Category Archives: Volume 31 Number 1 (Spring 2025)

Letter from the Editors (Spring 2025)

Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 31, Number 1 (Spring 2025)

Letter from the Editors (Spring 2025)

By Lauren Faulkner Rossi, Simon Fraser University

Dear Friends,

Since my last missive, many events have prompted me to remember lines from a Yeats poem that first impressed me decades ago, that suddenly have distressing significance: “turning and turning into the widening gyre the falcon cannot hear the falconer; things fall apart; the center cannot hold.” I gesture to not only the multiple and daily reorientations and whiplash attempts at change unleashed by the new administration in the United States, with widespread repercussions internationally; but also, and much closer to home intellectually, to the unexpected and devastating death of Thomas Großbölting, in a train accident in Germany last month. It is with uncharacteristic somberness that our year, and my letter, begins.

Dr. Thomas Großbölting

Two of our long-time editors who worked closely with Thomas Großbölting – who was himself a close friend of our journal, and who attended the 2013 conference in Vancouver, BC, that feted our founder, John S. Conway – have written Nachrufe that appear below. These tributes from Mark Ruff (originally written in German and delivered at a celebration of life, that he has translated into English) and Manfred Gailus (printed in the original German), are a fitting way to open our issue, to remember our colleague and friend.

To launch us into 2025, we bring you several reviews and an article that appeared in Der Tagesspiegel. Martin Menke examines Alexander Lamprecht’s revised and published Master’s thesis about Catholic clergy in South Tyrol, revealing an oft-overlooked peripheral region caught between Italian fascism and German Nazism. Martina Cucchiara delves into the biography of Benedicta von Spiegel, head of the Benedictine abbey of St. Walburg in Eichstätt for over a quarter of a century, until she died in 1950. Dirk Schuster offers two reviews: one of the film Zwischen uns Gott, a provocative Austrian documentary released last year that immerses itself in the paradoxes of contemporary religion; and the second of Andreas Pangritz’s slender 2023 volume that explores theological – that is to say, Christian – roots of antisemitism. This review dovetails nicely with Manfred Gailus’s contribution from Der Tagesspiegel, in which he grapples with the evolution of Christian (Protestant) antisemitism in Germany in the twentieth century.

We have also uploaded a formal list of submission guidelines on our website, meant to clarify the scope and formatting of submissions for potential reviewers.

I invite you, the reader, to let us know what you think by leaving a comment on our site, and to relate any major conferences, exhibitions, websites, or films that we should know about to review, by contacting me directly.

On behalf of my associate editors and the editorial board,

Lauren Faulkner Rossi,

Simon Fraser University

Kindly note: the editorial board of the CCHQ reserves the right to consider requests for translations of articles by contributors. Please direct your request to Lauren Faulkner Rossi at lnf@sfu.ca.

Thomas Großbölting in Memorium

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 31, Number 1 (Spring 2025)

Thomas Großbölting in Memorium

By Mark Edward Ruff, Saint Louis University

The fields of German history and religious history suffered a devastating and irreplaceable loss on February 11, 2025. The prominent German historian and Director of the Research Center for Contemporary History in Hamburg, Thomas Großbölting, who had generated headlines in Germany for having uncovered the sordid details of the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic clergy in the diocese of Münster, died tragically in a train accident in Hamburg, Germany. He was the sole fatality in a collision between his high-speed ICE train with 285 passengers and a semi-truck at a rail crossing in Hamburg-Rönnenburg.

Dr. Thomas Großbölting

His death comes as a shock to all who knew him, and not least his wife of nearly thirty years and four children. Großbölting was a highly respected, if not revered figure for multiple reasons. The most obvious was his remarkable scholarly output that spanned thirty years and multiple subdisciplines in contemporary Germany history. He was the author of ten monographs, the co-editor of seven edited volumes, and the author of dozens of journal articles and chapters in edited volumes. His topics ranged widely in their geographical and chronological scope. He earned renown not only for his magnum opus on religion in Germany since 1945, which was translated into English under the title, Losing Heaven: Religion in Germany since 1945, but also for his exposé of the clerical sexual abuse scandal. He wrote about the Stasi, German society after reunification, the representations of societal order in industrial and trade exhibitions in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries and their role in popularizing consumption, the politics of memory in Italy after the Second World War, amongst many other topics.

Born in 1969 near Bocholt, Thomas Großbölting was a product of the flat western regions of the Münsterland, in Westphalia in northwestern Germany. He studied history, German, and Catholic theology at the nearby university in Münster. He spoke fluent English and Italian. But even while a student there, he exhibited that characteristic which would accompany him until his final minutes on a high-speed train: he was constantly in motion. He jaunted from one archive and center of historical research to another. These early years in Münster were filled with excursions to Cologne, Bonn, and Rome. Fittingly, his final undergraduate research broached a topic that would remain part of his scholarly journey over the decades: debates in the Catholic Church about reform following the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). His dissertation, however, was about the history and fate of middle-class bourgeois society in the East German cities of Magdeburg and Halle during the Cold War. From there he went to Berlin, where he led scholarly investigation into the Stasi files. His more than five years of research culminated in a book about German society post-reunification, which appeared in print in 2020. His waystations as a professor began in Magdeburg, moved back to Münster following a detour to the University of Toronto, and concluded in Hamburg. He was involved in more scholarly nexuses, organizations, and associations than it is possible to list. He remained one of the best-connected historians – on both sides of the Atlantic – that one will find. An inveterate organizer, he mastered the fine art of bringing people together, delegating where necessary, and synthesizing.

His remarkably scholarly career aside, Großbölting was revered for a more important reason. As nearly of the testimonials and eulogies printed in Germany correctly note, he was that rare German academic with a combination of intelligence, ambition, and rigor – minus the vanity. As frequent a presence as he was on podiums across Germany and North America, he was equally a listener. He was never one to prescribe: serving as a mentor to dozens of budding scholars on both sides of the Atlantic, he was generous with his wisdom. He indeed was more than willing to offer constructive suggestions when his many students, research assistants, and co-workers needed them. He nonetheless never did so from an exalted or lofty position that sought to tell others what they needed to know or had failed to grasp. His assistance came instead from a position of trust and confidence. When taking part in a conference at Regent College in August 2013 to commemorate the Canadian church historian, John Conway, he offered many constructive suggestions for how to transform Conway’s newsletter that had focused on German church history and recent church developments into an electronic journal encompassing a broader range of topics and geographies.

