Dear Friends,

Twice this month I have had the pleasure of making the personal acquaintance
of several List-members, hitherto known only from cyber-space. In Grand Rapids,
Michigan, where I went for a visiting lecture, Randy Bytwerk suggested that we should try to use
this technology to get to know each other better. He even and most kindly volunteered to set up the
mechanics to make this happen. by establishing and maintaining a website.(See below:
Networking: Item 2 ). So may I urge you all to take advantage of this generous offer, which I feel
will help to advance our interest and research in contemporary church history.

Contents:

1) FDR Conference, Hyde Park,N.Y., Oct.1998
2) Networking for Association List-members
3) Book reviews

a) U.Gerrens, Medizinisches Ethos und theologische Ethik
b) B, Mensing, Pfarrer und Nationalsozialismus
c) E.W.Lutzer, Hitler’s Cross
4) Bonhoeffer new Home Page
5) Conference on “Europe: Divided or United”, July 1999
6) A Communist invokes the Power of Prayer

1) The recent conference organised by the Franklin and Eleanor
Roosevelt Institute at Hyde Park, New York on the topic of “FDR, the Vatican and the Roman Catholic
Church in America, 1933-1945” proved to be a highly interesting occasion. First, because our
discussions took place in FDR’s home and library, surrounded by the memorabilia and even the
documentation of his presidency, which gave a very special aura. Second, because the
distinguished participants comprised representatives of the State Department, including three present
or former U.S. Ambassadors to the Holy See, members of President Kennedy’s family, an envoy
from the Vatican’s Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, several noted
Catholic priests, and a stimulating group of professors from California to Prince Edward Island.
The Canadian contingent from Vancouver, Ottawa, Toronto, New Brunswick and P.E.I. made
excellent contributions. It was also good to meet several listmembers there.
F.D.R. was and is both attractive and enigmatic. Some papers described
how this Hudson Valley aristocrat with his social reformist leanings dealt with the largely
blue-collar and Irish Catholic working class who so largely sustained the Democratic Party for
opportunistic and self-serving interests. Even more interesting were the ambiguities involved
in Roosevelt’s attempts to recruit the Catholic Church internationally for the changing
demands of his diplomatic goals. The American government’s involvement with the Vatican,
in the absence of any regular diplomatic mission, began through sending Myron Taylor as a
Personal Representative to Pope Pius XII in early 1940. But there was considerable
opposition at home, and Roosevelt was obliged to leave the relationship ambivalent, especially
when Pius refused to give his support to American war aims. We heard conflicting views about
Pius XII’s diplomatic priorities, and can expect debate to continue on this subject.
The conference concluded with a special session on the recent Vatican
document “We Remember: Reflections on the Shoah”, whose theological premises were not
surprisingly warmly applauded by such an audience. The whole affair was magnificently organised by David Woolner of the
University of Prince Edward Island and Marist College, who arranged for the banquet to be
held in the former Jesuit Novitiate nearby – a huge religious edifice, where Teilhard de
Chardin is buried in the cemetery, but which is now used as a highly superior cooking school! Sic
transit gloria!

2. Networking: Randy Bytwerk writes:
During a recent visit to Calvin College, John Conway noted that even he does
not know personally all of the members who receive this Newsletter – largely because
the numbers have grown so rapidly – and that it would be useful perhaps to have a brief
information on subscribers available. I volunteered to take on this task. If you would like to post
a brief paragraph identifying yourself and your interests, email address, and home page should
you have one, I will post that information at this address:
http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/bytw/conway.htm
I will simply paste in what you send to me, so do proofread.

3a) Uwe Gerrens, Medizinisches Ethos und theologische Ethik. Karl und
Dietrich Bonhoeffer in der Auseinandersetzung um Zwangssterilisation und “Euthanasie” in
Nationalsozialismus. (Schriftenreihe der Vierteljahrshefte fur Zeitgeschichte, Bd 73),
Munich: Oldenbourg 1996
(This review appeared first on H-German@h-net.msu.edu on 9 Oct 98)

Uwe Gerrens’ work is an interesting contribution to the rapidly expanding
body of literature on eugenics and “euthanasia” in the Nazi period. Though it
originated as a dissertation in theology, it is more historical than theological in flavour. Gerrens’
use of archival and other primary sources, for example, is impressive, though his command of the
English-language historiography on his topic is a little limited.
While most works on eugenics and “euthanasia” focus on the perpetrators,
this one analyses the activities and ideas of two prominent opponents of Nazi
eugenics policies. Karl Bonhoeffer, professor at the University of Berlin, was one of the leading
psychiatrists in Germany in the early twentieth century.. His son, Dietrich, became a leading
theologian in the Confessing Church during the Nazi period. Despite their common opposition to Nazi
policies and their love for each other, Karl and Dietrich were miles apart in their world views and
interests. Karl was a careful scientist uninterested in religious matters, while Dietrich’s whole
life revolved around religion. Karl rarely discussed philosophy or ethics publicly, while
Dietrich considered work on ethics his life’s task. Thus Gerrens is obliged to reconstruct the father’s
medical ethics from his actions, while Dietrich’s writings reveal his views on medical ethics.
Other significant differences between the two emerge from this study. Karl
was so steeped in eugenics, which permeated the psychiatric profession in early
twentieth-century Germany, that he did not hesitate to refer to the mentally ill as
_Minderwertigen_ (inferior ones) in his writings. An essay he wrote after the Nazi period attempted to
rescue eugenics from its disreputable association with Nazi policies. The influence of eugenics
thinking on Dietrich, on the other hand, was negligible.
Despite these differences, Gerrens discovers significant common elements in
their medical ethics. Both opposed the Nazi Law for Hereditary Health, because it
called for compulsory sterilisation of those with hereditary illnesses. Both were
vigorous opponents of the Nazi “euthanasia” programme. Most of their criticism was surreptitious, of
course, but Gerrens effectively documents how they vainly tried to stymie Nazi policies. Many
scholars already know how Dietrich tried to halt Nazi encroachments on the church, but Gerrens
interestingly shows how his father unsuccessfully tried to ward off the Nazi takeover of the
psychiatric profession. Gerrens believes that both opposed Nazi eugenics policies on similar
grounds, upholding a view of human rights that rejected the state’s violation of individual
prerogatives, including the right to marry and reproduce.
Gerrens’ stress on the commonalities tends to obscure some fundamental
differences which he recognises but nonetheless de-emphasizes. Karl objected to
compulsory eugenics measures partly because he did not believe that eugenics laws could
accomplish as much as proponents promised. Sceptical scientist that he was, he did not think
eugenics had proven itself sufficiently to warrant legislation. Thus his opposition to eugenics
proposals was pragmatic and flexible, and he clearly endorsed voluntary eugenics. Dietrich’s
theological opposition to eugenics measures was more principled and permanent, being grounded in the
traditional Judeo-Christian doctrine of the sanctity of human life.
Richard Weikart, California State U., Stanislaus, Cal.

3b) Bjoern Mensing, Pfarrer und Nationalsozialismus. Geschichte einer
Verstrickung am Beispiel der Evangelisch-Lutherischen Kirche in Bayern (AKZ,Reihe B:Darstellungen, Bd
26) Gottingen:Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1998. 290 pp. DM 68.

Wie es mit der hohen “Anfaelligkeit der evangelischen Pfarrerschaft fuer
die NSDAP” und ihrer “politischen Vorbildwirkung auf die evangelisch-kirchliche
Bevoelkerung” stand, ist im allgemeinen bekannt. Mensing moechte es in seiner regionalgeschichtlichen
Studie fuer die Pfarrerschaft in rechtsrheinischen Bayern genauer nachweisen. Dafuer
wertete er die “Entnazifizierungsakten” aus, deren Luecken er aus den Bestaenden des ehem.
Berlin Document Centre auffuellte.
Ausserdem zog er dort eine Stichprobe von etwa 10 Prozent der bayerischen
Pfarrerschaft, die 1934 1,775 Geistliche umfasste. Weiterhim durfte er per
Sondergenehmigung die landeskirchlichen Personalakten von 245 Pg.-Pfarrern benutzen. Schliesslich
sah er die Gestapo-Akten von 92 bayerischen Pfarrern aus dem Staatsarchiv Wuerzburg
ein, und wertete Briefwechsel und zeitgenoessiches Schriftum aus. Endlich verschickte er im
November 1984 und in September 1988 jeweils verschiedene Fragebogen an bayerische Pfarrer, die
in der NS-Zeit mindestens zeitweise in der Region Dienst taten. Zwischen 1988 und 1990 fuehrte er weitere 100 “Intensivinterviews” durch.
Die Fragebogen sind der Arbeit nicht beigegeben, ueber die statistische
Auswertung des heterogenen Datenmaterials erfaerht der Leser, dass es mit Hilfe des bei
Sozialwissenschaftlern ueblichen Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) analysiert wurde. Welche
statistischen Prozeduren aus dem SPSS-Program durchgefuert wurden und welche seiner
verschiedenen Versionen zur Anwendung kamen, laesst sich aus der Studie nicht entnehmen.
Ob die bayerische Pfarrerschaft insgesamt oder nur die nationalsozialistisch organisierten
Pfarrer als Grundgesamtheit definiert, wie Stichproben gezogen und wie die erhobenen
Daten entsprechend ihrer unterschiedlichen Aussagekraft gewichtet wurden, laesst sich nicht
oder nicht genau erkennen.
Mensing jedenfalls haelt seiner Erhebung “fuer die Nachkriegsgeneration ab
Jahrgagng 1901” fuer representativ, raeumt aber ein, dass die zeitliche Distanz und
der Gegenstand der Befragung die Erinnerung der Respondenten erheblich beeintraechtigt haben
koennte. In der Tat ist fuer alle Auskuenfte nach 1945 mit dem seinerseits
instabilen Faktoren der “sozialien Erwuenschtheit” zu rechnen. “Fuer 163 Pg-Pfarrer liessen sich
aus den Personalakten und anderen Quellen Angaben zu Motiven ihres NSDAP-Beitritts eruieren.
Allerdings stammen nur 16 dieser Angaben aus der Zeit vor 1945”. Antibolschewismus rangiert
ganz vorn, nationale und soziale Motive folgen. Bei 41 Pfarrern spielten auch
Karrieregesichtsspunkte eine Rolle.
Mensing untersucht die soziale Herkunft seiner Klientel und stellt fest,
dass deren Vaeter und Schwiegevaeter sich “fast auschlieschlich” aus dem Mittelstand
rekrutiert und der Anteil der Arbeiterschaft bei nur 3 bzw 2 Prozent liegen. Die Vaeterberufe der
juengeren Pg-Pfarrer weisen dagegen einen “starken Anstieg der Arbeitersoehne” auf. Als weitere
Stationen der Sozialisationsgeschichte werden protestantische Gymnasien und fuer die
Studienzeit die Erlanger “Stammuniversitaet” und ihre Verbindungen untersucht. Dabei konzentriert
sich die Darstellung des Autors auf bekannte Einzelpersoenlichkeiten aus seinen anonymen
subgruppen, wie z.B. auf Eduard Putz, der als Theologiestudent zur NSDAP stiess, bei der SA mittat,es
bis zum Goldenen Parteiabzeichen brachte, 1933 in den Landeskirchenrat berufen wurde und dann
zur Bekennenden Kirche fand. Der empirische Konnex von Elternhaus, Schule und Universitaet
mit dem spaeteren Pfarrberuf ist fuer den Leser kaum nachvollziehbar, da er nicht
erkennen kann, ob sich die Aussagen durchweg auf dasselbe Segment der Population beziehen.
Schon fuer die Weimarer Republik konstatiert Mensing – vor allem in
Auswertung des Korrespondenzblatts – eine gewisse Naehe der bayerischen Geistlichkiet zur
voelkischen Bewegung und ein wachsende Interesse an der NSDAP. Bei der Reichstagswahlen
vom September 1930 soll Mensings Schaetzung zufolge 20 Prozent der bayerischen
Pfarrerschaft NSDAP gewaehlt haben. Waehrend die Kirchenleitung unter Kirchenpraesident
Veit, der im April 1933 aus dem Amt gedraengt wurde, die Pfarrer mahnte, sich
offentlicher Stellungnahmen zugunsten einer Partei zu enthalten, stieg die noch kleine Gruppe
nationalsozialistisch organisierter Pfarrer (ca. 20 Prozent) “zu Meinungsfuehrern der
Pfarrerschaft” auf. 1933/34 war immerhin die Haelfte der Geistlichen in der bayerischen
Landessynode nationalsozialistisch organisiert. Zwischen Januar und November 1933 stimmte
“vier von fuenf der nationalen Revolution zu”. Veits Nachfolger, Landesbischof Meiser
uebte sich gegenueber dem NS-Staat zunaechst in strikter Loyalitaet, bis ihn die Massnahmen des
Terror-Regimes im Herbst 1934 selber trafen. Nach der “Machtergreifung” wurden kirchliche
Schluesselstellungen mit Pg. besetzt.
Ein Stimmungswechsel in der Pfarrerschaft (“Sukzessiver Distanzierungsprozess”) bahnte
sich erst an, als die Partei das vermeintlich enge Verhaeltnis von NSDAP und
Kirche aufkuendigte, christentumsfeindlichen Kraeften in der “Bewegung” immer mehr
Raum gab und schliesslich gar treue NS-Pfarrer roh aus ihren Reihen stiess. Ein treue
Pg.-Kern (Ende 1937: 10 bis 15 Prozent der Pfarrerschaft) blieb jedoch im “Hitler-Mythos” (Ian
Kershaw) gefangen oder machte nach 1945 sonstige “austrittshemmende” Einflussnahmen geltend. Bis
zum Ende des Dritten Reiches schied etwa jeder vierte Pg.-Pfarrer “mehr oder weniger
freiwilling” aus der NSDAP aus.
Ueber jene Pfarrer, die nicht Parteigenosse der NSDAP oder Mitglied im
Nationalsozialistischen Evanglischen Pfarrerbund waren, erfaehrt der Leser
nur sehr wenig. Auch nach einer historisch-theologische gewichteten Beurteilung des ingesamt
unerfreulichen Befundes sucht man in dem Materialwust vergeblich – wohl weil der Autor, ein
Pfarrer im bayerischen Kirchendienst, meint, mit dergleichen Ueberlegungen “den Rahmen
einer geschichtswissenschaftlichen Studie” zu verlassen. Zweifel im Blick auf die
Gegenstandsangemessenheit, Anwendbarkeit und Validitaet quantifizierender
Methoden scheinen ihm dagegen nicht gekommen zu sein.
Uebrigens haben Regionalstudien ueber “Pfarrer und Nationalsozialismsus”
derzeit Konjunktur. Im Unterschied zu Mensching nehmen manche Autoren Vergleiche
zwischen katholisches und evangelischen Pfarrern vor und kommen zu signifikanten
Differenzen: “Katholisches Glaubens und Kirchenverstaendnis und nationalsozialistsicher
Totalitaetsanspruch liessen sich nicht vereinbaren. Daher war es nur konsequent, dass die
wenigen Geistlichen in der Pfalz, die sich fuer den Nationalsozialismus entschieden, entweder aus dem
kirchlichen Dienst ausschieden oder sich innerhalb des Klerus als voellige Aussenseiter
erlebten. . .”: Thomas Fandel, Konfession und Nationalsozialismus.Evangelische und katholische
Pfarrer in der Pfalz 1930-1939. (See review of this book last month: Ed)
Gerhard Besier, Theological Faculty, University of Heidelberg

3c) Erwin W. Lutzer, Hitler’s Cross, Chicago: Moody Press 1995
This book does not claim to be a work of original historical scholarship,
but is really an extended sermon on the need for Christian faithfulness, using the example of
Nazi Germany as a warning against apostasy. The author is the pastor of the Moody Memorial
Church in Chicago, writing for a basically evangelical Protestant readership, and hence adopts
a didactic tone replete with biblical quotations.
His account of the German Church Struggle, though derived from others,
covers the history of those years in a lively approachable style, with appropriate
heroes and villains, and does not fail to pay tribute to those who suffered at the Nazis’ hands for
the sake of their faith. Interestingly he defends Dietrich Bonhoeffer from the kind of charges of
liberalism often put forward by evangelicals, though wishing that Bonhoeffer and his friend Karl
Barth had been more forthright in affirming the Bible’s reliability.
Essentially the purpose of the book is contained in the following
paragraph: “Parallels between Nazi Germany and America can be overdrawn, but only
those who are blind to realities around us can deny that this report from Hitler’s Germany
has ominous warnings for the United States today. The enemies of religion are not even content
with banishing religion from the state’s public activities while allowing religious freedom
privately The goal is total control – the complete submission of the church to the arbitrary moral whims
of the political establishment”.
The Nazi attempt to substitute the pagan Swastika in place of the Cross
failed: the same attempt must be similarly resisted in America.
This account can be recommended, but only for beginning evangelicals.
JSC
4) New Bonhoeffer Home Page:
Wayne Floyd, General Editor, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Harrisburg,
Pennsylvania writes: The totally revised, upgraded and expanded Dietrich Bonhoeffer Home Page is
now available on the web at

www.cyberword.com/bonhoef

Please note that the site now more prominently features the DBW English
edition and its sponsoring organisation, the International Bonhoeffer Society, English
language section. There are also new sections devoted to “News and Events” (I’ll be glad to add
yours, just e-mail me with the information); “Research – Online” (which will feature both print
and electronic resources for Bonhoeffer research); and the “Church Struggle, the Holocaust, and the
German Resistance” (which will offer links to any sites that address supporting areas for
Bonhoeffer scholars).

The new site was developed using Microsoft FrontPage 98, which provides easy
site management now for me. I will be able to update the page regularly with your news and
suggestions for additions; so please let me know your suggestions.

In the near future look for these additional new features that will be
added: 1. The ability to find and order online from Amazon.com and Barnes and
Noble – but directly from the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Home Page – all the books by or about
Bonhoeffer which are currently in print.
2. A bibliography of recommended resources for students of Bonhoeffer,
providing an annotated list of selected sources that are available in print – or that deserve to be
known even if they are out of print and available only through libraries.
3. A page with information for editors and translators of the Dietrich
Bonhoeffer works, where up-to-date information about the DBW project can be found in full, available
for download to those working on the translation project.
4. A new Guest Book, giving visitors to the site the chance to get
information about the Bonhoeffer Society or to send comments to me or to one another about
information found on this site.

If it has been a while since you looked at the site – or if you have never
ventured there before – please check out the newly upgraded Dietrich Bonhoeffer Home Page. I know
that some of you out there will know far more about both Bonhoeffer resources and web-pages
than I do. So please don’t hesitate to give me suggestions, reactions, opinions. It was
in reaction to previous responses to earlier versions of the Page that I’ve upgraded the site at
this time. I do listen!
Thanks for your time
Wayne Floyd.
Bonhoeffer@sprynet.com

5) Conference on “Europe Divided or United”.
The 12th Biennial conference of the Australasian Association for European
History, organised by the University of Western Australia and Notre
Dame, will be held in Perth from 5-9th July 1999.
Details of the topics to be covered and the names of some of the speakers
can be found on the conference web-site:
http://www.arts.uwa.edu.au/conference/
Sent in by Mark Lindsay = lindsaym@arts.uwa.edu.au

6) One of East Germany’s leading Communist ideologues, Jurgen.Kuczynski,
made the following remarkable statement on the value of prayer at the 1987
GDR Writer’s Congress:
“Christen werden bei allem Arger, den sie am Tag haben, und allem, was
passiert, durch das Gebet morgens und abends an Gottt erinnert, das heisst
daran, dass das ganze Geschehen in der gesamten Welt einschliesslich des
Himmels und des Paradieses doch letzlich eine grossartige Sache ist. In
Islam wird man dreimal daran erinnert. Und ich suche vergeblich nach einem Ersatz fur das
Gebet, der uns bei all dem Arger, den wir taglich haben, bei all den vielen
Hindernissen, die unserem Streben taglich oder mindestens wochentlich begegnen, eine Art
Gebetserinnerung ist an das Fundamentale,Grosse, das der Sozialismus uns
gibt: keine Arbeitslosigkeit, keine Obdachlosen, nun, ich brauche nicht alles
aufzuzahlen . . . Ich habe versucht, zu den Problemen des Gebet-Ersatzes
einen Artikel zu schreiben. Es braucht gar nicht abgelehnt zu werden, weil schon alle meine Freunde,
denen ich ihn vorher zeigte, ihn ablehnten. Aber ihr als Schriftsteller habt
vielleicht eine Idee, was man tun konnte, um die Erinnerung an das Grosse – denn alles andere sind
ja sekundare Entscheidungen, die wahrlich wichtig sind, die wahrlich unsere
Leben stark beeinflussen, weil sie so alltaglich sind – um dieses Grosse ein oder
zweimal am Tag in unser Gedachtnis zu rufen”
(Sent in by Randy Bytwerk, Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Mich.)

Dear Friends,
You will be glad to hear that I have now successfully relocated to the
University of Western Ontario, where I am holding the Smallman Visiting
Professorship for the Fall Term and teaching a seminar on Nazi Germany. I
have been busy adjusting to the different technology on hand here, but hope
that the results will provide you with the same service as before.
Contents:

1) Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte meeting
2) Book reviews

a) T.Fandel, Konfession und Nazismus
b) M.G.Goerner, GDR church and state
c) ed.U.v.Hehl, Katholizismus

3) Research Enquiry – German Catholic journals
4) Book notes: N.Busch Katholische Frommigkeit und Moderne
5) Journal articles: Railton and McGreevy
6) Kirchliche Tourismus – Israel
1) The 1998 meeting of the Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte association took place
earlier this month in the idyllic setting of the Lund Diocesan Retreat
Centre in southern Sweden. The topic was ‘Images of Europe adopted by the
churches after the last war’. We began with an excellent survey of the plans
for the future put forward by churchmen resisting Nazism, who believed in
the need to re-christianize Europe, but who also recognised that the
churches’ ability to do so had been severely compromised. The call was for
intensifying the work already started before the war of building up a modern
ecumenical identity for all of Europe, leaving behind the nationalist and
confessional barriers of the past, and uniting in a spirit of
reconciliation. The newly-formed World Council of Churches, or the Lutheran
World Federation, or the later Council of European Churches were to be
models of this endeavour. But the absence of collaboration from both the
Orthodox and Roman Catholic communities meant that this effort to give
Europe back a Christian soul was a limited success. Much depended on the new
Germany. The surprising development of a stable democracy in one half of the
country owed more to Catholic statesmanship than to Protestantism, whose
forces often proved disruptive. The Nordic Protestant churches remained too
attached to their established positions to provide any new impetus for all
Europe. The overthrow of Communism ten years ago led to a revival of
nationalisms, some of them, as in Yugoslavia, misusing religious traditions
for political ends. Thus a Christian Europe has not survived or revived. And
as the final speaker remarked, the unprecedented arrival of several million
Muslims in Europe makes the necessity of accepting a pluralistic religious
future all the more pressing.

2a) Thomas Fandel, Konfession und Nationalsozialismus. Evangelische und
katholische Pfarrer in der Pfalz 1930-39. (Veroffentlichung der Kommission
fur Zeitgeschichte, Vol 76). Paderborn: F.Schoningh Verlag 1997. DM 100 –

After a long period of relative silence we now have a massive 600 page
account of how both major denominations in the Palatinate reacted to the
Nazi attempts to infiltrate Christian theology and practice during the early
years of Hitler’s rule. The Palatinate has not been well served before,
although a self-serving biography of the Protestant bishop, Ludwig Diehl,
appeared in 1995.
Fandel has succeeded remarkably well in portraying the serious conflicts
within the Protestant church in its attempts to embrace Hitler’s national
revolution while still upholding basic Christian principles. He also makes
it abundantly clear how many Protestant clergymen, led by Diehl himself,
succumbed to the siren call of Nazi ideology by either formally joining the
Party or by showing deep sympathies for its goals. The author, himself
‘Pressereferent’ in the Roman Catholic diocese of Speyer, takes great care
to offer a balanced analysis when he turns to the relations between the
regime and the Catholics. Bishop Ludwig Sebastian, head of the Speyer
diocese during the whole Nazi period, displayed, on the one hand, a strong
wish not to run afoul of the Party, for instance supporting its goals in the
crucial Saar plebiscite of January 1936. Such support was important because
the overwhelming majority of Saarlanders were Catholic, because of the
presence of Saar priests opposed to reunification, and because this helped
the Nazi Gauleiter to claim a united front of Catholics behind the pro-union
vote. On the other hand, Sebastian staunchly defended his episcopal
privileges, especially with respect to the appointment of parish priests and
even more so in his determined opposition to the Party’s goal of ridding the
Palatinate (and Germany) of denominational schools.
It could hardly be said that Fandel uncovers any earth-shattering new
evidence, except perhaps his recounting how priests who had either alcohol
or celibacy problems would use the Party to protect them from the church
hierarchy’s attempts to discipline or expel them. Generally one senses that
Fandel treats the role of the Catholic church with rather more sympathy than
the Protestants, as his narrative and evidence tend to create the impression
that the Palatinate Catholics succumbed less to Nazi blandishments than
their Protestant counterparts.
Fandel has probably been hampered by the rather thin amount of archival
material. While he has diligently mined the holdings of the Berlin Document
Centre, the personnel files and personal reminiscences (for members of both
denominations), much remains unstated. Issues such as the attitude of the
Catholic church to antisemitism, the churches’ response to the imposition of
the ‘aryan laws’, or to the pressure on the Protestant clergy to take an
oath of loyalty to the Fuehrer are not taken up here. Surely, for example,
there were clergy whose ‘non-aryan’ origins were suspect?
Elsewhere, Fandel spends much time discussing the many areas of
accommodation between the Nazi regime and the Palatinate Protestants. The
regrettable enthusiasm shown by virtually all Protestant clergy for the
national revolution in 1933 is just the most prominent example. Fandel
provides valuable statistical charts and interpretations for the large
number of Palatinate Protestants who joined the Nazi Party either before or
after 1933, led by their Bishop. One thought-provoking observation has to do
with the role of the Protestant clergy WITHIN the Party, and its ability
from this vantage point to oppose extreme anti-Christian measures. Fandel
provides interesting examples of how Party members such as Diehl, and even
more extreme Nazis such as Pastors Hans Schmidt or Theo Kaul, occasionally
turned against the regime’s wilful practices. Otherwise, those church
opponents who could not cover themselves with the mantle of Party membership
found themselves in rather dire straits, even though Fandel rightly points
out that in no case did a Protestant clergymen under Diehl’s leadership
spend more than a very brief period in a Nazi concentration camp. None of
them, unlike several of their Catholic counterparts, paid for their
opposition with their lives. An interesting conclusion here too is the fact
that, after 1945, former Party members amongst the clergy fared better than
those who had joined extreme splinter groups, attacking the church
establishment for theological rather than political reasons. In the post-war
era, denazification was only partially applied, and theological errors were
punished more severely than political.
A striking issue raised by Fandel’s treatment is the dichotomy between the
ideological thrust of the Catholic hierarchy and the sentiments of its
parishioners. Bishop Sebastian’s attempts to enforce doctrinal uniformity on
the parishes, especially during the struggle for the denominational schools,
showed the rifts in the Catholic community. For while the local priests were
largely loyal to the bishop’s directives, parishioners deserted the church
in droves to vote for the dissolution of such schools. This challenge to
episcopal authority was a severe blow, and Fandel could have explored how
much this fact deterred the episcopate from issuing calls for a more
resolute opposition on other battlefields, such as defence of the Jews
Here is a fruitful issue that needs deeper consideration: while the Catholic
Church after 1945 prided itself on its success in protecting its liturgy and
doctrine from Nazi incursions, ultimately it fared little better than the
Protestants who had to face deep invasions into territory traditionally
under church prerogatives. While the Protestant clergy showed an all-too
eager wish to reflect the current ‘Zeit-geist’, the Catholic hierarchy
attempted equally dangerously to create an inner world immune to National
Socialism. The consequences of these rival approaches are still being felt
today.
What generally strikes every scholar of the Palatinate church scene is that
resistance to Nazism was extremely marginal, and where it did occur it did
not originate in the Palatinate.
None of the clergy or laity played any significant role on either side,
possibly because of the long-standing tradition of undogmatic pragmatism and
accommodation. A good example, unfortunately not discussed by Fandel, is the
case of Pastor George Biundo, a prominent supporter of the Nazis who
nevertheless survived to re-emerge for another worthy career after 1945. The
post-war silence about such cases may well be due to the desire, still
apparent today, to keep such skeletons safely hidden.
But Fandel has made a good start with trenchant insights which deserve to be
widely known.
Ronald Webster, York University, Toronto, Ontario
2b) Martin Georg Goerner, Die Kirche als Problem der SED. Strukturen
kommunistischer Herrschaftsausubung gegenuber der evanglischen Kirche, 1945
bis 1958 (Studien des Forschungsverbundes SED-Staat der Feien Universitat
Berlin). Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1997. P. xii,433, DM 98.
(This review appreared in German Studies Review, Vol XXI, no 1, Feb 1998)
This study by a promising young scholar represents the definitive historical
work on the church-state relationship in the GDR during the early postwar
period. Goerner brings to this topic not only extensive familiarity with the
archival sources, but also personal experience in the GDR. The study builds
upon his extensive research of the Enquete Commission on this topic,
augmented by in-depth treatment of the rapidly growing body of secondary
literature. The study was originally written as a dissertation at the
liberal Potsdam University, but was published under the auspices of the
conservative Research Group on the SED State at the Free University of
Berlin. Despite the obvious cross-pressures, Goerner has succeeded in
producing a rigorous, non-polemical treatment.
His main purpose is to analyse the shift in SED policy in 1953: after
earlier attempting to integrate the church, then to liquidate it, the SED
shifted to a strategy of inflitrating and undermining the church from
within, seeking to control the institution. The resulting policy of
differentiating among “progressive”, “reactionary”, and “wavering” forces in
the church has since become grist in the mill of numerous scholars, not to
mention the media, church officials, and former SED policymakers. Goerner to
a great extent consolidates our new-found understanding of SED policy.
He analyses the form and structures of SED political control over the
institutional church. His analysis of the SED’s development of a systematic
strategy of divide and conquer, with the corresponding bureaucratic
apparatus for its implementation, is masterful. He provides a probing
analysis of the development of the front organizations and the Inszenierung
von Offentlichkeit by the SED. He concludes that, though the regime’s
instruments of political control changed, its goal of limiting the church to
cultic functions and subordinating it to SED control remained constant.
Goerner sees the Stasi as “an integral factor in the SED’s policy toward the
churches” (p.212), but he argues that it is “one partial sphere of the
fundamentally conspiratorial policy of the SED” (p.3), thereby placing the
Stasi in its proper context.
The author breaks new ground in several respects. First, he provides new
evidence to document the directive role of the Soviets, particularly in the
shift to the New Course in 1953, while confirming the attenuation of this
influence in the late 1950s. Although much remains to be researched in
Soviet archives, Goerner convincingly argues that, as a function of their
policy on Germany, the issue represented high politics for the Soviets.
Second, the author sheds new light on divisons within the SED leadership
itself, documenting, for example, the intramural skirmishes between the SED
leader Walter Ulbricht and Central Committee Secretary Paul Wandel during
the key phase of phony destalinization in 1956-57. New evidence is offered
of the special interest that hardliner Ulbricht took in the issue and his
manipulation of the churches (and the Soviets!). Third, Goerner provides a
nuanced interpretation of the role of the CDU leader, Otto Nuschke: he
treats the CDU as largely gleichgeschaltet, but acknowledges Nuschke’s
efforts to soften state policy and prevent the final division of Germany.
Although Goerner argues for a long-term continuity in state policy, his
findings do seem consistent with more than one scenario. For example, the
front organizations whose origins he richly describes eventually failed as
mobilization organizations, a development consistent with both an
interpretation emphasizing greater state accommodation to the churches in
the 1970s, as well as one highlighting increased Stasi penetration of the
churches. This suggests that the author has succeeded in analysing the early
church-state relationship in strokes both bold enough to offer a cogent
explanation, yet nuanced enough to accommodate the complexity of the
relationship in later years.
Robert Goeckel, SUNY College, Geneseo
2c) ed. Ulrich von Hehl and H.G.Hockerts, Der Katholizismus – gesamtdeutsche
Klammer in den Jahrzehnten der Teilung? Erinnerungen und Berichte. Paderborn
1996 Pp 192, DM 28
Normally each analytical volume in the Kommission fur Zeitgeschichte series
has been published with a scholarly apparatus, but the nature of this book
explains why it is an exception. The contributors to this volume come from a
variety of associations, and they discuss how the German Democratic Republic
and the Federal Republic remained linked after World War II through the
Catholic Church. These fourteen essays describe in very personal terms how
post-1945 Germans in both zones joined with one another to co-operate in
ecclesial concerns.
These Catholics did not only co-operate on the basis of nationality, but
rather attempted to keep the Church free and strong. Reflecting the
principle of subsidiary so prominent in Catholic social theory, all of the
essays remind us that in complex dictatorial regimes a great deal of
resistance can be established through personal contacts that struggle to
sustain an identity on every level. Paradoxically, then, maintaining their
Catholic ties helped nurture both German nationalism and Catholicism, which
survived until the wall was torn down.
The essays focus on such areas as the pastoral care of youth, the Caritas
Associations, the work of German Catholics in the diaspora Church in the
GDR, diocesan information services, Catholic Student Associations, and the
role of the laity in both zones as they interacted during these decades.
Paul Arfderbeck, for example, has analysed how the Archdiocese of Paderborn
was split into two parts, but still functioned as one ecclesial entity.
Joseph Homeyer’s essay on the political and economic role of the Church in
the divided Germany of the 1950s through the 1990s is particularly welcome,
since he has outlined, although too briefly, the role of political theology
in helping to structure the responses of the Church in the GDR. Homeyer has
also pointed to a research initiative that could profitably be exploited, if
a scholar could gain access to the sensitive materials that emerged when
bishops from the Federal Republic met those from the GDR in Rome. Their
memoranda, diary entries, and summaries of discussions could really
explicate how the bishops on a personal level attempted to shape political,
economic, and cultural policies, which could help the Church interact with
the two German states.
This collection of essays serves to remind the reader of the many levels on
which Catholics operated in the postwar period, and serves again to warn
historians that any monocausal approach, when applied to historical issues
affecting the religious culture of Catholicism, will not provide an adequate
picture of life in the Church. Particularly crucial at the end of this
century is the fact that the bizonal Church came to a sensitive
understanding of diaspora and refugee experiences, which could help serve to
meet the needs of Catholics working in war-torn areas around the world
today.
Donald Dietrich, Boston College, Mass.
3) Research Enquiry: Genevieve Gunderson, U.Cal. Berkeley writes: As part of
a project on the Catholic response to the Jugendbewegung of the early
twentieth century, I am looking for copies of any of the following
periodicals in North American libraries: “Efeuranken”. “Das heilige Feuer”,
“Quickborn” and “Heliand”. I would appreciate any suggestions or leads you
can offer.
Ggunders@socrates.berkeley.edu

