Contemporary Church History Quarterly
Volume 32, Number 1 (Spring 2026)
Review of Bauer, M. Sigram, Alban Buckel, Dominicus M. Maier et. al. Gestapo-Klostersturm im Hochsauerland. Texte zur Auflösung der missionsbeneditinischen Niederlassungen in Meschede und Olpe. Norderstedt: BoD, 2020.
By Martina Cucchiara, Bluffton University
This volume is the third in a projected four-part series on the Klostersturm (storming of the cloisters) in the archdiocese of Paderborn in Nazi Germany. Upon completion, the series will document in detail eight Catholic cloisters in the archdiocese that were closed and confiscated by the Gestapo between 1939 and 1941. The third and most recent volume focuses on the dissolution of the missionary Benedictine communities in the Sauerland: the Benediktinerkloster Königsmünster in Meschede and the Missions-Benediktinerinnen von Tutzing in Olpe. Divided into two parts, the book opens with Peter Bürger’s analysis and overview of the histories of the two religious communities. It is followed by a documentary section that brings together primary sources, personal testimonies, and previously published studies on the Benedictines in Meschede and Olpe as well as on the Klostersturm more broadly. Seeking to provide foundational material to scholars, the volume and series will mainly be of interest to scholars specializing in the history of the Catholic Church under Nazism.
Researchers and readers new to the topic will appreciate Bürger’s two introductory chapters, in which he situates the volume within the regime’s broader campaign against religious institutions. Repressive measures included the currency and morality trials, the closure of schools and novitiates, and the compulsory use of church properties during World War II. Continue reading
Co-editor Martin Keßler provides more detail on the concept in his individual contribution. Following Karl Mannheim, Max Weber, and most recently Dieter Henrich, the term “constellation” is to be understood as 
This, however, is exactly what Brandon Bloch presents in his book on Protestant Germany, a sweeping project that is part political, theological, and intellectual history and part social analysis that reassesses Protestant viewpoints and influences in postwar Germany, interspersed with occasional biographical materials on Protestant clergy and theologians as well as Protestant intellectuals and politicians. Bloch traces the wave of religious nationalism that swept up German Protestant during Hitler’s dictatorship and how the defeat of Nazi Germany required a reorientation among German Protestants which, as he convincingly argues, was both a break with the past as well as a continuation of previous Protestant mentalities. 
This book – or booklet – is the third of five publications thus far in Cambridge’s series “Elements in Modern War.” These 
This monograph advances several well-articulated claims. Its primary focus is to show that “even though Christian writers portrayed their engagement with each other as an egalitarian process, ecumenism was also deeply rooted in efforts to preserve hierarchies” (4). This study sheds light not only on the degree of interconfessional conflict and cooperation, but also on how opposition to class equality, feminism, and independence of African and Asian colonies prompted increasing ecumenical outreach. An additional thesis is that the rise of Nazism catalyzed change in confessional outlooks and caused an earlier shift toward cooperation between Catholics and Protestants than some previous histories of the subject suggest. 
Against the backdrop of rampant right-wing extremism in Saxony, it is all the more surprising that the government of Saxony does not wanted to provide any money to renovate the remaining buildings of the Sachsenburg concentration camp for an on-site memorial.
The work under review is his revised dissertation, which the late Thomas Großbölting supervised before his untimely death. Like most German dissertations, it begins with a lengthy discussion of existing literature and investigatory approaches. The author asserts that the concordat of 1933 was one of a series of treaties negotiated between churches and the German state in the twentieth century. Generally, the concordat is not considered a Staatskirchenvertrag, as those concluded by the German government and the Protestant churches are. Most historians of the concordat consider it a diplomatic agreement between two sovereign entities.
Mary Fulbrook is Professor of German History at University College London. She is a familiar and respected contributor to scholarship on Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. In this work she avoids teleological interpretations of events and rejects simplistic categorizations. She endeavors to tell the story of German bystanders “from the inside out” through “selected accounts of personal experiences” (16). She tells the stories of individuals. In so doing, she humanizes history. Victims and bystanders had names. They had stories. They were not a grouping of data points on a chart. Fulbrook’s subjects are profoundly human, and their complex stories challenge facile characterizations of society in Nazi Germany. Fulbrook’s primary sources for Part I are autobiographical essays from 1939 written on the theme “My life in Germany before and after January 30, 1933.” These essays give a broad range of everyday experiences before such memories were shaped by knowledge of the horrors of the Holocaust. Likewise, in Part II she employs a variety of firsthand accounts and memoirs to tell stories from the ground level. Fulbrook argues well for the value and limitations of her source base in her introduction.