Above all, Großbölting exuded optimism, radiated sunshine, and transmitted energy. Even when he was not traveling to another archive or to give another talk, he was always on the move. His favorite way of relaxing was to go jogging. I knew Thomas for almost thirty years, almost to the day. We met in early 1995 in a working group based in Münster whose focus appropriately was contemporary church history. The Arbeitskreis für kirchliche Zeitgeschichte in Münster was then under the direction of its founder, the renowned church historian, Prof. Dr. Wilhelm Damberg. Thomas and I were both 25-year-old graduate students; that we were from opposite shores of the Atlantic did not matter. We quickly developed a friendship that was equal parts scholarly and personal. We planned and led four seminars between 2014 and 2017 at the German Studies Association on the subject of religion in Germany between 1789 and the present. We also co-edited a volume, Germany and the Confessional Divide, which was published by Berghahn Books in 2021. While collaborating on these projects and seminars, we hosted each at other at our respective homes in St. Louis and until recently in Münster over the decades. Following conferences, we went swimming in the Pacific in San Diego and Vancouver Bay in British Columbia. Großbölting was at ease equally in discussing the vicissitudes of German Catholic history and the lives of our respective children. He was a devoted father to his four children, for whom he was an inspirational figure and his loss incomprehensible.

For me too, his untimely death remains inexplicable. It is akin to a rolling stone ceasing to move. In earlier eras, as Thomas knew all too well – and himself wrote about! – sudden departures from this world were more the norm than the exception. Theologians, hymnists, priests, and pastors all repeatedly spoke of the frailty and contingency of life. Here, today; gone tomorrow. In the words of one such German chorale, as rendered into English in The Lutheran Hymnal of 1941:

Who knows when death may overtake me!
Time passes on, my end draws near.
How swiftly can my breath forsake me!
How soon can life’s last hour appear!
My God, for Jesus’ sake I pray
Thy peace may bless my dying day.

That of all people, it was Thomas, the sunniest of optimists, who came to illustrate this age-old axiom is the bitterest of ironies. Yet in keeping with the spirit of the 17^th century, this hymn also concludes on a note of solace:

And thus I live in God contented
And die without a thought of fear;
My soul has to God’s plans consented,
For through His Son my faith is clear.

In his book, Losing Heaven, Großbölting explicitly described how remote and incomprehensible the religious sentiment articulated in this chorale had become in the later years of the Federal Republic. If the Christian churches wished to contribute to the moral questions facing society in the 21^st century in light of changing religious understandings, he wrote, they needed to show openness and enter into dialogue with those of all faiths as well as those of no faith. Yet as his untimely death also tells us, particularly in times of upheaval like ours, the task of church historians and theologians is to enter into a dialogue between past and present. The collective wisdom of the past and the needs of the present have to be in constant and constructive conversation. Thomas Großbölting would have agreed whole-heartedly.

I would like to close by extending my condolences to his family, friends, and colleagues who are suffering from this terrible loss.

Nachruf auf den Historiker Thomas Großbölting

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 31, Number 1 (Spring 2025)

Nachruf auf den Historiker Thomas Großbölting

By Manfred Gailus, Technischen Universität Berlin

Die Nachricht war ein schwerer Schock: Am 11. Februar stieß in Hamburg-Harburg ein ICE mit einem schwer beladenen Sattelschlepper zusammen, der fatalerweise auf einem ebenerdigen Bahnübergang stehengeblieben war. Es gab Verletzte und ein Todesopfer. Einen Tag später erfuhren wir, dass es der Historiker Thomas Großbölting war, der auf diese tragische Weise im Alter von 55 Jahren aus dem Leben gerissen wurde. Ein Schock, nicht zu fassen, ein vermeidbarer Unfall, und ausgerechnet er.

Großbölting stammte aus Westfalen (Dingden/Kreis Wesel) und studierte nach dem Abitur Geschichte, katholische Theologie und Germanistik. 1997 wurde er mit einer Studie über SED-Diktatur und Gesellschaft in der Region Magdeburg und Halle promoviert. Bei Hans-Ulrich Thamer in Münster habilitierte er sich mit einer Untersuchung über Industrie- und Gewerbeausstellungen im 19. Jahrhundert. Er bekleidete zahlreiche Anschlusspositionen in Magdeburg und Berlin, bis er 2009 einen Ruf als Professor für Neuere und Neueste Geschichte an der Universität Münster annahm. Beruflich außerordentlich erfolgreich und mit innovativen Projekten stets in Bewegung begriffen, trat er 2020 die renommierte Position des Direktors der Forschungsstelle für Zeitgeschichte in Hamburg an.

Er hinterlässt ein beeindruckend breitangelegtes, vielfältiges wissenschaftliches Oeuvre. Der Öffentlichkeit wurde er insbesondere durch die Leitung einer wissenschaftlichen Untersuchung zum Missbrauch im Bistum Münster bekannt, die 2022 erschien. An der im Januar 2024 publizierten Aufarbeitungsstudie zu sexualisierter Gewalt in den evangelischen Kirchen war er ebenfalls maßgeblich beteiligt. Großbölting veröffentlichte über katholische Konfession und Religion im Nationalsozialismus, über die gesellschaftsgeschichtliche Bedeutung von Bi-Konfessionalität in der deutschen Geschichte des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts, zuletzt über die deutsche „Wiedervereinigungsgesellschaft“ seit 1990.

