Category Archives: Volume 16 Number 4 (December 2010)

Letter from the editors: December 2010

ACCH Quarterly Vol. 16, No. 4, December 2010

Letter from the editors: December 2010

The Berliner Dom, in the heart of the capital.

Greetings for the holiday season and welcome to the December 2010 issue of the ACCH Quarterly! The reviews, reports, and announcements here deal with topics close to many of us – Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Pius XI, the German churches under National Socialism – but they also extend into less familiar terrain – the Bruderhof,Russiain the 1920s,Palestinein the 1940s. Together they point to the fact that study of church history, and religious history more broadly, is booming.

It’s worth pausing to reflect on this development. Twenty, thirty years ago historians of religion in the modern world were a rarity. If religious themes were treated at major conferences it was in a small number of discrete sessions or in the context of pre-modern history. Programs of the 2010 meetings of the German Studies Association, the Historikertag, and Lessons and Legacies Conference on the Holocaust reveal a very different situation: numerous papers, panels, and special events dealing with religion, and integration of religious matters into broader discussions of all kinds. Indeed, the overarching theme for the 2011 annual meeting of the American Historical Association is “History, Society, and the Sacred.” The same trend is evident in other places, too: look at what is being published in top historical journals, at lists of dissertation topics, or at the areas of focus of historical institutes of various kinds. One of the busiest parts of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum these days is the Committee on Church Relations, headed by Victoria Barnett.

There are a number of possible explanations for this surge of interest in contemporary religious history. The rise of fundamentalisms, the events of September 11, and the wars inAfghanistanandIraqhave no doubt played a role. Spirituality in various forms – from the New Age movement to global Pentecostalism – has emerged powerfully in the late twentieth century. Academically, social and cultural history have become dominant modes of historical analysis. Leadership by key individuals has also been vital: Hartmut Lehmann, Jon Butler, Gerhard Besier, Annette Becker, Emilio Gentile, and others have published, organized, mentored, and inspired work on religion in areas often far beyond their immediate specializations. John Conway, the founding editor and still most prolific contributor to this periodical, merits particular recognition here. John, we hope it is gratifying to see many seeds you have planted and nurtured over the years grow and flourish, even in ways you might not have imagined.

On behalf of all of the ACCH Quarterly editors,

Doris Bergen,UniversityofToronto

Andrew Chandler,UniversityofChichester

Manfred Gailus, Technische UniversitätBerlin

Review of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Berlin: 1932 – 1933: Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 12

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ACCH Quarterly Vol. 16, No. 4, December 2010

Review of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Berlin: 1932 – 1933: Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 12, ed. Larry L. Rasmussen, trans. Isabel Best, David Higgins, and Douglas W. Stott (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2009), 680 pp. ISBN 978-0-8006-8312-2.

By John S. Conway, University of British Columbia

The twelve months from November 1932 to October 1933 covered in this, the twelfth volume of Bonhoeffer’s collected writings, were to be of crucial significance, not just for the career of this young theologian, but for his nation as well. The political and social turmoil, which had resulted in violent clashes between rival gangs of Communists and Nazis in many of Germany’s major cities, culminated in the seizure of power by the National Socialists, led by Adolf Hitler, on January 30, 1933. It was the beginning of what Bonhoeffer, within a few days, was to describe as “a terrible barbarization of our culture”, the onset of what he later called “the masquerade of evil”. This insight was eventually to lead to Bonhoeffer’s involvement in the conspiracy to overthrow Hitler’s dictatorship and to his execution for high treason in April 1945. This period is therefore notable as marking the beginnings of his opposition to the Nazis’ imposition of totalitarian measures that were to have such fateful consequences.

This volume brings together the surviving letters, articles, papers and sermons from this short turning point in Bonhoeffer’s life. As before, the translation of the German original is excellent, and the editorial footnotes very helpful. In addition we are given a chronology of these months, a very full index of names, giving the positions held by those mentioned, as well as an exhaustive subject index. This volume’s value is enhanced by having not only Larry Rasmussen’s introduction, but also the translation of the afterword provided by the German editors. In addition, certain materials have been added since the original German edition was published. On the other hand, in contrast to the preceding volume 10, which covered Bonhoeffer’s stay abroad, this volume is less revealing. During these months in Berlin, Bonhoeffer was in close contact with his friends and family, so clearly most of the significant discussions and debates about his ideas and conduct were undertaken verbally and were not committed to paper or have not survived. Nevertheless, the remarkable number of his extant communications provides us with major clues, which of course were more fully explored in Eberhard Bethge’s full biography, first published in 1966.

If this volume contains only small items not hitherto known, it is still an impressive piece of scholarship. The centrepiece of this volume is the controversy over the future of the German Evangelical Church. This dispute greatly escalated after the Nazis came to power and particularly after the passage in April 1933 of the Law ordering the removal of people of Jewish origins from official positions. On the one side, the vociferous faction known as the German Christians sought to align the church as closely as possible with the new political regime. They supported Hitler’s goals for a renewed powerful Germany, and saw in him a leader who would restore the nation’s strength by boldly and forcefully attacking those they considered to be the national enemies, particularly Communists and Jews. By such a stance, they believed, the church would regain its popularity and demonstrate its loyalty to the state. On the other side were those whose conservative rootedness deplored such innovative departures from traditional Lutheran doctrines. From the beginning, as these documents make clear, Bonhoeffer championed this adherence to orthodoxy, and became, at the age of 27, one of the most vocal critics of the German Christians and their deplorable and false doctrines. He was thus caught up, as is clear from his correspondence and papers, in the turmoil and fluidity that assailed the churches. What is remarkable is the sense of foreboding reflected in his words from the early months of Nazi rule. He refused to share the widespread enthusiasm that swept through many sections of German conservative society, including the Evangelical Church. As early as February 1933, he was expressing his view that authoritarian leadership and ecstatic patriotism were dangerously misleading traits. Most particularly he now began to take issue with the German Christians’ attempts to introduce the state’s anti-Jewish regulations into the church by banning anyone of Jewish origin from holding offices in the church, and even by calling for their expulsion altogether. This led to his being invited in June 1933 to be one of a team drawing up a firm statement of orthodox belief, known from its place of origin as the Bethel Confession. Unfortunately the church leaders delayed its publication, and asked for revisions, so that eventually Bonhoeffer felt it had been watered down and dissociated himself. It was one of the factors that led him to decide to leave Germany and take over pastoring two German parishes in London in October 1933, which is where this volume ends.