4) Book notes: Norbert Busch, Katholische Frommigkeit und Moderne. Die
sozial- und mentalitatsgeschichte des Herz-Jesu-Kultes in Deutschland
zwischen Kulturkampf und Ersten Weltkrieg. (Religiose Kultur und Moderne Bd
6), Gutersloh, GutersloherVerlagshaus 1997, 368 pp. DM 88
This is another welcome attempt to bridge the gap between “Profangeschichte”
and “Kirchengeschichte” – much needed in German Catholic historiography.
This work is patterned on the excellent example set by Anglo-American
authors such as Margaret Anderson, David Blackbourn, Jonathan Sperber and
Helmut Smith. It deals with the astonishing success of the cult of the Heart
of Jesus, a very typical ultramontane reaction during the Kulturkampf, as a
symbol of the sufferings of the church at that time. Even though it appeared
to others as a regressive, defensive and anti-modern sentiment, it caught on
widely amongst the persecuted Catholics. Busch’s account of the
organisation, support and effect of this piece of popular piety is much to
be commended as breaking new ground. He finds the Jesuits as principally
responsible for the successful broadcast of this cult which strengthened
personal piety while enhancing the mystical view of the whole Church. He
also shows how this sentiment could be linked with German nationalism during
the First World War to overcome accusations of lack of national solidarity
amongst Catholics. Despite or because of its proto-magical invocations, it
proved highly popular among women, and in general gives added evidence that
the so-called “inevitable” advance of secular rationalism was off-set by
such influential movements as the Herz-Jesu-Kult.
JSC
5) Journal articles:
Nicholas Railton, of the University of Ulster, Coleraine, has contributed a
useful, lengthy, if somewhat rambling article on the German Free Churches
and the Nazi Regime to the January 1998 issue of The Journal of
Ecclesiastical History. He shows how the attitudes of such figures as the
Methodist Bishop, Otto Melle, or the Baptist leader, Paul Schmidt, were
developed, and gives explicit references to their conduct at the 1937
meetings in Oxford and Edinburgh, as well as to the responses of the English
churchmen they met.
John McGreevy of Harvard has written a notable article” Thinking on one’s
own: Catholicism and the American Intellectual Imagination, 1928-1960″ to be
found in the Journal of American History, 84, June 1997. This outlines the
massive campaign launched by American liberal intellectuals, led by such
figures as John Dewey, against Catholicism and even against all religions,
which were treated as outdated and dangerous systems of belief which
hindered the development of a healthier secular rationalism. In particular
Catholicism’s anti-individualistic view of society, its subordination to
authority and paternalism, its mediaevalism and anti-democratic tendencies
were held to threaten the very identity of the United States unless forceful
measures were taken in the public arena, and such religious views limited
solely to the private sphere. McGreevy fully describes the intolerant and
indeed authoritarian character of this campaign for “liberty” and shows how
it successfully captured almost every publicly-supported university in the
country, and affected the decisions of the Supreme Court. President Kennedy’
s election in 1960 brought about an armistice. But only now is the American
intellectual climate warming towards Catholicism as a source of moral
formation and civic responsibility.
JSC
6) Kirchliche Tourismus – Israel
Israel
Move past the soldier with the gun
Open the handbag please lady:
So this is the place of the Crucifixion;
Note the crack in the rock (like any other)
But protected by glass, and
Illuminated of course;
And the open tomb so close
All enclosed in the same Church, and that
A hut compared to St Peter’s
Continually reconstructed, Byzantine
Destroyed by crusaders,
Rebuilt and destroyed, mostly by men
Sometimes accidentally by fire.
To fight for possession
Of this piece of ground
Is heresy.
Don’t miss the old olive trees
In the Garden of Gethsemane.
As you put the money in the box
The old Franciscan with the ravaged face
Hands you an olive leaf
Guaranteed genuine in five languages.
And as you descend the Mount of Olives
Do not ignore Absalom’s Pillar
Not sacred enough to destroy
Hardly worth the building of a church over
Non inflammable, but without a doubt
A silent witness of the night of indecision
The night of resolution
The night of certainty.
Here’s where your faith should begin
Not at a crack in the rock
Not at an empty tomb
Not among the tasteless ornaments
At the place of the skull.
Do not attempt to return
A hard enough coming we had of it;
A late take-off
And a slight bumpiness over Crete
But enough to spill the champagne.
The walled-up gate of the Old City
Just across from the Mount of Olives
Will open
When the Messiah comes back
And all the dead shall be raised
And the trumpet shall sound
And has He evidence of identification?
Passport? Visa?
What race did you say? Man?
I am sorry it is not precise enough.
Can you see the people He preached to?
If you are unkind
Or faithful
Or partisan
You might say they stand with black hats
Thick spectacles and long hair
Bobbing up and down at the Wailing Wall
Eyes open but minds closed.
That’s the problem – how to open the mind
But to prevent it from emptying.
Pilgrim or Tourist?
Keep all together please
And on the right, one of the most sacred. . . .
At this well in Samaria
Try and keep together please
The sixday sixday sixday
(And on the seventh day they rested)
War
Thank God we weren’t shown the
Carpenter’s shop
Look in the eyes of boy on the donkey
Ignore the jeans and sneakers
And look beyond the suspicion.
You need faith to see the expectation
You always did, you always will.
Here and at any place
Now and at any time.
At least you can’t build a church over a lake.
The sea of Galilee still refreshes the spirit
Dusty with heat; and the fish are still there
To be caught and eaten –
St Peter’s fish – all part
Of the prearranged lunch.
The man opposite puts ketchup on his
But not me – it would mask
The delicate flavour, and besides
One has to watch one’s behaviour.
Who is the old lady on the path?
The Emperor’s wife journeyed from Rome
On the same mission as you
But sixteen hundred years before,
Fixing the site of the Sermon on the Mount
And the miracle of loaves and fishes
Forever.
A clear choice at London Airport;
I walk briskly through the ‘Nothing to Declare’
Possibly something left behind but certainly
Nothing to Declare.
Who’d be concerned with an olive leaf?
David V.Bates Summer 1969
With every best wishes to you all,
John S.Conway
jconway@interchange.ubc.ca

Dear Friends,

Contents: 1) Forthcoming conferences: GSA, Salt Lake City Roosevelt Institute, Hyde Park, New York 2) Book reviews a) A.Herzig, History of Jews in Germany b) H.Schmitt, Quakers and Nazis 3) New publication plans in German church history 4) Book notes: a) Society Culture and the State b) Friedlander and Hamerow on the Catholic Church c) Remembrance, Repentance, Reconciliation 5) Bonhoeffer – a Righteous Gentile?

1) This year’s conference of the German Studies Association will be held in Salt Lake City from Oct. 8th-11th. Two sessions would appear to be of interest to our List-members. Session 5: “The transformation of Religion in the Modern Era”,and Session 27, on “Luther and Hitler?”, when Hartmut Lehmann, Bob Ericksen and Richard Steigmann-Gall will discuss this provocative issue.

The Roosevelt Institute, together with Marist College and the FDR Library,is organising a conference on “FDR, the Vatican and the Roman Catholic Church in America, 1933-1945″ in Hyde Park and Poughkeepsie, N. York from October 7th-9th. Papers examining American and Papal war-time diplomacy will be presented by George Flynn, Brian Villa, Peter Kent, Michael Phayer, Michael Marrus and myself. The contact person is David Woolner, University of Prince Edward Island = dwoolner@upei.ca

2a) Arno Herzig, Judische Geschichte in Deutschland. Von den Anfangen bis zur Gegenwart. Munich 1997, 323pp. DM 28 Arno Herzig’s Judische Geschichte in Deutschland proposes to give a representative overview of over a thousandyears of German-Jewish history, combining in less than 300 pagesa wealth of information in a concise and often compendious chronology. As professor of Modern History in Hamburg, Herzig rightly makes the point that the history of German-Jewish relations cannot solely be reconstructed in the context of the Holocaust. He stresses that such a narrow approach, which he refers to as an”Einbahnstrasse in diese Katastrophe”, can lead to a misleading,even distorted historical account. Although the Holocaust leaves modern German history with a permanent scar, Herzig refocuses his readers’ attention on the fact that since the Middle Ages, and particularly since the Enlightenment, Jews were much more than just mere onlookers or passive victims. He points out, as others have already done, that Jews in Germany increasingly interrelated with their Gentile environment and contributed extensively to society’s political. economic, scientific and cultural life. Christian-Jewish relations wove a rich and colourful fabric of cultural exchange in which both sides learned and benefited from eachother. Herzig bases his premise on the understanding that German-Jewish history is set within a framework which, on the one hand, was defined by the various degrees of flexibility and freedom given to Jews by the Church and society. On the otherhand, this framework was also determined by the extent to which Jews were able to capitalize on their liberties. The dynamics of Jewish and Christian interaction is, therefore, one of the two most important, significantly related, leitmotifs in Herzig’s study.

The second, equally prominent leitmotif is the role of both the Catholic and Protestant churches as fundamentalist institutions successively trying to marginalize and defame the Jewish community to the point of a complete “Ausgrenzung” from German society. Segregation in the German territories of the Holy Roman Empire became increasingly a factor in the 13th century, when the Church ordained the ‘servitudo Judaeorum” forcing Jews to wear specific garments. Regulations to segregate Jews were tightened even more once the Basel Council decreed in 1450 that all Jews should take up residence within the cities’ designated areas, the “Judengasse”, or the ghettoes such as in Frankfurt and Worms. The Reformation brought no improvements, contrary to the hopes of some Jews. Luther emphatically demanded that Jews needed to be converted “wo aber nicht, so sollen wir sie auch bey uns nicht dulden noch leiden”. What he insinuated by this was later spelled out in his pamphlet “Von den Juden und ihren Lugen” of 1543, when he advised burning down the synagogues and the Jewish living quarters, depriving Jews of their Talmud, and prohibiting rabbis from teaching.

By the 17th century, the antagonisms of earlier years had largely abated, but Lutheran anti-Judaism incited Christians to reject and mistrust Jews in many ways, particularly if they were economically successful. Not until 1871 were Jews finally made equal before the law. This prompted a more rapid acculturation of Jewish youth, especially among young Jewish intellectuals, both men and women, who became soon over-represented in German universities – compared to their small number in the wider society. Herzig makes the point that, despite this acculturation, German Jews remained faithful to their Jewish identities, which signified to them much more than just a religious quest. Jewishness gave them a sense of self and belonging.

Starting immediately after Hitler’s accession to power, German Jewry was incrementally deprived of all their civil rights. Herzig assesses that out of 134,000 German Jews in 1939, only about 8,000 survived the Holocaust. He sees the role of the Church, in face of this tragedy, as one of a silent eye-witness, if not accomplice. Only the Catholic Raphaelsverein, which assisted Jews to emigrate, was an exception. But while Catholics were largely reluctant to preach and propagate the Nazi racial ideology, numerous representatives of the Protestant churches became convenient mouthpieces of Nazi propaganda. It is unfortunate that Herzig devotes less than 20 pages to the fortunes of German Jewry after 1945. German ambivalence about their present situation still remains, even though the popular media, and all politicians, take a strong position against antisemitism.

Given the book’s tight format and its emphasis on portraying an overall history of Jews in Germany, it is clearly intended for the general public. However, Herzig’s narrative is not easily accessible and, in places, quite convoluted. It comes as a surprise that he makes relatively little use of primary sources and, specifically, that his coverage of Jewish women is almost non-existent. Even though he writes that, during the first pogroms in Germany in 1096, many women formed part of the resistance, choosing suicide over enforced baptism, he never elaborates on this remarkable demonstration of female solidarity. In another case, he shows that a conservative Jewish women’s liberation, under the leadership of Bertha Pappenheim, took place in the Wilhelmine period, but the information is only sketchy. And what of all those noteworthy Jewish women philosophers, writers, artists, scientists and social reformers? Should they not be included in any representative survey? Another difficulty in this book arises from Herzig’s refusal to be explicit on the extent to which social segregation hurt, or even destroyed, Jewish-Gentile relationships throughout history. Reading this book, one unfortunately feels rushed. I think it would have been more beneficial if fewer facts had been accumulated, but more background provided about how these facts came about. And lastly illustrations would have been a valuable addition. Charlotte Schallie, University of British Columbia

2b) Hans A.Schmitt, Quakers and Nazis. Inner Light in Outer Darkness. Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press 1997. 296pp (This review will appear in Shofar, Vol 18, no 1, Fall 1999) After the widespread allegations of German”eliminationist antisemitism” in the first half of this century, it is a relief to turn to the story of persons who never be accused of holding such views – the Quakers. The history of this small but significant group of German non-conformists has not previously been written either in German or English, so Professor Schmitt’s carefully-researched account is much to be welcomed, all the more since we have to wait for so long. He makes extensive useboth of the few surviving Quaker records in Germany and of the reminiscences of surviving members, as well as of the large amount of Gestapo records which portray the close surveillance devoted by the Nazi authorities to this small sect. In addition, hehas made excellent use of Quaker archives in London and Philadelphia, and convincingly establishes his case that this was a tiny but heroic handful of men and women who preferred to light a small candle rather than curse the surrounding darkness of Nazi Germany.

The Society of Friends managed to establish a small following in Europe in its early years, but emigration or rejection led to its disappearance by the mid-nineteenth century. The Quakers first returned to Germany in 1919, when the British andAmerican Friends defied the wishes of their governments and came over to Berlin and Vienna to establish a humanitarian relief programme, principally by setting up feeding stations for the starving children of those cities. The “Quakerspeisung” was so well organised that by 1921 more than one million individuals were being fed in 1640 centres, assisted by 40,000 local helpers. As the food crisis ebbed, the Quakers turned to their other principal and more spiritual concern, the cultivation of groups of spiritual seekers along the familiar pattern of silent meetings and pursuit of the “inner light”.. The first national Yearly Meeting was held in 1925, and a headquarters building was purchased in the north German spa resort of Bad Pyrmont.

But the Quaker faith is highly demanding of commitment, conscience and conviction. It requires a readiness to suffer and a courageous witness. As a result no large-scale membership drive was attempted. By 1933 only some 150 members were declared Friends, though probably twice as many were interested observers. With the rise of Hitler, Quakers, as pacifists, were immediately suspect, and the evidence shows that from early on the Gestapo continually scrutinized their activities. The Friends were, however, to demonstrate that, even in this difficult and isolated setting, they were prepared to carry out their commitment to reconciliation and relief of suffering. Very quickly they became involved in trying to assist the Nazis’ chief victims, the Jews. In particular, the Quaker help was directed to those “non-aryans”who no longer had connections to any Jewish or Christian organisations. (A particularly poignant case is described in Yad Washem Studies, Vol XI, pp.91-130). This work was principally undertaken by the team of British Friends in Berlin under Corder Catchpool. He fully shared the Quaker commitment to the need to relieve suffering, but at the same time was convinced that his duty called him to attemptreconciliation, even with Nazis. He also shared a common Quaker view that if only he could meet with the top Nazi leadership, hecould convince them of the need for peace and toleration. But by1938 such naive illusions had to be abandoned. Frantic attempts were made to raise funds in Britain for daily sustenance of theNazis’ victims, or to gain sponsorship affidavits for emigration to the USA.

The results were limited in scope, but German Friends did what they could to alleviate distress. Being so few they increasingly were to feel their loneliness and vulnerability. When war broke out they were additionally weighed down by their burdened consciences and a deep sense of individual and collective inadequacy. They sustained their spiritual community by publishing small booklets of inspiring writings, and by constant dedication to helping the needy. They felt a particularly keen sense of shame and responsibility as Germans for what was being done in Poland and for the continually renewed pressure on the Jews. In fact, however, unlike the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Quakers were not imprisoned or executed for their beliefs. Schmitt wonders whether this was due to their small numbers, to the need to avoid bad publicity abroad, to their obviously sincere beliefs, or to the memory of the help they had earlier provided.

Schmitt’s account also gives valuable descriptions of other Quaker involvements, such as the school established in Holland for German refugees, which somehow survived even during the war. In Vienna, a remarkable American Friend, Emma Cadbury, extended help to the persecuted Jews and Social Democrats, trying to cope with an uncontrollable flood of petitioners, until finally forced to close her doors. More problematic was the good-natured earnestness of those British Friends who sought to prevent war by appeasing the Nazi regime. Their sense of guilt over past British policies, especially the much decried Treaty of Versailles, led them to hope they could usher in a new age of peace and international understanding. But in the end they had to realise that they had largely been duped by Nazi propagandists. In Schmitt’s view these peacemakers failed, but they did what they should have done. Their hopeless quest did not transform the world and their cause remains as lost as ever. But their moral example and the”Inner Light” which radiated provided an impressive witness to the power of love. The abiding lesson of the Quaker encounter with Nazism was that evil and violence persist, but Quakers must not and will not abet such destructive forces. JSC

3) New publication plans in German Church history. Both the Protestant and the Catholic Church Commissionsfor Contemporary History are making ambitious new plans for large-scale publishing ventures. In the EKiD, instead of undertaking what might turn out to be a contentious post-mortem investigation of the Church’s role in the former GDR, the proposal now is to enlarge the scope and to engage in a vast survey with the title “The role of the Evangelical Church in the divided Germany” to cover both the west and east, and thereby facilitate a comparative approach. This is to begin with an early study on “Die Klammerfunktion der Evangelischen Kirche” and a scholarly conference to work out the future dimensions of the project is to be held in Potsdam in November 1998. An even more ambitious proposal is being undertaken by a joint working group of both churches, to be financed by the Volkswagen Foundation. This seeks to evaluate, and eventually publish, those records of the Nazi Security Service, consisting of some 137 running metres of documents, which were carried off by the Red Army in 1945, and later returned to the headquarters of the Stasi in East Germany, presumably for more current use there. They are now housed in the Bundesarchiv’s Zwischen-Archiv in Dahlwitz-Hoppegarten, Berlin. These newly-discovered documents can be expected to give a much more complete picture of the ideology and practice of the Nazi repression and persecution of the churches than we have had before. Supervision of the archival project lies in the very capable hands of Dr Heinz Boberach, a former archivist of the Bundesarchiv, and himself a member of the Evang. Kommission. The results will be computerized, and eventually the documents themselves will be (re)-incorporated with the existing enormous records of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (R 58) in the Bundesarchiv. Along with computerized indices, this projectshould provide a much easier access to the Nazi records dealingwith the churches. A full description of this new project can be found in the latest issue of the Mitteilungen der Evangelische Arbeitsgemeinschaft fur kirchlicher Zeitgeschichte, Folge 17, April1998, pp 68ff, written (presumably) by the young scholar engaged on this work, Wolfgang Dierker, which is available from the Geschaftsstelle, Schellingstrasse 3 VG, 80799 Munich

4) Book notes: a) Society, Culture and the State, 1870-1930, ed.Geoff Eley, Ann Arbor: U of Michigan Press, 1996 Yet another volume of conference papers, this one reflecting the impact of gender and cultural studies in recent German historiography. However cogent the articles may be, they will get lost unless one has either an encyclopaedic memory or a well-tuned computerized indexing system. But for our purposes, two deserve mention. David Blackbourn summarizes the findings of his wonderful book, Marpingen (Oxford 1993) in his treatment of “Apparitions of the Virgin Mary in Bismarckian Grmany”, whichseeks to explore the interface between piety and politics,particularly during the Kulturkampf and its aftermath. Wilfried Spohn casts his net wider in examining “Religion and working-class formation in Imperial Germany, 1871-1914”. He seeks to remedy the omission of religion in most of the (proto-Marxist or socialist) writings about the emergence of working class political structures. Whereas most of the Protestant workers became secularized and transferred their loyalties and practices to an alternative socialist culture, the Catholic traditions proved more durable and retained their hold over this minority segment of the working population. The consequent mutual rivalries only hindered any effective challenge to the Kaiserreich’s authoritarian structures and policies. JSC

b) Two recent books, Saul Friedlander’s “Nazi Germany and theJews”, Vol. I, and Theodor Hamerow’s “On the Road to the Wolf’s Lair. German Resistance to Hitler”, deal in part with the churches and the Jews during the Holocaust. It appears to me that Hamerow reached a much more balanced and nuanced interpretation. To takejust one example – nevertheless an important one – consider how the two authors deal with Cardinal Michael Faulhaber. Friedlander depicts him as agreeing with Hitler’s antisemitic and racist ideas (pp183-4). In so doing, the author unfortunately follows the tendentious German publicist, Ernst Klee, whose book “Die SA Jesu Christi” pinned the racist label on Faulhaber. In arriving at this conclusion, Klee eliminated a key passage from Faulhaber’s notes on his three hour meeting with Hitler at the Obersalzberg in November 1936, in which he noted that the Pope (Pius XI) gave an address on the same day as Hitler’s Nuremberg speech, declaring that atheism and godlessness, rather than the Jews, were responsible for Bolshevism. (See Ludwig Volk’s “Akten Kardinal Michael von Faulhaber, 1917-1945”, p 184). My reading of Friedlander leads me to conclude that the author looked for negative points about the cardinal (and others) and overlooked the positive. He does not, for example, mention the positive relationship which Faulhaber had with Munich’s rabbi, LeoBaerwald (both before and after the Holocaust), nor does he mention Faulhaber’s letter to Cardinal Bertram in which he likened the forced emigration of Jews to the slave trade of previous centuries. Theodor Hamerow, on the other hand, gives a specifically non-racist view of Cardinal Faulhaber, basing his interpretation on, among other things, the private correspondence of the Bavarian church leader. Hamerow found that Faullhaber “disapproved of the regime’s racial policy” and not just when it concerned “converted Jews” but also Mosaic Jews (p.140-42). There is much to be said for Friedlander’s new book. Although he paints, like Goldhagen, a mostly negative picture of the churches, it is by no means as pitifully under-researched as is”Hitler’s Willing Executioners” on their role during the Nazi era. But I would be interested to know if others found a lack of balance in Friedlander regarding the Protestant Church as I have regarding the Catholics.Michael Phayer, Marquette University. (Anyone wishing to reply can write here, or direct to M.Phayer =PhayerM@vms.csd.mu.edu )

c) ed D.Tobler, Remembrance, Repentance, Reconciliation. The 25th Anniversary Volume of the Annual Scholars’ Conference on the Holocaust and the Churches, (Studies in the Shoah, Vol XXI),University Press of America, Lanham, New York, London 1998 This collection of papers from the 25th conference held in Provo, Utah, in 1995, besides a number of valuable articles on Holocaust topics, also includes Doris Bergen’s preliminary account of Overseas Missions and the German Christian View of Race, a sad commentary on how far racist views penetrated even the German missionaries abroad, though most of them turned away from such heresies when they realized the full implications. It also has my own tribute to the founders of these conferences, Franklin Littell and Hubert Locke.

5) Bonhoeffer – a Righteous Gentile? Considerable controversy has arisen over the attempt to have Dietrich Bonhoeffer commemorated in the Avenue of the Righteous Gentiles in the Yad Washem Martyrs’ Memorial gardens on the outskirts of Jerusalem, as reported in the latest issue of the International Bonhoeffer Society’s Newsletter. Led by a Connecticut lawyer, the grandson of the noted American Jewish leader at the time of the Holocaust, Stephen Wise, pressure is being mobilized to have Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s name added to the list of some 16,000 people recognised by the Israeli museum authorities, on the grounds that he participated in the rescue attempts which resulted in 13 Jews escaping to Switzerland in 1942. In reply, the director of Yad Washem Department for the Righteous among the Nations stated that Bonhoeffer “deserves our admiration for his courageous anti-Nazi stand, which eventually doomed him – he is a martyr in the struggle against Nazism” But the purpose of the programme is to “honour non-Jews who specifically addressed themselves to the Jewish issue, and risked their lives in the attempt to aid Jews”. There can be no doubt that Bonhoeffer’s attitude towards the Jews developed incrementally from 1933 onwards, theologically as well as personally. Not only were his sister and her husband, Gerhard Leibholz, obliged to flee Germany because of his “non-aryan” status, but another brother-in-law, Hans Dohnanyi, became the leading figure in the resistance movement, and was described by the Gestapo as “the intellectual head of the movement to remove the Fuhrer”. It was Dohnanyi who organised the flight of the 13 Jews, which has been exhaustively described in Winfried Meyer’sbook, “Unternehmung 7”. (Frankfurt/Main 1993) Meyer relates how Bonhoeffer was asked for his advice on the desirability of including Charlotte Friedenthal, a Jewish convert to Christianity, in the group,which he readily gave. But how much more he knew about, or assisted, in this venture was, needless to say, never recorded. But on the strength of his connection with this affair, both he and Dohnanyi were arrested in the following April, and, as we know, both were hanged in 1945.

Does this constitute enough to warrant inclusion among the Righteous Gentiles? In the view of those disappointed by Yad Washem’s response so far, there seems to be a built-in reluctance in Jerusalem to honour the members of the German resistance, even when they were clearly opposed to Hitler’s crimes, including the murder of the Jews, for the noblest of moral reasons, as Bonhoeffer undoubtedly was. Clearly, not all those who were executed by the Nazis for whatever reasons can be included. And, in Yad Washem’s eyes, Bonhoeffer is principally to be honoured for his defiant stance against the Nazis’ persecution of the church, and for his challenge to the entrenched anti-Judaism of so many of his Lutheran brethren. But, they claim, “no direct evidence has surfaced on his personal involvement in sheltering or extending other forms of aid to persecuted Jews (to persons still adhering to the Jewish faith)”. Such casuistry has been much criticized by Bonhoeffer’s supporters. In a “Christian Century” article, they questioned this exclusion of the Christian-Jewish converts, since the danger of being sent to Auschwitz was equally imminent for all Jews. And Bonhoeffer’s sympathies were by no means limited only to the Christian Jews, even if he had no immediate opportunity to undertake rescue efforts for others. This is clearly a border-line case. But in the interests of a warmer fellowship between Christians and Jews, such a recognition of the role which Bonhoeffer played in reversing the tradition of Christian anti-Judaism, and in pleading for support for the persecuted and oppressed, would seem to deserve a magnanimous gesture.on the part of Yad Washem, and would by no means detract from the honour which those Righteous Gentiles have been fittingly accorded in the splendidly laid-out row of trees which graces the entrance to the Holocaust Martyrs’ and Remembrance Memorial. It would be interesting to hear from any of you about this controversy. JSC

With best wishes

John S.Conway

jconway@interchange.ubc.ca

Contents: 1) Congratulations again 2) Forthcoming conference KZG and Lund University, 27th August-1st Sept. 3) Book reviews a) Davies/Nefsky, How silent were the churches? b) R.Hering, Theologinnen, Lauterer, Liebestatigkeit 4) Thesis review: B. Hall, Mormons in the G.D.R. 5) Journal article: W. Ribegge, Joseph Mausbach 6)Book note: H-J Ramm, Resistance and morality

1) Congratulations, first to Susannah Heschel, who has been appointed the Eli Black Professor of Jewish Studies, Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, and has just published a new book:”Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus” (U. of Chicago Press), which concerns debates over the relationship between Judaism and Jesus amongst Jewish and Protestant theologians in the 19th century in Germany. Congratulations also on the forthcoming arrival of herfirst-born in January! Congratulations are also due to Bruce Hall, Brigham Young University, for completing his M.A. thesis on “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in East Germany 1949-1989. (Ed Note: It is not our practice to review MA theses, but in view of the singularity of this topic, an exception is being made. See below.)

2) Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte will hold its 1998 meeting together with the Dept of Theology and Religious Studies, Lund University, in Lund, Sweden later this month, on the topic “Europabilder der Kirchen in der Nachkriegszeit”. A good turnout of Scandinavians is expected, and a short report will be included in our October issue

3a) Alan Davies and Marilyn F.Nefsky, How silent were theChurches? Canadian Protestantism and the Jewish Plight during the Nazi Era. Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press,1997 xvi + 179pp Cloth $39.95. (This review appeared in National History (Toronto) Vol 1, no 3 1997) It is not often that one wishes a book was twice as long as itis. But Davies and Nefsky’s treatment of Canadian Protestant attitudes towards the Nazi persecution of the Jews is so engrossing and insightful that one could wish for more. The collaboration of two scholars, one Jewish and one Christian, ensures that their evaluations are balanced and the results excellently summarised.

As the title of the book indicates, the authors seek to grapple with the accusation made in an earlier work “None is too many,” criticizing the lack of significant steps to permit Jewish immigration to Canada during the 1930s and 1940s, and attributing this regrettable inactivity to the prevalence of antisemitism in Canada. In the meanwhile, however,the valid point has been made that the rigid immigration barriers were maintained not because of antisemitism, but because of a much wider anti-alienism. And while racial prejudice undoubtedly existed in Canada, its target was much more often directed against orientals than against Jews, as could be seen by the fate of the Japanese-Canadians in 1942. Davies and Nefsky are certainly aware of both this widespread Canadian anti-alien nativism, and the equally prevalent belief that further immigration would only add to economic and social difficulties, and would appear to agree that the reluctance to accept refugees from whatever source was primarily economically-based rather than founded only on antisemitism. At the same time, as the authors demonstrate, many church members were appalled by the growing evidence of the persecution being suffered by the Jews in far-off Europe. As a result they developed a genuine dislike for antisemitism and antisemites and were increasingly alarmed by reports of the Nazis’ infamous policies. Several clergymen gave a lead in claiming that Canadians had, or should have, an obligation to seek to remedy such conditions.

Davies and Nefsky devote separate chapters to each of the Protestant denominations, based on the use of church records religious publications and even some sermons. Despite their significant differences of doctrine and ecclesiastical style, almost all these church bodies still held lingering traces of traditional anti-Judaism, often coupled with an ardent desire to evangelise the Jews in their hour of need. Nevertheless, apart from a handful of naive enthusiasts who at first idealized Hitler, the churches’ chorus of condemnation of Nazi policy grew with each successive outrage. Even if, for some, the predicament of the Jews was overshadowed by the events of the German Church Struggle, the Nazis’ attacks on both the Christians and the Jews came to be seen as companion evils. Prominent clergymen, such as Claris Silcox, generalsecretary of the Christian Social Council of Canada and a highly respected figure in the United Church, the Anglican bishops of Fredericton and Montreal, and the pastor of Toronto’s largest Presbyterian church, united in raising their voices in protest. Church periodicals from 1933 onwards vigorously denounced the Nazi state and its ideology. And while it is difficult to quantify the results among the churches’ rank-and-file, the evidence is clear that the church elites were not silent at all. Furthermore, they demanded action. They repeatedly called on the Canadian government to open the doors to the Nazis’ victims, and in so doing attacked the lethargy, xenophobia and insensitivity of the Canadian public. And they quickly sounded the alarm bells as soon as they received reliable information about the mass murders of Jews in eastern Europe after 1942.

Critics of the Christians’ alleged silence have too often believed that the churches were far more influential than was the case. They assume that, had the churches spoken out more forcefully, the government would have followed their wishes. But the reality was very different. The Canadian government adamantly refused to change its immigration policy, even if Prime Minister Mackenzie King was a loyal Presbyterian. In fact, the Christian conscience was aroused and, quite remarkably, was ready to see the Jewish victims of Nazism as belonging within the churches’ circle of obligation. Their leaders do not therefore deserve all the censure which later post-mortems have expressed. To be sure, their humanitarian pleas were consistently turned down in Ottawa. But this sad fact should not be allowed to blur the evidence of their advocacy on behalf of the Jews, even if their sympathies were not expressed with all the sensitivity we should now expect in today’s more religiously-correct climate. Davies and Nefsky are to be commended for setting the record straight. It is only a pity this account did not appear forty years ago. JSC

3b) Rainer Hering, Die Theologinnen: Sophie Kunert, Margarete Braun, Margarete Schuster, Hamburg 1997 125 pp Heide-Marie Lauterer, Liebestatigkeit fur dieVolksgemeinschaft: Der Kaiserwerther Verband deutscher Diakonissenmutterhauser in den ersten Jahren des NS-Regimes, (Arbeiten zur kirchlichen Zeitgeschichte, Reihe B: Darstellungen,22), Gottingen 1994 224 pp. ‘Opfer, Dienst, Liebe’ – these words play a key role in both Rainer Hering’s and Heide-Marie Lauterer’s recent contributions to the history of the Protestant church and of Protestant church womeni n Germany. But both authors go beyond an official, sentimental version of events to take a hard look at how those “womanly virtues” were promoted, used, and sometimes abused by the church as an institution and its more powerful spokesmen.

Hering’s biographical studies of three women theologians in Hamburg and Lauterer’s investigation of the association of Kaiserwerther Diakonissen in 1933 and 1934 do more than fill gaps in the existing narrative. Indeed, in the hands of Hering and Lauterer, what appear to be narrow topics of limited interest become windows on to much broader issues. These books illustrate processes of secularization, professionalization, and gender inequality in modern Germany; they depict aspects of the “Kirchenkampf” and address resistance and complicity in Christian antisemitism and the so-called Euthanasia programme – the murder of people deemed handicapped. At the same time, both works demonstrate the achievements, failings, and ironies of the church’s past in a way that is only possible when one turns one’s gaze from the macro to the micro level. Their carefully researched, skilfully presented studies merit wide readership.

