Association of Contemporary Church Historians

(Arbeitsgemeinschaft kirchlicher Zeitgeschichtler)

John S. Conway, Editor. University of British Columbia

Newsletter- March 2000- Vol.VI, no.3

Dear Friends,

I am very happy to let you know that for next month’s Newsletter we shall have a Guest Editor, Dr Doris Bergen. Doris is well known to some of us for her fine account of the pro-Nazi German Protestants, The Twisted Cross. She now teaches at Notre Dame University in South Bend, Indiana, but returns to her homeland Canada for the summers.

I am most grateful to her for accepting this assignment in the midst of her teaching duties, and very much hope that you will all welcome this change of viewpoints which is designed to enlarge our horizons.

Contents:

1) Forthcoming conference, Oslo, Norway, August 2000

2) Book reviews:

a) A.Wilkinson, Christian Socialism

b) ed. G.Kelly, C.J.Weborg, Reflections on Bonhoeffer

c)L.Terray, Bishop Lajos Ordass

d) A.H.Ion, Canadian Missionaries in Japan

3) Book notes, “Dietrich Bonhoeffer”, F.Thimme’s Church Struggle Mitteilungen d. Evang Arbeitsgemeinschaft f. kirchl.Zeitgeschichte 1) Forthcoming conference: CIHEC, Oslo, Norway, 11 August 2000

 

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As part of the 19th International Historical Congress, to be held at the University of Oslo from August 6th -13th, the affiliated Commission Internationale d’Histoire Ecclesiastique Comparee is arranging two sessions, organized by Prof Hartmut Lehmann, Director of the Max Planck Institute for History,Gottingen. These will be held on

a) Friday morning, 11 Aug, On the Road to a History of 20th Century. Christianity: Problems, Questions, Methods, with papers by W.Brandmuller (Rome). Jeffrey Cox (Iowa), Fr.W.Graf (Munich), M.Lagree (Rennes), H.McLeod (Birmingham), Jens H.Schjorring (Aarhus), chaired by H.Lehmann.

b) Friday afternoon, 11 Aug.: Writing the history of religion under Stalinism and Marxism. 1945-1989 with papers by G.Besier (Heidelberg), A Hryckiewicz (Minsk), V.Rajsp (Ljubliiana), F.Sanjek (Zagreb), F.Smahel (Prague), chaired by B.Vogel (Strassburg). For more information, contact Prof Lehmann = lehmann@mpi-g.gwdg.de

2) Book reviews:

a) Alan Wilkinson, Christian Socialism: Scott Holland to Tony Blair. London: SCM Press 1998. 302 pp. GBP 14.95

Alan Wlkinson is one of the Church of England’s senior historians, and these insightful lectures bring us up to date with one of the significant trends in this Church’s life over the past hundred years.The opening chapters nicely recapitulate the story already told, from the early influence in Britain of F.D.Maurice, Coleridge and J.W.Ludlow with their protests against the harsh rigidities of evangelical dogmatism and laissez-faire economics, to the impact of novelists like Dickens, Mrs Gaskell and Charles Kingsley, passionately denouncing the selfishness of the rich and successful. These writers all sought to evoke a kinder, more compassionate society in Britain, arising out of a sense of Christian love, where the needs of all would be fostered rather than the profits of the few. The second stage of Christian socialism developed in the 1880s following revelations of the ghastly conditions in London’s slums. Young men and women from Oxford and Cambridge were recruited to serve in newly-founded settlements in the East End, such as Toynbee Hall, which did much to create a socially sensitive leadership for the twentieth century. At the same time the first leaders of the trade unions were almost all recruited from the nonconformist chapels, which had a strongly Christian ethical commitment, and provided their lay preachers with the skills they needed to address public gatherings. Their socialism was reformist, immanentist and optimistic, and as such outweighed the much harsher creed of the secular revolutionaries. As we all know, the Labour Party owed more to Methodism than to Marx.

For its part, the Church of England demonstrated its commitment to social justice through the work of numerous Anglo-Catholic parishes in the slum areas. The sacrificial witness of such priests as Fr Robert Dolling or John Groser created a tradition which still endures. Their liturgical services brought a richness of drama and colour to their often sordid surroundings, even if many such parishes indulged in a nostalgia for the good old mediaeval days.

The Christian Socialist movement’s theology was incarnational, seeing the material world as an object for sanctification. Its advocates placed a new emphasis on sharing the gifts of the Church, especially the Eucharist, in a democratic fellowship. Yet they remained ambivalent about the exercise of power. Frequently its supporters were idealistically utopian, suspicious of political compromise and happiest in opposition, where moral absolutes and righteous indignation were, and are, always easier to maintain.

Intellectually the movement gained much from the Church Social Union, founded in 1889 under Canon Scott Holland, which sought to apply Christian principles to social and economic life. It functioned as both an educational and a research group, undertaking down-to-earth investigations of social problems and propagating its findings through the parishes. It encouraged collective action and called for governmental intervention, no longer believing that poverty and destitution were the result of individual moral failures. It came to enjoy considerable support from both the bishops and the Liberal Party, and from its ranks came such distinguished figures as R.H.Tawney, author of the highly influential book, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, and the later Archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple.

But, as Wilkinson, rightly notes, the movement was elitist, working from the top down. It never really succeeded in recruiting the working classes to whom it ministered and for whom it campaigned. Its leaders were drawn from the clergy, academics, writers and politicians whose Christian convictions led them to seek the practical realization of their social justice ideals, but who had rarely experienced unemployment, homelessness or poverty. Yet their success made England virtually the only country where Christianity and socialism were not seen as incompatible.

Wilkinson depicts the leaders, such as Holland, Gore, Tawney and Temple, as well as lesser-known figures, with sympathy, but no uncritically. By the light of later years, these were indeed giants in the land. All were moralists at heart, and were convinced that the struggle against capitalism was fundamentally ethical in character. But their Christian faith saved them from both utopianism and the worship of the all-powerful state or party. At the same time, their tradition separated them from the continental socialists. English, and especially Anglican, Christian Socialism was, and is, very much a local phenomenon. As a result, even in other English-speaking countries, such as Canada or Australia, it has had only limited success. But in Britain too, its Christian ethical basis came to be rejected by many socialists whose philosophy was entirely secular or opportunistically materialist.

In the inter-war period, William Temple lent his prestige and public relations skills to fostering the cause by advocating the principles of freedom, fellowship, service and sacrifice. But these proved too fragile to withstand the international challenge of Nazism, Fascism or Communism, or, at home, to offset the class warfare experienced on the road to Wigan Pier.

While the sponsors of the post-1945 British Welfare state, such as William Beveridge, were influenced by these views, the actual practice of the 1950’s recovery was prompted by less exalted motives, being egged on by the pursuit of materialist consumerism.

The cause of Christian socialism was not helped by the activities of such mavericks as the ‘Red’ Dean of Canterbury, Hewlett Johnson, who for years lent a religious gloss to his praise for Stalin and the Soviet system, totally ignoring even in the late 1950s the totalitarian and oppressive character of that regime. Instead, as he naively claimed, Communism was putting the New Testament into practice in the twentieth century. Just as Jesus proclaimed universal brotherhood, so did Communism. But as Adrian Hastings justly remarked: “there is a certain inherent silliness in the preaching of political revolution by a gaitered cleric from the comfort of a cathedral close”.

Far more constructive has been the influence of such men as Kenneth Leech who has ministered all his life in London’s East End. He has for years sought to make the Catholic movement an effective counter-society with cells of holy discontent, so that it can witness to the age to come amidst the structures of this fallen world. His 1997 book, The Sky is Red reasserts the need for a prophetic rather than just a reformist role for Christian Socialism. So there is a place for utopian dreams after all, as a counterbalance to the deadening effects of bureaucratic do-goodism by the state.

In 1989, the collapse of the East European political systems forced all the left to rethink their ideas about the role of the state. Christian socialists now found their suspicion of the omnipotent and omniscient state reinforced. The emphasis should revert to the earlier insight of socialism >from below, by encouraging participation in democratic structures at the local level, backed by moral commitment from engaged volunteers. At the same time, in Britain, another factor for the revival of Christian socialism , as can be seen in the stance of the present Prime Minister Tony Blair, was the revulsion against the selfish and harsh individualism of the Thatcher years.

Ethical corporatism in the Tawney tradition is presently favoured by both bishops and politicians in pursuit of the common good. In 1996, for instance, Tony Blair claimed that the Labour Party was in the tradition of the Old Testament prophets and Wilberforce, presumably stressing their concern for social justice. “the good of all depends on the good of each, but also confirms duties and responsibilities”. Libertarian individualism when “you did your own thing” is an inadequate creed for a whole society. Instead partnership, co-operation and consensus are the prime virtues, even though severely tested in the circumstances of Northern Ireland. Yet, as Wilkinson believes, by acknowledging his debt to his Christian faith, Tony Blair can draw support from the tradition derived from F.D.Maurice a century and a half ago.

Wilkinson concludes this stimulating survey by asking pertinent questions about the future. How should Christians react to the often disintegrating force of technological globalization? How should churches, long the upholders of the traditional past, react to the rapidity of seemingly unstoppable change? And particularly but not only in Britain, how should Christians react to the evolving pluralist society in which they are no longer a majority and which is sooner or later likely to renounce its Christian heritage? And where shall we find an ethical framework for a plural society in a plural world? Wilkinson clearly hopes that the Christian Socialist tradition which he has so ably described will be able to contribute to this on-going task. We can certainly be grateful for his invigorating insights.

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b) ed. G.Kelly and C.J.Weborg, Reflections on Bonhoeffer. Essys in honor of F.Burton Nelson, Chicago: Covenant Publications 1999, 357 pp

This Festschrift is in honour of our well-beloved colleague, F.Burton Nelson, who has served for many years at North Park Seminary of the Evangelical Covenant Church in Chicago. It is entirely appropriate that these essays open with a well-deserved tribute to Burton, and follow with reflections on the impact of Bonhoeffer, since Burton has done so much to teach, preach and research about this German theologian and make his findings known to so many North American students.

This collection may be seen as the parallel publication to the Cambridge Companion to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, reviewed here last December. In fact, many of the same authors contribute to both books, though on different aspects of Bonhoeffer’s significance. Even though this field is extremely well tilled, there are still nuggets to be found, and those not yet familiar with Bonhoeffer will be assisted to see his importance in the whole range of theology.

The essay by Geffrey Kelly, one of the editors, on Bonhoeffer and the Jews advances the discussion of what has been a thorny issue: when and how did Bonhoefffer leave behind the typical anti-Judaism of his Lutheran Church? Were his protests of 1933 primarily on behalf of the converted or on behalf of all Jews? And was his priority the defence of the Church’s autonomy against political interference, or the championing of human rights per se? In Kelly’s view Bonhoeffer should be given the benefit of the doubt, but only to note how exceptional his attitude was, compared to that of his colleagues. He also makes clear how embarrassing it was for the Confessing Church to be provoked into taking a stand against the State on this very issue. Even Niemoller only came to recognize the significance of standing up for the Jews after he was incarcerated in Dachau. “When they came for the Jews. . etc. . .” But Bonhoeffer’s part in the rescue of fourteen Jews who escaped to Switzerland was an integral part of his resistance to Nazi tyranny, and the immediate cause for his arrest in 1943. For that reason, Kelly argues, he deserves to be recognized as a “Righteous Gentile”, an honour so far denied by Israel’s Yad Washem Centre. In any case he cannot be denied the credit of leading the way, followed by others after his death in 1945, calling for the abandonment of Christian triumphalism and for the recognition of the need for reconciliation with our elder brothers, the Jewish people.

The later contributions cover Bonhoeffer’s legacy in ecumenical and contemporary issues. I particularly liked Keith Clemens’ autobiographical account of how Bonhoeffer’s words helped him to come to terms with his family’s and the western church’s missionary imperialism in China. In conclusion Charles Sensel warns of the danger that Bonhoeffer’s creativity may be forgotten in the pragmatic mixture of psychology and religion in the reactionary 1990s experienced in the United States. But in fact, in Germany and elsewhere, Bonhoeffer remains an icon to be revered but also learnt from. Expounding his theological witness has been Burton Nelson’s life work.

These essays help to show why it was so important and rich a legacy.

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b) Laszlo G.Terray, He Could Not Do Otherwise. Bishop Lajos Ordass 1901-1978. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans 1997. 171 pp.

Bishop Lajos Ordass was one of the leaders of the Lutheran Church in Hungary during the troubled years immediately after the Second World War. This tribute, originally published in Norway some years ago, has now appeared in an attractive English translation. It gives a valuable appreciation of the church-political struggles which this community endured. Ordass was born in the old Austro-Hungarian Empire, where several communities of Lutherans had migrated southwards over the centuries. But that Empire’s downfall in 1918 created new rival nationalisms, and Ordass found himself separated from his wider family for years as a result. Educated in Hungary, he was fortunate to spend a year in Sweden where he found a different form of Lutheranism, more ecumenical and pietistic, and less subservient to the German tradition. It was this which saved him from being seduced, after 1933, by the allurements of the “German Christians” who sought to rally all Lutherans to the Nazi cause. He was also influenced by these contacts to play a small role in assisting the Jews of Budapest in the darkest days of 1944.

Following the end of the war, new leadership was called for, and Ordass was elected bishop for western Hungary, including Budapest, The pastoral tasks involved in restoring church life were enormous, and were only made more difficult because Lutherans were frequently regarded as agents of the now hated Germans. But luckily with the aid of the World Council of Churches and the international Lutheran community, assistance was provided from Scandinavia, Switzerland and the United States. In 1947 Ordass was able to spend several months abroad to express his gratitude and to attend the constituent assembly for the newly-formed Lutheran World Federation.

In 1948, however, the Soviet-imposed Communist party tightened its grip. Its leaders made no secret of their hostility to the churches, especially those with connections to the West. Having watched closely the church struggles, especially in Norway, during the Nazi years, Ordass was resolved not to compromise the church’s integrity. Predictably the church schools were the regime’s first target. Ordass’ declared opposition to their being taken over led to the refusal of a passport to attend the 1st Assembly of the World Council of Churches, and subsequently to his arrest in September 1948. The following mock trial sentenced him to two years imprisonment and the loss of office. The similar arrest of the Catholic Primate, Cardinal Mindszenty, clearly showed the regime’s intentions. The surviving Lutheran authorities counseled submission, and when Ordass refused to resign, he had to be deposed. Even after his release from prison in 1950, he was not allowed to return to his ministry.

The revolution in October 1956, however, led to his rehabilitation and restoration to his episcopal office. For a brief period, the church seemed to enjoy more freedom of action, and Ordass threw himself into the pastoral tasks of rebuilding congregational life. In the following summer he was allowed to attend the Lutheran World Federation meeting in Minneapolis, a most welcome recompense after years of isolation.

But subsequently relations with the Communist Party again deteriorated, and in November 1958 Ordass was again deposed. For his remaining twenty years, he lived as a pensioner, but subject to constant reproach for not identifying himself or his church with the atheistic government. For his fellow Lutherans abroad, however, he symbolized, along with Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Bishop Berggrav of Oslo, the unflinching steadfastness of Christian and Lutheran resistance to state tyranny, as is reflected in this biography. Not until 1995, and only then under pressure, was his own church in Hungary prepared to acknowledge the injustice done to this valiant upholder of Luther’s tradition.

As in the other Communist countries, the role of the church leadership in Hungary during these repressive years remains hotly disputed. The author of this memoir is highly critical of the compromises which other leaders made, seeking to conform their congregations to the prevailing political climate. His praise for Bishop Ordass serves to remind us of the high price paid for such staunch witness.

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c) A. Hamish Ion, The Cross in the Dark Valley: The Canadian Protestant Missionary Movement in the Japanese Empire, 1931-1945. Waterloo, Ontario, Canada: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1999. xvi.428 pages (B & W photos).

The author, who teaches at the Royal Military College in Kingston, Ontario, has written three volumes (of which this is the third) on British and Canadian Protestant missions in Japan, Korea and Taiwan, beginning from their beginning in 1865 . In his first volume he explains his interest in missionaries, not primarily as evangelists but rather as agents of cultural interchange between Japan and the West. So when he writes in this volume, “This book studies the end of the missionary age in the history of Japan’s international relations with the West . . .” he is telling us that with the rise of militarism based on the worship of a god-emperor the missionaries had failed in the end to act as carriers of modern, western democratic values. That process must now be taken up by other groups.

In spite of Ion’s denial that he is concerned with the religious side of the missionary movement, he provides a good deal of interesting information about the final days of missionary activity. In twelve chapters he covers every possible aspect of Anglican, Presbyterian and United Church work in the prewar empire. Of particular interest is his comparison of evangelism and social service in Japan and the colonies (chapters 2 & 3, 6 & 7). In Japan, Christianity appealed mainly to members of the middle class, which tended to identify with the establishment, whereas in the colonies, workers, farmers and indigenous minorities responded. Thus in Japan, Christians – and their missionary friends – tended to affirm their country’s nationalist aspirations. In the colonies, on the other hand, the class consciousness of the underclass converts reinforced opposition to colonial dictates, a stand usually supported by their missionary mentors.

This contrast was most marked in the controversy over Christian attendance at State Shinto shrines (chapter 4). In Japan most Christians, eager to be counted patriotic citizens and members of a ‘mainline’ religion, accepted the government argument that shrine attendance was not an act of worship but an expression of “patriotism and loyalty” [87]. Missionaries like Howard Outerbridge of the United Church agreed with this arrangement and criticized the stance of colleagues in Korea who supported indigenous resistance to shrine attendance. Both sides, though, viewed the question as a “purely religious” one without being much concerned about its political aspect. This limited perspective meant that no missionary – only a diplomat like the Canadian ambassador, Herbert Marler – was equipped to deal holistically with the relations between the religious question and the rise of militarism. Hence the ‘failure’ of the missionary movement to influence events, whether in Japan or in Canada, which Ion notes in his introduction [1].

Ion’s treatment of the closing days of prewar missions (chapters 10-12) combines skillful use of archival material with sensitivity to the emotional elements involved in the missionaries’ leaving Japan. None of the missionaries wanted to leave, and their unwillingness was supported by the ambivalent attitude of the indigenous Christians. On the one hand, old friendships made them feel needed. On the other, the identification of church leaders with their country’s nationalistic goals meant that the Canadians (as ‘British’) represented a source of suspicion on the part of police and other government agents. This reviewer remembers his father’s anguish when his license to officiate as a priest was revoked by his Japanese bishop in 1942. His lifetime of work in Japan seemed to him to have been repudiated by the very people to whom he had dedicated his life.

There are a few flaws. The context of missionary withdrawal would have been enriched by more detailed reference to the changes in theological thinking about mission: by growing insight into the relations between missions and colonialism and the moves toward devolution (the handing over of leadership to indigenous Christians) that were being encouraged by the very nationalism described. The Jerusalem Conference of 1928 and the Layman ‘s Commission (briefly mentioned) are but two examples of what was going on in the understanding of the churches in the West. There are some curious stylistic infelicities that could have been altered by closer editorial supervision. But these are minor points in a work which breaks new ground, not only in our understanding of the earliest stage in Japanese-Canadian relations, but also in the detailed information about Canadian work that has hitherto been buried in British, Canadian, and Japanese archives.

Cyril Powles, Vancouver

Book notes:

a) “Dietrich Bonhoeffer” is the title of an essay by the well-known novelist Marilynne Robinson in a collection entitled The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought (Thomas Allan $19.95). This is a sympathetic analysis drawing particular notice to the tension evidently occurring in Bonhoeffer’s career through the contrasts between his transcendental theology and his immanentist ethics, which was only made more acute by being played out in the struggle against Nazi tyranny The book also contains a fine appreciation of the career of Jean Calvin, as an example of a thinker now too often disregarded, but who still has many worthwhile things to say to us all.

b) Friedrich Thimme, Briefe. Schriften des Bundesarchiv 46, Boppard 1994 Friedrich Thimme, a distinguished political historian, and editor of Germany ‘s diplomatic documents, retired just as the Nazis came to power. For the next five years, until his death in a climbing accident in 1938, he was much involved with church affairs. As a staunchly orthodox and upright Lutheran, he was from the first deeply opposed to Nazism, with its cult of violence and its totalitarian ambitions. His letters from these years, edited by his daughter,who formerly taught at the University of Alberta, show his resolute attempts, as a layman, to mobilize his fellow churchmen to recognize the Nazi danger. One of his aims was to publish an authoritative book of essays by both Catholic and Protestant authors warning of the Nazis’ neo-paganism.

Although he gained the support of several prominent Catholics, his own community were luke-warm, and even the staunch members of the Confessing Church shied away from any collaboration with Catholics. Suspicions died hard, even when both were on the same side against Nazi presumptions. At the same time, Thimme sought to convince his own immediate circle, including two brothers who were clergymen, not to indulge in wishful thinking about Hitler or to suppose that the Nazi take-over of power was a historic moment of national renewal. But largely he met with opportunistic responses, even from the leaders of the Confessing Church. (Ah, frailty thy name is Marahrens!) As a first-hand source for the early Church Struggle, these letters shed light on lay attitudes, make clear the prevarications and clash of loyalties which affected so many who should have known better, and show why the Church’s resistance to Nazism was so limited in its scope and effectiveness.

The latest Mitteilungen (18) put out by the Evangelische Arbeitsgemeinschaft für kirchliche Zeitgeschichte (Munich) contains the text of a special lecture given by Prof. Martin Greschat, now retired from the University of Giessen, on “Continuity and Crises: German Protestantism in the 1960s”, as well as a description of the publications planned by the Committee for the History of the Protestant Churches in a divided Germany since 1945. The debates over whether such history has to be written in two separate parts, corresponding to the division of the country for forty years, or as one overarching national experience, are still continuing. There are also reports on the various conferences marking the tenth anniversary of the downfall of the unlamented G.D.R.

The recently published Festschrift for Prof Ringshausen (Luneburg) entitled: Widerstehen und Erziehen im christlichen Glauben, edited by Gerhard Besier and Gunter R.Schmidt, and published in Holzgerlingen by Haenssler, 1999, includes the following items of interest to church historians: Joerg Thierfelder: “Aber Hände weg von Bibel und Kirche”. Wahlverweigerer im evangelischen Wuerttemberg bei der Volksabstimmung vom 10. April 1938, Ruediger von Voss: Der 20. Juli 1944. Anmerkungen zum Verstaendnis deutscher Geschichte, Gerhard Besier: “Efforts to strengthen the German Church”. Der Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America und die Repraesentanten der deutschen evangelischen Kirche in der Nachkriegszeit (1945-1948), Peter Steinbach: Die Ludwigsburger Zentrale Stelle und die Zukunft deutscher Vergangenheitsbewaeltigung.

 

With every best wish to you all,

 

John S.Conway jconway@unixg.ubc.ca ity, and a deep strain of anti-utopianism.

Andrii Krawchuk, Christian Social Ethics in Ukraine. The legacy of Andrei

Sheptytsky.

Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press 1997 404 pp.

Krawchuk’s doctoral thesis is a solid piece of historical scholarship

dealing with the Ukrainian Catholic Church in the first half of this

century, when the leading figure was its long-serving Metropolitan

Sheptytsky. The author’s coverage is both political and social, and

describes the attempts of the Metropolitan, up to his death in 1944, to keep

his church afloat in the midst of terrifying political persecution and

oppression. This work complements the 1996 study by B.R.Bociurkiw, The

Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and the Soviet State, 1939-1950.

For Germans, but not only for them, the forthcoming November 9th is a date

of particular importance. I would be interested to hear from any of you how

in fact you have commemorated the events which took place in this century,

either on or around that date itself, especially if you made any specific

reference to a possible Christian interpretation of its significance. Of

even wider significance are the commemorations of November 11th.

Now that we have abandoned the kind of religiously-flavoured national

patriotic demonstrations, what kind of ceremonies can be said to be fitting,

other than a purely secular wreath-laying. Do let me know what happens in

your area.

With best wishes,

John Conway

jconway@interchange.ubc.ca

 

Association of Contemporary Church Historians

(Arbeitsgemeinschaft kirchlicher Zeitgeschichtler)

John S. Conway, Editor. University of British Columbia

Newsletter- February 2000- Vol.VI, no. 2

Dear Friends,

 

Contents:

1) Obituary: Dr L.Siegele-Wenschkewitz

2) Forthcoming Conference: 30th Annual Conference on the Holocaust and the Churches, March 4th – 7th

3) Book reviews:

a) S.Selinger, C.v.Kirschbaum and K.Barth

b) E.Voegelin, Hitler and the Germans

c) N.Railton, German Evangelicals and Third Reich

4)Book notes:

a) A.Lindemann, Esau’s Tears
b) B.Chiari, Alltag hinter der Front
c) ed.P.Smith, After the Wall
d) Kretschmar, Das bischoefliche Amt
e) Mensing, Pfarrer und Nationalsozialismus

5)Journal articles:

a) R.Shaffer, Japanese Internees
b) G.Besier, East German Churches
c) B.Schafer, East German Catholics
6) Correction: H.Kreutzer, Reich Church Ministry

7) Technical Note

 

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1) It is with great regret that we learn of the recent death of Frau Dr. Leonore Siegele-Wenschkewitz (1944-1999) in Frankfurt, Germany. As a former associate of the late Professor Klaus Scholder in Tubingen, she developed a keen interest in the history of the Church Struggle, and published her researches on this topic. most notably in her valuable study Theologische Fakultaeten im Nationalsozialismus, Goettingen 1993. From 1983 she worked as Moderator of Studies at the Evangelical Academy in Arnoldshain, near Frankfurt, of which she became the Director in 1996. The numerous conferences and seminars she helped to organize there played a significant role in the life of the church in western Germany. At the same time she was an adjunct professor at Frankfurt University, when she had an opportunity to express her interest in the role of women in the church She served for many years as a member of the Evangelical Church’s Board for Contemporary History, and since 1988 was its vice-chairman. In view of the sad illness of the chairman, she was called on to take a very active role in the Board’s affairs in the last year of her life. In 1999 she was awarded the Edith Stein Prize, and was fortunately able to go to Gottingen to receive this honour and to deliver an appropriate speech in recognition of Edith Stein on this occasion.

2) The 30th Annual Scholars’ Conference on the Holocaust and the Churches will be held at St. Joseph’s University and the Adams Mark Hotel, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania from Saturday, March 4th to Tuesday, March 7th. The key note address on Sunday, March 5th will be delivered by Elie Wiesel. Registration and information can be obtained from the Annual Scholars’ Conference, P.O.Box 10, Merion Station, Pa 19066, FAX 610-667-0265.

3a) Suzanne Selinger, Charlotte von Kirschbaum and Karl Barth. A Study in Biography and the History of Theology. University Park, Penn: Penn.State U.P. 1998. 206pp

Female theologians are still a rarity: how much more so seventy years ago! The career of Charlotte von Kirschbaum, secretary and theological assistant to Karl Barth for over thirty years, has long intrigued, and sometimes scandalized, admirers of the most prominent Protestant theologian of the 20th century. Feminists have long accused Barth of exploiting “Lollo”, as she was always known, and Suzanne Selinger, herself an accomplished theological writer, shares a lot of the anger at what she sees as Barth’s
selfishness in not promoting von Kirschbaum’s own career. On the other hand, Lollo herself was an intelligent, devoted and faithful interpreter of Barth’ s often complex theology and accepted, apparently willingly, her indispensable role as part of his household.
Suzanne Selinger recognizes that the secrets of their personal relationship are hardly recoverable and instead seeks to elucidate more about their professional links. She regrets that Lollo only published a small amount on her own account, but senses in this accomplishment signs of the kind of influence she may have had in her daily discussions with Barth. Selinger rightly sees that, in order to achieve the kind of theological writing in which he excelled, and especially in his great work Church Dogmatics,
Barth needed a dialogical partner – someone to function as sounding board and, most characteristically, someone with whom to think things through. In his earlier career, Eduard Thurneysen had played this role. But after Barth moved to Germany, and needed more direct assistance in his academic affairs, it was only natural that he should seek out someone whose sympathy for his ideas and understanding of his mental processes and doctrinal positions, was matched by an incredible capacity for more humdrum tasks. Not only did Lollo type out Barth’s drafts, answer his letters, “manage” his students, organize his timetable of meetings, lectures and speaking engagements, but even found time to compile a vast collection of useful excerpts from a huge variety of Christian writers, which could then be turned to at will.

Selinger is particularly good at tracing Lollo’s nuanced view of gender issues, in the light of the christologically-based anthropology she shared with, or adopted from, Barth. She certainly rejected the patriarchal view of much of her German tradition-bound society, as also the romanticized view of women as inherently dependent on men, or alternatively more religious than man. Such stereotyping had to be rejected in favour of the kind of relational existence of both men and women in response to God’s command. In the later chapters, Selinger examines closely Barth’s doctrines of the image of God, the gender question and his innovative theories of dialogical personalism. Lollo’s contribution to such ideas is impossible to unravel, but Selinger clearly believes she played a significant role in their eventual formulation, especially in stressing the creativity of women, including a mutual fellowship in the constructive building of community. To understand all this, a close acquaintance with Church Dogmatics is recommended.

Charlotte von Kirschbaum was criticized, both in her time and since, by feminists unable to comprehend her spiritual approach, who saw only exploitation of her undoubted gifts by the dominant male. Yet she chose to be freely herself for Barth – a perfect realisation of I – Thou relationship. It was a one-sided partnership, yet clearly rewarding for both. Perhaps, as Selinger suggets, Barth’s need to have Lollo’s constant presence was the result of a weakness, a loneliness, which demanded the company of the other. Her legacy is to be found buried in his comprehensive theological work. It is not therefore to be disparaged.

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3b) Eric Voegelin. Hitler and the Germans. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1999.

This book is based on lectures Eric Voegelin gave at the University of Munich in 1964, that are being published now for the first time. The lectures were given in German, and they have been ably edited and translated into English by Detlev Clemens and Brendan Purcell. In this work, Voegelin seeks to address questions such as these: What were the spiritual conditions in Germany which allowed Hitler to rise to power and gain the support of so many average people?, Why did the Christian churches respond to Nazism so weakly?, How did a regime rooted in illegality and murder take over the legal system in Germany?, Why do intellectuals and academics in Germany after the war have such a poor understanding of Nazism as a spiritual phenomenon?, Why are many former Nazis who are war criminals living openly and prospering in Germany after the war?

Those who are already familiar with Voegelin’s philosophy will find here the basic concepts which he has developed elsewhere: human existence occurs “in between” materiality and the transcendent realm of God; human beings have a marked tendency to avoid living honestly with this reality of the “between”; this leads them to create false “second realities” in which they attempt to exist autonomously, apart from God; the flight from reality has led to the modern neo-gnostic regimes of mass murder such as Stalinism and Nazism. In these lectures, Voegelin focuses on the historical circumstances of Nazism, making this volume more concrete and accessible than his other more abstract and philosophical writings, which have a tendency toward dense argument and complex terminology. This volume would serve very well as an introduction to Voegelin for someone who has not read him.

There is a clear undercurrent of anger animating this text, which is understandable given Voegelin’s personal history of persecution at the hands of the Nazis. Voegelin doesn’t allow his anger to derail his central purpose, however, which is to analyze the various dimensions of the “abyss” into which Germany descended: the academic abyss, the ecclesiastical abyss, and the legal abyss. In the academic realm, Voegelin’s principal target of attack is P. E. Schramm, the historian who edited Hitler’s Table Talk. Voegelin pillories Schramm for producing an “anatomy” of the dictator which reveals a fundamental lack of understanding of the subject. This lack of understanding is reprehensible in Voegelin’s eyes because the intellectual tools needed for correct understanding were available to Schramm–in classical philosophy, biblical theology, and the writings of contemporaries such as Karl Kraus, Robert Musil, Thomas Mann, Hermann Broch, and Heimito von Doderer.

Voegelin comments on the ecclesiastical situation in two substantial chapters which are devoted to the Catholic and Protestant spheres. In each case his critique is very harsh, emphasizing the idea that most Christians knew of the persecution of the Jews by the Nazis and either applauded it or did not care about it as long as they themselves were not being persecuted. When the reach of the Nazis’ power did begin to negatively impact the churches, then Christians all of sudden began to realize that they should be concerned about their fellow human beings who are being murdered. Voegelin reveals the narcissism at the root of this morale debacle as a massive failure of the Christian church to hold fast to the central biblical teaching regarding the creation of all people in the image of God. On pages
199-201, Voegelin puts forward a list of ten biblical and philosophical points which are necessary to teach German clerics and theologians “the elements of Christianity.” His wish for the use of this list: “Lower clergy, copy it out daily ten times; bishops and theologians, daily a hundred times; theologians who have received a Cross of Merit from the Federal Republic, daily two hundred times until they have got it.” Voegelin’s anger and sarcasm make the book lively, but they don’t set the stage for a balanced and comprehensive historical account. He pays very little attention to the Confessing Church, for example, mentioning Bonhoeffer only in passing and Karl Barth not even once. His judgment that there was “no good theology” being produced in Germany at the time seems very odd in light of Barth’s works (162). But in hindsight, the impact of the Confessing Church was minimal in stemming the tide of Nazism, and Voegelin’s portrait of the situation is generally accurate. I make this comment without being a historian of that period myself. I would be very interested to read a review of this work written by such a person. It may be that members of the historical guild will not be as favorable in their attitude toward this work as I am, representing the guild of theological ethics.

Charles Bellinger, Regent College, Vancouver

3c) Nicholas Railton, The German Evangelical Alliance and the Third Reich. An analysis of the ‘Evangelisches Allianzblatt’, Bern: Peter Lang 1998, pp. 265 £27

Railton, who has already written an assessment of the German Free Churches and the Third Reich, has now produced this revealing study of the German Bible belt. Consisting of about one million adherents in the 1930s, and stretching from the Saxon Erzgebirge through Thuringia and Hessen to Baden and Wuerttemberg, it gave a depressingly rosy response to Hitlerism as a force standing for ‘positive Christianity’. Railton shows us quite clearly how much German evangelicalism (‘evangelikal’ used in its Anglo-American sense can be dated only as far back as 1965) in its modern phase, beginning with the loose inter-denominational Gnadau Association (1897) of Lutheran, Reformed and United Church evangelicals and their new missionary press (1890: c. 5,000), owed to the early modern and habitual German home-town environment and mentality of Pietism, Moravianism and early nineteenth-century Revivalism. Wilhelmine and Weimar successors, simply put, could not adapt either spiritually or morally to the challenges posed by our modern industrial age. It appears also that authoritarian political values investing the ‘state’ and those who ran it with an almost divine aura over-rode a religious ethos associated with being ‘born again’. The ideals of 1789, western Liberalism, Marxism, Bolshevism, post-1918 democratic republicanism and an alleged Jewish ‘materialism’ were lumped together, with not so much as the odd tweak of conscience, as poisons. These supposedly contaminated a German muscular evangelical post-1918 culture which drew its main inspiration from the recent hurrah patriotism of Bismarck’s Second Reich, and the ‘ we-are-so-hard-done-by’ interwar German Nationalist Party.

It does seem extremely odd today, that the two years 1933 and 1934, marking Nazi ‘co-ordination’, should be seen by the German Free Churches and evangelicals as giving far greater freedoms and opportunities than the years of the Weimar Republic, which had awarded the Christian Churches and other religions freedoms and financial support on a scale unheard of in Germany before 1918. It repays to read again and again, however bleak one’s frame of mind, this German ‘evangelical’ way of thinking and speaking during 1930-3. Railton summarizes it in the following way: ‘Hitler talked of “God”, ” the Lord” and “Providence”, so now they began to talk of the “Zeitenwende”, the “nationaler Aufbruch” and “Vorsehung”. The language of the Third Reich was already becoming the language of German evangelicalism’ (p.27) Chapter vi, ‘Evangelical social concerns’, and chapter vii, ‘The Jewish question’, recording adulation for Hitler as Mr Clean, and overt evangelical support for Nazi public moral hygiene, meaning clearing the streets of pimps,
prostitutes, homosexuals, Jews and assorted riff-raff, and approval of Nazi anti-abortion policy, pile a murky Pelion upon Ossa. The teaching of the Bible, purged, one might add, of the Old Testament, seems to have been completely dispensed with.

Nicholas Hope. (This review appeared first in the Journal of Ecclesiastical History, July 1999, p. 612-3)

Book notes:

4a) A.S.Lindemann, Esau’s Tears: Modern anti-semitism and the rise of the Jews, Cambridge University Press 1997. 568pp

The object of this large-scale history of anti-semitism is basically to take issue with the prevailing view found in simplistic surveys such as those by D.Goldhagen or Lucy Dawidowicz, which have blamed outside forces, including the Christian church, for this henomenon. Lindemann instead seeks to advance the polemical and provocative view that some aspects at least of this intolerance were due to the Jews’ own behaviour and their “rise”. On the historical role of the Church, Lindemann makes the following statement:

“One can unquestionably pinpoint Christian tendencies towards demonizing Jews, but such tendencies are balanced by others. The evidence is hardly persuasive that within Christian belief is contained a strongly determined predisposition, drawing in all Christians, to violent hatred of Jews. In modern times Christian peoples have differed enormously in their reactions to Jews, from mild philo-Semitism to murderous loathing. This range of sentiment cannot be convincingly connected to various traits within varieties of Christianity, whether Catholic, Protestant, or Greek Orthodox, sincere or lax, popular or elite.. . . Religion, though often seen as the ultimate or fundamental source of anti-Semitism, is too elastic and ambiguous a category to offer much more than conjectural, ahistorical and woolly explanations, in which the preconceptions and emotional agendas of the authors play a decisive role.” (p.xvi)

b) B.Chiari, Alltag hinter der Front. Besatzung, Kollaboration und Widerstand in Weissrussland 1941-1944 Dusseldorf, Droste Verlag 1998

This belated study of the German occupation of White Russia (Byelorussia) has a few pages dealing with the role of the church under Nazi rule (pp103ff). As in the Ukraine, the initial hopes for deliverance from the Communists led to exaggerated expectations amongst the upper Orthodox clergy which were soon enough disillusioned. As for the Catholics, who constituted some 20%, they were always regarded as hostile, and were treated accordingly. This is another mosaic in the wider picture of the fate of the Soviet churches which still remains to be written up. But B.Chiari has researched the Russian sources thoroughly as far as this aspect of his topic goes.

c) ed. Patricia Smith, After the Wall. Eastern Germany since 1989, Boulder, Colo. Westview Press, 1998

Detlef Pollack, a sociologist who teaches at Frankfurt an der Oder, contributes a chapter on the situation of religion since 1989, which draws on various interviews and samples to show that in fact the differences between religious practices and beliefs in east and west Germany are not all that great. Despite 40 years of deliberate secularization, the churches survive, though noticeably weaker in eastern Germany. On the other hand the anticipated loss to other faiths or cults has not happened. The expectations of what the churches should be like are similar, and the level of commitment, as for example to be seen in baptism or confirmation, are remarkably constant, but can not lend comfort to those who had hoped that the end of Communism would see a re-christianisation of the east German
society.

d) Georg Kretschmar, Das bischoefliche Amt. Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1999 355pp

The former Professor of Church History in Hamburg and Munich, and subsequently the bishop of the revived Lutheran Church in the Baltic States, has contributed these studies in the episcopal office which cover the office of the bishop in the Early Church, its rediscovery and renewal of the ministry during the Reformation era, and its ecumenical relevance. e) The study by Bjorn Mensing, Pfarrer und Nationalsozialismus, which was reviewed here by Prof.Gerhard Besier in November 1998, has now achieved a
second edition with a new publisher, Verlag C. u. C. Rabenstein, Bayreuth. The author has taken the opportunity to make suitable corrections in the light of a vigorous response, extending from helpful additions by surviving eye-witnesses to personal attacks and threats of legal action, even anonymous denunciations.

