German Christians
Encyclopedia
The Deutsche Christen (German Christians) were a pressure group and movement within German Protestantism
aligned towards the antisemitic and Führerprinzip
ideological principles of Nazism
with the goal to align German Protestantism as a whole towards those principles. Their advocacy of these principles led to a schism
within the German Protestant church
and the attendant foundation of the rival Confessing Church
in Germany
.
, before the Weimar Republic
, the Protestant churches (Landeskirche
n) in Germany were divided along state and provincial
borders. Each state or provincial church was supported by and affiliated with the regnal house
—if it was Protestant—of its particular region; the crown provided financial and institutional support for its church. Church and state
were therefore, to a large extent, combined on a regional basis. Monarchies of Catholic dynasties also organised church bodies territorially defined by their state borders. The same was true for the three republican German states within the pre-1918 Empire.
and the resulting political and social turmoil, the regional churches lost their secular rulers. With revolutionary fervor in the air, the conservative church leaders had to contend with socialists who favored disestablishment.
After considerable political maneuvering, state churches were abolished (in name) under Weimar, but the anti-disestablishmentarians prevailed in substance: churches remained public corporations and retained their subsidies from government. Religious instruction in the schools continued, as did the theological faculties in the universities. The rights formerly held by the princes in the German Empire simply devolved to church councils.
Accordingly, in this initial period of the Weimar Republic
, the Protestant Church in Germany now operated as a federation
of 28 regional (or provincial) churches. The federation operated officially through the representative Church League (Deutscher Evangelischer Kirchenbund); the League was itself established in 1922 by the Church General Assembly (Kirchentag), which was composed of the members of the various provincial churches. The League was governed and administered by a 36-member Executive Committee (Kirchenausschuss) which was responsible for ongoing governance between the annual conventions of the Kirchentag.
Save for the organizational matters under the jurisdiction of the national League, the provincial churches remained independent in other matters, including theology, and the federal system allowed for a great deal of regional autonomy.
Their movement was sustained and encouraged by factors such as:
The Deutsche Christen were sympathetic to the Nazi regime's goal of "co-ordinating" (see Gleichschaltung
) the individual Protestant churches into a single and uniform Reich
church, consistent with the Volk ethos and the Führerprinzip
.
Hitler was appointed Chancellor on 30 January 1933 and the process of Gleichschaltung was in its full sway in the first few months of the regime. In late April 1933 the leadership of the old Protestant federation, in the spirit of the new regime, agreed to write a new constitution for a brand new, unitary "national" church, which would be called the German Evangelical Church (Deutsche Evangelische Kirche or DEK). The new and unified national DEK would completely replace and supersede the old federated church with its representative league.
This church reorganization had been a goal of the Deutsche Christen for some time, as such a centralization would enhance the coordination of Church and State, as a part of the overall Nazi process of Gleichschaltung. The Deutsche Christen agitated for Müller to be elected as the new Church's bishop (Reichsbischof).
as Reichsbischof of the new Protestant Reich Church
by a wide margin, largely on the advice and support of the church leadership.
Needless to say, Hitler was infuriated with the rejection of his candidate, and things began to change. By June 1933 the Deutsche Christen had gained leadership of some Landeskirche
n within the DEK and were, of course, supported by Nazi propaganda in their efforts to reverse the humiliating loss to Bodelschwingh. After a series of Nazi-directed political maneuvers, Bodelschwingh resigned and Müller was appointed as the new Reichsbischof in July 1933.
, effectively defrocking
clergy of Jewish descent and even clergy married to non-Aryans.
With their Gleichschaltungspolitik and their attempts to incorporate the Aryan Paragraph into the church constitution so as to exclude Jewish Christians, the Deutsche Christen entered into a Kirchenkampf
with other evangelical Christians. Their opponents founded the Confessing Church
in 1934, which condemned the Deutsche Christen as heretics and claimed to be the true German Protestant Church.
The Deutsche Christen were supportive of the Nazi
ideas about race. They issued public statements that Christians in Germany with Jewish ancestors "remain Christians in a New Testament sense, but are not German Christians." Also they supported the call from the Nazi party platform for a "positive Christianity
" that does not stress human sinfulness. Some went so far as to call for removal of the "Jewish" Old Testament
from the Bible
. Their symbol was a traditional Christian cross with a swastika
in the middle and the group's German initials "D" and "C". It was claimed and remembered, as a "fact", that the Jews had killed Christ, thus appealing to and actively encouraging existing anti-Semitic sentiment among Christians in Germany.
came from certain Protestant groups of the German Empire
. These groups sought a return to perceived völkisch
, nationalistic and racist ideas within traditional Christianity, and looked to turn Christianity in Germany into a reformed intrinsic folk-religion . They found their model in the Berlin Hofprediger Adolf Stoecker
, who was politically active and tried to position the Christian working-classes and lower-middle-classes against what he perceived as Jewish "Überfremdung
".
