Article Note: Gordon L. Heath, “Canadian Presbyterians and the Rejection of Pacifism in the Interwar Years, 1919-1939”

Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 29, Number 3/4 (Fall 2023)

Article Note: Gordon L. Heath, “Canadian Presbyterians and the Rejection of Pacifism in the Interwar Years, 1919-1939,” Journal of Presbyterian History, 98, no. 2 (Fall/Winter 2020), 66-77.

By Kyle Jantzen, Ambrose University

In this article, Gordon Heath of McMaster Divinity College has analyzed diverse forms of pacifism within the Presbyterian Church of Canada (PCC) during the 1920s and 1930s. He argues that support for internationalist pacifism—a “liberal reformist” movement committed to “international developments for peace” but “willing to support the use of force as a last resort” (68)—was strong among Presbyterians, but that support for absolute pacifism—the refusal “to support the use of force for any reason” (68)—waned in the later 1920s and 1930s. This was in large part because the minority of Presbyterians who remained with the PCC after most chose to join the new United Church of Canada (UCC) were largely committed to the Just War tradition, a core Presbyterian conviction (67).

In the first section, “Shifting Views and Rising Pacifism,” Heath explains Canadian enthusiasm for the First World War in 1914 aimed initially at “saving civilization from German militarism,” then also putting a halt to the genocide of Armenians by Ottoman Turkey and more generally creating a world without war. Though postwar Presbyterians went on to commemorate the Great War, Canadians as a whole began to embrace pacifism, because of the costs of the war—both human and material. Among Christians, one evidence of this surge in pacifism was “A Creed for Believers in a Warless World” (1921), which articulated “belief” in arms reductions, international law, “a worldwide association of nations for world peace,” racial equality, good will between nations, “just dealing and unselfish service,” Christian brotherhood, and a “warless world” (66, 69). A wave of internationalism swept through the churches, just as it had the wider society. The influence of the social gospel was important for pacifism, as was the formation of the League of Nations, which the Presbyterian press supported, and a series of international agreements which suggested the possibility of arms reduction, normalization of relations with Germany, and the elevation of diplomacy over war (70).

Among Canadian Presbyterians, however, support for pacifism was limited to these hopes for stable international relations marked by bilateral and multilateral agreements, which would render war less likely. Absolute pacifism convictions were rejected. As one Presbyterian writer put it, while war was “contrary to the will of Christ and foreign to His spirit” as well as “not Christ’s method of bringing in His Kingdom” and “fundamentally alien to the spirit of brotherhood which he came to establish on earth,” it should be emphasized that “the Church does not take the position that no circumstances can justify armed resistance to unlawful aggression or inaction in the face of wrong and suffering inflicted upon the weak and defenseless” (71). Another writer asserted that German aggression in the First World War had demonstrated that “sometimes war was needed to stop bellicose nations.”

Still, Heath argues that 1920s Presbyterians believed that international organizations and the churches could partner to make peace, foster “universal brotherhood,” and usher in the Kingdom of God. The Christian contribution would be to invest in global Christian mission. By the 1930s, however, these hopes were challenged by the increasing aggression of dictatorships in Japan, Italy, and Germany. Presbyterians referred to a “Dark Valley” of international tensions that made pacifism seem more and more untenable (71).

The second section of Heath’s article (“Just War (Redux)”) illustrates the growing division among pacifists and the fact that PCC convictions were primarily internationalist and not those of the “absolute pacifists” (72). In 1934, for instance, the Canadian editor of the Presbyterian Record quoted his US counterpart (from the Presbyterian Banner) stating that any Presbyterians who support resolutions opposed to the use of any force to defend the country “should remember that they subscribed to a different doctrine when they accepted our Confession of Faith” (72) The magistrate still exercised the sword in the “Just War” tradition. Heath references other similar PCC statements to illustrate the limits of Presbyterian pacifism, while also noting that there were still some scattered Presbyterian statements renouncing war entirely. Overall, though, a new realism took hold.

Here Heath enters into historical debates about 1) the relative importance of the social gospel within Presbyterianism, 2) the level of preoccupation with survival and reconstruction of Canadian Presbyterianism after the departure of most Presbyterians for the UCC, 3) the extent to which Presbyterians had any energy at all for theological innovation, and 4) the level of conservatism within the (now much smaller and more homogenous) PCC. Above all, Heath argues,

Presbyterian identity was under duress due to the recent formation of the UCC. Despite the optimism for peace, it is not entirely surprising that absolute pacifism did not take root in the PCC. There was no significant pacifist movement in the Reformed tradition, and thus the surging peace movement did not resonate strongly with a pre-existing body of pacifist Presbyterians. More importantly, absolute pacifism directly contradicted the creeds of the church… (74).

As a result, when German Führer Adolf Hitler launch the world into war once again in 1939, “the PCC remained faithful to the Just War tradition, and the war against Hitler was deemed to be a Just War” (74). Moreover, commentary in the Presbyterian Record and resolutions from the General Assembly both maintained strong support for the war against Hitler and Nazism. What the pacifist influence had done, though, was to temper the enthusiasm with which the PCC endorsed the Second World War as compared to the First.

Conference Report: Otto Dibelius. New Research on a Protestant Figure of the Century

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 29, Number 3/4 (Fall 2023)

Conference Report: Otto Dibelius. New Research on a Protestant Figure of the Century

By Michael Heymel, Independent Scholar and Central Archives of the Protestant Church in Hessen and Nassau (retired)

Translated from the German by Martin R. Menke

Editor’s note: the translation has hewed closely to the original German of the conference report. In a few instances some linguistic liberties were taken to ensure readability in English, but we have tried to minimize these. On occasion the original German terms are retained in square brackets to clarify a translation.

From October 5 to 7, 2022, an international conference on [Otto] Dibelius took place in Marburg. LUKAS BORMANN of the Phillips University Marburg and MANFRED GAILUS of the Technical University Berlin organized the event. The organizers selected talks by sixteen scholars active in Protestant theology and historical, cultural, and religious scholarship on Otto Dibelius (1886-1967). The conference’s purpose was to develop a new understanding of this extraordinary personality in German Protestantism for the first time since the publication of his first and, so far, only biography thirty years ago.

The conference program consisted of seven thematic sessions. The first session featured contributions to the historiography concerning Dibelius. MARTIN STUPPERICH (Hannover) reported as a witness to the creation of the Dibelius biography written by his father, Robert Stupperich. In 1967, a group around Kurt Scharf had tasked the elder Stupperich with writing a biography to honor their esteemed teacher. The publisher, however, rejected the first draft. Subsequently, the son, Martin, took on the difficult task of revising the first draft with his father. Working with his wife, the doctorally qualified historian Amrei Stupperich, Martin Stupperich claimed to have composed a significant part of the [published] manuscript. He centered the biography on the theme of the church’s independence after 1919, one of Dibelius’s most important concerns. Martin Stupperich sought to mention the persecution of the Jews because originally Robert Stupperich had not focused on accusations of antisemitism against Dibelius. When the biography appeared in 1989, Dibelius was not perceived as an antisemite.