5) Journal articles:

Jacques Kornberg, Ignaz von Dollinger’s Die Juden in Europa: A Catholic Polemic against Antisemitism, in Journal for the History of Modern Theology/Zeitschrift fur neuere Theologiegeschichte, Vol. 6 no 2, 1999, pp. 223-245

Kornberg, a professor at Toronto, brings to light a long forgotten lecture given in 1881 by this most distinguished Bavarian academic, who unfortunately had been excommunicated by the Vatican for his opposition to the policies of Pope Pius IX. Kornberg sees this attack on the kind of vulgar anti-Judaism in one persistent strain of Catholic thought as part of Dollinger’s overall campaign against the ultramontane authoritarianism being imposed by Rome. On the other hand, Dollinger still adhered to the kind of triumphalism which looked forward to the eventual voluntary conversion of Jews to (liberal) Christianity. The sentiments expressed are very reminiscent of those adopted 8o years later at the 2nd Vatican Council, and contributed to Dollinger’s recent rehabilitation.

Robert Shaffer, Opposition to Internment. Defending Japanese American rights during World War II, in The Historian, Vol 61, no. 3, Spring 1999, 597ff

This article describes the small number of sympathizers with the Japanese Americans interned in 1942, often pastors and missionaries, who had some contact with these congregations on the American West Coast, and sought to alleviate their plight.

Gerhard Besier, The German Democratic Republic and the State Churches, 1958-1989, in Journal of Ecclesiastical History, Vol 50, no 3, July 1999, p. 523ff

Designed to bring to an English audience the results of Prof.Besier’s enormous volume of research into the fate of the East German churches under Communist rule, this article is a valuable if much abbreviated summary. For those who want to explore further, the footnotes give useful help.

Bernd Schaefer, State and Catholic Church in Eastern Germany, 1945-1989, in German Studies Review, Vol. XXII, no 3, October 1999, p. 447ff

A useful summary of the Catholic Church’s position, on similar lines to the previous item.

6) Correction: Following our notice in last November’s Newsletter of Heike Kreutzer’s 1993 MA thesis on the establishment of the Reich Church Ministry in 1935, the author has now kindly sent us her more recently completed PhD thesis from Tuebingen University on the same topic, which is to be published later this year. She has expanded her earlier work with a full analysis of the documentation relating to the Church Ministry, which was for so long unavailable in East German archives. Although her treatment essentially stops in 1938, she again emphasizes her view that the Ministry’s failure and its fate was already decided by that date. Her researches confirm in detail what was already known – that the Minister, Hanns Kerrl, was an impulsive, semi-educated, naive and bungling politician. Moreover, he was incessantly caught in the cross-fire between the rival church camps, especially in the Evangelical Churches, on the one side, and at the same time, sabotaged by his supposed colleagues in the Nazi Party, who were much more skillful than he at interpreting Hitler’s often contradictory tactics towards the churches.

Kerrl started from the “idealist” position that the Churches and the Nazi Party should be integrated more closely together. “True Christianity and true National Socialism are identical” was typical of his approach, which was found to be absurd not only by orthodox churchmen, but also by the Party radicals. While Kerrl sought to bring the churches under state control, the Party radicals sought to diminish or even to abolish them. Kerrl found his only support in a handful of “German Christians”, but already by 1937, he had been effectively outmanouevred and his grandiose plans aborted. Heike Kreutzer’s contribution is to document the lamentable career of this
hapless Nazi minister in a manner which will not need to be done again. Her viewpoint is not new, and suffers from a considerable amount of repetition. Especially revealing is her account of the extent to which Kerrl was unable to gain the loyalty of his own staff, which included at least three clergymen regularly reporting on his actvities to the Gestapo. The official in charge of Catholic affairs, a renegade priest, was a determined opponent of the Concordat, and organized an extensive campaign to weaken the Catholic Church’s institutional life, thus playing into the hands of the Nazi extremists. On the Protestant side, the ministry’s officials did seem to have more sympathy for their “clients’, but again proved ineffective against the increasingly anti-church and anti-clerical camp led by Bormann, Goebbels and Rosenberg.

Ms Kreutzer clearly shows how this Ministry and its officials were part of the internecine rivalries within the Nazi power structures, which in the end led to its complete subordination and failure. It would be nice to think that this misbegotten attempt to use state power to manipulate and coerce the churches had been defeated by the churches’ united resistance against such unwanted provocation. But the evidence shows that this was not the case. Not only did the Catholic Church, for example, welcome the close association with the state by signing the Concordat with Hitler in 1933, but successfully campaigned to have it upheld again in West Germany in the 1950s. And the experience in East Germany, where the Ministry for Church Affairs, reappeared in a communist guise, was to prove equally lamentable on both the state’s and the churches’part. It was not a chapter of church history to be proud of.

7) Technical Note:

This Newsletter comes to you free, gratis and without cost. Anyone who is genuinely interested in contemporary church history is welcome to subscribe, whether or not they have teaching responsibilities in this area. As of January 2000, we have 275 subscribers, whose geographical location is as follows:

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John S.Conway jconway@unixg.ubc.ca

Association of Contemporary Church Historians

(Arbeitsgemeinschaft kirchlicher Zeitgeschichtler)

John S. Conway, Editor. University of British Columbia

Newsletter- January 2000- Vol.VI, no. 1

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the New Year!

Contents:

1) Book reviews,

a) ed. G.Baum, The twentieth Century

b) J.Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope

2) G.Baum, Catholics in the Weimar Republic

3) Journal articles: O.Heilbronner, Catholic Resistance

B.Stambolis, German Catholics
M. Greschat, Churches in the GDR
M.Elliott/S.Corrado, Religion in Russia

4) Website: Karl Barth archive

 

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1) Book reviews:

 

a) ed. Gregory Baum, The Twentieth Century. A Theological Overview, Orbis Books Maryknoll, New York – G.Chapman, London 1999. 263pp

What better way to start a new century off in this Newsletter than by reviewing a stimulating book of essays, edited by one of our list-members, about the theologians’ responses to the principal political and social trends of the last hundred years? It was a splendid idea for Gregory Baum to invite some of his ecumenical colleagues to contribute to this valuable and sometimes provocative survey, which seeks to show that the story of twentieth century theology has been one of both fidelity and anguish – fidelity to God’s revealed word under changing historical conditions, and anguish over the unanswered questions and the powerlessness of truth in a sinful world.

His team comprises both Protestants and Catholics from leading North American universities, as well as some distinguished European scholars. Predictably they cover such major topics as the two World Wars, the Great Depression, the rise of Fascism, the Holocaust, as well as more far-reaching developments as the impact of the women’s movement or the ecological crisis in today’s world.

Douglas J.Hall leads off by pointing out that the catastrophes of the First World War were made more acute because the dominant liberal Christian theology of the day had so completely fostered the optimistic climate of “the religion of progress”, and had largely abandoned the vocabulary of earlier Christian (and Jewish) attempts to come to terms with disaster. It was no less fateful that the more conservative theologians so readily endorsed their nation’s war-time cause, and claimed divine approval for their side. The spectacle of such mutually exclusive pronouncements, and the incompatibility of the war’s conduct with Christian doctrines of love and peace. destroyed Christianity’s credibility for many of the survivors, and discredited much of theology as hypocrisy.

The post-1918 theological scene was marked by extreme confusion and uncertainty. Striking political events, such as the Communist Revolution in Russia or the rise of National Socialism in Germany, took their toll. Bernard Dupuis describes sympathetically the response of the Russian exiles seeking to defend Orthodoxy, while James Reimer outlines the scandalous divisions amongst the German theologians of the 1930s, when neither Paul Tillich’s religious socialism, nor Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s defence of confessing church neo-orthodoxy prevented the widespread support of Nazism by the theologians of the so-called “German Christian” movement, who indeed betrayed their craft. More notable was the renaissance of Catholic intellectual life in France where Jacques Maritain, Emmanuel Mounier, Henri de Lubac and others in conjunction with literary and philosophical scholars represented what Joseph Komonchuck calls a return from exile after the bleak crisis over “modernism”. Both he and Victor Consemius see these men’s ideas as formative in the restoration of a publicly significant Catholic theology which not only held the church together during the Second World War, but provided the seed-bed for the Second Vatican Council.

Not surprisingly the recurrent crises of the capitalist order prompted North American theologians in particular to formulate their protest against the resulting injustices. Donald Schweitzer gives a splendidly succinct description of Reinhold Niebuhr’s trenchant and influential critique of the existing political circumstances, and also of the parallel movement in Canada, the Fellowship for a Christian Order. In fact, the latter, though largely unknown today, was seminal in setting the moral agenda for much of Canadian politics, both at home and abroad, and can be said to be still having an impact decades later. Certainly the Canadian political scene allowed these advocates more direct influence than was possible in the United States. The Fellowship’s champions were, and often still are, possibly too eager to see God’s Kingdom in terms of an achievable political utopia. But their debate with Niebuhr was valuable in delineating what can be hoped for in history.

In the 1950s Protestant theology lived off the massive achievements of Niebuhr and Karl Barth. But in the following decades, as described by Gary Dorrien, the challenge to all authority, and especially to Christian authority, spawned a host of liberationist, feminist and other politically radical movements which repudiated the past.

For Catholics, the sense of renewal launched by the Second Vatican Council did something to preempt many of these feelings. The Council, and equally the 1968 Medellin Conference, as analyzed by the Mexican scholar Virgilio Elizondo, expanded horizons, challenged the Roman Catholic Church’s European predominance and established the preferential option for the poor, especially of the third world. The pastoral and theological significance of these developments are still being worked out. But the impact is undeniable. For the future, claims Lee Cormie, the great themes at the heart of Jewish and Christian theologies – creation, fall, liberation/redemption, salvation – will have renewed relevance in meeting the challenges of social, political and technological globalization. The sceptic must however ask whether this is not just wishful thinking at a time when faith and ethics are so often treated as irrelevant, or reduced to the private sphere. However, Harvey Cox, in his essay, joins others in disputing the view that growing secularization would and will lead to the disappearance of religion. The evidence is just not there. Rather, even where institutional and intellectual Christianity of a traditional type has been weakened, there are many other plural forms of religion which seek a re-ordering of worldviews, with or without the Enlightenment’s blessing. This transformation allows Cox to see a continuity with his earlier book of thirty years ago.

Gregory Baum, in his own chapter, examines the impact of Marxist ideas on Christian theology, suggesting that these have strengthened the sense of outrage against structural injustices and lent impetus to the theological praxis supporting the healing and redemption of the world. In a world now dominated by neo-liberal ideologies, such ideas are still necessary. At the same time, in his concluding remarks, Baum suggests that one of the most significant shifts in the last forty years has been that “the emancipatory dimension of divine redemption has assumed, for the first time, a central place in the construction of Christian theology”.

These essays portray the intellectual creativity, the rich imagination and the passion displayed by theologians in recent decades. Baum is confident that future theologians will demonstrate similar qualities. If they do, then indeed “the Spirit will continue to speak to the churches in the coming century”

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b) John Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope. The Secret Story of Pius XII, New York: Viking Press, 1999

In 1963 Rolf Hochhuth’s play Der Stellvertreter (The Deputy) led to a bitter controversy over the stand of the Pope and the Catholic Church under the Nazi regime. Debates over the role of Eugenio Pacelli (1876-1958), who was the papal nuncio in Germany between 1917 and 1929, have never been resolved. As Cardinal Secretary of State, in other words as ‘Foreign Secretary’ of the Vatican (1930-1939), and then in his role as Pope (1939-1958), Pacelli is basically accused of not having gone far enough to prevent the persecution and genocide of the European Jews. John Cornwell, a Catholic and Senior Research Fellow at Jesus College, Cambridge, now presents this volume to support the above accusation. Cornwell is not unknown to the Vatican. In 1991, he wrote a book ‘As a thief in the night’ which showed there was no proof that Pope John Paul I, who had always suffered from poor health, experienced an unnatural death on September 28, 1978, after only 33 days in office. Even at the start of his research on Pius XII, Cornwell affirmed that he was ‘convinced’ that the latter’s pontificate and the Catholic Church would “finally be vindicated above all reproach”.

The expectations aired in Rome, and the research on John Paul I gave Cornwell access to secret material that had accumulated in connection with Pacelli’s’ beatification. The only striking revelation of this book is that he was allowed access to these documents. And yet, his findings were disappointing for both sides. The author admits that at the end of his research he found himself ‘morally shocked’. Not only Pius XII but also ‘recent papal history’ is generally accused of greed for power and of ‘dislike of Jews’.

It was mainly the latter reproach which electrified the offspring of victims and offenders alike. Pro-Vatican historians called Cornwell’s book a pejorative pamphlet and undertook refutations. Cornwell sought to defend his position by claiming that other researchers had concentrated mainly on the period of the Second World War, and/or that the documents already published are only a limited sample. (See ‘Die Welt’, November 2nd). He is here referring to the twelve volume edition, ‘Actes et documents du Saint Siege, pendant la seconde guerre mondiale’, edited by four Jesuits, Pierre Blet, Angelo Martini, Robert A.Graham and Burkhart Schneider, and published in Vatican City from 1965 to 1981. Two years ago, in 1997, the last surviving editor, Pierre Blet, wrote his own history of Pius XII during the second world war, based on the introductions to these twelve volumes as well as other documents. He repeated the claim that no significant amount of material had been omitted, although he admitted that some few of the unpublished documents would have been worth including, even though they had been mentioned and their contents summarized..

Cornwell bases his case more on the earlier period of 1933 when he suggests that Pacelli entered into fateful negotiations with Hitler in pursuit of a Reich Concordat, which seriously compromised his attitude thereafter. This aspect he believes has not been treated thoroughly enough by other historians.

Fr Peter Gumpel, SJ, has also been working on the Pacelli files since 1965, in connection with the possible beatification. But on the basis of his heated attacks on Pius’ critics, Cornwell excludes him from the circle of “historians who can be taken seriously” and puts him among “mere apologists”. So too, Cornwell takes issue with the Israeli author, Pinchas Lapide, who judged Pius XII positively in his book ‘The last three Popes and the Jews’,(1967) because, according to his findings, Pius XII had saved the lives of some 800,000 Jews. Cornwell accuses him of not having acknowledged Carlo Falconi’s workThe Silence of the Pope: a documentary report. (1970). But such a criticism reflects badly on Cornwell himself, since he is also guilty of omitting consideration of numerous German works relevant to the subject, such as the readily available biography by K-A Recker Bischof Berning im Dritten Reich (1998), even though Berning collaborated closely with Pacelli in 1933. So too Hansjakob Stehle’s valuable study The Eastern Policies of the Vatican (1981) remained unused

There are of course some prominent historians who support Cornwell’s views, for example the distinguished German Protestant church historian, Klaus Scholder, who died in 1985. It is to his “masterful scholarship” that Cornwell shows a “deep reverence”. In fact, almost all that Cornwell reports about Pacelli’s policies from 1930 to 1934 is derived from Scholder’s two volumes, The Churches and the Third Reich (Eng.trans. 1987). Cornwell’s evaluation of this period revolves around the thesis, first advanced by Scholder, that Pacelli and the loyal leader of the German Centre Party, Ludwig Kaas, had sacrificed this party and its future existence for the sake of obtaining a long-desired Concordat. Such a debate is not new, since Scholder’s advocacy of this opinion had already aroused much controversy during his life-time in the late 1970s, and was again reviewed by Scholder’s friend, Professor Karl Otmar von Aretin, in a commentary in 1988. Even though this text was translated into English a year later, Cornwell left Aretin’s opposing arguments nmentioned.

This is not the only place where Cornwell dismisses objections and contrary views to his own, and in effect suggests there can be no alternative interpretations. Even though the book is marvelously well written, this drawing of dogmatically firm conclusions, and the exclusion of all ambiguities, is certain to lead to continuing disputes. Apart from this there is not much that is really new.

The second-to-last chapter reveals that Cornwell is concerned not only about an appropriate assessment of Pius XII but also about ‘recent papal history’ in general. The chapter is entitled ‘Pius XII Redivivus’ and takes issue with the present Pope John Paul II. Cornwell does not accuse the Pole Karol Wojtyla of antisemitism but rather of seeking to restore an authoritarian, power-minded and centralist papacy. By establishing a direct continuity between Pius XII and John Paul II and their alleged propagation of these trends, Cornwell assesses current church policy matters. And in subjecting such features to striking criticism, he wants history to give a boost to the reformers in the Catholic Church.

In his opinion, “The beatification of Pius XII would be a major victory for the traditionalists over the progressives with regard to the interpretation of Vatican II. If the Papacy becomes too strong to the detriment of the people of God, the Catholic Church will suffer a loss of moral and spiritual influence to the detriment of us all”.

Gerhard Besier, Heidelberg University- first published in Die Welt, November 2,1999, and subsequently translated by the author for this Newsletter.

2) Catholics in the Weimar Republic and Walter Dirks The Weimar Republic was neither anticipated nor wanted. German Catholics, as a whole, remained attached to the monarchical principle and found it difficult to adjust to the new democratic regime. Conservative Catholic thought, in reaction to 19th century liberalism, repudiated the idea of popular sovereignty and defended monarchical authority, held to be ultimately derived from God. Even the Catholic Party, the Zentrum, strongly represented in the German parliament, was internally divided. On the other hand, German Catholics profited from the collapse of the Protestant Monarchy, in which they had been treated as second-class citizens. The door was now open for their full participation in the cultural and political life of the nation.

One of those who sought to do so was the young Walter Dirks, whose Catholic spirituality of faith and political responsibility had been fashioned by membership in a lively youth group, Quickborn. From 1922 on, he worked at the Rhein-Mainische Volkszeitung, published in Frankfurt, a progressive Catholic daily that offered strong support for the new republic and defended social democratic values. With his colleagues on this newspaper, he became the great defender of democracy with much hope for the future of Germany. (His articles and editorials from this time were published in his Gesammelte Schriften, Zurich: Ammann Verlag 1989-90). Only after the September election of 1930, when National Socialism made a sudden leap forward, did Dirks and his friends become more pessimistic.

Dirks’ writings then turned to an analysis of German fascism and, in particular, ‘the German fascist coalition’, by which he meant the classes, groups and communities that were likely to be attracted by Hitler’s National Socialism. He passionately advocated the creation of an anti-fascist coalition, the sustaining core of which was to be collaboration between Catholics and the working class. His efforts failed. After Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, the Rhein-Mainische Volkszeitung was closed down. Dirks’ writings for this newspaper and several other publications in the twenties and early thirties offered detailed analyses of current events which allowed him to make predictions about the likelihood of certain developments. In the twenties he observed the growing integration of Germany into European society, Germany’s gradual economic recovery, its outstanding cultural creativity, and the spread of critical socialist ideas among many thoughtful people. But after the 1930 elections, his tone became less optimistic. He was shrewd enough to realize that Hitler’s decision to seek dictatorial powers in Germany by legal means, rather than by revolution, meant that the Nazi Party had to appeal to wider sections of the population. Hence his appeal to unsuspecting Catholics. The only way to stop the Nazis, Dirks argued, was to build a strong coalition between the Zentrum and the Social Democratic Party, both renewed. But this aim was to prove to be
wishful thinking.

In a seminal essay published in 1931, “Katholizismus und Nationalsozialismus” Dirks shows that, from a philosophical perspective, Catholicism and National Socialism were irreconcilable. The bishops too, for more pragmatic reasons, supported this stance, several of them published pastoral letters to this effect. The Bishop of Mainz even decreed that in his diocese members of the Nazi Party were to be excluded from receiving Holy Communion. Catholics were ill at ease with the revolutionary tone adopted by the leaders of the Nazi Party, with the atmosphere of hatred created by Nazi ideology, and with the lack of respect for traditional values and authorities.

Yet a more careful analysis persuaded Dirks that, under certain circumstances, the Catholic population could easily become supporters of Nazism. His fears were indeed justified after 1933. In the first place, Hitler used his first months in power skillfully to adjust the Nazis’public image. In order to consolidate his position, he needed to live at peace with the Christian churches, at least for the time being. Hence he frequently mentioned God and divine Providence in his speeches, supported the so-called German Christians in the Protestant Church, and more importantly, agreed to enter into a Concordat with the Vatican – a step the Weimar Republic had refused to take.

In the second place, many German Catholics seemed to place their material interests ahead of their spiritual concerns. Nazism appealed to the middle classes whose well-being had been shattered by the inflation and depression. The working classes were attracted by the promise of ending unemployment. The peasants believed they were unappreciated by government and public culture, while students and intellectuals were fearful of being permanently out of a meaningful job. For the great majority, Dirks believed, the turn to fascism was taken in the hope of solving their material problems. They seemed unable to recognize that democratic socialism was the only force which could create a more just society. While Dirks made these predictions on the basis of a class analysis, he was right to see that this failure to recognize the dangers was to have terrible political consequences. In the early months of 1933, Dirks was heart-broken that his dark premonitions had turned out to be correct. He kept on writing critical articles in Catholic newspapers as long as he could, including a highly interesting piece in April 1933, courageously deploring Nazi antisemitism and the persecution of the Jews, and defending the continuing vocation of God’s first-chosen people – a theological argument almost unknown in the Christian literature of that time.

Dirks was not alone in fighting for these ideals. The Catholic intellectuals of the Rhineland were more open and pluralistic in their views than was the case in other parts of Catholic Germany, such as Bavaria. And his vibrant faith, drawn from his Quickborn associations, kept him going even though he was criticized from time to time by Catholic bishops and attacked in the Catholic press. It was these qualities which enabled him to maintain his faith, and to play a significant part in the rebuilding of Germany in the post-Nazi era.

Gregory Baum, McGill University, Montreal (extracted from an article to be published shortly in a collection of essays: Why Weimar: Questioning the Legacy of Weimar from Goethe to 1999, McGill European Studies, New York: Lang)

3) Journal articles

a) Oded Heilbronner, Catholic Resistance during the Third Reich? in Contemporary European History, Vol 7 no 3 (1998) pp 409-414.

Oded Heilbronner, an Israeli scholar, has recently published a valuable study of ‘Catholicism, Political Culture, and the Countryside. A social history of the Nazi Party in South Germany’ – to be reviewed here shortly. So he is well equipped to take a very sharp look at the notion of Catholic resistance during the Third Reich. This article is in fact a review of three recent books, and takes issue with the authors for being part of the Catholic research establishment which failed to take a more critical view of their fellow Catholics under Hitler’s rule. For years this Catholic establishment has insisted that the Catholics formed the chief focus of resistance to Nazi claims, and much of its scholarship has this apologetic tone. The reason, Heilbronner, suggests is that many German Catholics have an interest in preserving the myth of the ‘Kirchenkampf’. This boosted the Catholics’ fortunes after 1945, and still needs to be maintained after the changes of 1989, when Catholics became a minority once again. But by stressing the Catholic opposition to Nazi attacks on the church as the source of their resistance, these authors evade the question Heilbronner poses: ‘If the Nazis had not taken action against the Catholic Church, would the latter have joined the war waged by the Nazis against the Jews, the Bolsheviks and the European peoples as a whole?’ His suspicion is: yes.

This raises the very touchy point of Catholic antisemitism. Up to now, Catholic apologists have emphasised the fact that their clergy were not nearly so infected as were the Protestants. But such a view, as expressed for example by Thomas Fandel in his book on the Palatinate – reviewed here, October 1998 – covers over the extent to which Catholics did in fact serve Hitler loyally throughout the war, and even if opposed to certain Nazi practices, nevertheless still wanted to uphold the Nazi state. They were possibly even more subject to the Nazis’ social control than other sections of the community. By trying to claim they were united in anti-Nazi resistance, these Catholic historians distort the record, and must be found guilty of white-washing whole areas of Catholic life especially for the war-time period. Of course, in 1945, their leaders immediately claimed they had been the first victims of Nazi persecution – and this has remained their refrain from then on. But Heilbronner knows better, and, more importantly, is prepared to say so.

JSC

b) Barbara Stambolis, (Hagen), Nationalisierung trotz Ultramontanisierung oder: “Alles fur Deutschland. Deutschland aber für Christus”. Mentalitätsleitende Wertorientierung deutscher Katholiken im 19 und 20 Jahrhundert in Historische Zeitschrift, Vol 269, no.1, August 1999, pp 57-97.

This article describes how German Catholics adopted their own version of national identity after 1870 with increasing enthusiasm until the Nazi period. Only after 1945 was this nationalist fervour replaced by a return to the ideals of the “Christian West”. Stambolis shows how easily elements in the German Catholic tradition could be manipulated for nationalist or even Nazi purposes, but also how the German Catholic mediaeval heritage could be used in the post-war attempt to re-Christianise Europe.

c) Martin Greschat, Politische Macht, Kirchen und Gesellschaft in der DDR. Ein Ueberblick in Neue Politische Literatur, Vol. 44, no 1,1999, pp 59-80

Writing for a primarily secular audience, Martin Greschat here gives a masterly survey of the major works produced over the last ten years on the churches in the former East Germany. The main problem is to know the criteria to be used in any overall assessment. Despite the fact that the initial spate of revelations, recriminations,and accusations has now died down, most of the works discussing both the churches’ life and witness, as well as those dealing with the special theologies expressed during the forty years of communist rule, still carry on the atmosphere of support or criticism of the stance taken by the churches. This is just as true of the Catholics as the Protestants. Greschat himself has sound comments to make on the shortcomings of these approaches, but nicely includes the books by two of our list members, Gregory Baum and Bob Goeckel. His general point is well taken: it is still too early to say whether this special situation should be seen as an errant episode, or as a prophetic witness, in the history of the German Church.

d) M.Elliott and S.Corrado, The 1997 Russian Law on Religion: the impact on Protestants. in Religion, State and Society, Vol 27, no 1, March 1999, 109-34

This describes the spotty impact of the new restrictive law in Russia, reversing the more tolerant ruling of 1990, and gives a partial list of incidents where Protestant churches have been subjected to discrimination.

4) The website for the Karl Barth archive and Newsletter is http://www.unibas.ch/theologie/Barth

With every best wish for the forthcoming century!
John S.Conway

jconway@interchange.ubc.ca

Alphabetical list of books reviewed in 1999:

Arrington, Leonard: Adventures of a Church Historian March

Baginski, Christophe: La politique religieuse de la France en Allemagne occupee February

Blet, Pierre: Pie XII et la seconde guerre mondiale March

Booty, John: An American apostle. The life of Bishop Bayne November

Brewer, John D: Anti-Catholicism in Northern Ireland April

Buchanan, T. and Conway, M.: Political Catholicism in Europe 1918-65 November

Buttner, Ursula and Greschat, M.: Die verlassenen Kinder der Kirche May

Chadwick, Owen: A History of the Popes 1830-1914 Aug/Sept

Chandler, Andrew: The terrible alternative. Christian Martyrdom April

” ” ed.: The moral imperative February

Collins, Donald E: When the church bells ran racist June

Conway, Martin: Catholic politics in Europe 1918-1945 November

Coppa, Frank J.ed.: Controversial Concordats November

Deselaers, Manfred: Die biographie von Rudolf Hoess January

Drapac, Vesan: War and Relgion in occupied Paris May

Finke, Anne-Kattrin: Karl Barth in Grossbritannien October

Fritz, Hartmut: Otto Dibelius July

de Gruchy, John ed.: The Cambridge Companion to Dietrich Bonhoeffer December

Haynes, Stephen: Holocaust Education February

Hesse, Hans ed.: Am mutigsten waren immer die Zeugen Jehovahs April

Kirby, Dianne: Church, State and Propaganda. Archbishop Garbett July

Luxmoore, J. and Babiuch, J.: The Vatican and the Red Flag Aug/Sept

Melady,Tom: The Ambassador’s story January

Mueller-Rolli, Sebastian: Evangelische Schulpolitik in Deutschland 1918-58 Aug/Sept

Nagel, Anne: Martin Rade June

O’Brien, Darcy: The Hidden Pope Aug/Sept

Oldstone-Moore, Christopher: Hugh Price Hughes.Founder of a new Methodism October

Phillips, Paul: A Kingdom on earth. Social Christianity 1880-1940 January

Ramet, Sabrina: Nihil Obstat.Religion,Politics and Change in eastern Europe January

Recker, Klemens-A.: Wem wollt ihr glauben?. Bischof Berning April

Reich, Peter: Mexico’s hidden revolution May

Xi, Lian: The Conversion of missionaries in China March nis weiter. Oberkirchenrat Udo

Association of Contemporary Church Historians

(Arbeitsgemeinschaft kirchlicher Zeitgeschichtler)

John S. Conway, Editor. University of British Columbia

Newsletter- December 1999- Vol.V, no. 12

Dear Friends,
This month marks not only the end of the year, and supposedly of the
Millennium, but also the completion of Volume 5 of this Newsletter. When I
launched this project – as a retirement occupation – I never imagined that
it would continue for so long, nor that the volume of materials relating to
contemporary church history would be so large. Nor had I any idea who might
be interested in receiving these brief bulletins about recent books and
events in this particular field. So of course I have been pleasantly
surprised and encouraged to find that some 300 colleagues around the world
subscribe to this Newsletter, and – what is more important – that there
continues to be a valuable output of new books on our subject, indicating
not only an active pursuit of new archives and sources, but also a lively
interest in the on-going debates which engross the church history
fraternity. This Newsletter can only hope to cover a small portion of the
total field, but I am vastly encouraged by the messages you have sent
indicating that you feel the endeavour is worth while. My hope is that I
will be able to continue this service to the cause for some time yet, but my
task would be much easier, and the quality doubtless enhanced, if you would
avail yourselves of the invitation to contribute items you would like to
share. Please feel free to write or E-mail me anything which would have this
wider interest. And together I trust we shall be able to mark the advent of
the new century with suitable contributions to remembering the achievements
of the past.
To mark the advent of the new century, the Newsletter is launching a
Millennium Prize of $100 for the best essay – to be submitted in either
English or German – on the topic:
“The Christian Churches in the Twentieth Century”
You are invited to contribute an essay of no more than 10 single space
pages.
The deadline for entry is March 31st 2000.
Since this is the season of Advent and Christmas, let me take this
opportunity of expressing to you all my hopes that you will be able to have
a blessed celebration of these Feasts, and to send you by this means my
very best wishes for your well-being in the New Year.
John Conway
Contents:
1) Conference reports, a) Protestant Churches under Communism, Sandbjerg,
Denmark
b) German Studies Association, Atlanta, Georgia, USA
c) Bonhoeffer Conference, Pennsylvania State University
2) Book review: The Cambridge Companion to Dietrich Bonhoeffer
3) New journal issue, Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte
4) Book notes: Dorothee Soelle, Memoirs; L.Spitzer, Hotel Bolivia
1a) Protestant Churches in Central and Eastern Europe under Communist
rule. This international conference held in Sandbjerg Manor, Denmark, at the
end of October, was a part steering-committee and part conference weekend.
This project is sponsored by the Danish state and by Volkswagen funds, and
is managed by an international steering committee under Prof. Jens-Holger
Schjorring, Church History and Practical Theology, Aarhus University. Its
aim is to sponsor, where it can, archival research leading to monographical
publications by a new generation of central and eastern European church
historians working on the contemporary history of their Protestant churches.
Periodic conferences are projected mixing general papers and current
research reports. This was the initial introductory meeting, made all the
more pleasant by being held in the fine late eighteenth-century Reventlow
and Dahl family home, now managed by Aarhus University.
The following general papers were given: The Iron Curtain and its
repercussions for the Churches in East and West – Nicholas Hope, Glasgow;
The Estonian Evangelical Church and its relations with the Protestant
churches of Latvia and Lithuania – R.Altnirme; The Protestant Churches in
Slovakia before and under Communist rule – D.Vesely; Thoughts on the
contemporary church history of the Balkans – C.Riis and P.Lodberg; The
Protestant Churches in the Soviet Occupied Zone of Germany and in the GDR –
Methods and Research so far – Martin Greschat; Hungary: Theologies of Church
Government:
Perspectives from above and below – T.Fabiny; The Protestant minority in
Rumania under communist rule – C.Klein; Destruction and Renewal of the
Protestant Churches in the Soviet Union – G.Stricker.
Of particular interest were several reports on very recent research by young
central and eastern European scholars. Sandbjerg’s mix of plenary sessions
and informality was an excellent start to a project which aims to promote
and share, in both east and west, the work of a new generation of church
historians.
N.M.Hope, University of Glasgow

1b)This year’s meeting of the German Studies Association in Atlanta,Georgia,
included several panels of particular interest to scholars of church
history.
Several of these papers were clearly sequels to those given at last year’s
conference, see below, under New journal issue,KZG.
i) “German Protestants Face German Guilt, 1945-1950,” with papers by Robert
Ericksen (Pacific Lutheran University); Rainer Hering (Staatsarchiv
Hamburg); and Hartmut Lehmann (Max-Planck Institute for History,
Goettingen); moderator and commentator Peter Steinbach (Freie Universitaet,
Berlin).

Bob Ericksen began with a paper on, “Protestant Evasion: `Persilscheine’ and
Other Guilt Avoidance Measures,” examining the role of German Protestant
leaders in evading early denazification efforts. As his title suggested,
Ericksen told a story of moral failure. Prominent Protestant leaders such as
Martin Niemoeller and Bishops Wurm, Meiser, and Faulhaber, all opposed plans
of the military governments to carry out denazification. Protestant pastors
produced numerous so-called Persil certificates attesting to the “clean
hands” of their bearers; such statements from clergy did help people get off
in many cases. It was not only small-fry who sought and got help from
Protestant clergy. A Confessing Church pastor in Frankfurt wrote in support
of Professor Verscheuer, Director of the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute in Berlin
and Josef Mengele’s mentor. Bishop Wurm interceded on behalf of Hans
Heinrich Lammers, head of Hitler’s Reich Chancellery, as well as SS
Hauptsturmfuehrer Hans Sommer, even though Sommer had left the church in
1933. Protestant pastors even defended leaders of the notorious
Sonderkommmandos who had slaughtered Jews and other supposed enemies of the
Reich in the Baltic states. According to Ericksen, Protestant church leaders
never considered denazification to be legitimate. They thought that a purge
of National Socialists would strengthen what they considered the church’s
own enemies–leftists and Jews. Moreover, they could not accept
denazification because they had been Nazis themselves, or if not themselves,
certainly they had friends and family members in Nazi ranks.

Rainer Hering’s paper was called “Did the Allies Make a Concentration Camp
out of Germany? Paul Schuetz (1891-1985), the Third Reich, and the Question
of War Guilt.” Hering used one individual, the churchman Paul Schuetz, to
examine the ambiguity of German Protestant responses, both to National
Socialism in its time and to dealing with that chapter of the German past.
Schuetz, a pastor and Privatdozent during the Nazi years, became a leading
representative of the church in Hamburg. Neither a member of the Nazi Party,
a “German Christian,” nor a vehement antisemite, he even had one of the
books he authored seized by the Gestapo in 1935. Nevertheless after 1945, he
considered the real victims of the war to have been gentile Germans. Schuetz
equated the destruction of Jews with what he called the Allies’ postwar
“psychological terror” against Germans. It was Schuetz who claimed that the
Allies had turned all of Germany into a concentration camp. Hering concluded
with reflections on Schuetz’s theology, which came out of a tradition that
emphasized God’s forgiveness for human sin much more than the need for
reconciliation and forgiveness between human beings. This was not the only
case where churchmen showed a startling disrespect for and obstruction of
attempts at an accounting with the Nazi past.

Hartmut Lehmann’s paper asked “Muss Luther Nach Nuernberg?” As suggested in
the subtitle–“Deutsche Schuld im Lichte der Lutherliteratur
1946/47”–Lehmann looked at how Luther’s legacy was assessed in Germany
after the war. Nazi propaganda had made much use of Luther’s anti-Jewish
writings, but as Lehmann showed, postwar Protestants found ways to avoid
confronting that stain on their hero. It was Hans Asmussen who asked, “Muss
Luther nach Nuernberg?,” but most of his counterparts avoided a direct
answer to that question. Gerhard Ritter insisted that Luther had nothing to
do with the crimes of the Third Reich; he did not mention Luther’s
anti-Jewish writings even once. Theologians who had supported Hitler as well
as those who had criticized or opposed National Socialism had little or
nothing to say about Luther’s antisemitism; at most they conceded that he
had been misused. Some, like Heinrich Bornkamm, altered their earlier
writings to present a sanitized, “denazified” Luther. The net result,
according to Lehmann, was that German Protestant theologians after the war
declared Luther–and by extension themselves–innocent of any wrong. Their
cleaned-up version of Luther seemed to provide a comfortable foundation on
which to build a new church for the future.

ii) “Resacrilizing the Secular: Protestantism and the Making of Modern
Germany,” with papers by Edward Mathieu (University of Michigan); Timothy
Kaiser (University of Michigan); and Richard Steigmann-Gall ( St. Francis
Xavier University, Nova Scotia); moderator Dagmar Herzog (Michigan State
University); comment by Doris Bergen (University of Notre Dame).
There was a smaller crowd for the presentations by three younger members,
but a lively discussion followed. Ed Mathieu spoke on “Public Ritual and the
Bourgeois Religious Project in Imperial Germany,” focusing on the Luther
Festival of 1883. According to Mathieu, the late nineteenth century was a
“time of continuing religious antagonism and perceived Protestant decline”
in Germany. The Luther Festival provided the German Protestant bourgeoisie
with an opportunity to define and assert themselves and their values
vis-a-vis German Catholics, Jews, workers, and “the masses.” In Thuringia,
every town and city staged its own Luther Festival in the anniversary year
of 1883; those events show the blending of religious and national action in
local settings.

Tim Kaiser’s paper was called “Fight the Good Fight: Protestant Youth and
the Battle against `Schund und Schmutz’.” He looked at a German Protestant
organization in the 1920s and early 1930s that sought to combat publication
of material its members considered distasteful and morally dangerous. Kaiser
argued that the so-called Protestant Schundkaempfer called on their
religious beliefs and traditions to create a unique and separate identity
for themselves. Protestantism, he said, was an explicit part of these young
men’s motivational structure. Like other youth groups, they used the
language and images of military combat to describe their activity, but they
also presented their fight against Schund and Schmutz as an element of a
much larger spiritual struggle of good against evil. Bible study and prayer
were central to their activities, although they also used the amenities of
the modern “big city” to help promote their cause.