Vielbeachtet war seine Studie „Der verlorene Himmel“ (2013) zum gesellschaftlichen Bedeutungsverlust beider großen christlichen Konfessionen nach 1945. „Ein ‚christliches Deutschland‘“ – so schrieb er damals pointiert – „gibt es nicht mehr.“ Gleichwohl seien Glaube, Kirchen und Religion aus dem Leben der Deutschen nicht verschwunden, aber sie hätten sich verdünnt und seien mehr und mehr an den Rand geraten. Seinerzeit verfasste Großbölting mit diesem lesenswerten Buch eine erste umfassende moderne Religionsgeschichte der Deutschen seit 1945, ein Buch, in dem seine eigene katholische Hintergrundprägung sublim durchscheint.

Es fällt schwer, diesen Nachruf schreiben zu müssen. In Hamburg, wo er seit 2020 wirkte, hatte er in wenigen Jahren eine enorme Fülle an neuen Projekten angeregt und viele verantwortliche Positionen übernommen. Man wird ihn schwerlich ersetzen können. Jeder Kollege, jede Kollegin, überhaupt alle, die ihn kannten, schätzten seine stets freundliche, zugewandte, liebenswürdige Art – dabei konnte er gut zuhören und brachte immer frische Ideen mit, in jedem Gespräch, auf jeder Tagung. Als ich im Dezember 2021 in der Berliner Stiftung Topographie des Terrors ein Buch über Religiosität im „Dritten Reich“ vorstellte, sagte er sofort für die Moderation zu und kam von Hamburg herüber – mit dem Hochgeschwindigkeitszug. Fotos von diesem Abend zeigen ihn, wie er war und wie er im Gedächtnis bleiben wird: anregend, ideenreich, immer klug und abwägend in seiner Argumentation.

Wir alle werden ihn sehr vermissen. Mit seiner Familie – er hinterlässt seine Frau und vier Kinder -, mit vielen Historikerinnen und Historikern, und mit allen, die ihn kannten, trauern wir um einen hochgeschätzten Kollegen und überaus liebenswürdigen Menschen.

“The New Testament is the most anti-Jewish book in the whole world.” Christian Antisemitism in the 20th Century

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 31, Number 1 (Spring 2025)

“The New Testament is the most anti-Jewish book in the whole world.” Christian Antisemitism in the 20th Century

By Manfred Gailus, Technischen Universität Berlin; Translated by Lauren Faulkner Rossi, with the assistance of DEEPL

This text originally appeared in German in Der Tagesspiegel, 7 February 2025, pg. 12-13.

There is a portrait of the former court and cathedral preacher Adolf Stoecker in the reserve room of Berlin Cathedral. For a long time, the huge painting hung in the sacristy of the church, where the clergy prepare for their sermons. Together with other portraits of cathedral preachers, the painting was taken down years ago, wrapped in packing paper and tied up tightly. This has symbolic power: Stoecker, the Christian-social co-founder of modern German antisemitism, has been made to disappear for the time being.

Stoecker died in 1909 and was buried with great expressions of condolence by the Protestant congregation. The renowned theologian Reinhold Seeberg from Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin gave a memorial speech for the deceased and paid tribute to him as a powerful, strong man of great gifts: a “pious child of God” and “gentlemanly man” at the same time. The cathedral preacher and the professor of theology were kindred spirits. With justification, Seeberg can be counted among the main guardians of Stoecker’s spirit. In 1922, he gave a lecture on Judaism and the church to the Central Committee for Inner Mission: the fight against the “Jewish spirit” is to be waged as a struggle against an orientation hostile to Christianity and Germanness. Seeberg saw Judaism as a foreign body that promoted the “dissolution of the historical and national life of the peoples”. The poison that “the Jew” served to others – so the theologian believed – was not injurious to himself. However, Seeberg rejected the unleashing of a “racial struggle” against Jewry with the aim of expulsion. One could not resort to the methods of Bolshevism. Anti-Jewish measures of violence, such as those recommended by Luther in his writings on the Jews, no longer made sense for that time.

Court and cathedral preacher Bruno Doehring spread similar resentment. Previously he had mixed his aggressive war sermons with racial antisemitic vocabulary. In his cathedral sermon on April 25, 1924, he declared that the “national question” now so burning in Germany had been awakened by the “shameless behavior of Judaism, which is hostile to Christ”. Ancient Jews could have become “the people of the earth”, but they had stoned their prophets and nailed Christ to the cross. As a people, they had thus condemned themselves to die. The clergyman proclaimed to his ever-growing audience in the cathedral that the Jews had become the “typical negative” of the world. With such convictions, the political preacher agitated in organizations such as the Evangelical League, in other associations, through a flood of newspaper articles, and as a member of the DNVP in the Reichstag.

A third important Protestant representative was also inspired by Stoecker. As a theology student, Otto Dibelius had attended a celebration of the Association of German Students in 1900, heard Stoecker’s speech, and spontaneously joined the antisemitic association. This marked the beginning of his career as an antisemitic publicist. In 1922, he complained of an “undesirable mixture of blood” due to the excessive immigration of “Eastern Jews.” In June 1927, now as general superintendent of the Kurmark in the rank of bishop, he wrote in the Berlin Evangelisches Sonntagsblatt: “The Jewish question is not primarily a religious but a racial question. The proportion of Jewish blood running through our national body is much higher than the religious statistics show.” Dibelius associated the political rise of the NSDAP after 1930 with expectations of a re-Christianization following the end of the “godless Republic” of Weimar. Accordingly, he welcomed the rise of Hitler’s party to power in alliance with the German Nationals. In the aftermath of the Nazi boycott of Jews, on April 1, 1933, which he justified, he made a more fundamental statement on the “Jewish question”: the “Jewish element” had played a leading role in all the dark events of the last fifteen years. The strong influx of Jews from the East had endangered “German national life.” No one could seriously object to the current suppression of Jewish influence. In order to solve the “Jewish question”, Germany’s eastern border had to be strictly sealed off.