We are not yet provided with a full account of the struggles that Bonhoeffer must have gone through to reach this decision. But it clearly meant leaving the two jobs he held, first the lectureship in systematic theology at Berlin’s university, and second a chaplaincy at the Technical College. The latter appointment was clearly a mistake since few students wanted counselling, and none appeared at his office hours. By contrast his students at the university were enthralled, even though Bonhoeffer lectured at 8 in the morning on Saturdays and Wednesdays! Fortunately several students preserved their notes from which a partial text has been reconstituted, which is included in this volume. But it is notable that Bonhoeffer carefully avoided any reference to current political events. Nor were the students consulted about his sudden career change.

No less striking is the material on Bonhoeffer’s extra-curricular engagements. In these months he diligently coached a confirmation class for young lads in a north Berlin slum district, and even moved there so that they could call on him in the evenings. No less significant was his involvement with the wider European ecumenical movement, particularly through the World Alliance for Promoting International Friendship through the Churches. Bonhoeffer had been appointed the World Alliance’s Youth Secretary for central Europe shortly after his return from America in 1931, and was responsible for organizing youth conferences designed to overcome national barriers and hatreds. But much to the regret of his mentors in this work, Superintendent Diestel and Professor Friedrich Siegmund-Schultze, Bonhoeffer was too preoccupied with his other responsibilities to give much time to the World Alliance. His most significant action was to travel to a conference in Sofia,Bulgaria, in September 1933, where he urged the World Alliance leaders to adopt a resolution deploring the German state’s measures against the Jews and protesting against the German church’s readiness to adopt the so-called “Aryan paragraph” discriminating against anyone of Jewish origin. At this point, Bonhoeffer felt that his outspokenness on this subject might well land him in a concentration camp if he returned to Germany. His decision to accept his next ministerial assignment in England was therefore a judicious move.

But the World Alliance continued to mean much to Bonhoeffer. This was the period when he was wholeheartedly persuaded of the need for world peace. In this cause he was a pupil of Siegmund-Schultze, the leading pacifist of the German Evangelical Church. But Siegmund-Schultze was to be forcibly expelled from Germany by the Gestapo in June 1933, which must have been a great shock and bitter blow to Bonhoeffer and his friends. It was not until the following year, at the World Alliance’s conference in Denmark, that Bonhoeffer’s most significant contribution to the issue of world peace was expressed. This volume, however, only hints at his developing ideas.

Karl Barth, whom Bonhoeffer greatly admired, was opposed to his leaving Germany, and the letters between the two reveal Barth’s strong regret and Bonhoeffer’s apologetic tone. But certainly we can be sure that Bonhoeffer’s steadfast denunciations of the false doctrines of the German Christians, as expressed in the Bethel Confession, were to pay a role in May 1934, when Barth composed the equally stringent rejection of false doctrines in the Barmen Declaration.

Equally notable is the text of Bonhoeffer’s often misunderstood statement on “The Church and the Jewish Question” of June 1933. This undoubtedly reflects the Lutheran theological tradition about these “outcast” people, and calls for their eventual conversion. But it also challenges the church to oppose the harsh measures taken by the state, and if necessary to bring the apparatus of the unjust and illegitimate state to a halt. He then goes on to proclaim the necessity of not allowing the state to prescribe who can be a member of the church. In reality, the church consists of Germans and Jews standing together under God’s Word. Racial characteristics have nothing to do with membership in the church. Unfortunately Bonhoeffer left this vital topic unfinished and rarely returned to it in subsequent years.

Our thanks are due to the editors and translators for their excellent work in maintaining the standard of previous volumes. It is to be hoped that the whole series will soon be completed for English-speaking readers. For as Vicki Barnett, the General Editor, rightly notes: “These volumes are a significant contribution to twentieth century theological literature, church history and the history of the Nazi era”. They afford us a detailed view of “Bonhoeffer’s historical context and its great challenges for the churches and for all people of conscience.”

Review of Ralf Retter, Zwischen Protest und Propaganda: Die Zeitschrift “Junge Kirche“ im Dritten Reich

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ACCH Quarterly Vol. 16, No. 4, December 2010

Review of Ralf Retter, Zwischen Protest und Propaganda: Die Zeitschrift “Junge Kirche“ im Dritten Reich (Munich: Allitera Verlag, 2009), 387 pp. ISBN: 978-3-86906-066-8.

By Kyle Jantzen, Ambrose University College

Ralf Retter’s study of the Protestent journal Junge Kirche questions common historical assumptions about its role in the church politics of Nazi Germany. His detailed study of the periodical, which ran from 1933 to 1941, arises out of his doctoral dissertation at the Technische Universität Berlin. Drawing not only on his analysis of the publishing activity of Junge Kirche but also on the previously unpublished correspondence among those responsible for the journal, Retter tackles three discrete topics: the history of the German press in the Third Reich, the German Church Struggle, and the German Resistance. His main question is whether Junge Kirche was really just the mouthpiece of the Confessing Church and an organ of the church resistance to Nazism, as has been argued in the past. Like many other recent studies of the German churches under Hitler, his answers complicate our understanding of the relationship between Christianity and Nazism.

Junge Kirche was the leading Confessing Church journal in the Nazi era. More than that, it was one of the few supra-regional Protestant periodicals to survive in Hitler’s Germany, and was the Protestant periodical most likely to be read within Germany and circulated abroad. But how, asks Retter, did it function in the highly regulated press environment of the Third Reich? Clearly, it was oriented towards questions of theology, faith, and the proclamation of the gospel, avoiding subjects that spilled over outside the church and touching on state policy. However, given the anti-clericalism of the Nazi state and Junge Kirche’s insistence on the independence of the church to preach and teach according to Scripture, the journal found itself positioned against National Socialism (11). The key leaders who tried to steer the journal through the church politics of the Third Reich were Hanns Lilje, Fritz Söhlmann, and Günther Ruprecht, of whom only the first is fairly well known.