Richard Steigmann-Gall’s contribution, “Apostasy or Religiosity? The
Cultural Meanings of the Protestant Vote for Hitler,” dealt with the
question of who voted for Hitler and investigated the roles that German
Protestantism played among the Nazi electorate. Steigmann-Gall identifies
what he calls a “Protestant affinity” for Nazi politics leading up to
January 1933, when Hitler became chancellor of Germany. Protestantism was
the single most important factor in determining who voted for Hitler, he
said, and it was not just the institutional affiliation that made the
difference. According to Steigmann-Gall, the extent of support for National
Socialism correlates directly to the degree of allegiance to Protestantism,
rather than, as has been so often suggested, apostasy from it.
Steigmann-Gall’s historiographical survey called for a dual reassessment: on
the one hand, he suggested, social and political historians need to take
seriously issues of religiosity; on the other hand, scholars who study the
ideas of Nazism and the churches in the Third Reich need to consider
Nazism’s connections to Protestantism rather than simply assuming it to be
inherently anti-Christian.

iii) A session on ‘Human Rights in Democratic Germany’ included a paper on
Jehovah’s Witnesses by Gerhard and Renate-Marie Besier (Heidelberg). This
paper focused on the legal request by Jehovah’s Witnesses to be acknowledged
with the status of a corporation under public law (i.e., instead of being
considered a sect without legal rights). Gerhard explained the background,
including the ironic fact that Witnesses, who suffered so much under
National Socialism, still suffer stigmatization under a democratic regime.
Renate added a statistical analysis to show that, according to the very
indices considered significant for German society, including employment, job
satisfaction, family stability, etc., Jehovah’s Witnesses would seem to
represent a positive rather than a negative force in Germany. [See also
below, item 3]
Doris Bergen, U. of Notre Dame and Bob Ericksen, Pacific Lutheran University

1c)”Bonhoeffer’s Dilemma: The Ethics of Violence”: conference held at
Pennsylvania State University, October 28-31, 1999.
Interest in the German pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was
executed by the Nazi regime on April 9, 1945, shows no sign of decreasing.
One reason for this may be the unusual scope of Bonhoeffer’s interests and
activism, which went far beyond the realm of his own church. He was not only
actively involved in the German church struggle; he had a strong interest in
(and opinions about) the European ecumenical movement and the religious
scene in the United States. His movement into the political resistance was
unusual for a theologian, and his theological reflection on this move is one
factor that makes his writings seem so relevant today.
Thus, scholars who study Bonhoeffer in depth are compelled to go beyond the
boundaries of their own disciplines. Historians who examine Bonhoeffer’s
role in the German resistance, for example, are helped by understanding the
controversies that marked the German church struggle, as the context for
Bonhoeffer’s own ethical and theological reflections on resistance and the
role of the church.
These aspects make Bonhoeffer an ideal subject for interdisciplinary study
and an intriguing case study in ethics. The recent conference, organized by
the Institute for the Arts and Humanistic Studies at Pennsylvania State
University, focused on a specific dilemma: how to resist violence without
creating an equal or greater evil. Drawing upon Bonhoeffer as a case study,
speakers from very different disciplines brought their expertise and insight
to bear upon this question.
The result was an extensive exploration of Bonhoeffer and his legacy. The
nature of evil, nationalism and resistance were discussed, both within the
limited context of Nazi Germany and on a more universal level. Several
speakers addressed Bonhoeffer’s relevance for African-American theologians
and his political legacy in the United States civil rights movement and, as
John de Gruchy described, in the South African anti-apartheid movement (as
well as in the painstaking process of reconciliation that has followed).
This proved to be a fascinating and thought provoking exchange.
John Pawlikowski offered a valuable overview of which Catholic theologians
have dealt with Bonhoeffer (and which have not), and concluded by comparing
key tenets of Catholic social teaching with some of the central themes of
Bonhoeffer’s thought. Another panel, including Klemens von Klemperer, as a
nearly contemporary witness, contrasted Bonhoeffer’s approach to the ethic
of resistance and tyrannicide with the larger context of his notions of
Christian love and existence. This counterpoint showed how his ethical
thinking changed as the brutality and oppression of the Nazi regime
intensified.
Because the two Jewish scholars invited had to withdraw, a Jewish
perspective on these issues was missing. This was particularly unfortunate,
since much recent scholarship has focused on the significance of
Bonhoeffer’s theological perspective on Judaism and the extent to which his
political resistance was motivated by outrage against the Nazi persecution
of the Jews. Since both these questions continue to be debated, a Jewish
response to some of the points raised in other papers would have been a
valuable addition to the meeting.
The true strength of the conference was its interdisciplinary nature and the
dialogue between scholars from different fields. An added attraction was the
moving recollections of retired East German bishop Albrecht Schönherr, who
was one of Bonhoeffer’s seminarians in Finkenwalde, and one of the few men
still alive who knew Bonhoeffer personally. Schönherr’s own ministry and
leadership after 1945 gave him a unique perspective from which to reflect
back upon his early teacher and the ongoing legacy, in very difference
circumstances, of Bonhoeffer’s life and work. [see also below, items 2 and
3] Victoria Barnett, Washington, D.C.
2) Book review: ed. J.W.de Gruchy, The Cambridge Companion to Dietrich
Bonhoeffer, Cambridge University Press 1999 281 pp.
The series of Cambridge Companions is intended to provide an accessible and
stimulating introduction to significant events or personalities for the
intelligent non-specialist or new readers. Each volume contains specially
commissioned essays by international scholars, who do not seek to advance
new theses or research but to sum up the state of debate so far. In the case
of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, this aim is well fulfilled by an expert team of a
dozen English-speaking scholars and a lone German, led by John de Gruchy,
Professor in Cape Town. Fifty and more years after his martyrdom, Bonhoeffer
‘s importance is still, even increasingly, recognized both as theologian and
Christian witness. A current evaluation is therefore timely.
The book falls into two halves: Bonhoeffer’s life and legacy, and the major
themes in his theology. The Australian scholar John Moses leads off with a
finely balanced account of the political context of the time, when so many
of the intellectual trends led Germans to see Nazism as a desirable solution
to their political woes. Burton Nelson of Chicago follows with a brief
biographical sketch which De Gruchy complements with an examination of why
Bonhoeffer’s life and thought continues to inspire and challenge Christians
world-wide.
This account is not purely hagiographical. Keith Clements, for example, can
ask some penetrating questions about the realism of Bonhoeffer’s pacifist
commitment and the ecumenical church movement’s role in world affairs. Ruth
Zerner points out that Bonhoeffer’s statements about the Jews in 1933 now
seem unconvincingly patronizing, though she believes, had he lived, he would
have taken the lead in dismantling Christian anti-Judaism. Larry Rasmussen
rightly points out the centrality of Bonhoeffer’s search for new ethical
foundations at a time when traditional cultural and religious patterns were
being torn to shreds. His unfinished book ‘Ethics’ is an attempt to find
some responsible way for both individuals and societies to relate
dynamically to their actual situations when the Church could no longer lay
down moral laws for all.
Bonhoeffer’s concept of human autonomy in a world come of age is now so
well-known that Peter Selby’s recapitulation of the passages from the
Letters from Prison seeks to evoke once again the shock these seemingly
outrageous statements made when they were first read. But he does well to
point out that Bonhoeffer was depicting a situation derived from his own
German experiences. Nevertheless, his call for the Church to be a vehicle
for reconciliation and redemption, the church for others, in the service of
a suffering God, has been heeded universally with a world-wide impact. The
inspiration and the incentive still remains, even though it took nearly
three decades before his fellow Germans were prepared to accept his witness.
But fifty years after his death, as Geffrey Kelly reminds us, Bonhoeffer’s
spiritual pilgrimage and his combining prayer with action for justice and
peace is still enormously appealing.
These collected essays go a long way to explain why this is so. JSC
3) New issue of journal: Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte Vol 12, no 1 1999/1
This issue, just released, contains contributions by several authors already
noted above in the conference reports. The general theme is “Religions and
Denominations in European Society”, covering a wide range of twentieth
century aspects. Nicholas Hope, for example, gives a excellent overview of
the Scandinavian churches and their relationships to the national political
bodies in the first half of the century. Drawing on papers given at last
year’s German Studies Association conference, Richard Steigmann-Gall
analyses the “Furor Protestanticus: Nazi conceptions of Luther 1919-33”, Bob
Ericksen describes “Luther, Lutherans and the German Church Struggle”, and
Hartmut Lehmann depicts the views of the Erlangen theologian Hugo Preuss in
1933.
Hartmut Lehmann also contributes a longer piece in which he reflects on the
position of the churches at the end of the century. He believes that,
despite all the pressures and disruptions they have gone through, the
churches are still able to maintain their position in European society. “It
would be short-sighted, not to say false, to depict the development of
religion and denominations in Europe in the 2oth century purely from the
aspect of the secularization theory. What we have is actually a complicated
mixture of tendencies towards both a de-Christianisation, a secularization
as well as a de-mythification of the world on the one side, but also a
re-christianizing and a sacralising of at least some parts of both public
and private life, along with a rediscovery of new aspects of mystery/myth on
the other side”.
In addition, Inge Mager, having carefully studied Bonhoeffer’s so-called
‘Love Letters from Cell 92’ sees in his relationship with his fiancee Maria
an important factor in developing his ideas on the ‘worldly’ interpretation
of theological concepts. And Waldemar Hirsch outlines the sad story of the
persecution of the leading member of the Jehovah’s Witnesses in Germany by
the Stasi, using Nazi records to discredit him and his followers as
‘traitors’, in order to justify the GDR’s total ban on this sect’s
activities in its territory.
4) Book notes:
a) Dorothee Soelle’s autobiography ‘Against the Wind. Memoirs of a radical
Christian’ (Fortress Press, Minneapolis 1999) has now appeared in English,
in a sprightly translation by our two Nova Scotia colleagues, Barbara and
Martin Rumscheidt. This reflects very well Soelle’s struggle as a German
woman theologian, not only for academic recognition, but also to make
concrete her search for an appropriate theological response to the terrors
of today’s
world. As a leading champion of liberation theology for women and men,
Soelle has bravely borne her share of criticism, but has pursued her quest
for justice with both passion and prayer. She describes her arrival in New
York in the 1970s to teach systematic theology at Union Theological Seminary
as an ideal opportunity to pursue independent writing with a teaching
position in a very liberal theological school. The contrast with Germany was
notable. She laments the often reactionary political stance of her own
church in West Germany, but affirms the positive signs of penitence and
renewal she sees around the globe. This is a very personal memoir,
witnessing to an activist’s confronting suffering with commitment, pain with
protest, as often expressed through her poetry. She also shows a resolute
determination to affirm a radical Christianity which will not yield to
complacency or conformity, but pertinently asks the question: Does anyone
seriously believe we could live without hunger and thirst for justice?
b) One of the most perceptive new books on the Jewish refugees who fled from
central Europe in 1938-9 is Leo Spitzer’s Hotel Bolivia. The culture of
memory in a refuge from Nazism, (New York: Hill and Wang 1998). Based on his
own and his families’ memories and mementos, Spitzer describes the fortunes
of the small group who gained visas for Bolivia, and were transported to the
high plateaus of the Andes without any opportunity for climatic or cultural
adjustment, or desire for permanent settlement. Hence the book’s title.
Spitzer brings out with great insight the feelings of relief, guilt,
frustration and accommodation experienced by these refugees, almost all of
whom left Bolivia as soon as convenient after 1945. A model for Holocaust
survivor narratives.
Sincerely
John S.Conway
jconway@interchange.ubc.ca

Association of Contemporary Church Historians

(Arbeitsgemeinschaft kirchlicher Zeitgeschichtler)

John S. Conway, Editor. University of British Columbia

Newsletter- November 1999- Vol.V, no. 11

 

Dear Friends,

 

I have recently exchanged computers, and am only just getting the hang of

this new one. So please forgive me if there are any errors in orthography or

lay-out.

I thought Windows 98 would be more user-friendly, but alas! However, I trust

you will find the enclosed to be of interest, especially the first book

review, in the light of the current furore over John Cornwell”s new account

of “Hitler’s Pope”, which will certainly be dealt with here shortly..

 

Contents: 1) Book reviews

a) F.J.Coppa ed., Controversial Concordats

b) J.Booty, An American Apostle

c) Political Catholicism in Europe

2) Report on 1999 Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte conference

3) M.A.Thesis: H.Kreutzer (Bonn)

4) Book notes

 

1a) Frank J.Coppa, ed., Controversial Concordats.

The Vatican’s Relations with Napoleon, Mussolini, and Hitler.

Washington,D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press.

1999 248pp

It was a good idea for a group of American Catholic historians

to put together this comparative analysis of the much-disputed Concordats

signed by the Vatican with the three dictators of recent European history.

Protestants have all along denounced such agreements as a flagrant betrayal

of the Church’s ideals, or as examples of the Papacy’s overweening political

ambitions.

But many Catholics are also distressed by what seem now to have been

unsavoury deals. What can be said about them in the present context? To

answer this question, the valuable and academically-sound scholarship of

these authors will be of considerable help.

The first thing to note is, of course, that in each case these Concordats

were concluded at a point before these rulers became so notorious. These

deals are controversial only because of the dictators’ subsequent policies

and crimes.

At the time they were assessed differently. Second, we have to note that

Vatican policy is based on very long-term considerations. As the world’s

oldest diplomatic entity, it is the repository of a centuries-old collective

memory (and equally centuries of secret archives). As John Zeender points

out in his introduction, the Vatican for several hundred years has adopted

the practice of seeking to fix relations with the various nation states and

their rulers through publicly-announced and supposedly legally-binding

agreements. Indeed such concordats have been the favourite instrument of

papal diplomacy since the twelfth century. In the modern era, the loss of

directly-ruled Papal territory on the Italian peninsular made the

consolidation of the Vatican’s influence and power in other lands all the

more urgent. And the awareness of how dangerously unpredictable the actions

of upstart rulers could be prompted attempts to secure the position of the

Church, even at the expense of unwelcome compromise.

William Roberts’ account of the Concordat of 1801 shows clearly enough the

mixture of political and religious factors involved. Despite the convoluted

process of negotiation, this Concordat lasted for a hundred years and became

the model for numerous other such pacts both in Europe and abroad. Napoleon

was pragmatic. Ideology was superfluous. But since morality and stability

were desirable, the Church should be recruited for these tasks. A Concordat

would serve to discredit the surviving royalist and anti-revolutionary

bishops (mostly in exile), while the Pope could be brought to discipline

those of his clergy opposed to Napoleon’s rule. The seizure of church

property could be mitigated by the state’s payment of clergy salaries.

Bishops were to be nominated by the state but confirmed and instituted by

the Pope. Interestingly nothing was said about the future of religious

orders, both male and female, which subsequently were to play so large a

role in French church life. But by the end of the century the rise of

anti-clericalism and attendant secularism in the petite bourgeoisie who

controlled the legislature of the Third Republic led finally to the breach

of 1905, despite the Vatican’s best efforts to retain the status quo.

By 1919, the loss of France, the continuing hostility of Italy, which had

gobbled up the Papal States, the downfall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, as

Catholicism’s main bulwark in central Europe, and the rising menace of

revolutionary Communism, all impelled the Papacy to seek new alignments.

Pope Pius XI, whose reign began about the same time as the rise of Mussolini

to power, was prepared to accept the inevitable loss of the Papal States and

to seek a new accommodation with Italy. Mussolini, despite his violently

anti-clerical past, was also pragmatic enough to want a settlement. The

Lateran Agreements of 1929 in fact served both sides well, until Mussolini

fell under Hitler’s spell and sought to introduce his antisemitic racial

policy in the late 1930s.The price paid was the abandonment of Catholic

political activities, but none of the Popes actually welcomed this form of

commitment. Treaties, even with dictators, were held to be safer. The

Vatican’s independence, in its mini-state of 108 acres, was hereby secured.

The papal officials finally recognized they were better off abandoning their

former territorial dreams. In return the Church gained broad concessions. As

Frank Coppa rightly notes, only the authoritarian Mussolini, by stifling

criticism, could have granted the Church such an advantageous agreement.

Pope Pius XI thought the Concordat would bring God back to Italy. Mussolini

thought he could exploit the Church in the Fascist cause. Neither

development occurred. But, in effect, the Vatican was deterred from any open

protests against the Duce’s misleadership thereafter, lest it be accused of

having made a grave error of judgment. This was in fact a most ominous

legacy. But the apparent success of the Lateran Agreements with Italy led to

the illusion that the same could be achieved with Germany.

The Reich Concordat signed with Hitler in July 1933 has given rise to even

more controversial debates, as succinctly reviewed here by Joseph Biesinger.

The tide of criticism of the Vatican for concluding such a disputable pact

continues even after sixty and more years. There is, however, a large amount

of wishful thinking in such attacks, just as there has been a large dose of

self-justifying apologetic amongst the Concordat’s defenders. The

personality of Cardinal Pacelli, the Concordat’s principal instigator, and

subsequently Pius XII, remains the focus point of high-flown controversy,

almost all of which is derived from later hindsight. Biesinger’s view is

that, at the time, the Vatican was motivated by realism. Hitler offered

unprecedented concessions, the refusal of which could have been

counter-productive. At the same time, he argues that Hitler had all along

planned to deceive the papal authorities, since his aim was nothing less

than the obliteration of the Church altogether. In which case, the Vatican’s

illusions about Nazi policy would have been even more reprehensible. But in

fact, the evidence suggests that, in 1933, Hitler’s attitude was still

ambivalent. He was still opportunistic enough to recognize the desirability

of Catholic and Vatican support. Only later, when his messianic and racist

ideology came to dominate his thinking and actions, did his stance turn

decisively against the Church. Could this have been foreseen in 1933? Could

the German Catholics have been mobilized against such a popular leader?

Could the Vatican have successfully prevailed against the Nazis’ appeal to

patriotic (and racialist) nationalism? On the other hand, Biesinger is right

that, by signing the Concordat, the bishops were restrained from overtly

challenging the Nazis’ claims and actions.

For its part, the Vatican protested vigorously but diplomatically the almost

incessant breaches of the Concordat. Both Pius XI and Pius XII failed to

recognize the dynamic nihilism of the Nazi regime. They were not alone. And

even if they had recognized the truth, it was far from clear what could have

been done. Equally sadly, the fact is that, had Hitler called off the

persecution of the churches, German Catholics would have supported him with

unshaken enthusiasm. Biesinger still thinks that some more forceful protests

would have brought results, but scepticism is allowed here. After 1939 Pius’

decision to follow a path of strict neutrality impeded any open

denunciations of the Nazi breaches of the Concordat. And after 1942

Biesinger agrees with me that “a sense of frustration, disillusionment and

failure was markedly to affect the Vatican’s efforts to assist the victims

of the war”. In 1945 only the Allied victory made the Concordat policy

appear to be a success.

In the aftermath, the Church’s successful bid to have the Concordat continue

in force – at least in West Germany – has been accompanied by serious

questioning of such politicized deals. The disadvantages are now clearly

recognized. To be sure, by negotiating with such dictators, the Church

gained in France and Italy, and after Hitler’s defeat in Germany too,a

status which it was unlikely to have won otherwise. But, as Stewart Stehlin

rightly notes in his concluding chapter, the price of making treaties with

immoral regimes which profess ideologies antithetical to the Church’s

teachings was a disastrous loss of credibility. Today the Church seeks to

rely less on treaties and accords and more on the appeal to idealism in

underlining spiritual rather than international laws. Church-State tensions

will undoubtedly continue. But lessons have been learnt, not least from

these three controversial concordats.

The texts of the Concordats are appended.

JSC

1b) John Booty, An American Apostle. The Life of Stephen Fielding Bayne,Jr.

Valley Forge, Pennsylvania: Trinity Press International 1997. 235pp

Biographies of American bishops are a rarity. So John Booty’s life of

Stephen Bayne, Bishop of Olympia and first Executive Officer of the Anglican

Communion, is welcome. Episcopal careers are usually too predictable to

deserve commemoration. They differ little from year to year or country to

country. But Bayne served during a particularly significant period in the

life of the Anglican Communion, when it began the process of

“de-colonization” and rediscovery of a more ecumenical world-wide

fellowship. So his story is of interest to show the gains and losses of this

development.

Bayne grew up in the Anglo-Catholic tradition of the eastern United States,

and his leadership skills were soon recognised as he advanced through the

parish ministry, college chaplaincy and wartime service in the U.S.Navy. At

the age of 39, he became the Bishop of Olympia, encompassing all of western

Washington State with his headquarters in Seattle. In the post-war and baby

boom, the Episcopal Church grew rapidly and happily. For Bayne these were

perhaps his best years.

By the end of the 1950s and following the 1958 Lambeth Conference of

Anglican bishops from around the world, there was a recognition that new

machinery was required. The Archbishop of Canterbury could no longer fulfill

the role of liaison to the now ever more numerous diocesans springing up.

Furthermore there was a need to shed the colonialist image, when Anglican

churches overseas were seen as nothing more than the ex-English at prayer.

The appointment of Bayne, a vigorous American, to be the Executive Officer

for the whole world-wide Communion, was designed to provide a new image. And

his leadership in this endeavour could be seen at the Anglican Congress held

in Canada in 1963 which adopted the forward-looking slogan “Mutual

Responsibility and Interdependence in the Body of Christ”. The objective was

to call all the 18 different Anglican churches with their 340 dioceses to a

new sense of belonging together, rather than being merely off-shoots of the

Church of England. At the same time, the paternal leadership of the

Archbishop of Canterbury was retained, and the Lambeth Episcopal Conferences

continued to be held every ten years in Britain.

This was a compromise solution which seemed to suit most Anglicans. But

Bayne felt less happy when Michael Ramsey took over as Archbishop, since he

sensed that Ramsey’s roots were still too tied to the Church of England. So

he gave up the post of Executive Officer and retreated to the USA, narrowly

failing to be elected Presiding Bishop there. As Director of the Overseas

Department and later Vice-President of the Episcopal Church, based in New

York, Bayne had the opportunity to put into practice many of the plans for

Mutual Responsibility and Interdependence, particularly in the Caribbean and

Latin America. But the programme, world-wide, ran into financial

difficulties. It still limps along, but the sense of genuine partnership was

only fitfully recognised.

Bayne was orthodoxly conservative, both theologically and politically. But

he was well aware, by the end of the 1960s, that his privileged and rich

church needed to come to terms with such critical factors as the civil

rights movement or the war in Vietnam. The tensions between the call to

social activism and the traditional pursuit of personal sanctity became

increasingly more evident. Many dioceses were reluctant to follow the

national church leadership. Ecclesiastical bureaucrats, like Bayne, were

obliged to spend long frustrating hours explaining, justifying, mediating or

simply appealing to the deaf. In 1970 he resigned in order to return to the

Anglican Seminary in New York as a “spiritual handyman”. His final years

before retirement proved as busy as ever, teaching, administering and

preaching as before. Luckily for John Booty, most of Bayne’s sermons and

much of his incidental writing was preserved, so his points of view could be

elucidated and the narrative established. It is all credibly done.

One of Bayne’s last responsibilities was to chair an episcopal committee on

the ordination of women. It was typical of his stance that he could “see no

conclusive argument against admitting qualified women . . . but I am not

eager for the day when they are admitted because of the bitterness and

hostility they will encounter”. Sadly he did not live to see the outcome,

but died in 1974 shortly after retiring.

Booty’s tribute is a well-balanced account which places Bayne in his

Anglican context and provides the evidence to show why he deserves our

respect as one of the percipient leaders of the Anglican Church in the

mid-twentieth century.

JSC

1c) eds. T.Buchanan and M.Conway, Political Catholicism in Europe 1918-1965.

Oxford: Clarendon Press 1996. 312 pp

M.Conway, Catholic Politics in Europe 1918-1945. London/New York: Routledge

1997

118pp

Most of the essays in the first of these volumes were presented as seminar

papers to the History Faculty at Oxford, which brought together ten experts

from various western European countries. Together they make an impressive

and scholarly contribution, which should do much both to fill a gap and to

correct misapprehensions, too often deliberately indulged in by “secularist”

historians who seek to deny the validity of religious experience by simply

ignoring its part in historical developments.

Each author has the space and the expertise to develop a convincing, though

not uncritical, picture of the political beliefs and actions of Catholics in

each of the countries described. Their general contention is that political

Catholicism reached its full fruition after the First World War when the

vestiges of previous hostility in the predominantly Protestant countries

were removed, and when Catholics themselves began to articulate their own

variety of political understandings. The book concludes with the sweeping

changes, both theological and political, symbolized by the Second Vatican

Council in the mid-1960s, which saw a whole new era of divergent trends

emerging. Only western Europe is treated, because of the very different fate

of Catholics beyond the Iron Curtain after 1945.

In general, the authors seeks to combat the view that Catholic political

movements were only part of diminishing and even disappearing religious

culture, destined to be replaced by enlightened secularism. Instead they

show how Catholic religion could not be divorced from politics in twentieth

century Europe. Indeed they collectively demonstrate that, in the first half

of the century, the vitality of Catholicism, both religiously and

politically, was remarkable, and was accompanied by a mood of self-confident

optimism. This kind of Catholic witness was to be of significance both for

the reconstruction of western Europe after the Fascist and Nazi onslaughts,

and for the building of at least a partial ideological consensus behind the

“European” idea of the 1950s and beyond.

The similarities and divergence between the situations in the major

countries of Germany, Italy, France and the British Isles are here

thoroughly and successfully explored. Each essay is substantially footnoted,

though there is no overall bibliography. Together they give a valuable and

insightful picture of how Catholics met the challenges and pitfalls of the

early twentieth century in their respective national settings.

Martin Conway (no relative) is Fellow and Tutor in Modern History at Balliol

College. He has prepared a shorter and chronologically-organised account of

the same subject, obviously designed for undergraduates, but equally well

and concisely written. It has the advantage of presenting the issues and

debates clearly and adds very extensive and helpful bibliographical notes.

JSC

2) Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte Conference:

This year’s conference was held in the Bildungszentrum of the Free Churches’

Academy in Elstal on the outskirts of Berlin in September. Hosted by

Professor Gerhard Ringshausen of Luneburg, the theme was “Freikirchen

zwischen sich sakularisierender Gesellschaft und klerikalisierender

Grosskirchen seit 1945. Italien und Deutschland im Vergleich”.

We met in this pleasant locale, adjacent to the now derelict Olympic Village

where Jesse Owens and others stayed in 1936. Together with Paolo Ricca of

Rome, Gerhart Ringshausen had planned these sessions in order to compare

developments in Italy and Germany in terms of minority free churches and

their relationships both to the dominant state churches and to the postwar

forces of secularization.

Despite a recent rethinking of secularization, given all the evidence of

religious impulses in the supposedly secular twentieth century, Ringshausen

still opened the proceedings by stressing secularism’s impact on the modern

European state. Hopes for a rebirth of Christianity in Germany after 1945,

for example, hopes which seemed briefy to be realistic, came up against the

powerful pluralistic attitudes of the 1960s. Since then the major state

churches have tried to deal with social ethics and with ecumenism. But their

approach has made it difficult to sustain Karl Barth’s concepts of

revelation from God, or indeed any other claims in which questions of faith

are taken seriously. As a result the established churches have been

diminished as a major player alongside the state.

Free churches in Europe have always had to deal with this diminished role,

never enjoying the benefits of state-empowered authority. For purposes of

comparison Reg Ward described modern developments aamong Methodists in Great

Britain, noting that clericalization in the ranks of the clergy (more

trained and ordained clergy, fewer lay pastors) has led to a gap between the

agenda of church authorities and the faith and concerns of church members.

We then heard reports on Waldensians in Italy, Mennonites in Germany,

Italian Baptists and both Baptists and Methodists in Germany. Space prevents

a full description, and no more than a mention of the role of American

Southern Baptist missionaries in postwar Italy with their motorcars and

their warnings against reading European theologians. However, the general

theme of the conference seemed to be that social forces in Europe since

1945, whether purely secular like the rise of consumerism, or ecclesiastical

through the increase of religious minorities, have provided similar

challenges to both state-supported and free churches. This challenge

involves a concern for maintaining the message while also holding on to an

accepted place in a pluralist society.

These papers are due to be published in full next year in the journal,

Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte.

(Submitted by Robert P.Ericksen, Pacific Lutheran University,

Tacoma,Washington)

3) M.A.Thesis Heike Kreutzer, Die Entstehung des Reichsministeriums fur die

kirchlichen Angelegenheiten. Rahmenbedingungen, Kompetenzen und Aufbau einer

obersten Reichsbehoerde. Leipzig 1993

One of the first-fruits of the opening of the archives of the Nazi Ministry

for Church Affairs – which had for so long been secreted away in East

Germany – was this M.A. thesis written under the direction of Prof U v. Hehl

in Leipzig. It deals with the origins and development of the Ministry, as

seen from its own files.

After an initial chapter on Church-State relations before 1933, and another

on the Nazi Party’s attitudes to the churches, Ms Kreutzer then examines the

process in 1935 which led to the Ministry’s establishment. Actually she

cannot throw any new light on this decision, but rightly surmises, as other

have done, that this was Hitler’s compromise between a radical separation of

Church and State, or a direct governmental control as had been the case

before 1918.

The thesis brings new information about the chief characters in the

Ministry, but stresses its basic weakness, due to Minister Kerrl’s impotency

in the Party and State, its lack of any organisational basis, the probable

fact that other agencies had “infiltrated” its staff, and that Kerrl himself

never had the complete loyalty of his bureaucrats.

There is a splendid bibliography, a list of archival sources, and

biographical notes of all concerned.

JSC

4) Book notes:

Richard von Weizsacker, Vier Zeiten

The memoirs of the former President of Germany, Richard von Weizsacker, have

now been excellently translated into English: From Weimar to the Wall, New

York: Broadway Books 1999.

Several chapters describe his involvement with the German Evangelical

Church, in particular with its lay movement, the biennial Kirchentage.

This project was revived by Reinhold von Thadden, after his spell in a

Russian P.O.W.camp, to be a means for national renewal and reconciliation.

Its week-long meetings have attracted and still attract huge crowds, and

provide a successful opportunity for lively discussion of major social and

political issues from the church’s perspective. In 1964 Weizsacker was

selected to succeed Thadden, and thus gained his first exposure to the range

of current national and social problems. He described the atmosphere as

follows:

“One scene from the Cologne Kirchentag in 1964 remains etched in my mind.

Though we were Protestants, this overwhelmingly Catholic city on the Rhine

welcomed us warmly. The Catholic prelate, Cardinal Josef Frings, gave us a

reception and recited from memory the verses from Galatians that became the

basis of the conference: Stand fast in liberty. It was a truly gripping,

moving ecumenical high point among churches in Germany”.

Subsequently Weizsacker served as German member on the executive committee

of the World Council of Churches, which widened his horizons still more, and

gave him a broader perspective for moral judgments. These experiences proved

valuable when he embarked on his later career as member of parliament,

governing mayor of Berlin and then President of Germany for ten years from

1984. Possibly his most significant act in that office was his speech on the

40th anniversary of the end of the war, which managed to strike a memorable

note of moral repentance and political realism, which did much to improve

the German image. The entire text, in English translation, is printed as an

appendix.

“In my speech I quoted a piece of old Jewish wisdom: ‘The desire to forget

prolongs the exile, and the secret of salvation is remembrance’. We cannot

save ourselves, nor can we undo what has been done. We have lived through

unfathomable and abysmal events and taken part in them. But one thing we can

and must do: look at our past steadily, recognise its truth. We owe it to

ourselves and to future generations”.

David Dowland, Nineteenth Century Anglican Theological Training. The

Redbrick Challenge. Oxford: Clarendon Press 1997, Oxford Theological

Monographs 241pp.

A study of the lesser-known colleges founded to provide theological training

for non-graduates of the major universities, and a survey of the official –

and usually disparaging – attitudes towards the often “lower-class” men who

attended them. The author sees these colleges as pathbreakers towards the

present formation of clergy in the Church of England. An informative view

from the inside of Anglican training practices.

Patrick Aliff, Catholic Converts, British and American Intellectuals turn to

Rome. Ithaca/London: Cornell U.Press 1997 343pp.

Most of the major Catholic intellectuals over the last 200 years have been

converts. Newman has been followed by a host of distinguished writers and

thinkers, and their spiritual pilgrimages are here charted in chronological

order. Nice vignettes of numerous personalities and descriptions of their

impact on the wider church community up to the Second Vatican Council. The

attraction, Aliff believes, lay mainly in the quest for doctrinal clarity

and authority, and a deep strain of anti-utopianism.

Andrii Krawchuk, Christian Social Ethics in Ukraine. The legacy of Andrei

Sheptytsky.

Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press 1997 404 pp.

Krawchuk’s doctoral thesis is a solid piece of historical scholarship

dealing with the Ukrainian Catholic Church in the first half of this

century, when the leading figure was its long-serving Metropolitan

Sheptytsky. The author’s coverage is both political and social, and

describes the attempts of the Metropolitan, up to his death in 1944, to keep

his church afloat in the midst of terrifying political persecution and

oppression. This work complements the 1996 study by B.R.Bociurkiw, The

Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and the Soviet State, 1939-1950.

For Germans, but not only for them, the forthcoming November 9th is a date

of particular importance. I would be interested to hear from any of you how

in fact you have commemorated the events which took place in this century,

either on or around that date itself, especially if you made any specific

reference to a possible Christian interpretation of its significance. Of

even wider significance are the commemorations of November 11th.

Now that we have abandoned the kind of religiously-flavoured national

patriotic demonstrations, what kind of ceremonies can be said to be fitting,

other than a purely secular wreath-laying. Do let me know what happens in

your area.

With best wishes,

John Conway

jconway@interchange.ubc.ca

 

Association of Contemporary Church Historians

(Arbeitsgemeinschaft kirchlicher Zeitgeschichtler)

John S. Conway, Editor. University of British Columbia

Newsletter- October 1999- Vol.V, no. 10

 

Dear Friends,

Contents: 1) Conference Announcement, Penn State University

2) Boston College conference report

3) Forthcoming conference, Notre Dame,Ind.

4) Book reviews

a) C.O-Moore, H.P.Hughes

b) A-K Finke, Karl Barth in Grossbritannien 5) Journal article, Moses:

Justifying War 6) Book notes

7) In memoriam

1) The Pennsylvania State University is arranging a conference on the theme

of “Bonhoeffer’s Dilemma: The Ethics of Violence” to be held on October

28th-31,1999 at the Nittany Lion Inn, Penn State University Park, with a

very distinguished cast of speakers and the world premiere of a new opera on

Bonhoeffer. For more information, contact Chriss Schultz by E-mail:

ConferenceInfo1@cde.psu.edu

2) Boston College conference, Sept 17-18th 1999

The very useful meeting held at the prestigious Jesuit centre of Boston

College last month provided an opportunity for some 20 scholars to discuss

“Christian Life and Thought: confronting totalitarianism/authoritarianism”.

Meeting in plenary session for two whole days gave a chance for both younger

and older scholars to have an intensive and valuable exchange of views,

particularly across denominational lines. In fact, apart from one paper

which examined the remarkably favourable treatment of the Mormons in the

German Democratic Republic, the rest of the papers were concentrated on the

churches’ responses during the Nazi period. The reason is clear: for

historians, the archives are now fully accessible and are being well used;

for the theologians, the issues have been around long enough for cogent and

critical discussion. The same amount of excellent scholarship could hardly

have been mobilised for papers on the churches’ responses to Soviet

totalitarianism.

How did the churches react to Hitler’s rise to power in 1933? With

acclamation, enthusiasm and a readiness to believe that, in their hour of

need, God had granted Germany a new heroic leader. Such were the illusions

which accompanied the signing of the Concordat, or which led many

Protestants to seek to align their beliefs with Nazi ideology. We heard a

scathing account of how leading Catholic theologians like Karl Adam and

Michael Schmaus instrumentalised their theology for political purposes. Many

of the papers in fact drew attention to the dangers of lending theological

legitimisation to political regimes in this century. The dilemma for

theologians under pressure to adopt a position in times of political crisis

is clear. The German case stands as a warning, but the issue still deserves

further examination. By what criteria can a justified political theology be

assessed? This was one underlying theme of the conference.

A second theme related to the topic of resistance. To what extent can the

examples of non-conformist behaviour displayed by various church members be

seen as resistance? There was agreement that, from the point of view of the

Nazi authorities, the churches were particularly suspect and therefore all

deviant behaviour was treated as punishable treachery. But in fact, almost

all church members remained loyal to their concept of Germany, even when

they disobeyed some of the Nazi edicts, and certainly didn’t consider

themselves to be part of a resistance opposition, let alone seek to

overthrow the regime. Such were the cases of those Catholic priests in rural

areas who regarded Polish forced labourers as fellow Catholics to be treated

with sympathy rather than with racial antagonism, or those pastors who

prayed weekly for the Nazis’ victims by name from their pulpits. The

ambivalence of their stance is reflected in the continuing uncertainty of

how they should be categorized by historians.

A third unavoidable theme was the response of the churches to the

persecution and sufferings of the Jews. Even after sixty years the aura of

guilt still haunts this topic, whether it is the ongoing debate about Pius

XII or the motivations of pastors such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer. In the former

case, since the documents remain unavailable, the result can only be

speculative, and the danger of scapegoating is evident. In the latter case,

a valuable corrective was heard against too easy a presumption of

Bonhoeffer’s pro-Jewish stance. At the same time it was valuable to hear

about such righteous Gentiles as Corrie ten Boom or the Viennese journalist

Irene Harand. a hitherto almost unknown Catholic campaigner on behalf of the

persecuted Jews. As our Jewish colleague noted, Corrie ten Boom’s undoubted

supersessionism should not be equated with antisemitism, however

theologically incorrect it may now seem.

The witness of such figures was however too little regarded in post-war

Germany, where the lessons of the Church Struggle were interpreted in

different ways to suit the need of the future. For the most part the

conservative wing of the Confessing Church, self-satisfied with its stance

against Nazi heresies, was able to restore the church-political landscape to

its liking, and to suppress the more radical wing which looked for a more

complete church renewal.

The German churches’ responses to totalitarianism were and are significant

to more than just the Germans. The explanation for their failures has to be

found less in moral than in historical terms. To be sure they were indeed

intimidated and persecuted, but not entirely so. Rather their early

enthusiasm has to be ascribed to the lack of preparation, theological as

well as political, for such an onslaught. And this in turn was largely due

to the confusion and uncertainty caused by the disasters of the first world

war. The remainder of this century can, in fact, be seen as the working out

of the dilemmas and challenges of that time, many of which still remain

unresolved.