Professor Seeberg, Cathedral Preacher Doehring, General Superintendent Dibelius – these voices are not outsiders, but represent the center of national Protestantism in the Weimar era. Their hybrid antisemitism combined theological anti-Judaism with set pieces of political and cultural antisemitism, while at the same time their speech about “the Jews” was mixed with völkisch ideology. With Hitler’s rise to power and the advance of the German Christian (Deutsche Christen – DC) movement, Protestant antisemitism became seriously radicalized. The publication Die Judenfrage (1933) by the renowned Tübingen New Testament scholar Gerhard Kittel should be singled out from the wealth of corresponding creeds. With his writing, he wanted to give the fight against Judaism a Christian meaning: the “meaning of our antisemitic struggle” must be to place Jews under strict immigration law again. The Christian also had his place in this battle. Jews were once the people of God, but they were no longer. Because they crucified Jesus, they had become homeless. In the New Testament, Kittel recognized the “most anti-Jewish book in the whole world.” The “calamitous mixing of blood and race” since the Enlightenment had caused a “putrefaction” of the German people and had to be corrected through strictly nationalist policies.

Where the German Christians predominated as they did in Berlin, they erased traces of Jewishness in theology, liturgy and songs. “Non-Aryan” pastors were ousted. Church hymns had to be rewritten; for the future, no “Zion” and no “Hosanna” were to be heard in the German church. Lectures on “Luther and the Jews” or Adolf Stoecker were the order of the day. In March 1937, the Berlin superintendent Schleuning* was thankful for the special edition on the “Jewish question” issued by the inflammatory newspaper Der Stürmer. He proudly emphasized that the Nuremberg Laws that Hitler gave to the Germans had their precursors in the church’s own Jewish legislation.

Now, the German Christians were not the only ones who represented the Protestants during the Nazi era. There were other, more moderate groups – or, like the Confessing Church (BK), there was church opposition. But even there, opposition to Nazi Jewish policy remained an exception – such as the high school teacher Elisabeth Schmitz‘s memorandum, “On the situation of German non-Aryans” (1935), or the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. On the contrary, ambivalence predominated in the church opposition camp: alongside sympathy and support for the persecuted, there were also explicitly antisemitic voices.

The churches were generally silent about the November 1938 pogroms, with some DC regional bishops even explicitly welcoming the outbreaks of violence. Critical voices were few and far between. Open protest against the state’s Jewish policy was dangerous. The reformed theologian Helmut Hesse preached in Wuppertal in June 1943: the church had to resist all antisemitism, testify to the salvation-historical [heilsgeschichtliche] importance of Israel in the face of the state, and resist any attempt to destroy Judaism. He was imprisoned and later sent to Dachau concentration camp, where he died at the end of 1943 at the age of 27.

After Hitler and the Holocaust, hybrid Christian antisemitism was not immediately overcome. The racist antisemitism of the German Christians was no longer present in the church public. But where had the many Nazi pastors gone? What about traditional religious anti-Judaism? The Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt of October 1945 made no mention of the persecution of Jews, in which the church itself was partly involved. The Württemberg Bishop Theophil Wurm, who was the first Chairman of the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD), defended the severely incriminated Tübingen “Jewish researcher” Gerhard Kittel in an expert opinion (April 1947): it had been part of Kittel’s ecclesiastical teaching assignment to point out the “divine causes of the rejection of the people of Israel.” Kittel’s theologian friends in Tübingen even said that, with his writings, Kittel had “resisted in the most pronounced sense” in the area of the “Jewish question.”

The “Hoff case” was shameful: in 1943, the Berlin provost Walter Hoff* had boasted in writing that he had participated in the liquidation of Jews during the war in the East. After he had initially been stripped of his clerical rights, growing calls within the church leadership to rehabilitate the alleged Holocaust pastor reached Otto Dibelius, who had risen to become bishop of Berlin. The consistory’s decision in February 1957 restored the former provost’s full pastoral rights.

Only a few voices spoke plainly. Theological revisions of the Christian-Jewish relationship took a long time. As a religious mentality, the anti-Jewish spirit of Stoecker was deeply ingrained and outlasted the caesura of 1945. Leading churchmen such as Theophil Wurm, Bishop Hans Meiser in Bavaria and Otto Dibelius remained influenced by it throughout their lives. Ultimately, breaking away from this unfortunate tradition was a generational issue. The critical zeitgeist of the 68ers brought a breath of fresh air, in theology as well as in the churches. In January 1980, the Rhineland Regional Church adopted a groundbreaking declaration on the renewal of Christian-Jewish relations. It acknowledged its shared responsibility for the Holocaust, condemned all anti-semitism and renounced the mission to the Jews. A significant step was the Day of Repentance sermon by Wolfgang Huber, then bishop of Berlin, in 2002, which was dedicated to remembering the fate of Christians of Jewish origin. According to Huber, the Confessing Church as an institution had also failed at the time.

Through synod resolutions, the appointment of commissioners on antisemitism, and various other activities, the member churches of the EKD have distanced themselves from antisemitic traditions and are engaged in interfaith dialogue with Jewish communities. The painful issue is not closed. Uncompromising church self-education about its own antisemitic past in the twentieth century remains an important prerequisite to convincingly oppose any spread of völkisch ideas in the church and in politics and society today. Adolf Stoecker has now been taken down in Berlin Cathedral, firmly packed away in the storeroom. Thank God, one might say. May he remain there forever.

Notes:

* Translator’s note: Johannes Schleuning, superintendent of Berlin-Lichtenberg, was a Russian-German chaplain and journalist.

* Translator’s note: well-known for his antisemitism, Walter Hoff was provost of St. Peter’s Church in Berlin beginning in the mid-1930s. During the Third Reich, he was a member of the German Christians (DC) and the Nazi Party. He served in the Wehrmacht during the war.

Review of Alexander Lamprecht, Zwischen Seelsorge und Diktatur: Südtirols Kirche in der NS-Zeit

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 31, Number 1 (Spring 2025)

Review of Alexander Lamprecht, Zwischen Seelsorge und Diktatur: Südtirols Kirche in der NS-Zeit. Bozen (Bolzano): Athesia Verlag, 2019. 299 pp.

