Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 25, Number 4 (December 2019)

Letter from the Editors (December 2019)

By Kyle Jantzen, Ambrose University

Dear Friends,

Although this issue of Contemporary Church History Quarterly has been somewhat delayed, we believe the content will be worth the wait. We are pleased to lead with an editorial from Manfred Gailus on the notion that 1933 in Germany marked the beginning of a kind of religious revival, a notion I can attest to in my own research on local church districts in various parts of the Reich. Several reviews follow from Doris Bergen, Christina Matzen, and Kyle Jantzen, on works relating to Luther as a propaganda figure in the First World War, Christian women in the Ravensbrück concentration camp, and a theological analysis of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s resistance thinking.

Several interesting notes follow: Suzanne Brown-Fleming guides us into the upcoming opening of the Vatican Archives and assesses a recent article on Vatican responses to the round-up of Jews in Rome in October 1943; Robert Ericksen offers an in-depth report on the Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte conference and this year’s theme of “Life-Line or Collaboration? Active contacts with churches in totalitarian societies”; Christina Matzen reports on recent conference papers devoted to Christians in the German Wehrmacht.

Lastly, I would like to take this occasion to welcome a new member to our CCHQ editorial team: Dr. Samuel Koehne from Melbourne, Australia. Dr. Koehne has written a series of provocative and insightful articles on the relationship of Nazism to religion, and in the process coined an extremely useful new concept: “ethnotheism,” which he understands as “religion defined by race and the supposed moral or spiritual characteristics that the Nazis believed were inherent in race” (from his article “The Racial Yardstick: “Ethnotheism” and Official Nazi Views on Religion,” German Studies Review 37.3 (2014): 575–596). Koehne teaches at Trinity Grammar School in Kew, Victoria, and is continuing his research in areas related to völkisch literature, Nazi leaders Alfred Rosenberg and Hans Schemm, and Hitler’s Mein Kampf.

On behalf of the editorial team,

Kyle Jantzen, Ambrose University

Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 24, Number 4 (December 2018)

Letter from the Editors (December 2018)

By Kyle Jantzen, Ambrose University

Dear Friends,

As we enter into Advent 2018, the editors of Contemporary Church History Quarterly are pleased once again to offer a variety of articles, reviews, and notes highlighting research and scholarly activity in the field of twentieth-century German and European religious history.

Manfred Gailus opens this issue with a short article about the silence of German Protestants in the wake of the November 1938 Kristallnacht pogrom–a fitting topic to revisit 80 years after the event. Gailus examines the nature of that silence, linking it to the völkisch theology so prevalent among Protestants, particularly but not exclusively in the German Christian Movement.

Antisemitism and its connection to völkisch theology continues as a theme in the three reviews that follow. Susannah Heschel examines Dirk Schuster’s important study of the Eisenach Institute, situating Schuster’s careful scholarship within the historiography of the topic. Christopher Probst reviews Horst Junginger’s study of The Scientification of the “Jewish Question” in Nazi Germany, which lays out in detail the connections between “Jewish research” at the University of Tübingen (and the Protestant seminary there) was closely connected to the politics of the Nazi state. Not surprisingly, Gerhard Kittel features prominently in Junginger’s book. Finally, Björn Krondorfer assesses Konstantin Hermann and Gerhard Lindemann’s biographical study of Saxon theologians during the Nazi era, which includes various German Christian theologians who “saw no contradiction between Hitler and Luther, between Nazi ideology and church teachings.” Hermann and Lindemann also write on theologians from the moderate “Mitte” group, as well as those connected to the Confessing Church. Importantly, they also examine five churchmen “who were persecuted by the Nazis for political and racial reasons.”

Several shorter notes round out this issue of CCHQ: Lauren Rossi offers a conference report from Lessons and Legacies that reflects on the lack of contributions relating to the history of Christianity and the Holocaust, Christina Matzen adds a conference report on the panel “Religion and Migration: Institutions and Law” from the German Studies Association conference, and David A. R. Clark introduces us to his research on Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s interpretation of the Old Testament.

We trust you’ll enjoy these scholarly offerings, and wish you a restful and meaningful Christmas and holiday season.