The primary argument of the book is that conservative student activists, and especially leaders of the Ring Christlich-Demokratischer Studenten (Association of Christian Democratic Students or RCDS), were not only present during the 68er generation’s protests but were meaningful actors that shaped many of the era’s signature events. The photographs and opening anecdotes to each chapter alone convincingly prove this point. The cover photo shows a famous debate in Freiburg between the older liberal academic Ralf Dahrendorf and young Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentbund (SDS) figurehead Rudi Dutschke. Lurking in the margins of the photo are young Christian Democrats, Meinhard Ade and Ignaz Bender, who helped organize the event and participated in the debate. Von der Goltz emphasizes how these two students are rarely recognized and sometimes even cropped out of this famous photo to illustrate how the primary subjects of her inquiry have been overlooked. The presence of Ade and Bender at the debate is nonetheless significant. On the one hand, they positioned themselves against their generational spokesperson, Dutschke, and spoke out against left-wing radicalism. On the other hand, their willingness to dialogue with left-wing students and their embrace of the liberal Dahrendorf distinguished them from the older generations of Christian Democrats. Another chapter opens by revealing that the RCDS had organized the visit of the South Vietnamese ambassador in 1966, which Rudi Dutschke and the SDS interrupted, to intentionally draw national attention to the New Left’s unpopular protest tactics. Additionally, the fifth chapter opens with a description of when RCDS chair Gerd Langguth held his ground, condemning the constitutional threat posed by the Marxist Student Association Spartakus while being pelted by cheese curds in 1972. Such examples highlight the often-forgotten role of the right in these moments of protest and illustrates how young Christan Democrats initiated dialogue about reform in the 1960s, imitated many of the theatrical tactics of their left-wing adversaries, and eventually condemned the far-left’s militant turn in the 1970s.
Based on her 2017 dissertation in Protestant theology at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Loos presents a meticulously researched, insightful, and densely written work on German Protestant attitudes toward communism in general (ideas, ideologies, organizations) and Soviet communist-Bolshevism in particular. Occasionally referencing pre-World War I events, her focus is Germany’s political transition through the Weimar Republic into the Third Reich, tracing the intensification of anti-communist rhetoric on the eve of World War II and the eventual military assault on the Soviet Union in 1941. While the opening chapter points to a few academic-theological debates at the turn of the century on possible family resemblances between the ideals of early Christian and communist communities, the last chapter briefly outlines post-war developments in the Protestant churches until the mid-1950s, with anti-communist stances, though more restrained, remaining largely intact.
The study on Catholic women authors was funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and based at the University of Erfurt. Antonia Leugers, Jörg Seiler, and Lucia Scherzberg, well-known historians of German Catholicism, as well as other church historians and several literature scholars and experts in database-supported research, collaborated on this study. Establishing a database of 160 Catholic women authors, as many as the grant permitted, the participants welcome future scholars to append additional writers, especially from earlier and later periods, to the historical record.
Instead, the volumes offer a wealth of case studies. Some of the authors, such as Gertrud von le Fort and Hedwig Dransfeld, were well-known, while others published only a few works. Each of the authors has their history. The Leugers volume includes a primarily quantitative summary of the women’s experiences, how many got divorced, converted to Catholicism, left the church, lived in same-sex relationships, had children out of wedlock, attempted suicide, chose cremation, were childless, etc. Leugers admits, however, that such personal information is sometimes difficult to obtain and that, given the limited sample, the data are more “symptomatic” than representative. This detailed qualitative analysis, however, lacks explanatory power. The more important questions raised in the project remain unanswered. The authors offer no conclusions about Catholic women’s emancipation, their understanding of gender, chastity, and parenthood. While some suggest disapproval of modernity, most suggest ways of accommodating it while maintaining a life of faith. In all cases, Catholic faith triumphs. Beyond this, however, this rich body of evidence cries for additional meaningful analysis. One wonders if these volumes report results from which results can be drawn.
Another instance in which women’s agency proved important can be found in Dominik Schindler’s discussion of the relationship between the Katholische Deutsche Frauenbund and Michael von Faulhaber, a theology professor at Strasbourg and bishop of Speyer. In a nuanced brief essay, Schindler argues that Faulhaber actively supported the formation of the Frauenbund and the Hildburgisbund, an organization supporting female university students. According to Schindler, Faulhaber largely adhered to traditional values, but insisted that Catholic values reflect the equal role many Catholic women played in securing the family’s income. He also argued publicly that Catholic theology proved no obstacle to women’s suffrage. While men remained heads of household, this did not consign women to second-class status. Faulhaber’s view of the family remained conservative. Still, he acknowledged that in an industrial society, a man’s wages might not suffice to meet the family’s expenses, and thus a woman might be forced to work. Faulhaber argued that women from the upper classes should be encouraged to participate in social and cultural life. In contrast, women in the lower classes deserved much support to earn an honorable living. He believed that women’s work was necessary to meet the needs of their children. Schindler argues that, even if Faulhaber’s views seem backward today, at the time, they were quite progressive.
Under the terms of the Hitler-Mussolini Agreement, all those South Tyroleans who retained Austrian citizenship after 1919 were now considered citizens of the Reich. They had no choice but to resettle in post-Anschluss Germany. South Tyroleans who had become Italians in 1919 were given a choice. They could opt for Germany and be resettled as German citizens in Germany, or remain and be confirmed in their Italian citizenship. Lamprecht successfully illustrates the painful decisions that South Tyroleans, lay and clergy, had to make. As a result of effective German propaganda and Italian fascist repression, more than eighty percent of South Tyroleans opted for Germany. South Tyrolean laypeople opted for Germany primarily out of resentment of Italian fascism and Italianization policies. The clergy in the parishes, however, found the decision much more difficult. Most sought to remain in their homeland.