The two following presentations were dedicated to the intellectual formation of Dibelius in late Imperial Germany. ALBRECHT BEUTEL (Münster) traced Dibelius’ development before the First World War and described him as an ambitious church reformer who oriented his thinking about parishes and parish activities on the work of Emil Sulze. Pleading for a form of preaching easily understood by the people, which Dibelius connected to a differentiated parish organizational program, he engaged the ideas of Calvin and his experience gained while studying abroad in the Church of Scotland and its small parishes. Dibelius sought to encourage parishes actively to participate in the life of the church. In his work, Dibelius considered himself a modern Lutheran and kept his distance from pietism. Dibelius embraced much of the Prussian tradition from Queen Louise to Bismarck, which to him embodied Germany. While he interpreted the outbreak of war in 1914 as a divine epiphany, his writing from the period reveals no trace of antisemitism.

WOLF-DIETRICH SCHÄUFFELE (Marburg) analyzed Dibelius’ activities during the First World War. Schäuffele concluded that his wartime sermons concerned pastoral concerns but were influenced by nationalist phraseology and far removed from the reality of the front. As a superior pastor in Lauenburg, he served soldiers’ needs. A year later, he conducted patriotic rallies in the Protestant Berlin parish of Heilsbronnen. The Christian state was his ideal, whose morality should be guaranteed by the church and Christianity. He also considered Germany’s status as a world power to be essential. Dibelius believed in a Christian German mission, and he understood the war as a just and holy war in which God, as the Lord of history, was continuing his work of creation. It seemed incredible to him that God should permit the political might of Germans to break. In 1918, Dibelius joined the DNVP.[1] At war’s end, he advocated the stab-in-the-back legend and decried the Treaty of Versailles as a satanic construct.

In the next session, which concerned itself with the church as guardian after 1919, BENEDIKT BRUNNER (Mainz) presented a talk online in which he analyzed the public and publishing activity of Dibelius in the Weimar Republic. For more than fifty years, Dibelius called for a people’s church (Volkskirche). In 1919, he considered it time for a free, strong people’s church. Dibelius claimed he was the best-informed man of the Prussian Church, who published until 1933 in seven journals. Furthermore, he supported religious instruction in public schools and called upon the people to gather around the Protestant church to resist secularization. In 1925, Dibelius became General Superintendent of the Kurmark and assumed the leadership of the Prussian church. In a much discussed and observed debate with Karl Barth, Dibelius used triumphalist language to defend the imperial church and its responsibility for the people.

TODD H. WEIR (Groningen), whose presentation had been prepared in part and translated by MAURICE BACKSCHAT (Münster), addressed the work of Dibelius at the Apologetical Center, founded in Berlin Spandau in 1921. From a Protestant perspective, the center engaged with secularization and the German atheist [Gottlosen] movement. It advocated a Christian worldview. Karl Barth considered the language of apologetics dangerous. Dibelius saw in Barth a dogmatic, disconnected from the world’s reality, who hardly understood the church’s mission. After 1945, Dibelius continued his apologetic work during the Cold War. Dibelius conceived the people’s church [Volkskirche] as a counterpoint to secular culture, which the church should engage. Dibelius recognized positive religious energies in nationalism but envisioned himself on the apologetic front against National Socialism and the German Christian movement. Until 1933, he found it increasingly difficult to delimit the boundary between his apologetics and the right-wing margins.

The fourth session analyzed Dibelius’ engagement in public debate. LUKAS BORMANN (Marburg) opened the session with a presentation about Dibelius’ most influential work, The Century of the Church, which was first published in 1926 and appeared in six further editions. Dibelius addressed his work to the educated reading middle class. Dibelius’ thesis held that the Lutheran Reformation had eliminated the church. He saw a wave of churches on a global scale and developed a Protestant cultural program that employed racial and national socialist terminology.[2] He identified freethinkers, Jews, and Catholics as demons. He argued that, while sects and the German free churches formed distinct groups, the church aimed to include everyone. At the time, Dibelius claimed that the Protestant church could co-exist with any form of government; later faced with the GDR, he relativized that position. More recent research (for example, from Wolfgang Huber, Hartmut Fritz, and Benedikt Brunner) is more critical of Dibelius’ program. He did not reach the broader masses. Instead of recognizing the church as polysemous, he polarized it and thus found himself between the fronts of a diverse Protestantism.

BRANDON BLOCK (Wisconsin) gave a virtual presentation in which he concentrated on the West German reception of Dibelius’ work Authority [Obrigkeit], published in 1959. As bishop and chairman of the Council of the Protestant Churches (EKD) in Germany, Dibelius took a traditional anti-communist position. At the same time, the Councils of Brethren sought a new role for the church. In 1958, the East German bishops professed their loyalty to the GDR. Given the situation, Dibelius wanted to make a statement about the nature of state authority. The term “authority” [Obrigkeit] (Romans 13) no longer seemed to be an adequate interpretation. Dibelius’ new work sparked a debate in which conservative Lutherans recognized an analogy between the GDR and the Third Reich. The circle around Karl Barth and the Councils of Brethren rejected Dibelius’ text. They claimed that, with his reactionary conservatism, Dibelius may have strengthened counter-reactions, which encouraged the transformation of the Protestant church into a church open to democracy and society.

JOLANDA GRÄSSEL-FARNBAUER (Marburg) addressed Dibelius’ position on women’s issues. She analyzed the work We Call Germany to God [Wir rufen Deutschland zu Gott] (1937), published by Dibelius and Martin Niemöller. She also studied critical reactions by contemporary female readers. We Call Germany responded to National Socialist church politics and criticized the German Christian movement. In the last chapter, the authors explained their view of the women’s movement. They thought women had contravened their destiny when they went to work for pay and sought education and public works. First and foremost, they were to be wives and mothers. Agnes von Zahn-Harnack contradicted this view, and theologians Meta Eyl and Gertrud Eitner identified an affinity of the text with National Socialist ideology. Although many women were active in the Confessing Church, it remained ambivalent on the question of women’s roles. Dibelius conceded to theologically educated women a role of service in the church but not the proclamation [of the gospel] in religious worship. Until the end, he refused to ordain women.