3) Upcoming Event: International Symposium on “Military Chaplains in their

Context”, University of Notre Dame, South Bend, Indiana, 17-18 March 2000.

There will be a keynote address and a small number of papers by invited

presenters. Anyone interested in the role of military chaplains from late

antiquity to the present is welcome to attend and take part in the

discussions.

For more information, contact Doris Bergen, Department of History,

University of Notre Dame, IN 46556. Tel: 219-631-7189

E-mail: Doris.L.Bergen.4@nd.edu

3a) Book review: Christopher Oldstone-Moore, Hugh Price Hughes. Founder of a

new Methodism, Conscience of a new Nonconformity. Cardiff: University of

Wales Press 1999 393pp.

Hugh Price Hughes was an eminent late Victorian Methodist, now forgotten. In

his heyday he was known as a spell-binding preacher and an active social

reformer. Christopher Oldstone-Moore’s newly-published and laudable

biography seeks to make him known to today’s audience, because he

represented a force for good which is no longer so vital in British

religious life, but which deserves to be remembered.

A century after John Wesley’s death, the Methodists had grown by leaps and

bounds to become a truly national entity. But they still suffered from

questions of identity. Disdainfully dismissed by supporters of the

established Church of England as “nonconformists”, Methodists saw themselves

as the champions of religious freedom from state control. But they still

felt discriminated against, on both social and religious grounds. Or again,

their fervour and devotion was often highly internalized. This quest for

personal salvation eclipsed any concern for the political and social welfare

of their fellow citizens. All this Hugh Price Hughes sought to change.

He made it his mission to convince his followers that nonconformity should

be seen as a positive virtue. Nonconformists enjoyed opportunities for

witness not given to the established church. They could embark on campaigns

for social and personal improvement which the Church of England, so long

embroiled with the ruling classes, could never undertake. As a young

minister, he was quickly involved with the temperance movement. But he came

to realise that campaigning against the “demon drink” was not just a matter

of personal moral righteousness. Rather it needed to be part of a wider

concern for social reconstruction.

Before the days of the Labour Party or of radio and television, and with

only the initial stages of trades unionism, the socially-minded churches

were the only means to arouse public concern for good causes. The memory of

the anti-slavery campaign was ever-present. But Hughes rightly saw that

consciences needed to be aroused and kept alert. This was what nonconformity

was called to do. In many ways he himself personified this new stance,

throwing himself into all sorts of struggles against social evils and

injustices.

At the same time he brought his intense vitality and institutional

leadership (what he called Christian audacity) to the task of refashioning

Methodism for the tasks ahead. The 1880s were a time of considerable

optimism and growth. Hughes wanted Methodists to outgrow their reputation of

being earnest, if narrow-minded, enthusiasts, and did much to promote the

denomination’s theological capacities. His principal achievement in

propagating his vision of a socialistic and democratic Christianity was to

found and edit a new Methodist newspaper to give impetus to the moral

reconstruction of the nation along evangelical lines. This venture copied

the secular press in being lively, personal, direct and topical, and soon

had a large readership.

This idealistic programme demanded commitment. Hughes and his wife both

fully exemplified this requirement. But, in the long run, this stance was

subject to erosion from two directions: many conservative Methodists were

only partly convinced of this social gospel, and preferred the earlier

emphasis on individual holiness. On the other side, social radicals

persuaded themselves that they could do good without having to subscribe to

any Christian doctrine. But, in the short run, the impact was undoubted,

especially in the ranks of the newly-founded Labour Party, which was rightly

categorized as “owing more to Methodism than to Marx”.

Oldstone-Moore ably outlines the ecclesiastical and political struggles in

which Hughes was involved. He admits that Hughes was an impassioned,

sometimes impulsive, man given to rhetorical excess. But the need for moral

regeneration made anything less than the highest standard of public

behaviour a betrayal. His watchword was: what was morally wrong cannot be

politically right. So compromises came with difficulty. His insistent

earnestness was an example to many But it took its toll in constant

frustration and even embitterment. And it is doubtful that the level of

evangelical, political and philanthropic enthusiasm which Hughes demanded of

his followers could have been maintained on a continuing basis.

The 1890s were in any case difficult years. The Irish Home Rule bill was

defeated. Mr Gladstone resigned. His successor was an aristocratic gambling

horse race owner. And shortly afterwards the conservatives returned to

power, from whom no advances towards righteousness could be expected. And

even though Hughes’ pre-eminence was recognised by his election as President

of the Church and the Free Church Association, the strain of his unceasing

efforts proved too much. He died of a stroke at the age of 55.

His optimistic preaching of the social gospel had been inspiring. In his

day, as Wesley had done before him, he convinced many thousands that God was

working out a new salvation in the world. But, with the onset of the first

world war, such idealisms seemed sadly out of place. In subsequent years the

appeal for building a righteous nation faded away, heralding the decline of

Methodism and other churches throughout this century.

JSC

3b) Anne-Kathrin Finke,Karl Barth in Grossbritannien: Rezeption und

Wirkungsgeschichte. Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag 1995 ISBN

3-7887-1521-9, xiv+354 pp.

In this book, the reworked version of her thesis (KiHo Berlin 1993),

Anne-Kathrin Finke has two aims. The first is to offer a detailed discussion

of the influence and reception of the theology of Karl Barth in Great

Britain (or, more precisely) in England and Scotland), proceeding both

chronologically and critically. The second is to offer insights into the

different approaches to “doing theology” in Britain and Germany. The first

aim should be understood as primary. Finke’s work draws upon a wide range of

theological discussions of Barth’s work to provide what she hopes will be

“an adequate description of the development in British discussions of Barth”

(p.11) She demonstrates, in contrast to the conclusions drawn by Richard

H.Roberts, that British discussions of Barth’s theology have been, not

one-sided, but fundamental, fair and fruitful.

Finke structures her work largely chronologically. Writing for a German

audience and assuming (probably rightly) that most German readers will need

an introduction to British theological thought, she opens with a brief

discussion of the history of theology in England and Scotland in the

nineteenth and twentieth centuries, concluding that British theology in the

1920s was still dominated by liberalism and influenced by German liberal

theology. In his introduction, Christoph Gestrich hopes that Finke’s

introductory chapter might be of use also to British readers, but both

British and German readers would be well advised to seek additional

background information elsewhere. The section on the Reformation in England

and Scotland contains some strange omissions (for instance, there is no

mention of the Prayer Books of either 1552 or 1559, the latter noted for

drawing together different theological interpretations and thus of some

importance, one would think, to Finke’s argument). She gives the impression

that England and Scotland were entirely separate kingdoms until the

beginning of the eighteenth century. Her discussion of the Church in the

nineteenth century would have benefited from reference to general

discussions other than Vidler’s The Church in an Age of Revolution (perhaps

Owen Chadwick’s The Victorian Church). On Lux Mundi there is now a detailed

discussion by Ulrike Link-Wieczorek (however this was not available to

Finke). And while the opening chapters introduce the German reader to

important aspects of English and Scottish theology, the English-speaking

reader unversed in German (theological) history may well be left wondering

in what way German theology, not to mention the situation in Germany in the

1920s, differed from that in England. What was the crisis that produced

Barth’s so-called “crisis theology”? The reader must be in a position to

know this, for Finke will not tell her.

Finke proceeds to discuss the theological work of Peter Taylor Forsyth. The

similarities between Forsyth’s theology and that of Barth, observed by early

British commentators such as John McConnochie and noted by Barth himself,

demonstrate that a “barthian” or dialectic theology can emerge from a

totally different context from that of post-First World War Germany. Finke

does not elaborate on the differences between the theologies of Forsyth and

Barth, and since she admits that Forsyth’s theology cannot be said to have

prepared the way for Barth’s, the impact of Forsyth’s work remains somewhat

unclear.

The remainder of Finke’s work is devoted to a discussion of the reception of

Barth’s theology in Britain. She identifies four phases in this reception,

of which the first is the impact made by Barth’s early theology from 1924 to

1936, the year in which George Thomas Thomson’s translation of the first

half-volume of the Church Dogmatics was published. From the beginning,

Barth’s rejection of natural theology was a primary concern – and point of

criticism – for British theologians; this early focus remained central in

the continuing discussions of his theology. In this period, English and

Scottish considerations of Barth’s theology take a similar line; the primary

work is that of Hugh Ross Mackintosh and John McConnochie. The second phase,

1936-1945, was the period in which Barth had most personal contact with

British theologians. It was also the time when his political profile as an

opponent of the Nazi regime in Germany was highest. This juxtaposition was

not without its complications, for, as Finke makes clear, theologians and

churchmen (for instance Bishop George Bell) who applauded Barth for his

opposition to Hitler were often unable to share his theological concerns.

Nevertheless, Finke concludes, “despite their semi-Pelagianism, natural

theology, moralism and optimism,” Barth found the British very attractive;

so much so, indeed, that he wrote to Bell in 1946: “Were I not Swiss, I

would choose to be British” (p.177).

It was only after the Second World War, in what Finke identifies as the

third phase of the reception of Barth’s theology, that this came to be

appreciated in its entirety. Barth’s Church Dogmatics was translated in its

entirety between 1956 and 1977, and thus became accessible to non-German

readers. Finke traces the increasing difference between Scottish and English

understandings of Barth in the post-war years, and especially the growing

influence of Thomas Forsyth Torrance, whose extremely individual

interpretation of Barth’s theology affected generations of systematic

theologians in Scotland. Despite the importance of this achievement (an

entire chapter is dedicated to Torrance), Finke notes that it is not always

easy to distinguish between Torrance and Barth’s interests; however, she

believes that Torrance’s interpretation of Barth still informs British

theological debates about Barth today (p.245). In the final phase, the 1970s

and (early) 1980s, British – and perhaps especially English – theologians

began to take seriously John Baillie’s plea that “there can be no hopeful

forward advance beyond (Barth’s) teachings . . if we attempt to go round it

instead of through it” (p.202).

Finke’s study offers a consideration of a wide range of theologians and

theological works. Her “person-centred” approach, probably the only approach

possible given the extent of her material, leads sometime to some odd

chronological juxtapositions. Thus, Barmen (1934) is discussed in the

chapter dealing with 1936-1945, and the beginnings of the ecumenical

movement in the 1930s appear in the post-war chapter. Sometimes her view of

cause and effect seems a little over-simplified: can there really be “no

doubt” that interest in Barth “accounts for the founding of the Study for

the Study of Theology” (p.197)?

Taken as a whole this book offers a resource which summarises who in Britain

wrote what about Barth when. Moreover the wide range of topics discussed in

the reception of Barth’s theology suggests that Finke could well be right to

claim (against the perhaps characteristic modesty of many British

theologians themselves!) that the British reception of Barth offers an

adequate and considered understanding of Barth’s theology, especially given

that it is, as Finke conceded, impossible to define who or what is “the

whole Barth”. Her claim might however, have been further substantiated had

she at some point defined what she understands to be an adequate

understanding of Barth’s theology. As it is, this issue can only be decided

by those more versed in Barth’s theology than I.

If”the whole Barth” is impossible to characterise, so too is “German

theology”. But however it may be defined, it would be risky to assert that

it is exclusively Barthian. Finke seems not to have taken this into account

and it is for this reason that, in my view, her book cannot claim to be a

comparative study of British and German theological mentalities. Barth has a

reception history in Germany just as he has in Britain; a comparison of

German and British reactions to Barth might offer some real insights into

the different ways of “doing theology” to be found in the different

contexts. Finke’s book offers a good resource for such a project, but her

achievement is another. She has produced a useful and detailed survey which

indicates that the impact of Barth’s theology on British theological

thinking has been both broader and deeper than has previously been

appreciated.

Charlotte Methuen, Ruhr-Universitat, Bochum

4) Journal Article:

John A.Moses, Justifying War as the Will of God: German theology on the eve

of the first world war. in Colloquium: The Australian and New Zealand

Theological Review, Vol 31, no 1, May 1999, p3-20.

Because this journal may well not be widely available beyond its homelands,

John Moses’ contribution to the most recent issue deserves mention. He seeks

to assess the part played by theologians and church leaders to the climate

of excessive nationalism, militarism and racism which has been frequently

seen as the cause of Germany’s disastrous history during this century.

Whereas critics of this Sonderweg view of secular German history have

claimed that other “great powers” did not behave too differently, so that

there is only a factor of difference of scale, Moses shows that as far as

the theologians goes, the Germans played a considerable role in maintaining

the idea of their spiritual separateness because they had received a special

calling from God and consequently a world mission unlike any other country.

From 1870 onwards there was a remarkable rise of national Protestantism and

its identification of the nation with the will of Almighty God, or the

advocacy of the idea that God had chosen Germany to be His agent on earth,

as His instrument in the “History of Salvation”.

This conflation of sacred and secular history should not be ignored by even

the most materialist of historians. It explains why religion came to endorse

limitless violence, how war was prioritized, and how German national

aggrandisement came to have spiritual significance. Alas, this view survived

the shock of the 1918 defeat, and came in handy for Hitler’s propagandists.

We even heard overtones about God’s hand guiding Germany’s destiny in 1989.

However, after the impact of the Holocaust’s revelations, the use of

national Protestantism as a tenable paradigm for educated Germans has been

effectively discredited. The religious Sonderweg has therefore been

abandoned, but what is to follow remains to be seen.

JSC

6) In Memoriam

We learn with sadness of the death of Sabine Leibholz, the twin sister of

Dietrich Bonhoeffer. She herself was also a victim of the Nazis when she and

her husband were forced to leave Germany in 1938, and seek refuge in Oxford.

Her husband subsequently returned to have a distinguished career in the

German Supreme Court. Sabine was the last of this generation of Bonhoeffers,

and took a lively interest in the activities over the years designed to

commemorate her brother.

With best wishes

John Conway

jconway@interchange.ubc.ca

 

Association of Contemporary Church Historians

(Arbeitsgemeinschaft kirchlicher Zeitgeschichtler)

John S. Conway, Editor. University of British Columbia

Newsletter- August-September 1999- Vol.V, no. 8-9

 

Dear Friends
Greetings to all those of you who are just now in the process of beginning
another academic year, and my very best wishes for the success of your
endeavours, especially in the field of contemporary church history.
Contents: 1) Book reviews:
a) 3 books on the Vatican
Chadwick, O’Brien, Luxmoore
b) Muller-Rolli, Evang.Schulpolitik
2) Book notes
3) Dissertation abstract: Roisin Healey
1a) Owen Chadwick, A History of the Popes 1830-1914, (Oxford History of the
Christian Church) Oxford: Clarendon Press 1998, 614pp.
Darcy O’Brien, The Hidden Pope. The Untold Story of a Lifelong Friendship
that is changing the relationship between Catholics and Jews. The personal
journey of John Paul II and Jerzy Kluger. New York: Daybreak Books 1998, 406
pp
Jonathan Luxmorre and Jolanta Babiuch, The Vatican and the Red Flag. The
struggle for the soul of eastern Europe. London: Geoffrey Chapman 1999.
351pp. ISBN 0-225-66772-X
Sir Owen Chadwick is the doyen of British ecclesiastical historians. His
magisterial narrative histories and his sprightly ecclesiastical biographies
have earned him world-wide respect. This latest history of the
nineteenth-century Popes will only enhance this reputation. His command of
the sources is masterly. His explication of the problems and dilemmas, both
theological and political, confronting the Papacy provides a valuable guide
to English-speaking (and presumably largely non-Catholic) readers. His
portraits of the Popes are sympathetic but not uncritical. Even for such
obstreperous autocrats as Pius IX, he can find arguments to dissuade one
from condemnation. Above all he has a sense of the value of the institution
and the need to see the developments of history from its age-long
vantage-point. This makes for a distinguished and, for an Anglican, unique
perspective.
He rightly centres his account of the reign of Pius IX on the horrendous
anguish caused by the loss of the Papal States. Their recovery was Pius’
main priority. Yet he was militarily impotent to protect his realm. He
believed he could substitute spiritual power to achieve the same end. Most
of the condemnations of the 1864 Syllabus or Errors, and the dogmatic
assertions of Papal Infallibility in 1870, were designed to demolish the
anticlerical forces, especially in the Kingdom of Italy, which had so
wantonly seized the papal lands. “The prisoner of the Vatican” appealed for
world-wide sympathy, seeing himself as the bastion of civilisation against
the rising onslaught of liberal revolution and its attendant destructive
ideas. All of which Chadwick knows was wrong-headed, but nonetheless shares
some sympathy with the stalwart defenders of the past.
The problem of Italy and the Vatican enclave remained unresolved until 1929.
But Chadwick shows that already Leo XIII was beginning to realise that the
absence of physical power could be an advantage to a universal church. By
the end of the century, other issues began to loom larger. Here is
Chadwick’s summary:
“The Church was in conflict with the modern world. Everyone admitted it.
Popes made the conflict a matter of faith. Laymen and laywomen who thought
themselves modern despised the Church as behind the times. Was this gulf
necessary? Was it needful for the Church to despise the world in order to
gain its soul? . . If churchman conformed their faith to the axioms of
contemporary fashion, there would soon be not much of a Church. The
conservatives argued thus: we may admit that the Church is always in need of
reform. But ordinary men and women need not to be disturbed in their faith
and way or worship.
The opposite viewpoint argued thus: . . was it a necessary consequence of a
theory of evolution that faith in God the Creator be denied? At least there
should be liberty to enquire.” (p.348)
But the dilemma continued unabated. Leo’s successor, Pius X was “a simple,
conservative pastor, who could not understand what was happening” but who
“had to be admired because his sense of right was such that he cared nothing
for the practical.” He and the Curia believed in the doctrine of the
slippery slope. Any opening of the doors to critical enquiry, whether of
systematic or biblical theology, would lead to the proliferation of
unsubstantiated radical ideas, and confuse the faithful irrevocably. Those
who propagated such heresies, like Loisy or Tyrrell, had to be ejected, lest
they give comfort to the Church’s enemies. Chadwick rightly asks whether in
the long run the suppression of such enquirers did not do more damage. The
same can be said for the notorious papal bull Apostolicae curiae of 1896
which condemned the validity of Anglican orders (including Chadwick’s own!)
Here he argues that the condemnation which so much hurt relations between
Rome and Canterbury (and is still in force) was due to intrigues in the
Vatican, and to the Roman tradition of rejecting new insights. “The bull was
a supreme example of self-contradictory policy in Rome. It was a sign that
the Pope was ageing. In 1896 he was 86 years old”.
Chadwick stands in the tradition of his predecessors as Regius Professor of
Modern History, Lord Acton. He deplores tyranny and exalts freedom of
enquiry. But at the same time, his strength is that he sees – and convinces
his readers to see – the vastly complex intertwining of the problems each
Pope had to confront daily. How to deal with hostile government, how to
assert Papal rights, how to protect the faithful, how to arouse consciences
against evil – all are on the agenda and overlap with one another. Prudence
and cautious conservatism are inevitably the result. And while continuity
was ensured during this period by the remarkable longevity of these Popes,
the sudden urge at the next conclave to have a different kind of Pope did
not necessarily improve matters. Chadwick paints a wonderfully rich picture
of the life of the Church, warts and all. It is all immensely rewarding for
the reader. Here is both a stimulating depiction of the rich cast of
ecclesiastical characters, and a thoughtful exploration through the thickets
of controversies which still have much to teach us today.
Darcy O’Brien is an accomplished journalist who tells the story of two young
Poles, one Catholic, one Jewish, the former destined to become Pope, and the
latter to escape the Holocaust by fleeing to Russia and the Middle East and
later to become a business man in Rome. After many years the two were
reunited and enjoy their close friendship again. Using extensive interviews,
family records and photographs, O’Brien reconstructs, in a highly positive
light, this life-long relationship with sparkle and humour. He also seeks to
interweave the theme of Christian-Jewish relations by claiming that this
particular friendship was a significant factor in John Paul II’s thinking.
It was this friendship, he believes, which led to the Pope’s historic
determination to overthrow the traditional Catholic hostilities of the past
and to encourage a wholly new era of reconciliation and trust between
Catholics and Jews.
This gives O’Brien the opportunity to review the steps taken over the past
twenty years to achieve this goal. He pays tribute to John Paul’s undoubted
tenacity and outlines the numerous political and theological obstacles to be
overcome. Such formidably intractable problems as the diplomatic recognition
of the State of Israel or the sad recriminations over the Convent at
Auschwitz are here ably discussed, and tributes dutifully paid. An
encouraging story.
Jonathan Luxmoore and Jolanta Babiuch are British Catholic journalists who
saw the disintegration of the Soviet Empire in eastern Europe as an
opportunity to survey the seventy year history of how the Vatican and the
Catholic Church responded to the Marxist political and ideological system.
They go on to claim that the role of the Papacy, especially of John Paul II,
was a significant factor in its overthrow.
Their account covers the political and diplomatic activities of the Catholic
Church in eastern Europe since 1945 – with only a barest reference to
theological developments. Their basic argument is that, during the reign of
Pius XII, the Church was on the defensive, pessimistically trying to save
what was left of the old aristocratic Catholic civilisation of the past. At
the same time the Church was confronted with the aggressive dogmatism of
militant Communists from East Berlin to Peking, which made the confrontation
ever sharper. But from 1960 the climate changed. Pope John XXIII was a more
attractive character. The Second Vatican Council called for a more positive
relationship with the modern world. And the Communists abandoned their ideas
of extirpating Christianity. Instead they concentrated on the exercise of
power, though events such as the Berlin Wall or the invasion of
Czechoslovakia destroyed much of their credibility.
The way was open, the authors believe, for a new approach by the Church to
appeal to the souls of eastern Europe through the pursuit of idealism,
particularly the ideals of democracy, free enquiry and human rights. Instead
of strident condemnation of Marxist theories, the church leaders sought an
evolutionary path of accommodation in order to put forward their own goals.
This involved a complicated pattern of advances and retreats, which are here
amply described. Most notably, this change can be seen in the career of
Karol Woytila, who is the hero of this book. His energy and influence, they
believe, was crucial to the success of the Polish challenge to Soviet
domination, and his pragmatic readiness for dialogue was a significant
factor in ending repression throughout the whole region.
These authors follow much the same path already traced out by Hans-Jakob
Stehle, the veteran correspondent in Rome of the German newspaper, Die Zeit.
His account of the Eastern Policies of the Vatican first appeared twenty
years ago, was translated into English, and has since been revised and
updated in 1993. But like Stehle, Luxmoore and Babiuch were not given access
to the Vatican’s files. They are therefore dependent on secondary works, as
outlined in the excellent bibliography. Yet caution is here called for.
Since the Papacy is newsworthy, there are innumerable correspondents
attached to, and observing, the Vatican. Often not much happens. But
journalists must justify their existence. Consequently speculative accounts
abound. Even these authors’ mentor, the late Peter Hebblethwaite, was not
immune to the temptation to speculate where nothing certain could be
ascertained. On the whole, Luxmoore and Babiuch are reliable in their
commentaries, especially of the successive Papal statements. But, until the
archives are open, these accounts must remain provisional. In the meantime,
this survey, together with Stehle’s account, is a good summary of the
progressive political stances of the present Pope. It was, they say, a long
march of hope. And it came to a climax in those spectacular visits John Paul
II has paid to his homeland. Here, the authors contend, is the incarnation
of the modern Catholic witness, aware certainly of the burden of history and
of the uncertainty of all human endeavour, but nonetheless presenting a
message of inspiration to captivate the souls of modern men and women.
JSC
b) Sebastian Mueller-Rolli, Evangelische Schulpolitik in Deutschland
1918-1958. Dokumente und Darstellung. Unter Mitarbeit von Reiner Anselm und
einem Nachwort von K.E.Nipkow. Veroff. d. Comenius-Inst. Muenster
Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1999 791pp Cloth DM 148.
Bildungs- und Schulpolitik steht bis heute nicht nur in der Bundesrepublik
Deutschland im Licht oeffentlichen Interesses, weil der Ausbildung des
Nachwuchses grosse Bedeutung fuer die Gestaltung der Zukunft beigemessen
wird. An dieser Diskussion nehmen die grossen Kirchen und
Religionsgemeinschaften regen Anteil. Um so mehr ueberrascht es, dass ein en
Geschichte der Schulpolitik der evangelischen Kirchen im 20 Jahrhundert noch
aussteht. Waehrend es zur Geschichte der Religionspeaedagogik – auch im
“Dritten Reich” – verschiedene Arbeiten gibt, besteht fuer die
protestantantische Schulpolitik eine gravierende Luecke. Daher ist es
besonders erfreulich, dass jetzt Mueller-Rolli eine Dokumentation mit
zusammenhaengender Interpretation ersetllt hat.
Die 1919 Trennung von Staat und Kirche bedeutete einen wesentlichen
Einschnitt in der deutschen Schulgeschichte. So wurde der in der Verfassung
fesgeschriebene Religionsunterricht nunmehr Teil der gemeinsamen
Bildungsverantwortung von Staat und Kirche. Die Schulpolitik, vor allem die
Auseinandersetzung um die Konfessionsschule, bestimmte noch bis in die
sechziger Jahre das Verhaeltnis von Staat und Kirche nachhaltig.
Die hier vorgelegte Quellensammlung dokumentiert die Beziehungen zwischen
Staat und evangelischer Kirche im Bereich des Volksschulwesens in der ersten
Haelfte des 20. Jahrhunderts. Sie konzentriert sich auf die sechs
Brennpunkte: 1918-21: Jahre der Konfrontation – Schulpolitik in der
Republik, 1936: Innere Zerissenheit – Schulpolitik im Kirchenkampf,
1941-144: Schulpolitische Vorstellungen in den Widerstandskreisen, 1945-48:
Regionale Eigendynamik unter allierter Kontrolle, 1948-9: Die Schulfrage in
den Beratungen des Grundgesetzes und 1958: Die Schulfrage auf der Berliner
Synode der Evangleischen Kirche in Deutschland (EKD). Jedem Kapitel ist ein
einordnender Text vorangestellt, der die Entscheidungsprozesse und
Argumentationsmuster herausarbeitet, einen Ueberblick ueber die abgedruckten
Dokumente und Hinweise auf weiterfuehrende Literatur gibt. Sofern es
erforderlich ist, werden einzelne Quellen noch eigens erlaeutert.
Die 95 in chronologischer Reihenfolge abgedruckten Dokumente sind sehr
heterogen und umfassende Erlasse, Verlautbarungen, Anweisungen,
programmatische Texte, Reden (geheime) Denkschriften, Schriftwechsel und
Berichte aus dem Alltag. Sie reichen vom Erlass des preussischen Ministers
fuer Wissenschaft, Kunst und Volksbildung ueber den Religionsunterricht vom
29. November 1918 bis zum Wort zur Schulfrage der Synode der EKD vom 30.
April 1958, in dem sich die Evangelische Kirche zu einem “freien Dienst an
einer freien Schule” verpflichtete. Sie verstand und versteht ihre
Mitwirkung am Bildungssystem als Dienst an den einzelnen Kindern und
Jugendlichen im Blick auf ihre individuelle Bildung und als Dienst am
Gemeinwesen im Rahmen einer grundlegenden, zeitgemaessen allgemeinen
Bildung. Damit kam der schulpolitische Selbstklaerungsprozess innerhalb des
Protestantismus nach der Verabschiedung der Verfassungen und Schulgesetze in
den Laendern der Bundesrepublik und der sich als landfristig abzeichnenden
Teilung Deutschlands zum Erliegen.
Ein umfangreiches Nachwort “Die gefaehrdete Freiheit in Schule und Kirche”
von Karl Ernst Nipkow (pp 720-33) skizziert die Entwicklung von den
fuenziger Jahren bis zur Gegenwart.
Muller-Rolli stellt einleitend klar, dass nicht alle Landeskirchen
gleichgewichtig behandelt werden. Besonders beruecksichtigt wurden aufgrund
ihres ueberregionalen Engagements Bayern und Baden-Wuerttemberg. Leider ist
diese Auswahl problematisch. Fuer das Gesamtbild waere ein Blick auf die
Hamburger Landeskirche bereichernd, um die evangelische Schulpolitik im
Angesicht von Entkirchlichung und gesellschaftlicher Modernisierung am
Beispiel einer Millionenstadt augzuzeigen.
Ergaenzungsbeduerftig ist auch das Literaturverzeichnis am Ende des Bandes,
das etliche fuer das Thema wichtige Titel, insbesondere neuere biographische
Arbeiten ueber zentrale Personen wie Otto Dibelius, Klara Hunsche, Helmuth
Kittel und Walter Uhsadel, oder die Studie von Ludwig Richter ueber Kirche
und Schule in den Beraturngen der Weimarer Nationalversammlung (Duesseldorf
1996), vermissen laesst.
Erschlossen wird das voluminoese Buch durch ein auch als Nachschlagewerk
nuetzliches Personenregister mit biographische Angaben. So ist – trotz der
kritischen Bemerkungen – ein sehr verdienstvolles Werk entstanden, dass
hoffentlich weitere Arbeiten zum Bereich Kirche und Bildung/Schule nach sich
ziehen wird.
Reiner Hering, Staatsarchiv Hamburg
2) Book notes:
a) Frank J.Coppa, ed., Controversial Concordats: The Vatican’s relations
with Napoleon, Mussolini and Hitler. Washington, D.C.:Catholic University of
America Press. 1998.
(to be reviewed here shortly)
b) John Pollard, The Unknown Pope: Benedict XV (1914-1922) and the pursuit
of Peace 1914-1922. London Cassell 1999.
A fine examination of the diplomatic papers recently released.
c) Karl-Hermann Kandler, Die Rolle der ev.-luth.Kirche in Freiberg waehrend
der “Wende” 1989-90. Freiberg 1996.
One of the pastors involved has compiled this vivid account of events in
this town in southern Saxony during the overthrow of the former communist
regime. He makes use not only of the church’s records but also those of the
municipal authorities, which took a consistently pejorative view of the
church members. Kandler endorses the opinion that the church’s role in
bringing about the end of the regime was hardly revolutionary, but certainly
played its part in mobilizing public opinion against the misdeeds of their
former rulers.
d) When Night Fell, An Anthology of Holocaust Short Stories, edited by Linda
Raphael and Marc Raphael. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press 1999
300pp.
This is the first anthology of short stories drawn from the Holocaust
experience, and is intended for teaching purposes. Several well-known
authors are here included, as well as unknowns. Given the nature of the
subject, there is surprising variety to be found,.though the mournful
reverent tone is prevalent throughout.
3) Roisin Healy, Dissertation Abstract: The Jesuits as enemy: anti-Jesuitism
and the Protestant bourgeoisie of Imperial Germany, 1890-1917.
This dissertation addresses the reasons for the strength of anti-Jesuit
feeling in Imperial Germany. While more intense in previous centuries,
anti-Jesuitism was sufficiently strong after the unification of Germany in
1871 to bring about the expulsion of Jesuits in the Jesuit Law of 1872. This
was one of the many laws passed against clerical authority and Catholic
institutions during the Kulturkampf. But this law did not benefit from the
subsequent thaw in church-state relations in the 1880s and remained in force
until 1917. The main agents of anti-Jesuitism were men of the liberal
Protestant bourgeoisie. Jesuitism represented all they rejected –
clericalism, internationalism,.and irrationality. Anti-Jesuits used their
criticism of the order to emphasise their own commitment to the German
nation, to individual autonomy, and to reason. In exaggerating the power of
their enemies, anti-Jesuits revealed a lack of confidence in the liberal
Protestant tradition, especially its capacity to find a balance between
authority and autonomy, which would be as effective as the Jesuits’ model of
absolute obedience.
Using both government documents and pamphlet literature, this dissertation
combines an account of the Jesuit Law with an investigation of
anti-Jesuitism in its social, political and cultural context. Organised in
the Protestant League, Protestant churches, and liberal political parties,
anti-Jesuits campaigned intensively against the readmission of Jesuits after
1890, when Catholics, inspired by the collapse of the anti-Socialist Law,
reasserted their opposition to the Jesuit Law. Anti-Jesuits drew on an
existing canon of charges against the Jesuits to make their case. They found
least support among socialists and conservative Protestants.
Socialists sympathised with Catholics as another persecuted minority. Some
conservative Protestants felt closer on theological or political grounds to
Catholics than to liberal Protestants. The Reichstag passed repeal bills
repeatedly, but the Bundesrat refused to endorse them on the grounds of the
Protestants’ strong opposition. The federal government pushed through repeal
in 1917 as an effort to boost wartime morale among Catholics.
This work testifies to the importance of confession in molding cultural
values and political convictions in Imperial Germany. It confirms that
growing realisation among German historians that liberalism cannot be
equated with tolerance. Rather, liberalism’s strength grew by excluding
Catholics and others. Finally this dissertation stresses the role of “hate
propaganda” in modern political culture. The dangers implicit in its use
were clear, even if the progression to physical violence was not a necessary
or inevitable consequence.
Sincerely,
John S.Conway
jconway@interchange.ubc.ca

Association of Contemporary Church Historians

(Arbeitsgemeinschaft kirchlicher Zeitgeschichtler)

John S. Conway, Editor. University of British Columbia

 

Newsletter- July 1999- Vol.V, no. 7 

Dear Friends

 

Contents: 1) Congratulations 2) Book reviews a) Graham and Alvarez, Nothing Sacred b) Evangelische Pfarrer 3) Journal article: Webster, Non-aryan clergymen in exile 4) Kirchliche Tourismus: South Tyrol

 

1) Congratulations are due to our list members, Mark Lindsay, who has successfully completed his doctoral studies with distinction at the University of Western Australia. His thesis was on”Covenanted Solidarity: The theological bases for Karl Barth’s opposition to Nazi antisemitism and the Holocaust”; (another list member, Professor John Moses, being one of his examiners); and to Rob Levy, for completing his MA thesis on “Screening the Past:Scholarly histories and popular memories” for Washington State University.