Rainer Hering’s book is straightforward and even old-fashioned in approach and style. It includes brief biographical sketches of Sophie Kunert, Margarete Braun, and Margarete Schuster, three academically trained theologians who served the church in Hamburg before women could be ordained as pastors. The chronological focus extends from 1927, when a new regulation extended possibilities for such women, to 1959 when Braun as the last of the three women he discusses retired. There is a brief introduction, no general conclusion, and no explicit, overarching analysis. Numerous, often personal, photographs and the use of high-gloss paper add to the impression that here is a traditional, attractive, accessible book, a suitable present for a devout mother or grandmother. Hering’s book is indeed all of these things, but its pious appearance harbours a message that is more disruptive than congratulatory. Always present in his respectful discussion of these women is an awareness of the profound difficulty and loneliness they faced, and a keen sense of the injustice that surrounded them. These pioneering theologians deserve our admiration, Hering shows, but their experiences also challenge us “not to content ourselves with the legal equality of women, but to anchor that equality firmly in reality” (p.9)

All three of Hering’s subjects were born in the 1890s. Only Schuster lived to see the”Pastorinnengesetz” of January 1969 that acknowledged women’s right to ordination in the Evangelisch-lutherischen church of Hamburg.. Two months later, Schuster received the official title”Pastorin i.R.”, as well as the right to preach in public and administer the sacraments, but never did so (p 118-9). On this note the book ends. The theme of too little, too late permeates Hering’s discussion. A recurring image is that of a church lagging behind a society itself reluctant to recognise the fundamental equality of women and men. Hering’s admonitions are subtle but are barbs all the same. Who cannot deplore the double standard that encouraged the pastors to marry while insisting that those women who served as Pfarramtshelferinnen and Gemeindehelferinnen remain single (and celibate) (p.8)? Who could not share Hering’s outrage, muted though it may be, at a church that refused to grant its faithful female servants the titles, authority, and salaries due them, and then even charged Margarete Braun interest on a loan to buy a car she needed to fulfil her duties (p.93-4)? Who could fail to be touched by the selfless devotion with which these women served some of the most neglected, needy and demanding groups within the church: Kunert’s women in prison (p. 41); sick and institutionalized women and young people in Braun’s case (p.91); for Schuster, couples who had refused church marriage or baptism for their children (p.108)?

Hering reveals something of the toll that this often thankless work and the lack of adequate support from the church took on these women. Kunert’s pain, he tells us, showed in her face in the photographs of her 1934 wedding (p. 54). Schuster suffered physical and emotional collapse in 1928, as she prepared for the second theological examination (p.111), and again twenty years later (p.117). The second time it became impossible for her to continue her work. None of Hering’s Theologinnen, with the possible exception of Kunert, considered herself a feminist. Still their work helped to open doors for women behind them. But those advances came at a high personal cost. Hering’s discussion of Kunert is by far the longest of the three. Presumably that imbalance reflects the availability of sources. In each case, Hering has drawn on archival records, the women’s writings, and conversations with friends and relatives. Each of the sketches has its own surprises, many of them involving the Nazi era. For example, the swastika displayed by Sophie Kunert’s new stepson on her wedding photograph comes as somewhat of a shock (p. 51) More appalling is the viciousness directed at her husband, Pastor Bruno Benfey, who came from a family of converts from Judaism (p.50-57). Rejected by most of Kunert’s family, reviled by the public, including members of his own church council, arrested, incarcerated in Buchenwald in 1938, and forced out of Germany, Benfey described his “bitter pain” at the behaviour of the official church in Hanover (p.58) Under Bishop Marahrens, it did everything it could to distance itself from him. To the extent possible, Sophie Kunert shared her husband’s hardships.

Margarete Braun’s experiences were very different. Demoted by the German Christian bishop Franz Tugel in 1934(p.87), she nevertheless joined the Nazi party three years later (p. 89) It is difficult to say what this decision meant to this competent, stoic woman. Schuster was briefly a member of the German Christian movement (p.113) but we learn little else about her relationship to the Nazi revolution. All three biographies are engaging and eminently readable.

Heide-Marie Lauterer’s book stands in contrast to Hering’s in some obvious ways. If his is characterized by its simplicity, hers is marked by complexity. She assembles her “thick description” (p.18) of the Kaiserwerther Verband deutscher Diakonissenmutterhauserin 1933-34 using a variety of methodologies: standard organizational history, linguistic, textual, and feminist analysis, oral interviews, and biographical studies. She critically engages otherkey works in the field, most notably those by Jochen-Christian Kaiser and Kurt Nowak (p.139), and her study shows the influence of a wide, diverse set of scholars, from Heinz Eduard Todt to Saul Friedlander, Ernst Klee, Gisela Bock, and even Klaus Theweleit.

Unlike Hering, Lauterer is explicitly analytical. A key concept hereis Martin Broszat’s notion of “Resistenz”, which she uses to assessthe extent to which the Kaiserwerther Verband, one of the largest Protestant women’s service associations with over 27,000 Diakonissen (p.59) can be said to have defied National Socialism. Lauterer’s findings are deeply unsettling. The Kaiserwerher organisation, she concludes, cannot be characterized as resistant. In particular its leadership, the Verbandsvorstand, proved eager to comply with and even anticipate the wishes of the National Socialist state (p.199) Rather than preserving a space independent of Nazi ideology.and limiting the impact of Nazi rule, the Diakonissenschaft as a whole was a stabilising factor (p.77). But, Lauterer shows, at least some of the individuals involved – the “Oberinnen, Vorstehern und Diakonissen” – do merit the”Resistenz” label. They continued to work for the suffering and needy without regard to Nazi racial laws; they sought ‘to obey God more than man’ (p.200). That gap between the institutional – the layers of leadership and organizational structures that built up around the Diakonissenmutterhauser – and the individual – the Diakonissen with their call to service, sacrifice, and love – pervades Lauterer’s study. It reflects a tension that in turn provides space for the range of responses her study evokes, from anger and disappointment to empathy and admiration. In this regard, Lauterer is not so different from Hering after all.

Her book is based on an impressive, indeed formidable amount of research in public and private archives. In addition, between 1984 and 1989, she visited twelve of the Diakonissenmutterhauser and interviewed around fifty of the women about their experiences under National Socialism (p.14). Her book has three parts. The first provides background on the Kaiserwerther Mutterhausdiakonie from 1833 to 1932; the second focuses on the Kaiserwerther Verband in 1933, with a look both at its relationship to the Nazi state and its interactions with the official Protestant church. Part Three, entitled “Kooperation und Resistenz” zeroes in on issues surrounding forced sterilization and so-called euthanasia from 1933 to 1945. In places excessive organizational detail detracts somewhat from the force of her arguments, but on the whole, Lauterer’s book is a thoroughly convincing presentation of how a purportedly Christian organization failed to counter the Nazi assault. It was not ultimately the agreement with Nazi racial, biological thinking that hindered resistance, Lauterer indicates.

Nor was it that Verband’s financial problems. Rather it was above all”the absence of a fundamental ethical stance” at the level of theleadership that made it impossible for the organization to recognise and oppose the abuses of the Nazi state (p.147) In particular with regard to forced sterilization and murder of people deemed handicapped, misgivings expressed too little, too late had terrible repercussions. One statistic serves to illustrate. In 1940, Lauterershows, of the 1,758 patients at the Kaiserwerther Verband’s Neuendettelsauer institutions, 1,100 were murdered.(p.142). The most intriguing parts of Lauterer’s study are those which draw directly on her conversations with Diakonissen. For example, the individual responses to involvement in the sterilization programare devastating (p.120-2). At the other extreme, personal memories of Oberin Elly Schwetdke in Frankfurt/Main are an inspirational tribute to the clear-sightedness and courage of that steadfast anti-Nazi (p.190-93).

However, for long stretches in this account, the women involved tend to disappear, a regrettable and sadly accurate reflection of the power relations within the Kaiserwerther Verband. Men not only dominated positions of leadership above the Oberinnen (p. 28); they were the primary publicists, representatives, and arguably beneficiaries of an organization that was based on women’s unpaid labour. Thus we learn a great deal about those men whose photographs grace Lauterer’s book: Hans Lauerer, Siegfried Graf von Luttichau,a nd Theodor Hickel (p.19). The one high-ranking, female, professional administrator – August Mohrmann -also receives a photograph and considerable attention (p.64-6). But the individual Diakonissen remain somewhat elusive. Lautererr ecognizes the limited options for women and the pervasive influence of the patriarchal family model in early twentieth-century Germany (p. 25). Inequality and double standards are part of her story as much as they are of Hering’s. Indeed, she suggests, the male leadership’s culpability may be all the greater given their female subordinates’ lack of political orientation and conditioning for obedience. Still Lauterer is no apologist, and the Diakonissen as she depicts them varied in their responses to Nazism from ardent enthusiasm to confirmed opponents. Like Hering, Lauterer is always sensitive and empathises with the humanity of her subjects. Both authors’ works are themselves labours of love that give at least some quiet voice to women whose service and sacrifice for the church were often not only underappreciated but misused. Doris Bergen, University of Notre Dame

4) Thesis review: Bruce Hall, Gemeindegeschichte als vergleichende Geschichte. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in East Germany 1949-1989. Bruce Hall’s impressive study of the Church of Latter-day Saints (LDS or Mormons) in the German Democratic Republic is based primarily on the story of the Leipzig branch of this sect, as well as official GDR records, including the voluminous files of the Stasi, all of which he has exploited most successfully to throw light on how this minority religious community attempted to live a devout religious life in an unfriendly Communist society.

As an American-based church, the Mormons were particularly suspect in the initial years of the GDR as a front for military and political espionage, and hence subject to constant Stasi surveillance – a situation not helped by the inflammatory anti-Communist speeches of their leaders in far-away Utah. The total membership constituted less than 0.3% of the GDR population, lacked influence of any kind, had no prominent leadership, nor any political agenda. Survival and upholding their moral and spiritual character was their sole goal. However, unlike the Salvation Army or the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the LDS was not outlawed.

How the Mormons maintained their religious witness while adopting a conformist stance politically and socially is at the heart of this thesis. For the general background, Hall relies heavily on the finebook by our list-member Robert Goeckel, which could have been supplemented by the newer insightful account by another list-member, Gregory Baum: “The Church for Others”. After 1961, when the doors were closed to outside support and influence, the LDS church stagnated as a rather isolated and closed community, striving to avoid confrontation, despite bureaucratic provocation and harassment by government officials. Hall’s chapter on the Stasi and the LDS admits that some Mormons were recruited to act as informants for many years, and even paid for their services in cash or in kind. By such means the minutes of leadership meetings, reports of church leadership changes, and personal profiles of these leaders came into the Stasi’s possession. What they knew about the LDS church was often more than what most members knew. Out of filial piety, Hall does not reveal these informers’ real names.

Paradoxically, however, Hall shows that the intense attention given by the Stasi to the LDS in the end turned out to be an advantage. Their reports concluded that the Mormons were no political threat to the regime, and could be regarded as model, if passive, citizens. In 1979, the dictator Honecker took theunprecedented decision to allow the Mormons to build their own temple in the GDR and to permit full-time American proselytizing missionaries to operate within the country. Hall believes this was part of a wider strategy to tame the churches and to integrate them more fully into the East German society, while exploiting their foreign contacts to help gain diplomatic recognition for the GDR. Certainly, the authorities proved remarkably co-operative in getting the Mormon temple built – with American money, at a cost of 32 million marks. 90,000 people came to view the edifice when construction was complete. As owners of the newest church buildings in all of the GDR, the Mormons were jubilant. But the Communist-led secularization process took its toll. Like the other churches, the LDS is not likely to recover from four decades of trial and hardship, and systematic atheist indoctrination,in the foreseeable future. Bitterness over the co-operation of some of their own members with the hated Stasi still lingers. In this situation, the Mormons were and are not alone. This is one valid point of comparison. On the other hand, in contrast to other churches, the stalwart loyalty to their own doctrinal positions meant that the LDS never challenged the GDR regime, nor indeed contributed to the protest movements which led to its overthrow. They could remain faithful within their somewhat limited horizons.This survival to live another day is a remarkable feat and Hall rightly celebrates it. JSC

5) Journal article: Prof. Wilhelm Ribegge, Munster, hascontributed a useful article on the Catholic moral theologian “Joseph Mausbach and his role in public life” at the beginning of this century to “Catholic Historical Review”, Vol LXXIV, no 1, January 1998.

6) Book note: Hans-Joachim Ramm “. . .stets einem hoherenVerantwortlichkeit. Christliche Grunduberzeugungen in innermilitarischen Widerstand gegen Hitler”, Stuttgart, Hansler1996, 370pp. Ramm seeks to defend the military officers who participated in the 20 July 1944 attempt to overthrow Hitler against charges that they were solely motivated by the fear of military defeat or by political opportunism. Rather he wants to demonstrate that they were primarily impelled by moral factors, because of their perception that Nazi rule was contrary to the Christian-ethical foundation of society. His account provides brief biographies of several of these officer-conspirators. most of whom lost their lives as a result of their convictions. Ramm, like Peter Hoffmann before him, shows that these were courageous individuals, smitten by conscientious scruples, directly challenging the long history of obedience to the state, and often, at first, misjudging the true nature of Nazism. He also shows that the attitude of the major church leaders was never supportive of any such acts of political high treason, even after the war, and points out how these conspirators’ reputations have suffered as a result. This is not a new thesis, and the book brings little new to the discussion, But it recapitulates the “moral”motivations of these military officers in a convenient form for quick reference, has a good bibliography but no index. JSC

I trust that all of you in the northern hemisphere have been able to enjoy the summer holidays. If you have been anywhere of church-historical interest, we would love to hear from you.

All the best

John S.Conway

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, whohas 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 StateUniversity.

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 whichwere 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 nearretirement 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 in1941 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 theVatican, 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 theVatican’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 indepicting vividly the turgid, claustrophobic and conspiratorial atmosphere which prevailed during those fateful years. JSC

2b) “Evangelische Pfarrer: Zur sozialen und politischen Rolle einerburgerlichen 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 the1940s. 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”, focusses on another preoccupation of the Bielefelders:the educated middle class, or “Bildungsburgertum”. Questions of change and continuity, so crucial to reassessments of World Wars I and 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 “Politische 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 the1970s. Kuhlemann’s interest in culture represents another innovation, evident also in Christoph Klessmann’s intriguing”Evangelische Pfarrer im Sozialismus – soziale Stellung und politische Bedeutung 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; sometimesthey 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 ofthe 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 contributionsby 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 aperiod 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 Winkler 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 provies 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 their rational, 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” wuld 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-WorldWar 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 theU.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 theBrenner 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 burstingwith yellow buttercups, kingcups, 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 blockedby 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 ayoung 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

Newsletter – Vol IV, no 6 – June 1998

Dear Friends,

Please forgive the delay in sending you this Newsletter, due to my absencein Europe forthe past month.

Contents: 1) Historisches Kolleg Colloquium, Munich,May 17-20th (Report submitted by Greg Munro) 2) Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte 1997/2 3) Book reviews a) G.Beck, Bistumspresse in Hesse b) V.Synan, Pentecostalism 4) Journal articles: Ustorf, German Missions Greschat, Euopean Unity

1)A Colloquium held in Munich last month, organised byProfessor Gerhard Besier, was designed to widen the scope ofinvestigations on the theme of “Nationaler Revolution andmilitarischer Aggression. Transformationen in Kirche und Gesellschaft unter der konsolidierten NS-Gewaltherrschaft 1934-39”. We began with a provocative paper by Hans Mommsen, outlining the significance to the Nazi leaders, especially Hitler, of the ideological/religious struggle. This was followed by a sound examination by Gerhard Ringshausien of the various resistance movements, and the differing interpretations of their activities and motives in the writings of both their contemporaries and of subsequent generations of historians. If the early analyses were dominated by the accounts of the National Conservative resistance members, especially the German officer corps, (Fabian Schlabrendorff, Offiziere gegen Hitler, 1946), and by the eschatological interpretation of Nazism (J.Neuhausler, Kreuz und Hakenkreuz, 1946), these were followed in the 1950s by the more differentiated picture drawn by Gerhard Ritter in his biography of Carl Goerdeler, who was certainly motivated by the need to defend an ethical system derived from the Christian faith, but also by his loathing of tyranny. In the 1970s and 1980s, with the ascendancy of the social sciences, there was a far greater stress on a sociological analysis of the resistance movement. But this in turn attracted considerable criticism from such historians as Klemens v.Klemperer and Peter Hoffmann, who insist of the importance of the religious and moral motivations of those individuals who took up arms against the Nazi regime. Klaus Mallmann (Universitat Essen) delivered an interesting paper on the Gestapo and the Churches. The evidence contained in the regularly compiled Berichte uber die weltanschauliche Lage im Reich, shows that already from 1934, the Gestapo regarded the churches as one of the most serious opponents of the Nazi state. Their powers were thus used to undertake an escalating persecution of all the churches, restrained only by various tactical considerations, as during the war-time period. But as Robert Gellately has shown, they skilfully made use of the information relayed by informants or through denunciations, and successfully infiltrated a substantial number of church assemblies, including the Fulda Bishops’ Conference, as well as exploiting numerousVertrauensmanner, quite often retired priests.Julius Schoeps’ paper on “Nationalsozialismus als politische Religion” traced the arguments in his book with this title (PhiloVerlag), and caused a lively discussion. He argued that Nazism could only really be properly understood if one acknowledged its religious dimensions, derived from the volkisch roots of Nazism combined with the exaltation of the nation. Hans Mommsen was critical of the application of the word “religion” to describe Nazism and suggested that the movement was better understood as an ideological cult. But what constitutes “religion”? One key aspect not addressed here were the various schools of German theology which certainly played a significant role in the churches’understanding and response to Nazism. The conference gained from the broader perspective provided by analyses of church responses outside Germany. Karl Schwarz (U of Vienna) described the tensions between the highly articulate Protestant minority in Austria and the Roman Catholic majority. While Austrian Catholics generally supported the Standesstaat ideology of the Austrian Republic, Austrian Protestants were frequently enthusiastic proponents of the Nazi regime after 1933.Clearly both groups supported the Anschluss in 1938. However,the idea of a Grossdeutschland under Nazi leadership appeared to elicit more enthusiasm from the Protestants. Referring to HansMommsen’s thesis of a radicalization of the Nazi movement from1938, Schwarz noted that Austria was an important laboratory, where the deconfessionalization of public life was carried out with even greater rigour when compared to the anti-clerical measures enacted before 1938 in Germany. And this pattern was to be continued in occupied Poland in 1939. Andrew Chandler (George Bell Institute, Birmingham, UK) read a fine paper on “The Attitude of the British Churches towards the political and church situation in Germany”, making clear that theBritish churches became ever more critical of the Nazi regime from 1933 onwards. They quickly identified the dangers of totalitarianism and atheism, and totally rejected the ethos of violence and racism. On the other hand, the British church leaders were reluctant to interfere in another church’s affairs, and were also subject to the mood of appeasement widespread at the time. During the Sudeten crisis of September 1938, most churches held special services with prayers for divine guidance. Neville Chamberlain’s apparent success in securing an agreement with Hitler seemed to justify such hopes. However, the pogrom of November 1938 and the German occupation of Bohemia and Moravia in March 1939 led to a complete disillusionment with the Nazi state.A similar response was to be seen in the North American churches, as reported by John Conway. Here too the churches were strongly inclined to a pacifist stance which went hand in hand with American isolationism. In the initial years of the Nazi dictatorship the Lutheran church press in America was sympathetic towards the Nazi regime, and there was even a tendency to accept the apologies of the Nazi propagandists who presented the Nazi regime as a bastion of Christian anti-Communist morality. But from 1934, opposition to the Nazi regime grew considerably,especially notably over the imprisonment of Martin Niemoller in1937. Prominent journals such as the Christian Century rightly noted that the Nazi attacks on Christians and Jews were companion evils. The church was therefore called to a simultaneous (and unprecedented) support of the persecuted Jews, as well as of their own members. However the call for a militant stand against Nazism was weakened by a tendency to believe that Nazi actions were not due to Hitler but to the radical wing of the party. Many North Americans also supported the appeasement policies of the British and French governments until the pogrom of November 1938. Thereafter their moral outrage at such events outweighed the lingering desire to uphold a pacifist stance, and hence these churches were ready to take up arms again in 1939-41in defence of both democracy and God. In his introductory remarks, Gerhard Besier had stressed the needt o take more seriously the theological aspects of the Church Struggle. However, it was disappointing that more of these did not emerge during the proceedings. I would have liked to see more attention given to the Roman Catholic Church’s part in the Church Struggle. As the devil’s advocate, Doris Bergen raised the questionas to why the Church Struggle is studied with such care when the Church seemed to be relatively powerless to affect the course of events. This occasioned considerable discussion about the role of the historian in making moral judgements. It was argued that,s ince the Church had played such a formative role in European history, the reasons for its eclipse and decline in power were especially worthy of study. Moreover, as a central component of the European intellectual tradition, the fate of the Christian faithmust remain a central concern of historians.

Greg Munro, Catholic University, Brisbane, Australia

2) The latest issue of Kirchliche Zeitgechichte 1997/2 has anumber of articles relating to our field of interest, which will repay close scrutiny. It also contains the texts of papers given in English by two of Gerhard Besier’s younger colleagues, Gerhard Lindemann and Christian Binder at last year’s meeting of the German Studies Association on Christians of Jewish Descent in the Nazi Period, and their regrettable treatment by the local church authorities. Bob Ericksen contributes a thoughtful commentary.

3a) Gottfried Beck, Die Bistumspresse in Hessen und der Nationalsozialismus 1930-1941,(Vervffentlichungen der Kommission für Zeitgeschichte, Reihe B:Forschungen, Bd 72)Paderborn: Ferdinand Schvningh 1996. 478 pp DM (This review appeared in the Catholic Historical Review, Vol LXXXIV, no1, January 1998, 139-41.) The German Catholic Commission for Contemporary History is continuing its well-established custom of publishing dissertations by young Catholic scholars, whose work is thereby given the extra prestige of appearing in this excellently-edited and finely-produced series of research studies. But, as before, readers should be aware that the overall theme is to provide an apologetic defence of Catholic policies during the Nazi era. Gottfried Beck has examined in depth the weekly Catholic press published in the region of Hesse, covering the three dioceses of Limburg, Fulda and Mainz. He thereby supplements the various studies of a similar character for other areas of Germany, and provides another mosaic stone to the picture already built up. His stance is basically to reject both the hagiographical approach adopted in the immediate post-war years, and the highly critical attacks of foreigners who saw the Catholic press as no more than a willing instrument for the propagation of pro-Nazi ideas. Instead he begins his account in 1930 in order to show the ambivalence ofthe Catholic editors during the downfall of the Weimar Republic. Despite a clear repudiation of Nazi ideological and political radicalism – most firmly expressed by the Bishop of Mainz, Ludwig Hugo – nevertheless there was an awareness that democratic republicanism was unable to provide strong government, and hence a certain sympathy for the Nazi goal of authoritarian leadership. In 1933 these editors shared most of the illusions about the nature of the new regime, and about the Concordat signed in July. The bishops’ reversal in late March on the question of Catholics joining the Nazi Party only added to the confusion. Previous reservations about the Nazis’ extreme nationalism and totalitarian ambitions were abandoned in view of the general euphoria, The shock and dismay at the rapidly implemented regulations issued by Goebbels’ new Ministry of Propaganda were therefore all the more devastating. The Catholic press now found itself “gleichgeschaltet” and subject to arbitrary interventions or prohibitions. Beck rightly notes that the Catholic reaction was one of bewilderment and lack of purposeful planning. The editors’ determination to combat Rosenberg’s campaign for the “new heathendom” was matched by their desire not to be branded as traitors to the new vision of national renewal. Unwilling to admit that the wishful thinking of the Concordat had been a mistake, the church leaders were unable torally their followers to the kind of outright opposition expressed towards the governments of the Soviet Union, Spain or Mexico. On the other hand, a conformist approach seemed to offer the best hope of preventing increased regulation or interference. Beck provides a plethora of examples of how these editors steered a careful line, and increasingly how they (and their readers) were obliged to “read between the lines”. But such compromises availed them little, and on fact only revealed the Catholics ‘dilemma more clearly. Reticence and abstention became the tone for their utterances on the Nazis’ most radical measures, such as the discrimination against and persecution of the Jews. The bishops’ hesitant lead, even in defending Catholic rights, such as in the field of education, was faithfully followed by the church press. The whole sad story is meticulously laid out from the examples here provided. To be sure, some editors sought to adopt a defensive position, rather than give away hostages to fortune, But their influence was progressively diminished, and their continued readiness to uphold their belief in the state and its powers, including their support of the war effort after 1939, only furtherc ompromised their stance. Beck does not claim that his study of Hesse breaks new ground. This regional press in fact differed little from that of other areas. But his thorough analysis of the editorial utterances is a useful addition to our general knowledge. His conclusion, with hindsight, that the failure to confront the evils of Nazism more forcibly owed much to the continuity of Catholic attitudes from the1920s with its disapproval of democratic liberalism is certainly correct but only reinforces the view that German Catholics were caught up in an ambivalent and ultimately morally disastrous conflict of loyalties. His claim that the church press should be recognised as having played a significant role in resisting Naziideological pretensions is in line with the view adopted by other authors in this series of volumes. But even so, the general failure of German Catholics to take a stand against this nefarious government and its atrocities cannot be denied. The record is a sobering example of the weakness of religious convictions when confronted by the criminal acts of a totalitarian regime. JSC

3b) Vinson Synan, The Holiness-Pentecostal Tradition. Charismatic Movements in the Twentieth Century. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans 1997 340pp $25. US Dean Vinson Synan has recently issued an updated revision of his scholarly treatment of the Pentecostalist movement, which first appeared in 1971. In view of the enormous and rapid spread of this form of Christian witness during the last three decades, this new account is most welcome. In Synan’s view, Pentecostalism has now grown out of its impulsive beginnings to become a firmly established tradition, which deserves to be taken more seriously as it moves along the spectrum discerned by Troeltsch from an irrelevant sect to a major church. Synan seeks to anchor the Pentecostalists firmly in the earlier experience of the “baptism in the Holy Spirit” which indeed was part of the public liturgy for at least eight centuries after the Day of Pentecost. It also owes much to both Catholic and Anglican mystical traditions. But, above all, Synan shows that its formative influence derives from John Wesley and the kind of holiness spirituality practised by his Methodist followers, including the famous Keswick Connection. He describes the developments in the United States during the 19th century, where an increasing populist discontent with the dominant eastern political establishment, along with a backlash among the lower classes against the liberal intellectual leadership of the churches, led to numerous attempts to return to a spontaneity of religious fervour. This historical emphasis is a useful correction for those who have regarded Pentecostalism with disdain, or as the product of an over-enthusiastic Californian extravaganza. To be sure, the scenes in the run-down shack on Azuza Street, Los Angeles in April 1906 were extraordinary enough to shock both respectable church-goers and non-believers alike. Theaccent on the “gift of tongues” and the accompanying frenzy of religious devotion were extreme even for Los Angeles, with its numberless varieties of creeds and sects. Leadership at Azuza Street was taken by a coloured preacher, W.J. Seymour, whose gifts to arouse religious enthusiasm with a stress on “speaking in tongues”would today rightly be called charismatic. By the summer’s end people of all races and nationalities were caught up in the revival, which notably ignored the colour-bar prevalent in so many other United States churches. The power and attractiveness of its enthusiasms quickly spread abroad, and led to literally thousands of similar “Spirit-filled” sects springing up around the globe. It clearly filled a need not catered to by more structured churches. The reason, Synan suggests, was that Pentecostalism was truly the child of the holiness movement which itself was the child of Methodism, all of them stressing the Wesleyan view of sanctification and Christian perfection. Synan ably traces the stages by which the Pentecostal movement managed, despite intense divisions, to become a coherent and attractive denomination. The early hostility against the “holy rollers” eventually subsided when it became apparent that Pentecostalism constituted no threat to either the political or ecclesiastical hierarchies. And within the sect, fears that any structured authority would quench the spontaneous outpouring of the Spirit gave way to a recognition of the advantages of national and even international organization. Despite the histrionics of such figures as Aimee Semple MacPherson, more moderate pastors steered the worshippers’ fervent ecstasy into worthier channels of devotion. At the same time, the warmth and sincerity of their worship services continued to attract large followings even when the first wave of preachers passed from the scene. In his final section, describing the new developments within Pentecostalism since his first edition came out, Synan outlines the various factors evident in the most recent years: first, Pentecostalism’s impact on the more established churches, including the Roman Catholic Church, through the charismatic movement, clearly resulting in a deepening of loyalty and faithfulness; second, its acceptance into middle-class educated circles, as seen in the Full Gospel Business Men’s Fellowship, where testimonies to the rewardsfor spirit-filled persons could be combined with upholding the American capitalist ethos; third, the widening of horizons to include fellowship with such liberal bodies as the World Council of Churches, with leadership given by David Du Plessis. In the last two decades, the astonishing and rapid spread of Pentecostal communities, first in Latin America and more latterly in the former Communist eastern Europe, produced a “third wave” of remarkable vitality. Trying to hold all these differing and sometimes divergent congregations has so far proved difficult, all the more since no clear doctrine of church discipline or authority has been agreed to. A key factor in the expansion of Pentecostalism was the appearance of unexpected waves of revival, constituting sources of both tension and growth. A recent example can be seen in the astounding phenomenon of Toronto Airport’s Vineyard Church with its “Toronto blessing”. How to maintain the revolutionary fervour of the “latter rain” movement, while at the same time making its adherents more aware of their social and political obligations, is now the prime task of Pentecostalist leaders. Even though he is certainly well aware of the dangers of fissiparous and individualistic trends within the Pentecostalist tradition, Synan optimistically concludes with the belief that “Christian affairs of the twenty-first century may be largely in the hands of surging Pentecostalist churches in the Third World and a Roman Catholicism inspired and revivified by the charismatic renewal”. JSC.

4a) Werner Ustorf, in the Journal of Religion in Africa, XXVIII, 1(1998), describes the regrettable stance taken by the leading German missiologists during the Nazi period towards the planned reversion of former German colonies and the impact on the missions there. He analyses the overlapping areas of contiguity between the missions and the Nazi racial attitudes, giving examples of the behaviour of Walter Freytag and other leading figures.

4b) Martin Greschat, in Pastoraltheologie Vol 87 (1998) outlines the contribution of Protestantism to the development of European Unity after 1945, concentrating on the German, Dutch, French and Scandinavian churches, as well as the ecumenical bodies such as the Conference of European Churches and the World Council. He describes the dilemma for the churches as to how to be both relevant and credible in these new pan-European structures without being captivated by any of the prevailing political ideological campaigns.

With every best wish

John S.Conway

Dear Friends,
I am pleased to let you know that I have been appointed the J.B. Smallman
Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Department of History at the
University of Western Ontario for the first half of the next academic year.
So Ann and I will be leaving for London, Ontario at the end of August until
Christmas. Just what the implications for this Newsletter are as yet unclear.
I shall hope to establish an E-mail connection through the University of
Western Ontario, and will also try to arrange to have messages forwarded from
here. But there may be some unavoidable interruptions or delays, for which I
apologise in advance. But perhaps, in return, there may be a chance to see
some of you in Ontario or nearby while I am there. That would be a
welcome opportunity for me. It would also help if I could prepare Newsletter
material in advance. I therefore repeat my invitation to you all to send in
comments or contributions. I would also like to ask those who have books out
for review (Fraser, Bergen, Ericksen, Friedrichs) to let me have your copy as
soon as possible. In the meanwhile the June issue will come to you a week
late as I have to be in Munich for a conference on the German Church Struggle,
on which I will report later. By contrast, I will try and get the September
issue off to you before I leave Vancouver. JSC
Contents: 1) Pius XII and the Jews 2) The Hidden Encyclical 3) Conference
proceedings: Amer. Cath.Hist. Ass. 4) Conference announcement – Holocaust and
Reconciliation 5) Book reviews – Raabe, SED Staat und katholische Kirche –
Sugate, Japanese Christians
1) Pius XII and the Jews: Considerable comment, with a wide range of opinion,
not much of it historical, has reached me about the recent Vatican
statement which was reviewed here last month. On the one side, several Jewish
commentators treated the document sceptically, showing an unwillingness to
believe that the Catholic Church, after so many centuries, could really be
changing its doctrinal stance. Others expressed disappointment that
the statement did not go far enough. But Rabbi Mark Shook of St Louis,
Missouri is surely right to say that “our expectations must be focussed on
the possible, not the impossible. No Pope will allow for open and frank
criticism of a predecessor. There is too much theology and church history
concerning the role of the pope to allow for critical review of one pope by
another.. . .This is not the end of the process. We need to give the church
time and space to allow reflection to continue. In a mere generation, the
Catholic Church has swept away the shadow of prejudice and ignorance from its
official pronouncements on Jews and Judaism. How long will it take before the
sweeping reaches down to the pew?” On the Christian side, opinion was also
mixed. The leadingU.S. Catholic journal, America, commented that “the
document reflected two concerns – to defend the Church against calumny and to
express repentance. The defensive motif predominates. . . .The horrors of the
Holocaust are attributed not to religious anti-Judaism but to nationalism and
racism hostile to both Christianity andJudaism alike. This leaves unsettled
how far religious prejudice nourished secular antisemitism. “John Paul II has
frequently deplored the Holocaust but has been reticent in speaking of
the church’s responsibility.” We shall have to wait for a further
personal pronouncement expected during the coming jubilee year. Kenneth
Woodward, writing in Newsweek on this topic “in defence of Pius XII” claimed
that “No one person, Hitler excepted, was responsible for the Holocaust. And
no one person, Pius XII included, could have prevented it. It’s time to lay
off this pope.” In Britain, the leading church historian Sir Owen
Chadwick,who has written extensively about the Papacy, believed the document
was inadequate, since “No one can be convincingly repentant about someone
else’s crimes – or in this case someone else’s failure to resist crime as
bravely as they should. If they cannot be convincing by the nature of the
exercise, the words will sound hollow, and hollow words are better not
spoken. . . . Nothing that anyone could ever say in the way of apology or
sorrow in repentance can ever be adequate; anything that is said is bound
to be resented. If you wish to avoid resentment (which is a good thing to
avoid), say nothing. . . History is much too complex to be painted with a
brush that daubs a few crude red or purple lines. The legends are a daub,
you cannot refute them with a different daub, they cannot be covered up by
shovelling on whitewash. The only thing that corrects them is more history
and that takes time.” Whatever the merits or otherwise of such declarations
of repentance – which are surely more appropriate than the
former triumphalism – they are no substitute for historical research.
But Chadwick is right, that takes time. How many scholars have in factfully
absorbed the 11 volumes of the Actes et documents relatifs ala seconde
guerre mondiale? These are an indispensable place to start for historians of
Pius XII and his diplomacy, even if sometimes, as recently in the Tablet, a
lady journalist used these in a highly apologetic manner only.. But see also
H.Favre’s highly critical analysis of these documents, L’eglise catholique
face aufascisme et au nazisme – reviewed here in Newsletter no 7,
August1995.JSC

2) Frank Coppa has contributed, in The Catholic Historical Review, January
1998, vol LXXXIV, no 1, pp 63-72,. a valuable guide to the “reception” of the
“Hidden Encyclical” of1939 in analysing the various books and articles which
have recently appeared on this topic.