The fifth session focused on National Socialism and the church struggle [Kirchenkampf]. According to MANFRED GAILUS (Berlin), at the opening of Parliament in Potsdam (March 21, 1933), Dibelius welcomed the National Socialist regime’s initial antisemitic policies. Using racist rhetoric, he [claimed] he had expected the “inflow of fresh blood” [“das Einströmen frischen Blutes”] as early as April 1932 and believed in a resurgence of faith. For him, the solution to the Jewish question was to prevent immigration from Eastern Europe. Dibelius’ antisemitic attitude, Gailus claimed, was amply documented. He did not encounter problems with the German Christian movement until he lost his administrative power. As an advisor to the regional Confessing Church of Brandenburg, he remained a man in the middle. He was never a Confessing Church pastor in a Confessing Church parish. Dibelius desired a large, strong, autocratically governed Germany but rejected the hierarchy of the German Christians. After 1945, a negative understanding of Dibelius developed in East Germany; in West Germany, he was seen more positively.

ANDREAS PANGRITZ (Osnabrück) studied the poorly-explored relationship of Dibelius to Jews. Pangritz considered him an antisemite with a clear conscience. After 1945, Dibelius sought to relativize his views. In an article published in 1948, in a retrospective on the Reichspogrom,[3] he did not explain why the church had remained silent. Still, he did emphasize that it was a duty of honor for the Confessing Church to help persecuted Jews. He also claimed that, after euthanasia,[4] he could no longer acknowledge the National Socialist state as an authority. He declared that he had employed two non-Aryans. Since 1934, he had employed a “half-Jew” as a secretary. Already in 1928, Dibelius confessed that he had always been an antisemite. Regarding the boycott of Jewish stores in 1933, Dibelius wrote on April 9 in the Protestant Sunday newspaper of Berlin [Evangelischen Sonntagsblatt Berlin] that the international economy and the international press were in Jewish hands. He continued that Jews abroad were rallying against Germany. He concluded that Jews were a foreign race and Eastern Jews were of questionable moral character.

TETYANA PAVLUSH (Cardiff) had been scheduled to speak on Dibelius’s attitude towards denazification. Because she canceled her talk, MICHAEL HEYMEL (Limburg) presented a talk on the relationship between Dibelius and Martin Niemöller. In a sketch of their personalities, he pointed out that there had been no conflict of authority until both occupied high leadership posts in the church. Both were Prussians, convinced monarchists, and homeless [heimatlose] national Protestants. They welcomed Hitler’s seizure of power but found themselves in ecclesiastical opposition to the German Christians. During the Kirchenkampf, they acted as allies for a time. Dibelius was initially only an observer of the Confessing Church and began his full cooperation only in June 1934. The opposition position that Niemöller assumed after the war’s end originated in the Confessing Churches’ internal fissures. This is evident in the differing evaluations of the church conference at Treysa. Niemöller considered Dibelius the bureaucratic leader of an ecclesiastical administration, while Dibelius considered Niemöller the representative of a superseded ecclesiastical minority.

The three papers of the following session were devoted to the post-war era. CLAUDIA LEPP (München) analyzed the work of Dibelius as a bishop of Berlin (1945-1966) under four aspects. First, in 1945, when he resumed his office in the Prussian Council of Brethren, Dibelius acted as a strongman, solidified old structures, and prevented a reorganization as the Council of Elders around Niemöller intended. In his work, he included both German Christian and National Socialist pastors. Second, in his sermons and pastoral letters, he assumed the position of someone who could analyze and interpret contemporary affairs, in order to frame and structure the life of the people. He also compared the Federal Republic with the Weimar Republic and the GDR with the National Socialist state. Thirdly, he acted as an anti-communist engaged in a church struggle, insisting on the rule of law and freedom of opinion in the GDR. At the time, ninety percent of the GDR’s population belonged to a Christian church. Dibelius struggled in vain against the Socialist Youth Ceremony of Jugendweihe, since most Protestants were unwilling to resist the government’s ritual. Fourth, he acted as a national Protestant activist for the reunification of Germany. By 1957, he was banned from entering the GDR but formally remained a bishop of East and West Berlin until 1966.

HANSJÖRG BUSS (Siegen) focused on the East German political and ecclesiastical opponents of Dibelius as bishop of Berlin. He was the only East German representative on the Council of the Lutheran Church of Germany and, during the 1950s, he was the face of the Protestant church. During this time, the Protestant church in the GDR lost public support. In a film produced by East German television, Dibelius was portrayed as a cold warrior based on his notorious sermon at Potsdam in 1933. This reflected the East German regime’s tendency to see him as an ideological opponent. In East German media, he was portrayed in caricatures as a NATO bishop and purveyor of the hydrogen bomb. While the East German polemic against Dibelius included antisemitic overtones, it increased his support in the West. In 1958, opposition among the pastors of Berlin-Brandenburg increased. Günter Jacob, Superintendent of the Neumark since 1946, became his primary opponent. Jacob did not insist on a unified Protestant church in Germany and, after 1960, turned against the structure of the Church of Berlin-Brandenburg, which was tailored to Dibelius and the office of the bishop.

SIEGFRIED HERMLE (München) used the annual reports written by Dibelius to analyze his tenure in office as chair of the Council of the Lutheran Church in Germany [Rat der evangelischen Kirche in Deutschland] (1949-1961). The council consisted of eleven members and was intended to lead and administer. Eleven individuals ran for the chair’s position in the 1949 elections. A clear majority voted for Dibelius and Lilje as his deputy. Niemöller was no longer capable of gaining a majority. For Dibelius, the churches in the German states represented the central points of German Protestantism. The individual churches did not want a strong central leadership. The Council of the Lutheran Church in Germany should only occasionally speak publicly in the name of the individual churches. In the eight annual reports filed by Dibelius, relations between church and state took up much space. He believed Bonn protected the church while, in the GDR, the church was increasingly exposed to propaganda. He argued that the Church should not let itself be abused in the competition of political forces. He acknowledged differences of opinion in military matters but disagreed with the Councils of Brethren. This was a contrast that influences debates concerning peace to this day. The conservative majority of the Councils of Brethren agreed with him.

The last session concerned Dibelius on the international stage. THEA SULMAVICO (Halle) characterized Dibelius’ position in the rearmament debate as ambivalent. The GDR press responded with polemics when he signed the agreement on pastoral care in the military (1957). Dibelius, in The Boundaries of the State [Die Grenzen des Staates] of 1949, criticized modern war. His criticism of the secular state was aimed only at the GDR, not against the Federal Republic. For Dibelius, the Fatherland had a higher priority than the state. It was a matter of national honor to provide for the defense of one’s own country. He warned against the great danger from the East. After atomic and hydrogen bomb tests, he believed the Soviet Union to possess superiority over the West. He accused Niemöller and Heinemann[5] of political propaganda. He claimed Lutherans were better than the followers of Barth in keeping separate political questions and questions of faith. Neither side ever entirely accepted Dibelius’ claim that he was unpolitical.

