England.Ω≥ This small group of women and men followed the Confessing Church’s Barmen line and opposed official Bavarian church policy. Only later in history did they become known as the Lempp Circle, named for the publisher Albert Lempp (owner of the Kaiser Publishing House in Munich), who was a member of the group.Ω∂ The Lempp Circle, which met to listen to the bbc and Swiss radio, also distributed lectures, letters, and protests from Karl Barth and Martin Niemöller’s circle about the church situation. In the spring of 1943, Württemberg Confessing pastor Hermann Diem contacted the group with a petition he had written and addressed to Bavarian bishop Hans Meiser. The final version was written by Diem and several members of the Lempp Circle. The group hoped that Meiser would publicly support the statement, which was a protest against the state and its agencies responsible for the persecution of the Jews: Reverend Bishop! As Christians, we can no longer tolerate the fact that the church in Germany keeps silent about the persecution of the Jews. In the church of the Gospel, all members are co-responsible for the proper exercise of the preaching office. For this reason, we acknowledge our complicity in this [the church’s] failure in this matter. . . . What compels us, first of all, is the simple commandment to love our neighbor as Jesus explained it in the parable of the Good Samaritan, explicitly rejecting any limitation to fellow believers, racial comrades, and fellow members of the Volk. Every ‘‘non-Aryan,’’ whether Jew or Christian, is the ‘‘one who has fallen among the murderers’’ in Germany today, and we are confronted with the question whether we face him as the priest and the Levite did, or as the Samaritan did. No ‘‘Jewish question’’ can release us from this decision. . . . It [the church] must particularly resist the ‘‘Christian’’ anti-Semitism in the congregation that excuses the action of the non-Christian world against the Jews, or the passivity of the church in this matter. . . . The church must witness to this salvation-historical significance of Israel before the state and resist to the utmost every attempt to ‘‘solve’’ the Jewish question according to a self-made political gospel. . . . The church must confess that it, as the true Israel, is bound inseparably in

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The ‘‘Elimination’’ of the Jews guilt and promise with Judaism. It may no longer attempt to save itself from the attack directed against Israel. Rather, it must witness to the fact that, with Israel, the struggle is directed against it and its Lord Jesus Christ Himself. Thus, the witness that the parable of the Good Samaritan requires of the church is not in any way suspended by the ‘‘Jewish question.’’ The phenomenon of the Jews, in whom the prophetic prediction that ‘‘I will make them . . . to be a curse, a terror, a hissing, and a reproach among all the nations where I have driven them’’ (Jer. 29:18) is fulfilled. . . . The church must interpret this phenomenon. . . . It [the church] thereby witnesses to those who govern that they can only be freed from the demonism of their political ‘‘gospel’’ through faith in Jesus. . . . The witness of the church against the persecution of the Jews in Germany is thus endowed with particular significance, as an example of the Church’s necessary witness against every infringement of the Ten Commandments by the state authority.Ω∑ It must warn the state in the name of God—that is, not with political arguments . . . against oppressing ‘‘the foreigner, the orphan, or the widow’’ (Jer. 7:6), and remind it of its responsibility for a justice within an orderly and public legal procedure, on the basis of humane laws. . . . This witness must occur publicly. . . . What the German church has done up to now in this matter cannot be counted as such a witness, since it neither occurred publicly nor did justice to the duty of the preacher in this matter. . . . In addition to sympathy for the persecuted, we are motivated by our fear that the preaching office of our church might desire to secure its existence through silence, at the price of losing its authority and credibility. And with this, all would be lost—with the church, our people would be lost as well.Ω∏

Two members of the group, Emil Höchstädter and Wilhelm Hengstenberg, delivered the document to Meiser around Easter 1943. They left their two-hour interview with Meiser depressed: Meiser . . . listened to the two gentlemen for a long while; they read the memorandum to him. Then he said he could not proceed directly. He regretted, of course, the terrible things that had occurred in Poland and in the concentration camps. But if he would do something officially, then he would only be arrested and the Jews would not be helped. On the contrary, the persecution then would become even more intense. In

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The Final Solution and the End of the Church Struggle addition, he, Meiser, was responsible for a large regional church. If persecution broke out, then suffering and misfortune would come upon thousands of families; Meiser also assured them that the church governments did much in secret and already had helped a great number of Jews, whom they had hidden or brought into Switzerland or to Sweden in some way.Ωπ

There is no sign that Meiser signed the petition or took any action. All traces of the memorandum have been removed from the Bavarian church administration and its archives.Ω∫ Presumably, Meiser either had the paper destroyed in order to wipe out any incriminating material against himself, or the Gestapo, which frequently ‘‘visited’’ the bishop’s office, confiscated the original copy. After the war, Meiser told Emil Höchstädter that the Gestapo had somehow learned of the memorandum and pressured Meiser to name the author or authors of the petition.ΩΩ Citing the inviolability of the confessional, Meiser fended off his inquisitors by remarking that it concerned people who had sought pastoral counseling and who had been motivated by issues of conscience. Meiser passed on the petition to Bishop Wurm; there, too, the document went ‘‘unnoticed.’’∞≠≠ The memorandum became the undoing of Dr. Hermann Albert Hesse (a Rhinish pastor and moderator of the Reformed Alliance)∞≠∞ and his son Helmut.∞≠≤ Impressed by the Lempp memorandum, Helmut Hesse read it before a Confessional assembly in Wuppertal on 6 June 1943.∞≠≥ The Nazis responded by arresting both Hesses and charging them with violating the ‘‘perfidy law’’ through their public support of the Jews. Hermann Hesse was further incriminated by a sermon he had preached on 30 May 1943 in which he had characterized the catastrophic Allied bombing of Barmen as divine judgment and had called on God’s help for the Jews.∞≠∂ Hermann Hesse was eventually released; his son died in Dachau in November 1943.∞≠∑ Despite Meiser’s refusal to publicize the Lempp memorandum, its advocates continued to search for ways to publicize their point of view. Stationed with the German forces in France, Pastor Walter Höchstädter (son of Emil Höchstädter) had a protest leaflet printed by a French printing firm in Annecy in June–July 1944. Höchstädter printed one thousand copies of the eight-page text and sent them to soldiers at the front, using the military postal service: 217

The ‘‘Elimination’’ of the Jews We live in an age no less fanatically pervaded by delusions and demons than the Middle Ages. Instead of the madness of witch hunts, the madness against the Jews celebrates its orgies in our supposedly ‘‘enlightened’’ age. The madness against the Jews, which raged terribly during the Middle Ages, has entered its acute stage today. Here, the church, the congregation of Jesus Christ, must confess. If it does not do so, it has failed, just as it did at the time of the persecutions of the witches. The blood of millions of butchered Jews, of men, women and children, cries to heaven today. The church is not permitted to keep silent. It is not permitted to say that the regulation of the Jewish question is an affair of the state. . . . Nor is the church permitted to say that the just punishment for the sins of the Jews has come to pass in the present time. . . . The Christian cannot have an indifferent attitude on this question. There is no moderate Christian anti-Semitism. . . . The objection that, without a ‘‘healthy’’ anti-Semitism, there would be the terrible danger of the Judaizing of the life of the Volk, is based upon a faithless and purely secular view of things which ought to be something that Christians have overcome. . . . The church must live from love. . . . Woe to it if it does not do this! Woe to it if it becomes implicated in worldly outbursts of hate through keeping silent or though all sorts of dubious excuses! Woe to it if it adopts the words and slogans from the spheres of hate for itself. . . . Love knows no compromise; love knows no bounds. It comes from the truth of faith!∞≠∏

It was one of the final Christian statements about ‘‘Christians and Jews.’’ Strictly speaking, of course, this theme did not yet exist as such; only fifteen years later did people begin discussing ‘‘Christians and Jews.’’ During the Third Reich, one spoke of ‘‘Christians and non-Aryans.’’ The Jews were characterized in negative terms: they were considered to be that which they were not, in a ‘‘racial’’ sense. The religious affiliation of the one term was exchanged for the so-called racial affiliation of the other. After 1942, fearless individual initiatives like Höchstädter’s contrasted strongly to the church’s generally bland statements. The statement to the congregations by the Confessing Church of Old Prussia, marking the tenth anniversary of the Barmen Synod (dated Pentecost 1944), was a step backward.∞≠π Although ‘‘the goal that stood before the soul of the Barmen Synod could not be attained completely up to the present day,’’ the Prussian church still praised God for everything ‘‘that has been granted to our 218

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church in connection with that Synod of Barmen. Because exhaustion and faintheartedness all too often have paralyzed the joyful confession to our Lord Jesus Christ,’’ Christians now had to ‘‘approach God in sincere repentance.’’ Even after the war, such vague statements would characterize the church’s ‘‘confessions of guilt’’ for years to come.

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part four

The Legacy of the Church Struggle ∞Ω∂∑–∑≠

The Kirchenkampf had ended; a new church was emerging from the ruins and ashes left by the total collapse of the Nazi dictatorship. This examination of the postwar era focuses primarily on those who spoke out before 1945: both those whose words were heeded and those whose statements were ignored. As with every inheritance, there were fights about the legacy of the church struggle. The early postwar period was marked by the claims of different groups to church leadership. In their attempt to come to terms with the past, church leaders searched for new theological understandings, and the German Evangelical Church produced several important confessions of guilt.

∞Ω

Confessions of Guilt On Ascension Day 1945, two days after the Nazi surrender on 8 May, Bishop Wurm concluded a sermon with ‘‘a word to our people . . . in the name of our Württemberg Protestant Church and as the spokesman of the entire Confessing Church in Germany.’’ Wurm directed his comments primarily to the state, which had not listened to the churches’ warnings: ‘‘How much distress and suffering could have been avoided if those who had held leadership in Germany had used their power conscientiously, justly, prudently. From the side of the two Christian churches, there was no shortage of attempts to remind the rulers of their responsibility to God and to human beings. But these admonitions either were not noted or were rejected as interference in state affairs.’’∞ In his weekly letter of 15 August 1945, Bishop Marahrens shared the burdens on his conscience with the congregations of the regional church of Hannover: ‘‘It weighs particularly heavily upon me—I have already said this several times—that the church did not find the redemptive word in the first storm that broke over the Jews of Germany. However divided from the Jews we may be in our beliefs and although a number of them may have brought severe harm upon our people, they ought not to have been attacked in an inhuman fashion.’’≤ Marahrens’s words were an ambivalent expression of regret, at best; his anti-Semitism did not allow for more. Still, he raised tentative ques223

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tions about the roots of the guilt that rested like a stumbling block ‘‘upon our path’’: ‘‘Were we struck dumb by our initial astonishment at the ominous impending conflict, or did we not see the true facts clearly enough? In any case, it becomes evident that guilt lies upon our path and that we cannot perform our work without living our lives on the basis of forgiveness.’’≥ With each month, the unimaginable scope of the murderous deeds done to the Jews became clearer. In August 1945, church leaders called their first conference, with the goal of regathering their members into a unified Evangelical Church in Germany. The Reich Council of Brethren met in Frankfurt from 21 to 24 August and drafted a ‘‘Word to the Pastors’’: Moral standards do not suffice to measure the magnitude of the guilt that our people has brought upon itself. Newer and newer deeds of inhumanity become known. Many people still cannot believe that all of this is supposed to be true. In this abyss of our guilt, the body and soul of our people are mortally threatened. We confess our guilt and submit ourselves to the burden of its consequences.∂

This statement was not ratified by the Church Conference of Treysa that met a few days later (27–30 August 1945). The first nationwide German Protestant meeting after the war, the Treysa conference was attended by representatives of most regional churches, the Committee for Church Unity (founded by Bishop Wurm during the war), and the Confessing Church Reich Council of Brethren. Martin Niemöller was probably involved in drafting the Council of Brethren’s statement, as his subsequent contribution to the Treysa meeting suggests. Speaking for the Reich Council of Brethren, he argued: I must strike a note here that undoubtedly has been neglected in all that we have heard up to now. Certainly, we stand before a state of chaos and, in many cases, we are already in the middle of it. But we must ask what has brought us to this. Our distress is not due to the fact that we have lost the war. . . . Nor is our situation today primarily the fault of our people and of the Nazis; how could they have followed a path that they did not know; they simply believed, after all, that they were on the right path!—No, the real guilt rests with the church, for it alone knew that the path being taken would lead to ruin, and it did not warn our people;

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Confessions of Guilt it did not expose the injustice that occurred, or did so only when it was too late. And here the Confessing Church bears a particularly large measure of guilt, for it saw most clearly what was developing; it even spoke about it, and then became tired and feared men more than the living God. And so the catastrophe has broken over us all and drawn us, with everyone else, into its turbulence. But we, the church, must beat our breast and confess: my guilt, my guilt, my enormous guilt!—This is what we must say today to our people and to Christendom, that we do not stand before them and approach them as the pious and just; on the contrary, we are guilty, and want to try in the future to recognize our duty correctly and to carry it out faithfully. . . . What is at issue is not just that we, as a church, have done this or that wrongly in the past . . . but that, through disobedience, we fundamentally neglected the office with which we were charged and with that have become guilty.∑

Such a contribution remained an isolated high point in the general discussion at the time. There was seldom any explicit mention of the injustices and of the guilt toward the Jews. The church needed time to acknowledge exactly what had happened. What else could explain the inability of those present in Treysa to agree on a confession of guilt that acknowledged the persecution of the Jews? But the majority was not ready for such a step. The ‘‘Word to the Congregations’’ issued by the Treysa meeting contained no insights that would have led to a confession of guilt such as Niemöller demanded. Instead, the document gave the impression that the ‘‘intact’’ churches and their representatives had negotiated to achieve a statement acceptable to all and offensive to no one, a statement that did not go too far and avoided self-recrimination: Amidst the failures of the church and the people, God granted men and women of all confessions, classes, and parties the power to rise up against injustice and arbitrariness, to suffer and to die. Where the church took its responsibility seriously, it summoned human beings to observe the commandments of God, addressed breaches of law and wickedness, the guilt in the concentration camps, the mistreatment and murder of Jews and the sick, and sought to prevent the seduction of the young. But it was driven back into the realm of the church, as into a prison. Our people were separated from the church. The public was no longer allowed to hear its word; no one heard what it proclaimed. And

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The Legacy of the Church Struggle then came the wrath of God. It took from us what human beings wanted to save.∏

Bishop Wurm may well have been the godfather of this section. Then, exactly eleven years to the day after the Dahlem Synod, ‘‘an event of enormous consequence’’ occurred, ‘‘a complete surprise, which no one had expected or prepared for’’: the sudden appearance of several ecumenical representatives at a meeting in Stuttgart of the newly established Council of the Evangelical Church of Germany on 18–19 October 1945.π The encounter liberated those present to write a confession of guilt that made a great impression on the ecumenical representatives.∫ Although the final version of this confession sounds unanimous, there were vehement arguments among those who wrote it.Ω From our perspective today, it is also devoid of any concreteness. There is still no mention of the murder of millions of Jews; indeed, there is a certain apologetic tone. The Stuttgart Confession announced that German Protestants had ‘‘often testified to the congregations’’ about the great efforts to oppose the evil spirit of National Socialism: We are all the more thankful for this visit because we know ourselves to be not only in a great community of suffering with our people, but also in a solidarity of guilt. With great anguish, we say: Through us, infinite sorrow has been brought upon many peoples and countries. What we have often testified to our congregations we express now in the name of the entire church: To be sure, we have fought in the name of Jesus Christ through many long years against the spirit that found its terrible expression in the brutal government of the National Socialists; but we accuse ourselves that we did not confess more courageously, did not pray more faithfully, did not believe more joyously, and did not love more passionately.∞≠

A statement he made during the assembly suggests that Lutheran pastor Hans Asmussen played an essential part in the formulation of this famous final sentence.∞∞ To his ecumenical colleagues, he said: ‘‘Dear brothers, I have sinned against you as a member of a people because I have not believed in a better way, because I have not prayed more purely, because I have not devoted myself to God in a more holy way.’’∞≤ Martin Niemöller addressed the ecumenical representatives in a similar vein: 226

Confessions of Guilt We know that we, with our people, have followed a false path that has implicated us, as a church, in the fate of the entire world. We ask that God might forgive us this guilt and, by forgiving, might let this guilt become a new motor for the entire world. He can forgive all guilt that is confessed to Him, and He forgives it in such a way that this forgiven guilt becomes a source of new power. . . . We will bear this guilt for a long time to come. Nor do we want to minimize it, but help us so that the blessing is not lost because Christians throughout the world perhaps believe: your confession of guilt cannot be taken very seriously. The men who are in the leadership of the church desire that under no circumstances should the blessing of a confession and the blessing of forgiveness be lost to our people and to the community of nations.∞≥

Bishop George Bell of Chichester tried to compensate for the failure to mention the people of Israel.∞∂ Bell did not hesitate to mention the specific sufferings caused by the war and raised the issue before the consciences of all present, not just the Germans: ‘‘No human being can close his mind to the enormous amount of cruelty that was done to the Jews, the displaced persons, and the political persons, the well-nigh millions of slaves.’’∞∑ The Stuttgart Confession of Guilt echoed a confession of guilt published in the English monthly St. Martin’s Review in May 1933. Near the conclusion of its appeal ‘‘to the Christians in Germany’’ to resist the antiJewish course of their country, the statement noted: ‘‘Fault in this matter can be found in all of us. We must repent of the blindness and indolence that we have shown in the peace of Versailles and afterward. How little have we encouraged that other Germany that wanted to shape its policy according to new principles. How negligent we were! How negligent we are at all times.’’∞∏ Two Protestant statements of support for the Stuttgart Confession of Guilt specifically mentioned the persecution of the Jews. The Ecclesiastical-Theological Society of Württemberg (founded by Pastor Hermann Diem during the Third Reich) took an unparalleled position with its confession of 9 April 1946: ‘‘We succumbed despondently and idly as the members of the people of Israel among us were dishonored, robbed, tormented, and killed. We allowed the exclusion of our fellow Christians who originated from Israel . . . from the offices of the church, even permitting the church to deny the baptism of Jews. We did not contest the 227

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prohibition of the mission to the Jews. . . . We encouraged racial arrogance indirectly by issuing innumerable certificates of Aryan descent, and thus impaired our service to the Word of the Gospel.’’∞π And, in July 1946, the first Westphalian Provincial Synod after the war stated: ‘‘We did not raise our voice loudly enough against the extermination of the Jews and other ostracized people.’’∞∫ Other statements, however, displayed no awareness of the Kirchenkampf’s implications for a new theological attitude toward the people of Israel. The Oldenburg Church Council sent a letter to its clergy ‘‘because of the obligation of the congregations toward the Jews.’’ The letter characterized the people of Israel, because of their ‘‘rejection of its Messiah sent by God for all nations,’’ as ‘‘an example of the divine judgment’’ that lent legitimation and urgency to the Christian ‘‘mission to Israel.’’ The only mention of the Christian church’s guilt was the denial of ‘‘the significance of baptism’’ by those Christians who had not accepted baptized Jews as fully Christian. The letter repeated the anti-Judaic attitudes that had been so typical of the church (and so fatal for the Jews) during the 1930s: ‘‘In the relationship to the Jews living in our midst, the twofold fact has become relevant to us, that baptism and the Christian faith invalidate the differences in origin and völkisch character . . . but also that the community we possess as members of the congregation of Jesus Christ does not erase the significance of these differences for public and cultural life.’’∞Ω Only in 1948 did the Reich Council of Brethren of the Evangelical Church of Germany make an explicit statement on the Jewish question (at the Darmstadt Synod on 8 April; this statement should not be confused with the better-known Darmstadt Declaration). Here the Council of Brethren announced that it could not ‘‘keep silent any longer in this matter that is a burden upon our heart.’’≤≠ Yet, like their Oldenburg colleagues, they resumed a centuries-old theological pattern of thinking. ‘‘By crucifying the Messiah, Israel rejected its election and intended purpose,’’ the Darmstadt statement declared. The election of Israel had been transferred to the church, and, therefore, the Christian church waited for ‘‘the straying children of Israel to assume once again the place reserved for them by God.’’≤∞ Christ’s death and resurrection were the only hope after Golgotha; because the Jews had rejected this, ‘‘God’s judgment . . . follows Israel up to the present day [as] a sign of His forbearance.’’≤≤ ‘‘That God does not let Himself be mocked is the mute sermon of 228

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the Jewish fate, for us a warning and for the Jews an admonition as to whether they ought not turn to the One in whom alone they, too, have their salvation.’’ The words of the Darmstadt statement suggested that the guilt and remorse felt in Stuttgart had disappeared or been transformed into mere sadness: ‘‘We are saddened by what happened in the past and by the fact that we have spoken no collective word about it.’’ But, though a confession of guilt can grow from the perception of undone deeds, only sadness ensues from the perception of unspoken words. In fact, the Darmstadt statement, ‘‘which was so infinitely long awaited, leaves behind a painful disappointment.’’≤≥ The final confession of guilt in this early postwar period was the statement drafted ‘‘overnight’’ by the General Synod of the Evangelical Church of Germany in Berlin-Weissensee (23–27 April 1950). The synodal agenda was the issue of postwar peace. Martin Niemöller and others suddenly spoke up, however, announcing that a statement on the Jewish question could not be avoided, particularly since Jewish cemeteries were being desecrated during the early postwar period. The resulting statement differed from the Darmstadt document; it adopted neither the missionary claim nor (despite Lilje’s efforts) a theology of rejection.≤∂ Still, there was a striking lack of commitment, which Prof. Walter Künneth, who attended the synod, appraised as ‘‘wise restraint and caution’’:≤∑ For God has consigned all men to disobedience, that he may have mercy on all. (Rom. 11:32.) We believe in the Lord and Savior who, as a man, is descended from the people of Israel. We profess the church that is joined together into one body made from Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians, and whose peace is Jesus Christ. We believe that God’s promise regarding Israel, his chosen people, has remained in effect even after the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. We state the fact that, through neglect and silence before the God of compassion, we have become guilty of complicity in the crime that has been committed by persons from among our people against the Jews. We warn all Christians against desiring to set God’s judgment upon us Germans over against that which we have done to the Jews; for, in judgment, God’s grace seeks the one who is repentant. We ask all Christians to abjure every kind of anti-Semitism and to

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The Legacy of the Church Struggle resist it with all earnestness where it makes itself felt, and to meet Jews and Jewish Christians in a spirit of fellowship.≤∏

Guilt was still formulated only as ‘‘complicity.’’ The Weissensee statement spoke of ‘‘persons from among our people’’ rather than of Christians who had become guilty. There was not yet enough insight into the roots of anti-Semitism to allow more than a mention of its symptoms. The church had not yet acknowledged the idea that the original roots of anti-Semitism were theological, not psychological or social.