On behalf of the other editors,

Kyle Jantzen, Ambrose University

Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 23, Number 4 (December 2017)

Letter from the Editors (December 2017)

By Kyle Jantzen, Ambrose University

Dear Friends,

As the Advent season is once again upon us, the editors are pleased to publish a new issue of Contemporary Church History Quarterly. For many of us—editors and readers—the encounter between German Christianity, whether Catholic or Protestant, and Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist regime is the defining event of the twentieth-century history of Christianity. As usual, this subject stands at the centre of our work at the journal. What strikes me as interesting are the ways in which the reviews and notes in this issue expand the boundaries of that story—chronologically, thematically, and geographically.

Mark Edward Ruff’s new book, The Battle for the Catholic Past in Germany, 1945-1980, reviewed by Robert P. Ericksen, asks why Catholic Christians came under scrutiny for their behaviour during the Third Reich long before Protestants, whose record was ultimately more troubling. It serves as the springboard for an expansive study of Catholic controversies about the Church in the Nazi era, from early triumphalist interpretations through various legal struggles, the uproar over Rolf Hochhuth’s treatment of Pope Pius XII, and on to cross-confessional debates between Klaus Scholder and Konrad Repgen in the 1970s and 1980s.

Heath Spencer then reviews Joachim Negel and Karl Pinggéra’s Urkatastrophe. Die Erfahrung des Krieges 1914-1918 im Spiegel zeitgenössischer Theologie. This survey of a broadly European (with a nod to global) array of theological responses to the cataclysms of the First World War, spanning from justifications of the conflict to Christian pacifist rejections of violence. What emerges is a picture of the extent to which the war provoked theological crises, some of which led to renewal and others of which continued to play out in encounters with totalitarianism, war, and Holocaust.

Lee B. Spitzer has written a detailed account of US Baptist responses to Jews and Jewish persecution and annihilation in the Hitler era, showing how events in Germany preoccupied North American Christians as well. As expected, Spitzer finds a mixture of responses—some ambivalent, others sympathetic, though none practically effective in ameliorating the crisis faced by European Jews.

Beth Griech-Polelle reviews The Evil that Surrounds Us: The WWII Memoir of Erna Becker-Kohen. Kohen, a Jewish-German who married a Catholic and subsequently converted, wrote of her day-to-day experiences in Nazi Germany. Her account, edited and translated by Kevin Spicer and Martina Cucchiara, reveals the sharp limits and high costs of the “protected status” of Jewish Germans married to “Aryans.” Though filled with disappointments and struggles, her memoir also reveals the potential of faith to sustain hope.

The shorter notes which follow these reviews continue to expand the story of Christianity’s encounter with Nazism and the Holocaust, assessing Protestant responses to Allied occupation, Romanian Catholic conversion of Jews, and Protestant institutional life in the Third Reich. Finally and most broadly, Mark Edward Ruff reports on recent scholarly engagements around questions of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Christian revivalism in Germany.

We hope you find these contributions interesting, and we appreciate your continued readership.

With best wishes, on behalf of the editorial team,

Kyle Jantzen

Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 22, Number 4 (December 2016)

Letter from the Editors (December 2016)

By Kyle Jantzen, Ambrose University

Greetings friends,

In this Advent season, we are pleased to offer you a new issue of Contemporary Church History Quarterly. Our December issue features two reviews of books relating to Bishop George Bell of Chichester, highlighting his efforts on behalf of the ecumenical movement and his role as intermediary between the German Resistance. In the latter work, his contact was, famously, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, though Bell had already received much of the information Bonhoeffer would provide from the German Pastor Hans Schönfeld of the International Christian Social Institute in Geneva, who had also met Bell in Sweden, a few days before the Bell-Bonhoeffer encounter.

We are also happy to report on some current research relating to the religious history of the Nazi period and, more broadly, the twentieth century. Members of the editorial team and guest contributors have provided information about papers given at five conferences or symposia held in Europe and North America over the course of the summer and fall.

We trust that you will find these enlightening, and wish you a merry Christmas and happy new year.

On behalf of the entire editorial team,

Kyle Jantzen, Ambrose University