3) The American Catholic Historical Association held its spring meeting at
Marian College, Indianapolis on March 27-28th. Of particular relevance to
members of this list were three panels. The first examined “Priests and
Pastors in the Third Reich” and included a paper by Doris Bergen, who asked
whether theWehrmacht chaplains were Christian soldiers or Nazi priests. Using
two examples, one Protestant and one Catholic, Bergen demonstrated that
German military chaplains responded to the demands of their tasks in various
ways, from adopting soldierly ways to identify with their comrades at the
front to appealing (ultimately in vain) to army officers to prevent the
killing of Jewish children. Bergen exploited the records of the Reich Ministry
of Church Affairs to argue that the complex selection process produced
military chaplains who were generally older, more nationalist clergymen.
Members of the Confessing Church, other independent-minded clergy and
aggressive “German Christians” were all screened out. Bergen concluded that
“the moderate nature of many chaplains” made the service “an effective vehicle
for legitimization of the Nazi regime”. John Delaney contributed a paper which
examined the role of Catholic priests in “opposing Nazi anti-Polish racial
policy measures directed at Bavarian peasants”. By inviting Poles,
mainly forced labour recruits on Bavarian farms, to Mass, including them in
the local spiritual community, giving them small gifts and instructing
parishioners “to treat Polish fellow-Catholics as co-religionists, not
‘sub-human racial threats'”, parish priests demonstrated a high level of
leadership (in the absence of support from the ecclesiastical
leadership). Kyle Jantzen gave a paper on the politics of pastoral
appointments in the German Church Struggle. Arguing that local church
history often fails to correspond with the high church politics of the
Naziera, Jantzen used the example of pastoral appointments in
Nauen (Brandenburg) to illustrate how parish patrons, local
political authorities, parish clergy, lay leaders, district synods and
Land church authorities combined to appoint pastors. As they engaged in this
process, local clergy and laity enjoyed ” a significant range of freedom in
which to act” and displayed the willingness to articulate practical and
ideological grievances against potential pastors.The second panel of note
dealt with the Catholic responses to war, and included a paper by Frank
Buscher of the Christian Brothers University (and Canadian Department of
Justice, Crimes against Humanity and War Crimes Section). Buscher detailed
the work of Cardinal Josef Frings in dealing with the German refugees
from 1945-1955, demonstrating the dilemma Frings and others faced between many
refugees’ desire to return to their former homes, their frustration with a
prolonged existence in temporary camps, and the difficulties of integrating
them into post-war Germany. A third panel had an interesting contribution by
Jose M. Sanchez on Pius XII, which took a different approach to the question
of that pope’s response to Nazism and the Holocaust. Rather than an austere
monarch of the church, Sanchez argued that Pius was infact a shy but warm
personality, a lonely man in a lonely job, who simply wasn’t prepared for the
crises he faced. Hampered by his diplomatic background and his habit of
looking at both sides of every problem, Pius did not have the confidence or
experience to be the pastor that the Roman Catholic Church needed in World War
Two. (Ed.note: This last sentence should surely be questioned. Pius had every
confidence, as well as the experience, in his own abilities as a diplomat.
Whether these were the right qualities at that juncture is still a matter of
debate.) (Contributed by Kyle Jantzen, Saskatoon)

4) The 5th Biennial Conference on Christianity and the Holocaust will be held
from October 18-19th at the Princeton Marriott Forrestal Village, at which
such leading figures as Cardinal Cassidy, Professor Martin Stoehr, President
of the InternationalCouncil of Christians and Jews, Rabbi Leon Kienecki, and
Dr John Gager, Princeton, will be the principal speakers. Contact:
Dr H.Kornberg, Rider University, Lawrenceville, New Jersey =HOLCTR@Rider.edu

5a) Thomas Raabe, SED-Staat und katholische Kirche. Politische Beziehungen
1949-1961. Paderborn: Schoeningh. 294 pp. DM 64.(This review appeared in
German History, Vol 16, no1, 1998,138-9) Historians of the churches in the
former German Democratic Republic have usually ignored the fate of the
Catholics for two reasons: they were only a minority in the predominantly
(at least nominally) Protestant land of Luther, and they kept a carefully low
profile, adopting a reticence without taking a stance for or against the
Communist government. Their history seemed therefore uninteresting. Thomas
Raabe’s dissertation makes use of the newly-available documents of the
unlamented regime to clarify its policies towards the Catholics during its
first twelve years, when its ideological class warriors attacked the
“reactionary” remnant of this “mediaeval survival” as part of its campaign to
overthrow all traces of the past and all institutional links with the Vatican
or the outer world. At the same time he seeks to outline what was the Catholic
Church’s response to this virulent onslaught. His findings are elegantly and
scholarly presented, and have therefore been included in the prestigious
series of research studies produced by the Catholic Commission for
Contemporary History, of which this is now the sixtieth to appear. The book
is well edited, has full footnotes and bibliography and has been kept to a
readable length. Raabe’s study is essentially one of an embattled
church, which had already undergone severe institutional repression at
the hands of the Nazis. In fact, German Catholics, ever since Bismarck’s days,
have seen themselves as a threatened minority trying to uphold the integrity
of their faith and witness when confronted with the challenge of state power,
whether in the Protestant-led imperial period, the racist-dominated Nazi era,
or now in the explicitly atheistic-materialist communist G.D.R. The Catholic
strategy had been to concentrate on the pastoral life of its parishes, to
strengthen the spiritual resources of its own following against all heretical
deviations, and to circumvent political confrontations where possible. This
strategy seemed to have worked well under the Nazis, enabling the church
leaders after1945 to claim that they had been victimised by the regime,
and hence to avoid direct responsibility for any Catholic collaboration. It
was only natural that a similar strategy should be advocated in the no less
turbulent early years of the G.D.R. Raabe succinctly describes how, in the
immediate post-war period, the Soviet military authorities adopted a
benevolent attitude towards all the churches, and their communist
lackeys similarly declared their support for all “anti-fascist
democratic forces”. But, even though the new G.D.R.’s constitution in
1949 enunciated high-sounding principles of religious freedom, the practice
was very different. In the 1950s the governing party, theSED, refused to
recognise the legitimacy of the 1933 Concordat, and disallowed any legal
appeals against its regulations. Catholic social, educational and welfare
institutions were in great part suppressed, and the regime launched an
intensive campaign to propagate the “inevitable” victory of Socialism. All
this is already well known, though Raabe is able to add a particular
Catholic perspective on these campaigns. The novel part of this book consists
of six case studies of how various Catholic institutions sought to protect
their autonomy during this repressive period. Raabe make good and
informative use of the surviving party and church records to show the
regime’s intransigent and belligerent intentions. However, already by
1953, and largely because of Soviet pressure, this headlong onslaught was
recognised as counter-productive. More time would be needed to root out all
ties to the Catholic church, so a more pragmatic tactical approach was to be
preferred. After 1961, increased efforts were made by the Stasi to infiltrate
the church’s activities, not without some success. But, in the earlier
period, the atmosphere was one of provocative confrontation, with numerous but
largely unsuccessful remonstrances by the church authorities. Because these
aggressive policies were formulated by the highly-centralized state
apparatus, and responded to by the Catholic bishops acting together and
forbidding any local initiatives by their priests, Raabe’s account rightly
describes events from the top downwards. We still need additional accounts of
how matters turned out on the local level. As a coherent strategy,
the Catholic response ensured survival, though with drastically reduced impact
outside the church’s immediate surroundings. Its doctrinal position was not
undermined by “fellow-travellers” in its own ranks, except for one lone
maverick priest. The price was however high. The church lost the battle over
the so-called “Youth Dedication”, an increasing proportion of the population
was alienated, and the church’s ranks were steadily reduced. Raabe’s
competent study gives a good picture of the SED’s convoluted policies, which
have already been documented in numerous works on the fate of the Protestant
churches. He rightly notes that the Catholic bishops were always more
sceptical and reticent than some of their Protestant counterparts. As
one dignitary trenchantly noted: “We live in a house whose foundations we did
not build, and whose structures we can only regard as false”. This insight
was however not enough to outweigh the persecution and pressures of the
totalitarian regime. By the 1980s only a remnant remained. But in the end the
Catholic church survived to live another day. JSC

5b) Alan Sugate. (with the assistance of Yamano Shigeko), Japanese Christians
and Society, Bern, New York: Peter Lang,1996 285pp ISBN 3-906755-84-3 This
work represents a break-through in English language book-length studies of
Japanese Christianity. Apart from a few articles, most works have dealt with
what be called the official side of Japanese Christianity, the “political” or
“ideological” record of the movement as seen from the outside. Here, through
a collaboration between an English and a Japanese scholar, we are able to
delve more deeply into the record and to see it from the inside. Thus the
writers are able to identify an element that they admit is a minority,
marginal to the movement as a whole, even looked on with “hostility . . .in
their struggle for the quality of social life in Japan”. Yet this is a
significant minority which has made a surprising impact on the society as a
whole, whether by themselves or “in concert with . . non-Christian
compatriots whenever common ground was possible” (13) Japanese Christianity is
itself a minority – never increasing to more than about one percent of the
total population – but it is the minority described by Sugate and Yamano that
gives the overall movement its cutting edge. Following an introductory
chapter which offers an interpretation of Japanese society as a whole, the
book proceeds to define and describe the important ideological nature of the
Tenno system. When Japan opened itself to the West in the mid-19th century, it
developed a constitution centred around the person of its ruler, a figure who
was seen as both a monarch and a priest. Not only did this monarch rule by
divine right, as in pre-civil war England, but he was himself in some sense
divine, the ultimate source of authority and power in the nation. This divine
nature was expressed in the ruler’s title. Tenno, usually translated
as ‘Emperor’ but used untranslated here because “the term ‘Tenno’ implies
religious headship, whereas ‘Emperor’ implies primarily a political headship”
(8) The various elites which dominated society- bureaucrats, both civil and
military, industrial and financial concerns and politicians – drew their
authority from the supremehead, and therefore considered that their power
could not be challenged. This constitution was abolished after Japan’s defeat
in 1945 and a new constitution established in which the emperor was seen as
the “symbol” of the people’s power. Nevertheless, the powerful elites, which
continued even after defeat (and whose power has been increased
astronomically by Japan’s ‘economic miracle’) havebeen pushing steadily and
with some success to restore the pre-war status of the Tenno and with it,
their own power to run the nation. This book describes the ‘machinations’ of
these ‘elephants’ (13) and the way in which the ‘ants’ (i.e. the Christian
minority and their allies in secular society) have struggled to maintain and
promote a juster and more democratic and humane society. In nine chapters the
authors describe with detailed documentation the revival of State Shinto (the
religious foundation of the Tenno system), the oppression of the
workforce, environmental pollution, discrimination against minorities and
the struggle for peace, all problems exacerbated by the revival of the Tenno
system. The book ends with a chapter of reflections. The authors have written
this study, not just to educate but to challenge Christians in the West.
According to the writers, the latter need to do two things. “First they
should listen to those Christian voices [which are raising the challenges in
Japan] and give them understanding and support. . . Secondly, they should
consider to what extent they are prepared to ask themselves critical
questions about their own societies, and act accordingly.” (250) We in
the West need to reflect on our own record when it comes to questions like
discrimination and imperialism (particularly as it takes its contemporary
trans-national form). Confronting social problems has led Japanese
Christians to review critically their traditional theology of “the life,
death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and therefore the very nature of
God” (256). In confronting the “immanental” nature of the Tenno system, they
have been led to emphasise the transcendence of God,underlining the crucial
distinction between God’s sovereignty and human power. The suffering of
oppressed minorities like the Koreans and the outcast communities has given
them a fuller understanding of the Cross: the suffering and self-emptying
of Christ. Thus they strive to go beyond a liberal social-gospel type of
activism to develop a living theology which will serve to enlighten the whole
Christian movement, not only in Japan but throughout the world. A book well
worth reading. Cyril Powles, Vancouver.

With best wishes
John S.Conway

Dear Friends,

On the occasion of this, the 40th, issue of this Newsletter, I amglad to report to you that, as of today, we now have 200 subscribers world-wide, from Western Australia to PolandI have been much gratified by the expressions of appreciation made by several of you whom I have met in recent weeks, and only hope there will be some future opportunity for more of us to meet each other personally. Since this Newsletter was conceived originally as a post-retirement project, I am not sure how long I can continue, but your enthusiastic support has been a great encouragement. In the meantime, let me repeat my invitation to send in contributions which may be of interest to other members. These will be most welcome.

Congratulations are due to our list-member, Jonathan Vance, who has been awarded the $5000 Dafoe Book Prize for his book “Death So Noble”, published by UBC Press, and reviewed here lastSeptember, Vol III, no 9. Contents: 1) Editorial: Vatican Document on the Shoah and Letter to the Editor 2) Scholars’ Conference, Seattle, Feb-March 1998 3) Holocaust Conference, Notre Dame, April 1998 4) Book reviews: Religion in Russia J Burgess, East German Church 5) Journal article: Confessional Cultures 1945 6) Bonhoeffer Society publication

1) Editorial: On March 16th, the Vatican issued an important Statement: “We Remember: A theological reflection on the Shoah”, which is designed to “heal the wounds of p ast misunderstandings and injustices” between Christians and Jews. This document, as printed in the New York Times, is clearly not a historical treatise, still less an attempt at Vergangenheitsbewaltigung, but a call for “serious reflection on the events of the Shoah”.. I can forward the full text to anyone who writes to ask for it. The first section expresses sympathy for the unspeakable tragedy which befell the Jewish people, to which “the Church cannot remain indifferent”. The third section acknowledges that “in the Christian world, erroneous and unjust interpretations of the New Testament regarding the Jewish people have circulated for far too long”, but points to their total and definitive rejection by the Second Vatican Council. At the same time, the rise of secular racism, as exploited by the Nazis, and condemned by the Church, showed a “definite hatreddirected at God himself”. “The Shoah was thus the work of a thoroughly neo-pagan regime”. But, on the other hand, was the Nazi persecution of the Jews “made easier by the anti-Judaic prejudices imbedded in some Christian minds and hearts?” “Any response to this question must take into account that we are dealing with the history of people’s attitudes . . . Did Christians give every possible assistance to those being persecuted, and in particular the persecuted Jews? Many did, but others did not. During and after the war, Jewish communities and Jewish leaders expressed their thanks for all that had been done for them, including what Pope Pius XII did personally or through his representatives to save hundreds of thousands of Jewish lives . . . Unfortunately the governments of some western nations of Christian tradition, including some in North and South America, were more than hesitant to open their borders to the persecuted Jews. . . Nevertheless . . . the spiritual resistance and concrete actions of other Christians was not that which might have been expected from Christ’s followers. We deeply regret the errors and failings of these sons and daughters of the Church. . . This is an act of repentance (‘Teshuva’) . . . the Church approaches with deep respect and great compassion the experience of extermination, the Shoah, suffered by the Jewish people during World War II . . . . We wish to turn awareness of past sins into a firm resolve to build a new future in which there will be no more anti- Judaism among Christians or anti-Christian sentiment among Jews”. Such laudable feelings summarize, in fact, what Pope JohnPaul II has been saying for several years. His condemnation of racist antisemitism, his repudiation of Christian anti-Judaism, his deep sorrow for the sufferings of the Shoah, and his desire to promote the Church’s “very close bonds of spiritual kinship with the Jewish people” are here repeated with added force. The initial reactions, however, from the Jewish side, according to press reports, remain sceptical. In particular, theabsence of any more extended treatment of the actual policies of the Vatican during the time of the Shoah, let alone any hintthat Pope Pius XII might have got his priorities wrong – pursuingpeace through diplomacy, rather than protest against persecution -(see below) will still leave many observers, and not only Jews, unsatisfied. The claim that Pius and his representatives rescued”hundred of thousands” is questionable. Hundreds were undoubtedly assisted to take refuge, and Papal interventions may have delayed, rather than prevented, the Jewish tragedy in such countries as Roumania or Hungary. But the document does not provide the evidence for such large figures. On the other hand, the kind of wishful thinking, which still believes that the Pope, had he protested loudly enough, would have been able to prevent the Holocaust entirely, as was voiced in the debate about the so-called”lost” Encyclical of 1939, is still with us and is surely wrong-headed. So too the complete absence in the Statement of any reference to the Land of Israel, or acknowledgement of the Jewish view of the indissolubility of the bond between Land and People, will leave others unsatisfied. But it is to be hoped that this evidence of a sincere desire for repentance and improved relations between Christians and Jews will serve to dispel some lingering prejudices and induce all Christians to reflect more deeply on the “ungekundigte Bund” which links both communities together, not least in a common resolve never to allow such events as the Shoah to happen again. JSC

Letter to the Editor:

Dear John, At the June 1975 International Conference on theHolocaust in Hamburg, Pinchas Lapide [author of The Last Three Popes and the Jews (London 1967)] (who recently died) told me that his estimate of 860,000 Jews saved through secret Vatican diplomacy during the Second World War was based on six month’s research in the Yad Vashem Holocaust archive in Jerusalem. In the interest of fairness, and since it is too little known, Pius XII’s own account of his actions and motives is to be found in his 30 April 1943 letter to Bishop Preysing of Berlin, which is printed int he Actes et Documents du Saint Siege, Vol 2, and in German translation in Die Briefe Pius XII an die deutsche Bischoefe 1939-1946, document no 105, German ed. p.235-242. It is unfair to judge any man without considering his own account of his actions, if one is available. Also deserving of mention, because of historical significance, is the fact that 80% of Italy’s Jews survived the Holocaust. In the face of six million dead, no one can claim that enough was done. To claim, however, that nothing was done – or that the failure to do more was the result of indifference, cynicism, or cowardice – is a grave falsification of history. Sincerely, John J. Hughes, St Loius, Missouri..

2) It was a particular pleasure to attend the 28th Scholars’ Conference on the Holocaust and the Churches at the University of Washington at the beginning of March. This annual event, which has been under the genial guidance of Professor Franklin Littell and his wife Marcie since its beginnings in 1970, brings together both Jewish and Christian scholars to discuss the implications oft he Holocaust for both religious communities. So it was great to meet so many old friends there, and to see how many of them are also subscribers to this Newsletter. This year, special sessions were devoted to the churches during the Nazi era. An excellent plenary session was given over to the policies of Pope Pius XII. John Pawlikowski explored Pius ‘development of Catholic social teachings, which sought to overcome the long tradition of opposition to democracy and liberalism, and posed the question as to how far this influenced his attitude towards the Jewish victims of Nazism. He also repeated his call for more opening of archives, which would surely give us a broader picture of the Vatican’s stance during these turbulent years. Jacques Kornberg, Toronto, outlined clearly the Holy See’s reactions to the earlier genocides of the Armenians, the Ethiopians, and the Catholic Poles after the Nazi onslaught began in 1939. In each case, the Popes were outraged, but their interpretation of Catholic interests led to them to keep silence, lest their authority should be challenged, and possibly weakened. The Vatican’s response to the Holocaust followed a similar path. It was only afterwards that expectations were heightened about how Pius XII should have acted, though the advocates of this view have rarely thought through the implications of their desire for a more forceful Papal intervention in political affairs. I was asked to speak on the Pope’s political priorities, and sought to outline his overwhelming concern for peace, his preservation of a strict impartiality, and his desire to play the role of mediator to bring the murderous hostilities to an end. To be sure, this policy which had been established already in the first world war under Benedict XV, Pius’ mentor, was not successful, and can be criticised for its illusions about the effectiveness of the Holy See’s influence. But it was a noble and worthy ideal, even if it was doomed to be thwarted by the power politics of all the combatants. So too, the Vatican’s heartfelt efforts to assist the victims of the war were to prove too limited, but should not be dismissed as totally insignificant. Later, we had a splendid session devoted to church policies, when we heard six papers on a variety of topics. Outstanding was the presentation by Jolene Chu, a member of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, on their fate in Ravensbruck concentration camp, as also a paper by Victoria Barnett on the ecumenical movement’s efforts to find aconsensus on opposing Nazism. Haim Genizi, Israel, read a mosti nteresting paper on a leading figure in the Canadian United Church, describing both his efforts to help Jewish refugees, as well as his subsequent opposition to Zionism after 1945. These were useful contributions to show the variety of Christian responses to the unprecedented challenge of totalitarian ferocity as exhibited during the Nazi era

.3) A major conference on The Impact of the Holocaust, with a distinguished and international cast of speakers, will be held at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana on 26-28th April. More information can be obtained from Center for Continuing Education, Box 1008, Notre Dame, Indiana 46556

4) Book reviews:

a) John Anderson. Religion, state and politics in the Soviet Unionand successor states. Cambridge: University Press, 1994. xi,236 pp. $54.95 hardback, $18.95 paper. ed. Michael Bourdeaux. The Politics of Religion in Russia and the new states of Eurasia. (The International Politics of Eurasia,Volume 3) Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe Inc., 1995. xiii, 321pp. $49.95 hardback, $19.95 paper. (This review appeared in Canadian-American Slavic Studies, Vol 30, no.2-4, 1996) Keston College, formerly in Kent, now in Oxford, has long been the most significant centre in the west for research into religion in communist lands. The authors of these books have made extensive use of its resources, and supplemented these in more recent years by at least partial access to archives in Russia itself, such as those of the Council for Religious Affairs and the Communist Party’s Central Committee. Anderson’s brisk and workman-like study deals with the making of religious policy in the Soviet Union from the death of Stalin to the overthrow of the regime. Much of the story lies hidden behind the complex and often competing strata of the Soviet bureaucracy, whose policy-making was exceedingly opaque and secretive. Nevertheless he rightly detects an on-going conflict between “fundamentalists” and “pragmatists”, with the former concentrating on the ideological necessity of rooting out religious superstitions and prejudice in order to create the new Communist society, while the latter adopted a more flexible but often severeline. Khrushchev was a strong champion of the hard-liners. His attack of the late 1950s upon the churches did much damage. Church leaders were cowed into submission and administrative restrictions imposed strict limits on church life. Following Khrushchev’s fall, a reassessment under Brezhnev drew attention to the counterproductive implications of these repressive measures, and placed greater emphasis on Russia’s national heritage, including the preservation of historic church buildings. A more nuanced ideological approach attacked the simplistic notions of earlier propagandists. Complaints from believers, appealing for their rights, were at least listened to, even though the sectarian activities of illegal and unregistered church bodies, such as the “underground”Baptists, continued to be repressed. The disappearance of religion came to be regarded as a distant prospect, and the anti-religious struggle lost its priority. At the end of the 1970s, the arrival of the human rights issue on the international scene, the perceived revival of Islamic self-confidence, and the election of a Polish Pope, posed new policy questions to the Soviet leadership, which was increasingly incapable of coming up with new answers. This situation paved the way for Gorbachev’s more radical rethinking in the 1980s. Particular difficulties arose from the strength of religious attachments in such areas as Lithuania and Central Asia. Concern that religious revitalization might lead to nascent nationalist strivings was widely expressed, but little was achieved to head off such dangers. The attempts by Andropov, a former head of the KGB, in the early ’80s to clamp down on nationalism, religion and dissent, in fact, only demonstrated the regime’s limitations. Not only the desire to polish up the patriotic image of the Soviet state, but the need to impress foreign churchmen, led to ambivalent policies, and did little to satisfy either foreign critics abroad or religious communities at home, despite intrusive and extensive moves to suborn the clergy to the regime’s wishes. It remained for Gorbachev to realise that repression of all non-conformity was unacceptable and inefficient. His motives, and those of the bureaucracy which backed him, were clearly designed to harness the energy and powers of religious communities behind the state’s secular purposes of economic and political reform. At such a time “opium” had its uses. As could be seen during the 1988 celebrations of the millenium of the adoption of Christianity, the regime tried to mobilize religious and nationalist sentiments for its own ends. But, in essence, perestroika was unstoppable. By the end of 1990, the Soviet anti-religious onslaught had been abandoned. Seventy years of persecution and repression had failed in its purpose, even though it left a difficult legacy of antagonism, suspicion and intrigue – problems which still remain to be dealt with. Relations between the new Russian state and its religious communities are still tangled, when the memories and recriminations of the past era overlap with the Orthodox Church’s view of itself as the upholder of Russia’s national traditions. Anderson’s well-informed survey of the Soviet regime’s policies is both competent and well-organized. His findings will surely gain wide acceptance. But his concentration on the state’s systemic political approach needs to be supplemented by considering the impact on the believers themselves. In the collection of essays edited by Michael Bourdeaux, we are given useful glimpses of how individual churchmen are trying to cope with the trauma of the turbulent events since the fall of the Soviet empire in both Russia and its neighbouring countries. Most of the contributors are academic observers sympathetic to the often ambiguous stages of church revival. Several Americans, such as John Dunlop, are critical of the Russia Orthodox hierarchy for its former subservience to the Communist rulers, while Fr. Chaplinoutlines the present views of the renewed Patriarchate, with useful quotations from its more recent pronouncements on political matters. Some observers like Michael Bourdeaux are confident that religion will play a positive role in rebuilding morale. But it is clear that old habits die hard, as for instance in the Russian Orthodox Church’s demand that the state should still control the influx of foreign missionaries from various sectarian, or at least non-Orthodox, bodies. Most valuable, because less well-known, are the chapters on the churches in the newly-independent states around the edges of the former Soviet empire. Robert Goeckel gives an excellentoverview of the intertwining of nationalist and ecclesiastical factors in the Baltic churches. Relations between the national churches and those linked more closely to outside church establishments, such as the Vatican, the Moscow Patriarchate or the Lutheran World Federation, pose a potential minefield for the democratization and renewal process. It is good to have Goeckel’s most competent guidance through these complexities. Professor Bociurkiw’s account of the intra-church and intra-tribal rivalries in the Ukraine is a brave attempt to introduce western readers to this morass, whose record of violence, murder and internecine in-fighting, has long defied any coherent or meaningful analysis. The final two chapters on Islam in the regions of Central Asia seek to show that the long years of Communist-inspired fear and intimidation have left an appalling legacy of total mistrust and unreliability. It is difficult to see many signs of religious renewal here, especially when political opponents consistently evoke the spectre of Islamic “fundamentalism”. Similarly in the Caucasus, the continuing nationalist and irredentist violence precludes the emergence of any climate in which the beneficial impact of religious forces might be effective. Religious pluralism may be now legally established, but any signs of a tolerant ecumenical willingness to live together in peace and harmony still seem a long way off. “This book”, says the editor, “is the product of an interim period during which many questions are being asked but few answers have been found. Religion, at this time, faces the challenge of either contributing to the process of destabilization or of fulfilling its potential as an agent of reconciliation”. Judging by the evidence, the outcome is still highly problematical. J SC.

4b) John P.Burgess, The East German Church and the End of Communism, Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press 1997,185 pp US $39.95 Congratulations to our list member John Burgess on the appearance of his short but valuable study of the East German Protestant Church’s theological developments, particularly in the1980s. It is a more theoretical, and possibly less vibrant, account of this beleaguered church’s fortunes than was contained in Gregory Baum’s highly sympathetic analysis, The Church for Others, (reviewed in this Newsletter Vol III, no 9, September 1997), but the two together provide the English-speaking audience with an excellent picture of the significant theological issues faced by the East German Protestants.. John Burgess is on the staff of the national Presbyterian Church of the USA. He spent several extended periods in the former East Germany for theological study, and wrote up his impressions in articles in various religious publications. He has now revised and updated these and turned them into a useful study of the fate of the church up to the collapse of the Communist regime. In 1989, the role of the churches in helping to bring about the fall of Communism was widely praised. Yet, shortly afterwards, shocking revelations of the extent to which its leadership had collaborated with the notorious secret police, the Stasi, led to a rapid change. Baum by-passed this issue as theologically irrelevant, but Burgess gives a fair and balanced outline of the implications of the seaccusations, and recognises how much they undermined the church’s trustworthiness as a public institution. The mixture of moral, political and ecclesiastical factors involved in coming to terms with such a past are here succinctly and frankly discussed. But Burgess is really more interested in the ways in which the churches sought to serve God in a Marxist land. They had to deal with the inconsistencies in the Communist ranks as to whether the churches should be seen as ideological opponents or as potential partners in building a socialist society. The churches also suffered from similar ambivalences. Some “progressive” churchmen sought to build a new form of Christian socialism; others aspired only to the freedoms enjoyed by their brethren in the west. Pragmatically the church leaders sought to enlarge the free space allegedly guarantied by the constitution; but they also saw the need to repudiate the long Lutheran tradition of subordination to the state, of nationalism and of authoritarianism. Burgess rightly points out the paradox that, while in its own religious sphere the church lost membership and support, it gained more and more adherents as the only ideological and political alternative to the regime. By seeking to define itself as being not beside, not against, but within socialism, the church tried to adopt a position of “critical solidarity” towards the Communist society. This was a risky venture, and western critics both before and after 1989 were ready to call it a sell-out. Nevertheless Burgess makes a convincing case that the ability of the church to uphold a theology with democratic political impulses, and to provide powerful symbols for the oppositional groups, gave it a pivotal role in the 1989 end of Communism. These essays are not a systematic history, but more of a thoughtful commentary on the church’s life in a communist-controlled setting. They presume a considerable knowledge of events. The personalities of the individuals involved could have been more fully explored. But Burgess’ discussion of the theoretical issues, especially in the field of Christian social and political ethics, will undoubtedly be helpful. JSC

5) Journal Article: In the latest issue of Occasional Papers fromthe German Historical Institute, Washington, No 20, edited by Geoffrey Giles, “Stunde Null: The End and the Beginning. Fifty Years ago”, Maria Mitchell contributes an insightful and excellently researched article on “Confessional Culture, Realpolitik and the organisation of Christian Democracy”. She examines the reasons why leading Catholics abandoned their pre-war stance of defending the Catholic Teilkultur through the Centre Party, and instead opted for a new alliance with Protestants in the new C.D.U. She traces the previous history of such interdenominationalism, and the drawbacks to any revival of the old Centre Party, basically because of the need for Catholics to find new partners in the struggle against both Socialists and Marxism. Adenauer’s leadership was certainly the most significant factor, but so too was the recognition that Catholic interests could only be defended if a new and more realistic assessment of political forces was acknowledged. The CDU still upheld many of the Centre’s traditions, so the breach was not complete, but the spectre of Communism, and the need for a common policy for restoration of the German economy and culture, along democratic and pragmatic lines, successfully overcame Protestant hesitations, and led to the success of Adenauer’s reign. JSC

6) The English Language Section of the International Bonhoeffer Society has produced a translation of Ernst Feil’s “Bonhoeffer Studies in Germany: a survey of recent literature”, which first appeared in German in 1992. This is a thoughtful and comprehensive history of the various trends in the study of Bonhoeffer’s theology, but is confined solely to the work of German authors, and hardly touches on historical events. It can be obtained from the I.B.S. – English Section, Box 235,Afton, Minnesota 55001, USA (price for non-members $6, and $2postage).The Bonhoeffer Website is http://www.cyberword.com/bonhoef

With best wishes

John S.Conway

jconway@unixg.ubc.ca

Contents:

1) The Hidden Encyclical

2) Book reviews : Latour, Papacy in World War I; Bacque, Crimes and Mercies

3) Kirchliche Tourismus or Postcards from Sacred Spots

1)”The Hidden Encyclical”: In the summer of 1938, Pope Pius XI was deeply troubled by the Nazis’ vicious antisemitic campaigns against the Jews, and by the likelihood that Mussolini would pass equivalent legislation affecting Italy’s Jews. He therefore resolved to commission an Encyclical which would make clear the Catholic Church’s opposition to such pernicious developments. To this end he requested a prominent American Jesuit, Fr. John LaFarge, well-known as an expert on race relations, and also as a leading contributor to the respected Jesuit periodical ‘America’, to prepare a suitable text. For three months, LaFarge, together with a German and a French Jesuit, laboured to summarise Catholic teachings on racism. He then submitted the results to the head ofthe Jesuit order in Rome for onward transmission to the Pope. For as yet unclear reasons, the document only reached the Pope’s desk in early 1939, but he died before it could be promulgated. His successor, Pius XII, chose not to make any statement on this highly controversial and politically explosive subject, and the Encyclical was in fact suppressed. Only in 1995 did a book in French, with the title “The Hidden Encyclical” appear, written jointly by two scholars, one Catholic and one Jewish, G.Passelecq and B Suchecky, as noted in our Newsletter no 21 (September1996), p.4-5. Their findings have helped to shed light on the origins, the contents, and the disposition of this document.