In 1896 Arthur Bonus advocated a "Germanization of Christianity". Max Bewer alleged in his 1907 book Der deutsche Christus (The German Christ), Jesus stemmed from German soldiers in the Roman garrison in Galilee and his preaching showed the influence of "German blood". He concluded that the Germans were the best Christians among all peoples, only prevented from the full flowering of their spiritual faculties by the materialistic Jews. Julius Bode, however, concluded that the Christianisation of the Germans was the imposition of an "un-German" religious understanding, and that Germanic feeling remained alien to it and so should remain exempt from it.
, in 1917, the Flensburg pastor Friedrich Andersen, the writer Adolf Bartels
and Hans Paul Freiherr von Wolzogen presented 95 Thesen on which a "German Christianity on a Protestant basis" should be founded. It stated :
For the authors of the Thesen, the "angry thunder-god" Jehovah
was the same as the "Father" and "[Holy] Ghost", that Christ preached and that the Germans would have guessed. Childlike confidence in God and selfless love was, to them, the essence of the Germanic "people's-soul" in contrast to Jewish "menial fear of God" and "materialistic morality." Church was not an "institution for the dissemination of Judaism", and they felt religious and confirmation materials should no longer teach the Old Testament and the Ten Commandments, nor even the New Testament, which they held to be of Jewish influence that had to be "cleaned" so that the child Jesus could be used as a model for "self sacrifice" and "male heroism".
In 1921 Andersen wrote Der deutsche Heiland (The German Saviour), in which he opposed Jewish migration as an apocalyptic decision:
Against the "contamination by Jewish ideas", mainly from the Old Testament, the Churches and Germany should (he argued) be "mutually benefits and supports", and then Christianity would win back its status as "a religion of the Volk and of the struggle" and "the great exploiter of humanity, the evil enemy of our Volk [would] finally be destroyed".
In the same year, 1921, the Protestant-dominated and völkisch-oriented League for German Churches was founded in Berlin. Andersen, pastor Ernst Bublitz and teacher Kurd Joachim Niedlich brought out the twice-monthly The German Church magazine, which in 12,000 articles advanced the Bunds ideas. Jesus should be a "tragic-Nordic figure" against the Old Testament's "religious idea", with the Old Testament replaced by a "German myth". Each biblical story was to be "measured under German feelings, so that German Christianity escapes from Semitic influence as Beelzebub did before the Cross."
In 1925 groups such as the Bund united with ten völkisch, Germanophile
and anti-Semitic organizations to form the German Christian Working Group . The Christian-Spirit Religious Society , founded in 1927 in Nuremberg by Artur Dinter
, saw more effect in the churches, striving for the 'de-Judification' and the building of a non-denominational People's Church .
The proposed abolition of the Old Testament
was in part fiercely opposed among Christian German nationalists, seeing it as a racist attack on the foundations of their faith from inside and outside. The theologian Johannes Schneider, a member of the German National People's Party
( or DNVP) (a party fairly close to the political aims of the NSDAP), wrote in 1925:
In 1927 the Protestant Church League reacted to the growing radicalization of German Christian groups with a Churches Day in Königsberg, aiming to clarify Christianity's relation to "Fatherland", "Nation", "Volkstum
", "Blood" and "Race". Many local church-officers tried to delineate, such as with regards to racism, but this only served to show how deeply it had intruded into their thinking. Paul Althaus
, for example, wrote:
On this basis, the radical German-Christians ideas were hardly slowed down. In 1928 they gathered in Thuringia
to found the Thuringian German Christians' Church Movement , seeking contact with the Nazi party and naming their newsletter "Letters to German Christians" .
's book The Myth of the Twentieth Century
resonated in these circles and gave them renewed impetus. His polemic against all "un-German" and "root-stock" elements in Christianity was directed against the Christianity and the denominational organisations of the time. Marxism
and Catholic Internationalism
were attacked as two facets of the Jewish spirit, and Rosenberg stated the need for a new national religion to complete the Reformation.