By Martin Menke, Rivier University

This volume is a revised version of the author’s Master’s thesis at the Philosophical-Theological University of Brixen (Bressanone), the seminary for the diocese of Brixen-Bozen. The work’s nature and its author’s affiliation, however, do not diminish the study’s value. It is an important work not only because it details the role of bishops and clergy during the period. It also is another well-illustrated example of the dilemmas that Christians living under fascism faced. South Tyroleans were ethnic Germans but had been living in Italy since the Treaty of Saint Germain-en-Laye in 1919 moved the Austro-Italian border to the Brenner Pass. Under the terms of the October 1939 Hitler-Mussolini Agreement, South Tyroleans were forced to opt for German or Italian citizenship. While Italy initially promised South Tyroleans respect for their German language and culture, the Italian fascist regime forcibly eliminated their language from public life. It enhanced the Italian presence in the region by building a large industrial complex in Bozen. As a result, much of South Tyrolean life, including German language instruction, went underground. As Lamprecht shows, most South Tyroleans bore little love for Italy.

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.

Lamprecht explains that, after the border shifts of 1919, the Holy See had rearranged the diocesan boundaries along the new frontier but otherwise left the South Tyrolean dioceses of Brixen and Trent (Trient/Trentino) intact. In 1939, the bishops of the two dioceses responded very differently to the demand to choose between Germany or Italy. Prince Bishop Johannes Geisler of Brixen decided that, no matter the clergy’s personal preferences, the South Tyrolean parishes moving almost intact to Germany required the pastoral care of their clergy. Thus, the clergy must opt for Germany. The clergy, however, vehemently objected. As a result, a deep chasm arose between the bishop and his curia on the one side and the clergy on the other. The clergy pointed to the German government’s animosity towards the Catholic Church as a deterrent from opting for resettlement. Their bishop, however, countered that any clergy remaining in South Tyrol would have to minister in Italian, both from the pulpit as well as in more personal duties. He warned that many clergy, whose Italian was poor, might find themselves without a purpose or an income once the resettlement process was complete. Geisler himself opted for resettlement and took up residence in the Austrian parts of his (non-contiguous) diocese. He felt secure in his choice since the diocese owned forests and other resources that would financially support his position. His priests, however, enjoyed no such security. By the end of the option process, Bishop Geisler no longer enjoyed any credibility or respect among his clergy.

In the southern part of the region, the Prince-Archbishop of Trent, Celestin Endrici, vehemently opposed the option for Germany. In this, he enjoyed the support of almost all his clergy. In May 1940, Endrici sent the Holy See a twenty-eight-page memorandum describing the state of his archdiocese. He explained that his clergy initially were reluctant to involve themselves in the option question. Once they became aware of the anti-Catholic views and practices of the German government, however, they warned their faithful to opt against resettlement. As a result, the German resettlement authorities in South Tyrol intensified their campaign against the clergy, which widened the gap between parishioners, who largely opted for Germany, and their clergy. While the German authorities were pressuring those inclined to remain by pointing to the many South Tyroleans who opted for Germany, Endrici argued that the clergy had to warn their parishioners because South Tyroleans were unfamiliar with the persecution of the Catholic Church that was so prevalent in Germany. Not to warn South Tyroleans of the dangers of National Socialism would be negligent.

Endrici openly opposed the neutrality that his colleague Geisler in Brixen had imposed on his clergy. Endrici demanded that his clergy fight against resettlement everywhere except from the pulpit. He did not want his clergy accused of preaching outright propaganda, but he wanted it to oppose the pro-German option. In underground meetings, in family visits, during youth catechesis, the priests were to urge South Tyroleans to remain. Lamprecht argues that those lay people in the Archdiocese of Trent who opted to remain did so because of the decisive influence of the clergy. In Brixen, Bishop Geisler had explicitly forbidden the clergy from discussing the option.

Lamprecht carefully differentiates his argumentation. For example, he notes that Giuseppe Mastromattei, the Italian prefect of Bozen, was worried about the double loss (and subsequent economic impact) of too many qualified workers as well as thousands of residents moving to the Reich. He wanted to encourage dissatisfied and disloyal South Tyroleans to leave, but he also wanted the majority to assimilate into Italian culture and remain. He went so far as to argue that anti-Nazi clergy would not be welcome in Germany and might better find refuge in a seminary or monastery, but in ethnically Italian provinces instead of in South Tyrol. The prefect feared for the economic stability of his province and thus sought to assuage the fears of South Tyroleans. His efforts led to German protests, so in 1940, the Italian government transferred him to another post. Also, implicitly, Lamprecht demonstrates that, until the German military occupation in 1943, Italian authorities jealously safeguarded their autonomy from German officials who were promoting and organizing the option registrations and the resettlement in Germany. Lamprecht’s explanation of the motives of different priests to decide one way or the other is also very well differentiated. Some wanted to remain as representatives of German culture in South Tyrol. Others feared for their economic security should they leave. Lamprecht, however, does not discuss the influence of the priests’ local ties on their decisions.

Less convincing is Lamprecht’s claim of an active Catholic resistance against Italian and German authorities. Lamprecht claims Catholic Action was the most effective measure against National Socialist youth workers, who were making inroads among the youth of South Tyrol. While Catholic Action worked discretely and in the shadows, it is not clear that encouraging young people to remain loyal to their faith constituted resistance. The leader of Catholic Action, Father Josef Ferrari, secretly recruited for the Andreas-Hofer-Bund, an underground organization committed to informing the faithful about the truth of National Socialism. While the German authorities sought a warrant for Father Ferrari, the Italian authorities merely admonished him to be more discrete. More explanation is needed for a convincing argument that the Andreas-Hofer-Bund was a resistance organization rather than an informal network of like-minded South-Tyroleans. Lamprecht argues that most South Tyroleans did not support the Bund and the most effective means of resistance remained Catholic Action.

The remainder of the work gives the impression of a list of topical odds and ends. For example, Lamprecht mentions that male clergy of German ethnicity and citizenship had to leave Italian territory or head into purely ethnic Italian areas, where their ability to function would be limited by a lack of Italian language skills. Female consecrated women, however, did not have to move as long as they applied for Italian citizenship. Also, given the organization of the work into separate discussions of Brixen and Trent, the author ends up repeating discussions and analyses. The author ends the work by listing questions requiring further research, such as the Church’s role in both the postwar negotiations about autonomy as well as in South Tyrol during the war more generally, which is ironic given the work’s title.