But debate continues. Recently, in the latest issue of ‘Holocaustand Genocide Studies’, Vol 11, no 2 (Winter 1997), Professor Michael Marrus published an excellently authoritative article on this “hidden encyclical”, which was followed last month by a public debate at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum inWashington, D.C., in which Professor Michael Phayer, Professor Tom Breslin and Fr. John Morley took part. In its usual secretive way, the Vatican long denied even the existence of this proto-encyclical. But Tom Breslin found the text in 1972 amongst John LaFarge’s Nachlass. Passelecq and Suchecky have now published the full text, and Marrus’ article makes its main points available in English. For several years, some critical observers, such as Connor Cruise O’Brien, have argued that here was “one of the greatest and most tragically missed opportunities of history”. Had the Vatican issued the Encyclical, it is claimed, its effect would have been enough to “save the Jews” from Hitler’s racial fanaticism.

It is one of the most significant “might-have-beens” of contemporary church history, a point of view not surprisingly shared by many observers of the Holocaust, whether Jewish or Catholic. More cautious scholars, such as Marrus and myself, discount such exaggerations. What possible results the Encyclical might have had were fully explored at the Washington meeting, but can only really be a matter of speculation. To be sure, LaFarge’s extensive text was suitably condemnatory of racism in general, and of Nazi antisemitism and American anti-negro attitudes in particular. But it would be wishful thinking to believe that significant sections of opinion in Germany, let alone in Poland, even among Catholics, would have changed their minds about the treatment of the Jews. In fact, LaFarge’s draft largely restated the classic Catholic position on Judaism, though he was also emphatic that the Jews are the Chosen People of God and that their Covenant has not been revoked. The Church should nevertheless ardently seek their conversion. But antisemitism was directly counter-productive to such a goal, and persecution only made matters worse. Justice and charity should be the hall-marks of the Christians’ attitude. Such general statements – as is usual in Papal Encyclicals – were not accompanied by any specific denunciations of either Hitler’s or Mussolini’s policies, and, as Marrus correctly states, this was more like a repetition of conventional wisdom of the Church on antisemitism rather than a call to arms against antisemitic forces in Germany or Italy. “Under these circumstances, it is hard to imagine that the issuing of the encyclical on the eve of the Second World War would have made a great deal of difference – let alone that it might have ‘averted the Holocaust'”. It is only too probable that its publication would have been as non-effective as was the1937 Encyclical ‘Mit Brennender Sorge’.

But speculations continue, as they do about the reasons why this hidden document never saw the light of day. Conspiracy theories, such as the view that Pius XI was deliberately murdered to prevent its appearance, or that the Jesuit leaders were ready to appease Hitler because of their violent anti-communism, or that the diplomatic Pius XII would not have been elected had a stronger anti-fascist course been set earlier, were aired at the Washington meeting. But whether or not such a pronouncement would have significantly altered the Church’s stance, or the fate of the Jews, still seems very debatable. All speakers were at least in agreement that access to the Vatican and Jesuit archives would be highly desirable in order to obtain a more complete account of this draft and its subsequent history. JSC (with thanks to Peggy Obrecht).

2a) Francis Latour, La Papaute et les problemes de la paix pendantla premiere guerre mondiale, Paris/Montreal: L’Harmattan 1996 ISBN 2-7384-4600-0 350pp. For the past thirty years considerable controversy has erupted about the policies of the Vatican, and of Pope Pius XII, during the Second World War. By contrast, the equivalent stances of the Vatican during the First World War have been largely passed by. Francis Latour, who teaches at the Catholic Institute in Paris, has recently produced a serviceable account of this earlier period, using the now available records for the pontificate of Pope Benedict XV (1914-1922). He shows that, in fact, both the principles and practices followed by the papacy in both conflicts were remarkably similar,to the point where one can conclude that Pius XII’s policies clearly owed much to the example of his predecessor. So too thepredicaments and the opposition faced by the papacy were similarin tone, often sparked by the same kind of resentments and disappointments. Benedict XV’s principles, enunciated immediately following his election, which took place a month after the outbreak of hostilities, were, firstly, to uphold resolutely the ideal of peace and to refuse to succumb to the war fever which engulfed all the combatantnations. Secondly, he deliberately decided to adopt a stance of strict impartiality, refusing to support or to blame either side.Thirdly, he sought to use the Vatican’s influence to promote the cause of a negotiated settlement, and to prevent any escalation of the conflict. These were honourable motives, but subject to incessant misrepresentation. His frequent appeals for a cessation of hostilities were politely and firmly rejected, his impartiality continually impugned, and his attempts at negotiation spurned by one or other side, for as long as the hope of military victory remained uppermost.Latour demonstrates that the Papacy’s horror at the calamities of modern warfare was genuine, based on the recognition that the whole edifice of Christian civilisation was being undermined. But equally, the Vatican was obliged to face the unwelcome fact that its power was insufficient to bring about a reversal or to re-establish a rational peaceful international order. And while its political influence was held to be an asset which both sides sought to obtain for their own ends, it was inadequate to challenge the massive nationalist enthusiasms mobilised for the propagation of ever-increasing mutual hatreds.

Each of the combatants criticised the Papacy’s refusal to take sides, or attacked the Pope for failing to protest the alleged atrocities of their opponents. Each side condemned the Vatican’s stance as “too weak”, and only a handful of commentators were prepared to recognise the difficulties and dilemmas faced by the Pope and his advisers. To be sure, in 1914, the papacy’s situation was not propitious. Ever since the unification of Italy in 1870, its position in Rome has rested solely on the good will, or otherwise, of the Italian government. With the separation of church and state in France in1905, the open hostility of such Protestant nations as Germany and Britain, the apparent disinterest of the United States, and the clear suspicion of the Russian Czarist Empire, the Vatican’s only reliable supporter was Austria-Hungary. But the Austrians’ determination to plunge the continent into war over the misdeeds of Serbia was a sad blow. So too was the readiness of Italy to join the Allied side in May 1915, despite Benedict XV’s strenuous efforts to prevent this development, prompted in part by considerable fears that an Italian defeat might lead to revolution in the streets of Rome and endanger the Vatican’s very existence.

Above all, the evident inability of the Vatican to assert its ideals was a source of constant grief. The Pope’s fervent pronouncements in favour of peace were ignored or disdained, and his motives continually misinterpreted. Yet his silences were equally criticised as an abdication of his pastoral responsibilities. But Benedict XV clung on to the belief, as Pius XII was to do twenty-five years later, that sooner or later the warring parties would see the folly of their war-like ways and require the help of a moderator to bring hostilities to an end. As Latour shows, this was a worthy but utopian illusion. Only in 1917, with the stalemate on the western front, and the overthrow of the Czarist regime, did a Papal initiative in favour of peace appear to have some chance of success.

This diplomatic endeavour has been fully documented in the large-scale volume, Das Friedensappell Papst Benedicts XV, beautifully edited by W. Steglich, which appeared in 1970. Incredibly, this volume is not mentioned at all by Latour. Nor is a convincing article on this topic in Stimmen der Zeit by a later papal adviser, Fr Robert Leiber. Even though Latour has had access to the papal records, he does not produce any new analysis to account for the failure of this significant undertaking.With the advantage of hindsight, it is clear that at no point did the prerequisites for a successful peace initiative by the Papacy or anyone else prevail. At no point were all the powers, simultaneously, prepared to recognise that neither side could obtain victory, to withdraw their ambitious dreams of national aggrandisement, or to abandon the hope of revenge for all the terrible losses suffered. Such a moment never came, and the papacy’s influence was palpably too weak to induce such changes in the belligerents’ attitudes.

On the other hand, the fact that all the combatants used moral terms in the attempt to justify their actions, and to demonise those of their opponents, appealing thereby to their public opinions, meant that the Vatican’s idealistic stance could not be rejected outright. Noble ideals were useful for propaganda purposes, even though they served only to foster illusionary prospects. In the event, Realpolitik and force majeure were the true proponents of each state’s policies,including those of the United States, despite President Wilson’s highly moralistic rhetoric. Wilson’s refusal to give any support to the papacy’s efforts was, in fact, deeply disillusioning, as was his capitulation to the anti-clerical forces, especially in Italy, which refused to allow the Vatican to be invited to the eventual Paris Peace Conference, or to become a member of the League of Nations. These rebuffs hurt, and were taken as a poor reward for Benedict’s high-minded and persistent pursuit of peace throughout the conflict. They were attributed therefore to the petty jealousies of anti-clericals, unable to grasp the nobility of the Pope’s ideals.

But, as Latour admits, no one at the Vatican was prepared to accept how much its own anti-democratic, authoritarian and distinctly un-ecumenical political style, dreaming of reconstituting a kind of mediaeval world order with the Pope as its spiritual guardian, was bound to arouse opposition and suspicions. The first great war was, in fact, a striking reminder that the Vatican’s position in the world was far less influential than its dignitaries desired. It was the beginning of an irreversible process. But the dilemma of how to uphold the vision of Christian idealism in the midst of the realities and disasters of power politics remains. Latour has provided a useful description of how this predicament was faced during the short reign of Benedict XV. JSC.

2b) James Bacque, Crimes and Mercies. The fate of German civilians under Allied Occupation 1944-1950, Toronto:Little, Brown and Co., 1997 288 pp. James Bacque is, according to the book jacket, a novelist living in Toronto. He is also, clearly, as man of extensive compassion, particularly for Germans. His earlier book, Other Losses, sought to describe the fate of “about 1 million” Germans captured at the end of the war in 1945, imprisoned on the banks of the Rhine and left to starve to death by the deliberate neglect of the American zonal authorities directed by General Eisenhower. This provocative accusation was supported by some highly original manipulation of demographic statistics seeking to account for the”disappearance” of so many suffering Germans, but earned only justified criticism from such historians as Eisenhower’s biographer.

Bacque has now produced a sequel which equallyconcentrates of the plight of the Germans in the post-1945 period,particularly those who endured “ethnic cleansing” by being expelled from eastern Europe, or as prisoners-of-war in the Soviet Union. Altogether, Bacque calculates, at least 9.3 million Germans died needlessly after the war because of the conditions imposed by the four major victors. “This is many more Germans than died in battle, air raids and concentration camps during the war” (p.131). Bacque believes these deaths have never been fully reported, largely because of a high-level cover-up by the Allied governments and their compliant historians. His aim now is to reverse this omission by exposing the lies and hypocrisy which enabled so-called democratic governments to ignore the mistreatment and plight of these helpless Germans. His final chapter entitled “History and Forgetting” describes what he calls “the great institutions of public opinion feverishly denying the Western Allied atrocities of the post-war period against Germany” (p.191), and points to the unfortunate reception given to those brave enough to bare the truth.

To support his case. Bacque tried to see the records of the Red Cross in Geneva, but was denied access. He did however visit the KGB archive in Russia, despite having no fluency in this language. Documents he obtained in Moscow, he claims, accurately gave the figure of 500,000 German deaths in Soviet captivity. Therefore, another missing million must have died in western-held camps. The silence about their fate, he asserts, amounts to a vast international falsification maintained for fifty years. “Sometimes the Allies have lied in co-operation with the Soviets, sometimes they have lied to foment hatred against them,s ometimes they have lied to cover up their own crimes. They are still at it” (p.88). The contrast between the well-publicised atrocities of the Nazis and the cover-up of post-war Allied crimes, forcing the Germans into starvation and death, is therefore glaring.

But his own examination of the surviving statistics and thed iscrepancies in reported death rates in Germany for 1946-1950, when he reaches the conclusion that 5.7 million persons”disappeared”, is largely speculative and so remains unconvincing. Bacque produces a similar indictment of the dreadful expulsions of Germans in 1945-6 from Poland, Czechoslovakia and other eastern European countries, despite the Potsdam Conference’s assurance that such population transfers would be orderly and humane. Enormous suffering also resulted form the Allies’ vindictive policy of dismantling industrial production in the name of reparations, when, Bacque claims, the Americans took from Germany at least twenty times the amount later returned under the Marshall Plan. It was all part of the Allies’ horrendous animus against the Germans. Leading figures in this conspiracy were such men as Henry Morgenthau, Churchill, De Gaulle and Eisenhower, the authors of the infamous policy of unconditional surrender. On the other hand, there were also the “good guys” such as Herbert Hoover, Victor Gollancz, Senators Langer and Wherry, journalists such as Dorothy Thompson, countless aid workers and a very few honest reporters. These were the merciful saviours whose compassion was in the end successful. Thanks to their efforts, Bacque believes, the ban on private aid to Germans was relaxed. And the horrendous German death rates in 1946-7, twice those of pre-war years, finally forced the Allied authorities to abandon their starvation policies.

As a historical work, this book suffers from both imbalance and imprecision. Contrary to Bacque’s assertions, much of the inhumanity inflicted on the German population has been well and more fully described before. His graphic recapitulation of eye-witness reports only adds graphic details to this regrettable story. On the other hand, his attribution of infamous motives to the main agents of Allied occupation policy ignores the complexities, even the contradictions, which dominated the political scene at the time. Portraying the Germans as helpless victims of Allied vindictiveness totally overlooks the fact that only a handful were prepared to acknowledge, let alone show remorse for, the manifold crimes committed in Germany’s name during the Nazi years. All observers at the time were appalled by the Germans’ complete pre-occupation with their own sufferings, and their total amnesia about what they had done to others. His indulgence in a conspiratorial view of history may in fact be due to his belief – as explained in an appendix – that, as a result of his earlier work, he was (is) under surveillance by such agencies as the CIA, his post censored and his telephone calls intercepted and recorded. Deplorable as this may be, his moralistic approach to history, seeing it as a continual struggle between the criminals and the merciful, leaves much to be desired. By upholding the democratic ideals of truth and justice, and by denouncing some of the lies and distortions of yester-year, Bacque is in the good company of other “expose” journalists. But his own partiality is so strident and one-sided that only the converted are likely to find much of value in this extended diatribe. JSC

3) Kirchliche Tourismus or Postcards from Sacred Spots (This column, which will appear from time to time, invites contributions from anywhere, recalling any aspect of church history which may be of general interest to our readers).

Shaking the Heavens. One of the lesser-known but still notable pilgrimage sites in North America is situated at Niskeyuna, near the banks of the Mohawk River, in upper New York State. When Ann and I visited there last month, we found it almost engulfed by Albany’s noisy airport. But two hundred years ago, this was where, in 1774, the first settlement of the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing was established under the charismatic guidance of their leader “Mother” Ann Lee. Because of the fervour of their religious ecstasy, especially in dancing, their opponents labelled this sect as the Shakers, and the name has stuck ever since.

Ann Lee was born in 1736 in the squalid slums of Manchester, at atime when the Lancashire cotton mill owners ruthlessly exploited child labour. She never attended school, nor indeed ever learned toread or write. Nevertheless as she grew up, she developed aremarkable spiritual presence which was to have a profound effecton thousands of lives. Having been mightily impressed by the preaching of George Whitefield, she joined a break-away group of Quakers who warmly encouraged the gifts of women, including preaching and prophesy. Their intense religious search led them to believe in the imminent return of Christ, and in Ann’s case to the conviction that this would happen in the form of a woman. But first, sin must be overcome, and, in particular, Ann believed, the sin of sexual lust. It is probable that she came to this view after her own early marriage and the loss of four children in rapid succession to early deaths. She therefore persuaded her followers that henceforth they must follow a life of strict celibacy, when men and women would live together in community but on separate lines.

Persecuted and harassed by the authorities in England, she resolved to seek the remoteness of America where she hoped their special witness would be allowed free expression. Somehow orother she and eight others, including her husband and brother, set sail for New York, and after a year of hardship and deprivation, finally realised their goal of setting up a small agricultural colony where they could practise their worship and evangelisation.In the 1770s the British American colonies were in a state of political and religious turmoil. Possibly for this reason, Ann Lee found an increasing number of men and women willing to renounce all worldly possessions and sex and to join the Shakers’ idealistic vision of new birth, despite the rigid discipline demanded.

By the turn of the century numerous Shaker farm settlements hadbeen established in New England, and by the mid-nineteenth century had spread as far away as Ohio and Kentucky after the remarkable religious revivals which swept these states. But in the following decades, the Shakers began to decline in numbers.Without children to carry forward their beliefs, they relied solely on sporadic conversions which grew less frequent. The last colony finally ceased in 1970, when their assets were turned over to a Heritage Society.

To get a clearer view of the Shakers’ life, we went over to Hancockin Massachusetts, about forty miles from Niskeyuna, which wasfirst settled in 1790 and still maintains most of the Shaker buildings in good repair. Here we found an impressive brickhouse, the dwelling of some 100 Shakers, symmetrically built with separate doors and staircases for men and women, and still furnished with fine examples of the simple pure Shaker furniture. The meeting house is beautifully proportioned with a large open area where the community practised their dancing rituals and gave their testimonies to God’s blessing. Here too were the workshops where the Shaker furniture, which has since gained a world-wide reputation and is much sought after, is still being made, and the weaving rooms where chair seats, pads and baskets are produced, and dried herbs and seeds harvested and packaged for sale. The commitment to hard work of this community is readily apparent in what was to become one of the most successful attempts in community living ever seen, where work and worship went hand in hand..

Their success and ingenuity in developing newinventions to improve their farming techniques were such that, int heir day, these settlements became models of a thriving agricultural way of life. But primary was the devotion to God in simplicity and humility, following the precepts of their foundress Ann Lee.In Niskeyuna, all that remains now of this inspiring experiment is part of the old orchard and a historic cemetery where Mother Ann Lee lies buried, surrounded by the ranks of her followers withs imple gravestones under the maple trees glowing in the autumnal sunshine. Here they rest, as witnesses to St Paul’s words: “All that believed were together and had all things common, being of one heart and of one soul” in an island of peace set over against the worldliness against which they witnessed so fervently, transformed, as they were convinced, by the perfect will of God. JSC

Our website, containing the index to all previous issues, can befound at: http://omni.cc.purdue.edu/~gmork/akz/index/html

With all best wishes,

John Conway

jconway@unixg.ubc.ca

Dear Friends,
Contents:

1) Prize awarded to Peter Hoffmann
2) Letter to the Editor: John Abbott
3) Report on Amer.Soc.Church History, Seattle
4) New issue of Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte
5) Book reviews: a) John Moses, From Oxford to the Bush b) Rainer Hering,
Vom Seminar zur Universitat
6) Book notes: Hamerow on Cardinal Faulhaber
7) Work in progress: Suzanne Brown
8) Vergangenheitsbewaltigung in Canada
9) Bonhoeffer statue

1) A belated but sincere congratulations to our list-member Peter Hoffmann of
McGill University on being awarded the 1997 Konrad Adenauer prize, sponsored
by the Humboldt Foundation, to enable him to undertake a biography of
General Ludwig Beck.

2) Letter to the Editor; John Abbott writes:” . . . I certainly agree with
what appears as your main objective: to call attention to those residual
barriers, institutional and mental, which continue to impose blinders upon
historical inquiry into religious and church matters. Especially welcome was
the emphasis upon the importance of social historical perspectives, and the
potential these still hold for church history. . . .The Editorial left me
with lingering questions, perhaps because its call for more open-endedness
was itself a little too open-ended.Some discussion of the relationship of
the history of religion to denominational histories might be of help in
drawing into clearer focus the tasks and possibilities that lie ahead . . .
”

3) The American Society of Church History meeting, Seattle, Jan10-11th 1998.
By some fortunate coincidence, this society arranged two sessions on the
Protestant Churches in 20th centuryGermany, which provided for five
excellent papers, and a good discussion thereafter. Both Brian Huck and
Matthew Hockenos spoke on the significance of the Darmstadt Declaration of
1947,and its political influence, as part of the post-1945 attempt to come
to terms with the Protestant church’s legacy, and provide guide-lines for the
future. Dan Borg outlined the situation in the 1920s and Doris Bergen
described the political impact of the Deutsche Christen in 1933 and 1939,
when she showed how this section of the Protestant church, in its euphoric
enthusiasm, provided legitimisation for the new Nazi regime and its
subsequent launching of war. Bob Goeckel gave an able account of the
much-disputed theme of the relationship of the churches in post-1945
East Germany and the Stasi, and put this in the wider context of the
situation in other east European churches. These were splendid contributions
to the task of coming to terms with the past.

4) New issue of Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte, 1997/1 The contents of this
belated issue concern the topic “Buergerkriegund Religion”. and consist of
papers read in Heidelberg in November 1996, dealing with two central problem
areas of civil war and religion, Northern Ireland and Bosnia. 5 useful
papers are in English, describing the complications of the Irish
situation.Particularly notable is Anne Herbst-Oltmanns’ survey of the
reactions of the major ecumenical organisations’ attempts to bring peace to
the Balkan region.
KZG is now into its 10th year of publication and remains an indispensable
and important resource for our subject. Subscriptions can be obtained via
the Editor, Prof G.Besier,Kisselgasse 1, D – 69117 Heidelberg, Germany.

5a) ed. John A.Moses with K.J.Cable et al., From Oxford to theBush. Essays
on Catholic Anglicanism in Australia. The Centenary Essays for the Church
Chronicle. Broughton Press, SPCK-Australia, Hall,A.C.T. and Adelaide 1997
ISBN 1 876106 06 9
In August last year we printed Matthias Zimmer’s insightful review of the
Festschrift for John Moses, honouring his years of scholarship in the field
of German history. We now have an additional reason to honour him with the
appearance of this new book of essays on Catholic Anglicanism in
Australia.John Moses, who is also an Anglican priest, has gathered a
distinguished group of authors, who seek to remind their readers of the
richness of the Catholic tradition within the Anglican Communion, a position
which Moses feels has been both neglected and maligned.The occasion for this
collection came from the unearthing in the Brisbane Diocesan archive of a
dusty file of newspaper articles, first published in 1933 to mark the
centenary of the beginning of what became known as the Oxford or Tractarian
Movement. This revival of the Catholic element in the Church of England was
associated with such luminous figures as Newman, Pusey and Keble, and
brought a new impetus to the efforts to restore church life and liturgy. It
was translated to Australia through the recruitment of numerous
Oxford-influenced priests and scholars,many of whom served in the Australian
colonies with distinction, founding dioceses and brotherhoods in the bush,
and introducing an added dimension to the range of ministries in what was
then the Church of England in Australia.Moses’ book begins by reprinting the
1933 articles, with accompanying useful biographical sketches of the
authors, most of them prominent clerics in the Australian church and
sympathetic to this wider understanding of Anglicanism. Their aim was to
defend the Catholic tradition within Anglicanism against its detractors
whether from the low-church evangelical camp, who saw them as proto-converts
to Roman Catholicism, or from Roman Catholics who rejected them as
pseudo-Catholics, deficient because they refused to acknowledge the plenary
authority of the Pope. John Moses’ own introductory article is hard-hitting,
even polemic, and criticizes both camps for their rigidity in failing to
appreciate the virtues of this segment of the Anglican understanding of
churchmanship. Catholic Anglicans, Moses believes, have rightly stressed
the insight that Catholicism is not to be equated with obedience to Rome, but
rather is a heritage enjoyed by the whole Church. The Church of England
existed long before the Reformation and the Oxford Movement sought and still
seeks to embody this continuity, rather than to stress the separation and
subsequent Protestant emphasis since the 16th century. Its achievement lay
in reviving the elements of beauty, richness and mystery in the liturgy, a
strong commitment to social service, and a recognition of the corporate
nature of the church as a whole, rather than merely the need for individual
salvation through personal redemption.
The Australian churches of the 19th century were largely the product of
rival missionary efforts. The result was a polarization between the Church of
England and other denominations, and also within the Anglican fold. The
strongest contingent of Evangelicals were to be found in Sydney and
Melbourne, but many rural and poorer dioceses were established and
maintained in the Catholic Anglican tradition. The consequent tensions for
years prevented any development of a unified Australian Anglican Church. And
the same divisions gave rise to disastrously erroneous views of each other’s
positions and often a climate of suspicion and legalistic backbiting, which
still has not been fully overcome. Many of these disputes arose over the
doctrine of authority in the Church, so the article by the Primate of the
Australian Church, Keith Rayner,depicting the Anglican perspective on this
issue, is particularly notable. In the same vein, Moses and his colleagues
are to be congratulated on this endeavour to recapture the “Vision Splendid”
of Catholic Anglicanism with its emphasis on historicity, catholicity and
intellectual vitality. This intelligent collection of essays will
undoubtedly contribute to a more open and ecumenical climate in Australia,
and at the same time also serves to give valuable insights to church
historians elsewhere.
J.S.C.

5b) Rainer Hering, Vom Seminar zur Universitaet.
Die Religionslehrerausbildung in Hamburg zwischen Kaiserreich und
Bundesrepublik. Hamburg: Doelling und Galitz Verlag 1997,234pp. Rainer Hering
has spent much of the past decade producing articles about various aspects
of religious education and educators in Hamburg. This book is an appropriate
and very useful culmination of his efforts. Hering makes thorough use of
church, state and private archives as well as interviews to craft a solid
and intelligent study, providing a clear narrative about the training of
religious education teachers in Hamburg, followed by comments from four
participant/eye witnesses. He also gives short biographical sketches of four
dozen individuals, along with a thorough and useful bibliography.This book
deals with a narrow topic, focussing on the preparation of teachers of
religion in Hamburg over a period of about a century. One is introduced to a
long list of individuals – pastors, bishops,politicians and educators – most
of whom have not caught our attention before and would be unlikely to do so
outside the confinesof this book. However Hering also touches upon several
issues of general significance.First, there is a complex of issues
surrounding religious education in modern German schools. Hering shows that
from the Wilhelmine era on, representatives of the Lutheran church in
Hambiurg viewed religious education as a way to forestall or reverse the
secularization of German society. To that end they tried to achieve greater
influence over the training and appointment of teachers of religious
education and over the content of the education provided to students. As
Hering describes their attitude about the end of the last century: “. . .der
Schuler sollte eine persoenliche Beziehung zu Christus als dem Erloeser
finden. . .Eine kritische Reflexion der Unterrichtsinhalte war nicht
vorgesehen” (20).During the ensuing century such a goal proved less and less
achievable. Although religious education remained a staple part of the
school curriculum (non-mandatory in Hamburg since 1905), the specific
political climate in Hamburg, influenced by the SPD, and the general
direction of society, influenced by secularization and then
multiculturalism, meant that the church could never create the system of
religious education it most desired. By the 1970s everyone recognised that
“critical reflection” was necessary, and religious education moved from
teaching specific Lutheran doctrine to a consideration of ethical and
spiritual issues in the modern world. Hering also illustrates the gradual
professionalization of schoolteaching as an occupation. During the
Kaiserreich, university education was required only for those destined to
teach at the secondary level. Primary teachers, by contrast, were trained
without benefit of Abitur, and were ready to go to work by about the age of
twenty. During the Weimar period, Hamburg created its own university (1919)
and also began requiring a university training for all its teachers. Hering
describes at length how this affected the provision of religious education
for future reachers, again noting the differing expectations of church and
state. The second important focus in this book is Hamburg itself. For
a variety of reasons, Hamburg represents a unique locale for the study of
religious education. Hering find comments already in the mid-19th century
claiming that Hamburg’s “real church” was the stockmarket, and that by the
turn of the century it was considered “die unkirchlichste Stadt des Reiches”
(22). Thus the trend towards a secular society came early in Hamburg, so
that this analysis of the issues might claim to be a study of the cutting
edge. It is also worth noting that Hamburg has inspired a good deal of
important research on the Nazi era, as seen, for example, in the work of
Ursula Buttner or Geoffrey Giles, The reserve police battalion described by
Chris Browning, and later used by Daniel Goldhagen, also came from
Hamburg.That points us to the Third Reich and thus to perhaps the most
important issues described by Hering. He gives a nicely nuanced view of
religious educators and religious education during the Nazi era. It is clear
that religious education did not prosper, though the required changes in
curriculum and teaching personnel took about a year and a half to take
effect. From that point on, the Old Testament received much less attention
and virtually all faculty were members of the Party and/or enthusiasts of
the “Deutsche Christen”persuasion. Even that enthusiasm did not prevent the
virtual removal of religious education from Hamburg University after 1939-40.
The sensitivity and complexity of the Nazi past is illustrated very nicely
in Hering’s presentation. He begins, for example, by stating “Die . .
Hinweise auf nationalsozialistische Aktivitaeten einzelnersollen jedoch
keinen’ Enthuellungcharakter’ haben; eine moralischeoder gar juristische
Wertung bzw. Verurteilung ist nicht das Ziel dieser Arbeit” (15). However,
he proceeds to describe the enthusiasm for Nazi politics and ideas exhibited
by a number of individuals with significant post-war careers in education
and thechurch. For example, Simon Schoeffel, Bishop of Hamburg from1933-34
and again from 1946-54, led the right-wing”Evangelischen Elternbund” in
Hamburg which sided with the Nazis in the elections of 1933 (35). Hering
then adds in a footnote about Bernhard Lohse’s biography: “Diese Aspekte
werden nicht beruecksichtigt”So too Helmuth Kittel (not to be confused with
Gerhard Kittel), a student of Emanual Hirsch, taught New Testament in
Hamburg from 1931-33: “Lange Zeit galt Helmuth Kittel aufgrund
seiner Verkuendingungskonzeption als Anhaenger der Bekennenden Kirche.
Tatsaechlich war er jedoch ueberzeugter Anhaenger des Nationalsozialismus und
Deutscher Christ und hatte bis zum Beginndes Zweiten Weltkrieges in diesem
Sinne publiziert” (64). Hering notes the anti-Jewish stress in Kittel’s
work, before and even after1945. Because of his activities and membership in
both the NSDAP and the SA, Kittel had to teach at the Paedogogische
Hochschulen in Celle and Osnabruck before returning to a chair in religious
education at Muenster in 1963.To cite a final example, Hering describes the
racist language and assumptions in the writings of Kurt Leese, professor at
Hamburg from 1935-1940, who also received an honorary doctorate from Marburg
in 1957. Leese’s voelkische and biological assumptions could be read as
inherently National Socialist, yet he was released from the university in
1940 on charges of being politically unreliable and a “judenfreund” (84-87).
By describing these individuals, Hering helps to show the pervasiveness of
ideas which undergirded the Nazi regime, and which dominated the teaching of
religious education in Hamburg during the 1930s. Hering also argues for
refinement in our analysis: similarities in vocabulary and discourse do not
automatically identify individual who supported the Nazi regime root and
branch.
Robert P.Ericksen, Olympic College, Bremerton, Washington,USA

6) Book notes; T.Hamerow contributes an insightful but critical chapter 8 to
ed.David Wetzel, From the Berlin Museum to the Berlin Wall. Essays on the
Cultural and Political History of Modern Germany, Praeger, Westport,
Connecticut/London 1996, pp 145-168, dealing with the career of Cardinal
Faulhaber. Faulhaber was a “representative of an ecclesiastical elite
in Germany that entered into a Faustian bargain with the dark forces of
totalitarianism. . . . He was an important spiritual leader condemned to
live in a time of destruction and cruelty. But blinded by a sense of
national humiliation, by fear of social upheaval, by hostility to the
secular outlook of modern society, and by nostalgia for a vanished age of
confessional orthodoxy, he never fully grasped the universal moral
implications underlying all religious faith”.:

7) Work in progress: Suzanne Brown, University of Maryland. I am working on
the papers of Alois, Cardinal Muench, sometimePapal Visitator to Germany
after 1945, and Catholic Liaison to theAmerican Military Government in
Germany, now held at theCatholic University in Washington, D.C. I am using
these as a lens to magnify the thoughts, feelings and difficulties of
post-war German lay Catholics. I am interested in the ways in which their
post-war identity was shaped by their experiences during the Third Reich and
the war. Many lay Catholics wrote Muench very frank letters, and poured out
their troubles, possibly because most Catholic newspapers described him as a
German (his family emigrated to the USA in the 1880s) and as sympathetic to
the sufferings of Germans, due to his pastoral letter “One World in Charity”
published in 1945 or 1946. These letters are fascinating. So far I have found
that most average lay Catholics felt victimized in various ways by the
Nazis, and did not consider either non-Catholics or non-Germans to have been
victims of Hitler. If they did consider them, Catholics felt akin to them as
“fellow-sufferers”.Such feelings left little or no room for a sense of
responsibility or guilt for the crimes of the Third Reich.