BERND KREBS (Berlin) discussed Dibelius’ relationship with Poland. In the 1920s, the primary focus was on Germans under Polish rule. Two-thirds of these Germans left Poland. General Superintendent Juliusz Barsche advocated the integration of all Protestants in the Polish state. Dibelius was convinced of a German mission in the East. Using strongly nationalist tones, he represented the interests of German Protestants in Poland. Before 1914, the region included a million Protestant Christians; after the war, only 350,000 remained. German pastors [in Poland] followed the DNVP party line and were considered leaders in ethnic German circles. In the mid-1920s, tensions worsened. National Socialist policies exerted massive pressure on the Protestant church in Posen. German Protestants in Poland were disappointed by National Socialism. Poland remained a realm of different cultures, in which the desired Germanification failed. After 1945, Dibelius concerned himself with the Lutherans in Poland.

A promised presentation on Dibelius’ active participation in the Ecumenical Movement had to be canceled because KATHARINA KUNTER (Helsinki) could not attend. HARTMUT LEHMANN (Kiel) summarized the conference and asked if anyone actually knew who Dibelius was. Did the presentations together constitute a new understanding of Dibelius? Three facets, Lehmann argued, were recognizable: 1. Dibelius was a prince of the church who always claimed leadership roles. 2. He was a man of the political right who consistently combated the left. Like the average German Protestant of his age, he supported antisemitism and initially also National Socialism. He integrated individuals from different backgrounds into the Council of the Protestant Churches of Germany. 3. After 1945, Dibelius missed the opportunity for a new orientation of the Protestant Church. One could at least imagine an alternative behavior marked by repentance and reversal. The question of what might have happened if Dibelius, as leader of the church, had acted differently before and after National Socialism would go beyond historical scholarship. LEPP and HERMLE remarked that, in such an instance, Dibelius would not have been himself and would not have risen to the church leadership positions he held.

The conference took place with relatively good participation by female scholars within a mixture of several generations of scholars and a constructive atmosphere. Nonetheless, in evaluating the work of Robert Stupperich’s discussion of antisemitism, tensions became evident. Relating to ecumenicism and denazification, gaps in the scholarship were regrettably noticed. New were the investigations of Dibelius during the Kaiserzeit[6] and his relationship to the Weimar era. On the question of antisemitism and Dibelius’ “tragic” post-war role between polemics and his slow distancing from them, the final word has not been spoken. The contributions to the conference are to be published in an edited volume.

[1] Editor’s note: German National People’s Party, a right-wing conservative nationalist party.

[2] Translator’s note: the preceding two sentences are contradictory in the original German.

[3] Editor’s note: the pogrom of November 9, 1938.

[4] Editor’s note: the Nazis’ T-4 “euthanasia” program.

[5] Editor’s note: Gustav Heinemann, at the time President of the Synod of German Churches and Minister of the Interior under Konrad Adenauer.

[6] Editor’s note: refers to the period 1871-1918.

Research Report: Madison Barben on German and American Methodists and Nazi Germany

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 29, Number 3/4 (Fall 2023)

Research Report: Madison Barben on German and American Methodists and Nazi Germany

By Madison Barben, Washington State University

My master’s thesis, “Between Brethren and Fatherland: German Methodist Relations with Nazi Germany and American Methodism, 1933-1939,” (Department of History, Washington State University, 2023) explores conflicts of religion, politics, and international relations between Nazi Germany and the United States by focusing on the German Methodist Episcopal Church (MEC). As the Nazis rose to power, they worked furiously to bring all aspects of Germany society, including churches under their control. The Nazis’ consolidation efforts affected not only the larger official state-recognized churches like the German Evangelical and the Catholic Churches, but also the Free Churches. Due to their independent status and foreign ties, the German Methodists and other Free Churches were in a precarious position. While the German Methodists feared their Anglo-American ties jeopardized their Free Church status, Nazi officials saw their connections as a means to influence American public opinion. In the thesis, I examine the German Methodist bishops’ international visits to analyze their changing relationship with the Nazi state and their American church brethren. To explore these ideas, I used Methodist periodicals The Christian Advocate and as well as the German Methodist bishops’ writing, speeches, and correspondence to church leadership in the United States.[1]

Recently, the Free Churches and German Protestants’ transnational ties have received specific attention. Historians Kyle Jantzen, Rebecca Carter-Chand, and Blake McKinney’s research stress the transnational scope of the Kirchenkampf with Carter-Chand and McKinney specifically examining the Free Churches.[2] I focused on the Methodists as a case study to examine how one Free Church navigated its place amidst Nazi control and conflicts amongst the German churches. With my thesis, I aim to contribute to scholarship on the Free Churches and the Kirchenkampf’s transnational influence. Also, my thesis builds on prior scholarship into Methodism in the Third Reich by emphasizing the church’s transnational connections through the bishops’ international tours.[3]

From 1933-1939, Bishops John L. Nuelsen (1912-1936) and F. H. Otto Melle (1936-1946) completed multiple propaganda tours in the United States and England on behalf on the Nazis. Their international visits illustrate the extent to which the German Methodist leaders went to preserve their church, even if it meant complying with an oppressive regime. The first bishop, Nuelsen, complied with Nazi orders as means for the MEC to survive, fearing opposition would destroy the MEC’s existence in Germany and connections to international Methodism. In 1933 and 1935, he completed propaganda tours in the United States supporting the Nazi’s positive influence over German society. While he showed early public support, he privately criticized the Nazis and later, when Germany was no longer part of his episcopal jurisdiction, ceased explicitly defending the Reich.

While Nuelsen cooperated with the Nazis for the church to survive, his successor, Melle, did so for it to thrive. In contrast to his predecessor, Melle, a self-described German national, was more opportunistic and eager to cooperate with the Nazi state. This is most evident in his controversial attendance and statements defending the Third Reich while dismissing the Confessing Church at the 1937 Life and Work “Oxford Conference.” Through his willingness to collaborate, Melle received political and material favor for the German Methodists, much to the dismay of Nuelsen and international Methodists.

My thesis only touched the surface of German Methodists and other Free Churches in the Third Reich. My project ends at the outbreak of World War II and does not cover wartime, the Holocaust, and post war.[4] While my thesis focuses on an individual Free Church, there is value in examining them collectively to highlight their parallel experiences and ecumenical relationships.[5] Finally, there can be more research into the Free Churches’ transnational relationships, specifically examining how their connections were used to influence opinions and politics on both sides of the Atlantic.