≤≠

The Confessing Church’s Record under Nazism The complex history of the Kirchenkampf clearly illustrates the difficulty of speaking about ‘‘the’’ Confessing Church. It was decidedly heterogeneous. Its diversity provided great opportunities, since there was an abundance of creative thinkers who were prepared to resist; but it also included church leaders and laypeople who had no intention of opposing the Nazi state. Throughout the Third Reich, the German Evangelical Church struggled to avoid a schism. One source of this lack of unity was the different theological traditions in the various regional churches. In 1931, the Congregational Newspaper for the Israelite Congregations of Württemberg made an interesting comment on the dangers of the Evangelical Church’s lack of unity. Asked where the strongest resistance to National Socialism and anti-Semitism would develop, the editors announced they expected nothing from the political parties. They entertained certain hopes about Catholicism, which at that point appeared to have taken an early stand against National Socialism. On the other hand, not much could be expected from Protestantism, since its division into individual regional churches did not allow much hope for a unified ‘‘front.’’∞ The Württemberg paper’s insight had been proved correct. Now, before the Protestant Church could shape its postwar future, it had to examine its record and motives under National Socialism. Confessing pastor Wilhelm Jannasch reflected on the circumstances that had led to his church’s silence: ‘‘In the first place, from the very beginning, nowhere near all the leading men, even within the German 230

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Confessing Church, saw through the nature of the new state and the intentions of the new rulers, but frequently allowed themselves to be blinded by their rhetoric.’’≤ ‘‘For reasons of loyalty,’’ even the critics had been willing to wait before they declared themselves for the one side or the other. Finally, the church had been so preoccupied with the issues of the Kirchenkampf that ‘‘little time and energy remained to observe and follow the general developments critically.’’≥ As early as 1936, Karl Barth had assessed the situation: ‘‘I think of the persecution of the Jews, I think of all the terrible things that are meant by the words ‘concentration camp.’ . . . This silence can be understood from the fact that in early 1933, when these evils were most flagrantly evident, the people who represent and sustain the cause of the Confessing Church today were deluded by the ideology of National Socialism. In 1933, whoever did not believe in Hitler’s mission was ostracized, even in the ranks of the Confessing Church.’’∂ The church—to borrow an image used by Karl Thieme—resembled a ‘‘caravan gone astray in the desert’’: ‘‘One sought an oasis, an intellectual-spiritual space where one could live amidst the new circumstances.’’∑ From the beginning to the end, great fortitude was required of those who avoided deferring to the tyrant. ‘‘The regime had calculated correctly when it concentrated upon forcing people to participate publicly; most people do not tolerate saying no in their hearts to that which they confess and do with their mouths and hands for very long.’’∏ The truth of Thieme’s observation was substantiated by the early statements that later haunted the church. In April 1933, several church leaders had announced: ‘‘A powerful national movement has seized and exalted our German Volk. . . . To this turning point in history, we speak a grateful Yes. God has granted this to us.’’π One day later, at a meeting of the Württemberg Pastors’ Association, Bishop Wurm had declared: ‘‘Our gratitude for a rescue from serious danger and our joy at the fact that the new state attacks problems regarding the health of the Volk . . . reconciles even our concern about whether the Gleichschaltung is occurring too rapidly.’’∫ But such support for the Nazi state had come not only from the church’s political ‘‘middle’’ but from the Confessing Church as well. On 15 October 1933, after Germany withdrew from the League of Nations, the Pastors’ Emergency League sent a telegram to Hitler: ‘‘We greet our Führer in this decisive hour for Volk and Fatherland. We give thanks for 231

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the manly deed and the clear word that preserves Germany’s honor. In the name of more than 2,500 Protestant pastors who are not members of the Faith Movement of German Christians, we solemnly pledge true allegiance and prayerful commemoration.’’Ω Thus, the early period of the Kirchenkampf had been marked by intellectual confusion and mixed loyalties. Even the debate about the Aryan paragraph, which triggered the church struggle, was ‘‘a weak point in the church of Christ,’’ in Martin Niemöller’s words.∞≠ Even more tragic was the fact that the Aryan paragraph (as well as the loyalty oath to the Führer in 1938) had not been imposed on the church by state authorities but proposed by a group within the church, the German Christians. In retrospect, it became clear that the Confessing Church had concentrated too much on the confessional question. Almost without exception, the theological opinions on the Aryan paragraph and the Jewish question epitomized a hopelessly bankrupt and insulated academic theology. It was a shocking picture of the theological and political situation in the church of that era: while Christians discussed Rom. 9–11 for five years, seeking clarity on whether and how Christians were ‘‘allowed’’ to help Jews and non-Aryan Christians, the timetables for the deportation trains were being prepared in Nazi headquarters. When a few individuals demanded that barricades be erected against the hatred, Karl Barth encouraged his followers ‘‘to let go with everything we’ve got’’ on theological principle.∞∞ As a result, many Confessing Church members were insufficiently prepared, even after the Kristallnacht. Writing years later about the November pogrom, Hugo Linck, a Confessing pastor from Königsberg, noted: ‘‘What could the church do in this situation? Proclaim the Gospel. It places all peoples under God’s judgment and brings the good news to all; it summons every human being before the omnipotent God and promises to all the grace that forgives sins.’’∞≤ Decades after the end of the war, such sentences resembled empty husks. In their postwar reflections, veterans of the church struggled to acknowledge how their fears under Nazism had affected them. As the Kirchenkampf progressed, even more radical Confessing Christians hesitated to speak or act publicly. In 1958, one pastor admitted openly that ‘‘we Christians kept our mouths shut out of fear and cowardice,’’ and Pastor Julius von Jan, who had paid for his Repentance Day sermon after the Kristallnacht with mistreatment and imprisonment, recalled, ‘‘We 232

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all were afraid to touch this sensitive spot of the regime.’’∞≥ Some recalled the terrorist ‘‘poetry’’ of the Nazi era: After the Olympics are done we’ll make mincemeat of the Confessing Church, then we’ll throw out the Jews then the Confessing Church will be through.∞∂

In 1935 Pastor Hans Asmussen had warned against the anxiety that led Christians to compromise all too easily: One shouts ‘‘Confession,’’ but plays the role of tactician. . . . One calls himself ‘‘Brother,’’ but denies the mutuality of risk. One shouts ‘‘heresy’’ against Ludwig Müller when this proves to be useful as propaganda, but says nothing if it is not opportune. I cannot go along with this. . . . I don’t consider such a game to be right. . . . What ought to be done? ‘‘Speak the Word, whether timely or inopportune!’’ God has bound us to serve Him so that we should only witness to His Word, which tolerates no compromise.∞∑

But compromise and caution were widespread; this drove some to feel that their church had deserted them. On 17 February 1940, Jochen Klepper mentioned the Confessing Church in his diary: A long seven-page letter from General Superintendent Dibelius, with some very useful criticisms of my hymns along with much that divides [us] on the subject of the Confessing Church. They [Confessing Christians] are, of course, anything but the ‘‘quiet ones in the land,’’ anything but the ‘‘genuine Christian congregation.’’ They really do not know what inescapable suffering . . . is. They have lost sight of the people and the congregation. They erect walls, and amidst all the contentious confessing, the proclamation of the message of love is silent. This church will never teach me to sing.∞∏

The Stuttgart Confession of Guilt had focused on what had been left undone, perhaps recognizing that sins of omission weigh more heavily than sins of commission. Yet there had also been occasions when too much had been said. These are also part of the overall picture of the Confessing Church and help explain why the church was silent on other points. This was especially true during the war, when most Christians (even those otherwise critical of the Nazi regime) put loyalty to the Fatherland above all else. An examination of sermons and prayers from the 233

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war period reveals astonishing statements, such as Hanns Lilje’s 1941 description of the ‘‘war as a spiritual achievement.’’∞π Years later, Lilje commented, ‘‘After Stalingrad, at the very latest, the wagon was rolling toward the abyss, and most knew this, too. Those who didn’t know it can hardly plead ignorance or something similar as an excuse. It has to be supposed that they refused to believe it and didn’t want to know about it.’’∞∫ Perhaps Lilje, too, saw the true objectives of the war and his warlord clearly only after 1943. Even the Confessing Church’s publication Junge Kirche occasionally emphasized its patriotism. After the failed assassination of Hitler on 8 November 1939 in Munich, the paper gave thanks for the ‘‘extraordinary preservation of the Führer.’’∞Ω And, in 1940, every issue contained wartime ‘‘prayers of the church’’:≤≠ ‘‘Bless and preserve with a strong arm our Führer against all the dangers surrounding him, and give him, amidst the onslaught of our enemies, good counsel and vigorous action at the proper time.’’ ‘‘Commend our Führer to your grace.’’≤∞ ‘‘Have thanks for all the successes of our weapons that you already have granted us.’’≤≤ After the Germans prevented the English landing in Norway, Junge Kirche noted: ‘‘We gratefully cast our eyes upon the Führer and his Wehrmacht, who once again have averted danger at the proper moment.’’≤≥ These voices were also a part of the disharmonious chorus that had begun as the Confessing Church and attempted to stand firm in a totalitarian system.≤∂ Contemporary judgments might be more sympathetic were it not for the fact that, during the postwar years, the witnesses and their successors attempted to rewrite their own history. Using apologetics and even concealing or withholding documentary material, they hoped to preserve at least some of the idealized picture of the Confessing Church. This was true of the so-called intact churches as well, which were so willing to compromise while skirting the edges of apparent noncompromise.≤∑ Karl Kupisch exposed their attempts to give a false picture during the postwar denazification proceedings.≤∏ Particularly in the Lutheran churches of Hannover, Württemberg, and Bavaria, the very leaders who had kept themselves politically ‘‘intact’’ during the Third Reich later emphasized their ‘‘bitter struggle’’ and resistance.≤π Not surprisingly, those who had been German Christians also reinterpreted their records.≤∫ The self-portrait offered by Dr. Christian Kinder, 234

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former leader of the Reich Movement of German Christians (and, after 1945, president of the Lutheran Church in Schleswig-Holstein), was a blatant attempt at self-justification.≤Ω Kinder deliberately failed to mention that he had signed the fatal letter of 17 December 1941 (which barred non-Aryan Christians from their churches) issued by the seven regional churches that supported a national church. Instead, he rebuked the churches of Lübeck and Mecklenburg for their solidarity with the state and party—without acknowledging that he had signed a letter calling for the abolition of ‘‘every kind of community with Jewish Christians’’ because he, too, was determined ‘‘to tolerate no influence whatsoever of the Jewish spirit on German religious and church life.’’≥≠ Kinder prefaced the third edition of his book by protesting the charges against him concerning his ‘‘party membership or even because of possible decisions that are supposed to have been made out of submission to the nsdap.’’≥∞ Still, he acknowledged that some church laws had been passed ‘‘under the influence of the difficult situation created by the circumstances of that time, to avoid otherwise inevitable conflicts with the state, the party, and at least 90 percent of the congregational members.’’≥≤ Kinder concluded that German Christian church policy had succeeded in ‘‘the preservation of our regional church in its own historically developed distinctive right and [in] achieving peaceful conditions amidst the frictions of the church struggle, which Schleswig-Holstein alone experienced among the regions of Germany at that time. And all this without violations of law and personal affronts!’’≥≥ Even those who had been in the midst of the Kirchenkampf succumbed to the temptation to retouch their memories. Wilhelm Niemöller falsified the past, perhaps in good faith, when he wrote that the church of Christ (that is, the Confessing Church) had ‘‘taken a firm position’’ on the Aryan paragraph.≥∂ Nor did Heinrich Grüber’s retrospective view correspond to the situation described by the documents: ‘‘The Confessing Church had comprehended the distress and misery of these people [that is, the non-Aryans] from the very beginning. Again and again, the synods of the Confessing Church, and its pastors as well, took a position regarding the defamation of the Jews. What was lacking, however, was practical assistance.’’≥∑ In no way, however, had the problems been recognized by ‘‘the’’ Confessing Church ‘‘from the very beginning.’’ Time and again, the synods avoided addressing the situation of the Jews. For the ‘‘confessing’’ 235

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church, confession for its own sake was more important than solidarity with others who were persecuted. The question is why people like Grüber later reinterpreted their own disappointment. After Martin Albertz and Marga Meusel delivered the first blueprints for aid to the Jews at Steglitz, Grüber personally witnessed how many of his confessional colleagues viewed these Jews as a burden and threat to the Confessing Church—and were all too happy to delegate the responsibility for nonAryans to the Grüber office and its branches throughout the Reich. The documents available establish that the Confessing Church regarded the Jewish question as annoying and burdensome and treated it dilatorily. The church’s protracted handling of the Jewish question encouraged the state’s persecution of the Jews. The Confessing Church’s dogmatic solutions to the Jewish question in 1939 and 1940 fostered the Evangelical Chancellery’s rigorous solution in 1941—and, ultimately, the Nazi state’s Final Solution.

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notes Abbreviations agk Arbeiten zur Geschichte des Kirchenkampfes ekd Evangelische Kirche Deutschlands (until 1945, Deutsche Evangelische Kirche [dek]) eza Evangelisches Zentralarchiv, Berlin lkan-kku Landeskirchliches Archiv Nürnberg, Kirchenkampf Unterlagen, Nuremberg lkan-lkr Landeskirchliches Archiv Nürnberg, Landeskirchenrat, Nuremberg lkavw Archiv der Evangelischen Kirche Westfalens, Bielefeld wl The Wiener Library, London introduction 1. Hans-Jochen Gamm, Judentumskunde: Eine Einführung (Munich, 1964), 89. 2. Karl-Dietrich Bracher, Die Deutsche Diktatur: Entstehung, Struktur, Folgen des Nationalsozialismus (Cologne, 1969), 15. 3. Bracher, Die Deutsche Diktatur, 43ff. 4. Bracher, Die Deutsche Diktatur, 44. 5. Adolf Stoecker, Christlich-Sozial (Berlin, 1885), 168. 6. Wilhelm Maurer, Kirche und Synagogue: Motive und Formen der Auseinandersetzung der Kirche mit dem Judentum im Laufe der Geschichte (Stuttgart, 1953), 63. 7. Adolf Stoecker, Reden und Aufsätze, ed. Reinhold Seeberg (Leipzig, 1913), 149. See also Eberhard Bethge, ‘‘Adolf Stoecker und der kirchliche Antisemitismus,’’ in Am gegeben Ort: Aufsätze und Reden (Munich, 1979), 202ff. 8. Stoecker, Reden und Aufsätze. 9. Bracher, Die Deutsche Diktatur, 16. 10. Including Kaiser Wilhelm I. Letter, 16 January 1880, wl. 11. Maurer, Kirche und Synagogue, 126. 12. Maria Zelzer, Weg und Schicksal der Stuttgarter Juden: Sonderband der Veröffentlichungen des Archivs der Stadt Stuttgart (Stuttgart, 1964), 100. 13. Gamm, Judentumskunde, 92. 14. See articles 4–6 of the nsdap party platform of February 1920, reprinted

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Notes to Pages 3–6 in Wilhelm Niemöller, Wort und Tat im Kirchenkampf: Beiträge zur neuesten Kirchengeschichte (Munich, 1969), 271ff. 15. See Günther van Norden, Kirche in der Krise: Die Stellung der evangelischen Kirche zum nationalsozialistischen Staat im Jahre 1933 (Düsseldorf, 1963), 22ff. See also Doris Bergen, Twisted Cross: The German Christian Movement in the Third Reich (Chapel Hill, 1996). 16. Golo Mann, ‘‘Der Antisemitismus: Wurzeln, Wirkung, und Überwindung,’’ in Von Gestern zum Morgen, vol. 3 (Munich, 1960), 27ff. 17. Günther Dehn, Die alte Zeit—die vorigen Jahre: Lebenserinnerungen (Munich, 1962), 211. 18. Dehn, Die alte Zeit, 294. 19. The series was published by Pastor Gerhard Jasper, director of the school of missions in Berlin. 20. E. Schaeffer, ‘‘Die Judenfrage und wir,’’ Studienhefte zur Judenfrage 1 (Dresden, 1925), 2. 21. H. Kircher, ‘‘Die völkische Bewegung und die Stellung des geistlichen Amts zu ihr,’’ Studienhefte zur Judenfrage 1 (Dresden, 1925), 7. 22. Klaus Scholder, The Churches and the Third Reich, vol. 1: Preliminary History and the Time of Illusions, 1918–1934 (Philadelphia, 1988), 116. 23. Eduard Lamparter, Evangelische Kirche und Judentum: Ein Beitrag zu christlichem Verständnis von Judentum und Antisemitismus (Stuttgart, 1928), 57. See also Heinz Kremers, ed., Die Juden und Martin Luther—Martin Luther und die Juden: Geschichte, Wirkungsgeschichte, Herausforderung (Neukirchen-Vluyn, 1985). 24. Lamparter, Evangelische Kirche, 58. 25. Lamparter, Evangelische Kirche, 60. 26. Ino Arndt, Die Judenfrage im Lichte der evangelischen Sonntagsblätter von 1918–1933 (Dissertation, Tübingen, 1960). 27. Arndt, Die Judenfrage, 219ff. 28. Arndt, Die Judenfrage, 211. 29. Arndt, Die Judenfrage, 53. 30. Arndt, Die Judenfrage, 214. 31. Otto von Harling, ‘‘Antisemitisches in der christlichen Presse,’’ in Saat auf Hoffnung, Zeitschrift für die Mission der Kirche an Israel (Leipzig, 1920), 125. 32. Kurt Dietrich Schmidt, ed., Die Bekenntnisse und grundsätzlichen Äusserungen zur Kirchenfrage, 1933–1935 (Göttingen, 1934–36), vol. 1: Bekenntnisse, 1933, 18–19. 33. Arndt, Die Judenfrage, 219. 34. Arndt, Die Judenfrage, 219.

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Notes to Pages 6–15 35. 36. 37. 38.

Arndt, Die Judenfrage, 220. Arndt, Die Judenfrage, 10, 220. Arndt, Die Judenfrage, 221. Adolf Köberle, ‘‘Die Judenfrage im Lichte der Christusfrage,’’ Christlicher Volksdienst, Ausgabe für Hessen, Hessen-Nassau und Waldeck 9 (1933), 39 (30 September), lkavw. 39. Köberle, ‘‘Die Judenfrage.’’ 40. See Scholder, Churches and the Third Reich, 1:124ff.; and Robert P. Ericksen, Theologians under Hitler: Gerhard Kittel, Paul Althaus, and Emanuel Hirsch (New Haven, 1985). 41. Dated 2 May 1933; reprinted in Der Ruf (November 1933), 335. (Copy given to the author by Eberhard Bethge.) the defamation of the jews 1. Schmidt, Die Bekenntnisse (1933), 136. 2. Schmidt, Die Bekenntnisse (1933), 17. 1. church responses to early anti-jewish measures 1. ‘‘Gesetz zur Behebung der Not von Volk und Staat,’’ in Walter Hofer, Der Nationalsozialismus: Dokumente, 1933–1945 (Frankfurt am Main, 1957), 47. See also Scholder, Churches and the Third Reich, 1:254ff. 2. Hofer, Der Nationalsozialismus. 3. Klepper, Unter dem Schatten deiner Flügel: Aus den Tagebüchern der Jahre 1932–1942, ed. Hildegard Klepper (Stuttgart, 1955), 45, 47. 4. One was a telegram from the Berlin Evangelical Consistory to the Reich Agency of German Jews in Berlin, dated 1 April 1933: ‘‘Following developments with greatest vigilance and hoping that boycott measures find their conclusion with this day.’’ eza, C 3/207. 5. Norden, Kirche in der Krise, 59. This account appears on p. 39 in the German edition. 6. Norden, Kirche in der Krise, 60. 7. For Menn’s response, see Norden, Kirche in der Krise, 177–79. 8. In Nachspiel (Berlin, 1928), 67, wl. 9. ‘‘Confidential’’ letter from the general superintendent of the Kurmark; quoted in The Strange Case of Bishop Dibelius, 66, wl. This quotation appears on p. 42 in the German edition. 10. Strange Case of Bishop Dibelius, 71. 11. ‘‘Evangelischer Appell an Amerika.’’ 12. ‘‘Friede und Freude,’’ official paper of the Evangelische Verein der KaiserWilhelm-Gedächtnis-Kirche, in a special edition of Evangelisches Blatt, 9 April 1933.

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Notes to Pages 15–22 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

‘‘Friede und Freude.’’ Strange Case of Bishop Dibelius, 5. Strange Case of Bishop Dibelius, 7. Letter to the author, 23 January 1965. In Norden, Kirche in der Krise, 177. Norden, Kirche in der Krise, 177. Scholder, Churches and the Third Reich, 1:267ff. Scholder, Churches and the Third Reich, 1:268. See Bruno Blau, Das Ausnahmerecht für die Juden in Deutschland, 1933– 1945, 2d ed. (Düsseldorf, 1954). 22. Walter Künneth, ‘‘Das Judenproblem und die Kirche,’’ in Die Nation vor Gott: Zur Botschaft der Kirche im Dritten Reich, 4th ed., ed. Walter Künneth and Helmut Schreiner (Berlin, 1934), 147ff. 23. Gamm, Judentumskunde, 93. 24. Jüdische Rundschau, 26 May 1933, in Hans Lamm, Über die innere und äussere Entwicklung des deutschen Judentums im Dritten Reich (Munich, 1951), 184. 2. early church statements 1. ‘‘An das Gewissen der Evangelischen Kirche,’’ ekd Chancellery, Hannover (C 2231/33, I 1361/33). 2. Reprinted in its entirety in Victoria Barnett, For the Soul of the People: Protestant Protest under Hitler (New York, 1992), 32. 3. See Sasse’s critique in ‘‘Kirchliche Zeitlage,’’ in Kirchliches Jahrbuch für die Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland, 1932, ed. Hermann Sasse (Gütersloh, 1933), 2–4. 4. ‘‘An das Gewissen der Evangelischen Kirche,’’ eza 1/c 2/231–33, I 1361/33. 5. ‘‘An das Gewissen der Evangelischen Kirche,’’ eza 1/c 2/231–33, I 1361/33. 6. ‘‘An das Gewissen der Evangelischen Kirche,’’ eza 1/c 2/231–33, I 1361/33. 7. Joachim Gauger, ed., Gotthard-Briefe (Elberfeld, undated), 77, 79; and Schmidt, Die Bekenntnisse (1933), 145–46. 8. 5.1, ‘‘Juden I,’’ lkavw. 9. Many leading theologians supported the Young Reformation Movement, whose members (including former submarine commander Martin Niemöller) came from the post–World War I theological generation. See Gauger, Gotthard-Brief, 77–79. 10. Gauger, Gotthard-Brief, 79.

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Notes to Pages 23–26 11. W. Vischer, ‘‘Zur Judenfrage: Eine kurze biblische Erörterung der Judenfrage im Anschluss an die Leitsätze eines Vortrages über die Bedeutung des Alten Testaments,’’ Pastoraltheologie 29 (1933): 185–90. See also Vischer, ‘‘Gott und Volk in der Bibel,’’ Evangelische Theologie 1 (1934): 24– 48. 12. Vischer, ‘‘Zur Judenfrage.’’ 13. Schmidt, Die Bekenntnis (1933), 163. 14. Schmidt, Die Bekenntnis (1933), 35. 15. Schmidt, Die Bekenntnis (1933), 65. 16. ‘‘Das Erste,’’ Rhein-Mainischen Volkszeitung, 24 June 1933. 17. ‘‘Das Erste.’’ 18. ‘‘72 Leitsätze zur judenchristlichen Frage,’’ Schmidt, Die Bekenntnisse (1933), 66–73. 19. ‘‘Bekenntnis westfälischer Pfarrer,’’ Schmidt, Die Bekenntnisse (1933), 73– 77. See also Günter Brakelmann, ‘‘Die Bochumer Bekenntnisse des Jahres 1933,’’ in Das Unrechtsregime: Internationale Forschung über den Nationalsozialismus, ed. Ursula Büttner, vol. 1: Ideologie/Herrschaftssystem/ Wirkung in Europa (Hamburg, 1986), 291ff.; and Marikje Smid, Deutscher Protestantismus und Judentum, 1932/1933, in Heidelberger Untersuchungen zu Widerstand, Judenverfolgung und Kirchenkampf im Dritten Reich, Bd. 2, ed. H. E. Tödt and E. A. Scharffenorth (Munich, 1990), 382ff. 20. Renate Maria Heydenreich, ‘‘Erklärungen aus der Evangelischen Kirche Deutschlands und der Ökumene in der jüdischen Frage, 1932–1961: Text und Kommentar, Überblick und Einleitung,’’ in Der ungekündigte Bund: Neue Begegnung von Juden und christlicher Gemeinde, ed. Dietrich Goldschmidt and Hans-Joachim Kraus (Stuttgart, 1962), 198. 21. Schmidt, Die Bekenntnisse (1933), 66–73. 3. dietrich bonhoeffer 1. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Eberhard Bethge (Munich, 1958–59), 1:37. All citations from the Bethge biography refer to page numbers in the second English edition (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000). 2. Two other prominent Confessing pastors, Helmut Gollwitzer and HansJoachim Iwand, were also sensitive to the plight of the Jews; Gollwitzer’s fiancée amd Iwand’s wife were ‘‘non-Aryan.’’ See Jürgen Seim, ‘‘Israel und die Juden im Leben und Werk Hans Joachim Iwands,’’ in Kremers, Die Juden und Martin Luther, 249ff. 3. Jacobi was pastor of the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche in Berlin and a leading voice within the Young Reformation Movement; with Martin Niemöller, he subsequently founded the Pastor’s Emergency League

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Notes to Pages 26–29 in late 1933. See Bonhoeffer, Gesammelte Schriften, 2:44 n.1, 631; and Bethge, ‘‘Dietrich Bonhoeffer und die Juden,’’ in Kremers, Die Juden und Martin Luther, 221–27. 4. Bonhoeffer, Gesammelte Schriften, 2:51. 5. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 273. 6. Scholder describes ‘‘The Church and the Jewish Question’’ as ‘‘one of the most illuminating and most significant works produced during these years—politically as well as theologically’’ (Churches and the Third Reich, 1:275). 7. Bonhoeffer, Gesammelte Schriften, 2:48. 8. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 276. 9. ‘‘Die Kirche vor der Judenfrage,’’ Bonhoeffer, Gesammelte Schriften, 2:50. See Jochen-Christoph Kaiser and Martin Greschat, eds., Der Holocaust und die Protestanten: Analysen einer Verstrickung (Frankfurt am Main, 1988), 105. 10. Bonhoeffer, Gesammelte Schriften, 2:54–55; cf. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 415–16. 11. Notes taken by Pastor Wilhelm Jannasch, eza, File 264c, former archives of the Kirchliche Hochschule, Berlin. 12. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 302. See also Bonhoeffer, Gesammelte Schriften, 2:80–89; and Bethge, ‘‘Dietrich Bonhoeffer und die Juden,’’ in Kremers, Die Juden und Martin Luther, 227–29. 13. Carsten Nicolaisen, Die Auseinandersetzungen um das Alte Testament im Kirchenkampf 1933–1945 (Dissertation, Hamburg, 1966), 150ff. 14. Bonhoeffer, Gesammelte Schriften, 2:80–89. 15. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 303. 16. Schmidt, Die Bekenntnisse (1933), 105ff. 17. This is the first mention of ‘‘brotherhood with the Jewish Christians.’’ 18. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 303–4. 19. See Jørgen Glenthøj, ‘‘Dietrich Bonhoeffers Kampf gegen den Arierparagraphen,’’ Kirche in der Zeit 20 (1965): 491. 20. Bonhoeffer to Karl Barth, 24 October 1933, in Bonhoeffer, Gesammelte Schriften, 2:131. 21. Bonhoeffer to Barth, 24 October 1933, in Bonhoeffer, Gesammelte Schriften, 2:132. 22. Bonhoeffer to Barth, 24 October 1933, in Bonhoeffer, Gesammelte Schriften, 2:132. 23. Wilhelm Niemöller, Kampf und Zeugnis der Bekennende Kirche (Bielefeld, 1948), 454. A more critical consensus has emerged since then. 24. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 304–5.