One of the challenging aspects of publishing during the Nazi era was censorship. Retter wonders how frequently and to what extent Junge Kirche suffered at the hands at censors, but also what role self-censorship played in the editorial process and (more controversially) to what extent those responsible for the journal might have identified with aspects of National Socialist ideology and rule. This raises the deeper question of whether Junge Kirche was really engaged in resistance against Nazism at all and, if so, whether its activities should be considered opposition (Widerstand) or merely non-conformity (Resistenz). Was it, Retter wonders, a force for the stabilization or destabilization of the regime (17)? In answering these questions, he devotes a good deal of attention to the argument that the journal was engaged in Resistenz between 1933 and 1936 (127), as it opposed the German Christian takeover of the church governments and supported the Barmen Confession, opposed both the introduction of the Aryan Paragraph in the churches and the abandonment of the Old Testament (188), affirmed the traditional historical narratives defending the long-standing presence of Christianity in Germany, supported the emergent ecumenical movement, and even criticized Nazi interference in the realm of the church (208). Still, Retter is careful to point out that this Resistenz took place in a context of traditional German-national sentiment.

By 1936, however, as the Confessing Church split and the pro-Nazi Fritz Söhlmann assumed the sole editorship of Junge Kirche, the journal lost most of its character as a centre for Resistenz. In rejecting the Dahlemite branch of the Confessing Church, Junge Kirche found itself caught up in internecine struggles and little able to engage in any significant opposition to the German Christian Movement. Siding with traditional Lutherans who were unwilling to break completely from the German regional church governments and the Reich Church authorities, Junge Kirche ceased functioning as a mouthpiece for the Confessing Church, argues Retter. By 1939, the pro-Nazi tendencies in the journal which had been present even from the beginning were given more or less free reign (particularly after Lilje, who had taken a more critical line towards the regime, was ousted from his editorial post). The self-censorship of publisher Ruprecht and editor Söhlmann kept the names of leading Nazis from appearing in the journal’s pages. And when Junge Kirche combined the embrace of Hitler’s war aims with its mission to foster piety and provide spiritual encouragement for Germans caught up in the Second World War, it grew into a stabilizing presence in the Third Reich—quite the opposite of a force for resistance.

For Retter, the fate of Junge Kirche mirrored that of the Protestant churches as a whole. Like the churches, it was reduced to the role of preaching the Word. Like the churches, its defence of the Reformation Confessions was interpreted by the state as political disloyalty and opposition. And like the churches, it had to work to clarify its relationship with the state. By choosing to support the “intact” Lutheran regional churches of Württemberg, Bavaria, and Hanover, Junge Kirche chose for cooperation with the National Socialist regime—a stance that opened the door for it to function as a propaganda arm of the state. Thus it was that the early period of protest gave way (in the language of the book’s title) to propaganda—active support for the Nazi regime and its conduct of war—a transition which was more self-induced than censor-driven (365). Indeed, the propaganda effect of Junge Kirche was especially profound, argues Retter, since it was a confessional publication and not a Nazi Party periodical. Its readers might well have assumed that Nazism was quite acceptable to the Christian churches of Germany.

All of this raises interesting questions pertaining to the relationship between Christianity and Nazism, highlighting once more the conflicting messages and understandings of the religious situation among German Protestants (and perhaps among Nazis, too). Concerns over Nazi anticlericalism and warnings about the movement becoming a political religion are mixed with Confessing Church support for aspects of Nazi antisemitism and the foreign policy of Lebensraum as well as calls to preach and promote piety in a particularly German cultural manner consistent with the conservative nationalism that marked the Protestant churches. In highlighting the presence of these inconsistencies and hypocrisies within the publishing arm of the Confessing Church, Retter contributes to our understanding of Christianity and Nazism as both partners and rivals attempting to win the hearts and minds of Christians in the Third Reich.

Review of Jürgen Elvert and Jürgen Nielsen-Sikora, eds., Kulturwissenschaften und Nationalsozialismus

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ACCH Quarterly Vol. 16, No. 4, December 2010

Review of Jürgen Elvert and Jürgen Nielsen-Sikora, eds., Kulturwissenschaften und Nationalsozialismus. Historische Mitteilungen im Auftrage der Ranke-Gesellschaft, 72 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2008), 922 pp. ISBN: 978-3-515-09282-1.

By Robert P. Ericksen, Pacific Lutheran University

This review appeared first in German History, Vol. 28 No. 2 (June 2010): 246-48, and is reprinted by kind permission of the author.

At the collapse of the Nazi State, some Germans committed suicide, unwilling to face a world without their Führer; some Germans were brought to Nuremberg, where they were placed on trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity; and most Germans began to act as if they had never been attracted to Adolf Hitler, despite sometimes copious evidence to the contrary. Already in 1946 Max Weinreich wrote Hitler’s Professors: The Part of Scholarship in Germany’s Crimes against the Jewish People; but most professors managed to cultivate the idea, common to a large portion of their German fellows, that they had played no role in Nazi crimes and had merely been caught under the boot of a totalitarian regime. This postwar denial endured largely intact for a generation or more. In the past two or three decades, however, it has been overturned by scholarship which shows that ‘good Germans’ of every sort succumbed to the attractions of Hitler and worked willingly within and for the Nazi State. Such an assessment clearly includes German professors and their universities. Despite purges of Jewish faculty, despite the burning of books, despite violations of academic freedom, the Nazi goal of ‘Gleichschaltung’ (coordination) within the universities is now widely thought to have been ‘Selbstgleichschaltung.’ It was professors who helped burn the books and professors who competed for preferment after their Jewish and leftwing colleagues had been removed.

Kulturwissenschaften und Nationalsozialismus is one of several recent attempts to focus on scholars in the humanities as one aspect of this problem. The plan for the book, formulated in 2000, involved thirty-five disciplines. Participants hoped to create a foundation for future scholarship, showing where research on each of these disciplines stood at the time and creating a sort of grid by which interdisciplinary comparisons could be made. Jürgen Elvert somewhat disarmingly admits that the goals of the project were not achieved (p. 17). No contributor could be found for some areas, some contributors agreed to produce a chapter but failed to deliver, and some contributors produced work unworthy of being printed. Nonetheless, this ‘failed’ project resulted in twenty-eight chapters plus an introduction, filling some 922 pages. It is a very useful work, though hardly a quick read and somewhat uneven in quality and thoroughness. Individual contributions vary from a low of thirteen pages to a high of sixty on standard topics such as history, sociology, literature and political science, with much attention to philology as well as fields as diverse as classical archaeology and modern theater.