The Associated German Religious Movement , founded in Eisenach at the end of 1933, was also an attempt to create a national religion outside and against the churches. It combined six earlier Nordic-völkisch oriented groups and a further five groups were represented by individual members. Jakob Wilhelm Hauer
became the group's "leader and representative" by acclamation, and other members included the philosopher Ernst Bergmann (1881–1945), the racial ideologue Hans F. K. Günther, the writer Ernst Graf zu Reventlow
, the historian Herman Wirth, Ludwig Fahrenkrog
and Lothar Stengel-von Rutkowski..
. One of its main tasks was to compile a "People's Testament" in the sense of what Alfred Rosenberg
called a "Fifth Gospel", to announce the myth of the "Aryan Jesus". It became clear in 1994 that the Testament's poetic text was written by the famous ballad-poet and proprietor of the Eugen-Diederichs-Verlag, Lulu von Strauß und Torney. Despite broad church support for it (even many Confessing Christians advocated such an approach, in the hope that the disaffiliation
of 1937 to 1940 could be curbed), the first edition of the text did not meet with the expected enthusiastic response.
. German Christian-related parties sought to influence the historiography of the Kirchenkampf in the so-called "church-historical working group", but they had little effect from then on in theology and politics. Other former members of the German Christians moved into the numerically insignificant religious communities known as the Free People's Christian Church and the People's Movement of Free Church Christians after 1945.
Protestantism
Protestantism is one of the three major groupings within Christianity. It is a movement that began in Germany in the early 16th century as a reaction against medieval Roman Catholic doctrines and practices, especially in regards to salvation, justification, and ecclesiology.The doctrines of the...
aligned towards the antisemitic and Führerprinzip
Führerprinzip
The Führerprinzip , German for "leader principle", prescribes the fundamental basis of political authority in the governmental structures of the Third Reich...
ideological principles of Nazism
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
with the goal to align German Protestantism as a whole towards those principles. Their advocacy of these principles led to a schism
Schism (religion)
A schism , from Greek σχίσμα, skhísma , is a division between people, usually belonging to an organization or movement religious denomination. The word is most frequently applied to a break of communion between two sections of Christianity that were previously a single body, or to a division within...
within the German Protestant church
Evangelical Church in Germany
The Evangelical Church in Germany is a federation of 22 Lutheran, Unified and Reformed Protestant regional church bodies in Germany. The EKD is not a church in a theological understanding because of the denominational differences. However, the member churches share full pulpit and altar...
and the attendant foundation of the rival Confessing Church
Confessing Church
The Confessing Church was a Protestant schismatic church in Nazi Germany that arose in opposition to government-sponsored efforts to nazify the German Protestant church.-Demographics:...
in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
.
The Imperial Period
During the period of the German EmpireGerman Empire
The German Empire refers to Germany during the "Second Reich" period from the unification of Germany and proclamation of Wilhelm I as German Emperor on 18 January 1871, to 1918, when it became a federal republic after defeat in World War I and the abdication of the Emperor, Wilhelm II.The German...
, before the Weimar Republic
Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic is the name given by historians to the parliamentary republic established in 1919 in Germany to replace the imperial form of government...
, the Protestant churches (Landeskirche
Landeskirche
In Germany and Switzerland, a Landeskirche is the church of a region. They originated as the national churches of the independent states, States of Germany or Cantons of Switzerland , that later unified to form modern Germany or modern Switzerland , respectively.-Origins in the Holy Roman...
n) in Germany were divided along state and provincial
Province
A province is a territorial unit, almost always an administrative division, within a country or state.-Etymology:The English word "province" is attested since about 1330 and derives from the 13th-century Old French "province," which itself comes from the Latin word "provincia," which referred to...
borders. Each state or provincial church was supported by and affiliated with the regnal house
Royal family
A royal family is the extended family of a king or queen regnant. The term imperial family appropriately describes the extended family of an emperor or empress, while the terms "ducal family", "grand ducal family" or "princely family" are more appropriate to describe the relatives of a reigning...
—if it was Protestant—of its particular region; the crown provided financial and institutional support for its church. Church and state
State religion
A state religion is a religious body or creed officially endorsed by the state...
were therefore, to a large extent, combined on a regional basis. Monarchies of Catholic dynasties also organised church bodies territorially defined by their state borders. The same was true for the three republican German states within the pre-1918 Empire.
Weimar
With the end of World War IWorld War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
and the resulting political and social turmoil, the regional churches lost their secular rulers. With revolutionary fervor in the air, the conservative church leaders had to contend with socialists who favored disestablishment.