Biographical Note

Madison Barben recently graduated with a master’s degree in history from Washington State University. She is an Assistant Content Creator for the United Methodist Church’s General Commission on Archives and History and an Assistant Archivist at the Nebraska United Methodist Historical Center and Archive. She is currently applying to Ph.D. programs and intends to continue researching intersections of religion and politics in German-American international relations.

[1] I specifically researched at the United Methodist Archives at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey and The Interchurch Center in New York City.

[2] Blake McKinney, “Conference Report: “Nazi Germany, International Protestantism, and the German Churches,” Contemporary Church History Quarterly, 27, no. 4 (December 2021), https://contemporarychurchhistory.org/2021/12/conference-report-nazi-germany-international-protestantism-and-the-german-churches/; Rebecca Carter-Chand, “Nationalism and Religious Bonds: Transatlantic Religious Communities in Nazi Germany and the United States,” in Religion, Ethnonationalism, and Antisemitism in the Era of the Two World Wars, eds. Kevin P. Spicer and Rebecca Carter-Chand (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2022); Blake McKinney, “The National and International Church: National Socialism, German Protestantism, and the Watching World” (PhD diss., University of Alabama, 2021)

[3] James A. Dwyer, “The Methodist Episcopal Church in Germany, 1933-1945: Development of Semi-
Autonomy and Maintenance of International Ties in the Face of National Socialism and the German Church Struggle,” PhD diss., (Northwestern University, 1978); Herbert Strahm, Die Bischöfliche Methodistenkirche im Dritten Reich, (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1989); Roland Blaich, “A Tale of Two Leaders: German Methodists and the Nazi State,” Church History 70, no. 2 (2001); Daniel, W. Harrison, “To Strengthen the Ties That Bind: Bishop John L. Nuelsen and German-Connectionalism in the Methodist Episcopal Church Mission in Europe, 1912-1940.” Methodist History 38, no. 3 (April 2000); Ulrike Schuler, “Crisis, Collapse, and Hope: Methodism in 1945 Europe,” Methodist History, 51 no. 1&2 (2012); Helmut Nausner, “Tracing Reconciliation: Post 1945,” Methodist History, 51 no. 1&2 (2012); Karl Heinz Voigt, “Melle, Friedrich Heinrich Otto,” Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon, 1993, https://www.bbkl.de/index.php/frontend/lexicon/M/Mc-Me/melle-friedrich-heinrich-otto-63151.

[4] There has not been much scholarship into German Methodist responses to the Holocaust besides Karl Voigt’s chapter in Daniel Heinz’s edited volume. Daniel Heinz, ed., Freikirchen und Juden im “Dritten Reich”: Instrumentalisierte Heilsgeschichte, antisemitische Vorurteile und verdrängte Schuld (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011).

[5] Carter-Chand and McKinney’s recent research examine the Anglo-American Free Churches as a collective unit, but there is still room to expand on these ideas.

Letter from the Editors (Summer 2023)

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 29, Number 1/2 (Summer 2023)

Letter from the Editors (Summer 2023)

By Kyle Jantzen, Ambrose University

Dear Friends,

I must begin this Letter from the Editors with an apology for the long delay between issues of Contemporary Church History Quarterly, which is due to the recent increase in the demands of my university position. While it has been my pleasure to have led a group of scholars in transforming the late John Conway’s monthly newsletter into a quarterly journal starting back in March 2010, it is time to pass on my Managing Editor responsibilities. I am pleased to announce that Dr. Lauren Faulkner Rossi of Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada, will be stepping into the lead role as of the next issue. I am delighted that she is willing to take on the responsibility and look forward to supporting her as she and her colleagues on the editorial board carry the CCHQ forward.

In this issue, we are pleased to present an article by Dr. Suzanne Brown-Fleming on a series of lectures by Father Marie-Benoît at the convent of the Sisters of Our Lady of Sion in Rome, in November 1944. In the lectures, he tried to bring together Jews and Christians by discussing topics such as the creation of the universe, man formed in the image of God, monogamy, the sanctity of marriage, the unity of the human family, and other topics common to both Christianity and Judaism. His lectures came to the attention of the Supreme Congregation of the Holy Office, the office within the Roman Curia that ruled on matters of faith and morals. The essay describes the tug-of-war between various authority figures, congregations within the Curia, and religious Orders that ensued, ultimately foreshadowing the sea changes of the Second Vatican Council.

We are also pleased to present a series of book reviews by Rebecca Carter-Chand, Martin Menke, Dirk Schuster, and Kyle Jantzen on the Vatican and Evangelical Christians in Fascist Italy, Archbishops Conrad Gröber and Lorenz Jaeger, Christianity and Antisemitism and Anti-Zionism, and British Christian engagement with Nazi Germany, respectively. Several news and notes round out this issue.

We hope you find these contributions both interesting and enlightening.

On behalf of the editorial team,

Kyle Jantzen, Ambrose University

The Rome Lectures: Father Marie-Benoît and the Path to Jewish-Christian Rapprochement

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 29, Number 1/2 (Summer 2023)

Article: The Rome Lectures: Father Marie-Benoît and the Path to Jewish-Christian Rapprochement

Suzanne Brown-Fleming, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Georgetown University

This essay was originally published in Holocaust Education Today: Confronting Extremism, Hate, and Mass Atrocity Crimes. The Ethel Lefrak Holocaust Education Conference Proceedings. Carol Rittner, ed. (Greensburg, PA: Seton Hill University, 2023), pp. 137-145. We are grateful for the permission of the National Catholic Center for Holocaust Education to reprint it here.

Abstract

In November 1944, with deportations to Auschwitz only having ceased the month prior, Father Marie-Benoît gave a series of lectures at the convent of the Sisters of Our Lady of Sion in Rome. In the lectures, he tried to bring together Jews and Christians by discussing topics such as the creation of the universe, man formed in the image of God, monogamy, the sanctity of marriage, the unity of the human family, and other topics common to both Christianity and Judaism. His lectures came to the attention of the Supreme Congregation of the Holy Office, the office within the Roman Curia that ruled on matters of faith and morals. This essay describes the tug-of-war between various authority figures, congregations within the Curia, and religious Orders that ensued, ultimately foreshadowing the sea changes of the Second Vatican Council.