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Notes to Pages 29–33 25. Entitled ‘‘The German Christians Say—We Answer.’’ ‘‘Flugblatt zur Kirchenwahl,’’ in Bonhoeffer, Gesammelte Schriften, 2:59ff. 26. ‘‘Der Arierparagraph in der Kirche,’’ in Bonhoeffer, Gesammelte Schriften, 2:62–69. 4. gutachten and synodal resolutions 1. ‘‘Gesetz betreffend die Rechtsverhältnisse der Geistlichen und Kirchenbeamten,’’ reprinted in Die Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland und die Judenfrage: Ausgewählte Dokumente aus den Jahren des Kirchenkampfes, 1933– 1943 (Geneva: Ökumene Verlag, 1945), 35ff. 2. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 307. See also Heinrich Hermelink, ed., Kirche im Kampf: Dokumente des Widerstandes und des Aufbaus der Evangelischen Kirche in Deutschland von 1933–1945 (Tübingen, 1950), 47–48. 3. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 307–8. 4. Two reports confirm the following statistics: Wilhelm Niemöller, memorandum dated 11 November 1933: ‘‘Gibt es jüdische Pfarrer in der evangelischen Kirche?’’; and a letter from Berlin superintendent Max Diestel (14 November 1933) to Friedrich Siegmund-Schultze. See Deutsches Pfarrerblatt, no. 44 (31 October 1933): 607–10, in eza, Best. 51 (formerly Ökumenisches Archiv Soest, Akte H). 5. Paragraph 3, sections 2–4 of the 6 September 1933 church law. 6. See also Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 307–8. 7. Bonhoeffer, Gesammelte Schriften, 2:70. 8. Bonhoeffer, Gesammelte Schriften, 2:71. The reference here is to the three ‘‘intact’’ churches (Hannover, Bavaria, and Baden-Württemberg) led by Lutheran bishops. 9. Bonhoeffer, Gesammelte Schriften, 2:72. 10. The outcome of this meeting was the Erlangen Gutachten. 11. See Bonhoeffer’s letter and Barth’s reply in Bonhoeffer, Gesammelte Schriften, 2:126ff. 12. Bonhoeffer, Gesammelte Schriften, 2:126ff. 13. Barth, Theologischen Existenz heute, Heft 1 (Munich, 1933), 24ff. 14. Barth, Theologischen Existenz heute, Heft 1, 24ff. 15. ‘‘Erklärung,’’ Bonhoeffer, Gesammelte Schriften, 2:70–71. 16. Bodelschwingh’s proposed changes are contained in a letter he sent Reich Bishop Ludwig Müller on 11 September. A copy of the letter is in the possession of the author. 17. ‘‘An die Deutsche Nationalsynode,’’ Bonhoeffer, Gesammelte Schriften, 2:74–76. 18. W. Niemöller, Texte zur Geschichte des Pfarrernotbundes (Berlin, 1958), 23.

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Notes to Pages 33–39 19. Niemöller, Texte zur Geschichte des Pfarrernotbundes, 4. 20. ‘‘Ergebnisse der Beratung in Essen am 11.9.1933,’’ Niemöller, Texte zur Geschichte des Pfarrernotbundes, 20–22. 21. W. Niemöller, Die Evangelische Kirche im Dritten Reich: Handbuch des Kirchenkampfes (Bielefeld, 1956), 378, eza, 50/828 and 50 z 20. 22. Archiv der Bayerischen Landeskirche, lkan-kku Nr. 9/2. 23. Reformed Church president Otto Koopmann to Westphalian Confessing pastor Karl Lücking, 21 September 1933, lkavw. 24. Koopmann to Lücking, 21 September 1933. 25. Bonhoeffer, Gesammelte Schriften, 2:68. 26. Letter, ‘‘Bad Oeynhausen, 19 September 1933,’’ lkavw. The letter is unsigned; another document identifies the author as President Koch (letter from Professor Rudolf Hermann, Greifswald, 23 September 1933). 27. No. 5, section 1 of the ‘‘Third Decree on the Implementation of the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service from 6 May 1933,’’ Reichsgesetzblatt 1:245. 28. No. 5, section 1 of the ‘‘Third Decree on the Implementation of the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service from 6 May 1933.’’ 29. Letter, 23 September 1933, lkavw. 30. For Koch’s background, see Wilhelm Niemöller, Karl Koch: Präses der Bekenntnissynoden (Bethel, 1956). 31. Cf. the more detailed description in the German edition, 69–73. 32. See Niemöller, ‘‘Nach fünfundzwanzig Jahren,’’ Evangelische Theologie 18 (1958): 390. 33. See Bethge’s comment on Knak, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 308. 34. He added: ‘‘We conduct a mission to the Jews in order to win some of the Jewish people for Christ, not in order to save the Jewish people as a people.’’ 35. Schmidt, Die Bekenntnisse (1933), 178. 36. Here a note cites Acts 10:34–35 and Gal. 3:28. 37. Schmidt, Die Bekenntnisse (1933), 178. 38. The Marburg professors conceded the state’s racial restrictions ‘‘out of considerations of national politics’’ but strictly refused to acknowledge their relevance ‘‘in the realm of the church.’’ 39. Here a note cites 1 Cor. 12:13. 40. Schmidt, Die Bekenntnisse (1933), 178. 41. Schmidt, Die Bekenntnisse (1933), 178. 42. See Heydenreich, ‘‘Erklärungen aus der Evangelischen Kirche Deutschlands,’’ in Goldschmidt and Kraus, Der ungekündigte Bund, 203. 43. Werner Elert, ‘‘Jakob Böhmes Deutsches Christentum,’’ in Biblische Zeit-

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Notes to Pages 39–45 und Streitfragen zur Aufklärung der Gebildeten, ed. F. Kropatschek (IX Serie, Berlin, 1914), 185ff. 44. Althaus, ‘‘Kirche und Volkstum,’’ in Evangelium und Leben: Gesammelte Aufsätze (Gütersloh, 1927). 45. Althaus, ‘‘Kirche und Volkstum,’’ 130ff. 46. ‘‘In complete agreement on the practical demands,’’ the theological faculty at Erlangen voted to support the opinion. 47. The contrast between deutsch (German) and fremd (alien, or foreign) is a leitmotiv throughout the Erlangen opinion. 48. The opinion (in point 8) leaves decisions about the ‘‘future admission of men of Jewish origin’’ up to the church. 49. The twenty-two signers are listed on p. 78 in the German edition. 50. Schmidt, Die Bekenntnisse (1933), 190. 51. Schmidt, Die Bekenntnisse (1933), 186–89. 52. Schmidt, Die Bekenntnisse (1933), 186–89. 53. Schmidt, Die Bekenntnisse (1933), 186–89. 54. The Nazi regime even sent an observer to Wittenberg. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 248. 55. See Scholder, Churches and the Third Reich, 1:483–92. 56. Bonhoeffer, Gesammelte Schriften, 1:75. 57. Staewen, an early socialist and friend of Karl Barth’s, later joined the Kaufmann circle, which helped Jews in Berlin. 58. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 319. 59. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 319. See also Niemöller, Kampf und Zeugnis, 64. 60. Gauger, Gotthard-Briefe, 103. 61. Lücking to Bodelschwingh, 23 October 1933, lkavw; see also Eberhard Klügel, Die lutherische Landeskirche Hannovers und ihr Bischof, 1933–1945 (Berlin, 1964), 84. 62. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 320. 63. See Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 325. 64. Bonhoeffer to Barth, 24 October 1933, in Bonhoeffer, Gesammelte Schriften, 2:132. 65. See Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 323. 5. the pastors’ emergency league 1. See Scholder, Churches and the Third Reich, 1:483ff. 2. ‘‘Verpflichtung der Gemeindeglieder,’’ newsletter no. 2 of the Pastors’ Emergency League, in Niemöller, Texte zur Geschichte, 31. 3. ‘‘Verpflichtung der Gemeindeglieder,’’ 32.

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Notes to Pages 45–52 4. Niemöller, Der Pfarrernotbund: Geschichte einer kämpfenden Bruderschaft (Hamburg, 1973), 35. 5. Gauger, Gotthard-Briefe, 112. 6. Niemöller, Kampf und Zeugnis, 75. 7. Schmidt, Die Bekenntnisse (1933), 80. 8. Schmidt, Die Bekenntnisse (1933), 92. 9. Schmidt, Die Bekenntnisse (1933), 171–72. 10. Schmidt, Die Bekenntnisse (1933), 173–74. 11. Schmidt, Die Bekenntnisse (1933), 78. 12. ‘‘Acht Artikel evangelischer Lehre,’’ in Schmidt, Die Bekenntnisse (1933), 80–89. See also Die Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland und die Judenfrage, 114. 13. Günter Gaus, Zur Person: Porträts in Frage und Antwort (Munich, 1965), 114. 14. ‘‘Erklärung,’’ Bonhoeffer, Gesammelte Schriften, 2:70–71. 15. Jürgen Schmidt, Martin Niemöller im Kirchenkampf (Hamburg, 1971), 96. 16. Niemöller, Der Pfarrernotbund, 36; and Schmidt, Martin Niemöller, 93, 120. 17. See also Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 306. 18. ‘‘Sätze zur Arierfrage in der Kirche,’’ Junge Kirche 1 (1933): 269, 271. 19. ‘‘Sätze zur Arierfrage in der Kirche,’’ 269, 271. 20. ‘‘Das Bekenntnis der Väter und die Bekennende Gemeinde,’’ in Schmidt, Die Bekenntnisse (1933), 105ff. 6. ecumenical developments 1. Armin Boyens, Kirchenkampf und Ökumene, 1933–1939: Darstellung und Dokumentation (Munich, 1969), 38–86. 2. eza, Best. 51 (formerly Ökumenisches Archiv, Akte H, SiegmundSchultze). 3. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 267–68. 4. Niemöller, Die Evangelische Kirche im Dritten Reich, 376. 5. eza, C I, Bd. I/II. 6. eza, C I. 7. W. Niemöller, Die Evangelische Kirche im Dritten Reich, 376–77. 8. See Schreiber’s letter to Adolf Keller, 7 April 1933, eza, C I, Bd. I/II. 9. Schreiber to Keller. 10. Schreiber to Keller. 11. eza, C I. 12. eza, C I, Bd. I/II. 13. eza, C I, Bd. I/II.

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Notes to Pages 52–57 14. eza, C I, Bd. I/II. 15. See Eino Murtorinne, Erzbishof Eidem zum Deutschen Kirchenkampf, 1933– 1945 (Schriften der Finnischen Gesellschaft für Missiologie und Ökumenik, Bd. 15), Helsinki, 1968. 16. Murtorinne, Erzbishof Eidem zum Deutschen Kirchenkampf, 21. 17. Murtorinne, Erzbishof Eidem zum Deutschen Kirchenkampf, 21,87. 18. On the activities of Birger Forell, named pastor of the Swedish Viktoria Congregation in Berlin in 1929, see Harald von Koenigswald, Birger Forell: Leben und Werk in den Jahren 1933–1958 (Witten, 1962). 19. See Boyens, Kirchenkampf und Ökumene, 1933–1939, 295–99. 20. ‘‘Anlage 2: Die Kirche und die Judenfrage in Deutschland’’ and ‘‘Anlage 3: Die evangelische Kirche und ihre Judenchristen,’’ in eza, C I, Bd. I/II. 21. ‘‘Das Judenproblem und die Kirche,’’ in Künneth and Schreiner, Die Nation vor Gott, 115–37. 22. See H. J. Barkenings, ‘‘Der Wahrheit verpflichtet? Notwendige Anmerkungen zu Walter Künneths Lebenserinnerungen,’’ in Allgemeine jüdische Wochenzeitung 34, no. 38 (21 September 1979): 37, 39. 23. Barkenings, ‘‘Der Wahrheit verpflichtet?’’ 37, 39. 24. ‘‘Die evangelische Kirche und ihre Judenchristen,’’ Anlage 3, eza, C I. 25. Pechmann left the church one year later, at the age of seventy-five. Gauger, Gotthard-Briefe, 74, 76, 178. See also Niemöller, ‘‘Ein Kirchenaustritt und vier Briefe,’’ Junge Kirche 10 (1949): 487ff. 26. The following quotations are from the protocol of the meeting, eza, C I. 27. Boyens, Kirchenkampf und Ökumene, 1933–1939, 299–308. 28. Memorandum, ‘‘Die Evangelische Kirche und ihre Judenchristen,’’ Anlage 3, eza, C I, 5. 29. See Hofer, Der Nationalsozialismus, 284. 30. ‘‘Anordnung der Parteileitung der nsdap vom 28. März 1933,’’ in Hofer, Der Nationalsozialismus, 283. 31. ‘‘Anordnung der Parteileitung der nsdap.’’ 32. eza, ‘‘Die Evangelische Kirche und ihre Juden,’’ C I. 33. Archives of the ekd-Kanzlei Hannover, D. 1/29, call number K. A. III, 306. 34. Murtorinne, Erzbischof Eidem, 25. 35. eza, 5/1. 36. See John Conway, ‘‘Between Pacifism and Patriotism—A Protestant Dilemma: The Case of Friedrich Siegmund-Schultze,’’ in Germans against Nazism: Nonconformity, Opposition, and Resistance in the Third Reich, ed. Francis R. Nicosia and Lawrence D. Stokes (Oxford: Berg, 1990), 87–115. 37. Andreas Lindt, George Bell/Alfons Koechlin: Briefwechsel, 1933–1954 (Zurich, 1969), 36.

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Notes to Pages 57–61 38. Siegmund-Schultze, ‘‘Internationales Hilfskomitee für deutsche (evangelische, katholische und mosaische) Auswanderer jüdischer Abstammung,’’ 1933, in eza, Akte H (Siegmund-Schultze). 39. Armin Boyens, Kirchenkampf und Ökumene, 1939–1945: Darstellung und Dokumentation unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Quellen des Ökumenischen Rates der Kirchen (Munich, 1973), 48. 40. Siegmund-Schultze, ‘‘Internationales Hilfskomittee.’’ 41. Siegmund-Schultze, ‘‘Internationales Hilfskomittee,’’ 7. 42. See Boyens, Kirchenkampf und Ökumene, 1939–1945, and Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer. See also Klemens von Klemperer, German Resistance against Hitler: The Search for Allies Abroad, 1938–1945 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1942); Willem A. Visser’t Hooft, Memoirs (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1973); and Haim Genizi, American Apathy: The Plight of Christian Refugees from Nazism (Ramat-Gan, Israel: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1983). 43. eza, 51. See also Boyens, Kirchenkampf und Ökumene, 1933–1939, 76–84. 44. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 312. 45. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 435–36. 46. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 312. 47. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 312. 48. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 313. 49. See the Times report in eza, C I Bd. III/IV. See also Bell’s letters from Müller, 23 October 1933, in Gauger, Gotthard-Briefe, 106. 50. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 313. 51. On the Novi Sad and Sofia meetings, see Boyens, Kirchenkampf und Ökumene, 1933–1939, 59ff., 66ff., 311–12. 52. In March 1933, Richter had helped Berlin Consistory vice-president Burghart draft a telegram to foreign churches, warning against the ‘‘Jews throughout the world’’ and the ‘‘Social Democrats’’ who were spreading anti-German propaganda. eza, Akte C 1, 1 and 2. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 190–93, gives a good overview of the German ecumenists from Berlin. 53. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 449. Cf. Glenthøj, ‘‘Dietrich Bonhoeffers Kampf,’’ 442–43, and Bonhoeffer, Gesammelte Schriften, 2:73. 54. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 315. 55. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 315. 56. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 315. 57. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 316–17. 58. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 316–17. Junge Kirche was the publication of the Confessing Church. It did not mention the Sofia resolution. 59. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 317. The Spiritual Ministry (Geistlichen

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Notes to Pages 61–68

60. 61. 62. 63. 64.

65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71.

Ministerium) was an advisory committee established by Reich Bishop Müller. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 452–53. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 452–53. eza, Akte H, Siegmund-Schultze. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 316–17. Hirsch, a professor of systematic theology in Göttingen, was a prominent and prolific theologian; he was also an apologist for National Socialism. See Ericksen, Theologians under Hitler. eza, C I, Bd. III/IV. eza, C I, Bd. III/IV. eza, C I, Bd. II/III. Compare the letters to Schreiber from 19 December 1933 and 13 October 1934, eza, C I, Bd. II/III. eza, C I, Bd. III/IV. Hans Lilje, ‘‘Politische Eindrücke,’’ eza, C I, Bd. V/VI. Lilje, ‘‘Politische Eindrücke.’’

7. the aryan paragraph and the protestant press 1. Gauger, Gotthard-Briefe, 112. 2. eza, C 4/17. Friedrich Forell (not to be confused with Birger Forell) was a Silesian pastor for social work. 3. eza, 4/17. 4. Junge Kirche 2 (1934): 334. 5. It also affected theology students at the universities. See Junge Kirche 4 (1936): 128. 6. Gauger, Gotthard-Briefe, 112. 7. eza, C 4/17. 8. eza, C 4/17. 9. See Gerhard E. Stoll, Die evangelische Zeitschriftenpresse im Jahre 1933 (Dissertation, Witten, 1963). 10. Stoll, Zeitschriftenpresse, 214. 11. Stoll, Zeitschriftenpresse, 215. 12. Stoll, Zeitschriftenpresse, 216. 13. Stoll, Zeitschriftenpresse, 216. 14. Stoll, Zeitschriftenpresse, 217. 15. Stoll, Zeitschriftenpresse, 217. See also Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 246. 16. Stoll, Zeitschriftenpresse, 217. 17. Stoll, Zeitschriftenpresse, 218.

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Notes to Pages 68–72 18. 19. 20. 21.

Licht und Leben, 12 March 1933, 173. Licht und Leben, 9 April 1933, 234. Licht und Leben, 18 June 1933, 392–93. With the exception of an anthroposophical publication, Die Christengemeinschaft. Stoll, Zeitschriftenpresse, 211. 22. Stoll, Zeitschriftenpresse, 219. 23. There was a prompt official response to the Breslau paper’s action. The regional president banned Evangelischer Ruf immediately, until further notice, ‘‘since the statements made in Number 42 of 14 October 1933, under the title ‘Vision,’ are designed to provoke discord in the population and abet subversive goals.’’ wl.

8. early confessional synods 1. Rudolf Bultmann, ‘‘Der Arierparagraph im Raume der Kirche,’’ in Die Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland und die Judenfrage, 78–97; Wobbermin argued the German-Christian case in Deutsches Pfarrerblatt 37 (1933), Nr. 44. 2. Georg Merz, ‘‘Zur theologischen Erörterung des Arierparagraphen (abgeschlossen am 11.11.1933),’’ in Die Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland und die Judenfrage, 102. 3. Grundmann, a student of New Testament scholar Gerhard Kittel, was a German Christian leader in Saxony. He later helped establish the Institute for the Study and Eradication of Jewish Influence in German Church Life. See Susannah Heschel, ‘‘Nazifying Christian Theology: Walter Grundmann and the Institute for the Study and Eradication of Jewish Influence in German Church Life,’’ Church History 63 (December 1994): 587–605. 4. Schmidt, Die Bekenntnisse (1934), 98ff. 5. Schmidt, Die Bekenntnisse (1934), 195–99. 6. Junge Kirche 2 (1934): 494–98. 7. Junge Kirche 2 (1934): 494–98. 8. Junge Kirche 2 (1934): 501. 9. See Die Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland und die Judenfrage, 135–36. 10. Gauger, Gotthard-Briefe, 102. See also Ericksen, Theologians under Hitler. 11. Archiv der Arbeitsgemeinschaft für kirchliche Zeitgeschichte, Munich, 246 g. 12. W. Niemöller, Texte zur Geschichte, 28. 13. Reich Minister Dr. Frick, ‘‘Die Rassenfrage in der deutschen Gesetzgebung,’’ Deutsche Juristenzeitung 39, Heft 1 (1 January 1934): col. 1–6.

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Notes to Pages 72–78 14. ‘‘Bekenntnis der freien Kirchen-Synode,’’ delivered at the first Free Reformed synod and published in Karl Immer, Freie reformierte Synode zu Barmen-Gemarke am 3. und 4. Januar 1934: Vorträge, Verhandlungen und Entschliessungen (Wuppertal, 1934), 20–33. 15. ‘‘Bekenntnis der freien Kirchen-Synode.’’ 16. Reprinted in Schmidt, Die Bekenntnisse (1934), 25. 17. Dated February 1934; it remained in draft form. ‘‘Leitsätze des PfarrerNotbundes,’’ in Schmidt, Die Bekenntnisse (1934), 39. 18. On the Barmen Theological Declaration and the discussion of it, see Nicolaisen, Der Weg nach Barmen: Die Entstehungsgeschichte der Theologischen Erklärung von 1934 (Neukirchen, 1985). 19. Karl Barth, Theologische Existenz heute, Heft 1, 24–25. 20. Barth, Theologische Existenz heute, Heft 1, 24. 21. Barth, Theologische Existenz heute, Heft 1, 39. 22. Barth, Theologische Existenz heute, Heft 1. 23. Barth, Theologische Existenz heute, Heft 1, 4. 24. Junge Kirche 2 (1934): 337; Schmidt, Die Bekenntnisse (1934), 59; Gauger, Gotthard-Briefe, 167. 25. See Niemöller, Kampf und Zeugnis, 108. 26. Niemöller, Die Evangelische Kirche im Dritten Reich, 29. 27. Gerhard Jasper, ‘‘Rasse und Mission,’’ Neue Allgemeine Missionszeitschrift 10 (1933): 203. 28. Jasper, Die evangelische Kirche und die Judenchristen (Göttingen, 1934), 20. 29. Jasper, Die evangelische Kirche und die Judenchristen, 19 n.55. 30. Jasper, Die evangelische Kirche und die Judenchristen, 21. 31. Jasper, Die evangelische Kirche und die Judenchristen, 28. 32. Jasper is referring to Wilhelm Stapel’s statement that ‘‘The Jew who believes in Christ is welcome, in God’s eyes, in a Christian church, but— who among us can ward off a shudder at the sight of him?’’ Jasper, Die evangelische Kirche und die Judenchristen, 27. 33. A renowned New Testament scholar and one of the most prominent academic supporters of the German Christians. 34. Jasper, Die evangelische Kirche und die Judenchristen, 25. 35. Jasper, Die evangelische Kirche und die Judenchristen, 26. 36. ‘‘Juden II,’’ dated 1934, lkavw. 37. See Barth, Theologische Existenz heute, Heft 1, 24–25. 38. ‘‘Die Ziele der Deutschen Christen,’’ Schriftenreihe der Deutschen Christen im Rheinland, 1934, Heft 5. This is evidence of the diversity among German Christians, even on the Jewish question. See also Kurt Meier, Die

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Notes to Pages 78–81 Deutschen Christen: Das Bild einer Bewegung im Kirchenkampf des Dritten Reiches (Halle, 1964), 309. 39. ‘‘Die Ziele der Deutschen Christen.’’ 40. The Aryan paragraph was reenacted on 21 August. See Junge Kirche 2 (1934): 720–21. 41. Gauger, Gotthard-Briefe, 143–45, 451, 497. 42. Gauger, Gotthard-Briefe, 303. 43. ‘‘Kampf um die Freiheit der ersten Christengemeinde,’’ dated 28 January 1935, lkavw. 44. ‘‘Kampf um die Freiheit der ersten Christengemeinde.’’ 45. ‘‘Grundsätzliche Stellungnahme der Vorläufigen Leitung der Deutschen Evangelischen Kirche zur Frage des Neuheidentums,’’ in Schmidt, Die Bekenntnisse (1935), 65–66. See also Gauger, Gotthard-Briefe, 461. 46. Joachim Beckmann, ed., Kirchliches Jahrbuch für die Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland, 1933–1944 (Gütersloh, 1948), 84–85. 47. ‘‘Beschlüssen der Bekenntnissynode der Evangelischen Kirche der altpreussischen Union’’ (Dahlem, 4–5 March 1935), in Schmidt, Die Bekenntnisse (1935), 70; Beckmann, Kirchliches Jahrbuch, 1933–1944, 85–86. 48. Niemöller, Die Evangelische Kirche im Dritten Reich, 55. 49. ‘‘Beschlüssen der Bekenntnissynode der Evangelischen Kirche der altpreussischen Union,’’ (Dahlem, 4–5 March 1935), in Schmidt, Die Bekenntnisse (1935), 70. 50. Schmidt, Die Bekenntnisse (1935), 78ff. 51. Kurt Meier, ‘‘Kristallnacht und Kirche: Die Haltung der evangelischen Kirche zur Judenpolitik des Faschismus,’’ in Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der Karl-Marx-Universität Leipzig 13 (1964), Gesellschafts- und Sprachwissenschaftliche Reihe, Heft 1, ed. by the Rector of the Karl-MarxUniversität Leipzig, 99. 52. Marcion had accused the church of a ‘‘Judaistic falsification.’’ See K. D. Schmidt, Grundriss der Kirchengeschichte, 71. 53. Reich Council of Brethren proclamation, dated 18 March 1935, in Hermelink, Kirche im Kampf, 253. 54. ‘‘Memorandum on the Responsibilities of the Confessing Church to the Evangelical Non-Aryans,’’ eza, 50/110, 636, 199. 55. ‘‘Memorandum on the Responsibilities of the Confessing Church to the Evangelical Non-Aryans.’’ Letter dated 24 May 1935. In speaking of ‘‘our church’s obligation,’’ Albertz was referring to the pel pledge. 56. W. Niemöller, ed., Die Dritte Bekenntnissynode der Deutschen Evangelischen Kirche zu Augsburg: Texte, Dokumente, Berichte (Göttingen, 1969). 57. eza, 50/110, 636.

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Notes to Pages 82–89 58. See the 12 December 1934 proclamation by the missionary and social welfare associations in Gauger, Gotthard-Briefe, 437. 59. eza, 50/110, 636. 60. See Schmidt, Die Bekenntnisse (1933), 180. 61. eza, 50/110. 62. eza, Archives of the Berlin Kirchliche Hochschule, Nr. 101 B, Memorandum, 2 September 1935. 63. eza, Archives of the Berlin Kirchliche Hochschule, Nr. 101 B, Memorandum, 2 September 1935. 64. ‘‘Die Juden,’’ Die Stadtmission 58 (1935): 114–17. 65. ‘‘Juden II,’’ lkavw. A handwritten note is attached, noting that the essay led to many attacks against its author. 66. In a letter to the Völkischer Beobachter, 7 August 1935. 67. See Günther Harder, ‘‘Die kirchenleitende Tätigkeit des Brandenburgischen Bruderrates,’’ in Zur Geschichte des Kirchenkampfes: Gesammelte Aufsätze, ed. Heinz Brunotte and Ernst Wolf, agk, Bd. 15 (Göttingen, 1965), 202. 68. Gauger, Gotthard-Briefe, 522. 69. ‘‘Staatsfeinde,’’ in Gauger, Gotthard-Briefe. 70. Marga Meusel, ‘‘Zur Lage der deutschen Nichtarier’’ (On the situation of the German non-Aryans), delivered to the synod by Martin Albertz. Reprinted in W. Niemöller, Die Synode zu Steglitz: Geschichte—Dokumente— Berichte, agk, Bd. 23 (Göttingen, 1972), 29–48. 71. See Niemöller, Die Synode zu Steglitz, 48–58. 72. Schmidt, Die Bekenntnisse (1935), 130. 73. ‘‘Proclamation to the Christians in Germany,’’ in the May 1933 English monthly, St. Martin’s Review, eza, Archives of the ekd-Kanzlei, C I/Bd. I. 74. Niemöller, Die Synode zu Steglitz, 44. 75. Niemöller, Die Synode zu Steglitz, 46–48. the isolation of the jews 1. Bernard Lösener and Friedrich A. Knost, Die Nürnberger Gesetze über das Reichsbürgerrecht und den Schutz des deutschen Blutes und der deutschen Ehre nebst den Durchführungsverordnungen sowie sämtlichen einschlägigen Bestimmungen (insbesondere über den Abstammungsnachweis) und den Gebührenvorschriften (Berlin, 1936), 15–16. 2. See Gamm, Judentumskunde, 93. Der Stürmer was the Nazi newspaper edited by Julius Streicher. 3. Gerald Reitlinger, Die Endlösung. Ausrottung der Juden Europas, 1939–1945 (Munich, 1964), 12.