After considerable political maneuvering, state churches were abolished (in name) under Weimar, but the anti-disestablishmentarians prevailed in substance: churches remained public corporations and retained their subsidies from government. Religious instruction in the schools continued, as did the theological faculties in the universities. The rights formerly held by the princes in the German Empire simply devolved to church councils.
Accordingly, in this initial period of the Weimar Republic
Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic is the name given by historians to the parliamentary republic established in 1919 in Germany to replace the imperial form of government...
, the Protestant Church in Germany now operated as a federation
Federation
A federation , also known as a federal state, is a type of sovereign state characterized by a union of partially self-governing states or regions united by a central government...
of 28 regional (or provincial) churches. The federation operated officially through the representative Church League (Deutscher Evangelischer Kirchenbund); the League was itself established in 1922 by the Church General Assembly (Kirchentag), which was composed of the members of the various provincial churches. The League was governed and administered by a 36-member Executive Committee (Kirchenausschuss) which was responsible for ongoing governance between the annual conventions of the Kirchentag.
Save for the organizational matters under the jurisdiction of the national League, the provincial churches remained independent in other matters, including theology, and the federal system allowed for a great deal of regional autonomy.
The Deutsche Christen
Ideology
The Deutsche Christen were, for the most part, a "group of fanatically Nazi Protestants." They began as an interest group and eventually came to represent one of the schismatic factions of German Protestanism.Their movement was sustained and encouraged by factors such as:
- the 400th anniversary (in 1917) of Martin LutherMartin LutherMartin Luther was a German priest, professor of theology and iconic figure of the Protestant Reformation. He strongly disputed the claim that freedom from God's punishment for sin could be purchased with money. He confronted indulgence salesman Johann Tetzel with his Ninety-Five Theses in 1517...
's posting of the Ninety-Five Theses in 1517, an event which served to endorse German nationalismNationalismNationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
, to emphasize that Germany had a preferred place in the Protestant tradition, and to legitimize antisemitism. This was reinforced by the Luther Renaissance Movement of Professor Emmanuel Hirsch. - the revival of völkisch traditions
- the de-emphasis of the Old TestamentOld TestamentThe Old Testament, of which Christians hold different views, is a Christian term for the religious writings of ancient Israel held sacred and inspired by Christians which overlaps with the 24-book canon of the Masoretic Text of Judaism...
in Protestant theology, and the removal of parts deemed "too Jewish"MarcionismMarcionism was an Early Christian dualist belief system that originated in the teachings of Marcion of Sinope at Rome around the year 144; see also Christianity in the 2nd century.... - the respect for temporal (secular) authority, which had been emphasized by Luther and has ample scriptural support (RomansEpistle to the RomansThe Epistle of Paul to the Romans, often shortened to Romans, is the sixth book in the New Testament. Biblical scholars agree that it was composed by the Apostle Paul to explain that Salvation is offered through the Gospel of Jesus Christ...
13)
The Deutsche Christen were sympathetic to the Nazi regime's goal of "co-ordinating" (see Gleichschaltung
Gleichschaltung
Gleichschaltung , meaning "coordination", "making the same", "bringing into line", is a Nazi term for the process by which the Nazi regime successively established a system of totalitarian control and tight coordination over all aspects of society. The historian Richard J...
) the individual Protestant churches into a single and uniform Reich
Reich
Reich is a German word cognate with the English rich, but also used to designate an empire, realm, or nation. The qualitative connotation from the German is " sovereign state." It is the word traditionally used for a variety of sovereign entities, including Germany in many periods of its history...
church, consistent with the Volk ethos and the Führerprinzip
Führerprinzip
The Führerprinzip , German for "leader principle", prescribes the fundamental basis of political authority in the governmental structures of the Third Reich...
.
Formation
The Deutsche Christen were organized in 1931 to help win elections in the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union, the largest of the independent Landeskirchen. They were led by Ludwig Müller, a rather incompetent "old fighter" who had no particular leadership skills or qualifications, except having been a longtime faithful Nazi. The group achieved no particular notoriety before the Nazi assumption of political power in January 1933. In the church elections of November 1932, Deutsche Christen won two thirds of the vote.Hitler was appointed Chancellor on 30 January 1933 and the process of Gleichschaltung was in its full sway in the first few months of the regime. In late April 1933 the leadership of the old Protestant federation, in the spirit of the new regime, agreed to write a new constitution for a brand new, unitary "national" church, which would be called the German Evangelical Church (Deutsche Evangelische Kirche or DEK). The new and unified national DEK would completely replace and supersede the old federated church with its representative league.