Essay

On November 29, 1944, His Eminence Cardinal Francesco Marchetti Selvaggiani (1871-1951), Secretary of the Supreme Congregation of the Holy Office,[2] wrote to Father Donatus von Welle, Minister General of the Order of Capuchin Friars Minor (Capuchin Franciscans/O.F.M. Cap). Cardinal Selvaggiani was puzzled by an announcement he read in L’Osservatore Romano:[3] “on Sunday, November 5, at the Sisters of [our Lady of] Sion (Via Garibaldi 28) at 3:00 p.m., Fr. Benedict of Bourg d’Iré, O.M. Cap., will give the second lecture on Christian-Jewish friendship,” stated the small and inconspicuous passage.[4]

“As has been announced in the newspapers,” Cardinal Selvaggiani wrote to Father von Welle, “Father Benedict of Bourg d’Ire [Père Marie-Benoît/Father Mary Benedict/Padre Maria Benedetto; hereafter Father Benoît], of this Religious Order, is holding a course of conferences ‘to maintain and spiritually consolidate the rapprochement between Israelites and Christians during the period of the recent persecution.’”[5]

This, wrote Cardinal Selvaggiani, was not in keeping with the Acta Apostolique Sedis,[6] and the cardinal wished for an explanation from the minister general of the Capuchin Franciscans. “May Your Reverend Fatherhood provide this Supreme Congregation with detailed information concerning the above-mentioned initiative, bearing in mind the dispositions given by this Supreme with the Decree of March 25, 1928, published in the Acta Ap. Sedis, edition of April 2, 1928, page 103, regarding the Amici Israel,’” the cardinal wrote.[7]

Opus sacerdotale Amici Israel, or the Clerical Association of Friends of Israel, was a controversial and short-lived international organization founded in February 1926. Conceived of as both a bridge between Jews and Catholics and a tool for conversion, it briefly enjoyed broad support. By the end of 1926, its membership included 18 cardinals, 200 bishops and about 2,000 priests. The association’s proposal to amend the Good Friday Prayer that used the word “perfidis” (perfidious) to describe Jews surfaced internal power struggles and sharp disagreements between the Congregation of Rites,[8] the Supreme Congregation of the Holy Office, and Pope Pius XI (1922-1939). The Holy Office did not approve the change, and Pope Pius XI ordered that Amici Israel be dissolved in 1928.[9] This was the controversy and resulting ruling that Cardinal Selvaggiani referenced in his 1944 letter, one he likely remembered well.

Few new more intimately the “recent persecutions” of the “Israelites” than did Father Benoît, the organizer of the conferences in question. The French Capuchin was one of the few Roman Catholic priests to be named Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem[10] in April 1966.[11] He was atypical in his herculean efforts on behalf of Jews trying to survive under Nazi and Axis onslaught. In 1940, he left the Capuchin monastery on the Via Boncompagni 71 in Rome to return to France, specifically to the Capuchin monastery in Marseilles, where he was active in rescue activities that included false baptismal certificates for Jews. Forced to return to Rome in 1943, he was elected acting president of Delasem (Delegazione Assistenza Emigranti Ebrei), an Italian and Jewish resistance organization that worked in Italy between 1939 and 1947.[12]

In November 1944, Rome was only six months into recovering from Nazi occupation (September 1943 – June 1944). World War II still raged. Deportations to the Nazi death Camp Auschwitz in Poland had only ceased in late October 1944. Father von Welle replied quickly to Cardinal Selvaggiani’s letter.[13] On December 5, 1944, he wrote a long explanatory letter emphasizing that Father Benoît could be relied on to carry out what the Holy Office would consider an appropriate approach to Jews, explaining:

Father Maria Benedetto of Bourg d’ Iré, from 1940 to 1943, was in temporary residence, for reasons of the war, in our convent of Marseilles, where, with the permission of the Most Rev. Ordinary of the place, he instructed in the Catholic faith and baptized a good number of Jews. This spiritual ministry gave him the opportunity to help also materially the converted and non-converted Jews, and so for three years he collaborated with the Jewish committees of Marseilles, Cannes and Nice in France, to protect the persecuted Jews, in agreement with the Italian Authorities in the French area they then occupied.[14]

Furthermore, the Holy Father himself approved – for in July 1943, Pope Pius XII (1939-1958) received Father Benoît and approved of the priest’s work, asserted Father von Welle. In fact, Father von Welle had been the one to present Father Benoît to the pope. In early September 1943, “hundreds of foreign Jews from France poured into Rome,” according to Father von Welle. Surely one could not expect Father Benoît to ignore their plight, for when visiting these new refugees, Father Benoît “recognized among them a good number of his assistants from Marseilles and Nice.” This meant he was “not able to avoid the duty of resuming his assistance,” and in answer to their plight, began his work with Delasem.[15]

Father von Welle argued Father Benoît’s work was “known to the Secretary of State [Cardinal Luigi Maglione] and to the Vicariate of Rome.” It was work to be praised, implied Father von Welle, for “it put Father Maria Benedetto in serious danger several times and required intense and continuous energy.” This was important work. According to his knowledge at that time, “on June 4, 1944,[16] there were 4,000 subsidized people in Rome, of whom 1,500 were foreigners and 2,500 Italians.” During the Nazi occupation of Rome, “about 25,000,000 Italian liras were spent,” wrote Father von Welle.[17] Father Benoît’s work was a point of pride for the pope, argued Father von Welle:

Once the persecution had passed, at least for Rome, the Jews immediately asked Fr. Maria Benedetto if they could express their gratitude to the Supreme Pontiff. The Chief Rabbi of Rome, [Israel] Zolli, accompanied by lawyer [Carlo Alberto] Ottolenghi, was received in private audience by His Holiness. The Holy Father received them very paternally, and also accepted the proposal of a public audience for all the Jews of Rome, but for later, when circumstances permit.[18]

As to the immediate November 5 conference that had already taken place on the Via Garibaldi 28, Father von Welle responded by quoting a letter from Father Benoît, produced upon the request of his superior. The lengthy passage is fascinating for the window it gives us into the manner in which Father Benoît understood his work:

I thought it was opportune to maintain and spiritually consolidate the rapprochement that took place between Israelites and Christians during the period of the recent persecution. To this end, taking advantage of the great popularity I enjoy among the Jews of Rome, I invited Jews and Catholics to listen to lectures given by me on the Old Testament, beginning at the very beginning with Genesis. It is a common ground on which we can meet and meditate together on the great religious teachings of the Word of God. My method is neither scientific nor polemical, but based […] on the Italian version of the Vulgate,[19] it is expository-educational. The immediate fruit of this should be, as I said in the first conference, a greater union between Jews and Christians, to fight every form of anti-Semitism, to arrive at a better understanding between all and to promote every good work. In the first three lectures I was already able to speak of the creation of the universe, of man formed in the image of God, of monogamy, of the sanctity of marriage, of the unity of the species, or rather of the human family, and thus of universal brotherhood, all matters that have pleased and made a salutary impression, as I was able to judge from the conversations that followed. Being a graduate of Theology from the [Pontifical] Gregorian University and a teacher of Theology in our International College for nearly twenty years, I believe I am able to give these lectures from the doctrinal point of view. I am familiar with the condemnation of the “Friends of Israel” because I used to be a member, but I believe I avoid the drawbacks of this association. I endeavor to conform my lectures to the spirit of the Church and the teaching of the Holy Fathers. I make use of the best commentators on the Bible such as Father [Francis de] Sales. I do not intend in any way to propose modifications in the Sacred Liturgy such as the Oremus “pro perfidis Iudaeis” on Good Friday; nor to attenuate the responsibilities of the Jewish people in the trial of Jesus or other similar things; on the contrary, I take advantage of every opportunity to make Christian doctrine known as it is, as I have already done once for the Sacrifice of the Holy Mass.[20]