Hans-Joachim Dahms, one of the contributors, was an early player in the uncovering of academic complicity. In 1987 he co-edited Die Universität Göttingen unter dem Nationalsozialismus and he has since written extensively on philosophy during the Nazi era. Here he gives a very useful assessment of that discipline, arguing that no actual ‘National Socialist philosophy’ emerged during the Third Reich, nothing to equal, for example, the anti-Jewish, anti-Einstein ‘German Physics’ pushed by two Nobel laureates, Philipp Lenard and Johannes Stark. He blames this upon the quarrelsomeness of German philosophers and their ongoing arguments over neo-Kantianism, logical positivism, and other branches within their field. Many important philosophers, however, did endorse the Nazi state, most famously Martin Heidegger. Heidegger’s supporters later argued that his famous pro-Nazi address in 1933 as Rektor atFreiburg had nothing to do with his philosophical ideas and represented merely an early, mistaken assessment. Dahms cuts him no such slack: ‘It has long been clear that his NS enthusiasm during the Third Reich never stopped and that even after 1945 he never distanced himself from National Socialism in general or from his own actions during that time’ (p. 43). Dahms sketches the careers of other pro-Nazi philosophers, such as Alfred Baeumler ofBerlin, who said at the time of the book burning in 1933: ‘What we remove today are poisonous materials which were collected during a time of false tolerance. It is our task to let the German spirit within us become so powerful that such materials can no longer be collected’ (p. 48).

Horst Junginger, taking on the discipline of Religionswissenschaft, illustrates some of the irony and complexity of the Nazi era. As a student of comparative religion, Junginger cannot approve the old tendency to study religion only from the perspective of orthodox Christian belief. He mentions Adolf von Harnack, for example, arguing a century ago for the primacy of the Christian point of view (p. 52). Junginger then bemoans the postwar influence of Karl Barth, whose Christology rejected all non-Christian faiths as false attempts to find the true God (p. 85). Comparative religion of the sort practiced today expects a more modern approach, more objective, based upon empirical evidence and similar to anthropology in its method. Ironically, Junginger finds that just that sort of open modernity produced a strange variety of racist and völkisch religious movements during the Nazi period. Many of the individuals he describes began as Protestants. They studied theology and then often spent time on a mission field, perhaps in India, as in the case of Jakob Wilhelm Hauer. Back in Germany their linguistic skills and openness to non-Christian religions allowed them to fill newly created university positions in comparative religion. Within the nationalistic and racist atmosphere of their day, however, they were likely to use their freedom from Christian orthodoxy to endorse syncretistic beliefs closely related to the Nazi Weltanschauung. Some, like Hauer with his German Faith Movement, tried to return to a purer, pagan past. Others, like the Deutsche Christen within the official Protestant Church, used comparative religion to reach the unlikely conclusion that Christianity had no actual connection to Judaism, but had always been entirely and inherently anti-Jewish. Walter Grundmann, professor of theology at the University of Jena and founding director of the Institute for the Study and Eradication of Jewish Influence on German Church Life, worked at de-judaizing the Christian tradition and even Jesus himself (as described recently by Susannah Heschel in The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany). Dozens of professors attended conferences at Grundmann’s institute and contributed to its work. No scholar today would consider the work of Grundmann or the ideas of Hauer objective attempts to study and learn from religious traditions, yet many professors made that claim in the Nazi era and achieved success.

Every chapter in this book acknowledges the affinity of German scholarship for the ideas of the Nazi state, though authors differ in their assessment of culpability and in the breadth of their critique. Most academics never cooperated with the regime quite as much as the regime would have liked; most retained some loyalty to the ideals of their profession. Yet the story remains grim and much closer to the one told by Max Weinreich in 1946 than defenders of academia might like to think. This book is an important source for insight into the phenomenon. As is often the case, these German authors could have paid more attention to scholarship produced in Britainand America. However, most made good use of archival records, correspondence, and other forms of primary documents. Kulturwissenschaft und Nationalsozialismus thus takes its place beside similar volumes, such as Nationalsozialismus in den Kulturwissenschaften (Hartmut Lehmann and Otto Gerhard Oexle, eds., 2004) and Die Rolle der Geisteswissenschaften im Dritten Reich, 1933-1945 (Frank-Rutger Hausmann, ed., 2002), in helping us understand the failure of humanities scholars in Nazi Germany to be humane.

Review of Emmy Barth, An Embassy Besieged: The Story of a Christian Community in Nazi Germany

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ACCH Quarterly Vol. 16, No. 4, December 2010

Review of Emmy Barth, An Embassy Besieged: The Story of a Christian Community in Nazi Germany (Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Books, Plough Publishing, 2010), 306 pp. ISBN 13: 978-1-60899-879-1.

By John S. Conway, University of British Columbia

The Bruderhof was the name given to a small Christian experimental community established in 1919 by Eberhard Arnold, a charismatic teacher and preacher, as a protest against the militarism and nationalism which had led to Germany’s recent defeat. He sought to recreate a community based on the ideas of the radical Reformer, Jakob Hutter, whose disciples had long since been banished from Europe and survived only in small groups in the Dakotas and western Canada. They aimed to follow Tolstoy’s lead in living a communal life without individual property, but witnessing in unity to their common piety and pacifism. In the 1920s this group settled on a dilapidated farm in a remote corner of Hessen near Fulda and began to propagate their idealistic vision as best they could. At first, this alternative life-style attracted a number of young people both from Germany and from other parts of Europe, drawn together in fervent discipleship of brotherly love according to the Sermon on the Mount. By 1933, the community had grown to over 100 persons.