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Notes to Pages 89–95 9. the nuremberg laws 1. See Peter Deeg, ed., Die Judengesetze Grossdeutschlands (Nuremberg: Verlag Der Stürmer, 1939), for the text of the laws cited here. 2. Deeg, Die Judengesetze, 180. 3. The term Jew had been used, but not defined, in the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor of 15 September 1935. 4. Section 2.2 of the First Decree to the Reich Citizens Law of 14 November 1935. 5. Deeg, Die Judengesetze, 179–80. 6. Deeg, Die Judengesetze, 179–80. 7. Deeg, Die Judengesetze, 187. 8. ‘‘The Implementation Provisions to the Law on the Alteration of Family and Given Names of 17 August 1938,’’ in Deeg, Die Judengesetze, 87. 9. Deeg, Die Judengesetze, 90. 10. After 1 October 1941, when emigration of any kind was forbidden, 164,000 Jews still lived in the ‘‘Old Reich’’ (i.e., the territory of pre-Nazi Germany). See Gamm, Judentumskunde, 94. 11. Reitlinger, Die Endlösung, 13. 12. Der Stürmer 13, no. 38 (September 1935). 13. Reprinted in Kölnische Zeitung, Stadt-Anzeiger, Ausgabe A, Morgenblatt, no. 469 (16 September 1935). Here the term endgültige Lösung (ultimate solution) appears, as a preliminary form of Endlösung (final solution). 14. Reprinted in Kölnische Zeitung, Stadt-Anzeiger, Ausgabe A, Morgenblatt, no. 469 (16 September 1935). 15. Gamm, Judentumskunde, 94. 16. See Jørgen Glenthøj, ‘‘Die nicht-jüdischen Nicht-Arier im Dritten Reich: Zum aussenpolitischen Einfluss auf die Nürnberger Gesetze,’’ Junge Kirche 33 (1965): 141–43. 10. a divided confessing church 1. See Hartmut Aschermann and Wolfgang Schneider, eds., Studium im Auftrag der Kirche: Die Anfänge der Kirchlichen Hochschule Wuppertal, 1935 bis 1945 (Cologne, 1985), 15–27. 2. See Niemöller, Kampf und Zeugnis, 282ff., and Ernst Wolf, ‘‘Kirchenkampf,’’ in Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, ed. Kurt Galling (Tübingen, 1957), 3:1448–49. 3. Niemöller, Kampf und Zeugnis, 377–78. 4. See also Albertz’s letter to President Koch, 24 May 1935, eza (former Archives of the Kirchliche Hochschule Berlin). 5. See Schmidt, Die Bekenntnisse (1935), 124–30.

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Notes to Pages 95–99 6. Schmidt, Die Bekenntnisse (1935), 64. 7. See Schmidt, Die Bekentnisse (1935), 124–25; and Niemoller, Die Dritte Bekenntnissynode, 78. 8. Niemöller, Die Evangelische Kirche im Dritten Reich, 383. 9. Niemöller, Die Evangelische Kirche im Dritten Reich, 383. 10. Confirmed by Helmut Baier (author of a dissertation, ‘‘Die Deutschen Christen Bayerns’’) in a letter to the author, 27 September 1968. 11. ‘‘Die evangelische Gemeinde und die Judenfrage,’’ Evangelisches Gemeindeblatt Nürnberg (1926), no. 33–35. Reprinted in 1935 by Pastor Fr. W. Hopf (Lutherisches Missionsjahrbuch 1935, 92). 12. Niemöller, Die Evangelische Kirche im Dritten Reich, 383. 13. Niemöller, Kampf und Zeugnis, 285. 14. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 486–87. 15. Niemöller, Kampf und Zeugnis, 289; Die Synode zu Steglitz, 165. 16. Die Synode zu Steglitz, 165, 168. 17. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 649. 18. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 651. 19. See the synodal resolutions in Wilhelm Niesel, Um Verkündigung und Ordnung der Kirche: Die Bekenntnissynoden der Evangelischen Kirche der altpreussischen Union, 1934–1943 (Bielefeld, 1949), 18–22, and Niemöller, Die Synode zu Steglitz, 370. 20. Karl Kupisch, ‘‘Die deutschen Landeskirchen im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert,’’ in Die Kirche in ihrer Geschichte: Ein Handbuch, ed. K. D. Schmidt and E. Wolf (Göttingen, 1966), 4:168 n.10. 21. Niemöller, Die Synode zu Steglitz, 370. 22. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 489. 23. Niemöller, Zwischen Dahlem und Steglitz, 129. 24. See Niesel, Um Verkündigung und Ordnung, 20. 25. Niemöller, Zwischen Dahlem und Steglitz, 130. 26. Niemöller, Die Synode zu Steglitz, 30. 27. Niemöller, Die Synode zu Steglitz, 143ff. 28. Niemöller, Die Synode zu Steglitz, 146. 29. Niemöller, Die Synode zu Steglitz, 144. 30. Niemöller, Die Synode zu Steglitz, 119–20. 31. Niemöller, Die Synode zu Steglitz, 143. 32. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 487. 33. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 490. 34. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 655. 35. W. Niemöller, Zwischen Dahlem und Steglitz, 128. 36. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 490.

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Notes to Pages 99–104 37. ‘‘Sonderausgabe des Rundbriefes—Nur für Glieder der Bekenntnisgemeinden,’’ lkavw. This and the following paragraph appear on pp. 389– 90 of the German edition. 38. ‘‘Sonderausgabe des Rundbriefes.’’ 39. ‘‘Sonderausgabe des Rundbriefes.’’ 40. W. Niemöller, Bekennende Kirche in Westfalen (Bielefeld, 1952), 97. 11. the jewish question after steglitz 1. ‘‘Beschlüsse der Ersten Synode der Bekennenden Evang.-Luth. Kirche Sachsens,’’ 28–29 September 1935, in Schmidt, Die Bekenntnisse (1935), 224. 2. ‘‘Denkschrift der vl der dek zur Frage des ev. Religionsunterrichts an den Volks-, Mittel- und höheren Schulens,’’ in Schmidt, Die Bekenntnisse (1935), 229–30. 3. ‘‘Zur deutschen Judengesetzgebung,’’ Christliche Welt, no. 21 (1 November 1935). 4. ‘‘Zur deutschen Judengesetzgebung.’’ 5. See Scholder’s discussion of Pechmann, Churches and the Third Reich, vol. 1. 6. Friedrich Wilhelm Kantzenbach, Widerstand und Solidarität der Christen in Deutschland, 1933–1945: Eine Dokumentation zum Kirchenkampf aus den Papieren des D. Wilhelm Freiherrn von Pechmann (Neustadt, 1971), 167–68. 7. Kantzenbach, Widerstand und Solidarität, 168. 8. Bonhoeffer to Karl Barth, 24 October 1933. Bonhoeffer, Gesammelte Schriften, 2:132. 9. ‘‘Juden II,’’ lkavw. 10. This refers to a church statement condemning the idolatry of ‘‘blood and race,’’ the ‘‘Kundgebung des Landeskirchenvorstandes an die Gemeinden der Landeskirche,’’ 28 March 1935, in Kirchliches Gesetz-und VerordnungsBlatt, Aurich. Bd. 8, 27ff. 11. Hermelink, Kirche im Kampf, 287. 12. Hermelink, Kirche im Kampf, 287. See also 291–93. 13. ‘‘Juden II,’’ lkavw. Zoellner’s reply is not available. 14. Hermelink, Kirche im Kampf, 298–300. Wurm’s statement, ‘‘Was heisst heute auf dem Boden des Bekenntnisses stehen?’’ is dated 4 December 1935; his late but fearless protests against the persecution during the war should also be recalled. 15. Adolf Schlatter, Wir Christen und die Juden (Velbert, 1930), 5. 16. Schlatter, Wird der Jude über uns siegen? Ein Wort für die Weihnachtszeit (Velbert, 1935).

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Notes to Pages 104–108 17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

Schlatter, Wird der Jude über uns siegen? 4. Schlatter, Wird der Jude über uns siegen? 19. Schlatter, Wird der Jude über uns siegen? 25. wl. Wilhelm Halfmann, ‘‘Die Kirche und der Jude,’’ in Amt für Volksmission, Heft 11 (Breklum, 1936). 22. Halfmann, ‘‘Die Kirche und der Jude,’’ 3. 23. Halfmann, ‘‘Die Kirche und der Jude,’’ 8. 24. Halfmann, ‘‘Die Kirche und der Jude,’’ 13–14. 25. Halfmann, ‘‘Die Kirche und der Jude,’’ 16–17. 26. The following paragraphs are on pp. 171ff. of the German edition. 27. Gross, ‘‘Die Judenfrage im Lichte der Bibel,’’ in Hermelink, Kirche im Kampf, 22–23. 28. ‘‘Volk und Obrigkeit eine Gabe Gottes,’’ excerpted in Die Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland und die Judenfrage, 109–13. 29. Die Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland und die Judenfrage, 113. 30. Die Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland und die Judenfrage, 111. 31. Die Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland und die Judenfrage, 110. 32. Niemöller, Die Synode zu Steglitz, 58. 33. On the memorandum’s publication and its consequences, see Jürgen Schmidt, Dokumente des Kirchenkampfes II: Die Zeit des Reichskirchenausschusses, 1935–1937, agk, Bd. 13–14 (Göttingen, 1964), 2:695–719, 1294– 95; and Boyens, Kirchenkampf und Ökumene, 1933–1939. 34. Beckmann, Kirchliches Jahrbuch, 1933–1944, 130–35. See also Martin Greschat and R. Wohlrab, ‘‘ ‘Lasst Euch nicht vergiften’: Ein unbekannter Entwurf von Dietrich Bonhoeffer und Franz Hildebrandt fur ein Pfingstwort an die Gemeinden aus dem Jahr 1936,’’ Evangelische Theologie 48 (1988): 492ff. 35. See Beckmann, Kirchliches Jahrbuch, 1933–1944, 135–39; Hermelink, Kirche im Kampf, 355–59. According to Wilhelm Jannasch’s papers, Otto Dibelius drafted the pulpit proclamation. W. Niemöller, ‘‘Corrigenda zur neuesten Kirchengeschichte,’’ Evangelische Theologie 28 (1968): 596– 97, and W. Niemöller, Die Bekennende Kirche sagt Hitler die Wahrheit (Bielefeld, 1954), 32. 36. Alfred Rosenberg, Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts: Eine Wertung der seelisch-geistigen Gestaltenkämpfe unserer Zeit (Munich, 1933), and Protestantische Rompilger (Munich, 1935). This paragraph is on p. 161 in the German edition. 37. Hermelink, Kirche im Kampf, 419–20. 38. Beckmann, Kirchliches Jahrbuch, 1933–1944, 215, 218ff.

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Notes to Pages 108–113 39. From Kerrl’s speech on 13 February 1937, reprinted in Die Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland und die Judenfrage, 153. On the reasons for Zoellner’s failure, see Hermelink, Kirche im Kampf, 375. 40. From Kerrl’s speech on 13 February 1937, reprinted in Die Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland und die Judenfrage, 153. 41. Hermelink, Kirche im Kampf, 382–83. 42. Hermelink, Kirche im Kampf, 385–86. 43. See Günther Heidtmann, ed., Hat die Kirche geschwiegen? Das öffentliche Wort der Evangelischen Kirche aus den Jahren 1945–1957 (Berlin, 1958), 44– 45; and Wilhelm Jannasch, Deutsche Kirchendokumente: Die Haltung der Bekennenden Kirche im Dritten Reich (Zürich, 1946), 44ff. 44. Jannasch, Deutsche Kirchendokumente, 46–47. 45. Hermelink, Kirche im Kampf, 346, and Beckmann, Kirchliches Jahrbuch, 1933–1944, 131. 46. Sasse, Kirchliches Jahrbuch, 1932, 2–3. See also van Norden, Kirche in der Krise, 37–38. 47. Beckmann, Kirchliches Jahrbuch, 1933–1944, 133; Hermelink, Kirche im Kampf, 351–52. 48. Beckmann, Kirchliches Jahrbuch, 1933–1944, 178. See also Niemöller, Die Evangelische Kirche im Dritten Reich, 124, and Hermelink, Kirche im Kampf, 399ff. 49. Beckmann, Kirchliches Jahrbuch, 1933–1944, 186. 50. Undated hectograph (probably 1937–38), ‘‘Die Kirche und Israel,’’ lkavw. 51. Deutsche Kirche, Heft 7 (5 April 1937), quoted in Wort und Tat, Zeitschrift für evangelische Wahrheit und kirchliche Verantwortung (Berlin, May 1937) (author unidentified). 52. Gerhard Kittel, ‘‘Das Urteil über die Rassenmischung im Judentum und in der biblischen Religion,’’ in Der Biologe, Monatsschrift des Biologenverbandes 6 (1937): 342ff. 53. Kittel, ‘‘Das Urteil über die Rassenmischung,’’ 352. 54. ‘‘Luther und das Alte Testament,’’ Junge Kirche 5 (1937): 712–24. 55. In the preceding passage, Schmidt quoted Luther’s famous anti-Jewish texts from 1543, ‘‘On the Shem hamphoras’’ and ‘‘On the Jews and their Lies.’’ ‘‘Luther und das Alte Testament,’’ 712. 56. ‘‘Luther und das Alte Testament,’’ 713–14. 57. Junge Kirche 5 (1937): 198. 58. Junge Kirche 5 (1937): 330. 59. Junge Kirche 5 (1937): 241. 60. Junge Kirche 5 (1937): 242. 61. Junge Kirche 5 (1937): 242.

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Notes to Pages 113–117 62. Junge Kirche 5 (1937): 330. 63. Junge Kirche 5 (1937): 328. 64. See Theodor Dipper, Die Evangelische Bekenntnisgemeinschaft in Württemberg, 1933–1945: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Kirchenkampfes im Dritten Reich (Göttingen, 1966), 221. 65. Bonhoeffer, Gesammelte Schriften, 2:48. 12. the evangelical church and its non-aryan members 1. Letter of 20 June 1933, Archiv des Kirchenrats Hamburg, B X e.2.7. Uhsadel became a professor of practical theology in Tübingen after the war. 2. Letter of 20 June 1933, Archiv des Kirchenrats Hamburg, B X e.2.7. 3. Letter of 21 June 1933, Archiv des Kirchenrats Hamburg. 4. Letter of 4 April 1933, in Kurt Meier, Kirche und Judentum. Die Haltung der evangelischen Kirche zur Judenpolitik des Dritten Reiches, agk 7 (Göttingen, 1968), 93–94. 5. No. 12, March 1934, Landeskirchliches Archiv Nürnberg, lkan-kku Nr. 9/2. 6. During the short-lived Munich revolution in spring 1919, Eisner had ordered the arrest of Pastor Hans Meiser (later bishop of the Bavarian regional church). See Gauger, Gotthard-Briefe, 327, 530. 7. ‘‘Juden II,’’ lkavw. 8. The quotations presumably come from the Gesamtausgabe der Werke Martin Luthers, Weimar edition, 51, 195. Cf. the essay written during the same period by church councillor Dr. Steinlein, ‘‘Luthers Stellung zur Frage der Judentaufe,’’ Junge Kirche 3 (1935): 842–46. 9. ‘‘Jüdische Trauung in Bielefeld,’’ Der Stürmer, no. 46 (1935). Cited in Niemöller, Bekennende Kirche in Westfalen, 175. 10. Niemöller lists Confessing Church pastors who defended the ‘‘nonAryans’’ in Bekennende Kirche in Westfalen, 258, and in Kampf und Zeugnis, 461–62. 11. eza, Archives of the ekd-Kanzlei, Akte C 3/171. The letter is signed ‘‘By order, Hans v. Detten.’’ 12. See Kurt Nowak, ‘‘Das Stigma der Rasse,’’ in Kaiser and Greschat, Der Holocaust und die Protestanten, 78–80. 13. Niemöller, Bekennende Kirche in Westfalen, 133. 14. Archiv der Arbeitsgemeinschaft für kirchliche Zeitgeschichte, Munich (copy of Akte 180 41 from the archives of the former Kirchliche Hochschule, Berlin). 15. Order of the Thuringian Landeskirchenrat, Eisenach, 30 November

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Notes to Pages 117–121 1938. Cf. also the second decree of 17 December 1938 (both in the Archiv der Arbeitsgemeinschaft für kirchliche Zeitgeschichte, Munich). 16. Cf. Niemöller, Die Evangelische Kirche im Dritten Reich, 379. 17. ‘‘Taufe und Taufnahme,’’ four-page manuscript. Copy (from the archives of the Kirchliche Hochschule, Berlin, Nr. 180 37) in Archiv der Arbeitsgemeinschaft für kirchliche Zeitgeschichte München. 18. Blau, Das Ausnahmerecht, 49–51. 19. ‘‘Taufe und Taufnahme.’’ 20. See Ernst Sodeikat, ‘‘Die Verfolgung und der Widerstand der Evangelische Kirche in Danzig,’’ in Brunotte and Wolf, Zur Geschichte des Kirchenkampfes, 164. 21. In the Gossner Haus in Berlin-Friedenau, a center of the Confessing Church, approximately sixty persons were baptized during the war. Hans Lokies, in ‘‘Das Haus: Erinnerung und Dank an Pfarrer Friedrich Wilhelm Otto,’’ an eight-page manuscript from 1967 (private collection of Pastor Klara Hunsche, Berlin). Cf. Hans Lokies, ‘‘Vom Katechumenat der Kirche,’’ Sonderdruck aus Die Stunde der Kirche (Berlin, undated), 164. 22. In any case, Blau’s summary of the anti-Jewish laws does not mention this. 23. eza, formerly Archives of the ekd-Kanzlei Hannover, Akte C 3/171. 24. Landeskirchliches Archiv Nürnberg, lkan-lkr: Plenary Session from 18 April 1939. 25. Martin Rade, ‘‘Einäscherung einer getauften Jüdin in Berlin, Ostern 1938,’’ ‘‘Juden III,’’ lkavw. 26. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 275–76. 27. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 275–76. 28. ‘‘Die Frage der ‘nichtarischen’ Kirchenmusiker,’’ in Oskar Söhngen, Kämpfende Kirchenmusik: Die Bewährungsprobe der Evangelischen Kirchenmusik im Dritten Reich (Kassel, 1954), 50–56. 29. Letter of 3 July 1936, eza, former Archives of the ekd-Kanzlei Hannover; copy to the Kirchenkanzlei III 1977, E.O. I 1352/36; a copy was also sent at that time to the dek-Kanzlei, Berlin. 30. Junge Kirche 3 (1935): 832–33. 31. Letter of 3 July 1936, eza, former Archives of the ekd-Kanzlei Hannover; copy to the Kirchenkanzlei III 1977, E.O. I 1352/36. 32. Letter of 3 July 1936, eza, former Archives of the ekd-Kanzlei Hannover; copy to the Kirchenkanzlei III 1977, E.O. I 1352/36. 33. Söhngen, Kämpfende Kirchenmusik, 51. 34. According to the German Lexikon der Juden in Musik. Letter of 4 November 1941, eza, former Archives of the ekd-Kanzlei, B VII, Nr. 9.

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Notes to Pages 121–124 35. The Jew with three Jewish grandparents was the composer Arnold Mendelssohn in Darmstadt, ‘‘who was retired at the time of the party’s assumption of power, and died during the course of 1933.’’ 36. Correspondence of December 1934, eza, former archives of the ekdKanzlei, Hannover, Akte C 3/170. 37. Söhngen, Kämpfende Kirchenmusik, 52. 38. Söhngen, Kämpfende Kirchenmusik, 52. 39. Söhngen, Kämpfende Kirchenmusik, 52. 40. Letter of 3 July 1936, eza, former Archives of the ekd-Kanzlei Hannover; copy to the Kirchenkanzlei III 1977, E.O. I 1352/36. 41. Söhngen, Kämpfende Kirchenmusik, 52. 42. See Blau, Das Ausnahmerecht, 31. 43. Blau, Das Ausnahmerecht, 51. 44. ‘‘Memorandum to Provisional Church Administration from Vicar Weth, 5 November 1935,’’ eza, Archives of the Kirchliche Hochschule Berlin, Az. Nr. 101 B. 45. Letter of 15 January 1935, signed by okr Kandler, eza, former Archives of the ekd-Kanzlei, B VII, Nr. 9. See also the correspondence from 8 August 1934 to 15 January 1935. 46. Letter of 7 December 1935, eza, former Archives of the ekd-Kanzlei, B VII, Nr. 9. 47. Söhngen, Kämpfende Kirchenmusik, 55. 48. In Germania, no. 233 (22 August 1936). Cf. Junge Kirche 4 (1936): 827. 49. Friedrich Zipfel, Kirchenkampf in Deutschland, 1933–1945: Religionsverfolgung und Selbstbehauptung der Kirchen in der nationalsozialistischen Zeit (Berlin, 1965), 218. 50. Lecture entitled ‘‘A German Christmas, Nonetheless,’’ in ‘‘Nichtarische Christen,’’ lkavw. 51. ‘‘German Christmas.’’ 52. Junge Kirche 5 (1937): 328–29. Hans Faust, a founder of the postwar Organization of Those Persecuted by the Nazi Regime (Bundes der Verfolgten des Naziregimes), writes that after July 1937, ‘‘unbaptized half-breeds’’ could also join the ‘‘Association of 1937.’’ Letter to author, 23 November 1987. 53. Letter of 3 June 1937, in ‘‘Nichtarische Christen,’’ lkavw. 54. See Jochen-Christian Kaiser, ‘‘Evangelische Judenmission im Dritten Reich,’’ in Kaiser and Greschat, Der Holocaust und die Protestanten, 186ff. 55. Letter of 27 April 1936, in Schmidt, Dokumente des Kirchenkampfes, 2:637 n.53. See also eza 50/636. 56. Letter of 27 April 1936.

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Notes to Pages 124–128 57. Letter of 22 May 1936, in Schmidt, Dokumente des Kirchenkampfes, 2:671. 58. eza, former Archives of the ekd-Kanzlei, Akte C 3/171. Provisional Church Administration to the Berlin chief of police, letter signed by Fritz Müller (Dahlem), 23 May 1936. 59. Provisional Church Administration to the affiliated regional church governments and Councils of Brethren, 9 June 1936, in Schmidt, Dokumente des Kirchenkampfes, 2:764. 60. eza, former Archives of the ekd-Kanzlei, E.O. II 6624/39. Evangelical High Consistory to the Society, 2 August 1939. 61. The society informed the Provisional Church Administration of this in a letter dated 13 February 1941. ‘‘Nichtarische Christen,’’ lkavw. 62. Dated 8 May 1936. Niemöller, Die Evangelische Kirche im Dritten Reich, 379. 63. Dated 17 June 1936. Niemöller, Die Evangelische Kirche im Dritten Reich, 379. 64. See Klügel, Die lutherische Landeskirche, 83–84, 492. 65. Klügel, Die lutherische Landeskirche, 492. 66. Jørgen Glenthøj, ‘‘Hindenburg, Göring, und die evangelischen Kirchenführer: Ein Beitrag zur Beleuchtung des staatspolitischen Hintergrundes der Kanzleraudienz am 25. Januar 1934,’’ in Brunotte and Wolf, Zur Geschichte des Kirchenkampfes, 87. 67. Karl Barth, 18 November 1934, to the chief pastor in Lübeck, Dr. Jannasch, who had been forced into retirement in April 1934 (Estate of Wilhelm Jannasch). 68. Swiss Evangelical Press Service, 16 September 1939. 69. Klügel, Die lutherische Landeskirche. Klügel’s disregard of important and accessible documentary material is criticized by W. Niemöller, ‘‘Corrigenda zur neuesten Kirchengeschichte,’’ Evangelische Theologie 28 (1968): 594–95. 70. Klügel, Die lutherische Landeskirche, 492–93. 71. Eberhard Bethge, ‘‘Exil,’’ Pastoral Theologie 57 (1968): 464. 72. Klügel, Die lutherische Landeskirche, 492. 73. Klügel, Die lutherische Landeskirche, 491. 74. Klügel, Die lutherische Landeskirche, 493. 75. Lecture entitled ‘‘Die nichtarischen Christen und die Kirche,’’ by Paul Leo, delivered in Frankfurt a/M. on 10 November 1937, 13 manuscript pages. In ‘‘Juden III,’’ lkavw. 76. Leo, ‘‘Die nichtarischen Christen und die Kirche.’’ 77. These cases are reviewed in greater detail in the German edition, 209– 16. 78. See Walter Reimann, ‘‘Nachruf für Pastor Benfey,’’ Junge Kirche 29 (1962):

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Notes to Pages 128–132 482–85. Two important documents on the case are a letter of 25 July 1936 from Pastor Goethe to Wilhelm Niemöller (in lkavw); and the report by an anonymous parishioner on the 8 November 1936 service in the Göttingen St. Marien church (eza, Akte 165 of the former archives of the Berlin Kirchliche Hochschule). I was able to study other documents in the possession of Benfey’s daughter, Dr. Huckemann-Benfey, in Giessen. 79. See Goethe’s letter to W. Niemöller, 25 July 1936. 80. Klügel, Die lutherische Landeskirche, 494. 81. In ‘‘Juden I,’’ lkavw. See also Niemoller, Bekennende Kirche in Westfalen, 260. 82. Niemoller, Bekennende Kirche in Westfalen, 261. 83. Niemoller, Bekennende Kirche in Westfalen, 262. 13. ecumenical responses 1. In Niemöller, ‘‘Vor fünfundzwanzig Jahren,’’ Evangelische Theologie 18 (1958): 389. 2. See Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 383. 3. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 385. 4. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 312. For details on Heckel’s relations to the Confessing Church, see Boyens, Kirchenkampf und Ökumene, 1939–1945, 19ff. 5. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 385. 6. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 383. 7. 18–22 August 1935. 8. In Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 479. 9. 12–18 August 1935. 10. ‘‘Die Frage der christlichen Nichtarier.’’ This paper, comprising twelve manuscript pages, is dated 9 August. eza, former Ökumenisches Archiv Soest, Akte H. 11. ‘‘Kirchliche Hilfsarbeit für die deutschen nichtarischen Christen,’’ a report by F. Siegmund-Schultze. Undated but obviously from January 1936. eza, former Ökumenische Archiv Soest, Akte N. 12. Siegmund-Schultze, ‘‘Kirchliche Hilfsarbeit für die deutschen nichtarischen Christen.’’ 13. Zoellner to Prof. Dr. Adolf Keller, Geneva, 20 January 1936; Zoellner to Prof. Dr. Siegmund-Schultze, Zurich, 28 January 1936. eza, former Okumenische Archiv Soest, Akte H. 14. Zoellner to Siegmund-Schultze, 28 January 1936, eza, former Okumenische Archiv Soest, Akte H.