 

2a)David Alvarez and Robert A.Graham,SJ. _Nothing Sacred.Nazi Espionage against the Vatican, 1939-1945_. London and Portland,Oregon: Frank Cass Publishers, 1997. Pp 190. Cloth$42.50. ISBN 0-7146-4744-6 Paper ISBN 0-7146-4302-5(This review appeared on H-German on June 5th) Fr.Robert Graham, who sadly died last year, was a notable journalist and Jesuit, who wrote several books on the history of the Papacy and the wartime policies of Pope Pius XII. In the course of these studies, Graham uncovered a large amount of material relating to the espionage and surveillance efforts by foreign governments or emissaries directed against the Vatican. With the assistance of a younger colleague >from California, David Alvarez,his bulky findings have now been reduced to a compact and readable 183 pages, concentrating on the Nazi attempts to spy on the Vatican during these turbulent years. The Vatican was, and is, a strictly hierarchical entity,whose policies are not subject to public scrutiny. Its diplomacy,similarly, is enveloped in secrecy, a characteristic which became even more tightly controlled once the European war broke out in 1939. The result was that all sorts of groundless rumours, imagined scenarios and even calculated falsehoods were rife about what the Pope would do or say, purveyed by “informants” who were only too ready to satisfy the world’s curiosity, often for personal gain. Since this “information” was never authorized, but equally rarely officially denied, fanciful speculations abounded, some of which were later repeated in post-war journalistic books. The Holy See was widely assumed to have considerable spiritual power which could affect the Catholic citizens of many nations. Such influence was worth cultivating. For this reason,during the war, “all of the major belligerents (with the exception of the Soviet Union) maintained diplomatic missions at the Vatican to press the righteousness of their cause and to solicit the support of the Pope and his advisers. At the same time all of the major belligerents (including the Soviet Union) sought to determine the sympathies of the papacy, and to uncover and frustrate the intrigues of their opponents by maintaining intelligence coverage of the Vatican” (ix). Prominent among these players was Nazi Germany. Hitler and his associates always had a hostile and suspicious attitude towards Catholicism. The Papacy, they believed, employed a world-wide network of clerical agents supplying potentially dangerous information to Rome. In consequence their deliberate aim was to curtail and curb such activities, not only by a ruthless persecution of “political Catholicism” in Germany and its occupied territories, but also by establishing their own networks of agents in the Vatican environment itself. A principal locale was the German Embassy to the Holy See. The Ambassador, Diego von Bergen, however, was a diplomat of the old school, rightly sceptical of much of the supposed “insider information” fed to him by various dubious contacts, and even by some pro-Nazi clerics. But Bergen was near retirement and no longer enjoyed much support in Berlin. Much more significant were the intrigues of Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA), whose pathological hatred of the church made him lose all sense of logic or proportion. He built a large staff in Munich and Berlin and in 1941 declared that “our ultimate goal is the extirpation of all Christianity” (59). In the meanwhile intelligence operations against such a dangerous foe should be intensified. The Vatican, as the centre of this anti-Nazi activity, was particularly suspect. Already in March 1939 an agent had been sent to Rome to report on the papal election, though his speculations proved entirely erroneous. This debacle showed that spying on the Holy See required better staffing, despite strong opposition from the regular diplomats. The RSHA was successful in penetrating not only the Nunciatures in Berlin and Slovakia, but also the central office of the German Catholic bishops. Various agents with contacts to high ecclesiastics were paid large sums to send in information. These machinations, on the other side, aroused alarm in the Vatican, leading to the belief that the Nazis were about to invade Vatican territory or even kidnap the Pope. In August 1943, this threat seemed so imminent that sensitive diplomatic documents and the Pope’s personal files were hidden under the marble floors of the papal palace. Despite the authors’ diligent researches, they have been unable to find any hard evidence that such a plot was instigated, but the fears were genuine, even if “inspired” by western agents. The closest the RSHA got to penetrating the Vatican itself was by bribing some exiles from Georgia with funds to buy a convent in which they tried to install a secret radio transmitter. But this failed when the Allies reached Rome first. They did manage to”turn” a young Soviet agent from Estonia, who did translations for the Congregation for the Eastern Churches, but he promptly reverted when the Germans left and was last seen in a Siberian ‘gulag’. The harvest was very meagre. The only real success came from eavesdropping on the Vatican’s signals communications and deciphering the Vatican’s diplomatic codes. Despite being the first in history to use cryptography, by the 1940s the Vatican’s methods were primitively out of date. Both Germany and Italy had no difficulty in reading most of the papal traffic, or in tapping the various nuncios’ telephones. In fact, the Vatican officials knew their systems were insecure, and hence were obliged to be even more discreet than ever. It was a severe restraint, and probably the greatest weakness of papal wartime diplomacy. The authors conclude that the results were mixed. No high-level Nazi agent was placed in the Papal entourage, and none of the very small number of individuals in the Vatican responsible for policy decisions was disloyal. This lack of success was partly due to the duplication of efforts by rival Nazi agencies, but also to the total misapprehension of the Vatican’s stature in the world,which was nothing like as powerful (or sinister) as the Nazis imagined. Nazi espionage was only one of the reasons why the Vatican’s influence and prestige suffered disastrously during the second world war. Essentially much more significant was the growing gap between its ideals of peace and justice and the meagre achievements of its diplomacy, for example in its efforts to mitigate the Holocaust. But the authors succeed very well in depicting vividly the turgid, claustrophobic and conspiratorial atmosphere which prevailed during those fateful years.JSC

 

2b) _Evangelische Pfarrer: Zur sozialen und politischen Rolle einer burgerlichen Gruppe in der deutschen Gesellschaft des 18 bis 20 Jahrhunderts_, edited by Luise Schorn-Schutte and Walter Sparn. (Konfession und Gesellschaft. Beitrage zur Zeitgeschichte, 12) Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1997. ISBN 4-17-014404-9. 217pp_Evangelische Pfarrer_ is a collection of ten essays edited by an historian, Luise Schorn-Schutte, and a theologian, Walter Sparn.Like half of the contributors to their volume, both were born in the 1940s. Eberhard Winkler and Johannes Wahl are the only two theologians represented; Reinhart Siegert was trained in Germanistik, and the others all appear to be historians, Given their professional profile, it is no wonder that the collection is heavily influenced by the methodological and thematic approaches to history which emerged in Germany in the 1970s and early 1980s. Indeed, a quick survey of the contents reminds us just how productive those years were in developing new ways to explore the German past.Schorn-Schutte’s piece on “Evangelische Geistlichkeit im Alten Reich und in der schweizerischen Eidgenossenschaft im 18 Jahrhundert” echoes attempts at cross-national comparisons that grew out of the French Annales school and its interest in the”longue duree”. Wahl’s “Lebenslaufe und Geschlechterraume im Pfarrhaus des 17 und 18 Jahrhunderts” builds on alternative traditions of Alltagsgeschichte. Hartmut Titze’s use of quantification, in “Uberfullung und Mangel im evangelische Pfarramt seit dem ausgehenden 18 Jahrhundert” is reminiscent of older works by Konrad Jarausch, who used quantified date to explore issues of professionalization. Titze’s assumption that social structures underlie cultural and material phenomena brings to mind the structuralism of Hans Mommsen and others. In his study of the Protestant pastors in the Vormarz in Kurhessen, Robert von Friedeburg echoes the so-called Bielefeld school of social history around Hans-Ulrich Wehler and its efforts to link the social and the political. The marks of Bielefeld are also evident in Frank-Michael Kuhlemann’s essay on “Die evangelischen Pfarrer und ihre Mentalitat in Baden 1860-1914″ with its sociological concerns, debt to Max Weber, and incorporation of the Annalistes’ attention to”mentalite”. Oliver Janz, in “Kirche,Staat und Burgertum in Preussen”, focuses on another preoccupation of the Bielefelders:the educated middle class, or “Bildungsburgertum”. Questions of change and continuity, so crucial to reassessments of World Wars Iand II in earlier works by Fritz Fischer, and at the heart of the debate over Germany’s alleged “Sonderweg”, reappear in productive ways in Kurt Nowak’s fascinating “Poliische Pastoren: Der evangelische Geistliche als Sonderfall des Staatsburgers (1862-1932)”.Of course the past twenty years have also changed historical methodology, and most of the essays reflect at least some of these developments. Schorn-Schutte and Wahl pay attention to women and gender, a part of the population and a category of analysis noticeably absent from mainstream German scholarship of the 1970s. Kuhlemann’s interest in culture represents another innovation, evident also in Christoph Klessmann’s intriguing”Evangelische Pfarrer im Sozialismus – soziale Stellung und politische Bedeuting in der DDR”, with its exploration of “milieu”. The one piece by a Germanisten, Siegert’s :”Pfarrer und Literatur im 19 Jahrhundert”, might not have been possible without scholarship on reading and production of books over the past decades, some of the best of it by the cultural historian Robert Darnton. So although there are times at which the essays in _Evangelische Pfarrer_ give one the impression of being in a time warp, in fact the book in rather subtle ways shows signs of the 1990s as well.As the book proves, application of older approaches, many of them drawn from Wehler’s “Gesellschaftsgeschichte” – a particularly German variety of social history – to the study of Protestant clergy in modern Germany, can be very fruitful. For example, the emphasis on the political contexts in which pastors existed helps complicate old cliches about relations between church and state. Here we see not simply the oft-invoked union of “Thron und Adler”,but a multi-faceted, dynamic, regionally-varied relationship between pastors – some of whom were liberals, some of whom sought more independence for their churches – and states that followed their own agendas. Attention to issues of class reveals complex connections between the clergy and the bourgeoisie:sometimes they overlapped to the point of coalescence; sometimes they moved in opposite directions with regard to prestige and power. In general, studying the social and material realities of pastors’ lives puts into perspective the changing conditions in which clergy and their families operated over time. Surprisingly, one of the most interesting and useful pieces in the book is what might seem at first glance the driest: Titze’s quantitative analysis of the six phases in the market for Protestant clergy from the end of the eighteenth century to the present.But there are downsides to the reliance on methodologies from the1970s as well. For one thing, those by now somewhat old-fashioned approaches lend an unnecessary provincialism to much of the book. The essays here, rooted in a German historical tradition,miss much of the enrichment that drawing on works from outside might have produced. In vain I searched the footnotes for reference to the burgeoning English-language literature on religion in Germany, much of it written by subscribers to this list: people like David Diephouse, Helmut Smith, and Dagmar Herzog. Although such works are in many cases directly relevant to the topics being explored, they might as well not have been written for all the impact they appear to have had on these scholars. Not surprisingly,the few exceptions – references to Steven Ozment and David Sabean or to Robert Ericksen (pp. 37, 48 and 72) – appear in what are, in my view, some of the livelier essays here: the contributions by Wahl and Titze.The book’s chronological coverage also reflects both the strengths and the weaknesses of the 1970s historiography. One of the great contributions of that decade was its recovery of the Kaiserreich as a period of interest. To a significant extent that concentration grew out of efforts to identify the roots of National Socialism, but the works stood on their own merits. _Evangelische Pfarrer_ partakes in that scholarly legacy; moreover, it also reflects the significant emphasis these days on the post-World War II Germanies. Klessmann’s contribution on the German Democratic Republic is an excellent example of how much can be learned by taking into consideration the most recent German past. Entirely absent from the volume, however, is any examination of Protestant pastors in the Nazi era. The editors decry this gap in their introduction (xxiii),but it sticks out like the famous blue elephant in the middle of the room which no one mentions and all the guests politely avoid, but which nevertheless remains an all-too-embarrassing presence in every conversation. How can one speak of the development of German Protestant clergy over time without even addressing the years that constituted the greatest challenge to these men and their congregations? Given the many outstanding German scholars working in the area, the editors could certainly have done more to include some discussion of the Nazi years.Finally, a sociological approach that lends itself well to exploring processes like secularization in many cases also produces bloodless analyses that can become tedious for readers. The worst culprit in this regard is Friedeburg. I found myself scouring his essay for signs of human life – anecdotes, even names – as relief from the impersonal discussion. In contrast, Eberhard Winkler’s piece on”Evangelische Pfarrer und Pfarrerinnen in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (1949-1989)”, the least historically and methodologically informed of all the contributions, was a refreshing reminder that history can be about people. Perhaps Winker could be faulted for his anecdotal approach, but I for one benefitted from his personal, engaged assessment of the challenges facing the Protestant clergy in West Germany before unification – and after. It is Winkler too whose concluding question provides a fitting close to the book: “Wie werden Menschen dazu bewegt, ihre geistigen und materiellen Gaben gemass (1 Peter: 4:10) als gute Haushalter der vielfaltigen Gnade Gottes in den Dienst zu stellen?” (p. 211) The reference to the New Testament and the content of 1 Peter 4:10 itself “As every man has received the gift, even so minister the same to one another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God”.remind us that, after all, a discussion of pastors is still a conversation about religion.By invoking scripture, Winkler highlights what is perhaps the most serious weakness of a purely social-historical approach to the study of Protestant pastors: that is, the way it excludes precisely the most absorbing and even urgent questions about religion. Economics,social class, relations with state authorities, education,professionalization, and religious institutions are only part of the story. What about belief, ritual, tradition, community, faith and spirituality? To address these components of the history of Christianity in Germany, one needs tools that allow access to the irrational, the emotional, and even the physical – tools that are more likely to come >from anthropology, cultural history and gender studies than from sociology and social history._Evangelische Pfarrer_ would have benefited from more careful editing. Some problems with breaks in words produced many cases of inappropriate hyphenation in the middle of lines. In addition to being distracting, non-words like “kon-ne”, “Bekennt-nisse” and”ba-dischen” (pp 89,93 and 121) create a postmodern or even Heideggerian effect that stands at odds with the book’s content. There is no index, and Janz’s essay is severely under-footnoted.Such quibbles aside, Schorn-Schutte and Sparn have put together a collection that will be useful to everyone concerned with Protestant clergy in the Kaiserreich, the Weimar Republic, or the post-World War II Germanies.Doris Bergen, University of Notre Dame(with apologies for the unavoidable omission of umlauts)

 

3) Journal Article: Ronald Webster, German “non-aryan” clergymen and the anguish of exile after 1933. in Journal of Religious History, (Sydney,Australia), Vol 22, no 1, Feb. 1998, pp 83-103.This article, based on oral and archival sources, comments on the lives in exile of a group of “non-aryan” pastors forced to flee to the U.K., Canada and USA to escape Nazi anti-Jewish persecution. It pays homage to the work of those who assisted the refugees, and explores the ways these testimonies open new ground for the the ongoing dialogue between Judaism and Christianity.

 

4) Whitsun in the South Tyrol. The village of Klobenstein sits halfway up the mountainside, high above the gorge of the River Etsch which hurtles down >from the Brenner Pass, past Bozen, Trent and Verona to the Italian plains.Nestled amongst surrounding meadows, in its midst is the village church – hardly larger than a chapel – where my wife and I went to celebrate the Coming of the Holy Spirit on Whitsunday.Like most of these ancient churches, it must have been a simple Gothic structure, but was later rebuilt during the baroque period,and now is surmounted by a onion-shaped steeple, whence two discordant bells unharmoniously summoned us to the Mass.Inside the apse was decorated with three large pictures under classical porticos, and the altar was moved forward, so that there wasn’t enough room for all the parishioners, especially on a major Festival like Pentecost. Many of them were obliged to stand throughout in the aisle, the narthex or even outside the west door.Luckily the sermon was short and simple, while in the gallery a wind and brass ensemble accompanied the Introit, Gloria and Creed with a tuneful folkloric setting. A lady parishioner read the Prayers of the People, invoking God’s aid for the tense political situation in Indonesia, which sounded very far from this peaceful Alpine village.We sang a hymn, which, since there were no hymn books, must have been well known to the villagers. But I did notice the young priest glowering at the congregation for not singing more enthusiastically. Afterwards everyone spilled out to the nearby coffee shop and Gasthaus to enjoy the bright sunlight.We walked back through the copses and fields, glowingly bursting with yellow buttercups, king cups, campion and blue violets. We crossed over the picturesque little tram line which loops and turns through the meadows. Every hour a tiny South Tyrolean “sky-train”trundles slowly between the farms and hamlets, as it has done ever since it was built in 1907.At the other end of the line is the settlement of Mary Ascension,where the wealthy merchants of Bozen have for centuries built their summer homes to escape >from the heat below. The only sounds were the calling of the cuckoos and the clanging of cow-bells. It was an idyllic rustic paradise.But it was not always so. Whenever the Etsch gorge was blocked by rock slides, floods or high waters, the only route open from north of the Alps necessitated ascending the hillsides to Klobenstein and then zig-zagging down the steep descent to Bozen far below. From Roman times onwards, thousands of merchants, soldiers, pilgrims and caravans trod the same paths we took on our way to church.Plundering armies invaded from north and south, looting the peasants’ cattle, and forcing them higher up into the mountains.Even in modern times, political turmoil has engulfed the area. Originally the South Tyrol was part of the Austrian Hapsburg Empire. But in 1919 it was awarded to Italy, in flagrant contradiction to President Wilson’s principle of self-determination.Under Mussolini, a vicious policy of “italianization” was launched -democratic rights were expunged, the German-speaking school system abolished, and place names forcibly changed. In 1939 Hitler and Mussolini signed a notorious agreement, giving the South Tyrolese the option, either of moving back to the German Reich to be rewarded with new lands conquered by the Nazi armies,or of compulsorily becoming Italian citizens, and even, it was said,of being evicted to Sicily if they disobeyed. This choice split the community apart, and the wounds still show. With Mussolini’s overthrow in 1943, the South Tyrol was seized by the Nazis, and hopes for a German future arose again, only to be dashed as the American and British armies “liberated” the territory in 1945. Demonstrations and sporadic violence against Italy’s rule continued until finally, some thirty years ago, the Italian government recognised the virtue of multiculturalism and restored most the German-speaking rights.The casualties in this long drawn-out struggle were high. On our way back to the hotel, we passed a memorial chapel dedicated to a young priest, Fr Peter Nuss Mayer, executed by the Nazis for refusing to take an oath of allegiance to the SS in 1945. Only a third of those who “opted” to go to Germany returned to their homes after the war. Despite the lushness of the meadows, economic realities make for difficult survival on these mountain slopes. Only embedded tradition and loyalty keeps this German-speaking minority attached to their homesteads.Across the valley looms the massive cliff face of the Schlern, rising a thousand feet precipitously from the valley floor. In the summer evenings, when the sun’s angle is right, the whole rock face turns a brilliant crimson – much to the delight of the tourists dining on the hotel terraces. Then the light fades, darkness falls, a night-bird calls,and the whole valley is silent, wrapped in the peace and grace of God. JSC

 

With every best wish for the summer holidays to you all,

 

John S.Conway

 

Association of Contemporary Church Historians

(Arbeitsgemeinschaft kirchlicher Zeitgeschichtler)

John S. Conway, Editor. University of British Columbia

 

Newsletter- June 1999- Vol.V, no. 6 

Dear Friends,

 

Contents: 1) Renewed request for biographical and research information 2) New electronic website on theology 3) Journal for the History of Modern Theology/Zeitschrift fur neuere Theologiegeschichte contd: 4) Journal issue: Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte 5) Book reviews: a) A. Nagel, Martin Rade b) Collins, Methodism in Alabama 6) Book notes 7) Personalia

 

1) Some months ago, we made a request to members of this List to send in information about their research interests, and possibly some biographical details, including their academic affiliation, so that other members could be aware of new developments going on,and so that we could get to know each other better. Personally I find it highly frustrating to receive an E-mail message from some anonymous numbered account, which gives no indication of the location of the sender. But I rejoice in hearing about your endeavours. So far the response to our invitation has been modest. The results can be read on http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/bytw/conway.htm

 

I am most grateful to Randy Bytwerk, Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan for this help.

 

2) New electronic website on theology. Dr Charles Bellinger, Public Service Librarian, Regent College,Vancouver has compiled a comprehensive website which is now available. This is a selective, annotated guide to a wide variety of electronic resources of interest to those who are teaching or studying religion and theology at the undergraduate or graduate level. The basic principle of organization used here is the course area heading. Under these headings, one will find materials divided into types: syllabi, electronic texts, electronic journals,websites, bibliographies, listserv discussion groups, and for some pages, liturgical resources. In all the site contains several hundred pages. These material types may also be browsed on their own pages. Information is also provided on ways in which electronic resources may be integrated into teaching.The course areas listed, for example, are:Archaeology and Classics Biblical Studies Christianity; General and Historical periods Ethics, Society and Culture Philosophy and Religion:Introductory and General courses World Religions Any of these subjects can be easily traced, and the appropriate website brought to your screen. In some cases, you will find that material in print has been added electronically and can be read by this means. Under Christianity/Theologians, for example, I found an alphabetical list of theologians of all ages, with details of the various websites, listservs, and electronic documentation pertaining to each. Undoubtedly a most valuable resource to explore. Many thanks to Charles Bellinger.The route to follow is http://www.Wabash center.wabash.edu/Internet/front.htm

 

3) The Editor of the Journal for the History of Modern Theology,Dr Richard Crouter, asks for attention to be drawn to the Source Document section of this journal, which is one of its most distinctive features. “In this section we print hitherto unpublished collections of materials (letters, lectures, documentation) that pertain to the history of modern theology. Recent issues have included such material by Harnack, M.Dibelius, F.Gogarten and an extensive exchange of correspondence between Bultmann and Krueger. There are even some letters from D.Bonhoeffer and Albert Schweitzer. We would welcome English-language materials dealing with theological developments and connections in the twentieth century. We encourage submissions of documentation reaching beyond Protestantism to include Catholic, Judaic and secular material that bears on the history of modern theology.”

 

4) The latest issue of the journal Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte (ed.Prof. Gerhard Besier, Heidelberg) contains a 120-page bibliography of items in our field published in 1997-8, mainly but not exclusively in German. This is impressive of the activity going on, and we are grateful to the editors for making this listing.Unfortunately, because of cost, this bibliography will not be printed in KZG in future, but will still be available, either on their web-site, or by E-mail, or on a disk or computer off-print. If your library subscribes to this journal, perhaps you would want to alert the librarian to this new offer, which might otherwise be overlooked.This issue also contains an informative, if shocking, article by Prof B.Hamm, Erlangen, about the theological justification for German militarism and racism as seen in the work of the prominent Lutheran theologian Werner Elert during the period 1914-1945.Vera Bucker contributes a useful analysis of the various Declarations of Guilt issued in 1945 by the German and Austrian Catholic bishops, as well as the better-known Stuttgart Declaration issued by the leaders of Evangelical Church. Her comparative approach shows both the strengths and weaknesses portrayed in these documents.

 

5a) Anne C.Nagel, Martin Rade – Theologe und Politiker des Sozialen Liberalismus. Eine politische Biographie (Religiose Kulturen der Moderne, Bd 4) Gutersloh 1996 pp 336 DM 178 (The review appeared previously in the Journal for the History of Modern Theology, Vol 5, p 317-20) Ambiguous Visions and Ambivalent Politics Martin Rade as Political Theologian In February 1934, Martin Rade wrote a letter to Wilhelmvon Pechmann, the well known representative of the Protestant church who resigned from all his ecclesiastical offices shortly after the Nazis came to power, thus protesting against the treatment of the German Jews. Referring to von Pechmann’s plan publicly to declare his leaving of the Protestant church as a way of protest, Rade stated that not being prominent enough, such a step taken by himself would not be effective. However he pointed out that an appeal to the public was necessary. In the present situation, he wrote, if “Die Christliche Welt” published such an appeal, this would lead to self-sacrifice. Perhaps there was a time to “die beautifully” – “In Schonheit sterben” (p. 291) as he put it. But, he continued, the right occasion would have to be found first. However, neither the “Christliche Welt” nor Rade .committed such a self-sacrifice. Whereas von Pechmann left the Protestant Church in April 1934, Rade remained inactive. Criticising the Protestant church and her treatment of baptised Jews in private letters, he did not entirely condemn the state’s policies towards the Jews: “Wenn nun der Staat Krieg mit Juda fuhrt”, he wrote in a later letter to von Pechmann in February 1939.”so kann man sich nicht wundern, wenn es nach Kriegsbrauch geht. Aber die evangelische Kirche durfte von ihren Gliedern die Hand nicht lassen”. (p. 292) These two letters show that Rade’s evaluation of the Nazi dictatorship was inconsistent. His faith in Christian values and his partial consent to the new German state and its order – these were the contradictory extremes of Rade’s political thinking. Anne Christine Nagel’s political biography of Rade (1857-1940) unfortunately does not focus on these extremes. Her book attempts to present the political commitment of this prominent representative of civil culture protestantism in Imperial and Weimar Germany. In ten chapters she describes the development of Rade’s political commitment, focusing on his liberal ‘Gelehrtenpolitik’ before the first World War in the first four chapters and on his democratic convictions after 1918 in chapters 6 to 9. Chapter 5 discusses Rade’s political attitude in the first World War, which she sees as an important break. In chapter 10 the author uses Rade as an example for evaluating the “Grosse und Grenzen professoralen Engagements” (p. 267). However, in writing a political biography, Nagel’s aim is to correct the image of Rade having been rather unpolitical and interested mainly in religious affairs. Instead, Nagel is more concerned with Rade’s political concepts and social visions than with his personal or academic life. But since he was an influential university theologian, a member of numerous liberal organisations and the longtime editor of the”Christliche Welt”, she shows how well Rade fits into the category of ‘Gelehrtenpolitiker’. By focusing on Rade’s social role and his political action,Nagel attempts to reconstruct his political thinking, his ‘Weltbild'(p.19) and analyses closely his political writings. She has used a wide array of primary sources, including Rade’s articles in national and regional newspapers, his special war pamphlets, and of course the weekly issues of the “Christliche Welt”. She has also made use of his papers deposited in Marburg University Library, including his correspondence with colleagues and his brother-in-law Friedrich Naumann, personal notes and official university documents. Furthermore she used archival material of the various parties of which Rade was a member, the “Fortschrittliche Volkspartei” and the “Deutsche Demokratische Partei”. Thus the book is also a contribution to the history of German liberalism. as seen through the writings of one of its most prominent men. She pays especial attention to the first World War and sees the catastrophe of Germany’s defeat in 1918 as a significant caesura.Indeed, she claims that her book can be divided into two separate parts by that event. However it is doubtful whether this rather artificial and unoriginal division is convincing. This book is not easy to evaluate. Certainly, a new biography of Rade was long overdue. Focusing on Rade’s political thought is of special interest not only for theologians but also for historians. But it is doubtful whether one can agree with Nagel’s results. Her thesis is that his career was not a success story, but that his greatness lay in his continuous aim to preserve and spread constitutional principles, his fight for the existence of universal values and his consequent demand for democratic rights. To be successful or unsuccessful – is that really the question that counts in a political biography? In the following I will concentrate mainly on two aspects crucial for an assessment of Rade’s ‘Gelehrtenpolitik’: his political stance during World War I and his role in Nazi Germany. On the outbreak of the war, Rade – who had been a member of the ‘Deutsche Friedensgesellschaft’ since 1908 and had often pleaded for international understanding – was as enthusiastic as many other academics. While pacifism was important to Rade, it was outweighed by patriotism in his political thinking. Even though in July he had criticised the German policy, in the following month he greeted the war, which he perceived as an “Umwerter aller Werte” (p.144). Convinced that his fatherland had to fight ‘um Sein oder Nicht seen’, as the Kaiser had put it, Rade used his magazine to join the ‘Krieg der Geister’. Whereas some readers complained that his articles were not patriotic enough, some colleagues, and the young Karl Barth especially, strongly criticised his statements. However, Nagel rightly stresses that Rade remained a true patriot throughout the war, but also points out his ambivalences. On the one hand he stressed the importance of subscribing to war loans right up to October 1918. On the other hand, already in 1915 he had started to plead for peace by agreement. In his war articles, Rade frequently outlined his vision of a new German state. From August 1914 onwards, he was convinced that it would be possible to build a ‘Volksstaat’ that would integrate all classes (p.124). He therefore pleaded for domestic reforms. However, at that time, he did not aim for democracy; his political vision was for a constitutional monarchy,a state in which everyone would be able to fulfil his ‘Pflicht zur Politik’ for the sake of the community. But after the collapse of the Empire in November 1918, he accepted the new order and joined the newly founded Deutsche Demokratische Partei. In the Weimar Republic Rade took part in the discussions about important reform projects, i.e. for reforming the Protestant church and the university system. He commented on political scandals. However, he also took a nationalist stance on Germany’s future international position, or on the need for internal renewal. He critically reviewed Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’ – but not until 1932. When the Nazis took power in 1933 Rade reacted optimistically and saw a new beginning (p.247) He eventually excused the SA’s brutality saying that a “Revolution” [sic] (p.248)was always brutal. Though he himself became a victim being dismissed in November 1933 – aged 76 -, Rade concluded”Wir konnten den Rad nicht in die Speichen fallen” (p.254) and remained politically inactive. Being unable to let “Die Christliche Welt” ‘die beautifully’, he evaluated the political situation in private letters. Condemning antisemitism and helping Jews secretly, he nonetheless considered them to be a social problem.Protestants in general aimed at helping to find a solution to what was called the ‘Judenfrage’. They pleaded for a re-christianisation of society to have a more perfect ‘Volksgemeinschaft’ and thus legitimised cultural exclusion of minorities. Rade greeted the Nuremberg Laws as a legal regulation that was long overdue. Now the ‘Loesung der Judenfrage’ (p.257) finally had a legal basis However, given the fact that these laws applied only to Jews, Rade considered it necessary to point out that the problem arose when ‘our baptised Christian children’ were forced to attend Jewish schools. Regarding the ‘Judenproblem’ as solved, he invented the’Halbjudenproblem’ and quickly offered the solution: Emigration. It becomes obvious that – contrary to Nagel’s contention – Rade was actually more concerned with the ecclesiastical than with political affairs. Equality before God – for Rade the sine qua non -and inequality before the law could exist in parallel. Rade did not question the Nuremberg Laws at all. Writing in this sense to von Pechmann in 1935, Pechmann in his answer stated his ‘schmerzliche Uberraschung’ (p.259) about Rade’s rather naive and uncritical attitude. The reader may be painfully surprised too, after noting Nagel’s conclusion that Rade continually aimed at spreading democratic ideas. According to her, Rade was a ‘republiktreuer, aber gleichwohl kritischer Publizist’ (p.265) who did not, however, see the danger arising in the Nazi movement. Having presented so many examples of his partial opposition and partial support of the regime, i.e. for the ‘Ambivalenz’ (p.149) of his thinking and actions, Nagel unintelligibly tries to save morally what cannot be saved objectively and ought not to be saved scientifically: the ‘good’ Rade. But whether he was good or not is as unimportant as whether his biography was ‘successful’ or not, because such criteria do not apply here. It has long been proved that, referring to Protestants especially, one cannot clearly distinguish between supporters and opponents of the Third Reich. Years before Nagel wrote her biography, it had already been stressed that the three basic elements of Protestant concepts of culture – the emphasis on the individual personality, the longing for cultural homogeneity and the ideal of the state as the guarantor of cultural values(“Kulturstaat’) – were important factors explaining the ambiguity of the Protestants varied attitudes towards Nazism and thus towards the ‘Judenfrage’. As F.W.Graf has noted, Protestants shared a paradoxical and simultaneous proximity and distance to the Nazi state.Characteristic was the combination of partial opposition to the racist parts of the Nazi ideology and a partial support of the new and strong state. Because they saw the state as the end-product of all values and the guarantor of the people’s unity, many liberal Protestants found it impossible to defend human rights against the state when they became endangered. Given that the basic elements of cultural Protestantism demanded resistance as much as forbidding it, only individual case studies could lead to further knowledge about how far liberal protestant mentalities were translated into social action. Being such a case study, Nagel’s book would have been more convincing if she had focused on this specific ambiguity.Instead she aims at giving a definitive interpretation where definite statements can hardly be given and thus misses that chance that writing an analysis of Rade’s multi-dimensional political views offered. Her political biography is an interesting and partly very detailed presentation of this academic’s political life. However, by neglecting the question of ambiguity, her book does not quite match the new research. If Nagel had had a look at war pamphlets in general, she would have noticed that academics in general, and Protestant theologians especially, were open to integrative anti-capitalistic and corporative ideologies. Indeed: Socialism and war-Socialism became common terms during the war, and the combination of nationalism and socialism was a widespread subject. This is why liberal Protestants, irrespective of their political views, were so susceptible to Nazism, because of their specific openness or adaptability to ideologies that offered an integral community. Based on collective devotion to the common good, such ideologies promised to overcome the scorned modernity. Being torn between his liberal values and his longing for a renaissance of a strong and powerful Germany, Martin Rade, as a political theologian, represents the ‘Gelehrtenpolitiker’ whose ambiguous visions and ambivalent politics marked ‘the decline of the German mandarins’ .(F.K.Ringer)                                                                           Steffen Bruendel, University of Bielefeld

 

b) Donald E.Collins, When the Church bells ran racist. The Methodist Church and the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama.Macon,Georgia: Mercer University Press 1998 xii +178 pp. As a young Methodist minister, Donald Collins served in southern Alabama during the height of the anti-segregation conflict in the 1950s and ’60s. He has now set down his personal recollections, aided by interviews with several former colleagues,in order to describe the attitudes and actions of the Methodist Church, and the agony and tragedy in which they were all involved. Collins’ stance is one of repentance for the failure of the Methodists of the Alabama-West Florida Conference to take a stronger stand earlier in the cause of justice for all. In particular he is critical of the church hierarchy for its absolute determination to defend the status quo and the supremacy of the dominant white group. The Methodist Layman’s Union, closely parallelling the White Citizens’ Council, opposed any relaxation of segregation and sought to prevent either the sudden or gradual integration of Negroes and whites. Interestingly, however, they did not try to defend this stance on theological grounds. The white clergy were, of course, in a difficult and exposed position. Their views and actions were subject to intense surveillance, and any hint of sympathy with the blacks could and did bring down immediate threats to have them evicted, or the loss of salary. Intimidation of such “nigger-lovers” was openly practised.It took immense courage to persevere, and Collins admits that many of his colleagues preferred to keep silent. The most active -including the author himself – were often quickly exhausted and opted to leave the ministry and take up secular jobs. Not even knowledge of overwhelming support from other sections of the church and the rest of the world could sustain them for long. Most congregations, however, accepted the tradition of injustices suffered by the black community as beyond contention. Even when lawless mobs brutalized the freedom riders in Birmingham and Montgomery, the church was silent. Its leaders expressed no outrage, and made no call for respect of law and order. The church bells rang racist. Collins describes the tense events of 1963-4 when education facilities in Alabama were finally integrated, and Methodists at last got round to removing the structures of segregation which had long prevailed in the church. But in Alabama-West Florida, Methodists remained bastions of resistance. Not until 1972 was the Alabama Methodist Church finally de-segregated. But even today, no black minister has ever been appointed to a white congregation. And racial integration has led to difficulties for both black and white members. The loss of qualified black ministers to more friendly conferences, the flight of white congregations to all-white suburbs and the closing of inner-city churches where inter-racial partnerships are most needed are disturbing features of the present scene. Although no longer serving as a Methodist minister,Collins writes with insight and sympathy for those who upheld the cause of reform at the most crucial time. His reportage and his witness as a Zeitzeuge are both insightful and valuable. But he continues to fear that in Alabama the church bells still ring racist.JSC

 

6) Book notes:a) ed. Frank J.Coppa, Encyclopedia of the Vatican and Papacy,Westport,Conn: Greenwood Press 1999 483pp ISBN 0-313-28917-4 US $99.50. This is a useful reference work, particularly good for its up-to-date biographies of all the Popes, each entry having an attached bibliography.

 

b) Peter Beier, Missionarische Gemeinde in sozialistischer Umwelt. Die kirchentagskongressarbeit in Sachsen im Kontext der SED-Kirchenpolitik (1968-1975) Gottingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht 1999 514pp DM 128

 

c) Last December the World Council of Churches celebrated the 50th anniversary of its establishment in 1948 during its 8th Assembly, held in Harare, Zimbabwe. The Assembly’s setting and deliberations have been incisively described in a 65 page booklet,entitled Journey Together Towards Jubilee, written by Martin Conway, who is distributing this from 303 Cowley Road, Oxford,U.K., price GBP 2.50, tel and fax +44(0)1865-723085.

 

d) eds. Gunter Brakelmann, Norbert Friedrich, Traugott Jahnichen,Auf dem Weg zum Grundgesetz. Beitrage zum Verfassungsverstandnis des neuzeitlichen Protestantismus.(Entwurfe zur christlichen Gesellschaftswissenschaft Vol.10)Munster: LIT Verlag 1999. 281pp ISBN 3-8258-4224-x This collection of essays describing the inter-relationship between the German Evangelical Church and the various successive constitutions since 1789 will be of interest primarily to church legal historians. Others will find the two essays by G. Brakelmann on the 5th article of the 1934 Barmen Declaration,and on the 1942 Freiburger Denkschrift, as well as Friedrich and Jahnichen’s essay on Gerhard Leibholz and Gerhard Ritter to be helpful in bringing out the atmosphere of the war and immediate post-war years. Like most such collections, the reader will need a good indexing system to remember and find the gold nuggets contained herein.

 

7) Personalia On April 25th, in Berlin’s French Cathedral, Archbishop Desmond Tutu was awarded the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Prize in recognition of his work for human rights and his leadership of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission.In his acceptance speech, Tutu spoke of the power of reconciliation and pointed out that many of the victims of apartheid had chosen to forgive their oppressors, despite the terrible atrocities reported by the 20,000 victims interviewed. * **The first woman to hold a professorship in Catholic theology at a German university, Frau Uta Ranke-Heinemann, is being proposed as a candidate for the next Presidential election by the Party of Democratic Socialism. Since the era of the Vietnam war, she has been a prominent anti-war activist and a leader of Germany’s pacifist movement. Her father Gustav Heinemann served as German President from 1969 to 1974, having earlier been a leading lawyer for the Confessing Church in Essen during the Nazi period.

 

With very best wishes

 

John Conway

Association of Contemporary Church Historians

(Arbeitsgemeinschaft kirchlicher Zeitgeschichtler)

John S. Conway, Editor. University of British Columbia

Newsletter- May 1999- Vol. V, no. 5 

Dear Friends,
Contents: 1) Obituary: Dr L. Siegele-Wenschkewitz
2) Forthcoming Conference: 30th Annual Conference on the Holocaust and the
Churches, March 4th – 7th
3) Book reviews:
a) S. Selinger, C.v. Kirschbaum and K. Barth
b) E. Voegelin, Hitler and the Germans c) N. Railton, German Evangelicals and
Third Reich
4)Book notes:
a) A. Lindemann, Esau’s Tears
b) B. Chiari, Alltag hinter der Front
c) ed.P. Smith, After the Wall
d) Kretschmar, Das bischoefliche Amt
e) Mensing, Pfarrer und Nationalsozialismus
5)Journal articles:
a) R. Shaffer, Japanese Internees
b) G. Besier, East German Churches
c) B. Schafer, East German Catholics
6) Correction: H. Kreutzer, Reich Church Ministry
7)Technical Note   1) It is with great regret that we learn of the recent death of Frau Dr
Leonore Siegele-Wenschkewitz (1944-1999) in Frankfurt, Germany. As a former
associate of the late Professor Klaus Scholder in Tubingen, she developed a
keen interest in the history of the Church Struggle, and published her
researches on this topic, most notably in her valuable study ‘Theologische
Fakultaeten im Nationalsozialismus’, Goettingen 1993. From 1983 she worked
as Moderator of Studies at the Evangelical Academy in Arnoldshain, near
Frankfurt, of which she became the Director in 1996. The numerous
conferences and seminars she helped to organize there played a significant
role in the life of the church in western Germany. At the same time she was
an adjunct professor at Frankfurt University, when she had an opportunity to
express her interest in the role of women in the church
She served for many years as a member of the Evangelical Church’s Board for
Contemporary History, and since 1988 was its vice-chairman. In view of the
sad illness of the chairman, she was called on to take a very active role in
the Board’s affairs in the last year of her life.
In 1999 she was awarded the Edith Stein Prize, and was fortunately able to
go to Gottingen to receive this honour and to deliver an appropriate speech
in recognition of Edith Stein on this occasion.