This church reorganization had been a goal of the Deutsche Christen for some time, as such a centralization would enhance the coordination of Church and State, as a part of the overall Nazi process of Gleichschaltung. The Deutsche Christen agitated for Müller to be elected as the new Church's bishop (Reichsbischof).
The Bishopric
Unfortunately for the Nazis, Müller had poor political skills, little political support within the Church and no real qualifications for the job, other than his commitment to Nazism and a desire to exercise power. When the federation council met in May 1933 to approve the new constitution, it elected Friedrich von BodelschwinghFriedrich von Bodelschwingh
Friedrich von Bodelschwingh, Junior was a German theologian and public health advocate. His father was Friedrich von Bodelschwingh, Senior , founder of the Bodelschwinghsche Anstalten Bethel charitable foundations.-Public health activities:Friedrich was the son of Reverend Friedrich von...
as Reichsbischof of the new Protestant Reich Church
Protestant Reich Church
The Protestant Reich Church, officially German Evangelical Church and colloquially Reichskirche, was formed in 1936 to merge the 28 regional churches into a unified state church that espoused a single doctrine compatible with National Socialism...
by a wide margin, largely on the advice and support of the church leadership.
Needless to say, Hitler was infuriated with the rejection of his candidate, and things began to change. By June 1933 the Deutsche Christen had gained leadership of some Landeskirche
Landeskirche
In Germany and Switzerland, a Landeskirche is the church of a region. They originated as the national churches of the independent states, States of Germany or Cantons of Switzerland , that later unified to form modern Germany or modern Switzerland , respectively.-Origins in the Holy Roman...
n within the DEK and were, of course, supported by Nazi propaganda in their efforts to reverse the humiliating loss to Bodelschwingh. After a series of Nazi-directed political maneuvers, Bodelschwingh resigned and Müller was appointed as the new Reichsbischof in July 1933.
The Aryan Paragraph
Further pro-Nazi developments followed the elevation of Müller to the DEK bishopric: in late summer the old-Prussian general synod (led by Müller) adopted the Aryan ParagraphAryan paragraph
An Aryan paragraph is a clause in the statutes of an organization, corporation, or real estate deed that reserves membership and/or right of residence solely for members of the Aryan race and excludes from such rights any non-Aryans, particularly Jews or those of Jewish descent, as well as to those...
, effectively defrocking
Defrocking
To defrock, unfrock, or laicize ministers or priests is to remove their rights to exercise the functions of the ordained ministry. This may be due to criminal convictions, disciplinary matters, or disagreements over doctrine or dogma...
clergy of Jewish descent and even clergy married to non-Aryans.
With their Gleichschaltungspolitik and their attempts to incorporate the Aryan Paragraph into the church constitution so as to exclude Jewish Christians, the Deutsche Christen entered into a Kirchenkampf
Kirchenkampf
Kirchenkampf is a German term that translates as "struggle of the churches" or "church struggle" in English. The term is sometimes used ambiguously, and may refer to one or more of the following different church struggles:...
with other evangelical Christians. Their opponents founded the Confessing Church
Confessing Church
The Confessing Church was a Protestant schismatic church in Nazi Germany that arose in opposition to government-sponsored efforts to nazify the German Protestant church.-Demographics:...
in 1934, which condemned the Deutsche Christen as heretics and claimed to be the true German Protestant Church.
Impact of Deutsche Christen
The Nazis found the Deutsche Christen group useful during the initial consolidation of power, but removed most of its leaders from their posts shortly afterwards; Reichsbishop Müller continued until 1945, but his power was effectively removed in favor of a government agency as a result of his obvious incompetence.The Deutsche Christen were supportive of the Nazi
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
ideas about race. They issued public statements that Christians in Germany with Jewish ancestors "remain Christians in a New Testament sense, but are not German Christians." Also they supported the call from the Nazi party platform for a "positive Christianity
Positive Christianity
Positive Christianity was a slogan of Nazi propaganda adopted at the NSDAP congress 1920 to express a worldview which is Christian, non-confessional, vigorously opposed to the spirit of "Jewish Materialism", and oriented to the principle of voluntary association of those with a common...