Despite these criticisms, the work is a valuable contribution to the field. Not only does it document the effect of the option program for South Tyroleans on the Catholic faithful, priests, and bishops, but it also contributes to the more extensive discussion of the Church’s role under fascism and National Socialism. Catholic leaders had to weigh the evils of Italian fascism against those of German National Socialism. They had to consider the need to provide pastoral care with the desire to oppose oppression. One can compare the dilemma of South Tyrolean clergy with the much more drastic fate of the French worker priests sent by their bishops to accompany those pressed into forced labor in the Reich to their German work sites, disguised as simple workers in the Service du Travail Obligatoire. South Tyrolean priests seemed more reluctant to follow their flocks in this manner.

This study, grounded in scholarly literature and extensive archival research, provides another example of the profound conflicts of conscience that many suffered under the mid-twentieth-century dictatorships. Lamprecht successfully illustrates not only institutional challenges but also the personal dilemma faced by bishops, priests, and laypeople in confronting the evils of fascism.

Review of Gerlinde von Westphalen, Lady Abbess. Benedicta von Spiegel—Politische Ordensfrau in der NS-Zeit

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 31, Number 1 (Spring 2025)

Review of Gerlinde von Westphalen, Lady Abbess. Benedicta von Spiegel—Politische Ordensfrau in der NS-Zeit. Münster: Aschendorff Verlag, 2022.

By Martina Cucchiara, Bluffton University

In over five hundred pages, this hefty biography traces the life and leadership of Abbess Benedicta von Spiegel, who led the Benedictine abbey of St. Walburg in Eichstätt for nearly twenty-five years, from 1926 until her death in 1950. While the title emphasizes the Nazi period, the strength of the book lies in the rich account of von Spiegel’s entire eventful life that straddled two centuries and included her troubled time in two other cloisters before ultimately settling at St. Walburg.

Born Elisabeth Agnes Wilhelmine Klementine Freiin von Spiegel in January 1874, the young noblewoman grew up in wealth and privilege alongside her eight siblings on the family’s vast estate in East Westphalia. The Catholic von Spiegel family, whose lineage dates to at least the fourteenth century, maintained a close and enduring connection to the Church. In many ways, this book is as much a history of the von Spiegel family as it is a biography of Benedicta von Spiegel. Readers interested in the German aristocracy will gain considerable insights, into not only intimate family relationships revealed through von Spiegel’s extensive personal correspondence, but also the immense influence that the nobility still wielded in twentieth-century Germany and considered their birthright.

At the age of twenty-five, von Spiegel entered the contemplative Benedictine abbey of Maredret in Belgium, where she took vows two years later and received the religious name Benedicta. In 1914, after the outbreak of war, she moved to the German abbey of St. Hildegard in Eibingen in the Rhineland before finally settling at St. Walburg in Bavaria in 1918. Unlike apostolic congregations of Catholic sisters, which focus on teaching, nursing, and social work, nuns like the Benedictines are dedicated primarily to prayer.[1] These communities typically observe more demanding monastic rules than apostolic congregations, including strict claustration. During von Spiegel’s tenure at at St. Hildegard, for example, nuns were prohibited from leaving the cloister even for necessary medical treatment.

During the eighteen years that von Spiegel spent at Maredret and St. Hildegard, she struggled profoundly with her vocation and appeared to experience several extended episodes of mental illness, though any retrospective diagnosis remains uncertain. Additionally, she seems to have faced serious conflicts with the abbess of St. Hildegard, who doubted her religious calling and described her as a burden to the community and as “severely affected” (erheblich belastet) (p. 112). The latter longed to remove her from the abbey. Despite limited documentation, von Westphalen presents a nuanced discussion of these struggles, offering readers rare insight into the inner workings of contemplative cloisters and the deeply personal challenges of an individual nun. Von Spiegel’s extensive correspondence with her spiritual advisors, including her Belgian confessor Columba Marmion, sheds light on how she and her mentors sought to address these crises within the framework of strong mystical beliefs. The letters reference “invisible beings” and, at one point, even suggest the possibility of an exorcism (pp. 78, 81). The author’s exploration of von Spiegel’s deep mystical affinities is a valuable contribution to the scholarship on modern religious women, a field that too often neglects the significance of mysticism, spirituality, and religious experience. Many readers will likely wish to learn more about practices such as the annual rite of the miraculous oil at St. Walburg (Walburgisöl) or the use of the rite of exorcism in the modern Catholic Church.

Von Spiegel’s affinity for mysticism perhaps explains her long and close friendship with the famous stigmatic Therese Neumann of Konnersreuth (1898–1962), whom von Spiegel met some years after her move to the abbey St. Walburg in 1918. There she finally found a permanent home, becoming abbess only eight years after her arrival. The abbey grew considerable under her leadership, not least because she transformed it into a thriving religious community devoted to the fine and decorative arts. Von Spiegel also interpreted the rule of claustration in a very liberal manner and frequently left the cloister to travel or visit friends in the local community. This newfound freedom enabled her to forge close friendships with a circle of Catholic intellectuals in Eichstätt, which included the journalist Fritz Gerlich, the Capuchin priest Ingert Naab, the aristocrat Erich Fürst Waldburg-Zeil, and the theology professors Franz Xaver Wutz and Joseph Lechner. Von Spiegel, an intellectual in her own right who spoke several languages, thrived in this environment. Therese Neumann, who hailed from a modest peasant milieu and lacked a formal education, became an important member of this circle.