8) Vergangenheitsbewaltigung in Canada.The following speech was delivered by
the Minister of Indian Affairs to a large public gathering in Ottawa on Jan
7th 1998
(Ed.note: Most of the residential schools referred to were run by
thec hurches, and were phased out 30 years ago)
“As aboriginal and non-aboriginal Canadians seek to move forward together in
a process of renewal, it is essential that we deal with the legacy of the
past affecting the aboriginal peoples of Canada,including the First Nations,
Inuit and Metis. Our purpose is not to rewrite history but, rather, to learn
from our past and to find ways to deal with the negative impacts that certain
historical decisions continue to have in our society today. The ancestors of
First Nations, Inuit and Metis peoples lived on this continent long before
explorers from other continents first came to North America. For thousands of
years before this country was founded, they enjoyed their own forms of
government. Diverse, vibrant aboriginal nations had ways of life rooted in
fundamental values concerning their relationships to the Creator, the
environment, and each other, in the role of elders as the living memory of
their ancestors, and in their responsibilities as custodians of the lands,
waters and resources of their homelands. The assistance and spiritual values
of the aboriginal peoples who welcomed the newcomers to this continent too
often have been forgotten. The contributions made by all aboriginal peoples
to Canada’s development, and the contributions they continue to make to our
society today, have not been properly acknowledged. The government of Canada
today, on behalf of all Canadians,acknowledges these contributions.Sadly,
our history with respect to the treatment of aboriginal peoples is not
something in which we can take pride.. Attitudes of racial and cultural
superiority led to a suppression of aboriginal culture and values. As a
country, we are burdened by past actions that resulted in weakening the
identity of aboriginal peoples, suppressing their languages and cultures, and
outlawing spiritual practices. We must recognize the impact of these actions
on the once self-sustaining nations that were disaggregated,
disrupted, limited or even destroyed by the dispossession of traditional
territory, by the relocation of aboriginal people, and by some provisions of
the Indian Act. We must acknowledge that the result of these actions was the
erosion of the political, economic and social systems of aboriginal peoples
and nations. Against the backdrop of these historical legacies, it is
remarkable tribute to the strength and endurance of aboriginal People that
they have maintained their historical diversity and identity. The government
of Canada today formally expresses to all Aboriginal people in Canada our
profound regret for past actions of the federal government which have
contributed to these difficult pages in the history of our relationship
together. One aspect of our relationship with Aboriginal People over this
period which requires particular attention is the residential school system.
This system separated many children from their families and communities and
prevented them from speaking their own languages and from learning about
their heritage and cultures. In the worst cases, it left legacies of personal
pain and distress that continue to reverberate to this day. Tragically, some
children were the victims of physical and sexual abuse. The government of
Canada acknowledges the role its played in the development and administration
of these schools. Particularly tothose individuals who experienced the
tragedy of sexual and physical abuse at residential schools, and who have
carried this burden believing that in some way they must be responsible,
we wish to emphasise that what you experienced was not your fault and should
never have happened. To those of you who suffered this tragedy at
residential schools, we are deeply sorry. In dealing with the legacies of the
residential school system, the government of Canada proposes to work with
First Nations, Inuit and Metis people, the churches and other interested
parties to resolve the long-standing issues that must be addressed. We need
to work together on a healing strategy to assist individuals and communities
in dealing with the consequences of this sad era of our history. No attempt
at reconciliation with aboriginal people can be complete without reference
to the sad events culminating in the death of theMetis leader Louis Riel.
{Hanged for insurrection, 1886] These events cannot be undone; however, we
can and will continue to look for ways to affirm the contributions of Metis
people in Canada and of reflecting Louis Riel’s proper place in Canada’s
history. Reconciliation is an ongoing process. In renewing our partnership.we
must ensure that the mistakes which marked our past relationship are not
repeated. The government of Canada recognizes that policies that sought to
assimilate aboriginal people,women and men, were not the way to build a
strong country. We must instead continue to find ways in which aboriginal
people can participate fully in the economic, political, cultural and social
life of Canada in a manner which preserves and enhances the collective
identities of aboriginal communities, and allows them to evolve and flourish
in the future.”

9) Bonhoeffer statue A statue of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, sculpted by Tim
Crawley, is one of10 stone carvings of Christian martyrs of the 20th century
to beplaced on the west portal of Westminster Abbey, London next summer. The
unveiling ceremony will be held on July 9th 1998. It will be conducted by
the Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey. Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II
will attend, as will numerous church dignitaries from around the world. A
commemorative book describing the witness of these 10 Christian martyrs is
being edited by Dr Andrew Chandler, Directorof the George Bell Institute,
Queen’s College, University of Birmingham. The chapter on Bonhoeffer is
contributed by Klemens von Klemperer. This should be available in time for
the unveiling ceremony.
With all best wishes,
John S.Conway
jconway@unixg.ubc.ca

Dear Friends,
With this issue, our Newsletter begins its fourth year of publication- with
gratitude for your continuing interest and support. Your letters of
encouragement for this endeavour have been much appreciated, and would seem
to indicate that trying out this new form of technology has been useful in
transmitting information and opinions around the world. My hope that this
service would extender horizons, and deepen our awareness of the
significance of contemporary Church History, has only been confirmed by
the generous way in which so many of you have sent in contributions. At the
same time, I believe this shows that our discipline is a vibrant one, as is
surely demonstrated by the wide range of new publications and conferences in
this field. In an attempt to summarize my impressions over the past years, I
am, for the first time, taking the liberty of submitting to you an Editorial
on the present state of Contemporary Church History.
Contents: 1) Editorial 2) Query to the list – Rob Levy 3) Note on Religious
Education in Germany 4) Book Reviews: a) Silomon, Synode und SED Staat b)
Laechele, Ein Volk,ein Reich, ein Glaube 5) Coming to terms with the past in
Jena
1) Editorial:In one of his sprightly addresses to the British Ecclesiastical
History Society, Professor Reg Ward provocatively remarked: “Nineteenth
century critics were entirely mistaken in supposing that political economy
was the dismal science; it is in fact ecclesiastical history. Goethe had a
word for it: ‘Es ist die ganze Kirchengeschichte Mischmasch von Irrtum und
Gewalt.’ “Not too many of the readers of this Newsletter will be likely
to agree with Reg Ward or Goethe. But perhaps it is time to consider some
features of our occupation sine ira et studio.In the past, contemporary
church history, like most of church history, has been affected by two rather
obvious but often overlooked factors. The first of these is the tendency
to hagiography. All institutions, of course, with a long and rich heritage
have a continuing desire to celebrate and to hand on to the next generation
the stories of their illustrious predecessors. The Church, as one of Europe’s
most enduring institutions, knew very well, from the earliest times, that the
lives of the saints of yester-year were a highly effective form of
inspirational literature. But in modern times, the growth of a more
scientific and sceptical treatment of the past has shown the defects of such
a hagiographical approach. Today we are well enough aware that the claims of
the church to be heard can no longer be based on spectacular miracles or
divine intervention. This legacy is one of the reasons why church history,
including its contemporary dimension, is so often dismissed by secular
historians. Church historians have to work hard to show that their commitment
to scholarly objectivity is not being distorted by the strength or the biases
of their faith.The second observable factor about contemporary church
history is that of narrowness of horizons. Too often, its practitioners
have demonstrated a regrettable tendency to limit their researches solely to
the affairs of their own denomination. This can be seen, for example, in the
treatment of the churches’ experience during the Nazi period. When both
Catholic and Protestants were being persecuted by the Nazis, many forms of
resistance involved joint co-operation amongst churchmen. But one would
hardly know this from the histories of the Church Struggle written in the
aftermath,which have almost exclusively been composed along denominational
lines..This feature, while prevalent in every country, is
particularly notable in Germany, which has seen such a high level
of achievement in the field of theological literature. Very few countries are
so well endowed as Germany with professional theologians and church
historians, largely due to the generous state support of the numerous
theological faculties. By comparison, in the United States, Canada, Britain,
to say nothing of France,theological studies are poor relations on the
academic scene, and this is reflected in the volume and quality of their
research. But the criticism is not unjustified that, in Germany, the
existence of separated, sometimes rival, Catholic and Protestant
theological faculties and their institutional pressures to maintain the
blinkers of the past, has not always been in the interests of
contemporary German church historiography.Fortunately there are now signs
that this separation is breaking down, not least because church historians
are recognising the need to overcome the barriers between Kirchengeschichte
and Profangeschichte, and because secular historians are posing the kind of
questions about the churches’ life and social effectiveness which require a
more ecumenical and eirenic approach.It is therefore all the more welcome
that a new generation of church historians recognise the need to adopt a
fresh approach which will attempt to rethink the complex relationship between
the church and society, especially on the much discussed.questions
of modernization and secularisation I think here of those who are now
producing the series “Konfession und Gesellschaft”, edited
by A..Doering-Manteuffel, Martin Greschat, Kurt Nowak and J-C.Kaiser, or
those, inspired by Natalie Davis and Stephen Ozmentin the USA, concerned
with 16th century church history.1) The stress now is on the need to widen
the horizons of church historians by adopting the techniques of social
historians, so that a more collaborative relationship with secular historians
can be found. While it is still too early to predict the results, and while
some church historians continue to believe that the principal purpose
of church history is to provide ethical guidance for the laity, these
new developments may be able to do something to overcome the limitations and
restrictive thinking of the past. 1) see the insightful introduction by
Michael Weinzierl to Vol 22 of the Wiener Beitraege zur Geschichte der
Neuzeit,”Individualisierung, Rationalisierung, Saekularisierung. Neue
Wege der Religionsgeschichte” 1997, as reported on the list H-SOZ-U-KULT,
Thursday Nov 27 1997.JSC
2) Rob Levy (Washington State University, Pullman, Wash) writes:”Some time
ago I posed a couple of questions to this list group. First, in light of the
French Episcopate’s public act of contrition over their “failure” or guilt
towards French Jews during the Nazi occupation of France, I was curious to
find out whether or not the German Roman Catholic Church had done something
comparable.And secondly, I was also interested in the questions raised by
this well-publicized event. Since the Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland’s
Stuttgart Declaration of 1945 and Karl Jasper’s 1946 book, what has happened
since then? And what about the German Catholics?The list members’ responses
to my questions proved to be highly interesting and very suggestive of issues
requiring further study.One common point raised by most who responded was:
there has not been a survey done of this topic. I am aware of a
PhD dissertation underway on the topic of collective guilt and
collective responsibility by Suzanne Fleming-Brown (University of
Maryland,College Park); and there are, to be sure, works addressing
various aspects of the so-called “Schuldfrage”, but not a comprehensive
or historical review of this question.Interestingly enough, while I was
compiling your responses to my questions, on another list (H-ANTISEMITISM), a
woman, who recently “discovered” that she may be distantly related to
Martin Luther, publicly apologised for her ancestor’s antisemitic remarks and
possible connection with the alleged “eliminationist”antisemitism of
National Socialism.This touches on several aspects of the Schuldfrage.
First, it raises the question of responsibility and accountability by
succeeding generations. Elie Wiesel’s response to this woman was that
the children of the perpetrators are not and should not be held responsible –
even if a connection with Luther and Nazism could be made. This, of course,
raises another set of questions: is it possible to make a teleological
connection between Luther’s antisemitism and Hitler? and what about
Protestant (or more generally Christian,including Catholic) theology and the
Holocaust – both during and after?While I was waiting for answers to my
original query, the Vatican held a gathering of 60 international scholars
(“Roots of Anti-Judaism in the Christian world” under the aegis of the
Theological-Historical Commission of the Central Committee for the
Jubilee Year 2000) to discuss strains of antisemitism within the
Church’s teachings, which focussed attention on the questions of
the Schuldfrage(n).A New York Times’ article, 1 November, attributed this
conference,in part, to the recent declaration of the French bishops and
“a similar apology made several years ago by Germany’s bishops”.The text
referred to by the NYT was a statement issued on 24 April 1995 by the German
bishops “zum Gedenken an das Ende des Zweiten Weltkrieges vor 50 Jahren”.
While this text does approach an “apology”, its context, I feel, is somewhat
diluted by attempting to equate all victims of National Socialism, e.g.
“zahllose Soldaten”and “fast 12 Millionen Deutsche die muessten von
der heranrueckenden Front fliehen oder wurden aus ihrer Heimat vertrieben”.
While this review of the Schuldfrage(n) has proved interesting, I still
remain unsatisfied. I do not claim to be a theologian, nor do I understand
the inner workings of the Church, but it seems to me that the Church(es)
could be a little more forthcoming with a public reconciling of its apparent
“silence” (for lack of a better word)during the Holocaust. While I
sympathize with all the victims of Nazism and of the Second World War, and I
dislike a hierarchy of victimization, it seems to me that the persecution and
attempted mass murder of the European Jews constitute a unique category
of victims. And while I remain undecided as to the concept of”collective
guilt”, a complex social and moral dilemma, perhaps rephrasing it as
“collective responsibility to the past”, may be more appropriate. Isn’t that
the heart of the term”Vergangenheitsbewaeltigung”? I would welcome any and
all in-put.I would like to thank Rev John Hughes for providing me with
a wealth of material on this subject, and his willingness actively to discuss
these issues.”Rob Levy(Ed: Rob Levy will be glad to supply bibliographical
references to the above. General replies can be addressed to the whole List
=kirzeit-l@unixg.ubc.ca, or to Rob Levy = rdlevy@wsunix.wsu.edu.)
3) Note on religious education in Germany:”Denominational religious
instruction is not an outmoded privilege of the churches, but rather a
necessary responsibility of the secular state”. Underscoring the leading role
of the churches in “Germany’s democratic order”, Chancellor Helmut Kohl
strongly endorsed the tradition of making religious education available in
Germany’s public schools in his speech at the opening of the
Evangelical Church’s General Synod on Sunday 2 November. Except
in Brandenburg, German parents have the option of having their children
receive church-supervised religious education as part of their school
studies. Brandenburg’s replacement of confessional instruction with courses
in ethics and philosophy is a “scandal”according to the Chancellor, who
added that he could not understand why the arguments against religious
instruction in the schools are not being challenged more vigorously.(From
This Week in Germany – November 7,1997)
4) Book reviews:a) Anke Silomon, Synode und SED-Staat. Die Synode des
Bundes der Evangelischen Kirchen in der DDR in Goerlitz vom 18. bis
22.September 1987. (Arbeiten zur kirchlichen Zeitgeschichte. Reihe B:
Darstellungen Bd. 24). Goettingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1997. 458 pp.This
volume was produced under the auspices of the Evangelische Kirche in
Deutschland as one response to the sensational and wounding allegations of
complicity between the churches in the former East Germany and the SED’s
notorious agency, the Stasi.Coming to terms with the record of the forty
years endured by the churches under Communist rule is a mammoth task, for
which these churches, apparently, had neither the resources, nor the will,
to undertake in a systematic and objectively scholarly fashion. So instead,
the EKD’s council agreed to publish a “Stichprobe” which would clearly
illustrate the complexity of the relationship between church officials and
the SED regime, and would indicate the extent to which the former had
succumbed to, or resisted, the intrusive machinations of the latter.For this
purpose, the deliberations of the 1987 Synod of the Federation of East German
Churches were chosen for close scrutiny and analysis. Two young researchers
were given the task of assessing all the available documentation, so as to
avoid a one-sided reliance on the Stasi records alone, as had been the case
in the much criticized book by Professor G.Besier and Stephan
Wolf,”Pfarrer,Christen und Katholiken. Das Ministerium fur Staatssicherheit
und die Kirchen”, (1991). The records of this Synod seemed to offer the
opportunity to present a microcosm of the whole eventful period by clearly
indicating the kind of forces and pressures which were expressed both openly
and behind the scenes. The objective was to clarify the extent to which
the behaviour of the churches on this particular occasion could lend support
to the charges of subservience and collaboration with the regime, or
alternatively justify the claim that the churches’ activities were an
integral part of the resistance movement which, two years later, successfully
toppled the regime in what has been called the”Protestant Revolution”.The
result is now published in the prestigious series of Darstellungen put out by
the EKD’s Arbeitsgemeinschaft für kirchliche Zeitgeschichte, which arose out
of the earlier desire to provide scholarly studies of the Protestant churches
under National Socialism, and is now extending its work beyond 1945.In 1987
the SED appeared to be fully in command. No one foresaw its future collapse
only two years later. Its foreign policy seemed successful, and its control
over internal dissidents was highly developed through the vast network of
informers deployed by the Stasi. Nevertheless the churches remained objects
of suspicion,being allegedly manipulated or at least influenced by West
German or other foreign opponents of the G.D.R. state. For their part,
the churches were conscious of their increasingly problematic situation with
markedly declining support, internal dissension, and differences in the ranks
between their expectations and the reality they had to face. All these
factors were to be reflected in the speeches and manoeuvring at this meeting
in the small town of Goerlitz.One of the central, but controversial themes of
the Synod was the question of “Witnessing for Peace”. Earlier the churches
had declared their vocal opposition to the concepts of mutual deterrence, the
deployment of nuclear weapons and the militarisation of the education system.
Such policies would contradict Christian doctrine, would be disastrous for
the populations of central Europe as the first victims of any such escalation
of military hostilities, and would further frustrate the long-held desire of
the churches to seek reconciliation between the peoples of the two Germanies.
The SED regime was particularly concerned lest the Synod should be used as a
focal point for rallying resistance to its so-called “Peace Policies”. A
whole team of officials was therefore mobilized to interview Synod delegates
in order to persuade them to adopt the “correct” ideas needed for the”defence
of Socialism”, as the SED Party saw it. The leaders of the churches were also
to be left in no doubt about the Party’s wishes,with the clear warning that
the church meeting should not be”misused” for political purposes, lest the
earlier “fruitful relationship” between the state and the churches be
endangered.”Negative forces” were to be kept under close surveillance by
the Stasi’s informers, including several high-ranking churchmen (here listed
in the book’s index), who were expected to send in extensive reports,
including the proposed texts to be brought forward by the alleged
“reformers’. So too the officials of the regime’s fellow-travelling
Christian Democratic Party were told off to seek to influence Synod delegates
along the right lines, and to report back. The extensive paper trail left by
all these carefully-planned measures is here documented in the book’s
appendices. But there is no evidence at all that any delegate’s mind was
changed. The whole massive effort was a failure.The actual debates of the
Synod, as the regime feared, soon took on a highly explosive character,
centring around the “Witness for Peace” theme. Silomon gives a day-to-day,
blow-by-blow account with extracts from many of the speeches, so that a
comprehensive picture emerges. On the one hand, the frustrations
and resentments of the more idealist delegates were expressed in moral and
theological terms. On the other side, prudent caution and expediency
characterized the church leaders’ responses, even when they sympathized with
the intent. Because of the diversity of views expressed, the conclusion can
hardly be sustained, either that the Synod delegates were all intimidated by
the SED’s pressure to be mere accomplices of the regime, nor that the Church
stood up resolutely for revolutionary change. Rather the debates show
a remarkably open climate of high-minded consideration for a church caught up
in a repressive system and anxious to present a faithful and thoughtful
witness which would be true to the Gospel and responsive to perceived needs
of their society. In other words, the delegates refused to be cow-towed into
a pietistic self-centred concern with personal salvation, as the regime would
have wished. On the other hand, they were also cognisant that the pastoral
needs of their followers should not be endangered by flamboyant challenges to
the existing political structures.Silomon’s detailed account of the Synod
itself is followed by two interesting chapters on the reactions, first within
the churches, and then by the regime’s officials. The Synod’s organisers
hoped that its moderate tone would lend strength to their moral appeals. But
the fact that, for the first time, the Synod had publicly discussed
issues critical of the government afforded a platform around which
new opposition groups were able to mobilize. The dilemma of the church
hierarchy in trying to play a reconciling role was therefore only made more
acute.For its part, the regime reacted with increased irritation
and suspicion against the “provocative” statements of such churchmen as
Provost Falcke. The Politburo itself resolved on steps to counteract the
Synod’s “negative campaign”. The hardliners in the Party stuck to their rigid
position that no concessions to the churches should be made, regardless of
the consequences. The subsequent escalation of measures to quash popular
dissatisfaction,both in or outside the churches, only served to discredit
the more conciliatory approach of the SED’s State Secretary for
Church Affairs, Gysi. Not long afterwards, Gysi was summarily
dismissed.Silomon’s conclusion is evenly balanced. The Synod delegates
gave expression to the popular and widespread concern about the regime’s
policies, but for moral not political reasons. On the other hand, the church
leaders’ caution was prompted, not by complicity, but by awareness that the
SED could, and did, implement even harsher measures against the churches.
Anyone wanting to see this Synod in a broader and more theological
perspective would do well to turn to the new book by Gregory Baum, The Church
for Others.Protestant Theology in Communist East Germany, Eerdmann Publishing
Co., Grand Rapids, Michigan 1996.J.S.C
b) R.Laechele, Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Glaube: die ‘Deutsche Christen’ in
Wuerttemberg 1925-1960. (Quellen und Forschungen zur wuerttembergischen
Kirchengeschichte, Bd 12), Stuttgart:Calwer Verlag 1994. PP xi + 319.One
facet of the German Church Struggle receiving more attention lately is the
attempt to fuse Christianity and Nazism, spearheaded by the ‘German
Christian’ movement. North American members of this Association will be
familiar with Doris Bergen’s Twisted Cross (Newsletter April 1996), but may
not be acquainted with another new contribution by Rainer Laechele. He has
produced a comprehensive survey of the ‘German Christian’ movement
in Wuerttemberg, the first such study of its kind since Helmut Baier’s1968
survey of the movement in Bavaria and Reijo Heinonen’s 1978 analysis of the
‘German Christians’ in Bremen._Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Glaube_ is broad in
scope. In a series of chronological chapters, Laechele traces the origins of
the ‘German Christans’ in the volkisch-religious groups of late Weimar
Germany and follows them right through their heyday in the Third Reich and on
into the West German era, where he explores an array of successor
movements.Laechele contends that the ‘German Christians’ attracted clergy
and laity who held a nationalist, anti-Jewish, anti-bolshevist,
anti-liberal and anti-pacifist mindset. However, their attempt to take over
the Wuerttemberg Land Church failed largely because the Land Bishop,Theophil
Wurm, launched his own pre-emptive “seizure of power”.According to Laechele,
the set-backs of 1933 and 1934 led to the ascendancy of ideological radicals
and provoked the movement to consider an outright rejection of the state
church. Interestingly, he adds that the ‘German Christians’ were virtually
unaffected by the most important initiative of their Confessing Church
rivals, namely the Barmen Declaration of May 1934. He supports this view with
a quotation from a non-‘German Christian’ pastor, who depicted Barmen as a
“church-political concoction” which came partly from the ivory tower and
partly from the negotiating table.Between 1934 and 1936, ‘German Christians’
were increasingly marginalised and their members maligned as pietist,
marxist, freethinkers or Catholic in orientation. Laechele illustrates
the deepening division within the Land Church prior to the war, using the case
of Pastor Georg Schneider of Stuttgart. Schneider’s racialist vision of a
modern, supra-confessional church devoid of any preaching of the miraculous
was enthusiastically supported by many urban parishioners. For its part, the
Land Church government was torn between granting concessions to Schneider and
exercising church discipline against him. In the end, Schneider’s
on-going presence opened the door to all manner of ceremonial innovations as
well as an intensive campaign for ‘German Christians’ to withdraw from the
Land Church. All this at a time when the Nazi Party was growing more
antagonistic towards any form of Christianity. After the outbreak of war,
‘German Christians’ readily volunteered for military service, thus adding to
the universal shortage of clergy.The church-political conflict cooled as
Germany’s fortunes waned and all ecclesiastical activity dwindled under the
Allied invasion.Ultimately their fate was that of falling between two
stools, for both the Nazi leadership and the Wuerttemberg Land
Church establishment rejected the ‘German Christian’ attempt to
synthesize Nazism and Christianity. Following the conclusion of the war,
the Wuerttemberg Supreme Church Council dismissed around 50 clergy with
‘German Christian’ orientations, though some later returned to the ministry.
The most interesting aspect of the fate of the ‘German Christian’ movement,
however, was its continuation after the war, both within and outside the Land
Church. ‘German Christians’ survived by couching their ideas in theological
debates and, ironically, by arguing that they had preserved Christianity
in the hostile atmosphere of the National Socialist regime.One of the
strengths of Laechele’s account in his ability to write the history of the
‘German Christians’ at different levels, effectively employing biography and
local history in the service of his analysis. For instance, Immanuel
Schairer is presented as an example of a ‘German Christian’ theologian, just
as Georg Schneider is used to demonstrate the increasing radicalization of
the movement, the mixed reaction of the Land Church, and ultimately the fate
of leading ‘German Christians’ after the fall of Nazism. The town of Aalen
serves Laechele as an example of the difficulties of establishing a local
‘German Christian’ chapter (though he never really explains what the ‘German
Christians’ there undertook to do). Finally, the career of Dekan Riedler of
Schorndorf is depicted in order to illustrate the price paid by ‘German
Christians’ for opposing Land Bishop Wurm, and the extent to which the
church-political conflict was carried right down into the parishes.Laechele
falls short, however, in his attempt to connect the history of the ‘German
Christians’ to their political, social and ideological context. He does well
to explain the volkisch-nationalist background of the leaders of the movement
(many were World War I veterans) and suggests that their lack of advancement
within the Land Church hierarchy might have contributed to their antipathy
for the official church. However Doris Bergen’s subsequent attention to the
ideological aspects of the ‘German Christian’ movement throughout Germany –
its anti-Jewish, anti-theological, anti-feminist, and anti-Catholic
tendencies – suggests that Laechele could have addressed these issues more
fully in Wuerttemberg.Nonetheless, as a history of the movement in one
German Land Church, Laechele’s work is most stimulating. It describes
the ‘German Christians’ not simply as theological strawmen for the Confessing
Church, but as participants in a concerted attempt to unite Christianity and
German culture. It was the attraction of that Christian-nationalist hybrid
that ensured the ‘German Christians’would find continued support even after
the fall of Nazism.Kyle Jantzen, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon.
5) Coming to terms with the past in JenaIn a recent issue, DAS PARLAMENT
reported on a symposium held in Jena to debate the fate of the peace movement
there in the early 1980s. Herewith an extract: “Ein wichtiger, immer
wiederdiskutierte Punkt was das Verhaltnis von Kirchen undFriedensgruppen.
Zwar bot die evangelische Kirche den Friedensgruppen einen gewissen
Schutzraum, aber schon bald kames zu Konflikten mit der Kirchenleitung, die
um das gute Verhaltnis zum Staat besorgt war. Versuche, in
Kirchenraumen Friedenbekenntnisse zu verlesen oder gar Friedensgottesdienste
zu gestalten, stiessen immer haufiger auf Widerstand, teils mit
der Begrunding, die Konzepte seien politisch und nicht vereinbar
mit religioser Liturgie.Anderseits gab es an der Basis zahlreiche Pfarrer und
kirchliche Mitarbeiter, die das Evangelium wortlich namhen, sich fur
die Friedensarbeit einsetzten und damit automatisch politische
Position bezogen. Viele Jugendliche empfanden dennoch Kirche eher als Kontroll
statt als Schutzraum und zogen sich zuruck. Die in Nachhinein
bekanntgewordene Stasi-Verstickung von Kirchenmitarbeitern and Amtstragern in
Thuringen verhartete das Verhaltnis weiter. Oberkirchenrat Udo Siebert, der
in den 80er Jahren Superintendent in Jena war und der den
oppositionelle Bewegungen seine private Raume zur Verfugung gestellt hatte,
sahsich jetzt in der makabren Situation, das damalige Verhalten
der Kirchenleitung erklaren und verteidigen zu mussen. Pfarrer
Walter Schilling, Nestor der Offenen Arbeit in der DDR, warnte
vor Selbstgerechtigkeit und undifferenzierten, holzschnittartigen Urteilen,
die nicht berucksichtigen, das der Leitungsapparat der Kirche mit diesem
Anspruch uberfordert war.”
Our web-site is: http://omni.cc.purdue.edu/~gmork/akz/index.html
With best wishes to you for 1998.
John S.Conway
jconway@unixg.ubc.ca

Association of Contemporary Church Historians

(Arbeitsgemeinschaft kirchlicher Zeitgeschichtler)

John S. Conway,Editor. University of British Columbia

Newsletter – December 1997 – Vol. III no 12

Dear Friends,

A very happy and joyous Christmas to you all!

“Theologically Christmas Day is the greatest occasion for rejoicing offered to sinful mankind; but this aspect of it is so august and so great that the human mind refuses to contemplate it steadily, perhaps because of its own littleness, for which of course it is in no way to blame. It prefers to concentrate its attention on ceremonial observances,expressive generally of good will and festivity, such as, for instance, giving presents andeating plum-puddings”. Joseph Conrad, Last Essays

Contents

1) Conference Reports:

a) Darmstadt Declaration b) G.S.A.,Washington D.C. c) Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte, Wittenberg, Germany

2) Journal Articles: D.Bergen, “Wehrmacht Chaplaincy”, C.Strohm, “Faith and Resistance”, L. Siegele-Wenschkewitz, “Evangelical Academies”, M.P.Berg, “Austrian Socialists and Church after 1945”

3) Book reviews: a) Fleischner and Phayer, Cries in the Night, b) Sittser, Cautious Patriotism

4) Work in progress: a) Mark Lindsay, b) John Abbott

1a) A recent conference in Arnoldsheim, Taunus, considered the significance of the Darmstadt Declaration of 1947, and its role in the thinking of the German Evangelical Church in the post-war period. Its origins came from the dissatisfaction with the lack of concreteness of the previous Stuttgart Declaration of 1945. Its authors, principally Barth, Niemoller and H-J Iwand, centred on the “erroneous paths” which the German people and Church had previously followed, particularly their nationalist and anti-Marxist sentiments, and sought to prepare the way for a better future. The controversy this aroused about the correct political course of the Church caused much dissension for many years. Papers were read by Dr. Hartmut Ludwig (Berlin), Joachim Perels (Hannover), Martin Kramer (Magdeburg) and Kurt Nowak (Leipzig), which also considered the longer term impact of this Declaration in both the FRG and the GDR. (from a report submitted by Brian Huck (Mainz and Pennsylvania).

1b) The 21st annual meeting of the German Studies Association was held in Washington. D.C. at the end of September. Of the 138 sessions, approximately a dozen had some relevance to contemporary church history, two of which, though they precede our time period, may be of interest. Chris Clark (Cambridge), known for his fine book on the Prussian Mission to the Jews, compared Napoleon’s Concordat with Friedrich Wilhelm’s Prussian Union. Although Napoleon was noted for his cynicism (I became a Muslim to win Egypt, etc.) and Friedrich Wilhelm for his piety, Clark saw a similar raison d’etat in each case. Both leaders saw a renewal of religion and the church as useful to the stability of the state; both expected to gain prayers for the head of state, etc,; and the clergy expected to gain greater stability in their organization and a more solid base for financial support. The second topic from this earlier period explored “Judaism as constructed by German Protestant Theology”. One ironic theme showed that the Protestant advocates of careful historical analysis paid no attention the history of first century Judaism, accepting instead the view of Phariseeism in the New Testament. Two students of Gerhard Besier (Heidelberg) presented their research, Gerhard Lindemann from his completed dissertation on “The fate of Christian pastors of Jewish descent in Hanover, 1925- 1955”, and Christian Binder from his ongoing work on “Christians of Jewish descent in the Baden State Church”. Each paper involved fine research into a difficult and important chapter of German church history, with regional evidence on questions overlapping religious and racial categories, especially regarding the so-called “Mischlinge”. In neither situation did Christians of Jewish descent fare well, although individual acts of bravery could be found. These papers may appear in a future issue of Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte, with Robert Erickson’s commentary. Gerhard Besier presented a useful review of the present controversy over the Scientology movement in Germany, and Doris Bergen updated her work on German military chaplains in World War II. If this GSA meeting is any indication, it does seem as if the significance of religious issues in modern history might be making some headway. (Robert Ericksen, Olympic College, Bremerton.)

1c) Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte 1997 conference, Wittenberg, 6 – 9 November. “Religion and Denomination – Foundation of Current and Future societies in Europe?” Inevitably a meeting in the refectory of the Augustinian monastery was forced to face the legacy of the Reformation, though in a singularly Germano-centric manner. M.Treu, Director of Wittenberg’s Lutherhalle, began with a pithy introduction to the Confessio Augustana as a document of unity or separation, and was followed by two papers on “Political religion” and “Denominational elements in the totalitarian systems of the 20th century”. The former concentrated on such contemporary issues as the challenge of Islamic fundamentalism, but did not discuss the question of a pluralistic education or the need for a common European foreign policy. The latter discussed “Widerstand” in its German context, but at the expense of comparisons with other resistance movements elsewhere in Europe – what made Germany different begged for an answer. Nicholas Hope raised the question of why cradle-to-grave welfare secularism had succeeded after 1945 beyond all reasonable religious hope, but could have said more about the Scandinavian initiatives to pursue peace and ecumenism, especially in the inter- war period. All of us might do well to take a rain check on 1) the gains and losses of the mainline churches, and the plurality of smaller denominations in this century, and 2) the fateful ‘Anpassung’ of the churches to political ideologies (a Volkskirche could be racialist or socialist), and the fact that the agencies of human destruction – poison gas or the mass murder of the Jews – were not stopped by Christians. National power-politics corrupted the churches at the expense of Christian and Judeo-Christian fellowship. Emeritus Bishop Rogge, bless him, left us with the text for Sunday, November 9th: Luke 17: 20-24. (Nicholas Hope, c/o Wiss-Theol.Seminar, Heidelberg University).

2) Journal Article: Doris Bergen, “‘Germany is our Mission – Christ is our Strength’ The Wehrmacht Chaplaincy and the ‘German Christian’ Movement,” CHURCH HISTORY, 66/3 (September 1997), 522-36. This is an excellent essay by one of our Newsletter colleagues on a topic that has not had much coverage in the English-language literature. The amount of material on the U.S. army chaplaincy during World War II is fairly sizeable, and the Chaplains’ Corps even had its own official historian. A good study of the German chaplaincy would be a useful contribution, so it is valuable to have Doris Bergen’s exploration of the role of the ‘Deutsche Christen” in the Wehrmacht. Many of them won appointments as chaplains, and the movement actively propagated its pro-Nazi Christianity through religious literature distributed to the troops. But there was also a confluence with the “mainline” Protestants, since almost all chaplains echoed the German Christian view that Germany’s religious traditions reinforced National Socialism and that Christianity and Judaism were naturally opposed. Although the regular military chaplaincy (including the military bishop, Franz Dohrmann) was cool to the pesky German Christians, their success in infiltrating the corps was considerable. Bergen estimates that approximately thirty percent of the Protestant chaplains had German Christian connections of one kind or another. Their impact was amplified by the fact that virtually no clergy associated with the Confessing Church gained admittance to the chaplaincy. They also had a voice in pastoral care to the armed forces through the officially sanctioned religious literature, much of which was produced by German Christian presses and writers, and religious propaganda which they sent directly to the front. The decision of the authorities to issue only New Testaments (i.e. omitting the Old Testament altogether) and the production of a “de- judaized” military songbook reflected the impact of their views, if not direct personal influence. The commonality of their mission with that of the Wehrmacht chaplaincy could be seen in the message of “manly Christianity”, one that emphasised soldierly virtues: hardness, self-sacrifice and heroism. Since their movement was radically antitheological, they rejected considerations of doctrine as bookish, Jewish and effeminate. Instead they propagated a simple, vague notion of Christianity which allowed easy incorporation of Nazi ideology. Their image of God had “no contours”; the message had nothing to do with the basic teachings about Jesus, sin or judgement, but they still offered the promise of God. They defined the church in racial terms as a community of “pure Germans” devoted to the exclusion of Jews, Jewish influence, and “non-Aryans”, that is, converts from Judaism and their descendants. They even hoped to meld Protestant and Catholic Germans into a “National Church”. In short, Christianity and the church were means to this end of national unity. Ironically the ideology of the dominant Nazis, such as Bormann, Himmler, Goebbels and Hitler himself, was militantly anti- Christian. A number of measures were taken to curtail the size of the chaplaincy and to reduce its numbers. Even the German Christians were not spared as their distorted Nazi Christianity was rejected, on the grounds that their claim to synthesize National Socialism and Christianity implied that the Nazi worldview by itself was inadequate. Still they tried to prove their worth by encouraging the fighting spirit of the troops, and the more they did so, the more they were caught in the trap of helping to legitimise German brutality and strengthening their ideological opponents in the Nazi Party. In their struggle for survival, the German Christian chaplains displayed loyal commitment to the goals of Hitler’s war, thereby giving assent to its atrocities, murder and genocide. In so doing, they undermined their moral authority as independent agents of the Christian message and betrayed the God they professed to serve. Richard Pierard, Indiana State University, Terre Haute.