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Notes to Pages 132–135 15. Zoellner to Siegmund-Schultze, 28 January 1936, eza, former Okumenische Archiv Soest, Akte H. 16. The motion proposed by Bishop Bell of Chichester, accepted by the Church Assembly of the Church of England on 20 November 1935, had aroused Heckel’s indignation. The motion had expessed ‘‘sympathy with the Jewish people and those who are of Jewish descent in the sufferings that many of them in Germany must endure’’ and called on Christians to protest the Nazi policies. Heckel responded with a letter to Zoellner (27 November 1935) demanding that interference ‘‘in the internal affairs of another church’’ not be permitted. eza, former Archives of the ekd-Kanzlei, Akte C 3/170ff. See also Zoellner’s letter of 1 April 1936, to Bishop Bell, in George Bell and Alphons Koechlin, Briefwechsel, 1933– 1954, ed. Andreas Lindt (Zurich, 1970), 247–52. 17. Protocol of the meeting of the International Church Relief Commission for German Refugees, held in London on 31 January 1936. eza, former Ökumenische Archiv Soest, Akte H. 18. Siegmund-Schultze to Zoellner (draft), 28 February 1936, eza, former Ökumenische Archiv Soest, Akte H. 19. See Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 546–51; Jørgen Glenthøj, ed., Dokumente zur Bonhoeffer-Forschung, 1928–1945 (Munich, 1968), 251; and Boyens, Kirchenkampf und Ökumene, 1933–1939, 146–47. 20. In Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 553. German text in Schmidt, Dokumente des Kirchenkampfes, 2:989–90. 21. See Schmidt, Dokumente des Kirchenkampfes, 2:695–719; Bernhard Heinrich Forck, ed., Und folget ihrem Glauben nach: Gedenkbuch für die Blutzeugen der Bekennenden Kirche (Stuttgart, 1949), 11–22; Niemöller, Die Bekennende Kirche sagt Hitler die Wahrheit. 22. Glenthøj, Dokumente, 253. 23. Schmidt, Dokumente des Kirchenkampfes, 2:990. 24. Kupisch, Die deutschen Landeskirchen, 164. 25. Letter dated 19 September 1936, in Glenthøj, Dokumente, 254. See Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 554. 26. A good overview of the conference is conveyed by the correspondence in Bell and Koechlin, Briefwechsel, 1933–1954, 279–301. 27. See Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 552ff., esp. 560; also 480–82. 28. This and the following are quoted from The Churches Survey Their Task: The Report of the Conference at Oxford, July 1937, on Church, Community, and State, intro. J. H. Oldham, 2d ed. (London: Geo. Allen and Unwin, 1938), 232–35. 29. See Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 642–43.

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Notes to Pages 136–142 30. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 641–42. See also Boyens, Kirchenkampf und Ökumene, 1933–1939, 152–53. 31. Letter from the Church Foreign Office (signed by Wahl) to the Berlin Evangelical Consistory, 19 October 1938. Archiv der Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte München, C3.25. 32. Heckel to ‘‘My Führer,’’ 15 May 1939. It is preceded by a letter from the Reich Minister for Church Affairs (Kerrl) to Heckel, 3 May 1939. Copies of this correspondence were given to the author by Prof. Dietrich Goldschmidt, Berlin. 33. See Junge Kirche 4 (1936): 912–13. 34. Junge Kirche 4 (1936): 913. 35. Letter dated 19 October 1938, made available to the author by Wilhelm Niemöller. 36. This was the German Lutheran Congregation of St. Georg in London, where Bonhoeffer had served from 1933 to 1935 and where his friend Hildebrandt now found a position. 37. Between 1933 and 1935, Bonhoeffer had viewed the care of the German refugees as his primary task in this congregation. Bonhoeffer, Gesammelte Schriften, 1:317. 38. Letter dated 22 October 1938. Copy given to the author by Wilhelm Niemöller. the ‘‘elimination’’ of the jews 1. Klepper, Unter dem Schatten, 676–77. 2. On the Reichskristallnacht, see Hofer, Der Nationalsozialismus, 268–76, 294–97; Reitlinger, Die Endlösung, 13–23; Gamm, Judentumskunde, 94– 96; Heinrich Uhlig, ‘‘9. November 1938,’’ in Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, Beilage zur Wochenzeitung Das Parliament, B 45/63, 6 November 1963, 1– 17, and, from the same series, ‘‘Urkunden zur Judenpolitik des Dritten Reiches: Dokumente zur Reischskristallnacht,’’ B 45/54, 10 November 1954; Heinz David Leuner, ‘‘Der 9. November und die Christenheit,’’ in Junge Kirche 35 (1968): 557–58; and Rita Thalmann and Emanuel Feinermann, Die Reichskristallnacht (Frankfurt am Main, 1987). 3. In Evian, only two of the smallest countries, Holland and Denmark, expressed any willingness to take refugees. The Nazi Völkischer Beobachter gloated, ‘‘No one wants to have that tribe. Most of the goverment representatives refuse to open the gates of their own countries to a pack that caused Germany’s ruin.’’ References from Leuner, ‘‘Der 9. November,’’ 558–59. 4. Blau, Ausnahmerecht, 52.

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Notes to Pages 142–147 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

Reitlinger, Die Endlösung, 16. Hofer, Der Nationalsozialismus, 291. See Hofer, Der Nationalsozialismus, 293–94. Hofer, Der Nationalsozialismus, 293. See Pastor Wilhelm Busch’s comment in Licht und Leben 71 (1960): 52. Hofer, Der Nationalsozialismus, 294–95. Reitlinger, Die Endlösung, 22.

14. reactions to the november pogrom 1. ‘‘Die neuen Richtlinien des Pfarrernotbundes vom 1.2.1938 mit den vom Vorstand am 25.8.1938 beschlossenen Ergänzungen,’’ in Niemöller, Texte zur Geschichte des Pfarrernotbundes, 63–69, and Der Pfarrernotbund, 132ff. 2. Hofer, Der Nationalsozialismus, 271. 3. Hofer, Der Nationalsozialismus, 72. 4. See Fritz Klingler, ed., Dokumente zum Abwehrkampf der evangelischen Pfarrerschaft gegen Verfolgung und Bedrückung, 1933–1945 (Nuremberg, 1946), 67–77. 5. Klingler, Dokumente zum Abwehrkampf, 67, 74. 6. The full text of von Jan’s sermon was published for the first time in August 1957. Reprinted in Dipper, Die Evangelische Bekenntnisgemeinschaft, 263ff. 7. The criminal complaint against the perpetrators, filed by the Evangelical Consistory at the time, was unsuccessful; nor were further legal proceedings initiated after 1945. Dipper, Die Evangelische Bekenntnisgemeinschaft, 266. 8. Dipper, Die evangelische Bekenntnisgemeinschaft, 221, 267–68. 9. Dipper, Die Evangelische Bekenntnisgemeinschaft, 269. 10. In Bavaria, Pastor Seggel from Mistelgau preached a Repentance Day sermon against the anti-Jewish terror. Legal proceedings brought against him by the Gestapo were dismissed in May 1939. See Helmut Witetschek, Die kirchliche Lage in Bayern, vol. 2 (Munich, 1965), 301, 309, and 323. 11. See Evangelische Theologie 18 (1951–52): 145. See also the thorough analysis of this sermon in Cornehl, ‘‘Sklavensprache,’’ in Vestigia Bibliae 3 (1981): 79ff. 12. Evangelische Theologie 18 (1951–52): 145–51. 13. Several examples are that of a Pastor Büttner (in Klügel, Die lutherische Landeskirche, 496); Pastor Will Praetorius (eza 611/14), and Pastor Kurt Scharf (eza 50/619; 7/12641).

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Notes to Pages 147–150 14. See Alphons Koechlin’s impressions in Bell and Koechlin, Briefwechsel, 1933–1954, 377. 15. Dipper, Evangelische Bekenntnisgemeinschaft, 266. 16. Professor Günther Bornkamm, Heidelberg, kindly made the sermon available to me. 17. This sentence is followed by remarks that Bornkamm himself deeply regretted later; that, in the ‘‘fury of hate and the unrestrained savagery,’’ he saw the ‘‘power of the curse’’ placed upon Israel because it rejected Christ. 18. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 607–8. 19. See Angelika Gerlach-Praetorius, Die Kirche vor der Eidesfrage: Die Diskussion um den Pfarrereid im Dritten Reich (Göttingen, 1967). 20. See Bonhoeffer, Gesammelte Schriften, 4:450ff. 21. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 606–7. 22. Martin Sasse, Martin Luther über die Juden: Weg mit ihnen! (Freiburg, 1938). Original copy in possession of the author. 23. Dipper, Evangelische Bekenntnisgemeinschaft, 268. 24. Letter dated 6 December 1938. ‘‘Evangelischer Oberkirchenrat,’’ Nr. A11268. Dek. Reg. C III2. eza, former files of the DEK Kanzlei, Hannover. 25. Letter dated 6 December 1938. ‘‘Evangelischer Oberkirchenrat,’’ Nr. A11268. Dek. Reg. C III2. eza, former files of the DEK Kanzlei, Hannover. 26. Wurm was referring to the attacks on Württemberg parsonages. 27. In Dipper, Evangelische Bekenntnisgemeinschaft, 268. 28. Meier, Kristallnacht, 100. 29. Copy given the author by Pastor Richard Fischer, editor (with Gerhard Schäfer) of Landesbischof D. Wurm und der nationalsozialistische Staat, 1940–1945: Eine Dokumentation (Stuttgart, 1968). 30. In Gerlach-Praetorius, Die Kirche vor der Eidesfrage, 161 n.16. 31. In Otto L. Elias, ‘‘Die evangelische Kirchenkampf und die Judenfrage,’’ Informationsblatt für die Gemeinden in den niederdeutschen lutherischen Landeskirchen 10 (1961): 217. 32. Lilje sent this report to the Church Foreign Office, with the request that it be forwarded to the Reich Minister for Church Affairs. We quote from a copy of the report that Heckel sent to Kerrl on 11 January 1939, now in the possession of Prof. Dietrich Goldschmidt, Berlin. 33. Lilje, report to the Church Foreign Office. 34. On 27 September 1938, under the threat of imminent war (during the Sudeten crisis), the Provisional Church Administration and the Council of Brethren of the Old Prussian Union Church had drafted a prayer of repentance and intercession. In response, the ss accused the churches

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Notes to Pages 150–153 of treason. Under pressure from the Reich Ministry of Churches, the ‘‘intact churches’’ distanced themselves further from the Provisional Church Administration and the Old Prussian Council of Brethren. During the same period, the Confessing Church was torn by the debate about whether its pastors could take an oath of loyalty to the Führer. 35. See Junge Kirche (19 November 1938): 931. 36. W. Goebel, ‘‘Der Krieg mit dem Weltjudentum,’’ published in the Deutsche Gemeinschaftsblatt 29. Cited in Rüppel, Die Gemeinschaftsbewegung, 269. 37. See Dipper, Evangelische Bekenntnisgemeinschaft, 269. 38. Dipper, Evangelische Bekenntnisgemeinschaft, 270. 39. Dipper, Evangelische Bekenntnisgemeinschaft, 269–70. 40. Wilhelm Vischer, ‘‘Wir Christen und die Juden,’’ in Juden, Christen, Judenchristen: Ein Ruf an die Christenheit (Zollikon: Schweizer Evangelische Hilfswerk für die Bekennende Kirche in Deutschland, 1939), 24. 41. Karl Barth, ‘‘Die Kirche und die politische Frage von heute’’ (lecture held in Wipkingen on 5 December 1938), in Juden, Christen, Judenchristen, 32– 33. 42. The Grüber office, with its affiliate offices throughout Germany. See Hartmut Ludwig, ‘‘Zur Geschichte des Büros Pfarrer Grüber,’’ in Beiträge zur Berliner Kirchengeschichte, ed. G. Wirth (Berlin, 1987). 43. Karl Barth, ‘‘Die Bekennende Kirche in Deutschland im Jahre 1938/39,’’ in Theologische Existenz heute, Heft 49 (1956): 59. 44. Zelzer, Weg und Schicksal, 157. 45. Lamm, Über die innere und äussere Entwicklung, 209. 46. In Leonard Baker, Days of Sorrow and Pain: Leo Baeck and the Berlin Jews (New York: Macmillan, 1978), 159. 47. Baker, Days of Sorrow and Pain, 170. 48. See Deeg, Die Judengesetze Grossdeutschlands, 95–96. 49. See, e.g., Bethge, ‘‘Exil,’’ Pastoral Theologie 57 (1968): 474. 50. Cf. the following figures: ‘‘From 1933 to the beginning of 1938, approximately 140,000 Jews left the Reich’’ (in Enno Meyer, Juden und Judenfeinde: Einführung in die Geschichte der Juden von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart [Darmstadt, 1966], 79); ‘‘Up until the spring of 1939, approximately half the 500,000 Jews who had lived in Germany in 1933 emigrated’’ (in Gamm, Judentumskunde, 94). 51. Ronald Jasper, George Bell: Bishop of Chichester (London: Oxford University Press, 1967), 137–43. 52. Jasper, George Bell, 140, 143. 53. Meyer, Juden und Judenfeinde, 79.

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Notes to Pages 153–155 54. 55. 56. 57. 58.

Meyer, Juden und Judenfeinde, 80. See Gamm, Judentumskunde, 94. Klepper, Unter dem Schatten, 705. Entry dated 29 December 1938. Klepper, Unter dem Schatten, 704. Entry dated 27 December 1938. Bonhoeffer, for example, had taken in such persecuted persons in Finkenwalde since 1936 and helped them emigrate. See Bethge, ‘‘Exil,’’ 473. 59. Bethge, ‘‘Exil,’’ 463. 60. Bethge, ‘‘Exil,’’ 463. 61. ‘‘Ordnung, betreffend die Auswanderung der nichtarischen oder nichtarisch versippten Pfarrer, Hilfsprediger und in der Ausbildung begriffenen Theologen.’’ Files of the Spiritual Administration of the Church Province of Westphalia, in the Archiv der Arbeitsgemeinschaft für kirchliche Zeitgeschichte München. This information appears on 266 n.25 in the German edition. 62. A partial list of the names and subsequent fates of the non-Aryan pastors is in the German edition, 254–55. 63. Bethge speaks of forty pastors (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 639); Gerhard Niemöller cites thirty-four (Die erste Bekenntnissynode der Deutschen Evangelischen Kirche zu Barmen, I. Geschichte, Kritik und Bedeutung der Synode und ihrer Theologischen Erklärung; II. Text, Dokumente, Berichte [Göttingen, 1959], 259). In private correspondence with the author in 1985, MajerLeonhard (Jewish-Christian Alliance in Germany, Inc., German branch of the International Hebrew Christian Alliance, Stuttgart) named seventeen additional pastors, probably most of whom emigrated because of their ‘‘non-Aryan’’ wives (list in possession of the author). 15. relief work 1. Little support for Jewish Christians could have been expected as long as Marahrens chaired the Provisional Church Administration. See Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 649. 2. See Bell and Koechlin, Briefwechsel, 1933–1954, 377. 3. Die Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland und die Judenfrage, 151. 4. ‘‘Die Bekennende Kirche und die Judenfrage,’’ eza, Archives of the Kirchliche Hochschule, Berlin, Nr. 207 49. 5. ‘‘Die Bekennende Kirche und die Judenfrage.’’ 6. See Hartmut Ludwig, Die Opfer unter dem Rad verbinden (Dissertation, Humboldt University, 1988). 7. Heinrich Grüber, An der Stechbahn: Erlebnisse und Berichte aus dem Büro Grüber in den Jahren der Verfolgung (Berlin, 1957), 9. See also Heinrich Grüber, Zeuge pro Israel (Berlin, 1963).

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Notes to Pages 155–159 8. See Grüber’s letter to Hermann Hesse, 19 August 1938, ‘‘Hesse,’’ lkavw; and Die Evangelische Kirche und die Judenfrage, 158. 9. See a letter dated 2 December 1938, eza, former Archives of the ekdKanzlei, III 71/39. 10. Kurtz stayed in Berlin with his ‘‘non-Aryan’’ wife until the end of the war and went to London only afterward. 11. See Grüber’s letter dated 2 December 1938, eza, former Archiv der ekd Kanzlei, III 71/39. 12. Grüber’s letter of 2 December 1938. 13. Grüber to the Berlin Evangelical Consistory, 11 September 1939, in Meier, Kirche und Judentum, 110–11. 14. Klügel, Die lutherische Landeskirche, 497. 15. Freudenberg had served in the German government Foreign Office and had been an ‘‘illegal’’ candidate in the Confessing Church (see Niemöller, Kampf und Zeugnis, 462). Because of his non-Aryan heritage, Freudenberg was forced to emigrate in early 1939. 16. Niemöller, Die Evangelische Kirche in Dritten Reich, 387. 17. Archiv der Landeskirchenamt Hamburg, Akte B XVI a 249. 18. Reichsgesetzblatt, no. 118 (6 July 1939): 1097. 19. Reitlinger, Die Endlösung, 32. 20. Grüber, An der Stechbahn, 19. 21. Grüber, An der Stechbahn, 20. 22. Letter dated 25 July 1939 to the individual church governments and regional Councils of Brethren within the German Evangelical Church. lkavw, ‘‘Hesse.’’ 23. Landeskirchliches Archiv Nürnberg, lkan-lkr, Plenary Session of the Landeskirchenrat from 28 September 1938. 24. Amtstagebuch Meiser, Landeskirchenliches Archiv Nürnberg, entries dated 1 February 1939 and 3 July 1940. See also Ludwig, Die Opfer unter dem Rad, 63ff. 25. Heinrich Schmid, Apokalyptisches Wetterleuchten: Ein Beitrag der Evangelischen Kirche zum Kampf im Dritten Reich (Munich, 1947), 390. 26. A novelist who had just begun to enjoy literary success at the onset of the Third Reich, Jochen Klepper had married an older Jewish widow. 27. Klepper, Unter dem Schatten, 851. Entry of 17 February 1940. 28. Klepper, Unter dem Schatten, 851. Cf. 851–68. 29. Klepper, Unter dem Schatten, 862. Entry of 20 March 1940. 30. A more detailed portrayal of these efforts, based on Klepper’s diary entries from the years 1941 and 1942, is given in the German edition of this book, 268–69.

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Notes to Pages 159–162 31. Grüber, An der Stechbahn, 37ff. 32. Sylten was a ‘‘half-breed’’ who had been suspended from the ministry for that reason in Thuringia. See Grüber, ‘‘Werner Sylten zum Gedächtnis,’’ in An der Stechbahn, 76. 33. Evangelical High Consistory file memorandum, 18 January 1941; reprinted in Meier, Kirche und Judentum, 112–13. 34. Evangelical High Consistory memorandum of 6 March 1941; reprinted in Meier, Kirche und Judentum, 113. 35. Forck, Und folget ihrem Glauben nach, 9. Grüber gives the date as 26 August (‘‘Werner Sylten zum Gedächtnis,’’ in An der Stechbahn, 73). 36. Grüber, An der Stechbahn, 77. See also Die Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland und die Judenfrage, 187. 37. Meier, Kirche und Judentum, 38. 38. See Grüber, An der Stechbahn, 86. 39. Zipfel, Kirchenkampf in Deutschland, 221. See also the contribution by Helene Jacobs in Kurt R. Grossmann, Die unbesungenen Helden: Zeugnisse der Menschlichkeit aus Deutschlands dunklen Tagen (Hamburg, 1964), 11– 16, and the description of the group’s resistance in Barnett, For the Soul of the People, 150–51, 186–87. 40. See Die Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland und die Judenfrage, 187. For more information about some of these women, see Barnett, For the Soul of the People, 74–77, 161–76; and Theodore Thomas, Women against Hitler (Westport ct, 1995). 41. The Württemberg Society was founded by Pastor Hermann Diem to represent the more radical wing of the Confessing Church within the Wurttemberg Landeskirche. 42. See Max Krakauer, Lichter im Dunkel (Stuttgart, 1959), and Zelzer, Weg und Schicksal, 263–64. 43. Letter of 19 February 1965 from Pastor Kurt Müller’s widow to the author. 44. Hugo Linck, Der Kirchenkampf in Ostpreussen, 1933–1945: Geschichte und Dokumentation (Munich, 1968), 246. 45. Reprinted in Léon Poliakov and Josef Wulf, eds., Das Dritte Reich und die Juden: Dokumente und Aufsätze (Berlin, 1955), 439. 46. Die Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland und die Judenfrage, 187. 47. eza 1/c 3/173. 48. eza 1/c 3/173. 49. eza 1/c 3/173. Confidential letter of 15 December 1933, Akte C 3/173. 50. eza 1/c 3/173. See Themel’s letter to the ‘‘Reich and Prussian Ministry for Science, Education, and People’s Education,’’ 28 February 1935, in the same archival file.