The advent of the Nazi Party to power drastically altered the Bruderhof’s fortunes. Eberhard Arnold was quite clear about the incompatibility of his vision with Nazi ideology. It was not long before the local authorities began to harass the community, making use of allegations that they were a bunch of crypto-communists or even drug users. Already in November 1933, the farm was raided by armed policemen who openly declared that the Bruderhof had no place in Hitler’s Germany. The Bruderhof’s charitable status was revoked, their fostering of children at risk was suspended, and various sanctions damaged the profitability of their farming operations. In early 1934, they were forbidden to operate a separate Christian school, so that the school-age children had to be evacuated to Switzerland. In the following year, the introduction of military conscription led to the emigration of all their young men, whose pacifist beliefs prevented them from joining any military force. At first, a refuge was found on a remote hillside farm in Lichtenstein, until the authorities there bowed to Nazi pressure. Another section of the community then went to England in 1936, where they were befriended by Quakers and relocated to a farm in the Cotswolds. Unfortunately Eberhard Arnold died of a botched operation in November 1935, but even without his inspiring leadership the group managed to maintain their spiritual integrity. However, this was not enough to alter the Nazis’ resolute determination to get rid of them all. In April 1937, the police again raided the Bruderhof in force, declared its property to be confiscated, and ordered the community’s immediate disbandment. Three of the leaders were imprisoned for nearly three months, but were eventually released. The survivors emigrated from Germany to England and began to reorganize their witness once again.

This whole sad story is excellently told by Emmy Barth, one of Eberhard Arnold’s descendants, who is the community’s archivist in what is now their main centre in upper New York State. She has skillfully woven together and translated the surviving material of Arnold’s sermons, speeches and letters, and has been able to discover in Berlin the relevant documents in the records of the Reich Ministry of Church Affairs for 1936-37. While this book is entirely written from the point of view of those affected and tells us little that is new about the Nazi persecution of these minor sects, nevertheless her story is a valuable illustration of self-reliant spiritual strength refusing to capitulate in the face of ruthless and unfeeling paranoia.. Thanks to Eberhard Arnold’s prophetic vision, the Bruderhof movement continues to survive and indeed flourish. Emmy Barth’s sequel to this book, No Lasting Home: A Year in the Paraguayan Wilderness, continuing the story of their subsequent wartime flight from England to Paraguay, was reviewed in our March 2010 issue (Vol. 16, No. 1).

Review of Richard Bonney, ed. and trans., Confronting the Nazi War on Christianity: The Kulturkampf Newsletters, 1936-1939

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ACCH Quarterly Vol. 16, No. 4, December 2010

Review of Richard Bonney, ed. and trans., Confronting the Nazi War on Christianity: The Kulturkampf Newsletters, 1936-1939. Studies in the History of Religious and Political Pluralism, Vol. 4 (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2009), 578 pp. ISBN 978-3-03911-904-2.

By Doris L. Bergen, University of Toronto

This volume presents a fascinating primary source on church-state relations in National Socialist Germany from the remilitarization of the Rhineland in early 1936 to the eve of World War II. The full title of the newsletters collected here was “Kulturkampf: News Bulletin of the Religious Policy of the Third Reich.” As Bonney explains in his introduction, these newsletters were published in London in English by the Kulturkampf Association, also known as the League for the Defence of Christianity, with funds from Erwin Kraft and encouragement from Bishop George Bell. Bonney estimates a circulation of about 2,500 copies. The English edition was translated from a French original, the work of German Catholic exiles in France. Karl Spiecker, a former chief of the German press service, was the editor. No doubt his experience was key in giving the bulletin its professional quality. Some of the newsletters have already been published in German, edited by the distinguished church historian Heinz Hürten: ‘Kurturkampf, Berichte aus dem Dritten Reich, Paris’. Eine Auswahl aus den deutschsprachigen Jahrgängen 1936-1939 (Regensburg: F. Pustet, 1988). Bonney’s book now makes this material available in English, along with some portions that Hürten did not include.

The newsletters are remarkable in their depth of coverage and analytical sophistication. Spiecker and his contributors, none of whom are identified, were surprisingly well informed on everything from international affairs to local developments. They devote what comes to almost 150 pages in the book to the Anschluß of Austria and its ramifications for the churches yet also note the significance of quotidian matters, such as the July 1938 attempt by a German merchant to “Aryanize” his daughter’s name, Judith, by lopping off the “h.” Consideration at three levels of courts left the outcome uncertain (416-7). Many of the newsletters reproduce passages, some of them extensive, from Nazi speeches and publications: Der Stürmer and Das Schwarze Korps, but also others that are no longer well known. Readers interested in any aspect of life in Nazi Germany in its understudied “middle period” are certain to find pertinent tidbits and possibly even major insights here.

The broad outline of the position presented in the newsletters is fairly predictable. Informed readers will be able to anticipate the central claims already from the titles – of Bonney’s volume, with its reference to the “Nazi War on Christianity” and of the newsletter, with its invocation of Bismarck’s Kulturkampf. The newsletters depict National Socialism as an ideological, institutional, and moral assault on Christianity that evolved from crude frontal attacks led by pagans and neo-pagans to a much more dangerous scheme to create a nazified, national church. For the people who assembled and distributed the bulletins, what must have been incredibly difficult and also risky work held out the promise of rallying forces beyond Germany in support of the churches, in particular the Roman Catholic Church and its most beleaguered elements. For Bonney, publishing this material now is a way to pay tribute to clergy who did not give in to Nazism (the book, like the German edition of Raul Hilberg’s Täter, Opfer, Zuschauer, is dedicated to Bernard Lichtenberg). It also appears to be a response to Richard Steigmann-Gall’s “revisionist position” (23), to which Bonney refers at numerous points.

Like every rich primary source, the Kulturkampf newsletters also contain surprises. The authors demonstrate an impressive grasp of the complex and dynamic connections between Nazi treatment of the churches and Hitler’s foreign policy. They devote a significant amount of space and understanding to developments within German Protestantism and to fostering a spirit of Christian solidarity. Rather than preaching the now familiar contention that the Roman Catholic hierarchy, led by an anti-CommunistVatican, settled for Hitler as the “lesser of two evils,” the newsletters explicitly reject that view. National Socialism was totalitarian, they insist, and as an ideologically conceived religion or substitute for religion, it posed an absolute and mortal threat with which there could be no compromise. The authors of the newsletters clearly recognized the centrality of antisemitism to the Nazi program, but in their analyses, the persecution of Jews is always a point of departure for discussion of the position of institutionalized Christianity. Most telling perhaps is the lengthy coverage of Hitler’s infamous speech of January 30, 1939, in which he “prophesied” that the next world war would result in the annihilation of Jewry. That part of Hitler’s tirade goes unremarked here, as the newsletters focus on another threat he made: that continued “misbehaviour” on the part of the churches would result in complete separation of church and state in Germany (488).