" that does not stress human sinfulness. Some went so far as to call for removal of the "Jewish" Old Testament
Marcionism
Marcionism was an Early Christian dualist belief system that originated in the teachings of Marcion of Sinope at Rome around the year 144; see also Christianity in the 2nd century....
from the Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
. Their symbol was a traditional Christian cross with a swastika
Swastika
The swastika is an equilateral cross with its arms bent at right angles, in either right-facing form in counter clock motion or its mirrored left-facing form in clock motion. Earliest archaeological evidence of swastika-shaped ornaments dates back to the Indus Valley Civilization of Ancient...
in the middle and the group's German initials "D" and "C". It was claimed and remembered, as a "fact", that the Jews had killed Christ, thus appealing to and actively encouraging existing anti-Semitic sentiment among Christians in Germany.
19th Century
The forerunner of the Deutsche Christen ideologyIdeology
An ideology is a set of ideas that constitutes one's goals, expectations, and actions. An ideology can be thought of as a comprehensive vision, as a way of looking at things , as in common sense and several philosophical tendencies , or a set of ideas proposed by the dominant class of a society to...
came from certain Protestant groups of the German Empire
German Empire
The German Empire refers to Germany during the "Second Reich" period from the unification of Germany and proclamation of Wilhelm I as German Emperor on 18 January 1871, to 1918, when it became a federal republic after defeat in World War I and the abdication of the Emperor, Wilhelm II.The German...
. These groups sought a return to perceived völkisch
Völkisch movement
The volkisch movement is the German interpretation of the populist movement, with a romantic focus on folklore and the "organic"...
, nationalistic and racist ideas within traditional Christianity, and looked to turn Christianity in Germany into a reformed intrinsic folk-religion . They found their model in the Berlin Hofprediger Adolf Stoecker
Adolf Stoecker
Adolf Stoecker was the court chaplain to Kaiser Wilhelm II, a politician, and a German Lutheran theologian who founded one of the first Christian Social Gospel political parties in Germany, the Christian Social Party.-Life:Stoecker was born in Halberstadt, Province of Saxony.A staunch Protestant,...
, who was politically active and tried to position the Christian working-classes and lower-middle-classes against what he perceived as Jewish "Überfremdung
Überfremdung
Überfremdung , literally "over-foreignization", is a German-language term used in politics to suggest an excess of immigration. The word is compounded from über meaning "over" or "overly" and fremd meaning "foreign".-Political uses:...
".
In 1896 Arthur Bonus advocated a "Germanization of Christianity". Max Bewer alleged in his 1907 book Der deutsche Christus (The German Christ), Jesus stemmed from German soldiers in the Roman garrison in Galilee and his preaching showed the influence of "German blood". He concluded that the Germans were the best Christians among all peoples, only prevented from the full flowering of their spiritual faculties by the materialistic Jews. Julius Bode, however, concluded that the Christianisation of the Germans was the imposition of an "un-German" religious understanding, and that Germanic feeling remained alien to it and so should remain exempt from it.
20th Century
On the 400th anniversary of the Protestant ReformationProtestant Reformation
The Protestant Reformation was a 16th-century split within Western Christianity initiated by Martin Luther, John Calvin and other early Protestants. The efforts of the self-described "reformers", who objected to the doctrines, rituals and ecclesiastical structure of the Roman Catholic Church, led...
, in 1917, the Flensburg pastor Friedrich Andersen, the writer Adolf Bartels
Adolf Bartels
Adolf Bartels was a German journalist and poet. Known for his völkisch worldview, he has been seen as a harbinger of National Socialist anti-Semitism....
and Hans Paul Freiherr von Wolzogen presented 95 Thesen on which a "German Christianity on a Protestant basis" should be founded. It stated :
For the authors of the Thesen, the "angry thunder-god" Jehovah
Jehovah
Jehovah is an anglicized representation of Hebrew , a vocalization of the Tetragrammaton , the proper name of the God of Israel in the Hebrew Bible....
was the same as the "Father" and "[Holy] Ghost", that Christ preached and that the Germans would have guessed. Childlike confidence in God and selfless love was, to them, the essence of the Germanic "people's-soul" in contrast to Jewish "menial fear of God" and "materialistic morality." Church was not an "institution for the dissemination of Judaism", and they felt religious and confirmation materials should no longer teach the Old Testament and the Ten Commandments, nor even the New Testament, which they held to be of Jewish influence that had to be "cleaned" so that the child Jesus could be used as a model for "self sacrifice" and "male heroism".
In 1921 Andersen wrote Der deutsche Heiland (The German Saviour), in which he opposed Jewish migration as an apocalyptic decision:
Against the "contamination by Jewish ideas", mainly from the Old Testament, the Churches and Germany should (he argued) be "mutually benefits and supports", and then Christianity would win back its status as "a religion of the Volk and of the struggle" and "the great exploiter of humanity, the evil enemy of our Volk [would] finally be destroyed".