It is a remarkable “defense” from a man who risked much to offer aid to persecuted Jewry during the Holocaust. It also speaks to the degree that both Fathers von Welle and Benoît knew that any rapprochement with Judaism – or any other tradition – was deeply frowned upon as Indifferentism.[21] Christian charity toward the suffering was one thing, but words and deeds that could be construed as approval of another faith tradition -especially Judaism -was quite another. And once again, as had been the case in 1928, the Congregation of Rites became involved.

In a long memorandum dated 18 December 1944, canon law jurist Vigilio Dalpiaz of the Congregation of Rites condemned Father Benoît’s lectures, using as a reference point the 1928 dissolution of Amici Israel. After summarizing the main points of the 1928 decree of the Holy Office, published in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis, issue of April 2, 1928, the memo noted an earlier announcement in L’Osservatore Romano, dated October 18, 1944 and more fleshed out than the subsequent November 4 version. In the memorandum, the entire premise of Father Benoît was rejected:

But can Fr. Benedict of Bourg be allowed to give to Catholics and Jews the conferences of which he speaks, and with the method he followed, that is, dealing with religious themes of common interest, but basing himself exclusively on the Old Testament? The Old Testament is only a prelude, a preparation for the New Testament, according to which the plan of universal salvation of souls is now based exclusively on faith in Christian revelation, on belonging to the Church founded by Our Lord Jesus Christ, on participation in the Sacraments, etc. […] The Church and her ministers have the right and the duty to preach, but to preach the Gospel […] If Fr. Benedict of Bourg de Iré had conceived and enunciated his course of lectures on the Old Testament, so as to present them to his Catholic and Jewish listeners as a necessary premise for a further exposition of Christian faith and morals according to the New Testament, he would have done praiseworthy work, and would have been well-deserving before the Church, as well as before souls. But he has stopped, and intends to remain, halfway, taking care not to make that move towards Christianity in general and towards the Church in particular: and this, evidently so as not to upset his Jewish hearers, who could in turn repeat the gesture of their ancestors when they left the synagogue of Capernaum, protesting against the “durus sermo” [intense speech] of Jesus.[22] In fact, the subjects he [Benoît] deals with must completely disregard the revelation of the New Testament, and form a “common ground” on which Catholics and Jews can meet, such as the Creation of the Universe and man, the unity of the human species, the institution and sanctity of Marriage, etc… Even the Messianic question, which, reflected in innumerable prophecies, forms the most vibrant chord of the Old Testament, and touched with a gentle hand, finds the most harmonious echo in the pages of the New Testament, converging irresistibly the eye and the heart if the divine figure of Jesus, is left completely aside. And what is the fruit intended by Fr. Benedict with these lectures? “A greater union with God,” he replies, “and a greater union between Jews, and Christians, in order to combat every form of anti-Semitism to arrive at a better understanding between all, and to promote every good work.” Without wishing to discuss that mysterious “union with God” especially for Catholics, it is clear, however, that the purpose of such conferences is purely philanthropic and humanitarian, i.e. such as even a simple rabbi, or any layman, could propose and achieve. But, then, why should Fr. Benedict set himself to work in his capacity as a Religious, that is, as a Minister of the Catholic Religion, and, even while dealing with religious matters, absolutely disassociate himself from the New Testament, that is, from the foundation of the Catholic Religion, the only true one? Certainly, his expostulation cannot but produce a sense of disorientation in the Catholics already used to considering the most serious problems of the spirit in the light of the New Testament, and not inject as a sweet soporific into the Jews, to whom it will not seem even true that now finally the Catholic Church resigns itself to accept as definitive the conceptions of the Old Testament, at least concerning the most fundamental religious questions. In order to achieve a greater union between Jews and Christians, which is a natural end, Fr. Benedict compromises the supernatural field of faith: in order to materially and morally favor the Jews he endangers the spiritual good of both Jews and Catholics: because both Jews and Catholics, seeing religious problems of such gravity treated by a Catholic priest exclusively according to the Old Testament, they will easily think that one Testament is worth the other, and the Jews will feel the impulse that perhaps pushed them towards the Christian Religion failing: while the Catholics will fall into the religious indifferentism that necessarily accompanies the fall of the Christian religion. Benedict of Bourg d’Iré should be enjoined to use the New Testament as the basis of his lectures, revealing its differences and superiority over the Old Testament through its points of contact and harmonies. If, as is foreseeable, this were not possible given the nature of the audience, he should be forbidden to hold these lectures.[23]

As was the case in 1928, opinion remained divided. HE Pietro Cardinal Fumasoni Biondi (1872-1960), Prefect of the Congregation for the Propaganda of Faith[24] from 1933 until his death, wrote,

Benedict of Bourg d’Iré seems commendable for his science and piety. Doctor of Theology, Professor of Dogmatics, Spiritual Director of the International College. Here in Rome he has given three lectures so far, and these on the Old Testament. Of course, it begins there, but it is not said that it ends there. This is demonstrated by the fact of the conversion of the Rabbi-Chief of Rome and the other fact that in Marseilles he has instructed in the Catholic Faith and baptized a good number of Jews. So let us leave him to it, and at the most, on the part of Monsignor Assessore or others, a word of praise and wise direction for the future.[25]

Discussions about the case continued into 1946, and the ACDF is a treasure trove for the continued wrestling between different congregations and authority figures within the Roman curia.

To conclude, in the midst of the Holocaust, efforts at rapprochement with Judaism were still met with a mixture of dear, defensiveness, and even hostility. Even figures like Father Benoît knew they needed to choose their words carefully when justifying such efforts. Aid to suffering Jews was tolerated, and some argue encouraged, by the pope and his closest advisors and disciplinary bodies. Acceptance of Judaism as a religious tradition was still rejected, and would only change with the Second Vatican Council. It would take 35 years after the Holocaust for Pope John Paul II to tell his Jewish audience in Berlin that God’s covenant with the Jewish people was never revoked. It is fascinating to consider the sea change that occurred between Cardinal Selvaggiani’s November 1944 inquiry and Pope John Paul II’s November 1980 address. It is sure that pioneers like Father Benoît contributed to the Church’s journey.