The usefulness of Bonney’s volume is unfortunately limited by the brevity of the introduction – much more could have been done to explain exactly what the newsletters were and how they were produced and received – and the paucity and unevenness of the footnotes. Nevertheless, this is a valuable contribution that provides much to ponder for all students of National Socialism.

More reviews of Susannah Heschel, The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany

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ACCH Quarterly Vol. 16, No. 4, December 2010

More reviews of Susannah Heschel, The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), 384 pp., ISBN: 978-0-691-12531-2.

Susannah Heschel’s book about Walter Grundmann and the Institute for the Study and Eradication of Jewish Influence on German Church Life (1939-1945) continues to attract attention and stimulate debate. Below are links to four reviews (two we’ve already published and two that are new to us) that we believe will be of interest to readers of the ACCH Quarterly:

1. Daniel J. Harrington, S.J., Professor of New Testament at the Boston College School of Theology and Ministry, in the predecessor of the ACCH Quarterly, John Conway’s ACCH Newsletter, available here.

2. Björn Krondorfer, Professor of Religious Studies and the Department Chair for Philosophy and Religious Studies, St. Mary’s College of Maryland, in theologie.geschichte and ACCH Quarterly (Vol. 16, no. 2), available here.

3. Beth A. Griech-Polelle, Associate Professor of History, Bowling Green State University, on the listserv H-German, available at http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=25673.

4. Bernard M. Levinson, Professor of Classical and Near Eastern Studies and of Law, University of Minnesota, and Tina Sherman, Brandeis University, in Review of Biblical Literature, available at http://www.bookreviews.org/pdf/7576_8280.pdf.

Article Note: Caitlin Carenen, “The American Christian Palestine Committee, the Holocaust, and Mainstream Protestant Zionism, 1938-1948”

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ACCH Quarterly Vol. 16, No. 4, December 2010

Article Note: Caitlin Carenen, “The American Christian Palestine Committee, the Holocaust, and Mainstream Protestant Zionism, 1938-1948,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 24 no. 2 (Fall 2010): 273-296.

By John S. Conway, University of British Columbia

Caitlin Carenen’s article describes the activities of a small but influential committee of American churchmen, the American Christian Palestine Committee (ACPC), established after the November 1938 pogrom in Germanyand comprised mainly of liberal Protestants. Its purpose was to mobilize support in American churches for the persecuted victims of Nazism and in particular to urge their resettlement in Palestine, along the lines advocated by Jewish and Zionist supporters. Carenen shows that this was a politically well-connected and effective lobby, motivated by the horrors of the Holocaust and sincerely dedicated to the idea of Zionism. At the time, the majority opinion among American Protestants was strongly isolationist and even pacifist, as reflected in their principal journal: The Christian Century. Events inEurope brought about a reluctant change.

One of the strong advocates forAmerica’s involvement in world events was Professor Reinhold Niebuhr ofNew York’sUnion TheologicalCollege. His ideas are well examined here. Thanks to his efforts and those of more than 300 leading political figures, support for the Zionist cause was advocated as a Christian duty, on humanitarian and pragmatic grounds, but also as an overdue response to the long history of Christian antisemitism.

This ACPC found itself allied to the much older Christian Zionism favoured largely by fundamentalists and biblical literalists, but studiously avoided any appeal to missionary ambitions, arguing instead that the return of Jews to their ancient home in Palestine would create a potentially democratic ally for American policy-makers in the Middle East. Considerable political pressure was mobilized by the ACPC against the restrictive policies of the British Mandate, which only increased after the Nazi defeat. Strong support was given to the 1945 Anglo-American Committee of Enquiry which advocated allowing 100,000 Jews to immigrate toPalestine. The British Government’s refusal to accept this policy was deplored, and subsequently the ACPC urged President Truman to throw his support behind the plans for the establishment ofIsraelas a state. His immediate recognition of this state’s existence in May 1948 can be seen as a vindication of the ACPC’s views. In subsequent histories, the contribution of these Protestants has been ignored or downplayed. This article provides a valuable corrective.

Article Note: R. Gribble, “Cooperation and Conflict between Church and State: The Russian Famine of 1921-1923”

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ACCH Quarterly Vol. 16, No. 4, December 2010

Article Note: R. Gribble, “Cooperation and Conflict between Church and State: The Russian Famine of 1921-1923,” Journal of Church and State 51 no. 4 (Autumn 2009): 634-662.

By John S. Conway, University of British Columbia

Richard Gribble’s article describes the unprecedented and unrepeated international and interdenominational efforts made to relieve the severe and widespread famine inRussiain 1921 to 1923. Brought about largely because of the mismanagement and misallocation of food resources by the newly-established Communist regime in theSoviet Union, this famine cost millions of lives. The enforced requisition of food grains from the peasants to feed the Red Army’s soldiers was a political decision which had catastrophic consequences. It was only when Lenin realized that not only his prestige but even the future of his regime was at stake that he accepted offers of help from outsiders. However, it was only on condition that no criticism or disruption of the Communist political control was undertaken. Complications and political difficulties abounded, but by early 1922 the American Relief Administration (ARA) under Herbert Hoover was able to bring in grain supplies to feed the starving population of millions.

Similarly, the Papal Relief Mission gathered up help from Catholic agencies in Europe and, along with the US National Catholic Welfare Council, coordinated its activities with the ARA, establishing numerous feeding centres, especially in the southernUkraineand theCrimea. Both Pope Benedict XV and his successor Pius XI saw this assistance as an opportunity to demonstrate theVatican’s commitment to compassion and charity even in a non-Catholic milieu. Pius XI donated 2 million Lire to the fund.

But none of this changed the Soviet Government’s hostility to Christianity and its clergy. Despite the Orthodox Church’s readiness to help feed the starving people, Communist repression of the church was stepped up. Leading clergy were put on trial. Church wealth was confiscated. The last significant bastions of the old regime were eliminated. The Russian famine did however demonstrate that international cooperation between church and state was possible. Even when the political and logistical circumstances were so adverse, millions of people were saved from certain starvation.

Conference Report: Pius XI and America, October 28-30, 2010, Brown University, Providence, RI.

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ACCH Quarterly Vol. 16, No. 4, December 2010

Conference Report: Pius XI and America, October 28-30, 2010, Brown University, Providence, RI.