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Notes to Pages 163–168 51. eza 1/c 3/173. Letter from the Unity of Brethren to the German Evangelical Church, 31 January 1936. 52. eza 1/c 3/173. Letter from the Unity of Brethren to the German Evangelical Church, 27 February 1936. 53. Lamm, Innere und Äussere Entwicklung, 324–25, 330ff. Lamm here relies on the following sources: Führer durch die jüdische Gemeindeverwaltung und Wohlfahrtsplege (Berlin, 1932) and Schockenalmanach auf das Jahr 5699 (Berlin, 1938). 54. Law no. e II e 1564, in Deutsche Wissenschaft, Erziehung und Volksbildung, 346. 55. eza 50/hv 2, Bd. 1 and 50/616, letter dated 12 August 1937. This letter is the source of the quotations in this and the following paragraph. 56. eza 50/hv 2, Bd. 1 and 50/616, letter dated 12 August 1937. 57. eza 50/hv 2, Bd. 1 and 50/616, letter dated 12 August 1937. 58. eza 50/hv 2, Bd. 1 and 50/616, letter dated 12 August 1937. 59. Letter to the Reich and Prussian Minister for Science, Education, and People’s Education, 30 November 1937. Archiv der Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte München. 60. Archiv der Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte München. 61. A Provisional Church Administration letter to the Council of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Germany on 21 January 1938 stated that the guidelines ‘‘have found the approval of the minister.’’ Archiv der Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte München. 62. Letter from Martin Albertz to Reich Education Minister, 12 January 1938. Archiv der Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte München. 63. Letter of 11 March 1938, in response to a letter of 17 February 1938 from the Provisional Church Administration, signed by Dr. Fleisch. Archiv der Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte München. 64. Gerda Drewes and Eva Kochanski, eds., Heimliche Hilfe: Bericht über die Hilfe an Rasseverfolgten (Lahr, 1961), 17; and Klara Hunsche, ‘‘Der Kampf um die christliche Schule und Erziehung, 1933–1945,’’ in Kirchliches Jahrbuch für die Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland, 1949, ed. Joachim Beckmann (Gütersloh, 1950), 499–500. 65. Hunsche, in Drewes and Kochanski, Heimliche Hilfe, 17–16, and in Beckmann, Kirchliches Jahrbuch, 1949, 499–500. 66. Martin Albertz, ‘‘Die Synagoge am Nollendorfplatz,’’ in Durchkreuzter Hass: Vom Abenteuer des Friedens, Berichte und Darstellungen, ed. Rudolf Weckerling (Berlin, 1961), 60. 67. Contrary to the information in Grüber, An der Stechbahn, 42. Letters

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Notes to Pages 168–171 from Klara Hunsche and Hildegard Kuttner, 12 January 1969, to the author. 68. Assistant Secondary School Director Rose Ollendorf, Dr. Landsberg, and a Ms. Bergmann. 69. Contrary to An der Stechbahn, 47, where Grüber asserted that the school had been closed after his arrest. ‘‘The school continued undisturbed after Pastor Grüber’s arrest’’ until 30 June 1942 (H. Kuttner, letter to the author, 12 January 1969). 70. Grüber, An der Stechbahn, 47. 71. Information given to the author by Klara Hunsche. 72. Kurtz, in Evangelische Kommentar 1 (1968): 714. 73. Grüber, Erinnerungen aus sieben Jahrzehnten (Cologne, 1968). 74. Klara Hunsche, letter to the author, 1 January 1969. See also Drewes and Kochanski, Heimliche Hilfe, 19. Cf. also ‘‘Merkblatt für die Versorgung evangelischer Juden,’’ 24 July 1939. Archives of the Kommission für die Geschichte des Kirchenkampfes im Dritten Reich, Dresden, Archiv-Nr. 107 156. 75. Beckmann, Kirchliches Jahrbuch, 1949, 500. 76. Dehn, Die alte Zeit—die vorigen Jahre, 307. 77. Letter to the author, 12 January 1969. 78. Blau, Das Ausnahmerecht, 109–10. 79. Hofer, Der Nationalsozialismus, 297–98. 80. Published in Katharina Staritz, Des grossen Lichtes Widerschein: Berichte und Verse aus der Gefangenschaft (Münster, undated), 40–41. 81. Copies of this correspondence were made available to me by Dr. Ernst Hornig, who later became bishop. 82. As was the Breslau Consistory’s response, on 26 September 1941. Copy given to the author by Ernst Hornig. 83. Letter from the Superintendent of the Church Province of Silesia to all clergy and vicars, 18 October 1941, ‘‘I 3310 III,’’ signed by Dr. Hosemann. Copy given to the author by Ernst Hornig. 84. Letter, 18 November 1941, signed by Hornig. Copy given to the author by Ernst Hornig. 85. Staritz’s statement was an official letter from the city dean, although it had been signed not by City Dean Lierse but by Assistant City Dean Meissner. 86. Letter (Nr. 4230) of 15 December 1941. Copy given to the author by Ernst Hornig. 87. Letter dated 2 January 1942. Copy given to the author by Ernst Hornig. 88. Letter of 23 December 1941, signed by Kellner (instead of Hornig, so as

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Notes to Pages 171–174 to underscore the fact that the Provincial Council of Brethren unanimously stood behind the letter). Copy given to the author by Ernst Hornig. 89. Letter of 13 March 1942 (Nr. I 468) (signed by Hosemann) to Pastor Kellner (Tiefenfurt). Copy given to the author by Ernst Hornig. 90. The details of Staritz’s fate are from Karl Kleinschmidt, ‘‘Der Fall Staritz,’’ in Evangelisches Pfarrerblatt (published by the Bund evangelischer Pfarrer in der ddr, 1962, h 7). 91. From a letter from Charlotte Staritz (Staritz’s sister) to Jochen Klepper, in Unter dem Schatten, 988. 92. From Katharina Staritz’s curriculum vitae, written in 1949 (made available to me by Charlotte Staritz). 93. Hermelink, Kirche im Kampf, 649; also Die Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland und die Judenfrage, 184–85; Klepper, Unter dem Schatten, 1042. 94. Klepper, diary entry of 9 July 1942, Unter dem Schatten, 1082, 1089. 95. Curriculum vitae of Katharina Staritz. 96. Further details are found in the obituaries written by Hanna Sommer, Claudia Bader, and Gerda Drewes (‘‘In Memoriam Lic. theol. Katharina Staritz’’) in Die Theologin: Rundbrief des Konvents evangelischer Vikarinnen in Deutschland 14 (1954): 9–16; and from Charlotte Staritz, in Drewes and Kochanski, Heimliche Hilfe, 7–16. 97. Charlotte Staritz believes that Paul Graf Yorck von Wartenburg, at that time member of the Council of Brethren in Silesia, obtained her release (letter to the author, 17 October 1967). See also Gerhard Ehrenforth, Die Schlesische Kirche im Kirchenkampf, 1932–1945 (Göttingen, 1968), 210–15. 98. A copy of the protocol of this conversation was given to the author by Charlotte Staritz. 99. See Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 746; and Günther van Norden and Fritz Mybes, Evangelische Frauen im Dritten Reich (Düsseldorf, 1979). See also Gertrud Staewen’s account of her resistance (in the Kaufmann circle) in Katharina Schmidt-Biesalski, Lust, Liebe und Verstand: Protestantische Frauen aus fünf Jahrhunderten (Gelnhausen, 1981), 84ff. 100. Meier, Kirche und Judentum, 114. 101. ‘‘Nichtarische Christen,’’ lkavw; the author is unnamed. (W. Niemöller mentions Forell as the author.) See also eza 50/619, 22ff.; 50/845; and 50/640, 15. 102. ‘‘Die Synagoge am Nollendorfplatz,’’ in Weckerling, Durchkreuzter Hass, 60. 103. Letter of 3 February 1965 to the author. 104. ‘‘Bilder aus der Arbeit der illegalen Judenhilfe,’’ in Drewes and Kochan-

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Notes to Pages 174–176 ski, Heimliche Hilfe, 25. See also Unterwegs (Berlin) 1, 3 (1947): 21–22, and Heinrich Fink, ed., Stärker als die Angst (Berlin, 1968), 81–82. 105. In Fink, Stärker als die Angst, 187. 106. See Ruth Felgentreff, Ist verpflichtet den Judenstern zu tragen: Eine Dokumentation über die Diakonissen Johanne und Erna Aufricht: Kaiserswerth— Theresienstadt—Auschwitz (Kaiserswerth, 1973), 10. 107. The Jewish wife of the organist Anton Penkert in Hamburg was denounced after she was seen without the star; she was deported to Auschwitz and died there. Heinrich Wilhelmi, Die Hamburger Kirche in der nationalsozialistischen Zeit, 1933–1945 (Göttingen, 1968), 279 n.162. 108. eza, former Archives of the ekd-Kanzlei, 1/c 3/170ff. 109. eza, former Archives of the ekd-Kanzlei, 1/c 3/170ff. Letter dated 21 November 1941. 110. eza, former Archives of the ekd-Kanzlei, 1/c 3/170ff. Letter dated 21 November 1941. 111. Letter of 31 October 1941 (from the papers of W. Jannasch, sent to me by W. Niemöller). 112. Letter of 12 November 1941, signed by Kracht (from the papers of W. Jannasch, sent to me by W. Niemöller). After 9 January 1942 the Hannover regional church imposed a similar policy. Niemöller, Handbuch, 380. 113. Cf. Reitlinger, Die Endlösung, 33 n.5. 114. Cf. Lamm, Über die innere und äussere Entwicklung, 207 n.44. 115. Harold Flender, Rescue in Denmark (New York, 1963), 31–32, 266–67 n.6. 16. the godesberg declaration 1. See Hermelink, Kirche im Kampf, 474–81; Die Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland und die Judenfrage, 165–79; Heydenreich, ‘‘Erklärungen,’’ 235–41; Boyens, Kirchenkampf und Ökumene, 1933–1939, 256–61. See also Bergen, Twisted Cross, 149ff., and Heschel, ‘‘Nazifying Christian Theology.’’ 2. Junge Kirche 5 (1937): 701–2. 3. The Council of the Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Germany informed its members of both decrees in a letter on 23 January 1939. ‘‘Juden IV,’’ lkavw, I f 2 88/39. 4. Council of the Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Germany, letter of 23 January 1939. 5. Council of the Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Germany, letter of 23 January 1939. 6. From the private files of Eberhard Bethge. ‘‘Juden IV,’’ lkavw, contains a

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Notes to Pages 177–182 report of the same incident. See also Die Evangelische Kirche und die Judenfrage, 173. 7. See Brunotte, ‘‘Die Kirchenmitgliedschaft der nichtarischen Christen im Kirchenkampf,’’ 155–56. 8. Junge Kirche 7 (1939): 215. 9. See ‘‘Juden IV,’’ lkavw. 10. See Fink, Stärker als die Angst, 60. 11. A copy of the protest letter, signed by Aurel von Juechen and Karl Kleinschmidt, is in eza, former archives of the Kirchliche Hochschule, Berlin (Akten-Nr. 135 B). 12. Fink, Stärker als die Angst, 60. 13. Letter of 24 March 1939, signed by Dr. Schmidt zur Nedden. Fink, Stärker als die Angst, 61–62. 14. The outcome of this is unknown. 15. Beckmann, Kirchliches Jahrbuch, 1933–1944, 293. See also Niemöller, Kampf und Zeugnis, 464–77. 16. These were the leaders of the churches in the Old Prussian Union, Saxony, Nassau-Hesse, Schleswig-Holstein, Thuringia, Mecklenburg, the Palatinate, Anhalt, Oldenburg, Lübeck, and Austria. Beckmann, Kirchliches Jahrbuch, 1933–1944, 294–95. 17. Beckmann, Kirchliches Jahrbuch, 1933–1944, 295. 18. See Meier, Die Deutschen Christen, 290ff., and the material on the Godesberg Declaration in Bergen, Twisted Cross. 19. Declaration dated 13 April 1939. Beckmann, Kirchliches Jahrbuch, 1933– 1944, 236–330. 20. Heydenreich, ‘‘Erklärungen,’’ 236. 21. Beckmann, Kirchliches Jahrbuch, 1933–1944, 236–330. 22. In Die Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland und die Judenfrage, 178–79. 23. Published in Die Nationalkirche in Sachsen-Anhalt, 30 April 1939, in Beckmann, Kirchliches Jahrbuch, 1933–1944, 298. 24. Beckmann, Kirchliches Jahrbuch, 1933–1944, 330–31 (undated, presumably from the end of April 1939). See also Boyens, Kirchenkampf und Ökumene, 1933–1939, 256–61, 380–81. 25. Beckmann, Kirchliches Jahrbuch, 1933–1944, 331. 26. Beckmann, Kirchliches Jahrbuch, 1933–1944, 309. 27. Beckmann, Kirchliches Jahrbuch, 1933–1944, 312–17. 28. Hermelink, Kirche im Kampf, 476. 29. Beckmann, Kirchliches Jahrbuch, 1933–1944, 299. 30. Beckmann, Kirchliches Jahrbuch, 1933–1944, 299. 31. Beckmann, Kirchliches Jahrbuch, 1933–1944, 300–301.

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Notes to Pages 182–187 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37.

Hermelink, Kirche im Kampf, 478. Klügel, Die lutherische Landeskirche, 497. Beckmann, Kirchliches Jahrbuch, 1933–1944, 301–5. Brunotte and Wolf, Zur Geschichte des Kirchenkampfes, 118–19. Beckmann, Kirchliches Jahrbuch, 1933–1944, 331–34. Beckmann, Kirchliches Jahrbuch, 1933–1944, 305–7. See also Niemöller, ‘‘Corrigenda zur neuesten Kirchengeschichte,’’ Evangelische Theologie 28 (1968): 598–601. 38. According to the Provisional Church Administration’s letter. 39. Niemöller, ‘‘Kirche und Israel,’’ Evangelische Theologie 17 (1957): 472–73. 40. Schmidt, Die Bekenntnisse (1934), 107; Gauger, Gotthard-Briefe, 293. 41. Deutsches Christentum, 8 January 1939. 42. The exact reference to the decree is ‘‘I d 42 X/38—5501 b—(RMBliV 1938, Nr. 35, S. 1345/48).’’ See the list of legally permitted Jewish names in Deeg, Die Judengesetze Grossdeutschlands, 88–90; and Junge Kirche 6 (1938): 681–82. 43. Brunotte’s draft and defense of it are in eza, former archives of the ekdKanzlei, Akte B XVIII Nr. c Bd. I. 44. See also Linck, Der Kirchenkampf in Ostpreussen, 242. 45. eza, former Archives of the ekd-Kanzlei, Akte C 3/171. 46. Brunotte’s 1967 attempt to explain his actions, ‘‘Die Kirchenmitgliedschaft der nichtarischen Christen im Kirchenkampf ’’ (in Zeitschrift für evangelisches Kirchenrecht 13 [1967]), was an apologia. See Wilhelm Niemöller’s critique, ‘‘Ist die Judenfrage ‘bewältigt’?’’ Junge Kirche 35 (1968): Beiheft 2. 17. the aryan certificate for theologians 1. Junge Kirche 4 (1936): 128. See also Harder, ‘‘Die kirchliche Tätigkeit des Brandenburgischen Bruderrates,’’ in Brunotte and Wolf, Zur Geschichte des Kirchenkampfes, 196. 2. Junge Kirche 7 (1939): 638. 3. Letter dated 30 May 1939, ‘‘Geistliche Leitung Koch,’’ lkavw. 4. Letter dated 30 May 1939, ‘‘Geistliche Leitung Koch,’’ lkavw. 5. Letter dated 30 May 1939, ‘‘Geistliche Leitung Koch,’’ lkavw. See also Niemöller, in ‘‘Kirche und Israel,’’ 474. 6. Niemöller, Kampf und Zeugnis, 460. 7. Letter of 7 July 1939, Archives of the Kirchenkampf-Kommission Dresden, Archiv-Nr. 107 149. 8. Letter of 21 August 1939, eza 50/844 and 50/827. 9. Schmidt, Die Bekenntnisse (1933), 96–98.

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Notes to Pages 188–193 10. Undated letter, ‘‘Juden IV,’’ lkavw. 11. Letter dated 11 July 1939. Printed in Niemöller, Kampf und Zeugnis, 461. 12. O. Palmer, ‘‘Materialsammlung zur Geschichte des Kirchenkampfes in der Braunschweigischen Landeskirche,’’ 76ff. Archiv der Braunschweigischen Landeskirche. 13. From a copy in the private files of Eberhard Bethge. See also Martin Broszat, Bayern in der NS-Zeit (Munich: Oldenbourg Verlag, 1977), 1:453. 14. Letter dated 30 September 1939 (reply to letter of 19 July 1939). No. 11364/a 13–17, lkavw. 15. Copy of this letter given to the author by Wilhelm Niemöller. Pastor Ulrich Dähne worked closely with the ‘‘illegal’’ young Confessing Church pastors in Westphalia; Pastor Ludwig Steil’s protests against the Nazi regime led to his imprisonment in Dachau, where he died in January 1945. 16. Schmidt, Die Bekenntnisse (1934), 25. 17. Niemöller, Der Pfarrernotbund, 132ff. 18. Letter of 16 November 1939 (copy from W. Niemöller). 19. ‘‘Arierfrage für den theologischen Nachwuchs,’’ ‘‘Juden IV,’’ lkavw. See Niemöller, Bekennende Kirche in Westfalen, 260. 20. ‘‘Arierfrage für den Theologischen Nachwuchs,’’ ‘‘Juden IV,’’ lkavw, p. 5. 21. ‘‘Arierfrage für den Theologischen Nachwuchs,’’ ‘‘Juden IV,’’ lkavw, p. 5. 22. Letter of 11 December 1939, ‘‘Juden IV,’’ lkavw. 23. Niemöller, Bekennende Kirche in Westfalen, 284. 24. Letter of 20 December 1939 (private file from W. Niemöller). 25. Letter of 23 December 1939 (private file from W. Niemöller). 26. Letter of 2 February 1940 to the Evangelical Consistory. Niemöller, Kampf und Zeugnis, 463. 27. See Ernst Sodeikat, ‘‘Die Verfolgung und der Widerstand der Evangelische Kirche in Danzig von 1933–1945,’’ in Brunotte and Wolf, Zur Geschichte des Kirchenkampfes, 167–68. 28. Letter of 18 October 1940 to the Evangelical Consistory in Münster (private file of Wilhelm Niemöller).

1. 2. 3. 4.

18. the final solution and the end of the church struggle For a summary of the trial, see Barnett, For the Soul of the People, 93–94. Bonhoeffer, Gesammelte Schriften, 2:430. See Fischer and Schäfer, Landesbischof D. Wurm, 147–48. See the reports on the situation at the time in Bonhoeffer, Gesammelte

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Notes to Pages 193–198 Schriften, 2:640–64, 428–32; and the Confessing Church statement ‘‘Zur Jahreswende’’ in Beckmann, Kirchliches Jahrbuch, 1933–1944, 382–88. 5. Canaris and Dohnanyi, a lawyer who worked in military intelligence, became key figures in the 20 July 1944 conspiracy to kill Hitler; both were executed. 6. See Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 747–49. 7. The annual volume of the Official Gazette of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Hannover announced this as a ‘‘legally binding order’’ on 9 January 1942. 8. Hofer, Nationalsozialismus, 305. Cf. Döscher, Das Auswärtige Amt im Dritten ReichDiplomatie im Schatten der ‘‘Endlosung’’ (Berlin, 1987). 9. Beckmann, Kirchliches Jahrbuch, 1933–1944, 479. 10. Beckmann, Kirchliches Jahrbuch, 1933–1944, 481. 11. Beckmann, Kirchliches Jahrbuch, 1933–1944, 482. 12. Letter of 6 February 1942, printed in Beckmann, Kirchliches Jahrbuch, 1933–1944, 482–84; see Fischer and Schäfer, Landesbischof D. Wurm, 153– 56. 13. Fischer and Schäfer, Landesbischof D. Wurm, 153–56. 14. Fischer and Schäfer, Landesbischof D. Wurm, 155. 15. Letter to the German Evangelical Church Chancellery of 5 February 1942, signed by Heinz Kloppenburg (for the Conference of Regional Councils of Brethren) and Hans Böhm (for the Provisional Church Administration). Beckmann, Kirchliches Jahrbuch, 1933–1944, 484–85. 16. Letter of 23 March 1942, ‘‘Juden IV,’’ lkavw. On the Hannover implementation decree, see the official newsletter of the regional church in Hannover, 9 January 1942. 17. See Klügel, Die lutherische Landeskirche, 497–98. 18. Archiv der Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte, Munich. The letter from the Spiritual Confidential Council is printed in its entirety in the German edition of this book, 332–37. 19. Archiv der Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte, Munich. 20. Archiv der Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte, Munich. 21. Brunotte, ‘‘Kirchenmitgliedschaft,’’ 173. 22. Elisabeth Dreyer, ‘‘Die Predigt der Evangelischen Kirche in der nationalsozialistischen Zeit,’’ unpublished manuscript, Hamburg, October 1963. 23. ‘‘Unser Hirte und Bischof ’’ (Our shepherd and bishop), sermon on 1 Pet. 2:21–25, 15 April 1934 (Stuttgart, 1934), in Dreyer, ‘‘Die Predigt der Evangelischen Kirche.’’ 24. Dreyer, ‘‘Die Predigt der Evangelischen Kirche,’’ 113.

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Notes to Pages 198–203 25. Dreyer, ‘‘Die Predigt der Evangelischen Kirche’’; ‘‘Der Gang zum Kreuz’’ (The path to the cross), sermon on Sunday Sexagesimae, 31 January 1937. 26. Dreyer, ‘‘Die Predigt der Evangelischen Kirche’’; ‘‘Christus, Christentum, Kirche,’’ sermon on John 1:18, 3:5, 21:14–19, 28 February 1937. His information is inconsistent with the figures given of the Jews deported from Württemberg in 1941 (Fischer and Schäfer, Landesbischof D. Wurm, 148). 27. Fischer and Schäfer, Landesbischof D. Wurm, 156. 28. Fischer and Schäfer, Landesbischof D. Wurm, 157. 29. Fischer and Schäfer, Landesbischof D. Wurm, 157–58. 30. Letter of 10 November 1941. Fischer and Schäfer, Landesbischof D. Wurm, 158. 31. Fischer and Schäfer, Landesbischof D. Wurm, 158, 277. 32. Fischer and Schäfer, Landesbischof D. Wurm, 159. 33. For one example, see Wurm to Reich Governor Murr, dated 17 February 1942, in Hermelink, Kirche im Kampf, 620. 34. A neighborhood party organization sent a form letter of voluntary consent to divorce to the ‘‘Aryan’’ wives of twelve non-Aryan men, along with instructions that their husbands formally present this text to their wives. Papers of Wilhelm Jannasch, undated. 35. Information given to the author by Dr. Margarethe Sommer, at that time the director of the Relief Organization of the Episcopal Ordinarius. (Letters dated 15 March and 8 April 1965.) 36. This draft was made available to the author by Wilhelm Niemöller. 37. Beckmann, Kirchliches Jahrbuch, 1933–1944, 432–33. 38. Wurm noted that his request was all the more urgent because he had received no reply to his letter of 8 February 1943 to Reich Governor Murr. 39. Fischer and Schäfer, Landesbischof D. Wurm, 162–63. 40. Fischer and Schäfer, Landesbischof D. Wurm, 163–64. 41. The petition was from 19 January 1943. Printed in entirety in Klügel, Die lutherische Landeskirche. Dokumente, 202–3. 42. See Fischer and Schäfer, Landesbischof D. Wurm, 164. 43. Pastor Dr. Jannasch to Pastor Lenz, Wohnbach (Upper Hesse), 16 March 1943. ‘‘Akte vkl,’’ lkavw. 44. Pastor Dr. Jannasch to Pastor Lenz, 16 March 1943. 45. Hermelink, Kirche im Kampf, 654–56. 46. Fischer and Schäfer, Landesbischof D. Wurm, 167. 47. See Hermelink, Kirche im Kampf, 654–56; Hofer, Der Nationalsozialismus, 164–66; Fischer and Schäfer, Landesbischof D. Wurm, 164–65.

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Notes to Pages 203–208 48. Fischer and Schäfer, Landesbischof D. Wurm, 168. 49. In his weekly letter of 20 July 1943, in Hermelink, Kirche im Kampf, 692. 50. Hermelink, Kirche im Kampf, 692–93. 51. From Wurm’s sermon in St. Mary’s Church in Reutlingen, 17 October 1943. In Fischer and Schäfer, Landesbischof D. Wurm, 169. 52. Hermelink, Kirche im Kampf, 656–58; Fischer and Schäfer, Landesbischof D. Wurm, 311–13. 53. Hermelink, Kirche im Kampf, 656–58; Fischer and Schäfer, Landesbischof D. Wurm, 311–13. 54. Dated 3 March 1944. Hermelink, Kirche im Kampf, 700–702; Fischer and Schäfer, Landesbischof D. Wurm, 313–15. 55. Lammers mentioned Wurm’s letters to the government on 20 December 1943, to Marahrens on 9 August 1943, and the petition sent on 16 July 1943 to the Führer and Reich government, which had been distributed abroad. 56. See Wurm, Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben (Stuttgart, 1953), 171. 57. Fischer and Schäfer, Landesbischof D. Wurm, 315–17. 58. Letter of 8 February 1945. Hermelink, Kirche im Kampf, 658–60. 59. Beckmann, Kirchliches Jahrbuch, 1933–1944, 391ff. 60. Beckmann, Kirchliches Jahrbuch, 1933–1944, 394–96. See also Niesel, Um Verkündigung, 99ff. 61. Beckmann, Kirchliches Jahrbuch, 1933–1944, 391ff. 62. On 17 July 1968, Prof. Günther Harder, who had been an outspoken Confessing pastor in Brandenburg and president of the Brandenburg Council of Brethren, wrote Wilhelm Niemöller that he and others had tried to organize protests against the Fürle decree at many local meetings of clergy. He suggested that such activities might have been one reason that the Prussian church did not issue such a law. 63. Niesel, Um Verkündigung, 99–100. 64. Niesel, Um Verkündigung, 99–100. 65. In Luther’s cathechism, ‘‘Thou shalt not kill’’ is the fifth commandment; in the Heidelberg cathechism (and in most U.S. denominations) it is the sixth. 66. Beckmann, Kirchliches Jahrbuch, 1933–1944, 398ff.; Niesel, Um Verkündigung, 105ff. 67. Niesel, Um Verkündigung, 105ff. 68. Niesel, Um Verkündigung, 105ff. 69. Niesel, Um Verkündigung, 105ff.

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Notes to Pages 208–214 70. The English translation of this letter, dated 19 December 1938, is in Herbert Hartwell and Frank H. de Jonge, eds., The Bridge (London: GermanBritish Christian Fellowship, November 1967), 13–14. 71. Klepper, Unter dem Schatten, 105–6. Journal entries of 7, 8 September 1933. 72. Klepper, Unter dem Schatten, 984–86. Journal entry, 17 November 1941. 73. Klepper, Unter dem Schatten, 1133. Final journal entry, 10 December 1942. 74. Beckmann, Kirchliches Jahrbuch, 1933–1944, 402ff.; Niesel, Um Verkündigung, 109–10. 75. Beckmann, Kirchliches Jahrbuch, 1933–1944, 402. 76. See 248–49 in the German edition of this book. 77. Ritter, in a letter to the author, 5 February 1965. Cf. Ritter, Karl Goerdeler und die deutsche Widerstandsbewegung (Munich, 1964), 513 n.71. 78. Annedore Leber and Freya Gräfin von Moltke, Für und Wider: Entscheidungen in Deutschland (Berlin, 1961), 246. See also Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 775–77; and Christine-Ruth Müller, Dietrich Bonhoeffers Kampf gegen die nationalsozialistische Verfolgung und Vernichtung der Juden (Munich, 1990), 275ff. 79. On Bauer, see Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 907, and his obituary written by Adolf Kurtz, in Evangelische Kommentar 1 (1968): 714, 734. 80. Fischer and Schäfer, Landesbischof D. Wurm, 348–49. 81. The entire memorandum is in Helmut Thielicke and Philipp von Bismarck, eds., In der Stunde Null: Die Denkschrift des Freiburger ‘BonhoefferKreises’: Politische Gesellschaftsordnung: Ein Versuch zur Selbstbesinnung des christlichen Gewissens in den politischen Nöten unserer Zeit (Tübingen, 1979). The subtitle of this volume (‘‘The Bonhoeffer Circle’’) is historically false, since the group never used this name. 82. Thielicke and Bismarck, In der Stunde Null, 146–47. 83. Thielicke and Bismarck, In der Stunde Null, 148. 84. Thielicke and Bismarck, In der Stunde Null, 149. 85. Thielicke and Bismarck, In der Stunde Null, 149–50. 86. Thielicke and Bismarck, In der Stunde Null, 150. 87. Thielicke and Bismarck, In der Stunde Null, 151. 88. Thielicke and Bismarck, In der Stunde Null, 151. 89. See Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 775, 794–95. 90. Bonhoeffer, Gesammelte Schriften, 2:51. 91. W. A. Visser’t Hooft, ed., ‘‘The Message of the Assembly,’’ in The First Assembly of the World Council of Churches (London: scm Press, 1949), 9.