Neumann remains of considerable interest to scholars, and von Westphalen dedicates an entire chapter to her friendship with von Spiegel. After experiencing visions and stigmata—the spontaneous appearance of wounds resembling those of Christ—for the first time in 1926, Neumann quickly rose to fame as a Catholic mystic, drawing both admiration and skepticism. Her claim that she neither ate nor drank anything for years, except for a single consecrated host per day, invited considerably suspicion and scorn, especially since she refused to undergo a clinical observation to verify her claim. The author asserts that she has uncovered new evidence proving that Neumann’s close circle of friends and influential churchmen were aware of her fraud regarding her eating habits and even helped to cover it up. The key piece of evidence is a letter from May 1938 written by Joseph Lechner, a confidant of von Spiegel, in which he suggested subjecting Neumann to a controlled clinical observation, albeit under the condition that the results would be sealed and deposited in the Vatican. He writes that the Cardinal Secretary of State and future Pope Pius XII, Eugenio Pacelli, agreed to this arrangement. Von Westphalen notes that this “unattainable so-called proof under lock and key” in the Vatican “would have made Therese Neumann more or less untouchable” (p. 202). Although no direct evidence exists in which von Spiegel and her associates explicitly acknowledged knowing about (and abetting) Neumann’s fraud, the author infers that they actively supported it because “Therese Neumann had long since become a symbol of unwavering Catholic resistance” in Nazi Germany (p. 13).

The theme of resistance is central to von Westphalen’s narrative of von Spiegel’s conduct under Nazism. She argues that the abbess was “political and engaged in the resistance against National Socialism” (p. 9). However, this assertion is problematic, not least because of the lack of a clear definition of resistance. It is evident, however, that von Westphalen does not define resistance as total opposition to the regime that involved concrete actions to bring about its downfall. Von Spiegel’s life certainly was deeply affected by violence when her close friend Fritz Gerlich was arrested in 1933 and later executed during the Röhm Putsch in 1934 for his anti-Nazi writings in the newspaper Der Gerade Weg. However, von Spiegel herself did not take part in these journalistic efforts. Instead, her actions in Nazi Germany were entirely in line with those of Catholic Church leaders at the time who adhered to a cautious and conciliatory policy, which primarily sought to preserve Catholic institutions. From time to time, von Spiegel engaged in what Martin Broszat termed Resistenz, meaning nonconformist behavior that aimed at preserving pre-1933 values without directly confronting the Nazi regime. This was the case during the school struggle in the mid-1930s, when the Bavarian state dismissed women religious teachers from public schools and commenced the closure of Catholic secondary schools. Von Spiegel wrote lengthy (and ultimately futile) protests to Nazi officials, but this was not at all unusual or even all that political.

Moreover, the book’s broad scope makes it difficult to explore certain critical topics in sufficient depth. The foreign-exchange trials of 1935–36, which directly affected von Spiegel and St. Walburg, were pivotal moments in the regime’s campaign against religious congregations and orders. Yet the author devotes less than a page to them. Similarly, von Westphalen cites part of a 1990 local news report claiming that St. Walburg had sheltered “a person persecuted by the SS,” but offers no further context or corroboration (p. 404). Where the book truly excels is in its rich portrayal of von Spiegel’s family history. The detailed accounts of her siblings, nieces, and nephews—each following different paths in the Third Reich—provide a compelling snapshot of one aristocratic Catholic family navigating Nazi Germany. The book’s greatest strength lies in its ability to illuminate the intimate world of one woman and her family, offering a deeply personal lens on history.

Notes:

[1] Benedictine nuns follow the Rule of St. Benedict (6th century). Their communities are typically autonomous and focus on contemplative life and liturgical prayer within a cloistered setting. Catholic sisters usually follow the rule of St. Augustine. They usually practice limited or no enclosure and are dedicated to apostolic work in their communities, including teaching, nursing, and social work. See: Relinde Meiwes, “Arbeiterinnen des Herrn”. Katholische Frauenkingregationen im 19. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt: Campus, 2000), 52–67.

Film Review of Zwischen uns Gott, Directed by Rebecca Hirneise

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 31, Number 1 (Spring 2025)

Film Review of Zwischen uns Gott, Directed by Rebecca Hirneise (Ruth Beckermann Filmproduktion, 2024)

By Dirk Schuster, University of Vienna

Zwischen uns Gott (Between Us God), the title of the documentary by director Rebecca Hirneise, already gives a clear indication of what the audience can expect. Hirneise visits her family in southwestern Germany to talk to them about religion. Her grandparents, both now suffering from dementia, have raised their children to be religious in a strict Methodist tradition. Her uncles and aunts tell Hirneise—among other things—how they experienced their childhood, how they relate to God and, above all, how they deal with the fact that Hirneise and her mother have turned away from Christianity and no longer want to be Christians. Hirneise manages to bring her sister, her brother and their husbands together after years of distance and talk to them about God and themselves as a family. What the viewer gets to see and hear—Hirneise has one-on-one conversations with everyone involved—is sometimes exciting, sometimes shocking and sometimes just bizarre. One aunt mourns her lost youth, as her parents (Hirneise’s now-deranged grandparents) had completely forbidden all non-religious leisure activities such as dancing, going out, and so on. The siblings’ youth was dominated exclusively by activities within the religious community—no wonder that all of them found their spouses inside the religious community. Her husband has, in turn, founded his own charismatic community in which healing is practiced with the help of God. The viewer cannot help but note that harmony in this marriage seems to be foreign, and divorce perhaps overdue, though outward appearances seem to be more important than personal happiness. This same uncle claims with complete conviction that severed limbs have grown back in his presence simply by asking God. Unfortunately, however, he is not prepared to let the camera in on such events.

Another aunt, on the other hand, talks incessantly about the damnation that awaits Hirneise because of her turning away from God. For this aunt, there is no reality outside of faith, which is why she constantly asks God for forgiveness for Hirneise and her mother. This aunt’s husband is also strictly religious, but unlike his wife, he accepts scientific views to explain the world. For example, he sees the creation of the universe through the Big Bang as entirely possible. And he also accepts that people turn away from God, a stance that his own wife acknowledges with incomprehension. Hirneise’s mother, for her part, reports how her own mother (Hirneise’s grandmother with dementia) had demanded that her daughter remain completely abstinent until her husband—who, it should be noted, had left her—came back to her. The subject of the divorce is not discussed further, so it remains unclear why Hirneise’s father left the family. And of course, he never came back.