2) The 30th Annual Scholars’ Conference on the Holocaust and the Churches
will be held at St. Joseph’s University and the Adams Mark Hotel,
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania from Saturday, March 4th to Tuesday, March 7th.
The key note address on Sunday, March 5th will be delivered by Elie Wiesel.
Registration and information can be obtained from the Annual Scholars’
Conference, P.O.Box 10, Merion Station, Pa 19066, FAX 610-667-0265.   3a) Suzanne Selinger, Charlotte von Kirschbaum and Karl Barth. A Study in
Biography and the History of Theology. University Park, Penn: Penn.State
U.P. 1998. 206pp
Female theologians are still a rarity: how much more so seventy years ago!
The career of Charlotte von Kirschbaum, secretary and theological assistant
to Karl Barth for over thirty years, has long intrigued, and sometimes
scandalized, admirers of the most prominent Protestant theologian of the
20th century. Feminists have long accused Barth of exploiting “Lollo”, as
she was always known, and Suzanne Selinger, herself an accomplished
theological writer, shares a lot of the anger at what she sees as Barth’s
selfishness in not promoting von Kirschbaum’s own career. On the other hand,
Lollo herself was an intelligent, devoted and faithful interpreter of Barth’s often complex theology and accepted, apparently willingly, her
indispensable role as part of his household.
Suzanne Selinger recognizes that the secrets of their personal relationship
are hardly recoverable and instead seeks to elucidate more about their
professional links. She regrets that Lollo only published a small amount on
her own account, but senses in this accomplishment signs of the kind of
influence she may have had in her daily discussions with Barth. Selinger
rightly sees that, in order to achieve the kind of theological writing in
which he excelled, and especially in his great work _Church Dogmatics_,
Barth needed a dialogical partner – someone to function as sounding board
and, most characteristically, someone with whom to think things through. In
his earlier career, Eduard Thurneysen had played this role. But after Barth
moved to Germany, and needed more direct assistance in his academic affairs,
it was only natural that he should seek out someone whose sympathy for his
ideas and understanding of his mental processes and doctrinal positions, was
matched by an incredible capacity for more humdrum tasks. Not only did Lollo
type out Barth’s drafts, answer his letters, “manage” his students, organize
his timetable of meetings, lectures and speaking engagements, but even found
time to compile a vast collection of useful excerpts from a huge variety of
Christian writers, which could then be turned to at will.
Selinger is particularly good at tracing Lollo’s nuanced view of gender
issues, in the light of the christologically-based anthropology she shared
with, or adopted from, Barth. She certainly rejected the patriarchal view of
much of her German tradition-bound society, as also the romanticized view of
women as inherently dependent on men, or alternatively more religious than
man. Such stereotyping had to be rejected in favour of the kind of
relational existence of both men and women in response to God’s command.
In the later chapters, Selinger examines closely Barth’s doctrines of the
image of God, the gender question and his innovative theories of dialogical
personalism. Lollo’s contribution to such ideas is impossible to unravel,
but Selinger clearly believes she played a significant role in their
eventual formulation, especially in stressing the creativity of women,
including a mutual fellowship in the constructive building of community. To
understand all this, a close acquaintance with _Church Dogmatics_ is
recommended.
Charlotte von Kirschbaum was criticized, both in her time and since, by
feminists unable to comprehend her spiritual approach, who saw only
exploitation of her undoubted gifts by the dominant male. Yet she chose to
be freely herself for Barth – a perfect realisation of I – Thou
relationship. It was a one-sided partnership, yet clearly rewarding for
both. Perhaps, as Selinger suggets, Barth’s need to have Lollo’s constant
presence was the result of a weakness, a loneliness, which demanded the
company of the other. Her legacy is to be found buried in his comprehensive
theological work. It is not therefore to be disparaged.
JSC   3b) Eric Voegelin. Hitler and the Germans. Columbia: University of Missouri
Press, 1999.
This book is based on lectures Eric Voegelin gave at the University of
Munich in 1964, that are being published now for the first time. The
lectures were given in German, and they have been ably edited and translated
into English by Detlev Clemens and Brendan Purcell.
In this work, Voegelin seeks to address questions such as these: What were
the spiritual conditions in Germany which allowed Hitler to rise to power
and gain the support of so many average people?, Why did the Christian
churches respond to Nazism so weakly?, How did a regime rooted in illegality
and murder take over the legal system in Germany?, Why do intellectuals and
academics in Germany after the war have such a poor understanding of Nazism
as a spiritual phenomenon?, Why are many former Nazis who are war criminals
living openly and prospering in Germany after the war?
Those who are already familiar with Voegelin’s philosophy will find here the
basic concepts which he has developed elsewhere: human existence occurs “in
between” materiality and the transcendent realm of God; human beings have a
marked tendency to avoid living honestly with this reality of the “between”;
this leads them to create false “second realities” in which they attempt to
exist autonomously, apart from God; the flight from reality has led to the
modern neo-gnostic regimes of mass murder such as Stalinism and Nazism. In
these lectures, Voegelin focuses on the historical circumstances of Nazism,
making this volume more concrete and accessible than his other more abstract
and philosophical writings, which have a tendency toward dense argument and
complex terminology. This volume would serve very well as an introduction to
Voegelin for someone who has not read him.
There is a clear undercurrent of anger animating this text, which is
understandable given Voegelin’s personal history of persecution at the hands
of the Nazis. Voegelin doesn’t allow his anger to derail his central
purpose, however, which is to analyze the various dimensions of the “abyss”
into which Germany descended: the academic abyss, the ecclesiastical abyss,
and the legal abyss. In the academic realm, Voegelin’s principal target of
attack is P. E. Schramm, the historian who edited Hitler’s Table Talk.
Voegelin pillories Schramm for producing an “anatomy” of the dictator which
reveals a fundamental lack of understanding of the subject. This lack of
understanding is reprehensible in Voegelin’s eyes because the intellectual
tools needed for correct understanding were available to Schramm–in
classical philosophy, biblical theology, and the writings of contemporaries
such as Karl Kraus, Robert Musil, Thomas Mann, Hermann Broch, and Heimito
von Doderer.
Voegelin comments on the ecclesiastical situation in two substantial
chapters which are devoted to the Catholic and Protestant spheres. In each
case his critique is very harsh, emphasizing the idea that most Christians
knew of the persecution of the Jews by the Nazis and either applauded it or
did not care about it as long as they themselves were not being persecuted.
When the reach of the Nazis’ power did begin to negatively impact the
churches, then Christians all of sudden began to realize that they should be
concerned about their fellow human beings who are being murdered. Voegelin
reveals the narcissism at the root of this morale debacle as a massive
failure of the Christian church to hold fast to the central biblical
teaching regarding the creation of all people in the image of God. On pages
199-201, Voegelin puts forward a list of ten biblical and philosophical
points which are necessary to teach German clerics and theologians “the
elements of Christianity.” His wish for the use of this list: “Lower clergy,
copy it out daily ten times; bishops and theologians, daily a hundred times;
theologians who have received a Cross of Merit from the Federal Republic,
daily two hundred times until they have got it.”
Voegelin’s anger and sarcasm make the book lively, but they don’t set the
stage for a balanced and comprehensive historical account. He pays very
little attention to the Confessing Church, for example, mentioning
Bonhoeffer only in passing and Karl Barth not even once. His judgment that
there was “no good theology” being produced in Germany at the time seems
very odd in light of Barth’s works (162). But in hindsight, the impact of
the Confessing Church was minimal in stemming the tide of Nazism, and
Voegelin’s portrait of the situation is generally accurate. I make this
comment without being a historian of that period myself. I would be very
interested to read a review of this work written by such a person. It may be
that members of the historical guild will not be as favorable in their
attitude toward this work as I am, representing the guild of theological
ethics.
Charles Bellinger, Regent College, Vancouver   3c) Nicholas Railton, The German Evangelical Alliance and the Third Reich.
An analysis of the ‘Evangelisches Allianzblatt’, Bern: Peter Lang 1998, pp.
265 £27
Railton, who has already written an assessment of the German Free Churches
and the Third Reich, has now produced this revealing study of the German
Bible belt. Consisting of about one million adherents in the 1930s, and
stretching from the Saxon Erzgebirge through Thuringia and Hessen to Baden
and Wuerttemberg, it gave a depressingly rosy response to Hitlerism as a
force standing for ‘positive Christianity’. Railton shows us quite clearly
how much German evangelicalism (‘evangelikal’ used in its Anglo-American
sense can be dated only as far back as 1965) in its modern phase, beginning
with the loose inter-denominational Gnadau Association (1897) of Lutheran,
Reformed and United Church evangelicals and their new missionary press
(1890: c. 5,000), owed to the early modern and habitual German home-town
environment and mentality of Pietism, Moravianism and early
nineteenth-century Revivalism. Wilhelmine and Weimar successors, simply put,
could not adapt either spiritually or morally to the challenges posed by our
modern industrial age. It appears also that authoritarian political values
investing the ‘state’ and those who ran it with an almost divine aura
over-rode a religious ethos associated with being ‘born again’. The ideals
of 1789, western Liberalism, Marxism, Bolshevism, post-1918 democratic
republicanism and an alleged Jewish ‘materialism’ were lumped together, with
not so much as the odd tweak of conscience, as poisons. These supposedly
contaminated a German muscular evangelical post-1918 culture which drew its
main inspiration from the recent hurrah patriotism of Bismarck’s Second
Reich, and the ‘ we-are-so-hard-done-by’ interwar German Nationalist Party.
It does seem extremely odd today, that the two years 1933 and 1934, marking
Nazi ‘co-ordination’, should be seen by the German Free Churches and
evangelicals as giving far greater freedoms and opportunities than the years
of the Weimar Republic, which had awarded the Christian Churches and other
religions freedoms and financial support on a scale unheard of in Germany
before 1918. It repays to read again and again, however bleak one’s frame of
mind, this German ‘evangelical’ way of thinking and speaking during 1930-3.
Railton summarizes it in the following way: ‘Hitler talked of “God”, “the
Lord” and “Providence”, so now they began to talk of the “Zeitenwende”, the
“nationaler Aufbruch” and “Vorsehung”. The language of the Third Reich was
already becoming the language of German evangelicalism’ (p.27) Chapter vi,
‘Evangelical social concerns’, and chapter vii, ‘The Jewish question’,
recording adulation for Hitler as Mr Clean, and overt evangelical support
for Nazi public moral hygiene, meaning clearing the streets of pimps,
prostitutes, homosexuals, Jews and assorted riff-raff, and approval of Nazi
anti-abortion policy, pile a murky Pelion upon Ossa. The teaching of the
Bible, purged, one might add, of the Old Testament, seems to have been
completely dispensed with.
Nicholas Hope. (This review appeared first in the Journal of Ecclesiastical
History, July 1999, p. 612-3)   Book notes:   4a) A.S.Lindemann, Esau’s Tears: Modern anti-semitism and the rise of the
Jews, Cambridge University Press 1997. 568pp
The object of this large-scale history of anti-semitism is basically to take
issue with the prevailing view found in simplistic surveys such as those by
D.Goldhagen or Lucy Dawidowicz, which have blamed outside forces, including
the Christian church, for this phenomenon. Lindemann instead seeks to
advance the polemical and provocative view that some aspects at least of
this intolerance were due to the Jews’ own behaviour and their “rise”.
On the historical role of the Church, Lindemann makes the following
statement:
“One can unquestionably pinpoint Christian tendencies towards demonizing
Jews, but such tendencies are balanced by others. The evidence is hardly
persuasive that within Christian belief is contained a strongly determined
predisposition, drawing in all Christians, to violent hatred of Jews. In
modern times Christian peoples have differed enormously in their reactions
to Jews, from mild philo-Semitism to murderous loathing. This range of
sentiment cannot be convincingly connected to various traits within
varieties of Christianity, whether Catholic, Protestant, or Greek Orthodox,
sincere or lax, popular or elite.. . . Religion, though often seen as the
ultimate or fundamental source of anti-Semitism, is too elastic and
ambiguous a category to offer much more than conjectural, ahistorical and
woolly explanations, in which the preconceptions and emotional agendas of
the authors play a decisive role.” (p.xvi)   b) B.Chiari, Alltag hinter der Front. Besatzung, Kollaboration und
Widerstand in Weissrussland 1941-1944 Dusseldorf, Droste Verlag 1998
This belated study of the German occupation of White Russia (Byelorussia)
has a few pages dealing with the role of the church under Nazi rule
(pp103ff). As in the Ukraine, the initial hopes for deliverance >from the
Communists led to exaggerated expectations amongst the upper Orthodox clergy
which were soon enough disillusioned. As for the Catholics, who constituted
some 20%, they were always regarded as hostile, and were treated
accordingly. This is another mosaic in the wider picture of the fate of the
Soviet churches which still remains to be written up. But B.Chiari has
researched the Russian sources thoroughly as far as this aspect of his topic
goes.   c) ed. Patricia Smith, After the Wall. Eastern Germany since 1989,
Boulder,Colo. Westview Press, 1998
Detlef Pollack, a sociologist who teaches at Frankfurt an der Oder,
contributes a chapter on the situation of religion since 1989, which draws
on various interviews and samples to show that in fact the differences
between religious practices and beliefs in east and west Germany are not all
that great. Despite 40 years of deliberate secularization, the churches
survive, though noticeably weaker in eastern Germany. On the other hand the
anticipated loss to other faiths or cults has not happened. The expectations
of what the churches should be like are similar, and the level of
commitment, as for example to be seen in baptism or confirmation, are
remarkably constant, but can not lend comfort to those who had hoped that
the end of Communism would see a re-christianisation of the east German
society.   d) Georg Kretschmar, Das bischoefliche Amt. Gottingen: Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht 1999 355pp
The former Professor of Church History in Hamburg and Munich, and
subsequently the bishop of the revived Lutheran Church in the Baltic States,
has contributed these studies in the episcopal office which cover the office
of the bishop in the Early Church, its rediscovery and renewal of the
ministry during the Reformation era, and its ecumenical relevance.

e) The study by Bjorn Mensing, Pfarrer und Nationalsozialismus, which was
reviewed here by Prof.Gerhard Besier in November 1998, has now achieved a
second edition with a new publisher, Verlag C. u. C. Rabenstein, Bayreuth.
The author has taken the opportunity to make suitable corrections in the
light of a vigorous response, extending >from helpful additions by surviving
eye-witnesses to personal attacks and threats of legal action, even
anonymous denunciations.   5) Journal articles:   Jacques Kornberg, Ignaz von Dollinger’s Die Juden in Europa: A Catholic
Polemic against Antisemitism, in Journal for the History of Modern
Theology/Zeitschrift fur neuere Theologiegeschichte, Vol. 6 no 2, 1999,
pp.223-245
Kornberg, a professor at Toronto, brings to light a long forgotten lecture
given in 1881 by this most distinguished Bavarian academic, who
unfortunately had been excommunicated by the Vatican for his opposition to
the policies of Pope Pius IX. Kornberg sees this attack on the kind of
vulgar anti-Judaism in one persistent strain of Catholic thought as part of
Dollinger’s overall campaign against the ultramontane authoritarianism being
imposed by Rome. On the other hand, Dollinger still adhered to the kind of
triumphalism which looked forward to the eventual voluntary conversion of
Jews to (liberal) Christianity. The sentiments expressed are very
reminiscent of those adopted 8o years later at the 2nd Vatican Council, and
contributed to Dollinger’s recent
rehabilitation.   Robert Shaffer, Opposition to Internment. Defending Japanese American rights
during World War II, in The Historian, Vol 61, no. 3, Spring 1999, 597ff
This article describes the small number of sympathizers with the Japanese
Americans interned in 1942, often pastors and missionaries, who had some
contact with these congregations on the American West Coast, and sought to
alleviate their plight.   Gerhard Besier, The German Democratic Republic and the State Churches,
1958-1989,
in Journal of Ecclesiastical History, Vol 50, no 3, July 1999, p. 523ff
Designed to bring to an English audience the results of Prof.Besier’s
enormous volume of research into the fate of the East German churches under
Communist rule, this article is a valuable if much abbreviated summary. For
those who want to explore further, the footnotes give useful help.   Bernd Schaefer, State and Catholic Church in Eastern Germany, 1945-1989, in
German Studies Review, Vol. XXII, no 3, October 1999, p. 447ff
A useful summary of the Catholic Church’s position, on similar lines to the
previous item.   6) Correction: Following our notice in last November’s Newsletter of Heike
Kreutzer’s 1993 MA thesis on the establishment of the Reich Church Ministry
in 1935, the author has now kindly sent us her more recently completed PhD
thesis from Tuebingen University on the same topic, which is to be published
later this year. She has expanded her earlier work with a full analysis of
the documentation relating to the Church Ministry, which was for so long
unavailable in East German archives. Although her treatment essentially
stops in 1938, she again emphasizes her view that the Ministry’s failure and
its fate was already decided by that date. Her researches confirm in detail
what was already known – that the Minister, Hanns Kerrl, was an impulsive,
semi-educated, naive and bungling politician. Moreover, he was incessantly
caught in the cross-fire between the rival church camps, especially in the
Evangelical Churches, on the one side, and at the same time, sabotaged by
his supposed colleagues in the Nazi Party, who were much more skillful than
he at interpreting Hitler’s often contradictory tactics towards the
churches.
Kerrl started from the “idealist” position that the Churches and the Nazi
Party should be integrated more closely together. “True Christianity and
true National Socialism are identical” was typical of his approach, which
was found to be absurd not only by orthodox churchmen, but also by the Party
radicals. While Kerrl sought to bring the churches under state control, the
Party radicals sought to diminish or even to abolish them. Kerrl found his
only support in a handful of “German Christians”, but already by 1937, he
had been effectively outmanouevred and his grandiose plans aborted.
Heike Kreutzer’s contribution is to document the lamentable career of this
hapless Nazi minister in a manner which will not need to be done again. Her
viewpoint is not new, and suffers from a considerable amount of repetition.
Especially revealing is her account of the extent to which Kerrl was unable
to gain the loyalty of his own staff, which included at least three
clergymen regularly reporting on his actvities to the Gestapo. The official
in charge of Catholic affairs, a renegade priest, was a determined opponent
of the Concordat, and organized an extensive campaign to weaken the Catholic
Church’s institutional life, thus playing into the hands of the Nazi
extremists. On the Protestant side, the ministry’s officials did seem to
have more sympathy for their “clients’, but again proved ineffective against
the increasingly anti-church and anti-clerical camp led by Bormann, Goebbels
and Rosenberg.
Ms Kreutzer clearly shows how this Ministry and its officials were part of
the internecine rivalries within the Nazi power structures, which in the end
led to its complete subordination and failure. It would be nice to think
that this misbegotten attempt to use state power to manipulate and coerce
the churches had been defeated by the churches’ united resistance against
such unwanted provocation. But the evidence shows that this was not the
case. Not only did the Catholic Church, for example, welcome the close
association with the state by signing the Concordat with Hitler in 1933, but
successfully campaigned to have it upheld again in West Germany in the
1950s. And the experience in East Germany, where the Ministry for Church
Affairs, reappeared in a communist guise, was to prove equally lamentable on
both the state’s and the churches’part. It was not a chapter of church
history to be proud of.   7) Technical Note:
This Newsletter comes to you free, gratis and without cost. Anyone who is
genuinely interested in contemporary church history is welcome to subscribe,
whether or not they have teaching responsibilities in this area. As of
January 2000, we have 275 subscribers, whose geographical location is as
follows:
USA 103, Canada 61, Germany 44, U.K. 22, Australia 10, Sweden 4, Norway 3,
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Poland, Austria, Ireland, Hungary, Finland 1 each, and a few in cyberspace.
The subscribers’ list is NOT made available to any other agency or
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Written contributions or comments are most welcome and can be forwarded to
me at the address below.
Anyone desiring to unsubscribe should also so indicate to me, and not to the
list in general.   With best wishes
John S.Conway
jconway@interchange.ubc.ca

Association of Contemporary Church Historians

(Arbeitsgemeinschaft kirchlicher Zeitgeschichtler)

John S. Conway, Editor. University of British Columbia

 

Newsletter- April 1999- Vol.V, no. 4 

Newsletter – Vol V, no 4 – April 1999

 

Dear Friends,

 

Contents: 1) Book reviews: a) Jehovah’s Witnesses b) Brewer,Anti-Catholicism in N.Ireland c) Chandler, Terrible Alternative d) Recker, Bishop Berning 2) Thesis abstract: Jeff Zalar 3) Journal articles in Religion, State and Society 4) New books noted

 

1a) Hans Hesse (ed), Am mutigsten waren immer die Zeugen Jehovahs: Verfolgung und Widerstand der Zeugen Jehovahs im Nationalsozialismus, Bremen:Edition Temmen 1998, 447pp. DM48Klaus-Dieter Pape, Die Angstmacher: Wer (ver)fuehrt die ZeugenJehovahs?, Leipzig: St.Benno-Verlag 1998, 282 pp DM 26.80. Jehovah’s Witnesses (Watchtower Society) are a small Christian religious association with a history of over a 100 years’ activity in Germany. Today, they number more than 5 million believers world-wide. During the past five years, they have repeatedly made headlines in Germany because of their efforts – up to now unsuccessful – to gain the status of a corporation under public law.During both dictatorships, the J.Ws displayed remarkable resistance, and consequently suffered many casualties. In the early nineties, they went on the offensive in Germany, not only with respect to their legal status, but also by modifying the way they handle their own past. They became more open, co-operating with outside historians wishing to do research and pushing ahead some of their own historical projects. At the same time they modified their doctrines in some important areas. Unfortunately, these new social initiatives only stirred up latent prejudices and antagonisms still in existence among the major churches and other groups. So when in 1997 the J.Ws produced a video documentary entitled “Jehovah’s Witnesses Stand Firm against Nazi Assault”, emotions flared up. The Schulpsychologische Dienst (Centre for Educational Psychology)in Bremen circulated a somewhat awkwardly phrased letter,stating: “Although no doubt Jehovah’s Witnesses suffered torture,imprisonment and even death in the concentration camps under the Nazi regime, using this video documentary in schools cannot be recommended, because doing so would provide this sect with an opportunity to gain publicity for their organization.”When Jehovah’s Witnesses protested, the letter was withdrawn.But the Schulpsychologische Dienst would not drop its reservations. “The situation is complicated since the video documentary is about a religious association which is understandably interested not only in publicising their persecution but also their history, doctrines and organization”.Of course the fact that other films about the conduct of the churches during the Third Reich have been produced for as long as anyone can remember, films which also do not restrict themselves to the subject of persecution, is often conveniently ignored. The official institutions responsible for the approval of media for schools consulted six experts, including two “sect experts” from the major churches. The result was their decision not to let the film”get into the hands of pupils” and to recommend against distribution.Part B of Hesse’s book examines in detail the aspects of the film being criticised. One scholar in religious studies, not a member of the J.Ws, came to the conclusion: “In the light of Auschwitz and the Holocaust, if such an example of Christian integrity by a community of faith had not existed, then the credibility of Jesus’ teachings would have been put in doubt.” A “vindication” of Christianity by, of all people, the scorned J.Ws! Neither of the major churches can claim this distinction. Still, the facts speak for themselves. After some early attempts to adjust to the new”national conditions” in Nazi Germany, the J.Ws fiercely resisted all Nazi attempts to suborn their religious convictions.The first part of Hesse’s book reports that almost half of the 25,000 J.Ws in Germany suffered imprisonment or torture. More than 2000 were sent to concentration camps, where 250 were subsequently executed. Next to the Jews, the J.Ws statistically paid the highest price in terms of lives lost. There were solid reasons for this: “No other religious association resisted National Socialist pressure to conform with comparable unity and uncompromising character”. The reason why the fate of this group, persecuted with such animalistic force, has not been examined for over 50 years, is,according to Dietlef Garbe, historian and director at the Neuengamme (Hamburg) Memorial, because of “social resentment” against the Jehovah’s Witnesses. The second book under review takes a very different tack.Converts commonly tend to speak negatively about their former beliefs. Rarely does this tendency spread to the converts’ children.In the case of the Pape family, however, a whole clan has devoted itself to discrediting the group they were once part of. Guenther Pape, the father, at the age of nine, watched his parents being arrested by the Gestapo in 1936. He was then placed in a home for poor children. But from January 1946 onwards, he was a full-time worker for the J.Ws. After they were again bannedby the authorities of the GDR in 1950, he fled to the west. In the 1950s Guenther Pape fell out with the J.Ws and as a result was disfellowshipped. He subsequently wrote a strongly accusatory book against his former religious associates, entitled “I was a Jehovah’s Witness!” This was first published in 1961 and was reprinted some 15 times by 1993, but gave only vague reasons for the break such as “inner problems”, “external failure” and denunciations by the Witnesses. At Eastertide 1963 he converted to the Roman Catholic Church. Since the early 1970s, Pape – now in the employ of the Catholic Church – doggedly uses all his energy to warn whoever may be listening of the “deceptions, misrepresentations and falsehoods” of the J.Ws with a steady stream of books, brochures and lectures. His brother Dieter has been ardently pursuing the same goal in eastern Germany. Over the years they carried out energetic cross-border activities, even collaborating with the Stasito carry out their polemical attacks.. The Stasi records further identify Dieter Pape as an”unofficial co-worker” who attempted to justify the then existing ban on the J.Ws in the GDR “because of the provocative policies of the Watchtower Society, and their anti-democratic agitation in connection with other forbidden campaigns”. Interestingly a report of April 1962 by Stasi Lieutenant Teichmann relates a conversation with another “unofficial co-worker” code-named”Rolf”, in which Dieter Pape admitted that his brother could never have written his book without financial support. “The Catholic Church took over the finances”, he said. Guenther Pape’s son, Klaus-Dieter, a certified theologian employed by the Catholic Church, walks in the footsteps of his father and uncle. In the book under review, Klaus-Dieter Pape states that two papers he wrote in 1997 on the J.Ws’ “loyalty towards the law” were used by the experts advising the Federal Administrative Court, whose decision denied the J.Ws their sought-after status. A definite success for the Pape family business.Gerhard Besier, Heidelberg

 

1b) John D.Brewer with G.I.Higgins, Anti-Catholicism in Northern Ireland 1600-1998. The Mote and the Beam. London: Macmillan 1998. 248pp. John Brewer’s analysis of anti-Catholic prejudice in Northern Ireland proceeds along two dimensions, historical and sociological, and depicts the two central features which are deeply intertwined and mutually reinforcing: religious intolerance and secular/political antagonism. He shows how, ever since the early 17th century, settlers from England and Scotland brought with them the whole panoply of anti-Catholic arguments drawn from Reformation polemics, and used them to justify their struggle against the local Irish population. Every aspect of Roman Catholic doctrine and practice, as well as the iniquitous activities of the Pope, the priests and the Vatican, could be vilified and even if evidence was lacking, could be used to construct venomous conspiracy theories. The usefulness of such religious bigotry is readily apparent, since it can be used on any occasion, being timeless in substance and easily repristinated. In the twentieth century, secular and political antagonisms have been used to defend Northern Ireland’s minority against the danger of amalgamation with the republican south. But since the alleged devotion to a Greater Britain was and is subject to tensions,popular Protestantism formed the stronger bond with which to unite the whole anti-Catholic population. Brewer analyses the different sources of this religious antagonism, from the kind of Old Testament covenantal theology of the followers of Rev. Ian Paisley to disdainful liberal Protestants who deplore the backward superstitions of Irish Catholics. He makes the valid point that each party makes extensive use of the techniques of distortion, deletion, distance and denial to validate their polemics. Anti-Catholics have long since established what may be called a cognitive map or mid-set, which is serenely impervious to reasonable debate, and bears little relation to the actual Church doctrine as presently professed by Roman Catholics,or indeed to present political realities in the republic of Eire. It is clear that far too many minds have been made up for far too long,and fear of the future plays an enormous part in keeping them shut tight. Brewer’s attempt to put the record straight is clearly eirenicin purpose, and theologically evocative. But he knows very well that those who need to hear his skilful and scholarly words are unlikely to do so. And for them to admit that Catholic theology especially since the Second Vatican Council, has changed, would undermine their whole stance. As a sociologist, Brewer seeks to show how these particular prejudices have been mobilised at three levels: ideas, individual behaviour and the social structure. He offers interesting comparisons with antisemitism, showing how both forces could be used to expedite social and political goals in fostering group conflict. Because of the peculiar setting of Northern Ireland, anti-Catholicism has survived long after its equivalent in Britain (and elsewhere) has died out. At the same time the strength of this religious differentiation has slowed down the process of secularisation which could have altered the structural patterns. For many on both sides, Ireland remains locked in a religious conflict over unresolved centuries-old disputes, organised to reinforce minority ethnic defences, and bolstered by a huge armoury of invective. In Brewer’s view, the claim that anti-Catholicism is justified on scriptural grounds is based on lies, half-truths, ancient prejudices and out-dated conspiracy theories. His book’s sub-title is therefore very apt, and he concludes with a brief outline of the steps he thinks should be taken to produce a new and more harmonious way ahead in place of the vice-like hold of the past.JSC

 

1c) ed. A.Chandler, The Terrible Alternative. Christian Martyrdom in the twentieth century. London: Cassell 1998 186pp Last summer, over the entrance to Westminster Abbey, ten new statues of modern Christian martyrs were unveiled. They serve as a reminder that more Christians have died for their faith in this century than in any other age. The Abbey authorities sought to mark this fact by paying tribute to a small representative group of figures from all parts of the world and all branches of the Church. Some of them, like Martin Luther King, are household names. But others are virtually unknown outside their own localities, such as the teenaged girl on a native reserve in South Africa whose steadfast decision to worship Christ led to her persecution and death at her tribe’s hands. All are commemorated for their courage and readiness to choose, not the road of passive acquiescence, but the terrible alternative of facing up to persecution, knowing that death could well result. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the leading German theologian executed by the Nazis in 1945, was one such martyr, deliberately plotting to overthrow the Nazi regime by violence as the only way to save Christianity. So too, Maximilian Kolbe, recently canonised by Pope John Paul II, chose to give up his life in order to save another man in the awful circumstances of Auschwitz. The stories of these ten martyrs are told in this new book,edited by the Director of the George Bell Institute in Britain, when ten scholars describe the special circumstances of these martyrs’ sacrifice. These essays are particularly helpful for the information they provide on the lesser-known figures, such as Esther John, a Pakistani young woman who was killed in 1960 by unknown murderers, presumably because she had left her Muslim family and refused to return. So too, the clash of values led to the martyrdom in 1973 of Wang Zhiming, a member of the minority Miao group in southwestern China, where a flourishing Christian culture established by western missionaries was attacked by the zealots of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Wang Zhiming’s public execution was watched by an audience of 10,000, most of them Christians, compelled to attend in order to frighten them into submission. But his witness only strengthened the faith of the church, and the overthrow of the “Gang of Four” brought a reversal of official policy. The brutal deaths of Archbishop Janani Luwum of Uganda and Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador were deliberately caused by their resolute opposition to the arbitrary lawlessness of the oppressive regimes in their countries. So too ideological hatred led to the death of Grand Duchess Elizabeth at the hands of Soviet Communists in 1918, or the unsung martyrs of Papua New Guinea at the hands of Japanese military invaders in 1942. These men and women chose to face martyrdom in their pursuit of faith and justice in the violent world of this century.Their biographies bring to life a sense of the vast moral and human tragedies of our age when terrible alternatives confronted Christians in so many parts of the world. Their names are now joined in the great tradition of Christian martyrs, whose witness remains a compelling example of commitment and dedication for the generations to come. As Archbishop Romero succinctly remarked shortly before he was assassinated: “Martyrdom is a grace of God that I do not believe I deserve. But if God accepts the sacrifice of my life, let my blood be a seed of freedom and the sign that hope will soon be reality. Let my death, if it is accepted by God, be for the people’s liberation and as a witness of hope in the future”.JSC

 

1d) Klemens-August Recker, “Wem wollt ihr glauben?” Bischof Berning im Dritten Reich. Paderborn; Schoningh 1998 525pp There are a number of biographies of Third Reich Catholic bishops and this is one of the best. Recker gets right to the point,discussing those questions we want to know about: antisemitism,racism, the Holocaust, and the failure of resistance. The appendices have some important documents and the study is nicely indexed. The first two hundred pages of the book deal with Berning’s shifting attitude towards Nazism and Hitler. Like other bishops, at first negative, Berning became optimistic after his 1933 meeting with Hitler, two years his junior. The Fuhrer assured the bishop that he would do what the church had wanted to do to the Jews for centuries – procure their elimination. Berning did not respond to this, but was enthusiastic when Hitler promised good church-state relations. Recker points out that German Catholics did not understand why their leaders had reversed themselves after the Concordat, and does not fail to mention Catholic criticism on this score. Berning’s optimism was in any event short lived. By 1934 he opposed Nazi racism, and did so officially in a pamphlet and from the pulpit. This led to conflict with local NSDAP leaders -especially over racism. The next section of the book – chapters dealing with the increasing alienation of the church from the state – the author is at pains to situate Berning’s anti-Nazism in the context of that of his peers within the German hierarchy. Secularization of church schools, the issue of schoolroom crucifixes, and attacks on the clergy were a few of the issues which led to Pius IX’s encyclical of 1937, Mit Brennender Sorge. Cardinal Bertram, head of the German Bishops’ Conference, wanted Berning to be a member of the team sent to Rome to draft this document because he thought of Berning as a competent negotiator. But the Pope rejected this suggestion outright. In fact, Berning turned out to be more of a critic of the Nazi regime than Bertram had thought. Regarding antisemitism, Berning preached “Christian humanism”. The bishop and the local Nazi officials in Osnabruck squared off over the cleric’s catechism statement that salvation came from the Jews. By 1938 Berning had explicitly rejected Nazi neopaganism and racism from his pulpit, insisting that the state must follow the laws of God. The war years put Berning to the test, as it did all German church leaders. His response was ambiguous at best. Recker looks first at the issue of the war itself. Berning praised Hitler for his aggressiveness in Austria and Czechoslovakia but remained silent about Poland and subsequent blitzkrieg attacks in the west and north. But by 1940 the bishop sounded hawkish: “If everyone does his duty at home and at the front, the war will be victorious for us”(274). And when Operation Barbarossa got underway, Berning wholeheartedly joined the chorus against the anti-Christian Bolshevists. It became a war against atheism and for Christianity. Bishop Berning was even more ambiguous about euthanasia and the Jews. Although not as compromising as Cardinal Bertram on the former issue, he put up no real resistance as did his neighbouring bishop, Galen, of Munster. Much worse was Berning’s record regarding the Jews. While subordinating race to the supernatural order and affirming that Germans were a mixed race, the bishop called pagans and Jews bitter enemies of the cross. Recker is highly critical of Berning in this regard,pointing out that the bishop had to have known that his anti-Judaic statements would only compound the situation of the Jews,subjected for years to antisemitic pogroms and propaganda. Instead of immunizing Catholics against antisemitism, the bishop in effect, opened the door for it. After Margarete Sommer apprised Berning about the destiny of the deported Jews, the bishop spread the word to other west German prelates. The hierarchy then fell into intramural wrangling over what to do. This is well-known to us now, but what role did Berning play? In 1941 he urged that all bishops protest the treatment of the Jews from their pulpits on Passion Sunday. This foundered because of opposition from Cardinal Bertram and bishops Buchberger and Groeber. Recker disagrees with Fr.Ludwig Volk, the now deceased dean of German Catholic historians, affirming that Berning tried to change Bertram’s mind and bring him around to Bishop Preysing of Berlin’s hardnosed opposition to Hitler and to the crimes of the Holocaust. In general,Recker’s biography does not alter our notion of why the church leaders failed to protest. Bertram was the “Hemmschuh”. Yet, Recker does point to other evidence which certainly played a part in the bishops’ minds. Top Nazis informed them in no uncertain terms that if they did not watch out what they said,their priests would be made to suffer. Some, like Galen, ignored this threat and spoke out against euthanasia. But Recker’s appendix contains three letters written to Berning from Luebeck priests in 1943 on the day of their execution for treason against the Nazi state. The effect of these martyrs’ letters on the bishop must have been bone-chilling. The alternatives for the church leaders were clear: keep silent; or see the priests they themselves had ordained pay the penalty of death; or put their own heads on the block. Recker’s conclusions are sharply worded but not always easy to find. He affirms that the bishops’ anti-Judaism could easily be viewed by many Catholics as akin to Nazi antisemitism, but this comes at the end of a short chapter on the Sinti and Roma! (359). I was pleased to see that Recker carried his biography through to the post-war period, especially because here he formulates his judgments about Berning and other Catholic bishops regarding the Holocaust. In his view, the bishops were only responsible, not guilty, for what happened to the Jews. They should not have left the faithful in the dark about the Nazi’s brutal atrocities.Unfortunately, after the war, these church leaders were unwilling to accept any personal responsibility for the crimes of their country, or to lead their followers in any widespread acknowledgement of their nation’s guilt.                               Michael Phayer, Marquette University, Milwaukee

 

2) Thesis abstract: Jeff Zalar, Georgetown University,102705.1001@compuserve.com”My dissertation, directed by Prof. Roger Chickering, is the first historical-cultural study of the Association of Saint Charles Borromeo in Wilhelmine Germany, 1890-1914. Founded in 1844,the Borromeusverein was the largest independent founder of libraries and reading rooms and the most influential advocate of broad intellectual consumption among the Catholic population. By advocating Catholic exposure to the great works of German culture and promoting the habits of mind associated with the German tradition of self-cultivation or Bildung, the Borromeusverein hoped to erode the image of the retrograde, ill-bred Catholic common among the Protestant majority, and thereby to relax the social restrictions and institutional barriers they faced. It insisted on the need for Catholics to be well-versed in the German cultural canon in order to participate fully in the social and institutional life of the Second Reich. It therefore set in motion a revolution in religious attitudes, especially among the Catholic middle class, that shook the censoriousness and deference that had governed Catholic education and cultural engagement in the 19th century.The main sources of my research are institutional papers, extensive episcopal correspondence, reports from local chapters, documents from related organizations, a number of Catholic journals, and memoirs. I am working primarily at the archives of the Borromeusverein in Bonn and in diocesan archives elsewhere.I am also using the archives of the Volksverein fur das katholische Deutschland in Moenchen-Gladbach to determine the relationship between these two associations devoted to, among other things, the cultural disposition of German Catholics. As my study investigates the connection between social class, religious values,and perspectives on education, I have developed a highly differentiated approach to these sources, including social history,the phenomenology of spiritual experience, and discourse analysis,which makes for a fresh and comprehensive study of the Borromeusverein an as important transmitter of educational values and religious mentalite.An article analysing the cultural-religious discourse of the Borromeusverein is due to appear shortly in “The Catholic Historical Review”.

 

3) Journal articles:Victor Conzemius, Protestants and Catholics in the German Democratic Republic, 1945-90: a comparison, in Religion, State and Society Vol 26, no 1, March 1998.A notably balanced and wise evaluation by a veteran ecumenical scholar, who shows how the two churches took different roads to living in the communist regime of the GDR. He has percipient criticism of both, and at the same time calls for more research comparing the responses of the churches to both the Nazi and the Socialist dictatorships.

 

The Orthodox Churches and the Ecumenical Movement.Several articles in Religion, State and Society, Vol 26, no 2, June 1998 outline the complex and sometimes conflictual relationship of the various Orthodox Churches with Protestant churches in the west, and particularly with the Geneva-based World Council of Churches. Highly sobering reading.

 

4) New books noted:ed. Klaus Koschorke, Christen und Gewurze, Vandenhoeck &Ruprecht, Gottingen 1998 The links between western missionaries and ancient Christian communities on other continents.

 

Sebastian Muller-Rolli, Evangelische Schulpolitik in Deutschland 1918-1958. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Gottingen 1998

 

Heather Warren, Theologians of a new world order. Reinhold Niebuhr and the Christian Realists 1920-1948, Oxford U.P. 1997A notable history of the American theologians’ involvement with the Ecumenical Movement in the first half of this century.

 

ed Martin Greschat, Personenlexikon Religion und Theologie Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Gottingen 1998A very useful pocket-sized reference book with brief biographical details of international scope and all centuries

 

ed.R.H.Stone and M.L.Weaver, Against the Third Reich. Paul Tillich’s wartime radio broadcasts into Nazi Germany, Louisville,Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press 1998, 275 pp.A useful translation of this source for Tillich’s political/theological views on Germany during the war.

 

Very best wishes for a blessed Easter to you all,

 

John S.Conwayjconway@interchange.ubc.ca.