By Charles R. Gallagher, S.J., Boston College

An international conference on the connections and impact of Pope Pius XI on America was held on October 28 to 30 at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. Dr. David Kertzer was the lead organizer along with Dr. Alberto Melloni of the University di Modena e Reggio and director of the Fondazione per le Scienze Religiose Giovanni XXIII in Bologna.

The compelling research motive for the conference was to gather scholars in one place who have been studying and examining the papers of Pope Pius XI which were opened by the Archivio Segreto Vaticano in 2006. The conference was the third in a series of conferences organized by the European Network of Scholars on Pope Pius XI and the Secret Vatican Archives. Over forty scholars from Europe and North America attended. It should be mentioned that his Excellency Romano Prodi, the 80^th Prime Minister of Italy, set the tone of the historical reflection by pointing out during his remarks that the cultural history of Italy in the 1930s cannot adequately be written without assessing the important role of the Roman Catholic Church. It was Prime Minister Prodi’s hope that the archival research conducted by the scholars would shed light not only on Italian concerns, but also American matters and the worldwide scope of the papal diplomacy of the era.

As the organizers had hoped, the value of the conference was anchored in the new revelations and rich discoveries of the archives. David Kertzer showed, for example, that President Franklin D. Roosevelt sought a strong Papal denunciation of the Italian racial laws of 1938. Full diplomatic relations between the U.S.and the Vatican, a long-sought goal of many Catholic officials, was to be the reward for such a denunciation. But Roosevelt’s offer failed to shake the Holy See from its decision not to speak out. In the same vein, the paper of Lucia Ceci of the University of Rome showed that the United States also pushed Pius XI to speak out regarding the Italian invasion of Ethiopia, and that in fact this initiative was perhaps the first full-scale diplomatic project between the U.S. and the Vatican during the 1930s, when there was no formal diplomatic relationship between the pope and the United States.

The conference was designed not only to gather new research on political and international relations, but also to delve into questions surrounding Catholic culture as well. Issues such as birth control, the economics of the Vatican, and the emerging Vatican position on human rights were examined. All of the scholars anchored their presentations in the Pius XII papers in the Secret Vatican Archives, and all generated new questions. The conference was fortunate to have a large number of scholars from Italy provide reporting on new evidence pertaining to Brazil,Iraq,Poland, and political activities in Italy during the 1930s. Since his role was central to questions connected to his later papacy, the behavior and positions of Eugenio Cardinal Pacelli were also examined. For Holocaust scholars, the research contained a great deal of material related to the comportment of the Holy See in the run-up to World War II, with much of the discussion reviving the Anti-Semitism/anti-Judaism debate.

The conference concluded with an update concerning one of the latest and most significant projects of the European Network or Scholars on Pope Pius XI, namely its initiative to draw-up a pan-European study of Catholic Action – Pius XI’s hierarchically-sponsored movement of spirituality and social reconstruction. Because each of the papers represented work in sources which were previously inaccessible, the revelations will be published as a compendium – with comment – by the Fondazione per le Scienze Religiose Giovanni XXIII in Bologna.

A full conference schedule with participants and panel details may be found at its website: http://www.watsoninstitute.org/conference/PiusXI/schedule_public.cfm.

Conference Report: Intellectual Freedom and the Church: A Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte/Contemporary Church History Symposium, November 19-21, 2010, George Bell House, Chichester Cathedral

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ACCH Quarterly Vol. 16, No. 4, December 2010

Conference Report: Intellectual Freedom and the Church: A Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte/Contemporary Church History Symposium, November 19-21, 2010, George Bell House, Chichester Cathedral.

By Andrew Chandler, George Bell Institute, University of Chichester

George Bell House was formally opened by the Archbishop of Canterbury in October 2008, on the fiftieth anniversary of Bell’s death. Set beside the cathedral, where Bell’s life and work is much commemorated, the house also stands outside the gate to the Bishop’s Palace, where visitors like Gandhi, Bonhoeffer, T.S. Eliot and Henry Moore came now and then across almost three decades. Today, George Bell House offers a valuable venue for small conferences. It certainly proved a very happy setting for this particular conference, held under the auspices of the journal Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte / Contemporary Church history. Speakers from a number of countries arrived on November 19 and throughout the following day they were joined by members of the University of Chichester, the cathedral, local people from Chichester itself and visitors from the breadth of the county.

The conference began with a paper on Ignaz von Döllinger, given by Dr. Charlotte Hansen, a Danish scholar now working with the George Bell Institute at the cathedral. The paper focussed attention on the confident character of Döllinger’s thought, his determination to rejuvenate Catholic theology and the response of the Vatican to what was increasingly viewed in those quarters as a challenge to its own theological authority. Yet Döllinger was a far from negligible figure: he won friends and admirers acrossEurope. Matters came to a head after the Vatican Council in 1870: from this point Döllinger’s fate was sealed. He was excommunicated, converged briefly with the Old Catholic Church, and soon retired from public life. Dr. Hansen concluded by drawing upon statements by Pope Benedict XVI and placing Döllinger’s ideas and experiences in a broader, unfolding context of Catholic theological life.

Professor Robert Ericksen of Pacific Lutheran University gave a paper on Emanuel Hirsch and “the turn towards Hitler.” Hirsch was a thinker who practiced and admired intellectual freedom in his own understanding of the Christian faith and message. However, he also saw intellectual freedom in the modern world leading almost inevitably toward what Kierkegaard called the “all-encompassing debate about everything.” He feared this turn toward radical scepticism, both in religion and in democratic politics; so he turned toward the discipline and control promised by Hitler, accepting Hitler’s claims to represent the traditional values of the German Volk. Only an authoritarian, völkisch, unified Germany could prevent the threat of nihilism and chaos he saw threatening in the modern world, and especially in Weimar. The way was open for an accommodation with the Deutsche Christen movement and National Socialism. Professor Ericksen suggested that questions about intellectual freedom remain relevant and difficult for us in our multicultural world. They cannot easily be resolved, but at least we can recognize how disastrous Hirsch’s turn toward Hitler proved to be.