Three further new journal articles are of interest: Christoph Strohm, “Die Bedeutung von Kirche, Religion und christlichen Glauben im Umkreis der Attentaeter des 20 Juli 1944″, in Zeitschrift fur Kirchengeschichte, 1997/2, pp 213 ff. L Siegele-Wenschkewitz, ” ‘Hofprediger der Demokratie’, Evangelische Akademien und politische Bildung in den Anfangsjahren der Bundesrepublik Deutschland”, in Zeitschrift fur Kirchengeschichte 1997/2, pp 236 ff. Matthew P.Berg, “Between Kulturkampf and Vergangenheitsbewaltigung. The SPO. the Roman Catholic Church and the problem of reconciliation”, in Zeitgeschichte (Innsbruck), 1997 no 5/6

3) Book reviews: a) Michael Phayer and Eva Fleischner, Cries in the Night. Women who challenged the Holocaust. With a foreword by Nechama Tec. Kansas City: Sheed and Ward 1997. xxi + 143 pp. US $15.95.

This short but vivid memoir of seven Catholic women who assisted Jews to escape from Nazi persecution and annihilation is both a heartfelt tribute and an attempt to record, for an English-speaking audience, their bravery and courage at a time of utmost peril. It is not the authors’ intention in any sense to provide an alibi for the Catholic Church. Rather they seek to add to the fullness of the record of the Holocaust by rescuing from obscurity or forgetfulness the actions of a few courageous women whose deeds provide a ray of sunshine in this otherwise dreadfully dark chapter of history. As such the authors’ aim is similar to David Gushee’s fine book The Righteous Gentiles of the Holocaust (Fortress Press 1994). Nor are they forgetful that Protestant women, such as Marga Trocme, played a similar role. The seven examples they have chosen come from France, Poland, Germany and Hungary but all were united in their abhorrence of the effects of the Nazis’ racial inhumanity. As care-givers, some by profession and others by conviction, they also had a bountiful compassion which refused to be limited by any sense of cautious prudence. As Catholic women, their efforts were not always applauded by their male superiors. Margarete Sommer, for instance, working in Berlin for the Catholic charity organisation, was frequently rebuffed by the presiding Cardinal Bertram, and Gertrud Luckner did not fare much better in Freiburg. But both were determined to do what they could to provide practical assistance and comfort, warning their Jewish friends of the Gestapo’s imminent moves, and organising relief packages and even cash where possible. In 1943 the Gestapo caught up with Luckner and sent her off to the bestial Ravensbruck concentration camp, where she barely survived. But from 1945 onwards she carried on in the same spirit, and was finally able to raise enough funds to build a new home for victims of the Holocaust in Israel. Mother Matylda Getter in Poland and Germaine Robiere in France were alike in resolving to take swift and necessary action to rescue Jews even if their church leaders were silent. Part of their motivation was undoubtedly the frustration they felt at such ambivalence and prevarication. For them, the suffering individual came first. They shared a conviction, a passion, a willingness to fight, and so humanitarian, nationalist and Christian sympathies could be fused. As Germaine said, rescuing Jews was “the Christian life of the moment”. She was impulsive, impetuous but nonetheless extraordinarily determined not to allow herself to become a bystander or to share the shame of her countrymen in not doing enough to help. In Vichy France, Marie-Rose Gineste was more fortunate in having the open support of her bishop, for whom she smuggled dangerous literature to the parishes on her bicycle, and found homes for refuge in remote farmhouses, while Germaine Bouquet was deeply influenced by the famous Jewish educator Jules Isaac, for whom she provided a safe haven in 1943-4, enabling him to undertake his seminal work “Jesus and Israel”. Equally notable were the actions of Margrit Slachta in Hungary whose sense of patriotic devotion went hand in hand with the principle of brotherly love and an obligation to Christ. As the head of a noted Social Sisterhood, she used her aristocratic connections to call on the Hungarian bishops to protest and to oppose the bureaucrats’ inhuman treatment of the Jewish minority. But when rebuffed she refused to give in, and in 1943 actually travelled to Rome to see the Pope himself. His apparent sympathy, even if not matched by any prophetic protest, sustained her efforts to challenge both the state and the church hierarchy in order successfully to rescue many of the Jews of Budapest after the Nazi take-over of power in March 1944. These were women who cared. But in the post-war world their valiant witness was a standing reproach to the church, most of whose members had collaborated with the enemy or remained passive while the Jews were being murdered. Their stories were ignored, and they themselves even felt guilty that they had not been able to do more, and perplexed by the moral ambiguity of the Catholic Church. Yet they played their role, especially Gertrud Luckner, in preparing the ground for the eventual abandonment of Catholic anti-Judaism in 1965. As powerless women, their contributions to a new era of Christian-Jewish reconciliation fully merit the tributes given in this book. It deserves a wide readership. J.S.C.

b) Gerald R. Sittser, A Cautious Patriotism: The American Churches and the Second World War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997. 317 pp. $39.95.

Sittser, a professor of religion and philosophy at Whitworth College in Spokane, Washington, has produced the first full-length study of the role which the U.S. churches played in World War II. To be sure, this reviewer had contributed a chapter on World War II to Ronald A. Wells, America’s Wars: Christian Perspective (Mercer University Press, 1992) and a long entry on the topic to the Dictionary of Christianity in America (InterVarsity Press, 1990), but Sittser’s volume goes into much greater depth and detail. His thesis is that the churches practiced a “cautious patriotism” with regard to the conflict, unlike World War I where American Christians plunged unreservedly into the war effort or Vietnam where the Christian community was deeply divided about it. The churches were loyal to the endeavour but not blindly or fanatically patriotic. Churchmen believed that America had a divine destiny and the Allied cause was righteous, but they refused to see the war as a holy crusade and repeatedly called for the spiritual revitalisation of the church. They tried to strike a balance between nationalism and internationalism, political realism and religious idealism, and priestly concern and prophetic criticism. They sought to minister to the needs of the nation, but not at the expense of their commitment to justice and peace. They saw the war as a spiritual conflict that called for a resurgence of religious influence in world affairs.

Sittser maintains that the manner in which the churches expressed their cautious patriotism varied from issue to issue and event to event, and often they were deeply divided over matters of strategy and how they religiously interpreted the war. Still, they were united in their basic beliefs about American democracy, freedom, and religion, and they were convinced that the transcendent God calls all nations to repent, even America. Also, the victory would be of little value if the peace did not strengthen the church and advance the cause of Christianity in America.

Besides just making statements and pronouncements, the churches involved themselves in the war abroad through the chaplaincies and denominational programs for servicemen and civilians. Some churchmen even took part in the fight at home for civil liberties and racial justice. In a great many ways they sought to mitigate the moral costs of war, alleviate human suffering, and apply Christian principles to the postwar peace.

The book’s methodology is a content analysis of thirty-nine religious periodicals (both denominational and nondenominational) published in the years 1939-1945, and the year-books or annual meeting reports of eleven different denominations during this time. The author also looked at many of the books written by theologians and church leaders. His industry in collecting and analysing data on what churches and their officials were saying and doing is admirable.

Sittser’s most interesting chapters have to do with the crisis facing church leaders in the pre-war era and the debate over entering the war. Also noteworthy are his treatment of the issue of theodicy – how to reconcile the goodness of God with the badness of war – and the efforts to link democracy with the Christian faith. Other topics include the churches’ influence on wartime society, actions in the mobilization for war, involvements with the military hierarchy, their less than impressive record in the civil rights struggle, relief efforts, and planning for life in the postwar world.

We are indebted to Sittser for marshalling so much information and providing many helpful insights. At the same time he calls attention to the ambiguities in their positions and deep divisions in their ranks, even as they were doing their utmost to support the war with a cautious patriotism. On the other hand, his apparent lack of understanding of European history limits his perceptions, and he neglects some topics which I feel belong in the discussion, above all, President Roosevelt’s use of civil religion to rally the American people behind the war effort. In short, the book is a useful study but more work remains to be done on the religious aspects of the American involvement in World War II. Richard Pierard, Indiana State University, Terre Haute.

4a) Work in progress: Mark Lindsay, Western Australia: “Covenanted Solidarity: The theological bases for Karl Barth’s opposition to Nazi antisemitism and the Holocaust”

In the historiography of Holocaust and Church Struggle studies, Karl Barth occupies a strangely marginalised position. Historians have acknowledged his seminal role in the founding of the Confessing Church, his pivotal involvement in the composition of the Barmen Declaration, and his leadership of the ecclesiastical resistance to the Nazi regime. By contrast, his vehement rejection of Nazi antisemitism and the resultant Holocaust, as well as his forceful advocacy of the need to assist the persecuted Jews, have received scant attention. Historians have displayed an unwillingness to encounter the theological issues involved in Barth’s position with any penetrating depth, and have likewise shied away from Barth’s massive “Church Dogmatics”, in which his most profound defence of the Jews is located. Most historical monographs of Nazi antisemitism and the Holocaust, if they mention Barth at all, do so in a critically negative fashion, usually assuming that Barth was either anti-Judaic himself or simply uninterested in the question. My thesis seeks to counteract this received wisdom by focussing, not only on Barth’s explicitly political pamphlets, but also on his dogmatic theology from the early 1920s through the “Church Dogmatics” period. I look at how Barth treats the motif of ‘Israel’ and, more importantly, how his own conceptions of revelation, Christology and election stand in deliberate antithesis to the Nazified versions of the same. The Nazis adopted and then perverted these theological motifs in an effort both to deify the regime and Hitler, and to demonise the Jews and thus to justify their mass murder. I seek to show that Barth’s usage of these concepts was at once a recapturing of theological orthodoxy and, more significantly, a basis from which his defence of the Jews could be, and was, launched. Barth was no mere armchair theologian, but was socially and politically active throughout his career. Barth’s pro-Israel hermeneutic was no aberration but rather the extension of his social(ist) praxis from his earlier pastoral work in rural Switzerland, and hence found practical expression during the Nazi years. The conclusion of this dissertation is that the overwhelming weight of evidence, in contrast to previous historical assessments, shows that Barth was both actively involved in resisting the Nazis’ antisemitic violence, and that this praxis was grounded securely in his profound Christocentric theology.

4b) John Abbott, Chicago. My dissertation -in-progress is an extended study of Bavarian rural politics from the 1980s to 1933. My narrative focus is the Bayerischer Bauernbund, the surprisingly durable protest party in rural Altbayern from 1893 to the Machtergreifung. Thematically, I am most interested in the intersections between rural social and cultural development, on the one hand, and political behaviour, on the other. I have found myself drawn to consider the evolution of the Catholic political establishment, and the process by which the Church, as the self-designated guardian of tradition, in reality became the chief instrument of rural modernization. In my view, the main impetus came from the network of Catholic lay associations, co-operatives and schools, providing a series of new accommodations and syntheses. Nineteenth-century rural Bavaria had a large, rising class of independent peasant proprietors, whose social ascent had found no equivalent in Catholic culture, dominated as it was by local priests and Catholic nobility. The rise of organisations such as the Bauernbund created new spaces in public life; in this respect they allowed for a “re-masculinization” of Catholic lay culture, and helped to contain and domesticate the conspicuous anti-clerical impulses of many peasants These associations helped to introduce and popularize a new role model, a new type of Catholic “public man” who combined religious piety with educational achievement, and technical expertise with a popular touch. Their emphasis was on technocratic virtues, representing the advantages of modern, efficient organization. These peasant co-operatives, despite their origins in a vaguely anti-capitalist rhetoric, became important schools of peasant capitalism in the first decades of this century. The results were to change substantially the face of popular Catholicism in the countryside. The rise of a new Catholic meritocracy in rural affairs marked an important change in church attitudes towards education, giving new scope for upward social mobility. In tandem with the Centre/BVP parties, these associations became important transmission links between peasant youth and the wider world of opportunity, opening careers to rural talent, as reflected in government service or office. These developments also point to a shift of power within the Church milieu. Where priests had once enjoyed a virtual monopoly over village affairs, the long-term impact of peasant literacy, of an associational life increasingly independent of clerical (and aristocratic) tutelage, and of the rise of an essentially ‘bourgeois” Catholic lay leadership, was to force a redefinition of clerical authority and competence., though more glacial than episodically linear, and frequently influenced by events from outside. But the differences in Catholic culture between 1900 and 1933 are striking. I try to suggest that this “silent” cultural revolution occurring within Catholicism prior to 1933 produced developments roughly similar to the socio-cultural transformations broadly identified with the original Protestant Reformation. As such, they paved the way for the emergence of the kind of political alignments seen in the CDU/CSU since 1945.

A complete list of the books reviewed in 1997 can be found by consulting our Website.

All the best for a happy Christmas and the New Year.

John Conway

Association of Contemporary Church Historians

(Arbeitsgemeinschaft kirchlicher Zeitgeschichtler)

John S. Conway, Editor. University of British Columbia

Newsletter – November 1997 – Vol III, no 11

Dear Friends.

For Remembrance Day: The Past

When we would reach the anguish of the dead,

hose bones alone, irrelevant, are dust,

But of ourselves we know we must, we must

To some obscure but ever-bleeding thing

Unreconciled, a needed solace bring,

Like a resolving chord, like daylight shed.

Or do we through time reach back in vain

To inaccessible pain?

Frances Cornford

Contents

1) Journal article: Klemperer on Bonhoeffer

2) Book reviews

a) W.D.Halls, Politics, Society and Christianity in Vichy France

b) A.Jarlet, Oxford Group and Churches in Northern Europe, 1930- 1945

c) ed H.Lehmann, Saekularisierung, Dechristianisierung, Rechristianisierung im neuzeitlichen Europa

d) T.Sandkuehler, Endloesung in Galizien. Der Judenmord in Ostpolen und die Rettungsinitiativen von Berthold Beitz, 1941- 1944

3) Churches in the G.D.R.

4) Work in progress: Kyle Jantzen

1) David Diephouse kindly sent in the following contribution: The more theologically inclined Kirzkeit-Listler may be interested in Klemens von Klemperer, “Beyond Luther? Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Resistance against National Socialism”, Pro Ecclesia, Vol 6/2, Spring 1997, pp 184-198. Klemperer argues that “if Bonhoeffer moved beyond Luther’s theology, he never really departed from him”. He seeks to show that the roots of Bonhoeffer’s commitment to resistance and responsible action can be found in his rediscovery/reappropriation of, among other things, Luther’s understanding of sin, suffering, and redemption (e.g. theology of the cross). The apparent contradictions between Bonhoeffer’s activism and the traditional Lutheran canon, Klemperer concludes, represent a paradoxical affirmation of the “relevance of Luther’s theology in our world come of age”. A thought-provoking piece.

2) Book Reviews

2a) W.D.Halls, Politics,Society and Christianity in Vichy France, Oxford/Providence,USA: Berg Books 1995 419pp

Controversy over the fate of France during the years of humiliation from 1940-45 between the supporters of resistance and those of collaboration has continued unresolved for more than fifty years. W.D.Halls’ masterly account of the experiences of the French churches is therefore both timely and valuable. Rich in its archival explorations, insightful into the dilemmas confronting the church leaders as well as the laity, this study is written from a helpful ecumenical point of view which includes significant comparisons between the majority French Catholics and the minoirty, but still influential, French Protestants. Halls’ treatment therefore supersedes earlier more partial or apologetic accounts such as those by Duquesne or Pierard, and gives added depth to the work of Marrus and Paxton, or more recently the single chapter in Phillippe Burrin’s, Living with Defeat. While his wide-ranging investigations lead him to paint an inclusive panorama, his sympathies clearly lie with those who staunchly resisted the Nazi- led encroachments on church activities, or heroically gave help to the most persecuted of the Nazi victims, the Jews.

The military defeat of 1940 was both unprecedented and calamitous. The churches were whole-heartedly nationalistic, but at the same time resented the kind of second-class status forced on them by the secularist and anticlerical policies of the Third Republic. Its overthrow and replacement by the authoritarian regime of Marshal Petain seemed therefore to be a welcome chance to reverse the errors of the past, and a genuine opportunity to embark on national renewal. Petain appeared to be a leader worthy of estimation in contrast to the lack-lustre politicians of the Third Republic, his values seemed to be much more in tune with Catholic ideals, and his military record inspired confidence that he would be able to carve out a new place for France in a war-torn Europe. The alternatives, either of capitulating to German domination, or of believing in possible victory by the perfidious English (shades of Joan of Arc!), were equally unpalatable. Hence the enormous veneration and trust given by the church leaders to Petain. Once given, this stance was difficult if not impossible to renounce, as it would have questioned the authority of the church’s hierarchy, never ready to admit that they had been mistaken. Even when Petain’s inability to uphold his goals, or when his minister Laval’s craven subservience to the Nazi overlords became more obvious, the church leaders clung to their belief in Vichy’s beneficence.

To begin with, the Catholic church gained substantially with the revocation of many of the impediments imposed earlier. The Protestant leader, Boegner, similarly joined Petain’s National Council in the belief that here was an opportunity effectively to re- christianize France through repentance and reform. Only later, as the Nazis’ depredations grew, and especially with their onslaught on the Jews, did this sympathy erode rapidly. At the same time, Halls makes it clear that even the most devoted followers of Petain’s line were not deluded for theological reasons. None of them embraced Nazism or its fascist equivalent. At most, opportunism, political hostility to Communism, or a profound despair about France’s situation, led this small minority of collaborationists to support the Germans. By contrast the majority of the lower clergy were immune to such blandishments and indeed were revolted by the idea of collaboration. They gave a lead on the local level to the resistance, especially on humanitarian grounds, and many paid a terrible price. At least 800 priests were arrested and deported to German concentration camps, where many perished. But the dilemmas were manifest. Given their support of Petain, the bishops particularly could only see armed insurrection by the Resistance Maquis as “terrorism” or “banditry”, which they had to oppose. On the other hand, some, like the Archbishop of Toulouse, were resolute in defending publicly Christian values such as the sanctity of life (including Jewish lives). The most notable underground protest, Temoignage Chretien, was organised by Catholic priests in Lyons. So too the Protestants were strongly influenced by the own memories of earlier persecutions, and by the resistance ideas of Karl Barth, and so adopted an increasingly oppositional stance on theologically-based grounds.

Halls is particularly good on the variety of ways in which church members sought to protect or assist the Jews, as also on the differing strategies adopted by the clergy in counselling their parishioners whether or not to accept the “draft” for labour in German factories. Loyalty to the Marshal dictated obedience to Vichy decrees, but in fact many priests advised listening to personal conscience on this matter – a significant alteration in Catholic practice.

As the German defeat loomed, and the reputation of the Vichy regime visibly declined, the ambivalence of the church leaders only increased As a Protestant, Halls prefers the more prophetic stance adopted by a few outspoken clergymen. He could have been more sympathetic to the pastoral approach adopted by the majority of the bishops, whose concern for the preservation of sacramental life, and for the fate of their flocks, obliged them to seek accommodations. But in this they were not alone. Virtually all the European church leaders caught up in the political and ideological maelstroms of the second world war faced equally formidable dilemmas. Prudence and tradition prompted them to safeguard the churches’ institutional existence. Equally they could not fail to be conscious that open defiance against the Vichy regime or its Nazi controllers would not only contradict their concept of national loyalty, but would lead to a high price to be paid by those valiant enough to heed their call. The responsibility for causing such additional suffering was undoubtedly a major deterrent.

Halls rightly concludes that the ambiguities of the churches’ positions, especially those of the most prominent bishops, were very understandable and uncomfortable. They were not as resolute as their counterparts in Denmark or Holland, but they did not capitulate as the German bishops had done. Halls believes they could have asserted themselves more vigorously, but wrongly concludes that they were held back by the silence of the Vatican. This very Protestant view is too simplistic. In fact, the prospect of an eventual victory by the Anglo-American-Soviet Allies was neither foreseeable nor widely welcome, but the need to maintain pastoral care was a daily reality. On the other hand, the younger clergy showed themselves more ready to support the resistance, and more open to new ventures like the worker-priest experiment, or to the benefits of ecumenical contacts. Such developments served the church well in the long run, and paved the way for a more reformist mood as evidenced in the Second Vatican Council. J.S.C.

2b) Anders Jarlert, The Oxford Group Revivalism and the Churches in Northern Europe, 1930-1945. (Bibliotheca Historico- Ecclesiastica Lundensis 35). Lund University Press 1995. 526pp

This doctoral thesis from the University of Lund provides more than a specific account of the “Oxford Group Revivalism” in Northern Europe. It also aims at an assessment of this particular movement as compared to other similar revivalist movements, notably those in Scandinavia in the 19th century. The author has set up a very ambitious project, an impression amply confirmed by his bibliography, and in his introduction where Jarlert defines the scope of his material. He is determined to do justice to the complex, international and contemporary character of the Oxford Group, by examining its “vision and strategy, doctrine and theology, mentality and function”. Moreover the author has researched a remarkably wide range of sources, reflecting the specific features of this revivalist movement. He has examined not only printed and unprinted literature, but also conducted numerous personal interviews. It is no wonder that he is therefore able to provide many new insights. In particular he sheds light on the history of the Oxford Group’s activities in Sweden, which is an important supplement to previous investigations, since, strangely enough, Swedish developments have been left aside, while attention has been directed towards the corresponding (though slightly differing) developments in Norway and Denmark. No less interesting is his analysis of the Oxford Group’s involvement during the Nazi period in Germany. He is certainly aware of the more or less spectacular attempts, undertaken by the “leaders” from the international team, to convert key persons from the leadership of the Nazi Party, among them Heinrich Himmler. His intention, however, is not to indulge in sensational revelations. On the contrary, he provides a balanced, comprehensive account of this episode (especially pp 405-408). There can be no doubt that this research is important. But the length of his account – 440 pages of text – reflects a weakness, since the multitude of details threatens to dominate at the cost of the main theses. Moreover, it appears that Jarlert pays too little attention to the individual role of the undisputed leader of the Oxford Group, Frank Buchman, in particular, or to the leaders of the international team in general, considering that the analysis seeks to depict a new type of revivalist movement over against the traditional pietist and/or nationalist movements of the 19th century. Remarks of this kind, however, by no means weaken the overall impression of a solid and well-researched doctoral thesis. Jens Holger Schjorring, Aarhus Faculty of Theology, Denmark

2c) Saekularisierung, Dechristianisierung, Rechristianisierung im neuzeitlichen Europa. Bilanz und Perspektiven der Forschung. ed. Hartmut Lehmann (Veroeffentlichungen des Max-Planck- Instituts fuer Geschichte 130) Goettingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1997. 335 pp DM 72.00

For many decades disputes have continued over the meaning of the term “Secularisation” in modern European history. Many liberal intellectuals have seen this process as an irreversible and desirable development in human progress, leading as Max Weber once said to the “de-mystification of the world”, to the abandonment of outdated superstitious ideas from earlier ages, and to the growth of a rationalist, humanistic approach to life Their historians therefore ignored or downplayed the role of religion, either public or private, and concentrated solely on materialist factors as causative of events. Other scholars have questioned such hubristic assumptions and instead have described the evident, often politically-motivated, elimination of Christianity’s public role in society as a de- christianisation. Yet others have pointed to the equally apparent revival of spiritual movements, especially among the lesser- regarded sects, and to the clear evidence of re-christianisation of segments of the European population. There is therefore no consensus to be found about the significance of the three terms used in the title of this collection of essays which arose out of a conference held in Goettingen in 1994, and published under the auspices of the renowned Max Planck Institute. The book serves to provide us with a broad and scholarly overview of the state of the debate, and in fact reflects the widely divergent opinions on such controversial topics. Alois Hahn makes the valid point that the unresolved religious divisions left over from the Reformation destroyed the unitary framework of earlier centuries which provided coherence in political and social affairs. The resulting competing pluralism of views has only been accelerated in more recent years by the effects of international migration, communication and technology. Nevertheless, despite deliberate attempts to relegate religion in any of its forms from public affairs in many states, the sociological and hence political evidence of the continuing influence of religious ideas is undeniable. Hence secularisation should be used as a descriptive rather than as a prescriptive term. F.W.Graf seconds this plea by pointing to the long history and polemic character of each of these three terms. Churchmen and anti-clericals alike have mounted their campaigns and proposed their answers to these developments with scant respect to the need for precise definitions or tolerance of opposing views. Graf stresses the importance of recognising the continuing influence of traditional imagery, especially in the festivals of the church year, in counterpoint to the inevitable changes in historical settings. It is far too soon to talk of irreversible tendencies. The same theme is taken up by other contributors who warn against too functional or reductionist a view, or against dissolving these topics into an incalculable agglomeration of individualistic subjectivities. A pluralist approach would show, as van Rooden notes from the Netherlands, that each epoch has a distinctive mix of characteristics with qualities of gain and loss. The term “de-cristianisation” is at best to be limited to the public sphere, though as David Hall rightly points out, it is not to be equated with the separation of church and state, which in America enabled the many churches to thrive. On the other hand, less is said here about the clear loss of plausibility of Christian doctrines, due largely to the churches’ own mutual antagonisms, or even more so to their mistaken bestowal of theological justification to politically disastrous developments, such as the German Christians support for Nazism. No less significant have been the changes in gender roles, and the abandonment of rigid moral codes. Much can be learnt from the comparisons of conditions in Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, USA, Switzerland, Poland and Russia, as described by this international team of authors, though it is a pity that the British Isles were entirely missing. The interplay of historical, nationalistic, political and social factors is certainly too complex for any easy generalisations. Dmitri Furman writing about present-day Russia goes so far as to claim that “the results of all rationalisation and secularisation processes are not the victory of rationalism, nor the return to religion, but rather a kind of irrational, adogmatic eclecticism, a kind of ideological mist, a multi-coloured, ever-changing, Chameleon-like shifting of beliefs and ideas.” It is small wonder that confusion rather than consensus is the result. In the two final essays Wolfgang Schieder and Hartmut Lehmann attempt to find a balance. The former points out that these subjects have long been researched in France, England and Holland, but only in recent years in Germany, and have hardly begun to be studied in Poland or Russia. Furthermore, none of the participants has really come to terms with where to start or how to proceed. Almost all have their own predispositions or subjective agendas. Finding a mutually acceptable “objectivity” on such a slippery subject as “Religion” is almost impossible, especially in the “longue duree” And how can any such discussions be widened to take account of the impact of non-European religions? Hartmut Lehmann concludes that the problems of finding adequate terminologies to describe the transformations of religious life and belief in Europe over the past three centuries remains unresolved. Greater precision is indispensable. So too are more individual studies, especially desirable on topics overlapping both history and geography, such as the concepts of morality, death, mission or millenarianism. But at the same time secular historians need to take more account of religious factors as a formative, if no longer normative, aspect of the total picture. These essays can only help to provide some initial promptings towards such a goal. J.S.C.

2d) Thomas Sandkuehler, Endloesung in Galizien. Der Judenmord in Ostpolen und die Rettungsinitiativen von Berthold Beitz, 1941- 1944. Bonn: Dietz 1996 592pp

This is a book of extraordinary quality. Using German and Polish archives, the author was able to present a more detailed account of the mass murder procedures for a specific area than any other work with which I am familiar. I can think of no other country or province where the murder of the Jews was accomplished under more cruel circumstances. Although, of course, Germans were implicated in this horrendous crime, the worst perpetrators were Ukrainians, for which reason Sandkuehler takes explicit exception to the Goldhagen thesis. The author found convincing evidence both for and against Raul Hilberg’s well-known contention that Jews acquiesced passively to their fate. Readers of this newsletter will be especially interested in the third part of the book which outlines Beitz’s efforts, and those of his wife, to save Jews. Beitz was a person of deep Protestant principles and convictions, who had never succumbed to Nazi propaganda or joined the party. When he was sent to Eastern Poland to work in a managerial position for an oil company, he was shocked by the brutality of Germans and Ukrainians. He witnessed, for example, the murder of a child in its mother’s arms. Beitz was able to employ Jews for several years because of the German need for oil. He was under constant pressure to surrender them, but Beitz found he could “control” the local SS officer, Friedrich Hildebrand. During tennis matches or hunting trip he would convince Hildebrand to leave his Jews alone. Altogether, Beitz probably saved about 100 Jews. The number would have been higher, but Beitz himself was drafted into the army in 1944 and had to leave his position in Galizia. Michael Phayer, Marquette University, Milwaukee

3) Churches in the G.D.R. In the May 1997 issue, I noted the publication by the Landtag of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern of three volumes about life in the G.D.R. Three further volumes have now appeared, and in the sixth, there are two separate chapters devoted to religious conditions in this area. The first is written by a Catholic author, Bernd Schafer, with a general overview of church policies, while the second consists of four regional studies around Rostock and Stralsund. These can again be consulted in Regent College Library.

4) Work in progress: Kyle Jantzen

Nationalism and the Protestant Clergy. I am undertaking an analysis of parish clergy from three church districts in Wuerttemberg, Brandenburg and Saxony during the period of the Third Reich. Based on sources from the Evangelical Central Archive in Berlin, the Wuerttemberg Land Church Archive in Stuttgart, as well as parish, city and church district archives in Brandenburg, Saxony and Wuerttemberg, I am attempting to evaluate clerical nationalism on the local level and relate it to the church politics of the German Church Struggle.

Ever since Friedrich Baumgaertel’s _Wider die Kirchenkampf- Legenden_ appeared in 1958, doubts have been raised about the popular notion that the German Protestant clergy was neatly split into camps of supporters and opponents of National Socialism and Nazi church policy. Since then, historians of the German Church Struggle have generally recognised that Protestant clergy welcomed the new Nazi regime in 1933. Nonetheless, the historiography of the German Church Struggle has been dominated by a dualistic paradigm pitting theologically orthodox members of the Confessing Church against pro-Nazi “German Christians” and their racial theology. Implicit in this dualism is the notion that the Confessing Church was ultimately an anti-Nazi movement as well. This view had its basis in the many memoirs of clergy and chronicles of the Church Struggle written during and immediately after the Nazi era, most by those loyal to the Confessing Church. The martyrdom of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and imprisonment of Martin Niemoller – and the attention they received – strengthened the impression that the Confessing Church was active in resistance to the Nazi regime. The weakness of this interpretation was that it conflated opposition to the “German Christian” movement and the Nazi church policy with opposition to the National Socialist regime itself. In reality, many Protestant clergy – even if they opposed the application of Nazi racial ideology and administrative interference in the churches – believed wholeheartedly in the Nazi movement and its national and racial ideology, during and after 1933. They spoke of themselves as National Socialists, endorsed the foreign policy of the Third Reich, and helped to legitimate Adolf Hitler’s leadership.

Protestant pastors announced that the emergence of Adolf Hitler was a gift from God, and many regarded his life as a divine mission. Pastors praised the Nazis for their anti-Bolshevism, and emphasised the sobriety and piety of the new Fuehrer. Some who opposed the Nazi church policy still joined the Party out of a sense of duty to the national renewal. Generally the Protestant clergy lo oked eagerly for the recovery of German pride and power, regardless of their church-political orientation. This paradox creates problems for the interpretation of the Church Struggle and demands a closer examination of the pastors’ records throughout Germany. Kyle Jantzen, Instructor, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon. PhD cand. McGill University, Montreal (Ed.’s note: see also introduction to J.S.Conway, The Nazi Persecution of the Churches, re-issued edition 1997)

With all best wishes to you all,

John S.Conway

Association of Contemporary Church Historians

(Arbeitsgemeinschaft kirchlicher Zeitgeschichtler)

John S. Conway, Editor. University of British Columbia

Newsletter- October 1997- Vol.III, no.10

Contents

1) Conference announcement – ASCH-Seattle – Jan. ’98

2) Book reviews:

a)Festschrift for John Moses.

b)Baumann, Protestantismus und Frauenemanzipation (Germany)

c) Davis, A Long Walk to Church (Russia)

d) Sells, A Bridge Betrayed (Bosnia)

Dear Friends,

To those of you in the northern hemisphere starting a new academic session, my very best wishes. I am most grateful to those who have sent in contributions, which enables this month’s reviews to have a truly ecumenical flavour. You may be interested to hear that, after 34 issues, our membership statistics look like this: USA 63, Germany 23, Canada 39, Australia 5, U.K. 7, Switzerland 2, Denmark, Belgium, Poland, Norway, South Africa, Austria, and Holland 1 each. New members are always welcome.