Association of Contemporary Church Historians

(Arbeitsgemeinschaft kirchlicher Zeitgeschichtler)

John S. Conway, Editor. University of British Columbia

 

Newsletter- March 1999- Vol.V, no. 3 

Dear Friends,

 

Contents: 1) Editorial 2) Book reviews: a) L.Xi, Conversion of missionaries in China b) P. Blet, Pie XII c) L.Arrington, Adventures of a Church Historian 3) Journal articles a) M.Greschat, Widerstand 4) Another martyr commemorated

 

1) Regular readers of this Newsletter will have noticed that a lot of attention has been given to the affairs of the German churches.In part this is due to the fact that my own research interests, for the past thirty-five years, have been engaged by the complex and often tragic developments in these churches throughout this century. At the same time, it is also due to the really remarkable and continuing plethora of publications by German church historians. Few countries have been so well served by their church historians as Germany, due to the well established position this field has in university circles, as well as to the generous support from a number of highly reputable publishers. The number of impressive volumes which appear every year is quite outstanding, and as such sets a good example to all of us in other countries, where alas the external circumstances are not so favourable. But of course we must also add that the appetite among readers must also be responsible, which is an excellent sign. Paradoxically, this interest in church history seems to be growing at a time when the effects of a secularised retreat from church allegiance, especially in the”new” provinces in Germany, is notable. As Andreas Holzem pointed out in the recent issue of the journal KirchlicheZeitgeschichte (p.70), “the immense research publications since the beginning of the 1960s undertaken by the Catholic Kommission fur Zeitgeschichte have explored the development,organisation and activity of Catholicism as a social force from the background of its social change and the political events and catastrophes of the 19th and 20th centuries. Such works have contributed significantly to a true evaluation of the Church’s stance, even though so far the undoubted fact of the erosion of its position in society has not been tackled as a subject for research”The same could largely be said of the Protestant community in Germany too. Yet, at the same time, the vitality of all these scholarly endeavours does much to contradict the assumptions of many secular historians, in both Europe and North America. As the distinguished Harvard church historian, William Hutchison noted in the same issue of Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte (p. 139), “European historians have been sure that religion in the modern era simply cannot be important. [They] have not merely ignored religion; until quite recently they thought that, in most of Europe, religion had done the decent thing and died out. A correlative idea was that the Americans, being more innocent and foolish, had not yet extirpated the infamous thing but would do so in time”. So in fact, these German efforts, as for instance in such series as Konfession und Gesellschaft, have helped to put the subject of religious history back into the historiographical picture, for which we should all be grateful. My object, in editing this Newsletter, has been to try and maintain an international and interdenominational balance, while at the same time keeping abreast of the new publications. Since Germany has produced, and still produces, so many new works, I expect we shall still have a preponderance from this one country, but trust you find the reviews of these impressive achievements to be of help. However, this month, I am very glad to have contributions about other churches for you, and want to express my thanks to Cyril Powles and Jay Hughes for their valuable assessments. Editor

 

2a) Lian Xi, The Conversion of Missionaries: Liberalism in American Protestant Missions in China, 1907-1932.University Park,PA: Penn.State U.Press, 1997 xiv +247 pp This is an interesting book for several reasons. It is written by a scholar from mainland China who was attracted to the subject through contact with an American professor at his university (Fujian Normal). The author does not seem to have any connection with the present Christian movement in China, but writes from the stand-point of someone looking at the missionary movement from the non-Christian Chinese side. At the same time, he takes exception to the conventional wisdom in his country that Christian missions represented a “disguised cultural imperialist thrust across the Pacific”. Such a position, he feels, “detracts from the richness of the story of the missionary movement.” (xi) His thesis that contact with Chinese culture changed certain missionaries from an initially aggressive fundamentalism to a more open (“liberal”) attitude toward non-Christian religion is interesting, particularly for the early dating of this change, though there are certain problems with his analysis. The book is divided into two parts. An Introduction sets out the author’s plan and states his thesis, that “the self-sufficiency and vitality of the Oriental traditions challenged the nineteenth-century view of heathen wretchedness . . .[and] undermined the confidence and sense of purpose, or ‘cut the nerve’ (as conservative missionaries repeatedly warned), of American Protestant missions.” (10) The first three chapters give case studies of three early missionaries – Edward H.Hume, a medical missionary, Frank J.Rawlinson, an evangelist, and Pearl Buck, in education – who began their careers in the early part of this century as conventional evangelicals but later became so ‘liberal’ (the author’s term) that they could no longer remain within their denominational mission. The second part, also consisting of three chapters,generalizes from the three cases to argue that the trend toward liberalism spread among other missionaries, many of whom returned to the US to propagate a new gospel of the “union of Religions” (the title of Chapter 6). This process coincided with the emergence of biblical criticism and the social gospel in America and led to tensions, not only within denominational missionary headquarters, but within the denominations as a whole. Fundamentalism as a theological position arose as a reaction tot his process, resulting in a polarization between conservatives and liberals. The latter saw Christianity as one religion among many and, in the Chinese situation, sought to produce a union between American Christianity and Confucianism-Taoism-Buddhism which the author (borrowing a term from the conservatives) labels as ‘syncretism’. The majority, however, both in the mission-field and at home, probably stood somewhere in between the two extremes. This middle-of-the-road position resulted in a new theology of mission which included a push toward ecumenism, as missionaries in the field established organs of cooperation like the National Christian Council and the Church of Christ in China. A strong motive for accommodation cam from the rise of nationalism following the overthrow of the Manchu Dynasty. This nationalism, strongly anti-religious in nature, focussed on the missionary institutions as representative of foreign domination and the hated unequal treaties. The liberal missionaries reacted by pushing for more Chinese leadership in the institutions and with sympathy for China’s ancient religious traditions. In the light of later experience, it is ironic that this resulted in the “liberals”identifying with the very elites (represented by leaders like ChiangKai-shek) who would form the resistance to liberation following the end of the Pacific War. Only a few of them (in this book Henry Luce represents the supporters of the Chiang regime, while Sherwood Eddy – though not so identified in this study – came to support the Communists) were able to move with Mao Zedong and Chou En-lai toward a vision of a New China. It is also interesting that the Canadian ‘liberals’, most of whom were grouped around West China Union University in Chengdu, tended to go with Mao. This reviewer has some difficulties with the use of the term ‘liberal’, and its associated expression ‘syncretism’, in this study.They have obviously been accepted from their critical use by conservatives, and are not exactly defined. Moreover they do not take account of the range of theological positions that would lay so-called liberals open to being so labelled. At the extreme left would be those like Pearl Buck, whose theological position one might call humanist-universalist, but from there one could go on to describe as liberals anyone who did not subscribe to biblical literalism or who could say, as most theologians of mission today would say, that God’s revelation has not been confined to Christianity. As far as the term ‘syncretism’ is concerned, this is properly used of the amalgamation of Christianity with incompatible elements from other religions. In this study,however, it is used for what we would today call religious pluralism or relativism. Another problem, this time of emphasis, occurs in the weighing of liberalism vis-s-vis conservatism in this study. In a footnote (fn.60,p.148) the author quotes a colleague (Gu Chang-sheng) as saying that “Fundamentalists . . .continued to dominate the missionary enterprise after the 1920s”. The experience of the Christian movement in China today would seem to bear this judgement out, as conservative evangelicalism predominates,especially in the rural regions. But because this is a study of liberalism, an unwary reader might conclude, as did another writer whom our author quotes, that “taken as a whole, conservatives were far ‘outweighted’ by liberals.” [148] Some striking differences emerge when one comes to compare the history of Christianity in China with Japan. Because Christianity in Japan appealed mainly to the elites who were dispossessed at the time of the Meiji Restoration of 1867,missionaries were forced to recognise Japanese leadership at a much earlier date in the eighties and nineties of the last century.The Meiji government, which had established its own religious authority in a divine emperor, kept tight control of organs like education, prohibiting religious education in mission schools in 1899, a full generation before similar legislation in China. At a popular level, there is a curious way in which missionaries in China identified more closely with their country of adoption than did those in Japan. The continental culture seems to have been able to accept foreigners, making them feel at home more easily than did the tightly knit society of Japan. Or perhaps, as this book argues,Chinese culture was self-confident enough to accept foreign elements if they were willing to go half way.

 

Cyril Powles. Vancouver

 

2b) Pierre Blet S.J, Pie XII et la Seconde Guerre mondiale d’apresles archives du Vatican. Paris: Perrin 1997 343pp n.p The death of Pius XII on October 9, 1958, brought unanimous praise of his work for peace and relief of suffering during the Second World War. Jewish leaders repeated their thanks, which had been expressed during the war and climaxed at its conclusion,for his unremitting efforts to save their people from extermination. However, publication of Rolf Hochhuth’s play “Der Stellvertreter” in 1963 reversed this positive image. Overnight the Pope became the hero of a black legend. He was here depicted as standing mute and inactive during the war, motivated either by political calculation or cowardice, in the face of bureaucratically planned mass murder which he could have prevented with a single flaming protest. In 1964, Pius’ successor, Paul VI, confronted with what he knew from his own close collaboration with Pius XII throughout the war to be a grave falsification of history, ordered the publication of everything in the Vatican archives which could shed light on his predecessor’s actions. An international team of four Jesuits,including the author of this book, produced twelve volumes of documents between the years 1965 and 1981. As Blet writes in his Foreword, however: “Fifteen years after the publication of the final volume many of those who speak or write about the Holy See during the war remain unaware of the contents of these volumes, or even of their existence.” Blet’s book is an attempt to make the record more widely known. Drawing on these volumes of Vatican documents, but also on published collections of documents from other government archives,as well as on memoirs, articles, and monographs, Blet has produced a narrative history of the Holy See’s wartime role. The account is largely devoid of commentary. Blet limits his interpretation to the minimum necessary for intelligibility. A footnote at the beginning of each chapter lists the sources for the material which follows. The Pope’s wartime policy was not neutrality (which could imply indifference) but impartiality, which enabled him to judge events and nations according to truth and justice. At times, however,he stretched impartiality to the limit: informing the British government in January 1940 that a group of German generals was prepared to replace Hitler if they could be assured of an honorable peace; warning Britain, France, and the Low Countries of Hitler’s impending attack in May 1940. Those communications were secret. Not so the Pope’s telegrams of sympathy to the Belgian and Dutch sovereigns following Hitler’s attack. When Mussolini threatened the Pope with “the gravest consequences” for this supposed breach of neutrality, Pius said that he was not afraid to go to a concentration camp and had had revolvers pointed at him before (as nuncio in Munich in 1919). In the same interview the Pope said that he wanted to speak words of “flaming protest” against the well known Nazi atrocities in Poland. He had refrained only to spare the victims further suffering. Following Hitler’s attack on his erstwhile ally, Stalin, in June 1941, the Pope refused repeated demands that he endorse a crusade against Bolshevism. And he assured American Catholics that while the previous papal condemnations of communist ideology remained in force, these need not limit support for the Soviet Union now invaded by a power whose leader, like Stalin, was the declared enemy of Christianity. The desire to save as many victims as possible explains the Pope’s public reserve. But he was not silent. His clearest protest came in his 1942 Christmas broadcast pleading for “those hundreds of thousands who, through no fault of their own but simply by reason of their nationality or race are marked for death or progressive destruction.” Well understood at the time (the speech earned the fulsome praise of the New York Times and angry condemnation by the Nazis as “one long attack on everything we stand for”), these words are either unknown today, or simply ignored. Pius repeated this protest in his speech to the Cardinals on June 2, 1943, protesting against acts deleterious for “those destined for extermination simply because of their race or nationality”. For those who wanted him to speak louder or more often, he added in the same speech that everyone of his public utterances had “to be considered and weighed for its possible effect on those who are suffering”. Much of this book recounts the feverish and unremitting efforts of the Holy See, through its nuncios in various countries, to save as many victims as possible. The archives report the attempts,seldom their results. Flaming protests would have been counter-productive – as the Dutch bishops learned, to their sorrow, when their public protest against Nazi persecution of the Jews in July 1942 brought immediate acceleration of the deportations to Auschwitz. In a rare comment, Blet quotes the judgment of the Israeli historian Pinchas Lapide (in his 1967 book The Last Three Popes and the Jews) that Vatican diplomacy, pursued necessarily in secrecy and directed by Pius XII, saved 860,000 Jews from death. At the 1975 Holocaust conference in Hamburg, Lapide told this reviewer that this figure was based on six months’ research in the Yad Vashem Holocaust archive in Jerusalem and added: “If the leaders of other churches had done only what Pius XII did, several hundred thousand more Jews might have survived the war.” Despite the dispassionate tone, the book has many dramatic high points. An English translation would be welcome. It is unlikely, however, to change many minds. Confident that they occupy the moral high ground, the critics of Pius XII have long since concluded that he is guilty as charged. They insist that his defenders prove a negative. How much of the unremitting clamour to “open the Vatican archives” is motivated by the desire to pursue scientific history? How much comes from people unwilling to be moved by evidence or facts who wish to rummage at will until they find some document which, taken out of context or read without knowledge of the conditions under which it was written, supports the verdict rendered in advance: that Pius XII is co-responsible for the death of six million Jews? Until these questions are resolved the Holy See’s caution seems fully justified.

 

John Jay Hughes, Archdiocese of St Louis, Missouri, USA

 

2c) Leonard J.Arrington, Adventures of a Church Historian,Urbana: U.of Illinois Press, 1998, 249 pp Leonard Arrington’s incisively-written, and obviously sincere,memoir describes his service to the Church of Latter Day Saints, i.e.Mormons in Utah. His career took him from a professorship in economic history at Utah State Agricultural College to becoming the Church’s Official Historian in Salt Lake City. His account not only gives snatches of Mormon history in their heartland, but also provides an interesting commentary on those qualities – intense personal piety, a puritanical morality, enormous energy and a strong social commitment to their fellow Mormons – which enabled this once persecuted and exiled sect to become a highly successful and wealthy community with a world-wide outreach. It is not his purpose to analyse the rigid orthodox doctrine practised by Mormons, nor essentially to raise questions about the authoritarian pattern of leadership in the Church, which, since many Mormon leaders live to a great age, on some occasions turns into a form of theological gerontocracy. Rather he seeks to elucidate the dilemmas he faced as an official denominationally-employed historian. As a professional scholar Arrington sought to break out of the encapsulated and inward-looking Mormon community to present a picture of their rich history which would be acceptable to the outside scholarly world. He was therefore disconcerted to discover that some of the Mormon hierarchy believed his more professional works to be too “humanist” or “liberal” and lacking in sufficient spiritual experiences or faith-promoting stories. Behind this lay their conviction that all Mormon history should first and foremost have an edifying purpose, preferably indicating that supernatural rather than natural causes were responsible for Mormon successes. No hint of unsavoury behaviour, even if a century old, should be published lest the Mormon religion be brought into disrepute. Such forceful criticism from elderly “integristes” “watching over the Church, defending the Lord’s anointed, and protecting a sacred stewardship”, who really wanted narratives saturated with scriptural allusions and a total abstinence from controversial episodes, naturally placed Arrington in an invidious position. After his years of faithful and devoted service to the cause, and trying to do his job under conflicting pressures, he says he felt like a mouse crossing the floor where elephants are dancing. In some ways, it seems, this memoir was written to justify his own point of view. This account raises very clearly the difficulties of writing church history with its competing impulses to satisfy scientific objectivity and denominational loyalty. Perhaps Arrington was naive in believing he could reconcile the two, or underestimated the strength of the ingrown defensiveness of the guardians of the Mormon community, some of whom imposed rigid restrictions on what could be written as well as who had access to the church archives, even though they were not particularly well trained or aware of the historian’s goals and purposes. The evidence here presented of distrust and suspicion of historical scholars amongst a few of the Mormon hierarchy can hardly enhance this sect’s reputation in the wider world. But it also raises the wider question of when and to what extent church historians can or should be influenced by the desire to protect the faith of their readers. For this reviewer, Klaus Scholder’s maxim is persuasive:”Truth may be painful for the church, but untruth is even more so.”In this sense, Arrington’s Adventures may have a lesson for us all.Sadly Leonard Arrington died early last month in Salt Lake City.JSC

 

3a) Martin Greschat, “Kirche und Widerstand gegen der Nationalsozialismus” in Zeitschrift fur Geschichtswissenschaft,Vol 46, no 10, Oct 1998 A useful summary of the debate about the extent of resistance activities against Nazism within the German Churches.Greschat rightly points out that the resolute defence of the church’s autonomy by both Catholics and the Confessing Protestant Church cannot be taken to mean an equally resolute rejection of Nazi policies in general, including their antisemitism. Indeed, there is evidence enough that many staunch Confessing Church, as well as Catholic, supporters approved Hitler’s secular aims. Greschat examines how these matters were reflected in the text books for religious education produced after the war, and shows a development away from the pietistic church-centred view of the 1950s to a wider perspective in later years, when the question really changes from: how much did the church protect its own institutional way of life, to : how much did it join and promote a wider opposition to Nazi racism and terrorism?By such a standard, the answer is: not much. JSC

 

4) Another martyr commemorated.(The following report comes from the Catholic Historical Review,Oct.1998). During Pope John Paul II’s pastoral visit to Austria last Junehe declared blessed three more servants of God in Vienna. One of them was Sister Maria Restituta Kafka, who was born in Brno on May 10, 1894, and grew up with her family in Vienna. As a nurse she came into contact with the Franciscan Sisters of Charity (the Hartmannschwestern) and entered their congregation in 1914. From 1919 she worked as a surgical nurse and gained a reputation not only for professional skill but also for care of the poor and oppressed. She even protected a Nazi doctor from arrest which she thought was unjustified. After the Anschluss she made her total rejection of Nazism clear and public. She called Adolf Hitler a “madman”. When she hung a crucifix in every room of a new wing of a hospital,the Nazis threatened to have her dismissed unless the crosses were removed. After her community argued that she could not be replaced, she remained as also did the crucifixes. Sister Restituta was soon arrested, however, and accused not only of hanging the crosses but also of having written a poem mocking Hitler. On October 28, 1942, she was sentenced to death for “aiding and abetting the enemy in the betrayal of the fatherland and for plotting high treason”. Later she was offered her freedom if she would leave her religious congregation, but she refused. When Martin Bormann was asked to commute her sentence, he rejected the request, saying,”I think the execution of the death penalty is necessary for effective intimidation.” While awaiting death, she cared for the other prisoners, as even communists later attested. After various requests for clemency were rejected by the authorities, Sister Restituta was decapitated on March 30, 1943.

 

With sincere regards, and best wishes for a blessed Lent,

 

John S.Conwayjconway@interchange.ubc.ca

Association of Contemporary Church Historians

(Arbeitsgemeinschaft kirchlicher Zeitgeschichtler)

John S. Conway, Editor. University of British Columbia

 

Newsletter- February 1999- Vol.V, no. 2 

 

Dear Friends,

I fear that some of you may have been disappointed if you tried to access the Index to past issues on our web-site, which has been out of order. We hope to take remedial steps. Looking over the books reviewed in the past year, I note a tendency to concentrate on German affairs. I hope to do better in 1999, but want to take this opportunity to thank all of you who so kindly, and without remuneration, were persuaded to review books for our members. The responses have been so positive that I very much hope you will continue. Ed.

 

Contents: 1) Modern Martyrs’ Monument 2) Book reviews: a) Chandler, The Moral Imperative b) Hayes, Holocaust education c) Baginski, Religious policy in French-occupied Germany 3) Journal articles: a)M..Greschat, Church policy in the French zone of occupation 1945-49 b) W.Husband, Soviet atheism c) D Ackermann, Catholics in Hanover d) D.Novak, Jews and Catholics e) P.Prein, Moravians in Africa f) U.R-Braun, Ludwig Ihmels 4) Book notices – Hexham, Concise Dictionary

 

1) Last July, in the presence of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth and other notables, ten newly-carved statues of twentieth century martyrs were unveiled on the west portal of Westminster Abbey ,London’s most historic and prestigious Anglican church. The desire of the Abbey’s Dean and Chapter was to record the fact that this past century has been a period of heroic suffering and persecution for many Christians. To mark this, ten representative figures were chosen on an international and ecumenical basis. These figures are- from left to right – Maximilian Kolbe (Poland, d.1941), Manche Masemola (South Africa, d.1928), Janani Luwum (Uganda,d.1977),Grand Duchess Elizabeth of Russia (Russia, d.1918), Martin Luther King (USA,d.1968), Oscar Romero (El Salvador, d.1980), Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Germany, d.1945), Esther John (Pakistan, d.1960),Lucien Tapiedi (Papua-New Guinea,d.1942) and Wang Zhiming(China, d.1972). The statues themselves were designed by the British sculptor Tim Crawley, and the unveiling ceremony was preceded byan impressive Concert of Remembrance, when the premiere performance of a new De Profundis by John Hardy was given,specially composed for this occasion. In conjunction with these events a notable book of tributes was published – The Terrible Alternative. Christian Martyrdom in the Twentieth Century, London and New York: Cassell 1998.Edited by our list-member, Dr Andrew Chandler, this collection of essays by noted scholars will be reviewed here later, and should be helpful in providing information about the lesser known figures here commemorated.

 

2a) ed. A.Chandler, The Moral Imperative. New Essays on the Ethics of Resistance in National Socialist Germany 1933-1945.Widerstand: Dissent and Resistance in the Third Reich. Boulder, Co:Westview Press 1998, 124pp. This slim volume contains six essays that were presented in1 995 at a conference to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. For the occasion, the George Bell Institute,University of Birmingham, brought together distinguished religious leaders, academics and publicists from North America, Britain and Germany to hear papers on “Christianity and Resistance: Nazi Germany 1933-1945”. A splendid introduction by Andrew Chandler places the essays in a broader setting of the pre-1933 history of church-state relations in Germany, and the post-1933 political realities of the Nazi dictatorship and the churches’ response. Students will be grateful for the many references that lead further into the subject. Churches specialize in the business of discerning evil. Yet they did little of that when public policy in Nazi Germany became overtly evil. In a chapter on “The role of the churches in the German Resistance Movement”, John Conway sees in this ‘reluctant resistance’ of the churches, especially the Protestant ones, a legacy of their tradition to back up civil authority. This tradition peaked during World War I, when the churches invested their moral capital in support of German militarism and imperialism. Through the defeat of these secular causes, the churches forfeited their claims to moral leadership in Germany. They now dedicated their energies to preserving their organization and doctrine. This protective attitude made the Churches blind to the need to defend the secular values and political ideals of the liberal republic. Instead they could find in the Nazi agenda old and new ideals to champion: nationalism, anti-liberalism, anti-parliamentarism, anti-communism and revisionist foreign policy. This agenda also appealed to Catholics, whose greater mistrust the Nazi regime neutralized in mid-1933 by the Concordat. Conway also points out how the regime’s early and blatant terrorism helps one understand the churches’ subsequent quietism. While Conway sees in the commitment of the churches in World War I a compelling explanation for their global failure in the Nazi era, he is of course aware of the exceptional instances of heroic resistance by clergy and laity. This is the theme of the chapter on ‘Laity and Churches in the Third Reich’ by Beate Ruhm von Oppen. Among the resisters, she cites H.J.von Moltke as one who did not count the churches out. He expected that their resistance would grow as Nazi persecution increased. He also assigned to the churches a role in the moral renewal after the war,and included Protestant and Catholics in the broad coalition he assembled to draft programmes for a defeated Germany, As an example of lay resistance on the humblest level, Ruhm v. Oppen pointed to the untutored religious obstinacy of the peasant Franz Jaegerstaetter in Austria, who refused to ‘fight for a regime that was fighting against the church’, and was beheaded. He had faith first,and resisted the evil that threatened its core; Moltke first recognised the evil, and in resisting it grew in faith, as his letters, edited so brilliantly by Ruhm v.Oppen, show. In a chapter ‘Church, Religion and the German Resistance’,Klemens von Klemperer maintains that all institutions tend to conform, or to collaborate with the regime under which they exist.Therefore, it would be wrong to expect en bloc resistance from the military, industry, civil service or even the churches. Nevertheless,some in the German Resistance expected more than accommodating quietism from church leaders, and demanded that the Church not be ‘silent like a dumb dog’. That was the conclusion of exceptional church leaders outside Germany (Berggrav, Oslo). While the churches failed to lead, those who took up resistance found that religion gave them strength in their dangerous and lonely stance. Klemperer calls this turning to religion “Spirituality -Frommigkeit”. He cites striking instances of how personal piety, deepening over time, sustained resisters, with or without a religious background. And as they realized that the Nazi regime meant to destroy religious and secular human values they became aware of how much Christianity and Humanism had in common. That helps to explain the ‘piety’ of socialists, who found strength in prayer or the Eucharist. One traditional blend of Christian and secular values that inspired a prominent social group to resist is the subject of Klaus-Jurgen Muller’s chapter on ‘Prussian elements in the German resistance’. His focus is on the Prussian conservative and military tradition, a backward-looking world view peculiar to an exclusive social class (gentry) and profession (army). Both bear enormous responsibility for bringing Hitler to power, partly because their Prussian virtues – duty, service to the state, pietist self-appraisal -failed early on to expose Hitler. Later, these same values inspired courageous men to organize bold plots against him. While it is useful to be reminded that one time Prussian virtues had admirable components, we cannot forget they were shared by a class that had forfeited its claim to leadership in the last decades of the Empire. Peter Hoffmann assessed ‘The Persecution of the Jews as a motive for Resistance against National Socialism’. His unrivalled knowledge of the sources is evident in the end-notes – among them judicious bibliographic mini-essays. The chapter sums up the anti-semitic policies and coercive resolve of the Nazi system – to oppose the one meant to face the other. While this rule applied to all manner of resistance, anyone who showed concern for the fate of the Jews defied the central belief of the Nazi regime. Hoffmanngives a wealth of detail showing that some first challenged the Nazis’ anti-semitic policies, (Goerdeler) and were then led to inform and protest (the Scholls); but others became more resolved to end the regime when they learned about the fate of the Jews. This is what police interrogators concluded after 20 July 1944, as was also evident in the testimonies in the People’s Court. In these most harrowing circumstances, resisters explained their actions by referring to the racist policies, especially the murder of the Jews.Hoffmann states that ‘the crimes of the regime, in particular the deliberate murder of the Jews’ (p.91) was the most powerful factor motivating the plotters against Hitler’s life. That could explain why so many who took part in the July 1944 plot had not acted in earlier years. The final chapter is by Ursula Buttner, ‘An unknown case of resistance; the rescue of Jews in Christian-Jewish mixed marriages’, which deals with examples of resistance at the most personal level:Christian spouses shielding partners whom the Nazi law deemed to be Jewish. Although progressively marginalised, the Jewish partner had a measure of safety – as long as the marriage held. As public pressure to divorce or cast adrift the Jewish spouse increased, so did suicide. But in 1943 in Berlin, when these Jewish spouses were rounded up for deportation, their families rallied and obtained their release after a mass protest of more than a week in front of the central collection point. Is there a similar example of mass civil disobedience in the Third Reich? Resistance calls for personal moral commitment. In the Third Reich, resistance could range from tyrannicide to protest on behalf of a spouse. Some resisted very early (Moltke), others late(Stauffenberg). The question remains: why did these persons make their commitment? What sets them apart from relatives and friends with whom they had grown up, learning the same values at home, in school, church and university? Before 1933 none could have singled out the likely candidates for resistance activity. Yet those who did resist were undoubtedly inspired by ethical norms and religious beliefs that were common knowledge. What set them apart was that they recognized evil and were inspired and sustained in their determination to do something about it. The essays in this collection show that, as the perils of resistance escalated,commitment to Christian beliefs deepened.Erich J.Hahn, University of Western Ontario.

 

2b) Stephen R.Haynes, Holocaust Education and the Church-related College. With a foreword by Franklin H.Littell. Westport, Conn:Greenwood Press 1997, 185pp Stephen Haynes, a young Presbyterian minister now teaching at a church-related college in Tennessee, is fully persuaded of the maxim adumbrated a generation ago by Professor Franklin Littell that the Holocaust is not just a Jewish, but also a Christian tragedy, not least because of the importance of the Jewish-Christian bond and the historical complicity of Christians in antisemitism. His book is a study of how far this perception has taken root in church-related colleges in the U.S.A. In 1994 he conducted a nation-wide survey of such colleges, asking about the inclusion of Holocaust education in their curriculum. His findings are highly ambivalent, namely that there is a lack of institutional commitment to such courses in many colleges, or that the initiative largely stemmed from interested faculty members. Indeed Holocaust education at church-related colleges would appear to be negatively correlated with religious aspects of college identity. It is Haynes’ aim to suggest how an effective Holocaust education can help to give an more authentic Christian dimension to church-related higher education. For one thing, no one teaching or learning about the Holocaust can avoid a personal crisis of identity, out of which a new spirituality can grow, including a widening of intellectual and moral horizons, and an ability to be moved by others’ pain, along with a sense of personal responsibility for alleviating such pain. The church colleges’ own religious traditions can be resources for humanizing pedagogy and encouraging such broader sensitivity, if properly fostered. By so doing, such an education could help to counter the indifference, apathy or relativism, or worse still the racially-motivated collaboration, which marked the response of so many secular universities and their graduates to the Holocaust, and other outbursts of racial intolerance, in the 1930s and 1940s, and the danger of which still exists today. JSC

 

2c) Christophe Baginski, La politique religieuse de la France enAllemagne occupee (1945-1949), Villeneuve-d’Ascq: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion 1997, 344 pp.(This review translated from the French by Editor) This work consists of a 1996 doctoral thesis from the University of Lille III. It is an acute study, though lacking in the kind of conclusions which might have provided a more synthetic overview of an already complex subject. But the treatment is new and rigorous, based on German and French archives, from which one can learn a lot about a topic hitherto little treated. What strikes one is the highly improvised character of French religious policy in the zone occupied by General Koenig’s troops, compared to the American and British policy in their respective zones. This was due principally because France only received its occupation zone at the Potsdam Conference in August 1945, and had therefore to adapt to these new circumstances without time to weigh up the attitude to be adopted towards the German churches. The task was therefore delicate. The author shows very well that the churches were the only institutions in German society to survive the general disaster,particularly the Catholic church thanks to its supranational character and its links to the Holy See, whereas the Protestant churches were fragmented by their purely German structure.Furthermore they were entrenched in those areas where their spiritual authority was strong: Catholics represented 62.5% of the French zone’s population, compared with the Lutherans’ 34.8% – in other words an impressive majority. The situation was far >from simple. The churches had supported the Nazi regime, possibly more out of conformity or weakness rather than out of ideological conviction. But the number of those who resisted, especially at first, was very few. Denazification was therefore necessary, just as in the rest of German society. The churches, however, quickly distanced themselves from the Nazis’ crimes, refusing to recognise any share of responsibility, and instead stressing their acts of resistance,which, no doubt, may have been real, but were not on the scale one could have wished. However, the French joined their allies in a deceptive stance, by agreeing that the churches could be regarded as having supported the resistance movement. Was this just naivete?Certainly not. In French eyes, the churches had two advantages: first, they represented a bulwark against Nazi paganism, and after 1947,against communism. It was necessary to make them supporters of the occupation policies. So the French authorities quickly allowed freedom of worship, and the re-opening of seminaries and theological faculties. They organised a very limited and discreet purge of the clergy, here studied in detail. In return they demanded that the German churches should ease relations with the occupation authorities, and restrict themselves purely to the religious arena. However, it was soon clear that, in asking for alleviation of the occupation’s rigours, or in appealing for a prompt return of prisoners, the bishops were engaging in political affairs. The French authorities took a very firm line. The author seeks to show that, in general, relations were correct, even benevolent on the part of the French. After consulting with the Holy See, they agreed to recognise the validity of the 1933 Reich Concordat. They ensured that no church lacked supplies for celebrating the Eucharist, which was a considerable achievement at a time of great penury. Charitable works were authorized and even encouraged, as was youth work. Finally, the French sought to buildup Christian political parties, but on condition that the Centre Party,which had voted plenary powers to Hitler in 1933, should not reappear. They avoided adopting too punitive a policy, but rather believed, like their allies, that this would be an effective way of combating the increasing menace of communism. At the same time, this benevolence could hardly conceal other French objectives, such as their desire to separate both the Catholic and Protestant churches of the Saar from the rest of Germany. It is a pity that the author did not give more space to this issue, which was central to the French occupation authorities. It would have been good to describe this situation more exactly, as it provided an overlap between the religious and political spheres, as part of France’s desire to detach the Saar from Germany in order to establish it as a kind of satellite state. Nevertheless we owe Christophe Baginski a debt for so competently filling a historiographical void with this solid and pertinent work which allows us to understand more fully the complexity of Franco-German relations in the immediate post-war period.Francis Latour, Paris

 

3a) Journal article: Martin Greschat, “Die Kirchenpolitik Frankreichs in seiner Besatzungszone”, 2 parts, in Zeitschrift fur Kirchengeschichte, Vol 109, nos 2 and 3, 1998. This same subject is explored by one of Germany’s leading church historians in a two part article, which is notably more critical of French policy. Greschat shows that French dreams of restoring its European status rested on the exploitation and dismemberment of western Germany, thus fulfilling the unfinished business of 1919. At the same time, the Germans would need to bere-educated to learn to abandon their long-held nationalism, or their admiration for former heroes, up to and including the Nazis. Such goals now appear fantastic, and Greschat rightly repeats the already known facts about the lack of competence both in theory and practice, of the French occupation authorities. Relations with the churches were cool and correct, but suffered from ambivalence: on the one side the French tried to win them over to French goals, even while propagating the view that Church and State should be rigidly separated as in France. The British and Americans were criticised for believing that the churches should be encouraged to help in building up a new sense of democracy. Such political activity was highly problematic in French eyes. Suspicion of clerical resurgence, especially Catholic,was evident. While the churches were expected to condemn Nazism, they were not to be allowed any political expressions on current policy. Not surprisingly, this policy ran into serious opposition from the still nationalistically minded German bishops,who now saw their role as the advocates for the “oppressed” victims of the occupation policy. Their unwillingness to accept any blame for Germany’s crimes, which were ascribed solely to a few Nazis,only made the situation more tense. But the church leaders were increasingly prepared to engage in political protest, if only to makeup for past failures. Such a stance not surprisingly caused tensions. On the other hand, Greschat notes that efforts to foster peace and reconciliation were made by a valiant French Jesuit, who evaded the military government’s regulations, and in turn such moves widened the German church members’ horizons. So too the chief Protestant chaplain, Marcel Sturm, established good relations with the Confessing Church members, even though he saw that they too were still overly nationalistic. “Ils ne peuvent pas chanterouvertement “Deutschland uber alles”, main c’est reste la melodiede leur coeur”. Karl Barth’s strictures about the German churches and about the disastrous effects of Lutheranism were widely accepted by the French Protestant officials. Where, as in the Palatinate, the local church leaders showed no willingness to come to terms with their past, the French authorities intervened forcibly,dismissed the acting bishop and installed their own favourite. But at the same time, they declared that true German repentance would be met with friendship and assistance. Greschat pays tribute to Sturm’s efforts to combine his pursuit of French political aims with the encouragement of the Confessing Church’s theological programme, in a sincere effort to rebuild the German Protestant churches in the French zone. In theend, such ambitions failed, but the personal witness certainly helped to build bridges towards a better future. JSC

 

3b) William Husband, Oregon State University: “Soviet Atheism and Russian Orthodox Strategies of Resistance, 1917-32”, in Journal of Modern History, March 1998, p 74 ffThis article usefully explores how Russian workers and peasants employed resistance and circumventions to protect their traditional beliefs and practices against the changes imposed by the new Bolshevik regime after 1917.

 

3c) Detlef Schmichen-Ackermann, “Katholische Diasporazwischen Ruckzug und Selbstbehauptung in der NS Zeit” in Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht, Vol 49, no7/8, July 1998, p.462.Ackermann examines the extent of collaboration and/or resistance amongst the Catholics in the “exile” of north Germany around the city of Hannover during the Nazi period. A helpful local study.

 

3d) David Novak “Jews and Catholics: Beyond Apologies” in First Things, no 89, January 1999, p 20 This assessment of the recent Vatican statement “We remember” by a sympathetic Jewish scholar, rightly points out that the Catholic church is now calling for an active work of repentance and reconciliation, which has far more theological significance than an apology, designed to bury the past, ever could have. But Novak also rightly makes the point that the document would have been stronger if it had simply not raised the still disputed issue of Pius XII’s diplomatic actions during the Second World War – an issue which it could not possibly have treated adequately.

 

3e) Phillip Prein, “The Moravian Invention of an African Missionary Object” in German History, Vol 16, no 3 1998,p.328ff. This piece describes how far national and racial ideas penetrated German church circles with the example of the Moravian mission to southern Africa. These missionary leaders left behind their previous emphasis on individual conversions, and now began to dream of converting a whole Volk, with surprisingly romantic idealism.

 

3f) Uwe Rieske-Braun, “Ludwig Ihmels und die soziale Frage” in Zeitschrift fur Kirchengeschichte, Vol 109, no 3, 1998. This article sketches the career and ideas of the Bishop of Saxony(1922-33) and his stance on social questions, particularly in connection with the ecumenical conference in Stockholm in 1925.Rieske-Braun rightly shows that Ihmels was one of those conservative church leaders whose reluctance to support the democratic advances or peaceful foreign policy of the Weimar Republic led directly to their enthusiasm for the Nazi victory in 1933.

 

4) Book notices:Irving Hexham draws attention to the new edition of his Concise Dictionary of Religion,second edition Regent College Press,Vancouver 1999, first published in 1993. At the same time he has made it available on the website: http://www.acs.ucalgary.ca/~nurelweb/concise/INDEX.html This compendious work is a scholarly attempt to provide a glossary of most of the world’s religions, which dexterously combines incisiveness and outspokenness.

 

Since it is the season of the Epiphany, and although not really a 20th century subject, I draw your attention to the splendid account,beautifully illustrated with black and white photographs, by Richard Trexler, The Journey of the Magi. Meaning in History of a Christian Story, Princeton University Press 1997, 278pp, which ends with the triumphant return of the Magi’s relics to Cologne Cathedral through the almost entirely bombed out streets of that city in 1948. “The magi will come again, when the West needs to justify a new world order. . .Once again, the journey of the magi would culminate in resurrection”.With best wishes to you all. The next issue will appear a few days late – but better so than never!

 

John S.Conwayjconway@interchange.ubc.ca.

Association of Contemporary Church Historians(Arbeitsgemeinschaft kirchlicher Zeitgeschichtler)John S. Conway, Editor. University of British Columbia 

Return to index. 

 

Newsletter- January 1999- Vol. V, no. 1 

 

Dear Friends,I fear that some of you may have been disappointed if you tried to access the Index to past issues on our web-site, which has been out of order. We hope to take remedial steps. Looking over the books reviewed in the past year, I note a tendency to concentrate on German affairs. I hope to do better in 1999, but want to take this opportunity to thank all of you who so kindly, and without remuneration, were persuaded to review books for our members. The responses have been so positive that I very much hope you will continue. Ed.

 

Contents: 1) Modern Martyrs’ Monument 2) Book reviews: a) Chandler, The Moral Imperative b) Hayes, Holocaust education c) Baginski, Religious policy in French-occupied Germany 3) Journal articles: a) M..Greschat, Church policy in the French zone of occupation 1945-49 b) W.Husband, Soviet atheism c) D Ackermann, Catholics in Hanover d) D.Novak, Jews and Catholics e) P.Prein, Moravians in Africa f) U.R-Braun, Ludwig Ihmels 4) Book notices – Hexham, Concise Dictionary

 

1) Last July, in the presence of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth and other notables, ten newly-carved statues of twentieth century martyrs were unveiled on the west portal of Westminster Abbey, London’s most historic and prestigious Anglican church. The desire of the Abbey’s Dean and Chapter was to record the fact that this past century has been a period of heroic suffering and persecution for many Christians. To mark this, ten representative figures were chosen on an international and ecumenical basis. These figures are- from left to right – Maximilian Kolbe (Poland, d.1941), Manche Masemola (South Africa, d.1928), Janani Luwum (Uganda,d.1977), Grand Duchess Elizabeth of Russia (Russia, d.1918), Martin Luther King (USA, d.1968), Oscar Romero (El Salvador, d.1980), Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Germany, d.1945), Esther John (Pakistan, d.1960),Lucien Tapiedi (Papua-New Guinea, d.1942) and Wang Zhiming (China, d.1972). The statues themselves were designed by the British sculptor Tim Crawley, and the unveiling ceremony was preceded by an impressive Concert of Remembrance, when the premiere performance of a new De Profundis by John Hardy was given,specially composed for this occasion. In conjunction with these events a notable book of tributes was published – The Terrible Alternative. Christian Martyrdom in the Twentieth Century, London and New York: Cassell 1998. Edited by our list-member, Dr Andrew Chandler, this collection of essays by noted scholars will be reviewed here later, and should be helpful in providing information about the lesser known figures here commemorated.