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Notes to Pages 214–218 92. Thielicke and Bismarck, In der Stunde Null, 21–22. 93. Most of the information here comes from Pastor Walter Höchstädter (son of Dr. Emil Höchstädter, a member of the Lempp Circle), ‘‘Einige historische Ergänzungen zu der durch einen kleinen Kreis in München verfassten Erklärung zur Judenfrage,’’ 7 March 1966 (a copy is in the author’s possession). See also Höchstädter’s article in Evangelische Theologie 48 (1988): 468ff., and Wolfgang Schweitzer’s corrections in Evangelische Theologie 49 (1989): 122–23. 94. Confessing Church members of the group were Wolfgang Schweitzer, Bavarian pastors Kurt Frör and Karl Nold, Stuttgart pastors Hellmut Traub and Kurt Müller, and the founder and director of the Württemberg Theological Society, Pastor Hermann Diem. 95. See Fink, Stärker als die Angst, 132; and Hermann Diem, ‘‘Kirche und Antisemitismus,’’ Christ und Welt 18 (8 January 1965): 18, 22. 96. Published in Die Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland und die Judenfrage, 196–99; and Hermelink, Kirche im Kampf, 650–53. 97. This quotation from the account by Walter Höchstädter (see note 93) corresponds to the report by his father in the fall of 1943. 98. See Hermann Diem, Sine vi—sed verbo: Aufsätze, Vorträge, Voten (Munich, 1965), 273. 99. See Fink, Stärker als die Angst, 133. 100. Hermelink, Kirche im Kampf, 653; and Fischer and Schäfer, Landesbischof D. Wurm, 165 n.34. 101. As early as 1933, Dr. Hesse had criticized the Aryan paragraph. See Herwart Vorländer, Kirchenkampf in Elberfeld, 1933–1945: Ein kritischer Beitrag zur Erforschung des Kirchenkampfes in Deutschland (Göttingen, 1968), 66–67. 102. See Forck, Und folget ihrem Glauben nach, 92–93, for more information on Helmut Hesse. 103. Vorländer, Kirchenkampf in Elberfeld, 544–45. 104. Vorländer, Kirchenkampf in Elberfeld, 544–45. 105. See Günther van Norden, ‘‘Helmut Hesse—ein Bekenntnispfarrer, den die Bekennende Kirche nicht trug,’’ Monatshefte für Evangelische Kirchengeschichte des Rheinlandes 29 (1980): 241–68. 106. The text is titled ‘‘Darum seid nüchtern! Ein Gruss an unsere Brüder.’’ Similar statements are cited by Heinz David Leuner in ‘‘Versagen und Bewährung der Christen in der Solidarität,’’ in Fink, Stärker als die Angst, 39–40. 107. Beckmann, Kirchliches Jahrbuch, 1933–1945 (2d ed.), 391–92.

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Notes to Pages 223–229 19. confessions of guilt 1. Fischer and Schäfer, Landesbischof D. Wurm, 479–80. 2. In Klügel, Dokumente, 204. See also Klügel, Die lutherische Landeskirche, 497–98. 3. Klügel, Die lutherische Landeskirche, 497–98. 4. In Joachim Beckmann, ed., Kirchliches Jahrbuch für die Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland, 1945–1948 (Gütersloh, 1949), 4. 5. Beckmann, Kirchliches Jahrbuch, 1945–1948, 12–13. 6. Beckmann, Kirchliches Jahrbuch, 1945–1948, 18. 7. See W. Niemöller, ‘‘Corrigenda zur neuesten Kirchengeschichte,’’ Evangelische Theologie 28 (1968): 594ff., esp. 602–3; also Glenthøj, Dokumente, 324–28. 8. Joachim Beckmann, ed., Kirchliches Jahrbuch für die Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland, 1950 (Gütersloh, 1951), 26. See also Martin Greschat, Die Schuld der Kirche: Dokumente und Reflexionen zur Stuttgarter Schulderklärung vom 18./19. Oktober 1945 (Munich, 1982); and Gerhard Besier and Gerhard Sauter, Wie Christen ihre Schuld bekennen: Die Stuttgarter Schulderklärung 1945 (Göttingen, 1985). 9. See Greschat, Die Schuld der Kirche. 10. The entire text of the Stuttgart Declaration is reprinted in Barnett, For the Soul of the People, 209. 11. Beckmann, Kirchliches Jahrbuch, 1950, 21. 12. Bell and Koechlin, Briefwechsel, 1933–1954, 433. 13. Bell and Koechlin, Briefwechsel, 1933–1954, 433. 14. See Heydenreich, ‘‘Erklärungen,’’ in Goldschmidt and Kraus, Der ungekündigte Bund, 248. 15. Beckmann, Kirchliches Jahrbuch, 1950, 24. 16. eza, former Archives of the ekd-Kanzlei, C I, Bd. I. 17. Heinz Schmidt, Die Judenfrage und die christliche Kirche in Deutschland (Stuttgart, 1947), 57–58. 18. Niemöller, Bekennende Kirche in Westfalen, 318. 19. ‘‘Anschreiben an die Pfarrämter wegen der Verpflichtung der Gemeinden gegenüber den Juden,’’ in Gesetz- und Verordnungsblatt für die Ev.Luth. Kirche in Oldenburg, XIII. Bd., 15. Stück, Nr. 107 (reprinted in Kirchliches Jahrbuch, 1950, 223). Dated 6 December 1947 and signed by Wilhelm Stählin. 20. See Heydenreich, ‘‘Erklärungen,’’ 249–50. 21. Heydenreich, ‘‘Erklärungen,’’ 249–50. 22. Heydenreich, ‘‘Erklärungen,’’ 249–50. 23. Heydenreich, ‘‘Erklärungen,’’ 248.

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Notes to Pages 229–234 24. Heydenreich, ‘‘Erklärungen,’’ 255–56. 25. Heydenreich, ‘‘Erklärungen,’’ 255–56. Heydenreich critically analyzes the entire synod, 254–56. 26. Joachim Beckmann, ed., Kirchliches Jahrbuch für die Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland, 1951 (Gütersloh, 1952), 5. See also M. Niemöller’s statement in Heydenreich, ‘‘Erklärungen,’’ 257. 20. the confessing church’s record under nazism 1. Zelzer, Weg und Schicksal, 163. 2. Wilhelm Jannasch, Hat die Kirche geschwiegen? (Frankfurt, undated), pp. 5–6. 3. Jannasch, Hat die Kirche geschwiegen? 5–6. 4. Karl Barth, ‘‘Die Bekennende Kirche im heutigen Deutschland,’’ lecture from 15 March 1936, in Schaffhausen, lkavw, hectographed transcript. 5. Karl Thieme, Mein Leben in Deutschland vor und nach dem 30. Januar 1933 (Läufelfingen, Switzerland, 1940; private printing), 49. 6. Thieme, Mein Leben in Deutschland, 50. 7. Proclamation from 25 April 1933, in Niemöller, Handbuch, 79. 8. Niemöller, Handbuch, 81. Declaration of 26 April 1933. 9. Junge Kirche 1 (1933): 252. 10. Martin Niemöller, ‘‘Sätze zur Arierfrage in der Kirche,’’ in Schmidt, Die Bekenntnisse (1933), 98. 11. Bonhoeffer, Gesammelte Schriften, 2:135. Letter to Bonhoeffer, 20 November 1933. 12. Linck, Der Kirchenkampf in Ostpreussen, 243. 13. In Elias, ‘‘Der Evangelische Kirchenkampf und die Judenfrage,’’ 217. See, too, Klingler, Dokumente zum Abwehrkampf, 72. 14. In a letter of 6 August 1936, Bonhoeffer informed his friend Eberhard Bethge of this sign (Bonhoeffer, Gesammelte Schriften, 280–81). 15. In Schmidt, Dokumente des Kirchenkampfes, 2:152–53. 16. Klepper, Unter dem Schatten, 851. 17. Lilje, ‘‘Der Krieg als geistige Leistung.’’ 18. Hanns Lilje, ‘‘20. Juli 1944: Aus den Gedächtnis verdrängt: Überlegungen zu einem Jahrestag,’’ Deutsches Allgemeines Sonntagsblatt 22 (20 July 1969): 1. 19. Junge Kirche 7 (1939): 857. 20. ‘‘Gebete der Kirche im Kriege,’’ Junge Kirche 8 (1940): 245–46. 21. Junge Kirche 8 (1940): 249. 22. Junge Kirche 8 (1940): 278. 23. Junge Kirche 8 (1940): 271.

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Notes to Pages 234–235 24. See Friedrich Baumgärtel’s article, ‘‘Wider die Kirchenkampflegenden,’’ Deutsches Pfarrerblatt 58 (1969): 127–28. 25. See Christian Kinder, Neue Beiträge zur Geschichte der evangelischen Kirche in Schleswig-Holstein und im Reich, 3d ed. (Flensburg, 1968), 118–26. 26. Kupisch, ‘‘Die deutschen Landeskirchen,’’ 172ff. 27. Kupisch, ‘‘Die deutschen Landeskirchen,’’ 172ff. See, too, Klügel, Die lutherische Landeskirche, and Boyens, Kirchenkampf und Okumene, 1933– 1939, 171–72. 28. See Bergen, Twisted Cross, 206ff. 29. Kinder, Neue Beiträge zur Geschichte, esp. 118–26. 30. In Beckmann, Kirchliches Jahrbuch, 1950, 381. 31. Kinder, Neue Beiträge zur Geschichte, 11. 32. Kinder, Neue Beiträge zur Geschichte, 124. He was referring here to the ‘‘so ill-reputed laws of the Synod of 1933.’’ 33. Kinder, Neue Beiträge zur Geschichte, 239. 34. Niemöller, Kampf und Zeugnis, 454. 35. In Drewes and Kochanski, Heimliche Hilfe, 5.

286

glossary Aryan paragraph The legal clause that stipulated that all civil servants had

to be ‘‘pure Aryans.’’ central council (Landeskirchenrat) The administration, or governing body, of

some regional churches. church federation (Kirchenbund) The church federation uniting the Evangeli-

cal regional churches. Confessing Church The movement within the German Evangelical Church

that most strongly opposed the Aryan paragraph and the German Christians; it never broke away completely from the German Evangelical Church, and many of its leaders retained their official positions in the gec. Confidential Clerical Council (Geistliche Vertrauensrat) An advisory board of three church leaders, appointed by Dr. Friedrich Werner, the German Christian director of the gec Chancellery in Berlin. Because of the political tendencies of its members, the council was not trusted by Confessing leaders. consistory A national or regional church governing council. Council of Brethren (Bruderrat) The advisory councils of the Confessing Church, on both the regional and national level, consisting of clergy and lay representatives. Ecclesiastical Ministry (Geistlichen Ministerium) Advisory Committee appointed by Reich Bishop Ludwig Müller in September 1933. Evangelical Central Council (Evangelischer Oberkirchenrat, or eok) One of the administrative bodies of the Old Prussian Union Church. Other governing bodies were the chancellery (Kanzlei) and the consistory (Konsistorium: which included the lay and clergy representatives and had some supervisory powers). Evangelical Church of Germany (after 1945) See German Evangelical Church. executive committee or church board (Landeskirchenausschuss) Advisory committee of a regional church. executive committee of the Reich Church (Reichskirchenausschuss). Gauleiter The leader of a district (Gau) in the organization of the National Socialist Party. German Christians (Deutsche Christen) A movement that sought to merge Christianity and the ‘‘Aryan’’ principles of Nazism. German Evangelical Church (before 1945) The Protestant church of Germany, incorporating the Reformed, Lutheran, and United theological and

287

Glossary church traditions. Smaller Protestant denominations in Germany (e.g., Methodists) are ‘‘free churches.’’ When Protestant is used in this book, it refers to the German Evangelical Church and its members. German Evangelical Church Chancellery (Deutsche Evangelische KirchenKanzlei) One of the two highest Protestant governing boards (the other was the German Evangelical Church Consistory in Berlin). Gleichschaltung The legal process of ‘‘synchronization,’’ placing all aspects of German life under Nazi control and direction. Gutachten Professional opinion usually requested by the church leadership and written by prominent theologians and professors. ‘‘illegal’’ pastors and theologians Clergy and theological students who had studied and taken their theological exams from boards of the Confessing Church, not the German Evangelical Church (whose examination boards were often controlled by German Christians). After Himmler banned Confessing Church seminaries in 1937, these pastors and theology students were ‘‘illegal.’’ ‘‘intact’’ churches The three largest regional churches, Bavaria, Württemberg, and Hannover, led by Lutheran bishops (sometimes called ‘‘neutral’’ churches). Jewish Christian Christians defined by Nazi racial laws as Jews or ‘‘nonAryans’’ (also called ‘‘non-Aryan’’ Christians). Kirchenkampf The ‘‘church struggle’’ between the German Evangelical Church and Nazi authorities and, more specifically, with the German Christian Faith Movement. Kirchliche Hochschule In this work, it refers to the illegal Confessing seminary in Berlin. Ministry of Church Affairs Established in February 1935 to oversee the Old Prussian Union Church, directed by Hanns Kerrl. Old Prussian Union Church (Kirche der Altpreussischen Union) The Evangelical Church in Prussia, which included eight regional churches (East Prussia, Brandenburg, Pomerania, Mark Posen-West Prussia, Silesia, Saxony, Westphalia, Rhineland). Pastors’ Emergency League (pel) Organization founded in late 1933, intended to show solidarity with non-Aryan clergy. Provisional Church Administration of the Confessing Church (Vorläufige Kirchenleitung, or vkl) Confessing Church government established at the Dahlem confessional synod in October 1934) as a counterpart to the Church Consistory and Chancellery in Berlin, which were headed by German Christians or ‘‘neutral’’ leaders.

288

Glossary regional church (Landeskirche) The Evangelical church in one of the German

‘‘lands,’’ or regions (comparable to an American state). Regional Council of Brethren (Landesbruderrat) Advisory council for the

Confessing Church on the regional level. Reich Church Committee (Reichskirchenausschuss) Convened by Reich Min-

ister of Church Affairs Hanns Kerrl in October 1935. Reich Central Security Department (Reichssicherheitshauptamt; rsha)

Formed in 1939; it oversaw the Security Police (including the Gestapo) and other Nazi police forces. SA (Sturmabteilung) ‘‘Storm troopers’’; the first Nazi paramilitary force. SS (Schutzstaffel) The elite guard of the sa. Synod A church assembly of laity and clergy on the local, regional, or national level, convened to discuss and sometimes decide church affairs. Volk A word not to be confused with the English ‘‘folk’’; in German, this and related words (völkisch, Volkstum, etc.) connote both national and racial/ ethnic ties. The term Volk was used a great deal in Nazi ideology and propaganda. Völkischer Beobachter Leading newspaper of the National Socialist Party. Volkskirche The church concept of German Protestantism, which is structured more democratically than the Roman Catholic Church and deliberately not constituted as a ‘‘state church.’’ The concept, which came into use during the nineteenth century, is partly derived from Martin Luther’s concept of a ‘‘priesthood of all believers.’’ Under Nazism, the German Christians interpreted this concept to mean that the church should serve only the German people and exclude those not of the Volk. It should be noted, however, that this term did not originate with the Nazis. Volkstum Sense of culture marked by exclusivity in terms of race, mentality, and national character. Wehrmacht The German armed forces, including army, navy, and air force. World Alliance for Promoting International Friendship through the Churches

One of the first ecumenical organizations, founded in 1909. Young Reformation Movement Formed in the spring of 1933 to oppose the

German Christians and the Aryan paragraph; precursor of the Pastors’ Emergency League.

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note on sources archives and institutions The following archives and institutions were visited in preparing this work: Archiv der Evangelische-Lutherische Kirche in Hamburg; Archiv der Arbeitsgemeinschaft für kirchliche Zeitgeschichte in Munich; Archiv der Evangelischen Kirche Westfalens in Bielefeld (lkavw); the Bodleian Library, Oxford; the Wiener Library, London (twl). The following archival collections used for the original research for this book are now part of the Evangelische Zentralarchiv in Berlin: Archiv der Kirchenkanzlei (Hannover); Archiv der Kirchlichen Hochschule (Berlin); Ökumenisches Archiv (Soest). Other archives and organizations consulted were the following: Archiv der Braunschweigischen evangelische-lutherische Landeskirche (Braunschweig); Archiv der Kirchenkampf-Kommission (Dresden); Archiv des Evangelischen Oberkirchenrats (Stuttgart); Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung (Bonn); Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine (Paris); Evangelische Hilfsstelle für ehemaligen Rasseverfolgte (Berlin); Germania Judaica (Cologne); Hilfsstelle für Rasseverfolgte bei der Evangelischen Gesellschaft (Stuttgart); the Jewish congregation in Berlin; Kirchenkanzlei der ekd (Berlin); Landeskirchenamt der Evangelische-Lutherische Kirche in Thüringen (Eisenach); Pfarrer-Ludwig-Steil-Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte der Jahre 1918–1945 (Wanne-Eickel); Schweizerische Evangelische Judenmission (Zurich); Yad Vashem—Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Memorial Authority (Jerusalem). bibliographical essay Several of the works cited are particularly valuable in portraying the Kirchenkampf and the situation of the German Evangelical Church during the Nazi era: Gerhard Besier and Gerhard Ringshausen, Bekenntnis, Widerstand, Martyrium: Von Barmen 1934 bis Plötzensee 1944 (Göttingen, 1986); Armin Boyens’s Kirchenkampf und Ökumene, 1933–1939 (Munich, 1969) and Kirchenkampf und Ökumene, 1939–1945 (Munich, 1973); Günther Harder and Wilhelm Niemöller, eds., Die Stunde der Versuchung: Gemeinden im Kirchenkampf, 1933–1945: Selbstzeugnisse (Munich, 1963); Heinrich Hermelink, ed., Kirche im Kampf: Dokumente des Widerstandes und des Aufbaus der Evangelischen Kirche in Deutschland von 1933–1945 (Tübingen, 1950); and Günther van Norden, Kirche in der Krise: Die Stellung der evangelischen Kirche zum nationalsozialistischen Staat im Jahre 1933 (Düsseldorf, 1963); also see Die Evangelische Kirche in

291

Note on Sources Deutschland und die Judenfrage: Ausgewählte Dokumente aus den Jahren des Kirchenkampfes 1933–1943 (Geneva: Refugee Organization of the Ecumenical Council of Churches, 1945). For background material on Nazi Germany, the primary works consulted were Walter Hofer, Der Nationalsozialismus: Dokumente, 1933–1945 (Frankfurt am Main, 1957); and Gerald Reitlinger, Die Endlösung: Ausrottung der Juden Europas, 1939–1945 (Munich, 1964). The published works of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, all of which are available in English, contain invaluable material about the churches under Nazism. A new English edition of Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography, was published by Fortress Press in 2000. See also Bethge, ‘‘Dietrich Bonhoeffer und die Juden,’’ in Die Juden und Martin Luther—Martin Luther und die Juden, ed. Heinz Kremers (Neukirchen, 1985), and Asta von Oppen, Der unerhörte Schrei: Dietrich Bonhoeffer und die Judenfrage im Dritten Reich (Hannover, 1996). Books consulted on relations between Christians and Jews in Germany included Edna Brocke and Jürgen Seim, eds., Gottes Augapfel: Beiträge zur Erneuerung des Verhältnisses von Christen und Juden (Munich, 1986); Robert Raphael Geis and Hans-Joachim Kraus, eds., Versuche des Verstehens: Dokumente jüdischer-christlicher Begegnung aus den Jahren 1918–1933 (Munich, 1966); Dietrich Goldschmidt and Hans-Joachim Kraus, eds., Der ungekündigte Bund: Neue Begegnung von Juden und christlicher Gemeinde (Stuttgart, 1962); and Hans Hermann Henrix and Martin Stöhr, eds., Exodus und Kreuz im ökumenischen Dialog zwischen Juden und Christen: Diskussionsbeiträge für Religionsunterricht und Erwachsenenbildung (Aachen, 1978). The complete bibliography is in the original German edition. Related works in English include Alan Abrams, Mischlinge, Special Treatment: The Untold Story of Hitler’s Third Race (Secaucus nj, 1985); Shelley Baranowski, The Confessing Church, Conservative Elites, and the Nazi State (New York, 1986); Kenneth C. Barnes, Nazism, Liberalism, and Christianity: Protestant Social Thought in Germany and Great Britain, 1925–1937 (Lexington ky, 1991); Victoria Barnett, For the Soul of the People: Protestant Protest under Hitler (New York, 1992); Doris Bergen, Twisted Cross: The German Christian Movement in the Third Reich (Chapel Hill, 1996); John S. Conway, The Nazi Persecution of the Churches, 1933–45 (New York, 1968); Donald J. Dietrich, God and Humanity in Auschwitz: Jewish-Christian Relations and Sanctioned Murder (New Brunswick, 1995); Robert P. Ericksen, Theologians under Hitler: Gerhard Kittel, Paul Althaus, and Emanuel Hirsch (New Haven, 1985); Jack Forstman, Christian Faith in Dark Times: Theological Conflicts in the Shadow of Hitler (Louisville, 1992); Sarah Gordon, Hitler, Germans, and the ‘‘Jewish Question’’ (Princeton, 1984); Richard Gutteridge, Open Thy Mouth for the Dumb! The German Evangelical Church and

292

Note on Sources the Jews, 1879–1950 (Oxford, 1976); Steven Haynes, Reluctant Witnesses: Jews and the Christian Imagination (Louisville, 1995); Ernst Christian Helmreich, The German Churches under Hitler: Background, Struggle, and Epilogue (Detroit, 1979); Franklin H. Littell and Hubert G. Locke, eds., The German Church Struggle and the Holocaust (Detroit, 1974); Heiko A. Oberman, The Roots of AntiSemitism in the Age of Renaissance and Reformation (Philadelphia, 1984); Klaus Scholder, The Churches and the Third Reich: Preliminary History and the Time of Illusions, 1918–1934, and The Year of Disillusionment: 1934 (Philadelphia, 1988); Uriel Tal, Christians and Jews in Germany: Religion, Politics, and Ideology in the Second Reich, 1870–1914 (Ithaca, 1975); and Jonathan R. C. Wright, ‘‘Above Parties’’: The Political Attitudes of the German Protestant Leadership, 1918–1933 (London, 1974).

293

index Albertz, Martin, 59, 81, 83, 154–55, 158, 165–66, 173, 236; imprisonment of, 192; at Steglitz, 94, 97 Althaus, Paul, 39–41. See also Erlangen Gutachten American Joint Distribution Committee, 142 Ammundsen, Bishop Valdemar, 59, 60, 132 Anhalt, church of, 117, 194 anticommunism, 12 anti-Judaism, 6–7, 39, 83, 165, 214, 228– 29 anti-Semitism, 2–4, 5–6, 19, 67–69, 198, 211; among church leaders, 13–17, 46, 148–49, 150; church’s defense of, 39– 40, 56, 91, 105; church’s postwar condemnation of, 229–30; protests against, 53, 133. See also Aryan paragraph; boycott; Hitler, Adolf; ‘‘Jewish question’’; legislation; National Socialism; National Socialist regime; racial ideology Arnade, Herbert, 175 Arndt, Ino, 5, 6 Arnim-Lützlow, Wilhelm von, 172 Arnold, Heinz, 156 Aryan certificate, 187–88, 189–90, 192, 281 n.62 Aryan paragraph, 24–25, 30, 62, 64–66, 76, 78, 103, 126, 144; Bonhoeffer on, 26, 27–28, 29–30; debate about, 37– 43, 44, 69–70, 72; ecumenical discussion of, 60–61; Erlangen support for, 40–41; protests against, 33–35, 45–49 Asmussen, Hans, 226, 233 Association of German Students, 2 Augsburg Synod (1935), 81, 94, 97 Auschwitz, 193

Bad Oeynhausen Synod (1936), 94 Baden, church of, 54–55 Baeck, Leo, 57, 59, 152, 161–62, 169 baptism, of Jews, 24, 111, 114–18 Barmen confession, 72, 75–76, 206; and non-Aryan Christians, 73–75 Barmen Synod, 80, 93, 113; tenth anniversary of, 217–18 Barth, Karl, 46, 47, 67, 72, 126–27; and Aryan paragraph, 31–32; and Barmen confession, 73–76; criticizes Confessing Church, 95, 231; after November 1938 pogrom, 151–52 Bauer, Walter, 210 Bavaria, church of, 78, 93, 119, 158. See also Meiser, Bishop Hans Bell, George, 50, 57, 59, 60, 132, 133, 155, 208, 227; and aid to emigrants, 62, 152–53, 154; statement of support for Jews of, 264 n.16 Benfey, Bruno, 127–29 Berlin Church Chancellery, and church musicians, 120–22. See also German Evangelical Church Berlin City Mission, 83 Bertram, Cardinal, 200 Bethel, 28 Bethel confession, 28–30, 49, 77 Bismarck, Otto von, 2 Blankenburg, Friedrich, 122 Bodelschwingh, Fritz von, 28, 32–33, 156 Boegner, Marc, 59 Böhm, Frank, 210 Böhme, Jakob, 39 Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, 25–30, 75, 82, 102, 119, 130, 193; and Aryan paragraph, 30, 35, 47; and Bethel confession, 49, 77–78; and ecumenical movement, 60–61, 134; and Freiburg memo, 210, 214; and November 1938 pogrom,

295

Index Bonhoeffer, Dietrich (cont.) 147; petition to National Synod of, 33, 43–44; refugee work of, 59; and Steglitz Synod, 96–97, 99 Bornkamm, Günther, 147, 267 n.17 boycott (1 April 1933), 12–17, 26; church responses to, 49–50, 56 Brandt, Wilhelm, 37 Braune, Paul, 156 Breit, Thomas, 108 Bremen, church of, 186 Brendel, Pastor, 116 Breslau Synod (August 1943), 206–7 Bronisch-Holtze, Ernst, 27, 95 Brown Synod, 30, 31, 35 Brunotte, Heinz, 176–77, 183–84, 197–98 Brunswick, church of, 188 Buber, Martin, 24, 67 Bultmann, Rudolf, 37, 69 Burghart, Hermann, 50, 58, 59 Cadman, S. Parkes, 63 Canaris, Wilhelm, 193 Catholic Church, 85, 230; and Catholic members of Freiburg group, 210; and concordat with Nazi regime, 34; on Nazi intermarriage laws, 200–201; and Protestant churches, 68, 131, 199; and work with Grüber office, 157 Chamberlain, Houston Stewart, 2 Chamberlain, Neville, 141 Chamby conference (1936), 130, 133. See also ecumenical movement; World Alliance for Promoting International Friendship through the Churches Christianity, and Judaism, 2, 5–6, 24. See also German Evangelical Church: and responses to state anti-Jewish measures; Judaism; Old Testament; theology, Christian: on Judaism Christian Social Party, 2 Christology, 11 ‘‘Church and the Jewish Question’’ (Bonhoeffer), 26–27