1) The next meeting of the American Society of Church History will be held in Seattle from January 8th-11th. Of particular interest to our members will be two sessions on Protestant Responses to Political Change in Germany 1933-1990, one organised by Brian Huck, Pennsylvania, and one by Matthew Hockenos, New York University. The contact person is Richard Kieckhefer, = kieckhefer@nwu.edu

2) Book Reviews:

a) Power, Conscience and Opposition. Essays in German History in honour of John A.Moses, ed. A.Bonnell, G.Munro and M.Travers. New York: P.Lang 1996 538pp

John Moses, in whose honour this voluminous Festschrift has been prepared, is one of Australia’s foremost historians, and the contents reflect his wide interests not only in German history, on which he has written extensively on such topics as the foreign policy of the Kaiserreich, trades unionism, the Fischer controversy, and the relations of church and state, but also on German-Australian issues. The 26 essays dedicated to him range therefore widely, but can be grouped into four thematic blocs. The first deals with questions of ideology and power from the Kaiserreich to the Third Reich, the second with democratic opposition in Germany, the third is somewhat opaquely entitled “Rethinking German history”, while the fourth is devoted to German Australian perspectives. A bibliography of Moses’ publications and a tabula gratulatoria conclude the book.

In the first section, Peter Overlak describes the idea of German “mission” as promoted by German academics during the Kaiserrreich and its relation to naval armament in the context of Germany’s Weltpolitik. These predecessors of the “spirit of 1914” exemplified the logic of the ideas of Germany’s elite, and thus in part support Fischer’s view that the first world war was not an accident. Peter Hempenstall’s account of the difficulties of writing the biography of Wilhelm Solf, one of this elite, shows the predicament historians can sometimes find themselves in, when asked by the family to write on “objects” of academic interest. Douglas Newton’s analysis of the disillusionment of some of the Germanists working for British intelligence at the end of the war describes an interesting episode in bureaucratic in-fighting in the wake of the Versailles Peace Conference. The Germanists, in particular Alfred Zimmern, James Headlam-Morley and Edwyn Bevan, all recommended nourishing the new German Republic, and opposed a harsh peace which, in their view, destroyed the hopes of stabilizing the situation. Maybe this is one of the reasons why the British public was not, as Martin Travers suggests, particularly alarmed by Hitler’s rise to power in 1933.

The second part analyses democratic oppositional movements in 19th and 20th century Germany, from 1817-48 (Walter Grab) to Wilhelm Leuschner’s resistance activities against Hitler (G.Besier). I found three essays particularly interesting. John Conway describes bourgeois German pacifism during the first world war, which was overwhelmed by the patriotic outburst of the “spirit of 1914”; his essay provides a good contrast to the “dominant” paradigm as described by Overlak. Gregory Munro focusses on the War Guilt question and German Catholicism, with examples from the Allgemeine Rundschau of Munich, which shows that religious cleavages in Germany also affected their interpretation of war guilt. Finally Julian Jenkins’s analysis of the ecumenical movement in the Weimar Republic and Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s role in it not only underlines the difficulty of bridging the gap between German nationalism and western liberal ideas, but also helps to explain why the conservative protestant tradition had little problem accepting Hitler as the saviour of the German nation. The third part is somewhat of a mixed bag, including, among others, essays by Wolf Gruner on the French Revolution and German identity, Peter Monteath on concentration camp memorials, Bernd Hoppauf on Ernst Junger as an early example of “forgetting” the Holocaust. and Georg Iggers on common bases of 19th century European historiographical thought. Irmline Veit-Brause’analysis of twists in historicism handed down a more lenient verdict than Iggers, and was most interesting. Less so were two weak papers by Immanuel Geiss and Ulf Sundhausen which were too simplistic, and should have been revised. The final section deals with German-Australian perspectives, covering topics such as the immigration of 1848 intellectuals to Australia (Gerhard Fischer), Australian reactions to the Franco- Prussian war (Alan Corkhill), and Fascism and the second world war (J.S.Klan). I particularly enjoyed Johannes Voigt’s richly documented study of how the transportation of criminals to Australia served as a model for debates in Germany on the same theme. The generally high standard of academic research not only reflects positively on the authors, but even more so on John Moses, who gave the impulse to pursuing many of the themes and perspectives here. We are all grateful to him for his fine initiatives, to which this book is a fitting tribute. Matthias Zimmer, University of Alberta, Edmonton

b) Ursula Baumann, Protestantismus und Frauenemanzipation in Deutschland 1950 bis 1920, Frankfurt: Campus Verlag 1992 383pp

Ursula Baumann opens her book with an observation by Virginia Woolf. It may be, Woolf postulated, that the history of opposition to the emancipation of women is as interesting as the story of that liberation itself.(7) Bauman’s study confrims Woolf’s point. The history of the relationship between Protestantism and women’s movements in Germany from 1850 to 1920 is above all a tale of obstruction and resistance: not only from obstinate theologians and wary husbands and fathers, but from conservative church women eager to distance themselves from what they considered the excesses of the bourgeois, let alone working-class, women’s movements. True to Woolf’s prediction, that story of opposition is both interesting and important; moreover, like women’s history itself, it intersects with every aspect of individual and collective life. In fact, one of Baumann’s most significant achievements is her integration of often disparate subfields of history. Church history, women’s history, political and social history – all come together here. This is a work inspired by Rudolf von Thadden’s call to write ‘Kirchengeschichte als Gesellschaftgeschichte’, informed by Thomas Nipperdey’s synthesis of religion, politics and culture, and committed to gender as a central category of historical analysis. Scholars interested in German conservatism, secularization, and class struggles, as well as those concerned with religious or women’s issues, will find this book a valuable resource.

Bauman’s lucid introductory chapters situate her topic in the context of German respnses to modernization. Industrialization, urbanization, and secularization produced anxiety among Protestant churchmen. Insecure about the future of the church, they saw demands for women’s rights as related threats to ecclesiastical relevance. Women in their own ranks occupied an ambivalent position. As descendants of Eve, they could somehow be blamed for humanity’s fall. But as the most loyal participants in church life, as Christian wives and mothers, they also represented the last, best hope for spiritual rejuvenation. According to Baumann, this two- pronged stereotype – woman as both scapegoat and cure-all for social and ecclesiastical ills – characterized organized Protestantism in Germany until well into this century. Baumann emphasizes the conservatism of Protestant responses to women’s issues. Indeed, her narrative shows a marked, but not inevitable, move to the right within German Protestantism, theologically, socially and politically from the 1840s until after the First World War.

Baumann divides her study into five chronological periods. The first, from about 1830 to 1880, laid the groundwork for subsequent developments; it witnessed both the foundation of a middle-class women’s movement in Germany and the birth of the Diakonissenwesen, which established a tradition of Protestant female charitable work. During phase two, about 1890, a critique of the subordination of women emerged within German Protestantism. Baumann spends most time on the third phase, from the late 1890s to 1912. It saw the founding of the three German women’s organizations that would shape the church’s formal response to women’s causes for the next decades: the Deutsch- Evangelische Frauenbund (DEF), the kirchlich-sozialen Frauengruppen, and the Evangelische Frauenhilfe. Conservatives dominated all three, although their rivalries and differences were often intense. During phase four, from about 1912 to 1918,: Protestant responses to women’s movements – and to workers’ and liberal causes in general – became increasingly hostile. The war exacerbated a trend to the right. In 1918, the DEF cut ties to the secular Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine (BDF), whose advocacy of female suffrage the DEF refused to endorse. Thus, by phase five, 1918-1919, the women’s groups, like dominant voices within German Protestantism as a whole, were positioned for hostility to the new republic. For leading members of the women’s organizations, hatred of Versailles and nostalgia for the Kaiserreich found political expression in the Deutschnationale Volkspartei (DNVP). Baumann points out the irony that the DNVP, home to so many vociferous opponents of female suffrage, itself benefited disproportionately from women’s votes in the first elections of the fledgling republic (259).

Throughout the book Baumann stresses the heterogeneity of German Protestantism – its orthodox and liberal camps, its regional variations, its ability to produce surprising alliances across theological and political lines. For example, Adolf Stoecker the Hof- und Domprediger best known for his antisemitic Christian Social Movement, emerges as a constant supporter of women’s rights in the church. Baumann calls him the “conservative modernizer par excellence” (118). Also conspicuous is the prominent role of single women. From Amalie Sieveking (born 1794), the pioneer of female charitable work, to Elisabeth Malo (born 1855), outspoken proponent of women’s full participation in the church, and Elisabeth Gnauck-Kuehne (born 1850), whose 1894 address to the Evangelisch-Sozialen Kongress represented women’s triumph over the silence imposed by St. Paul’s injunction (89), the individuals who dominate Baumann’s story remained unmarried. In 1910, Baumann indicates, almost half the DEF’s members in Hanover were single women (126). Here we see how desperately scarce opportunities for women outside the home must have been in pre-1918 Germany.

Baumann is at her best when she uses her outstanding published and archival sources to personalize her subject. For example, she draws an effective contrast between Amalie Sieveking’s vision of autonomous women’s charitable organizations and Johann Hinrich Wichern’s concept that women, as supposedly responsible for human sinfulness, owed the male world both abnegation and obedience (53). Baumann’s book loses some appeal, however, when it devolves into a purely organizational history replete with details and acronyms. Two long chapters dealing with the period around 1899 tend most in this direction.

Baumann’s research is meticulous but some important areas remain underexplored. She emphasizes Protestant heterogeneity but pays no attention to the Reformed tradition or its legacy in Germany. She mentions Christian antisemitism but does not develop the connection between hostility to Judaism – or to some constructed image of what it was – and antagonism, or in Stoecker’s case openness, towards women’s rights. Baumann moves very quickly through the final chapters, on the World War and revolution, so that I at least was left somewhat disappointed. Drawing attention to these gaps is intended less as a criticism than an indication of both the stimulating, creative qualities of the work and the need for research in related areas. Like recent contributions by Nancy Reagin, A German Women’s Movement: Class and Gender in Hanover, 1880-1933 (1995) and George Mosse, The Image of Man: the Creation of Modern Masculinity (1996), Baumann’s book helps to deepen our understanding of gender in the Kaiserreich. More importantly, like Reagin and Mosse, Baumannn shows that attention to issues of gender in turn sheds new light on every facet of the past, including the life of the church. Doris Bergen, Notre Dame University

c) Nathaniel Davis, A Long Walk to Church: A Contemporary History of Russian Orthodoxy. Boulder, Co.:Westview Press 1995.

It is always risky to write on something so contemporary as the Russian Orthodox church, especially its life in the post-Soviet era, but Davis has done his work well. Moreover, as an observer of the Russian scene for well over four decades, he has excellent qualifications to do so. He began travelling to Russia in the 1950s, completed a dissertation on religion and the communist governments in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe at the Fletcher School in 1960, and spent thirty-six years in the U.S. Foreign Service. He was frequently posted to Moscow and served as President Lyndon Johnson’s senior adviser on Soviet and East European affairs. After retiring he assumed a professorship at Harvey Mudd College and devoted his scholarly endeavour to preparing this modern history of Russian Orthodoxy. The book is a prodigious effort that draws primarily on printed Russian sources and archives which have been opened since 1991, but he also reveals an intimate knowledge of existing scholarship in the field. The endnotes comprise one-third of the entire text. The title comes from an experience he had forty years ago in a provincial town. He was looking for a church and asked an elderly woman if there was a church near by and how he might get to it. Her response was: “It’s a long, long walk to church”. This reflected how many churches had been closed during the communist era. Particularly in the east and north of Russia one could travel hundreds of kilometres to reach the nearest functioning church. For many Russians it was truly a long walk to church. He shows that twice in the history of the Soviet state the regime virtually drove the institutional church to its death – the Stalinist 1930s and the slow stagnation of the Brezhnev era. Fortuitous events saved the church both times – the Second World War, with Stalin’s more permissive attitude towards the church, and the millenium of the baptism of Rus in 1988 along with Gorbachov’s pragmatism. Davis recognises that Orthodoxy is a living faith and shows clearly that in spite of official hostility and the oft-expressed desire to extinguish religion, the church was so much part of the Russian psyche that it could not be rooted out. The opening chapter briefly sketches out the position of the church from the Bolshevik Revolution to World War II. This is familiar ground which numerous writers have covered. The turn around that occurred during and immediately after the war is also well-known. The treatment of the church during the Krushchev and Brezhnev years is dealt with in considerably more detail and is accompanied by some statistical material. The millenium of 1988 and the Orthodox Church’s recovery of its institutional strength in 1988-91 makes especially interesting reading. Very informative but less inspiring is the account of the strife within the church over the revelation of KGB activities within its ranks and the splintering resulting from nationalistic secessionist movements. In the second half of the book the focus shifts from the institutional history to the integral elements of the church itself – the clergy, underground congregations, monastic institutions and their personnel, theological education, publications (including Bibles), finances, and the laity. Davis concludes that considerable continuity in the history of the church existed and that a progressive decline in communist dedication to its extinction took place. As in pre-Soviet Russia a certain kind of symbiotic relationship between church and state existed. However, Gorbachov’s moves in the area of democratization and new thinking in foreign policy led to the Russian Orthodox Church losing its status as the protected church of the state. This removed the shield against challenge and schism; the Greek Catholics, Ukrainian Autocephalists, and Protestant evangelicals quickly moved to assert themselves. Resurgent nationalism was a mighty force against Russian Orthodoxy as well. Yet the fragmentation of the Soviet Union had the effect of strengthening the church in the vast Russian Federation, and one wonders whether forces seeking national salvation will seek to co-opt the church. Will the church be a ready instrument for Russification, discipline, control and order as it once was, such as in the struggle against the Mongol Tartars, the 17th century Time of Troubles, or in the 19th century doctrine of Official Nationality? A major challenge facing the church today is the superficial Christianity of the population and how to respond to this with an effective spiritual outreach. The Baptists and evangelical sects are hoping to fill this vacuum, although Davis tells us far too little about their role in the new Russia. All in all, this is a rich book, full of insights and information about the post-Soviet church, and deeply appreciative of the role of religion in Russian history. Richard Pierard, Indiana State University. (Dick Pierard spent a month in Russia this spring teaching a course on church, state and religious liberty at the Moscow Theological Seminary of the Evangelical Christians-Baptists).

d) Michael A.Sells, The Bridge Betrayed. Religion and Genocide in Bosnia, Berkeley: U.of California Press, 1996. 244 pp

Michael Sells’ indictment is graphic, detailed and horrifying. He asserts that the genocide of Bosnia’s Muslims in the recent civil war was orchestrated and justified by Christian extremism and intolerance. Both Orthodox Serbs and Catholic Croatians joined in the propagation of a vibrant “Christoslavism”, which combined the mobilization of historical religious mythology and the use of ethnic stereotypes to embark on a campaign of “extermination of the Turkifiers”. Serbs made use of nationalist literary traditions invented in the nineteenth century, or appealed to the fervent one- sided memories of the battle of Kosovo six hundred years ago. Croats, including their President Tudjman, openly called for the eradication of the “Asiatic influence” of the dangerous forces of Islam, and the creation of a defensible frontier for “Europe”. Unspeakable horrors were perpetrated in the name of such “ethnic cleansing” but the popular justification was made in religious- ethnic terms. Massacres of Bosnian Muslim women, for example, were defended as necessary as revenge for alleged plans by Bosnian Muslims to seize Serb women and put them in harems. The mass murders in the so-called safe area of Srebenica, under the very eyes of an UN contingent, were gruesomely accompanied by extensive measures to eradicate all traces of the Muslims ever having lived there. The Serbian Orthodox Church in Bosnia made the same mistake as the Catholic Church had made earlier in Croatia; it allowed itself to become the servant of religious nationalist militancy. Serb bigotry was fuelled by highlighting the motif of Muslims as Christ killers and race traitors, and by building a massive new cathedral in Belgrade on the spot where Ottoman Turks had allegedly burned the bones of the Serbian saint Sava. So too in Croatia, despite protests by Cardinal Kuharic of Zagreb against war crimes in Herzogovina, his own previous record of glorifying Croatia’s thirteen hundred years of Catholic history, and his attempts to deny the atrocities of the Ustacha government in Croatia during the second world war, gave a more accurate picture of Croatian Catholic attitudes, which were only enhanced by the phenomenal cult of the Virgin at Medjugorje. Nor are the bystanders let off the hook. Western church leaders seem to have been too much influenced by the long-held stereotype that the Balkan peoples have been prone to maniacal violence for centuries, so that no influential protests against the genocide proceeding there have been made. Nor did the Pope made any explicit reference to the excesses of his followers in such places as Mostar, but instead spoke with equal fervour of the suffering of all peoples in the area. However well intentioned, such appeals were of little comfort to the immediate victims. Sells’ vision is for Bosnia to return to the pluralistic kind of society it enjoyed during the Tito years, when all religions lived side by side, and valued the historic treasures of their respective artistic creativity, so needlessly and deliberately destroyed by both Serbian artillery and Croatian militias. His warning of how easily religious intolerance can be stirred up in the service of political extremism is a timely reminder that the Christian record of the past still needs to be dealt with if such recurrence of intolerance under a religious veneer is not to tarnish church history once again. J.S.C

With best wishes from a wet autumnal Vancouver, John S.Conway jconway@unixg.ubc.ca

Association of Contemporary Church Historians

(Arbeitsgemeinschaft kirchlicher Zeitgeschichtler)

John S. Conway, Editor. University of British Columbia

Newsletter – September 1997 – Vol III, no.9

Dear Friends,

August has been a holiday month, but I have pleasure in sending you two reviews of books by distinguished Canadian

scholars, one from Quebec and one from Ontario.

Table of Contents

1) Conference announcement: Wittenberg, November 1997

2) Book reviews: Baum, The Church for Others, Vance, Death so Noble

3) Journal article: Heilbronner and Muhlberger, “Catholics in 1933”

4) Member’s publication: Hilmar Pabel on Erasmus

1) Conference announcement. The 1997 meeting of the Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte group, together with LUISA (Luther in Sachsen- Anhalt), will be held in Wittenberg from November 6-9th, on the subject of “Religion and Denominations – Foundations of Current and Future Societies in Europe?” Papers will be offered by M. Funcke, Bonn, N.Hope, Glasgow, D.Pollack, N.Hjalm, J.Bowden, London, under the leadership of Profs. Martin Onnasch, Jorg Ohlemacher, Peter Steinbach. The address is Luisa@esc.de

2a) Gregory Baum, The Church for Others. Protestant Theology in Communist East Germany. Grand Rapids,Michigan: William Eerdmans Publishing Co. 1996 xvii + 156pp US $ 15.00

Gregory Baum was brought up in Berlin but was forced to flee by the Nazis as a teenager. He subsequently has become Canada’s leading Catholic theologian with a strong interest in ecumenical affairs. In 1992 a return visit to Berlin gave him an opportunity to study the fate of the East German churches, particularly the Protestants, during the unlamented forty years of communist rule. To his surprise, he found that the Protestant theology advanced there was a pastoral and intellectual achievement very different from the kind of liberation theology he knew from Latin America. This short insightful work seeks to analyse the contours of this notable accomplishment, to make his findings available to a North American audience, and at the same time to explain the “brilliant contextual theology that steered a Protestant church through an important period of its history”. It is a most welcome addition to our awareness of these issues. In recent years, West German critics have taken considerable pains to denigrate all aspects of life under communist control, including the role of the churches of the German Democratic Republic. Their leaders have been depicted as complicit in maintaining the regime’s undemocratic totalitarianism, and even as willing accomplices of the notorious Stasi. This is, as Baum suggests in his introduction, all part of the wide-spread tendency in Germany, supported by the government, to equate the dictatorship of the GDR with that of Nazi Germany, and in so doing to co-operate with certain historical revisionists who want to minimize the singular and unparalleled horror of the Nazi period. Baum, however, describes the ideas and actions of the GDR church leaders, not from the biased reports of the hostile state, but from their own evaluations of their tasks and theological understandings. He thus strikes a much more positive note, which is both a welcome contrast to many German commentaries, a pioneering work for a Catholic theologian, and a fine ecumenical achievement. In 1945 the East German churches emerged from their twelve years of Church Struggle against Nazism and hoped to begin again in freedom. The initial attitudes of the Soviet military commanders were surprisingly favourable. But after the establishment of the communist-controlled state in 1949, they soon found themselves once again under dictatorial rule. The new state was determined to root out all potential opposition from class enemies, and in particular to control all aspects of education and youth work. Not surprisingly the church leaders reverted to the tactics which had seemed efficacious against the Nazis, adopted a fortress mentality, raised the drawbridge against any Marxist assaults, and stood watch on the ramparts eagerly hoping for rescue from their allies in West Germany. Ten years later, the defects of this defensive posture were apparent. The churches had become locked in a ghetto-like existence, and were increasingly irrelevant to the society at large. They had lost the battle to maintain their influence on young people, and communist indoctrination seemed to be succeeding. A group of the younger clergy, therefore, sought a new stance which would face up to the new reality of the permanence of their imposed “socialist society”. They sought a new pastoral relationship which would re-define their mission and encourage Christians to assume responsibility for the society in which they were, however reluctantly, obliged to live and exercise their witness. The price to be paid was to abandon nostalgia for the past, to forgo their hopes of the restoration of their former privileged position, and more practically to cut many of their links with the church in West Germany. At the same time the East German regime moderated its policies, recognising that rooting out the churches’ influence would take a lot longer than the Marxist ideologues imagined. The way was open for a new arrangement, though the church leaders were careful to avoid any grounds for the accusation that they were accepting an ideological loyalty to or accommodation with the communist-dominated state. The government, for its part, put pressure on the churches to support its claims for international recognition, and used its power to promote sympathetic pastors in the state-supported faculties of theology. Church delegates were allowed to travel to international conferences to argue in favour of the independent existence of the G.D.R. or its alleged “peace policies”, such as presented at the Christian Peace Congresses based in Prague. By such means the state sought to gain acceptance for its political aims, while the church sought to dispel communist suspicions that it was a Trojan horse working for the overthrow of the regime, and at the same time avoiding counter- charges that it had become a mere lackey of the new state. Baum’s chief concern is with the theology developed in this tension-ridden setting, which “allowed the Christian community to reflect critically on the church’s own past and draw important lessons from it, to invent and evaluate new pastoral approaches and policies, to react to initiatives taken by the government, and to respond to the challenges of a new historical situation”.(p.20) This theology rejected two extreme positions: either to deny any legitimacy to the G.D.R. regime, or to surrender to an uncritical acceptance of the socialist state. Rather, the church leaders called for a recognition that God had called them to exercise their ministry in this particular place, and to seek ways to bring the Christian message to bear on all of its concerns, social and political, as well as personal. Such a witness called for recognition of the theologically problematic character of the Constantinian era, and the associated idea of the duty of Christendom to act as the normative and regulative body providing ethical and spiritual guidance in society. Instead, in the new situation, Christians should discover a more biblically based sense of community. Baum rightly points out two distinguishing and important features: discernment of place (Ortsbestimmung) and the learning process (Lernprozess). The former called not merely for the abandonment of the privileged position of the past, but for an acknowledgement that the church in a secularized society could no longer command but only serve as a creative witnessing minority. The latter invited a critical examination of the church’s past record, including its too close reliance on former governments, its neglect of the industrial masses, and the need to take seriously the Marxist critique of religion. The impulse for this theology came from the fact that most of these leaders had been members of the Confessing Church during the Church Struggle against Nazism, and heeded the critical post-war evaluations, such as the Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt and the more concrete Darmstadt declaration of 1947. This latter had called for a renunciation of the church’s traditional nationalism and militarism, and chided the church for thinking too much about preserving its own institutional autonomy instead of supporting the victims of Nazi violence. Baum rightly notes that, as a result, the East German church made strenuous efforts to overcome the legacy of antisemitism and frequently expressed both its repentance for its past attitudes towards Judaism, and an explicit solidarity with Israel, a view which the GDR state greatly disliked. This impulse was also much influenced by the theology of the Swiss theologian, Karl Barth, whose proto-Calvinist writings, his critique of the “establishmentarianism” of Lutheran orthodoxy, his optimistic assessment of Marxist socialism and his anti- Americanism, all seemed to suit the new East German church situation. In the 1960s and 1970s this theology was greatly strengthened by the reception of the prison writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, martyred by the Nazis in 1945. Bonhoeffer’s call for radical reform, abandonment of past shibboleths, and in particular his appeal for the church to become “the church for others” – here excellently summarised by Baum (p.87-102) – was eagerly taken up by his former associates such as the Presiding Bishop in East Berlin, Albrecht Schonherr. Bonhoeffer’s stress on the ethical and pastoral witness of the church provided the basis on which the church could minister in the new reality, seeking to play its role as a witnessing church, not against, not beside, not for, but within Socialism. Undoubtedly many of these leaders were ready to believe that the socialist regime could live up to the humanistic idealism it propagated, or when it did not, were prepared, like Heino Falcke, to call for “an improvable socialism”. They called this “critical solidarity” or “discriminating co-operation”, and appealed for a constructive dialogue. This illusion, that here was a preferable political and social order to the discredited forms of western capitalism, was shared by most of these church leaders. Hence their grievous disappointment in 1989-90 at the haste with which their congregations supported re-unification with West Germany. As one bishop ruefully remarked afterwards: “the consensus in the church must have been smaller than we then thought”. Baum clearly finds this theology appealing. He correctly notes that it was enthusiastically endorsed in the 1970s and 1980s by such international bodies as the World Council of Churches. In these circles it appeared as a model of Christian pastoral witness and service fully in line with the new emphasis on the church becoming “the voice of the voiceless”, and giving a prophetic lead to a world still too much attached to the ethos of capitalism and exploitation, especially in the Third World. This aspiration for a world transformed, witnessing to the values of peace and justice, and expressing solidarity with the oppressed in their struggle for emancipation, even when coupled with a consciousness of human sin, was and remains very appealing, especially to theologians with left-wing views. But just how much support it received from the GDR’s rank and file church members remains unclear. The harsh fact is that the church’s nominal membership dropped drastically during these years from 80% to 31% of the population, and is probably even less today. It must also be acknowledged that there was a certain elitism in this small band of church leaders, who sometimes did not take pains to contradict the view that theirs was a superior theology to that propounded in West Germany. Their optimistic assessment of their role in the “real socialism” of the GDR was to be cruelly thwarted by secular events, particularly the collapse of the Soviet Empire. But they continued to believe that theirs was the better way, and hence have been deeply hurt by all the discredit poured upon them in the years since 1990, and in effect have been reduced to an impotent silence. Baum’s sympathetic portrayal of this experiment and the theology behind it, at least sets the record straight by faithfully depicting how these ideas were developed in the difficult and tense situation of the communist dictatorship. He rightly defends these theologians from the charge that they were communist stooges, or alternatively, naive innocents who were taken in by the duplicities of the regime. Since he only briefly discusses the actual church- political practices of the period, he avoids any detailed analysis of the more problematic questions of the church leaders’ dealings with the Stasi, or the charge that they silently failed to protest the regime’s tyrannical injustices.. This is a theological not a historical treatise. Shortly after 1989 one of these leaders commented: “In the beginning there was too much praise; now there is too much blame”. Baum’s skilful account seeks to achieve a more balanced assessment. Particularly helpful is his account of the ideas which enabled the church to steer between total repudiation or total assimilation in the Marxist society, rejecting both pietistic individualism and subservient conformism, in favour of taking the risk of faith in the service of the wider community, in line with Bonhoeffer’s legacy. It was just this kind of witness which was reflected in the World Council’s radical stance of the 1980s with its call for the church to support the ideals of peace, justice and the integrity of creation. This theme indeed was central to the GDR churches’ activity, and can be seen as formative in the growth of the protest movements which eventually helped to bring down the regime. This vision of “God’s Shalom” in today’s world remains a powerful impulse, and owes much to the GDR theologians’ interpretations of faith as discipleship. Now that political events have irrevocably altered the life of the East German churches, in effect leading to an annexation of the East without recognizing the positive and constructive elements of their experience, Baum’s evaluation of this legacy is a fitting and thoughtful tribute to a notable endeavour. J.S.C.

2b) Jonathan F.Vance: Death so Noble: Memory, Meaning, and the First World War. Vancouver: UBC Press 1997. xv + 319pp. Can $39.95

The casualties suffered on the Western Front in the First World War were so numerous, so unexpected, and so emotionally overwhelming that the people of every country involved were obliged to find some way of coming to terms with these irreparable losses. Personal, corporate and national grief had to be assuaged. For the victors, these sacrifices could be seen as a necessary price in a just war; for the vanquished there was not even this consolation. Jonathan Vance is to be congratulated on his fine achievement in spelling out how Canadians met this collective need to commemorate their war-time participation, suffering and death. Canada was not alone in contributing a usable mythology for this purpose, and Vance’s study is one of several in this genre, notably those by Jay Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning, George Mosse, Fallen Soldiers, or Modris Ekstein, Rites of Spring. But his success in pulling together the previous Canadian writings and sources, including his splendid use of illustrations – a very desirable recourse in such a book – is altogether admirable, excellently researched, finely published, and to a large extent convincing. Vance begins with the entirely valid point that the memory, and subsequent mythology, of Canada’s war became so appealing because it filled explicit needs. For some it was consolatory; for others, explanatory. It could also be didactic, inspirational or even entertaining. Above all it served to remind the survivors of their good fortune, and to enable them to alleviate their hurt by paying tribute to their fallen comrades. Their leaders quickly exploited the war for their own political purposes, either to break the stranglehold of British imperial control, or to seek to forge a stronger internal bond in the Confederation. Moralists could claim that victory was a deserved reward for defeating German aggression. Others sought ways to fashion a usable past out of the war. After 1918, far more Canadians sought to celebrate their triumph on the battlefield than were appalled by the senselessness and slaughter of the trenches. The idea of having fought for the preservation of intrinsic Canadian values against the “barbarous Hun” was staunchly maintained, and played no small part in 1939 when such participation was again invoked. The attempts by some liberal clergymen, energetic but wrong-headed ladies in the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, and a few radical academics, to challenge this interpretation was largely in vain. And the widespread acceptance and nurture of this Canadian war mythology brought about the eclipse of Canadian pacifism. Vance is also correct to point out that the Canadian clergy and chaplains were staunch upholders of the righteousness of the Allied cause. At the same time, they readily enough equated the soldiers’ sacrifices with the sacrifice of Christ. Thus their suffering and loss could be reconciled with Christian idealism. This imagery found its way on to numerous war memorials, persisting in Canada long after it had been challenged elsewhere. In front of several CPR stations, the angel of victory bears the fallen soldier to heaven. So too churchmen provided the argument that the loss of 60,000 Canadian youths was not in vain, since they had become “immortalized” in the service of their country – and Christ. Both the liturgy and imagery of the annual Remembrance Day parades still invokes this Christian symbolism even if often transmuted into secularized or “multicultured” forms. By turning the soldiers’ graveyards into dignified gardens of the dead across the face of France, the spiritual character of their sacrifice could be emphasized. The statuary on Vimy Ridge became and remains the cathedral of Canadian war memorials, symbolizing both national pride and collective loss in a semi-Christian allegorical but very impressive manner. The paradox was that, even though many (most?) veterans returned with a strong opposition to “organized religion”, nevertheless they accepted and reinforced the image of Jesus and his passion as a fellow sufferer. By such means could meaning be given both to the enormity of the sacrifices and the greatness of the cause. To be fair, Vance could have made more of the fact that most chaplains returned from the war disillusioned by their earlier glorification of war and the crusading militarism of their sermons. On this point the recently-published Bickersteth diaries give trenchant witness. Many chaplains sought to carry over the spirit of war-time fellowship into civilian life, but found little response for any large-scale acceptance of the need for political and social reform. Comradeship was welcome but communism was not. Nevertheless, Vance suggests, Canadians were much slower than others at being disillusioned by the impact and memory of the war. For years they remained attached to the edifying, romanticised and necessarily sanitized version put out for home consumption. One reason lay in the fact that there was no available alternative either in literature or painting. Another was that Canadians wanted it that way. Perhaps Vance could have been on stronger ground if he had been able to quantify such assertions. But he rightly points out how valuable was the image of the civilian-soldier defending the decent values of his Canadian homeland, and commemorating this sense of dedication in annual reunions in the years that followed. Such themes, as spelled out by poets, artists and regimental histories, outweighed the more critical voices who sought to focus on the mismanagement of the war or on the senseless slaughter of young lives. Today the vast majority of Canadians have never fought in a war. They find it difficult, eighty years later, to see why so many men were seduced by the notions of imperial loyalty, or heroic warfare, and took part so readily in far-off battles from which they did not return. Vance’s skill is to show how and why these now- faded ideals not only gave Canadians the impulse to join in but were preserved in post-war commemorations. This spirit was best incorporated in John McCrae’s famous appeal to maintain the faith “In Flanders Field”, which is still recalled with sincere fidelity in countless annual ceremonies and not just by Canadians. Mobilizing this idealism for the cause of a new Canadian national consciousness proved, however, to be problematic. Vance rightly stresses that the rhetoric of the war’s mythology was too often contradicted by peace-time realities. The belief that the sacrifices of the war would lead to an assimilated Canadian population united around the ideals of national greatness and social justice for which the dead had allegedly fought, was and is still unrealised. Nevertheless Vance’s conclusion is eminently fair. The memory of the Great War in Canadian hearts was not artificially induced, nor imposed from above. Rather it sprouted from the grief, the hope, and the search for meaning of a thousand Canadian communities. J S.C.

3) Journal article: O Heilbronner and D.Muhlberger, “The Achilles Heel of German Catholicism: ‘Who voted for Hitler?’ Revisited” in European History Quarterly, vol 27, no 2, April 1997, p.221 ff.

4) Hilmar Pabel, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C. has just published the following: Conversing with God: Prayer in Erasmus’ Pastoral Writings, U.of Toronto Press 1997; also “Erasmus of Rotterdam and Judaism” in Archiv fuer Reformationsgeschichte, 87 (1996), 9-37.

Best wishes to you all, especially those starting a new academic season. John S.Conway jconway@unixg.ubc.ca