 

2a) ed. A. Chandler, The Moral Imperative. New Essays on the Ethics of Resistance in National Socialist Germany 1933-1945.Widerstand: Dissent and Resistance in the Third Reich. Boulder,Co:Westview Press 1998, 124pp This slim volume contains six essays that were presented in 1995 at a conference to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. For the occasion, the George Bell Institute,University of Birmingham, brought together distinguished religious leaders, academics and publicists from North America, Britain and Germany to hear papers on “Christianity and Resistance: Nazi Germany 1933-1945”. A splendid introduction by Andrew Chandler places the essays in a broader setting of the pre-1933 history of church-state relations in Germany, and the post-1933 political realities of the Nazi dictatorship and the churches’ response. Students will be grateful for the many references that lead further into the subject. Churches specialize in the business of discerning evil. Yet they did little of that when public policy in Nazi Germany became overtly evil. In a chapter on “The role of the churches in the German Resistance Movement”, John Conway sees in this ‘reluctant resistance’ of the churches, especially the Protestant ones, a legacy of their tradition to back up civil authority. This tradition peaked during World War I, when the churches invested their moral capital in support of German militarism and imperialism. Through the defeat of these secular causes, the churches forfeited their claims to moral leadership in Germany. They now dedicated their energies to preserving their organization and doctrine. This protective attitude made the Churches blind to the need to defend the secular values and political ideals of the liberal republic. Instead they could find in the Nazi agenda old and new ideals to champion: nationalism, anti-liberalism, anti-parliamentarism, anti-communism and revisionist foreign policy. This agenda also appealed to Catholics, whose greater mistrust the Nazi regime neutralized in mid-1933 by the Concordat. Conway also points out how the regime’s early and blatant terrorism helps one understand the churches’ subsequent quietism. While Conway sees in the commitment of the churches in World War I a compelling explanation for their global failure in the Nazi era, he is of course aware of the exceptional instances of heroic resistance by clergy and laity. This is the theme of the chapter on ‘Laity and Churches in the Third Reich’ by Beate Ruhm von Oppen. Among the resisters, she cites H.J. von Moltke as one who did not count the churches out. He expected that their resistance would grow as Nazi persecution increased. He also assigned to the churches a role in the moral renewal after the war,and included Protestant and Catholics in the broad coalition he assembled to draft programmes for a defeated Germany, As an example of lay resistance on the humblest level, Ruhm v. Oppen pointed to the untutored religious obstinacy of the peasant Franz Jaegerstaetter in Austria, who refused to ‘fight for a regime that was fighting against the church’, and was beheaded. He had faith first,and resisted the evil that threatened its core; Moltke first recognised the evil, and in resisting it grew in faith, as his letters, edited so brilliantly by Ruhm v. Oppen, show. In a chapter ‘Church, Religion and the German Resistance’, Klemens von Klemperer maintains that all institutions tend to conform, or to collaborate with the regime under which they exist. Therefore, it would be wrong to expect en bloc resistance from the military, industry, civil service or even the churches. Nevertheless,some in the German Resistance expected more than accommodating quietism from church leaders, and demanded that the Church not be ‘silent like a dumb dog’. That was the conclusion of exceptional church leaders outside Germany (Berggrav, Oslo). While the churches failed to lead, those who took up resistance found that religion gave them strength in their dangerous and lonely stance. Klemperer calls this turning to religion “Spirituality -Frommigkeit”. He cites striking instances of how personal piety, deepening over time, sustained resisters, with or without a religious background. And as they realized that the Nazi regime meant to destroy religious and secular human values they became aware of how much Christianity and Humanism had in common. That helps to explain the ‘piety’ of socialists, who found strength in prayer or the Eucharist. One traditional blend of Christian and secular values that inspired a prominent social group to resist is the subject of Klaus-Gorgon Muller’s chapter on ‘Prussian elements in the German resistance’. His focus is on the Prussian conservative and military tradition, a backward-looking world view peculiar to an exclusive social class (gentry) and profession (army). Both bear enormous responsibility for bringing Hitler to power, partly because their Prussian virtues – duty, service to the state, pietist self-appraisal -failed early on to expose Hitler. Later, these same values inspired courageous men to organize bold plots against him. While it is useful to be reminded that one time Prussian virtues had admirable components, we cannot forget they were shared by a class that had forfeited its claim to leadership in the last decades of the Empire. Peter Hoffmann assessed ‘The Persecution of the Jews as a motive for Resistance against National Socialism’. His unrivalled knowledge of the sources is evident in the end-notes – among them judicious bibliographic mini-essays. The chapter sums up the anti-semitic policies and coercive resolve of the Nazi system – to oppose the one meant to face the other. While this rule applied to all manner of resistance, anyone who showed concern for the fate of the Jews defied the central belief of the Nazi regime. Hoffmann gives a wealth of detail showing that some first challenged the Nazis’ anti-semitic policies, (Goerdeler) and were then led to inform and protest (the Scholls); but others became more resolved to end the regime when they learned about the fate of the Jews. This is what police interrogators concluded after 20 July 1944, as was also evident in the testimonies in the People’s Court. In these most harrowing circumstances, resisters explained their actions by referring to the racist policies, especially the murder of the Jews.Hoffmann states that ‘the crimes of the regime, in particular the deliberate murder of the Jews’ (p.91) was the most powerful factor motivating the plotters against Hitler’s life. That could explain why so many who took part in the July 1944 plot had not acted in earlier years. The final chapter is by Ursula Buttner, ‘An unknown case of resistance; the rescue of Jews in Christian-Jewish mixed marriages’, which deals with examples of resistance at the most personal level:Christian spouses shielding partners whom the Nazi law deemed to be Jewish. Although progressively marginalised, the Jewish partner had a measure of safety – as long as the marriage held. As public pressure to divorce or cast adrift the Jewish spouse increased, so did suicide. But in 1943 in Berlin, when these Jewish spouses were rounded up for deportation, their families rallied and obtained their release after a mass protest of more than a week in front of the central collection point. Is there a similar example of mass civil disobedience in the Third Reich? Resistance calls for personal moral commitment. In the Third Reich, resistance could range from tyrannicide to protest on behalf of a spouse. Some resisted very early (Moltke), others late (Stauffenberg). The question remains: why did these persons make their commitment? What sets them apart from relatives and friends with whom they had grown up, learning the same values at home, in school, church and university? Before 1933 none could have singled out the likely candidates for resistance activity. Yet those who did resist were undoubtedly inspired by ethical norms and religious beliefs that were common knowledge. What set them apart was that they recognized evil and were inspired and sustained in their determination to do something about it. The essays in this collection show that, as the perils of resistance escalated, commitment to Christian beliefs deepened.Erich J.Hahn, University of Western Ontario.

 

2b) Stephen R.Haynes, Holocaust Education and the Church-related College. With a foreword by Franklin H.Littell. Westport, Conn:Greenwood Press 1997, 185pp Stephen Haynes, a young Presbyterian minister now teaching at a church-related college in Tennessee, is fully persuaded of the maxim adumbrated a generation ago by Professor Franklin Littell that the Holocaust is not just a Jewish, but also a Christian tragedy, not least because of the importance of the Jewish-Christian bond and the historical complicity of Christians in antisemitism. His book is a study of how far this perception has taken root in church-related colleges in the U.S.A. In 1994 he conducted a nation-wide survey of such colleges, asking about the inclusion of Holocaust education in their curriculum. His findings are highly ambivalent, namely that there is a lack of institutional commitment to such courses in many colleges, or that the initiative largely stemmed from interested faculty members. Indeed Holocaust education at church-related colleges would appear to be negatively correlated with religious aspects of college identity. It is Haynes’ aim to suggest how an effective Holocaust education can help to give an more authentic Christian dimension to church-related higher education. For one thing, no one teaching or learning about the Holocaust can avoid a personal crisis of identity, out of which a new spirituality can grow, including a widening of intellectual and moral horizons, and an ability to be moved by others’ pain, along with a sense of personal responsibility for alleviating such pain. The church colleges’ own religious traditions can be resources for humanizing pedagogy and encouraging such broader sensitivity, if properly fostered. By so doing, such an education could help to counter the indifference, apathy or relativism, or worse still the racially-motivated collaboration, which marked the response of so many secular universities and their graduates to the Holocaust, and other outbursts of racial intolerance, in the 1930s and 1940s, and the danger of which still exists today. JSC

 

2c) Christophe Baginski, La politique religieuse de la France en Allemagne occupee (1945-1949), Villeneuve-d’Ascq: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion 1997, 344 pp.(This review translated from the French by Editor) This work consists of a 1996 doctoral thesis from the University of Lille III. It is an acute study, though lacking in the kind of conclusions which might have provided a more synthetic overview of an already complex subject. But the treatment is new and rigorous, based on German and French archives, from which one can learn a lot about a topic hitherto little treated. What strikes one is the highly improvised character of French religious policy in the zone occupied by General Koenig’s troops, compared to the American and British policy in their respective zones. This was due principally because France only received its occupation zone at the Potsdam Conference in August 1945, and had therefore to adapt to these new circumstances without time to weigh up the attitude to be adopted towards the German churches. The task was therefore delicate. The author shows very well that the churches were the only institutions in German society to survive the general disaster,particularly the Catholic church thanks to its supranational character and its links to the Holy See, whereas the Protestant churches were fragmented by their purely German structure.Furthermore they were entrenched in those areas where their spiritual authority was strong: Catholics represented 62.5% of the French zone’s population, compared with the Lutherans’ 34.8% – in other words an impressive majority. The situation was far >from simple. The churches had supported the Nazi regime, possibly more out of conformity or weakness rather than out of ideological conviction. But the number of those who resisted, especially at first, was very few. Denazification was therefore necessary, just as in the rest of German society. The churches, however, quickly distanced themselves from the Nazis’ crimes, refusing to recognise any share of responsibility, and instead stressing their acts of resistance,which, no doubt, may have been real, but were not on the scale one could have wished. However, the French joined their allies in a deceptive stance, by agreeing that the churches could be regarded as having supported the resistance movement. Was this just naivete?Certainly not. In French eyes, the churches had two advantages: first, they represented a bulwark against Nazi paganism, and after 1947,against communism. It was necessary to make them supporters of the occupation policies. So the French authorities quickly allowed freedom of worship, and the re-opening of seminaries and theological faculties. They organised a very limited and discreet purge of the clergy, here studied in detail. In return they demanded that the German churches should ease relations with the occupation authorities, and restrict themselves purely to the religious arena. However, it was soon clear that, in asking for alleviation of the occupation’s rigours, or in appealing for a prompt return of prisoners, the bishops were engaging in political affairs. The French authorities took a very firm line. The author seeks to show that, in general, relations were correct, even benevolent on the part of the French. After consulting with the Holy See, they agreed to recognise the validity of the 1933 Reich Concordat. They ensured that no church lacked supplies for celebrating the Eucharist, which was a considerable achievement at a time of great penury. Charitable works were authorized and even encouraged, as was youth work. Finally, the French sought to buildup Christian political parties, but on condition that the Centre Party,which had voted plenary powers to Hitler in 1933, should not reappear. They avoided adopting too punitive a policy, but rather believed, like their allies, that this would be an effective way of combating the increasing menace of communism. At the same time, this benevolence could hardly conceal other French objectives, such as their desire to separate both the Catholic and Protestant churches of the Saar from the rest of Germany. It is a pity that the author did not give more space to this issue, which was central to the French occupation authorities. It would have been good to describe this situation more exactly, as it provided an overlap between the religious and political spheres, as part of France’s desire to detach the Saar from Germany in order to establish it as a kind of satellite state. Nevertheless we owe Christophe Baginski a debt for so competently filling a historiographical void with this solid and pertinent work which allows us to understand more fully the complexity of Franco-German relations in the immediate post-war period. Francis Latour, Paris

 

3a) Journal article: Martin Greschat, “Die Kirchenpolitik Frankreichs in seiner Besatzungszone”, 2 parts, in Zeitschrift fur Kirchengeschichte, Vol 109, nos 2 and 3, 1998. This same subject is explored by one of Germany’s leading church historians in a two part article, which is notably more critical of French policy. Greschat shows that French dreams of restoring its European status rested on the exploitation and dismemberment of western Germany, thus fulfilling the unfinished business of 1919. At the same time, the Germans would need to be re-educated to learn to abandon their long-held nationalism, or their admiration for former heroes, up to and including the Nazis. Such goals now appear fantastic, and Greschat rightly repeats the already known facts about the lack of competence both in theory and practice, of the French occupation authorities. Relations with the churches were cool and correct, but suffered from ambivalence: on the one side the French tried to win them over to French goals, even while propagating the view that Church and State should be rigidly separated as in France. The British and Americans were criticised for believing that the churches should be encouraged to help in building up a new sense of democracy. Such political activity was highly problematic in French eyes. Suspicion of clerical resurgence, especially Catholic,was evident. While the churches were expected to condemn Nazism, they were not to be allowed any political expressions on current policy. Not surprisingly, this policy ran into serious opposition from the still nationalistically minded German bishops,who now saw their role as the advocates for the “oppressed” victims of the occupation policy. Their unwillingness to accept any blame for Germany’s crimes, which were ascribed solely to a few Nazis,only made the situation more tense. But the church leaders were increasingly prepared to engage in political protest, if only to makeup for past failures. Such a stance not surprisingly caused tensions. On the other hand, Greschat notes that efforts to foster peace and reconciliation were made by a valiant French Jesuit, who evaded the military government’s regulations, and in turn such moves widened the German church members’ horizons. So too the chief Protestant chaplain, Marcel Sturm, established good relations with the Confessing Church members, even though he saw that they too were still overly nationalistic. “Ils ne peuvent pas chanterouvertement “Deutschland uber alles”, main c’est reste la melodiede leur coeur”. Karl Barth’s strictures about the German churches and about the disastrous effects of Lutheranism were widely accepted by the French Protestant officials. Where, as in the Palatinate, the local church leaders showed no willingness to come to terms with their past, the French authorities intervened forcibly,dismissed the acting bishop and installed their own favourite. But at the same time, they declared that true German repentance would be met with friendship and assistance. Greschat pays tribute to Sturm’s efforts to combine his pursuit of French political aims with the encouragement of the Confessing Church’s theological programme, in a sincere effort to rebuild the German Protestant churches in the French zone. In the end, such ambitions failed, but the personal witness certainly helped to build bridges towards a better future. JSC

 

3b) William Husband, Oregon State University: “Soviet Atheism and Russian Orthodox Strategies of Resistance, 1917-32”, in Journal of Modern History, March 1998, p 74 ff. This article usefully explores how Russian workers and peasants employed resistance and circumventions to protect their traditional beliefs and practices against the changes imposed by the new Bolshevik regime after 1917.

 

3c) Detlef Schmichen-Ackermann, “Katholische Diaspora zwischen Ruckzug und Selbstbehauptung in der NS Zeit” in Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht, Vol 49, no7/8, July 1998, p.462.Ackermann examines the extent of collaboration and/or resistance amongst the Catholics in the “exile” of north Germany around the city of Hannover during the Nazi period. A helpful local study.

 

3d) David Novak “Jews and Catholics: Beyond Apologies” in First Things, no 89, January 1999, p 20. This assessment of the recent Vatican statement “We remember” by a sympathetic Jewish scholar, rightly points out that the Catholic church is now calling for an active work of repentance and reconciliation, which has far more theological significance than an apology, designed to bury the past, ever could have. But Novak also rightly makes the point that the document would have been stronger if it had simply not raised the still disputed issue of Pius XII’s diplomatic actions during the Second World War – an issue which it could not possibly have treated adequately.

 

3e) Phillip Prein, “The Moravian Invention of an African Missionary Object” in German History, Vol 16, no 3 1998,p.328ff. This piece describes how far national and racial ideas penetrated German church circles with the example of the Moravian mission to southern Africa. These missionary leaders left behind their previous emphasis on individual conversions, and now began to dream of converting a whole Volk, with surprisingly romantic idealism.

 

3f) Uwe Rieske-Braun, “Ludwig Ihmels und die soziale Frage” in Zeitschrift fur Kirchengeschichte, Vol 109, no 3, 1998. This article sketches the career and ideas of the Bishop of Saxony (1922-33) and his stance on social questions, particularly in connection with the ecumenical conference in Stockholm in 1925.Rieske-Braun rightly shows that Ihmels was one of those conservative church leaders whose reluctance to support the democratic advances or peaceful foreign policy of the Weimar Republic led directly to their enthusiasm for the Nazi victory in 1933.

 

4) Book notices:Irving Hexham draws attention to the new edition of his Concise Dictionary of Religion,second edition Regent College Press,Vancouver 1999, first published in 1993. At the same time he has made it available on the website: http://www.acs.ucalgary.ca/~nurelweb/concise/INDEX.html. This compendious work is a scholarly attempt to provide a glossary of most of the world’s religions, which dexterously combines incisiveness and outspokenness.

 

Since it is the season of the Epiphany, and although not really a 20th century subject, I draw your attention to the splendid account,beautifully illustrated with black and white photographs, by Richard Trexler, The Journey of the Magi. Meaning in History of a Christian Story, Princeton University Press 1997, 278pp, which ends with the triumphant return of the Magi’s relics to Cologne Cathedral through the almost entirely bombed out streets of that city in 1948. “The magi will come again, when the West needs to justify a new world order. . .Once again, the journey of the magi would culminate in resurrection”.With best wishes to you all. The next issue will appear a few days late – but better so than never!

 

John S.Conwayjconway@interchange.ubc.ca.

Association of Contemporary Church Historians

(Arbeitsgemeinschaft kirchlicher Zeitgeschichtler)

John S. Conway, Editor. University of British Columbia

 

Newsletter- December1998- Vol. IV, no. 12 

Dear Friends,
With this issue of our Newsletter, we come to the completion of Vol. IV.
Editing these issues has been a labour of love for me, which has been
sustained largely because of the encouragement I have received from so many
of you. Let me assure you all that I continue to welcome your contributions,
so that we can more fully produce a truly international and
interdenominational bulletin of value to our world-wide readership from
Poland to Western Australia.
I shall be returning to Vancouver in mid-month, so individual correspondence
may be somewhat disrupted. But I want to take this opportunity to wish each
and all of you my very best wishes for a blessed Christmas and a happy and
successful New Year.
Contents: 1) Repetition of invitation to supply biographical resumes
2) Forthcoming International Historical Conference
3) Journal issue
4) Thesis abstract: Karl Barth. Covenanted Solidarity. M.Lindsay
5) The Erosion of Conscience
6) Book review: M.Kalusche, Der Schloss an der Grenze
1) Repeat invitation to supply biographical and research interest
information.
As we noted last month, list-members are invited to become better known to
each other by sending in a short resume of your career and research
interests, along with your e-mail and postal addresses, and home page if you
have one. Please send this to Randall Bytwerk
The results can be read at
http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/bytw/conway.htm
2) Forthcoming conference
It is not too early to take note of the opportunity to take part in the next
meeting of the International Congress of Historical Sciences to be held in
Oslo, Norway from 6th-13th August 2000.
The whole programme can be obtained from
thomas.evensen@hi.uio.no
This is the largest most ecumenical gathering of the world’s historians, so
its themes have to be very broad and general. But one of the major subjects
to be discussed will be “Millennium, time and history” including a section
on ‘eschatology, millennial movements and visions of the future”, while
among the special topics are “Religion and Gender” and “Christian Missions,
modernisation, colonisation and de-colonisation”.
In addition a number of affiliated organisations will hold simultaneous
meetings. Amongst these should be the Commission Internationale d’Histoire
Ecclesiastique Comparee (CIHEC). If I can establish contact with any of this
group’s executive, I will and get more details of the two-day programme, and
how to contact the organizers.
3) Journal issue:
The Journal for the History of Modern Theology/Zeitschrift fuer neuere
Theologiegeschichte, Volume 5, no 2 1998 has now been published and includes
the third part of a deocumentary edition of the exchange of letters between
Rudolf Bultmann and Gerhard Krueger 1924-1974, also interesting reviews of
new books in our field. The web-site is
http://www.degruyter.de/journals/znthg/index.html
4) Thesis abstract
Covenanted Solidarity. The theological basis of Karl Barth’s opposition to
Nazi antisemitism and the Holocaust.
In the historiography of Holocaust and Church Struggle studies, the figure
of Karl Barth occupies a strangely marginalised position. Historians have
acknowledged his seminal role in the founding and leadership of the
Confessing Church, including his pivotal involvement in the writing of the
Barmen Declaration. Thus, his significance as a ‘Founding Father’ of the
ecclesiastical campaign against the Nazi regime has been widely recognised.
Conversely, his vehement rejection of National Socialist antisemitism and
the resultant Holocaust, as well as his forceful advocacy on behalf of the
persecuted Jews, have received scant attention. Historians have displayed an
unwillingness to encounter in any penetrating depth the theological issues
involved in Barth’s position, and have shied away from Barth’s massive
“Church Dogmatics” in which his most profound defences of the Jews are
located. The results of these failings has been that most historical
monographs about Nazi antisemitism and the Holocaust that do mention Barth
do so in critically negative fashion, usually assuming that Barth was either
anti-Judaistic himself or simply uninterested in the question.
This thesis counteracts this received wisdom by presupposing that any
historical assessment of Barth must take in utter seriousness his
theological work on its own grounds. Consequently, while the thesis falls
within the discipline of history, it is the theological bases of Barth’s
resistance to Nazism and its antisemitism that forms the material core of
the project.
This approach focusses not only on Barth’s explicitly political pamphlets,
but also on his dogmatic theology from the early 1920s through the “Church
Dogmatics” period. It looks not only at how Barth treats the motif of
“Israel” but, more importantly, how his conceptions of revelation,
Christology and election stand in self-conscious antithesis to the
voelkisch, Nazified versions of the same. The National Socialists adopted
and then perverted these theological motifs in an effort not only to deify
the regime and Hitler, but also to demonize the Jews and thus to justify
their extermination. This thesis seeks to show that Barth’s usage of these
concepts was both a recapturing of the theological orthodoxy and, as well, a
basis from which his defence of the Jews could be, and was, launched.
The other central element is the demonstration that Barth was no mere
armchair theologian, but was socially and politically active throughout his
career. This theme is developed by showing how Barth’s pro-Israel
hermeneutic found practical expression during the Nazi years. This was no
aberration, but rather the extension of Barth’s social(ist) praxis from his
earlier pastoral work in rural Switzerland.
There are undoubtedly points at which Barth’s theological and practical
political can be criticised. Nevertheless the overwhelming weight of
evidence shows that, in contrast to previous historical assessments, Barth
was both actively involved in resisting Nazi antisemitic violence, and that
this praxis was grounded securely in his profound Christocentric theology.
Mark Lindsay, Dept of History, University of Western Australia.
5) The Erosion of Conscience
On a recent visit to the University of Western Ontario, Prof Peter Baehr of
Memorial University, Newfoundland, had these pertinent comments on the
problem of the loss of moral standards in Nazi Germany, as discussed by
Hannah Arendt in her well-known book “Eichmann in Jerusalem”:
A particularly disturbing fact for a civilisation ostensibly based on
Judaeo-Christian principles, is that such principles were not sturdy enough
to forestall the Holocaust, Though the Nazis themselves were decidedly
anti-Christian, Germany had been a Christian region, with Christian
traditions, for centuries. What had then happened to the commandment: Thous
shalt not kill? To be sure this injunction had everywhere been previously
qualified to allow for capital punishment or war. But the Jews were not
criminals in the conventional sense – they had broken no law until they were
put outside of it – or in a position to assault Germany. In her book “The
Origins of Totalitarianism”, Arendt delineated a number of historical, macro
elements that had prepared the way for the temporary triumph of the Nazis,
among them the disintegration of the nation-state, the emergence of
minorities and millions of stateless peoples, and the development of racism
which denies the common origins of Man. All of these had weakened the
conventions, customs and traditions on which moral scruples are based.
In “Eichmann in Jerusalem” Arendt deepened the analysis by providing a
phenomenology of the factors and phases by means of which conscience is
eroded, to such an extent that it is only exceptional people who are able to
behave “normally”.
Arendt was emphatic that someone like Eichmann “commits his crimes under
circumstances that make it well-nigh impossible to know or to feel that he
is doing wrong” But what were these “circumstances” that disabled people
like Eichmann from knowing or feeling that they were doing wrong?
Concentrating primarily on the environment within which Eichmann and people
like him moved, Arendt enumerated a number of factors that contributed to
the erosion of conscience. The first of these was linguistic. A conspicuous
feature of the bizarre world inhabited by the Nazi hierarchy was a roster of
slogans and catch-phrases – the SS motto “My Honor is my Loyalty ” – that
leant their deeds an inflated importance, and that substituted the plain
fact of murder with “language rules” (euphemisms like ‘final solution’
‘special treatment’, ‘resettlement’) whose purpose was to conceal the
enormity of what was being done.
During the war, the slogan was “the battle of destiny for the German people”
(der Schicksalskampf des deutschen Volkes) “coined either by Hitler or by
Goebbels, which made self-deception easier on three counts: it suggested,
first, that the war was no war; second, that it was started by destiny and
not by Germany; and third, that it was a matter of life and death for the
Germans, who must annihilate their enemies or be annihilated”.
Moreover, it became evident that such terminology had survived the war when,
during Eichmann’s trial, his defence counsel, Dr Robert Servatius declared
Eichmann “innocent of charges bearing on his responsibility for ‘the
collection of skeletons, sterilizations, killings by gas, and similar
medical matters'” Whereupon Judge Halevi interrupted him: “Dr Servatius, I
assume you made a slip of the tongue when you said that killing by gas was a
medical matter” To which Servatius replied: “It was indeed a medical matter,
since it was prepared by physicians; it was a matter of killing, and
killing, too, is a medical matter”.
Second, and relatedly, the Nazis created amongst their functionaries a
pseudo-morality through warping a component that all ethical ideas contain:
the notion of obligation and sacrifice. Such a grotesque twist was required
precisely because the majority of murderers were not “sadists or killers by
nature”. Members of the Einsatzgruppen, for instance, the mobile killing
units of the SS, were typically reasonably well-educated, Himmler’s
stratagem for dealing with feelings of pity they may have harboured
consisted in ramming home the message, not “what horrible things I did to
people!” But rather “what horrible things I had to watch in the pursuance of
my duties, how heavily the task weighed upon my shoulders!. And since it was
an unpleasant “task” for which “sacrifice” was required, and not a pleasure
experienced for its own sake, such a rationalisation could assume the
tincture of duty and anaesthetise other moral qualms. A similar phenomenon
was evident amongst those who built the installations of mass death. In many
cases, these were the same functionaries who had been involved in the
euthanasia drive to which around 50,000 Germans had fallen victim between
December 1939 and August 1941. The phraseology of “mercy killing” which
justified this policy – and which, again, implied that the killers were
working with an elevated motive – prepared them well for their next job.
Third, the sheer fact of war itself, the multiplication of death it
involved, and the ever-present sense that one’s own life now hung in the
balance, lessened the value of life more generally.
Fourth, and finally, the atmosphere of collusion was so complete – among the
Nazi Party hierarchy, the Foreign Office, legal experts, the Ministry of
Finance – that there was nothing, and no-one, to convince Eichmann that he
was doing anything wrong. The absence of dissenting opinions, the fugitive
and opaque character of resistance, such as it was, spun a cocoon in which
crime was transformed into orthodoxy. Who, Eichmann asked, was he to
protest? The very success of the regime made obeying it seductive, and a
virtue out of opportunism. But the situation was made even worse, Arendt
argued, because of the way the Jewish Councils cooperated with the Nazi
functionaries in the deportation of their own people. Through the practice
of establishing privileged categories of Jewish persons – “German Jews as
against Polish Jews, war veterans and decorated Jews as against ordinary
Jews, families whose ancestors were German-born as against those recently
naturalised, etc ” – through formulating various exceptions, the Jewish
leaders had seemed to accept the rule. As a result, it was all too easy for
the Nazi functionaries to feel “that by being asked to make exceptions, and
by occasionally granting them, and thus earning gratitude, they had
convinced their opponents of the lawfulness of what they were doing”.
“Nobody”, Eichmann explained, ” came to me and reproached me for anything in
the performance of my duties. Not even Pastor Gruber [a Protestant minister
with whom Eichmann had negotiated, and who gave evidence at the trial: PB]
claims to have done so . . . He came to me and sought alleviation of
suffering, but did not actually object to the very performance of my duties
as such”. For Arendt, this and other episodes revealed “the moral collapse
of Jewish society”. And accompanying it, of course, was the moral collapse
of Christian society too. Peter Baehr, Memorial University of Newfoundland.
6) Book review:
Martin Kalusche, Das Schloss an der Grenze. Kooperation und Konfrontation
mit dem Nationalsozialismus in der Heil- und Pflegeanstalt fuer
Schwachsinnige und Epileptische Stetten i. R.. Heidelberg:DWI Verlag 1997
(Diakoniewissenschaftliche Studien, Bd 10) 412 pp DM 32-
(English summary: Ed. The tragic history of the mistreatment and even murder
of the mentally-ill in Nazi Germany is now being explored more fully,
especially on the local level. Many of these patients were placed in
church-run institutions, such as the one at Stetten in Wuerttemberg, which
is the subject of this capable analysis. The author makes clear that the
clash of loyalties between Christian compassion and Nazi racial demands was
felt by all the staff, but particularly by the directors. He gives a full
account of the dilemma of Pastor Ludwig Schlaich, but suggests that his was
not a strong personality able to withstand the constant pressures to
conform. Stetten showed how easily all in charge got used to the poisonous
impact of Nazi ideas. The initial Nazi programme in 1934 was for compulsory
sterilization of Stetten’s patients as a “sacrifice for the sake of national
health purity”, as Schlaich justified such steps.
From May 1940 onwards, the deportations from Stetten began, despite
ineffective protests. Within seven weeks nearly half the inmates had been
put to death. The author rightly expresses his inability to describe
adequately their feelings, or the conflicts felt by the hospital staff,
especially when heartrending choices had to be made in the hopes of saving
some of the victims.
The third part of the book is more analytical and discusses the whole issue
of “euthanasia” in its wider context, as also a comparison with the story at
other German institutions. The author successfully combines an
identification with the theme’s subjects, but also a due scholarly distance.
“Stetten” ist fuer viele Menschen in Wuerttemberg ein Synonym fuer eine
Anstalt, aus der zur Zeit des Nationalsozialismus behinderte Menschen zur
Ermordung abgeholt wurden. “Stetten” – das verbindet sich schliesslich mit
einer zentralen Gestalt, Pfarrer Ludwig Schlaich (1899-1977), dem
Hauptprotagonisten dieses Buches. Basierend auf einer 1100 Seiten dicken
Chronik der Anstalt Stetten widmet sich der Autor in acht Kapiteln der
Grundfrage: “Wie war es moeglich, dass vor zwei Generationen fast die
Haeflte der Bewohnerinnen und Bewohner verschleppt und auf der Schwaebischen
Alb ermordert werden konnte? Inwiefern war die Anstalt Stetten an den
nationalsozialistischen Verbrechen an behinderten Menschen beteiligt?”
(S.16)
Drei Hauptteile sind es, in denen diese Frage aus jeweils veraenderter
Perspektive angegangen wird. Im ersten Teil “Leben und Arbeiten in der Heil-
und Pflegeanstalt 1933-40” (S 33-142) orientiert Kalusche die Leser ueber
die Vorgeschichte der Anstalt Stetten wie ueber die Hauptpersonen. Er
informiert ueber die finanzielle Situation der Anstalten. Stetten ist im
Dritten Reich ein oekonomisch prosperierendes Unternehmen, was aber durch
grosse Sparsamkeit und einer damit einhergehenden Verschlechterung von
Lebens- und Arbeitsbedingungen erkauft wird. Dabei orientiert sich der Autor
stark an dem Begriff der “Grenze”. Er thematisiert ihn am
(Nicht-)Verhaeltnis der Anstalt zur Gemeindee Stetten, wie er auch die
Grenzen der geistlichen Gemeinschaft in Stetten aufweist: Mitarbeiter und
Bewohner gehen getrennt zum Abendmahl; viele Bewohner, die nicht konfirmiert
werden koonten, sind vom Abendmahl ausgeschlossen.
Ein erster Hohepunkt des Buches liegt im zweiten Kapitel, in der Stetten als
Teil der NS-Volksgemeinschaft untersucht wird. Dabei wird deutlich, wie sehr
NSBO und KdF die “Betriebsgemeinschaft” Stetten praegen wollen. Natuerlich
muss sich im Herbst 1937 auch die gesamte Mitarbeiterschaft sich auf Hitler
verpflichten. Zweifellos – so folgert der Autor – war nach dem Willen der
Verantwortlichen die Anstalt Teil des NS-Volksgemeinschaft. Daneben steht
jedoch, und dqs wirkt vielfach paradox, die Feststellung, dass hier
weiterhin im Rahmen des christlichen Menschenbildes der eigene Wert jedes
behinderten Menschen vertreten wurde, was der Autor zu Beginn des dritten
Kapitels mit vielen Belegen zeigt. (S.120) Hier wie an vielen anderen
Stellen wird die schwierige Gratwanderung Ludwig Schlaichs deutlich, die
zwischen dem Kosten-Nutzen-Aspekt und der positiven Bedeutung der
behinderten Menschen entlang fuehrt.
“Brauchbare-Auslese” heisst der Begriff, mit dem sich Schlaich
auseinandersetzen muss. Zusammenfassend muss Kalusche feststellen, dass bei
aller Paradoxie Stetten nicht der Ort war, an dem sich aus christlichen
Glauben, Ablehnung des NS-Terrors und einem Patriotismus, der Freiheit und
Menschenwuerde verpflichtet ist, eine Widerstandshaltung entwickeln konnte.
Er konstatiert vielmehr eine allmaehliche “Gewoehnung an das Gift des
Nationalsozialismus” (S.145)
Der zweite Teil der Arbeit, der den nationalsozialistischen Verbrechen an
den Behinderten in Stetten gewidmet ist (S 143-323) thematisiert zunaechst
in beklemmender Weise Begruendung und Realisierung der von der Inneren
Mission weithin begruessten Zwangssterilisierung. Der Autor beleuchtet
dieses Thema unter anderem aufgrund einer Rundfunkreportage, einem
“Hoerbericht aus der Heil- und Pflegeanstalt Stetten i/Remstal”, die die
Sterilisierung subtil an die Hoererschaft bringen will, spaeter gleichwohl
doch nicht ausgestrahlt wird. Im weiteren geht er auf den Kreis der
Sterilisierten ein, wie auch auf die traumatischen Folgen der
Sterilisierung. Der Autor zieht aus Schlaich’s Stellungnahmen und
praktischer Taetigkeit die Einsicht, dass ausgehend von einer politischer
Entscheidung fuer das Dritte Reich die theologische Urteilsbildung eindeutig
korrumpiert worden sei. So wird die Unfruchtbarmachung von Schlaich als
Bewaehrung des “Erbkranken” als Christ und “Volksgenossen” interpretiert,
als “Opfer” fuer den Staat, “um die weitere Untergrabung der Volksgesundheit
durch die Erbkrankheiten zu verhindern”. (Vortrag Schlaich 27.1.1935 in
Stuttgart, zit. bei Kalusche, S.196)
Am 22 Mai 1940 beginnt die Deportation von Bewohnern der Anstalt Stetten.
Sieben Transporte schildert Kalusche in seinem Buch, nicht ohne die
Korrespondenz der Anstalt mit den Angehoerigen zu dokumentieren. In diesen
Zusammenhang kann nur der Autor recht gegeben werden, wenn er schreibt:
“Dabei stossen wir immer wieder an die Grenzen dessen, was im Rahmen einer
wissenschaftlichen Arbeit moeglich ist. Wie soll es gelingen, das Schicksal
der Deportierten und Ermordeten, aber auch die Todesangst der mit dem Leben
Davongekommenen angemessen zu schildern? Wie ist es moeglich, dem tragischen
Konflikt gerecht zu werden, den die Anstaltleitung aushalten muss, wenn sie
Menschenleben opfert, um andere zu retten?” (S.286).
Der Autor resuemiert, dass die Leitung der Anstalt Stetten mit den
Deportation rechnen musste. Als die ersten Transporte angekuendigt werden,
habe man gegen die Deportation beim Reichsstatthalter und beim
Innenministerium interveniert, wenngleich weithin ohne Erfolg. Auch die
Bemuehungen der Angehoerigen waren nicht ganz fruchtlos, wenngleich sie
wenig daran aenderten, dass in zwoelf Wochen fast die Haelfte der
behinderten Menschen umgebracht wurde. Ende 1940 wurde die Anstalt Stetten
beschlagnahmt. Viele der in anderen Anstalten verlegten Menschen wurden dort
Opfer der “Euthanasie”.
Abschliessend geht der Autor im dritten Teil auf Fragen von Widerstand und
Nonkonformitaet ein, beleuchtet Schlaichs verklaerende Schrift
“Lebensunwert” aus dem Jahre 1947 und vergleicht Stetten mit anderen
Einrichtungen der Inneren Mission in Sueddeutschland. (S.324-384)
Das Buch endet mit der Frage nach zeitgenoessischen Herausforderungen in
Form von sieben sehr bedenkenswerten Thesen. Unter anderem konstatiert er
hier “Formen von Gewoehnung und Korrumpierung” und fordert ein offensives
Umgehen mit der “Realitaet eines internationalen
biotechnologisch-industriellen Komplexes”. Die wichtigste Einsicht aus der
Geschichte der “Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens” liege wohl darin, “dass
ein Verbrechen, auch wenn man annimmt, es sei zu gross, um jemals begangen
zu werden, dennoch veruebt werden kann” (S.384)
Nur wenige Buecher aus dem Bereich der Kirchlichen Zeitgeschichte, die in
den vergangenen Jahren erschienen sind, koennen sich mit dieser Heidelberger
Dissertation messen. Das gilt auf drei Ebenen. Zum einen liest man selten
eine so geglueckte Synthese vonb Identifikation mit dem Thema und
wissenschaftlich notwendiger Distanz. Zur anderen is beeindruecken, dass
sich der Autor nicht von herkoemlichen Schablonen blenden laesst, sondern
tief in die Quellen eindringt, um die Wahrheit herauszufinden. Schliesslich
bleibt er nicht in einer unverbindlichen historischen Beschaeftigung stehen,
sondern schafft es, im besten Sinne einen Lernprozess anzustossen. Dem
Rezensenten bleibt nur, die Lektuere dieses Buches vorbehaltlos zu
empfehlen.
Rainer Laechele, Riesengebirgstr.2, D 73457 Essingen, Germany
Rlaechele@t-online.de
It only remains for me to wish you all the compliments of the season, and to
hope that we shall all meet again in 1999.
Sincerely,
John S.Conway
jconway@interchange.ubc.ca