Church Federation, 51 Church Foreign Office, 51, 130, 132, 153– 54; and ecumenical movement, 59– 60, 135–36. See also Heckel, Theodor civil service, and legislation, 17–19. See also National Socialist regime: legislation of clergy: arrests of, 80; military conscription of, 144, 193; non-Aryan, 113. See also Aryan paragraph; Confessing Church: and non-Aryan members; German Evangelical Church concentration camps, 133 Confessing Church, 7, 25, 200–201; attacks on, 112–13, 136; divisions within, 93, 94; during the war, 169, 192, 205–10; and ecumenical movement, 133; memo to Hitler by, 133; ministry to Jews of, 114–19; and National Socialist regime, 108, 109, 231; and non-Aryan members, 79–80, 126– 29, 167, 172–74; and November pogrom, 143–52; paralysis of, 183, 267– 68 n.34; and persecution of Jews, 75– 76, 81–86, 94–100, 132, 135–36, 160– 62, 215, 218; postwar discussion of guilt of, 225, 235–36; and Steglitz, 98– 99, 100; and synods on Aryan paragraph, 29–30. See also Aryan paragraph; Barmen confession; Bonhoeffer, Dietrich; Council of Brethren; Dahlem Synod; ecumenical movement; German Christians; German Evangelical Church; Godesberg Declaration; Old Testament; Pastors’ Emergency League; Provisional Church Administration Council of Brethren, 79, 93, 158, 163, 224; and Godesberg Declaration, 180; and non-Aryan pastors, 117, 126, 187; in Silesia, 171, 172 Dahlem Synod, 79, 80, 93. See also Provisional Church Administration

296

Index Dähne, Ulrich, 189, 190 Daladier, Edouard, 141 Dannenbaum, Hans, 83 Darmstadt Synod (1948), 228 Dehn, Günther, 169 denazification, 234 Denmark, and response to German measures, 62, 175 Derichsweiler, 110 Dibelius, Martin, 133 Dibelius, Otto, 13–16, 50, 108–9, 133, 210, 233 Dickinson, Lord, 58–59 Diem, Hermann, 161, 198–99, 215, 227– 28. See also Württemberg Society Diestel, Max, 136 Dietze, Constantin von, 210, 214 Dipper, Theodor, 161 Dohnanyi, Hans von, 26, 193 Draeger, Margarete, 168

Erlangen Gutachten, 39–41 Eucken, Walter, 210 euthanasia, 199 Evangelical Central Council, 120. See also German Evangelical Church Evangelical Chancellery (Berlin), 124. See also German Evangelical Church Evangelical Church of Germany, 224, 226 Evian conference (1938), 135, 141, 153, 160, 265 n.3

ecclesiology, 73, 75 Ecumenical Council for Practical Christianity, 50 ecumenical movement: and Aryan paragraph, 31; and Godesberg Declaration, 181; and German church factions, 43, 57, 135–36; and German persecution of Jews, 49–53, 57–59, 59– 64, 134–35. See also Bell, George; Chamby conference; World Alliance for Promoting International Friendship through the Churches Ehrenberg, Hans, 24–25, 37, 129 Eidem, Bishop Erling, 53, 57, 59, 61, 68 Einstein, Albert, 16, 67 Eisner, Kurt, 116, 259 n.6 Elert, Werner, 39–41 emigration, 16, 58, 131–32, 152–54. See also Grüber, Heinrich; refugees; Siegmund-Schultze, Friedrich Enabling Act, 12 England, 63, 152–53 Enlightenment, 1

Fabricius, Cajus, 27 Fanø ecumenical meeting, 60, 130 Faust, 39 Feuchtwanger, Leon, 16 Fiedler, Otto, 51 Fiessler, K. A., 162 ‘‘final solution,’’ 141. See also National Socialist regime Finkenwalde seminarians, 96–99, 147 Flender, Harold, 175 foreign community: and press reactions to Nazi measures, 14–15, 16, 92; and response to persecution of Jews, 141–42 Foreign Office (German state), 43, 131 Forell, Birger, 53, 159 Forell, Friedrich, 64–65 Frankfurt, church of, 79 Freiburg memo, 210–14 Freudenberg, Adolf, 156 Frick, Wilhelm, 71, 80 Friedenthal, Charlotte, 155, 161, 193 Fritsch, Theodor, 2 funerals, of non-Aryan Christians, 118– 19 Fürle, Günther, 193, 194, 197 Fürst, Dr., 169 Fürstenheim, Frieda, 168 Gaus, Günter, 47 Gerhard, Maria, 161 German Christians, 11, 19, 23, 46, 62, 102, 108, 109, 112–13, 183; and Aryan paragraph, 25, 35, 44, 45; and Godes-

297

Index German Christians (cont.) berg Declaration, 176, 179–80; and non-Aryan clergy, 78–79, 128, 186; and postwar revision of record, 234– 35; strength in regional churches of, 93. See also Confessing Church; Müller, Ludwig; Old Testament; ‘‘positive Christianity’’ German Evangelical Church, 19, 31, 76, 80, 93, 136–37, 230; anti-Semitism among clergy of, 4–8; Aryan certificate for clergy of, 186; Aryan paragraph, 45, 70; central Berlin offices of, 20, 120, 177; and ecumenical movement, 50–53, 59–60, 62, 130, 132, 133, 135–36; and Godesberg Declaration, 181–82; Grüber office of, 156; and Nazi state, 94; and non-Aryan members, 20, 22, 114–19, 120–22, 124–25, 126–29; and November 1938 pogrom, 144; overseas congregations of, 51–52, 62; and regulations for non-Aryan Christians, 174–75, 176, 178–79, 184– 85; and responses to state anti-Jewish measures, 13–15, 17, 36, 53–57, 183– 84, 193–96, 201–2; and schools for non-Aryan children, 162–63, 166–67. See also Confessing Church; ecumenical movement; German Christians German Evangelical Church Federation (Kirchenbund), 49 Germany: foreign criticism of, 16, 50, 92; and popular response to anti-Jewish laws, 19 Gestapo, 124; and Grüber office, 158–59; and measures against churches, 79, 80, 95, 144, 146–47, 173, 217; pressures on Confessing Church by, 183, 192; and Staritz case, 171–72 Geyer, Christian, 116 Girkon, Pastor, 35, 37 Gleichschaltung, 20, 31 Godesberg Declaration, 176, 179–82, 187 Goebbels, Joseph, 141, 142, 199

Goerdeler, Karl, 210 Goethe, 91 Goetze, Pastor, 188 Goldmann, Erwin, 123 Goldstein, Ernst, 116 Gollwitzer, Helmut, 146–47, 241 n.2 Göring, Hermann, 12, 142–43 Gospel and Church group, 30 Gossner Mission, 173 Greiffenhagen, 173 Gross, Erich, 106 Grüber, Heinrich, 159, 191–92, 208, 235, 236; office of, 117, 155–59, 170, 193; and Oranienburg school, 168–69. See also Confessing Church: and nonAryan members, and persecution of Jews; emigration; refugees Grundmann, Walter, 70, 250 n.3 Grynszpan, Herschel, 142 guilt, postwar confessions of, 223–30; statements of 201, 203 Günther, V. A., 51 Gürtner, Franz, 148, 149 Gustloff, Wilhelm, 142 Gutachten, on Aryan paragraph, 41–42. See also Erlangen Gutachten; Marburg Gutachten Hafa, W., 162 Halfmann, Wilhelm, 104, 105–6 Hannover, church of, 93, 156, 193. See also Marahrens, August Hannover, Reformed church of, 102 Hapsburg monarchy, 1 Hardenberg, Karl von, 1 Harder, Günther, 116, 281 n.62 Heckel, Theodor, 59–61, 62, 130, 132, 137, 154, 181, 264 n.16 Hempel, Johannes, 63 Hengstenberg, Ernst-Wilhelm, 216 Henriod, Henri-Louis, 51, 61, 134, 154 Hermann, Rudolf, 36 Hess, Rudolf, 109 Hesse, Hermann Albert, 95, 216

298

Index Hesse, Helmut, 216 Hesse-Nassau, church of, 188 Heydrich, Reinhard, 142, 143 Hildebrandt, Franz, 25, 96–97, 137–38; fights Aryan paragraph, 31, 43–44; flees, 153–54 Hirsch, Emanuel, 62, 249 n.64 Hitler, Adolf, 51, 55, 91–92, 109, 111, 136–37, 141–43, 202–3, 234; Confessing Church memo to, 107, 133; Pastors’ Emergency League telegram to, 231–32 Höchstädter, Emil, 216, 217 Höchstädter, Walter, 217–18 Holland, 16, 52, 62 Hornig, Ernst, 64–65, 171 Hosemann, Johannes, 56, 171, 172 Humburg, Paul, 8 Hunsche, Klara, 161, 167, 168–69 ideology. See anti-Semitism; National Socialism Inner Mission, 2, 57, 82–83, 85 intact churches. See Lutheran churches intercessory prayer lists, 110, 183 intermarriage. See legislation: on intermarriage Irenaeus, Bishop, 59 Israel: Christian theological perspectives on, 23–24, 26, 27, 77, 106, 111–12, 151; Confessing Church statements on, 206–7 Iwand, Hans-Joachim, 241 n.2 Jacobi, Gerhard, 26, 30 Jacobs, Helene, 161 Jacobsen, Justus, 118 Jan, Julius von, 144–46, 148, 149, 232–33 Jannasch, Wilehlm, 151, 200, 202, 230 Jasper, Gerhard, 76–77 ‘‘Jewish question’’, 108; Bonhoeffer on, 25, 60; in Freiburg memorandum, 211, 213–14; Protestant discussions of, 6, 11–12, 53–57, 70–72, 80, 100–

102, 103–7, 130, 155; theological statements on, 23–25, 39–40, 110–12, 113. See also anti-Semitism; National Socialism: racial ideology of Jews, 1, 51, 90, 152–53; baptism and conversion of, 77, 101, 124–25, 127–28, 228, 260 n.21; and Jewish relief organizations, 57–58; lack of support for, 141–43, 151; legislation against, 17– 19, 157, 169; persecution of, 12, 14, 84, 141–43, 159, 193, 211–12, 215, 218, 225; postwar church attitudes toward, 227, 228–29; statistics about, 254 n.10, 268 n.50; suicides of, 208–9; support for, 21, 57–59, 60–61, 63, 67–68, 69, 107, 155–62; theological perspectives on, 23, 37, 103–7. See also antiSemitism; Judenmission; November 1938 pogrom Joseph II, 1 Judaism, 1, 24, 104 Judenmission, 5, 11, 77, 95 Junge Kirche, 61, 65, 68, 70, 113, 150, 234 Kapler, Hermann, 50, 51, 55 Kassel, church of, 20–21 Kaufmann, Franz, 160–61 Keller, Adolf, 51, 155 Kerrl, Hanns, 94, 96, 108, 116, 179, 182, 183, 193–94 Kessel, Fritz, 99 Kinder, Christian, 234–35 Kirchenkampf, 25, 26, 230–37. See also Confessing Church; German Christians; Pastors’ Emergency League Kittel, Gerhard, 77, 111–12 Klepper, Jochen, 13, 141, 153, 158–59, 208–9, 233 Klügel, Eberhard, 156 Knak, Siegfried, 37, 95 Köberle, Adolf, 6–7 Koch, Karl, 30, 35–36, 81, 93, 94, 129, 130, 133, 183, 189, 190, 192 Koechlin, Alphons, 193

299

Index Koopmann, Otto, 35 Krakauer, Max, 161 Krause, Reinhold, 46, 64 Kristallnacht. See November 1938 pogrom Kritzinger, Friedrich, 199 Kube, Wilhelm, 83 Kübel, Johannes, 17, 79 Kupisch, Karl, 53–54, 229, 234 Kurhessen-Waldeck, church of, 118 Kurtz, Adolf, 156, 167, 168, 173 Kuttner, Hildgard, 168, 169

London, German congregation of, 153– 54 loyalty oath controversy, 147. See also Confessing Church: divisions within Lübeck, church of, 117 Lücking, Karl, 37 Ludwig, Emil Cohn, 16 Luther, Martin, 112, 116, 147, 196 Lutheran churches, 44, 93, 234 Lutheran World Federation, 150

Laible, Wilhelm, 66–67 Lamm, Hans, 59, 152 Lammers, Hans-Heinrich, 204–5 Lamparter, Eduard, 4–5 Lampe, Adolf, 210 Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor, 89 League of Nations, 231 Leffler, Siegfried, 112 legislation, 152; anti-Jewish, 26, 84, 89– 93, 117–18, 142, 157, 163; and church officials, 30, 121–22, 200–201; civil service, 17–19; defining Jews and nonAryans, 254 n.3; on intermarriage, 90, 114–15, 116, 200–201 Leibholz, Gerhard, 25, 31, 119 Lempp, Albert, 215 Lempp circle, 215–18 Leo, Paul, 127–28 Lesser, Friedrich-Karl, 124 Leutheuser, Julius, 112 Licht und Leben (periodical), 68 Life and Work, 59–60, 62, 134–35. See also ecumenical movement Lilje, Hanns, 52, 63, 133, 150, 229, 234 Linck, Hugo, 161, 232 Lisbon, German congregation of, 52 Livingstone, Laura, 158 Loerzer, Fritz, 44 Lohmeyer, Ernst, 37

Maas, Hermann, 59, 130–31, 132, 155 Mann, Golo, 3–4 Manning, Gordon, 50 Marahrens, August, 44, 93, 94, 98, 108, 137–38, 154, 156, 182, 201–2, 203, 223; and non-Aryan pastors, 126–28 Marburg Gutachten, 38–39, 69, 81, 82, 244 n.38 Mark Brandenburg, church of, 187 Marr, Wilhelm, 2 Marxism, 7 Meckenburg, church of, 117, 177, 194 Mein Kampf, 8 Meiser, Bishop Hans, 35, 44, 93, 95–96, 98, 158, 182, 215, 216–17 Meissner, Otto, 170, 172 Menn, Wilhelm, 13 Merz, Georg, 69 Meschke, Kurt, 159 Meusel, Marga, 81–86, 95, 97, 107, 124, 154, 161, 236 Michaelis, Walter, 55, 68 Monod, Wilfred, 59 Moravian Church 162, 163 Mörike, Otto, 161 Mulert, Hermann, 68 Müller, Fritz, 108 Müller, Hans Michael, 66 Müller, Kurt, 161 Müller, Ludwig, 35, 45, 59, 63, 65; and Aryan paragraph, 64, 71–72; at National Synod, 43–44. See also German Christians; Reich Bishop

300

Index Munich agreement, 141–42 Murr, Wilhelm, 205 Muzzle Law (1934), 71 Nassau-Hesse, church of, 194 nationalism, 6; in churches, 39–40, 49, 233–34; in Confessing Church, 231–32 National Socialism, 6–8, 141; racial ideology of, 11, 17–18, 16, 60, 67. See also anti-Semitism; ‘‘positive Christianity’’; racial ideology National Socialist Party, 3, 12; and churches, 50, 56, 83–84, 95–96; and party program Article 24 on religion, 14, 20, 102, 109 National Socialist regime, 12, 22, 101, 157; anti-Jewish legislation of, 17–19, 89–93, 117–18, 152, 163, 169, 200– 201; church protests against, 209; measures against Confessing Church of, 107–8, 109–10, 143–44, 155, 192– 93, 217; and regulations affecting churches, 96, 99, 108, 109, 250 n.23. See also Hitler, Adolf; legislation; state, church attitudes toward National Synod (September 1933), 25, 30, 43; and Gutachten, 38, 41–42 Niemann, Karl, 116 Niemann, Pastor, 188 Niemöller, Martin, 44, 71, 82, 96–97, 124, 150, 187, 224–25, 229, 232; arrest of, 109, 153; and Aryan paragraph, 30– 31, 32–33, 47, 48; and Bethel confession, 49, 77–78; and early antiSemitism, 46–47; postwar statements of guilt by, 45, 227 Niemöller, Wilhelm, 76, 100, 235 non-Aryan Christians, 17–18, 20, 22, 25, 29, 95, 205–6; and Bethel confession, 28; ecumenical attitudes toward, 130– 31; numbers of, 31, 131; and question of separate congregations, 38, 76, 77– 78, 82, 110; pressures on, 84, 108; relief efforts for, 57–58, 78; and Staritz

case, 170–72; status debated, 120–22, 193–98, 199; support for, 81, 177–78, 207–8, 209 non-Aryan clergy, 33, 48, 186, 269 n.63; emigration of, 154; lack of support for, 36, 37–38, 41–43, 70; measures against, 64–65 Norway, response to German measures, 52, 63 November 1938 pogrom, 129, 141–43, 204, 212, 232, 266 n.10 Novi Sad ecumenical meeting, 59–60 Nuelsen, John, 50 Nuremberg Laws, 59, 84, 89–93, 101, 116, 132, 212 Oldenburg Church Council, 228 Old Prussian Union Church, 31, 80, 93, 96, 106, 169, 181, 186–87; October 1943 synod, 207–8, 209–10; September 1942 synod, 205–6 Old Testament, 22; defense of, 11, 70–71, 79, 80, 112, 195, 206; GermanChristian statements on, 27, 45–46 Olympic Games (1936), 92 Operation 7, 193. See also Bonhoeffer, Dietrich; Friedenthal, Charlotte Oranienburg Street Family School, 167– 68, 174 Oxford conference (1937), 134–35. See also ecumenical movement Palestine, 136–37 Pastors’ Emergency League, 33, 44, 94, 231; on Aryan paragraph, 45–49, 65– 66, 71; guidelines of, 73, 189; pledge of, 36, 46–48, 143–44, 186–87. See also Niemöller, Martin Paulusbund, 123–24 Pechmann, Wilhelm von, 54–56, 75–76, 102 Perels, Friedrich Justus, 193 Polnauer, Richard, 152 ‘‘positive Christianity,’’ 20, 110

301

Index prayer liturgy controversy, 267–68 n.34 press: Protestant, 5, 6, 14, 66–69; foreign, 49, 50; Nazi, 12 Preysing, Konrad von, 200 Protestant church. See German Evangelical Church Protestant Inner Mission. See Inner Mission Protestant School Association, 162 Provisional Church Administration, 79– 80, 93, 94, 98, 108, 109, 110, 124–25, 165–66, 181, 186; and ecumenical movement, 136; and Godesberg Declaration, 182; and non-Aryan clergy, 126, 154, 196; memo to Hitler by, 107; and persecution of Jews, 95, 144, 155; and schools, 163–64, 169; and Steglitz, 96, 100. See also Confessing Church; German Evangelical Church; Lutheran churches Prussia, 1 Prussian General Synod (September 1933). See Brown Synod Quakers, 152 Quervain, Alfred de, 106 Rabenau, Eitel-Friedrich von, 45, 169 racial ideology, 77, 80; 1933 Gutachten on, 40–42, 111; church support for, 25, 101, 103; in Freiburg memorandum, 214; in Godesberg declaration 182; theological critiques of, 23, 28, 39, 107. See also anti-Semitism; Erlangen Gutachten; Marburg Gutachten; National Socialism Rade, Martin, 101–2, 110, 119 Rath, Ernst vom, 142, 157 Rauch, Wendelin, 210 Reformed churches, 94; and confessional synod (January 1934), 72 refugees, 51, 57–64, 133–35, 137–38. See also Evian conference Rehm, Wilhelm, 113

Reich Association of Jews in Germany, 157, 168 Reich Association of non-Aryan Christians, 79, 123 Reich Bishop, 28, 70. See also Müller, Ludwig; Reich Church Reich Central Security Department, 159, 172 Reich Chamber of Music, 120–22 Reich Church, 19, 30, 71, 113 Reich Church Committee, 94, 96, 102–3, 108, 124, 126, 132. See also Zoellner, Wilhelm Reich Citizens Law, 89 Reich Interior Ministry, 124, 131 Reich Law for the Restoration of the Civil Service, 17–19, 36 Reich Minister for Church Affairs. See Kerrl, Hanns Reichstag, 12, 91 Reisner, Erwin, 117–18, 168 relief work, in Germany, 155–62 Rendtorff, Bishop Heinrich, 55–56 reparations, of Freiburg memo, 211–12 resistance groups, 193. See also Operation 7 Rhineland, church of, 70–71, 110, 196 Rhineland Brotherhood, 34 Richter, Julius, 60, 153 Richter, Martin, 248 n.52 Ritchie, Frank, 59 Ritter, Gerhard, 210 Ritter, Karl Bernhard, 46 Roman Catholic Church, relief efforts of, 57–58 Rome, German congregation in, 52 Rosenberg, Alfred, 108 Rott, Wilhelm, 193 Rust, Bernhard, 19, 101 sa (Sturmabteilung), 12 Sasse, Martin, 147 Sasse, Hermann, 20, 28, 30–31, 110 Saxony, church of, 70, 78, 100, 174; Coun-

302

Index cil of Brethren in, 116, 187; German Christians in, 180–81; opposition to ministry and membership of nonAryans in, 117, 194 Schacht, Hjalmar, 153 Schaeder, Hilde, 161 Schäfer, Dr. 169 Scharf, Kurt, 45 Schlatter, Adolf, 104–5, 195 Schleswig-Holstein, church of, 194 Schmidt, Adolf, 190–91 Schmidt, Albert, 129 Schmidt, Gerhard, 112 Schmidt, Karl Ludwig, 67 Schmidt-Henrici, Walter, 66 Schöffel, Bishop Simon, 115 Scholder, Klaus, 17 schools, 100–101; for Jews, 101; for nonAryan Christians, 131, 162–69; and racial legislation, 17–18, 19 Schreiber, August, 51, 52, 63 Schultz, Bishop Walther, 177 Schultz, Georg, 34 Schweitzer, Carl, 103, 215 Seeberg, Reinhold, 70 Seidmann, Bernhard, 122 Shanghai, emigration to, 153 Siegmund-Schultze, Friedrich, 49–50, 60–61, 68; and relief work, 57–59, 62, 131, 132 Silesia, church of, 170–72. See also Staritz, Katharina Soden, Hans von, 171 Söderblom, Nathan, 53 Sofia, ecumenical meeting in, 43, 60–61 Söhngen, Oskar, 120–33 Spiero, Heinrich, 123 Spiritual Confidential Council, 197 Sports Palace rally, 45–46, 64. See also German Christians Staewen, Gertrud, 43–44, 161, 174 Stahn, Julius, 96 Stallmann, Martin, 98 Stange, Erich, 50, 133

Staritz, Katharina, 161, 169–73 state, church attitudes toward, 22, 26, 29, 82, 84, 128 Steck, Elsie, 161 Steglitz Synod (1935), 84–85, 94–99. See also Confessing Church: synods on Aryan paragraph; Meusel, Marga; Nuremberg Laws Steil, Ludwig, 23, 37, 189 Steinbauer, Karl, 188 Steiner, Ernst, 173 Steinmetz, Melanie, 161 Stoecker, Adolf, 2, 6, 83, 149, 195 Stoll, Gerhard, 66–69 Stoltenhoff, Ernst, 13 Strathmann, Hermann, 42 Streicher, Julius, 112 Der Stürmer (periodical), 89, 91, 103, 115– 16, 118 Stuttgart Confession of Guilt, 44, 226, 233 Sutz, Erwin, 25 Sweden, 53, 63–64 Sydow Brotherhood, 34 Sylten, Werner, 159, 168 Tecklenburg confession, 23 Theological Existence Today (periodical), 32, 73 theology, Christian, 26; and Aryan paragraph, 37–43; in Barmen confession, 72–76; on Judaism, 11, 28–29. See also Barth, Karl; Bonhoeffer, Dietrich; Confessing Church; Erlangen Gutachten; Marburg Gutachten Thielicke, Helmut, 210, 214 Thieme, Karl, 231 Thimme, Hans, 189, 191 Thuringia, church of, 112, 147, 156; and exclusion of non-Aryan Christians, 117, 176–77, 194 Treitschke, Heinrich von, 149 Treysa meeting, 224–25

303

Index Uhsadel, Walter, 114 United States, 63 universities, and racial legislation, 17– 18, 19, 39, 66 veterans, 17–18, 89 Vischer, Wilhelm, 22, 28, 49, 151 Visser ’t Hooft, Willem, 154 Vogel, Heinrich, 46, 97 Wach, Joachim, 78 Wagner, Richard, 2 Wahl, Hans, 63 Walcher, Pastor (Rome), 52 Waldensians, 52 Wannsee Conference, 193 war, church statements about, 203–4 Weimar Republic, 3–5 Weissensee Synod, 229–30 Weissler, Friedrich, 107 Welczek, Ambassador, 142 Welle, Ivar, 63 Werner, Friedrich, 186, 187 Westphalia, church of, 23, 70–71, 93, 187–88, 189–90; and non-Aryan pastors, 129; postwar statement of guilt of, 228. See also Koch, Karl Wienken (Catholic prelate), 59 Wilhelm II, 2

Wittenberg Synod, 37. See also National Synod Wobbermin, Georg, 69 Wolf, Erik, 210 Wolff, Lily, 168, 169 Wolff, Richard, 123 World Alliance for Promoting International Friendship through the Churches, 43, 50, 62, 131–32; and Bonhoeffer, 31; ecumenical meetings of, 60–61, 130–31; refugee work of, 58–59 Wurm, Bishop Theophil, 44, 93, 103, 115, 148–49, 182, 197, 210, 217, 223, 224, 226, 231; protests against Nazi regime of, 194–96, 198–205 Wurth, Klaus, 55 Württemberg, church of, 93, 145. See also Wurm, Bishop Theophil. Württemberg Society, 161, 227 Young Reformation Movement, 22, 33, 35, 43, 240 n.9 Zänker, Otto, 49 Zoellner, Wilhelm, 94, 103, 132, 133 Zuckschwerdt, Carl, 116 Zwanzger, Johannes, 158

304