Unsurprisingly, the experiment of talking together does not end well; it does not lead to an understanding discourse. The viewer witnesses how accusations are made by family members against each other, such as how the secular mother blames the religious fundamentalists because she was virtually expelled from the family after her divorce and renunciation of faith. Conversely, the fundamentalists condemn Hirneise and her mother because both no longer believe in God. In between are the moderates, who somehow want to mediate, but that doesn’t work. This dispute ultimately ended the family talks.

The film is raw documentary: no scene is acted, no dialogue is prearranged. This unscripted approach makes the movie both exciting and shocking. In an increasingly secularized (Central European) world, the viewer is given an unfiltered view of how faith in God is present within Hirneise’s family and how that faith prevents a peaceful coexistence based on mutual acceptance. Hirneise does not judge, but lets the viewer form his own opinion. This cinematically realized field study documents the tenacious power of religion to determine family dynamics—God has, almost literally, come in between its members. This viewer hopes that this sober anti-blockbuster will be seen by many people, because it impressively reflects the religious conflicts of the present day: one’s own point of view is so entrenched that other opinions can no longer be accepted at all. A different view to one’s own—in this case a Christian fundamentalist view—is not tolerated at all. As a result, the family can no longer even sit at the same table and talk to each other. This fact alone is thought-provoking.

Review of Andreas Pangritz, Die Schattenseite des Christentums. Theologie und Antisemitismus

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 31, Number 1 (Spring 2025)

Review of Andreas Pangritz, Die Schattenseite des Christentums. Theologie und Antisemitismus. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2023.

Dirk Schuster, University of Vienna

Theology and antisemitism: to be honest, the subtitle of the book initially led me to believe that this was yet another classic theological-apologetic attempt to negate the Christian inﬂuence in the development of antisemitism. Fortunately, Andreas Pangritz, Professor Emeritus of Systematic Theology at the University of Bonn, proved me wrong. With his book, based on a lecture at the University of Bonn in 2020, Pangritz wants to achieve exactly the opposite. He follows the basic assumption that there is a connection between Christian theology and antisemitism (11). Accordingly, the main thesis is that antisemitism is essentially Christian antisemitism and that the importance of Christian theology in the formation of antisemitism should not be underestimated (17).

In the second chapter, Pangritz addresses the problematic distinction between the terms anti-Judaism and antisemitism. He shows that the distinction between a theologically-argued hostility towards Jews and a racially argued antisemitism, which has been repeatedly postulated since the end of the Second World War, has not stood the test of time. On the contrary, such a distinction harbors the danger that (Christian) hatred of Jews is trivialized by juxtaposing it with antisemitism. Pangritz proposes “not to speak of a break, but rather of a transformation of the traditional Christian ‘doctrine of contempt’ (Lehre der Verachtung) into the modern forms of antisemitism” (35). It remains unclear, however, why Pangritz returns to the concept of anti-Judaism later in the book (e.g. 119). The term has been overused by Christian apologetics, and Pangritz himself has pointed out that the academic distinction between anti-Judaism and antisemitism has not produced any new insights or meaningful differentiations. (30). Conceptual clarity would have been helpful here, especially since Pangritz argues well with Léon Poliakov, Peter Schäfer and even Reinhard Rürup that “antisemitism” should be used in its most general sense: “The word ‘antisemitism’ denotes hostility, hatred and contempt of all kinds against Jews and Judaism; this does not exclude differences in motivation, but includes them” (33). However, this small point is the only criticism I can make in the entire book.

In Chapter Three, Pangritz argues cogently why Christian theology included a self-image that was explicitly directed against the existence of Judaism from its inception. The theological interpretation that Christians had replaced Jews as the chosen people of God inevitably led to antisemitism. From this particular Christian perspective, the Jews’ refusal to recognize Jesus as the Messiah means nothing other than denying the Christian claim to truth.

Pangritz devotes an entire chapter to Martin Luther and his radical hatred of Jews. Here, too, he succeeds in demonstrating how Luther’s inﬂammatory writings served as a reservoir for the development of the scientific antisemitism in later centuries. Accordingly, Pangritz also denounces the attempts of Protestant theologians to separate Luther the reformer from Luther the anti-Semite in order to trivialize the latter as a negligible, even marginal phenomenon in history. True to the motto: what must not be, does not exist.

In German national Protestantism, which unified German national identity and the Protestant faith, the anti-Jewish ideas of Protestant theologians ultimately culminated in an “antisemitism of redemption” (as coined by Saul Friedländer). It is correct that Pangritz emphasizes the admiration of such Protestant leaders as Theophil Wurm and Otto Dibelius for the most popular antisemite of the late nineteenth century, Adolf Stoecker. The antisemitic outbursts of church representatives during the Third Reich therefore can no longer be attributed solely to the German Christians (Deutsche Christen)—a disingenuous shifting of blame that still happens far too often in German-speaking countries, though, fortunately, less frequently in America. This juxtaposition of good (Confessing Church) and evil (German Christians), or “intact” and “broken” regional churches, as is still standard in Protestant church historiography, is ultimately just another attempt to serve one’s own myth of victimization instead of dealing seriously with anti-Jewish theology and its history within one’s own (Christian) faith.

In his conclusion, Pangritz once again addresses different scholarly views on possible straightforward connections between Luther and Hitler. Whether these connections are direct or indirect is ultimately not of decisive importance, and Pangritz does not make a deﬁnitive statement here, either, which is not necessary. Instead, he concludes with an appeal: “Within Christian theology today, there is still consensus on the condemnation of antisemitism. The question remains, however, whether this condemnation also translates into a willingness to repent regarding anti-Jewish thought patterns in theology and, in particular, in theological education” (192).

The book deserves a broad audience. For non-theologians, the book offers a number of suggestions for focusing more on Christian theology and its inherent hostility towards Jews when dealing with the phenomenon of antisemitism. For theologians, on the other hand, to whom the book is primarily addressed, the book represents an excellent critical self-reﬂection of their own faith. Anyone, whether an active scholar or a lay Christian, who still holds the view that the murderous antisemitism of the last two centuries did not originate in Christian hatred of Jews should read this book.