Professor Gerhard Besier of the Technische Universität Dresden examined the careers of two more German thinkers, this time drawn from the post-war period. Hans Küng is, of course, a well-known name; in the Protestant Gerd Lüdemann there was something of a counterpart. Much of the paper examined the character of their thought and the reasons why they had become controversial within their own confessions. Both had very different church authorities with which to contend, but in both cases the story was one of confrontation, a good deal of manoeuvring over academic positions, a certain amount of avoidance, censure and repudiation. Küng earned many supporters within his own church and across Protestantism too. Lüdemann ended up with a Chair in the United States, from which he continues to write freely. This paper produced an extended discussion on the place of church authorities in the selection of theological faculties in universities, and also began to point towards the distinction to be found between the perceived responsibilities of teaching ordinands on the one hand and those of teaching students from all backgrounds.

In his contribution Professor Torleiv Austad of the Norwegian School of Theology looked at these themes from a Norwegian perspective, but also as one at various times involved in them as a senior church leader and a scholar. He began with the promise to the ordaining bishop with which an ordained minister begins their career and examined the story of Helge Hognestad, ordained in 1965. Hognestad was first influenced by Marxism, but soon became drawn to ‘New Age’ ideas and also became increasingly critical of the theological traditions of his church. In 1984 he resigned from office and five years later asked to be released from his ordination promise. In 1998 he sought to be readmitted, claiming that his thought was now compatible with Evangelical-Lutheran doctrine. This provoked a new debate and deliberations of the bishop, the Doctrinal Commission of the church and, in time, the state itself. Professor Austad concluded, “Intellectual freedom is important. But it cannot be used to undermine an ordained minister’s obligations and to break his or her promises.”

In the final paper, Professor Gerhard Ringshausen of the Leuphana Universität Lüneburg presented a paper which did much to complement this, but also enhanced the discussion of the meaning and reality of “freedom” in the context of Christian theology at large. He showed how the expression of freedom involves a wide range of meanings: first, the Christian understanding of freedom, which is founded in Jesus Christ, who makes his believers free of their sins and free to love to him; second, the sense that freedom is also a basic value of political and social life; third, the problem of differentiating and connecting both these understandings of freedom. Here, for example, it had to be asked if academic freedom in the Church and in theology could be understood as part of Christian freedom or as a consequence of it. The paper proceeded to explore these ideas in the theology of Luther, Troeltsch, Harnack and, most recently, Wolfgang Huber.

The conference concluded with the evensong service at the cathedral and a brief tribute at the spot where Bell’s ashes are interred. It was the eve of the festival of Christ the King. As we left, the cathedral organist could be heard practicing Bell’s own hymn, written for that festival while he was bishop here.

Conference Announcement: Secularization and the Transformation of Religion in the U.S. and Germany after 1945, March 17-19, 2011, German Historical Institute, Washington, D.C.

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ACCH Quarterly Vol. 16, No. 4, December 2010

Conference Announcement: Secularization and the Transformation of Religion in the U.S. and Germany after 1945, March 17-19, 2011, German Historical Institute, Washington, D.C.

By Mark Ruff, St. Louis University

At first glance, the religious landscapes of the Federal Republic of Germany and the United States would seem to be worlds apart. Religion appears to play a much more significant role in the American public arena than in the German. Televangelists, radio evangelists, Roman Catholic bishops and evangelicals have flexed their political muscle and have become important players in American political life. The United States records higher rates of attendance at church and mass. In fact, however, religious institutions in both societies have had to struggle with similar challenges—emerging multi-religious realities, strong secular movements and declining membership rosters, processes that they often subsume under the heading of “secularization.” Religious bodies in both nations have had to recognize that they operate in a competitive media-driven cultural and religious marketplace, even if the transformations emerging in this new environment are not as outwardly visible in Germany as in the United States.

This international conference seeks to explore the history and meaning of secularization and the transformation of the religious landscape of both the United States and Germany after 1945. It will challenge traditional narratives that focus on the disappearance of religion in modernity and instead highlight the transformation of religion within larger societal changes. Our approach is transnational, inter-disciplinary, and multi-confessional.

The conference will focus on modernization processes in U.S. and German religious life after 1945, when churches in both countries were increasingly challenged by rapid changes in the societies around them. The rise of television, the development of new forms of public discourse, and processes like democratization, liberalization and the increased influence of science all influenced and transformed the self-understanding of religious bodies and produced new forms of religious life and discourse.

For more information, contact Dr. Uta Andrea Balbier, German Historical Institute, 1607 New Hampshire Ave., NW, Washington, DC 20009-2562, U.S.A., or at balbier@ghi-dc.org

and www.ghi-dc.org.

Conveners:

Uta A. Balbier, German Historical Institute,Washington,D.C.

Wilhelm Damberg, Bochum University

Lucian Hoelscher, Bochum University

Mark Ruff, Saint Louis University

Contact:

Mark Ruff, St. Louis University

Conference Announcement: Celebrating the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works English Edition, November 13-15, 2011, Union Theological Seminary, New York

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ACCH Quarterly Vol. 16, No. 4, December 2010

Conference Announcement: Celebrating the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works English Edition, November 13-15, 2011, Union Theological Seminary, New York.

By Victoria J. Barnett, General Editor, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, English Edition and Director of Church Relations, U. S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

With the publication this summer of Letters and Papers from Prison in the Bonhoeffer Works English Edition, the twenty-year project approaches completion. Volume 15 (covering the period from 1937-1939) will be published next year and the files of the final two volumes will be at Fortress Press. An electronic edition is also being planned.

The Editorial Board is pleased to announce that an international conference to celebrate this monument of theological publishing will be held November 13-15, 2011, at Union Theological Seminary, New York.

In addition to honoring translators, editors, donors and other supporters of the project, the conference will feature two days of presentations and discussion about new insights learned from the edition and new perspectives on Bonhoeffer interpretation.

One day of the conference will focus on the Bonhoeffer Lectures in Public Ethics, which have been held on alternating years in Germany and the United States for about fifteen years. Sessions on this day will examine how Bonhoeffer’s legacy has engaged public issues such as peace, poverty, racism, genocide and church-state issues over the last sixty years; speakers will also address emerging public issues and new research.

The conference is a public event, open to all interested in Bonhoeffer’s life, theology and ethics. More details about program, speakers, accommodation, and cost will be announced in coming months. Official registration will begin in 2011. The conference coordinator is Dr. Guy Christopher Carter. For initial expressions of interest and inquiries he may be reached at: drguychrcarter@comcast.net, phone 717 938 1098.