In the same year, 1921, the Protestant-dominated and völkisch-oriented League for German Churches was founded in Berlin. Andersen, pastor Ernst Bublitz and teacher Kurd Joachim Niedlich brought out the twice-monthly The German Church magazine, which in 12,000 articles advanced the Bunds ideas. Jesus should be a "tragic-Nordic figure" against the Old Testament's "religious idea", with the Old Testament replaced by a "German myth". Each biblical story was to be "measured under German feelings, so that German Christianity escapes from Semitic influence as Beelzebub did before the Cross."
In 1925 groups such as the Bund united with ten völkisch, Germanophile
Germanophile
A Germanophile is a person who is fond of German culture, German people, and Germany in general, exhibiting as it were German nationalism in spite of not being an ethnic German or a German citizen. Its opposite is Germanophobia...
and anti-Semitic organizations to form the German Christian Working Group . The Christian-Spirit Religious Society , founded in 1927 in Nuremberg by Artur Dinter
Artur Dinter
Artur Dinter was a German writer and Nazi politician.- Biography :Dinter was born in Mulhouse, in Alsace-Lorraine, German Empire to Josef Dinter, a customs adviser, and his wife Berta, née Hoffmann, and he was baptized in the Catholic Church.After doing his school-leaving examination, Dinter...
, saw more effect in the churches, striving for the 'de-Judification' and the building of a non-denominational People's Church .
The proposed abolition of the Old Testament
Marcionism
Marcionism was an Early Christian dualist belief system that originated in the teachings of Marcion of Sinope at Rome around the year 144; see also Christianity in the 2nd century....
was in part fiercely opposed among Christian German nationalists, seeing it as a racist attack on the foundations of their faith from inside and outside. The theologian Johannes Schneider, a member of the German National People's Party
German National People's Party
The German National People's Party was a national conservative party in Germany during the time of the Weimar Republic. Before the rise of the NSDAP it was the main nationalist party in Weimar Germany composed of nationalists, reactionary monarchists, völkisch, and antisemitic elements, and...
( or DNVP) (a party fairly close to the political aims of the NSDAP), wrote in 1925:
In 1927 the Protestant Church League reacted to the growing radicalization of German Christian groups with a Churches Day in Königsberg, aiming to clarify Christianity's relation to "Fatherland", "Nation", "Volkstum
Volkstum
The Volkstum is the entire utterances of a Volk or ethnic minority over its lifetime, expressing a "Volkscharakter" this unit had in common...
", "Blood" and "Race". Many local church-officers tried to delineate, such as with regards to racism, but this only served to show how deeply it had intruded into their thinking. Paul Althaus
Paul Althaus
Paul Althaus was a German Lutheran theologian, son of Adolf Paul Johannes Althaus. He was born in Obershagen in the Province of Hanover, and he died in Erlangen. He held various pastorates from 1914 to 1925, when he was appointed associate professor of practical and systematic theology at the...
, for example, wrote:
On this basis, the radical German-Christians ideas were hardly slowed down. In 1928 they gathered in Thuringia
Thuringia
The Free State of Thuringia is a state of Germany, located in the central part of the country.It has an area of and 2.29 million inhabitants, making it the sixth smallest by area and the fifth smallest by population of Germany's sixteen states....
to found the Thuringian German Christians' Church Movement , seeking contact with the Nazi party and naming their newsletter "Letters to German Christians" .
Pagan and Anti-Christian Trends
Alfred RosenbergAlfred Rosenberg
' was an early and intellectually influential member of the Nazi Party. Rosenberg was first introduced to Adolf Hitler by Dietrich Eckart; he later held several important posts in the Nazi government...
's book The Myth of the Twentieth Century
The Myth of the Twentieth Century
The Myth of the Twentieth Century is a book by Alfred Rosenberg, one of the principal ideologues of the Nazi party and editor of the Nazi paper Völkischer Beobachter. It was the most influential Nazi text after Hitler's Mein Kampf. The titular "myth" is "the myth of blood, which under the sign of...
resonated in these circles and gave them renewed impetus. His polemic against all "un-German" and "root-stock" elements in Christianity was directed against the Christianity and the denominational organisations of the time. Marxism
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
and Catholic Internationalism
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...
were attacked as two facets of the Jewish spirit, and Rosenberg stated the need for a new national religion to complete the Reformation.
The Associated German Religious Movement , founded in Eisenach at the end of 1933, was also an attempt to create a national religion outside and against the churches. It combined six earlier Nordic-völkisch oriented groups and a further five groups were represented by individual members. Jakob Wilhelm Hauer
Jakob Wilhelm Hauer
Jakob Wilhelm Hauer was a German Indologist and religious studies writer. He was the founder of the German Faith Movement.-Biography:...
became the group's "leader and representative" by acclamation, and other members included the philosopher Ernst Bergmann (1881–1945), the racial ideologue Hans F. K. Günther, the writer Ernst Graf zu Reventlow
Ernst Graf zu Reventlow
Ernst, Count Reventlow was a German naval officer, journalist and Nazi politician.-Early life:Ernst Christian Einar Ludwig Detlev Graf zu Reventlow was born at Husum, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, the son of Ludwig Reventlow, a Danish nobleman, and Emilie Julie Anna Louise Rantzau...
, the historian Herman Wirth, Ludwig Fahrenkrog
Ludwig Fahrenkrog
Ludwig Fahrenkrog was a German writer, playwright and artist. He was born in Rendsburg, Prussia, in 1867. He started his career as an artist in his youth, and attended the Berlin Royal Art Academy before being appointed a professor in 1913. He taught at the School of Arts and Crafts in Bremen from...
and Lothar Stengel-von Rutkowski..
Attempts to "de-Judify" the Bible
Some churches remained led by German Christians until 1945. In 1939 with the approval of 75% of the German Protestant churches the Eisenacher "Institute for Research and the Elimination of Jewish influence on German Church Life" was founded, led by Walter GrundmannWalter Grundmann
Walter Grundmann was a German Protestant theologian during the Third Reich and GDR. He was a member of the Nazi party from 1930 onwards, and from 1933 onwards an active member of the German Christians...
. One of its main tasks was to compile a "People's Testament" in the sense of what Alfred Rosenberg
Alfred Rosenberg
' was an early and intellectually influential member of the Nazi Party. Rosenberg was first introduced to Adolf Hitler by Dietrich Eckart; he later held several important posts in the Nazi government...
called a "Fifth Gospel", to announce the myth of the "Aryan Jesus". It became clear in 1994 that the Testament's poetic text was written by the famous ballad-poet and proprietor of the Eugen-Diederichs-Verlag, Lulu von Strauß und Torney. Despite broad church support for it (even many Confessing Christians advocated such an approach, in the hope that the disaffiliation
Religious disaffiliation
Religious disaffiliation means leaving a faith, or a religious group or community. It is in many respects the reverse of religious conversion...
of 1937 to 1940 could be curbed), the first edition of the text did not meet with the expected enthusiastic response.
After-effects
After 1945, the remaining German Christian currents formed smaller communities and circles distanced from the newly-formed umbrella of the independent church bodies Evangelical Church in GermanyEvangelical Church in Germany
The Evangelical Church in Germany is a federation of 22 Lutheran, Unified and Reformed Protestant regional church bodies in Germany. The EKD is not a church in a theological understanding because of the denominational differences. However, the member churches share full pulpit and altar...
. German Christian-related parties sought to influence the historiography of the Kirchenkampf in the so-called "church-historical working group", but they had little effect from then on in theology and politics. Other former members of the German Christians moved into the numerically insignificant religious communities known as the Free People's Christian Church and the People's Movement of Free Church Christians after 1945.
See also
- KirchenkampfKirchenkampfKirchenkampf is a German term that translates as "struggle of the churches" or "church struggle" in English. The term is sometimes used ambiguously, and may refer to one or more of the following different church struggles:...
- Positive ChristianityPositive ChristianityPositive Christianity was a slogan of Nazi propaganda adopted at the NSDAP congress 1920 to express a worldview which is Christian, non-confessional, vigorously opposed to the spirit of "Jewish Materialism", and oriented to the principle of voluntary association of those with a common...
- Race of JesusRace of JesusThe race and appearance of Jesus have been discussed on a number of grounds since early Christianity, although the New Testament includes no description of the physical appearance of Jesus before his death and its narrative is generally indifferent to racial appearances.Despite the lack of direct...
- Esoteric Nazism#Collective Aryan unconscious
- Adolf Hitler's religious views
- List of white nationalist organizations
- The Foundations of the Nineteenth CenturyThe Foundations of the Nineteenth CenturyThe Foundations of the Nineteenth Century was the best-selling work by Houston Stewart Chamberlain...