Further Reading

Hubert Wolf, Pope and Devil: The Vatican’s Archives during the Third Reich, translated by Kenneth Kronenberg (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010.

Susan Zuccotti, Père Marie-Benoît and Jewish Rescue: How a French Priest Together with Jewish Friends Saved Thousands during the Holocaust (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013.

Discussion Questions

What are the main themes and arguments stressed by Father Benoît as included in the 1944 letter from Father von Welle to Cardinal Selvaggiani?
What are the main themes and arguments made in the judgement of canon lawyer Vigilio Dalpiaz?
Compare and contrast these arguments. Which do you find more convincing?

Video/Film Resources

The Assisi Underground [DVD]. New York, N.Y.: MGM/UA Home Video; Distributed by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, 2011.

My Italian Secret: The Forgotten Heroes of the Holocaust (2014). Available on Netflix. See https://myitaliansecret.com/.

Notes

[1] The views as expressed are the author’s alone and no not necessarily represent those of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum or any other organization.

[2] This congregation, renamed the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith in 1965, promotes and safeguards the doctrine on faith and morals in the whole Catholic world. See https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_pro_14071997_en.html, accessed 3/30/2022.

[3] L’Osservatore Romano is the daily newspaper of the Vatican City State. It reports on the activities of the Holy See and events taking place in the Church and the world. It is owned by the Holy See. For a description see https://www.osservatoreromano.va/en.html, accessed 3/30/2022.

[4] L’Osservatore Romano, 4 November 1944 – N.259 (25.676) page 2. Short announcement under the heading “Nostra Signora di Sion.” The text read: Domenica 5 novembre, presso le Suore di Sion (via Garibaldi 28) alle ore 15 il P. Benedetto da Bourg d’Iré, O.M. Cap. Terrà la seconda conferenza sull’amicizia cristiano-ebraica.

[5] Letter from HE Cardinal Francesco Marchetti Selvaggiani to Father Donatus von Welle, 29 November 1944, 125/28. Archivio della Congregazione per la Dottrina della Fede (Archive of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, hereafter ACDF), Vatican City: 00161 – 2 c. 206 227: Circa le conferenze del P. Benedetto.

[6] The Acta Apostolique Sedis is the official gazette of the Holy See containing all the principal decrees, encyclical letters, decisions of Roman congregations, and notices of ecclesiastical appointments. See https://www.vatican.va/archive/aas/index_ge.htm, accessed 3/30/2022.

[7] Letter from HE Cardinal Francesco Marchetti Selvaggiani to Father Donatus von Welle, 29 November 1944, 125/28. Archivio della Congregazione per la Dottrina della Fede (Archive of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, hereafter ACDF), Vatican City: 161 – 2 c. 206 227: Circa le conferenze del P. Benedetto.

[8] At the turn of the 20^th century, the Congregation of Rites dealt with matters directly related to sacred worship as well as matters relating to saints. By 1928, the Congregation consisted of two sections: one for beatification and canonization, the other for sacred rites. In 1969, the Congregation of Rites was divided into two separate entities: the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Congregation for the Causes of Saints. See https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/ccdds/index.htm, accessed 3/30/2022.

[9] See Hubert Wolf, Pope and Devil: The Vatican’s Archives during the Third Reich, translated by Kenneth Kronenberg (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010; and Emma Fattorini, Hitler, Mussolini and the Vatican: Pope Pius XI and the Speech That was Never Made, translated by Karl Ispen (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2011).

[10] Yad Vashem – The World Holocaust Remembrance Center, is the national Holocaust memorial of the state of Israel.

[11] See https://www.yadvashem.org/righteous/stories/benoit.html, accessed 3/30/2022.

[12] See Gérard Cholvy, Marie-Benoît de Bourg d’Iré (1895-1990): Itinéraire d’un fils de Saint François, Juste des Nations (Paris : Les Editions du Cerf, 2010); and Susan Zuccotti, Père Marie-Benoît and Jewish Rescue: How a French Priest Together with Jewish Friends Saved Thousands during the Holocaust (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013), among others.

[13] Letter from Father Donatus von Welle to HE Cardinal Francesco Marchetti Selvaggiani, 5 December 1944, 125/28. ACDF, Vatican City: 161 – 2 c. 206 227: Circa le conferenze del P. Benedetto.

[14] Ibid.

[15] Ibid.

[16] Date of the liberation of Rome from Nazi control by the Allied powers.

[17] Letter from Father Donatus von Welle to HE Cardinal Francesco Marchetti Selvaggiani, 5 December 1944.

[18] Susan Zuccotti describes this event through the eyes of Father Benoît in her book Père Marie-Benoît and Jewish Rescue, p.196-198. With full access to the ACDF archive since early 2020, scholars can now better understand the context for Father Benoît’s 4 December 1944 letter – to whom he was writing, and why. Father von Welle relied heavily on Father Benoît’s text in his response to Cardinal Selvaggiani, dated the very next day.

[19] The Vulgate is a late-4th-century Latin translation of the Bible.

[20] Letter from Father Donatus von Welle to HE Cardinal Francesco Marchetti Selvaggiani, 5 December 1944.

[21] Indifferentism is the belief that no one religion is superior to another.

[22] According to the gospels of Luke (4:31–36) and Mark (1:21–28), Jesus of Nazareth taught in the synagogue in Capernaum and healed a man who was possessed by an unclean spirit.

[23] ACDF, Vatican City: 161 – 2 c. 206 227: Circa le conferenze del P. Benedetto, pp.223-228 and 65/1-65/6. On December 18, 1944, Dalpiaz rendered the decision of the judicial system of the Vatican City State seated in Piazza Santa Marta.

[24] Now called the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, this congregation of the Roman Curia is responsible for missionary work and related activities. See https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cevang/index.htm, accessed 3/30/2022.

[25] Ibid. N.125/28; 66/3 and p.233 in the file.

Review of Kevin Madigan, The Popes Against the Protestants: The Vatican and Evangelical Christianity in Fascist Italy

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 29, Number 1/2 (Summer 2023)

Review of Kevin Madigan, The Popes Against the Protestants: The Vatican and Evangelical Christianity in Fascist Italy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2021). 368 Pp. ISBN: 9780300215861.

By Rebecca Carter-Chand, US Holocaust Memorial Museum

Readers familiar with the historiography of the Vatican in the first half of the twentieth century may recognize the reference in Kevin Madigan’s newest title, The Popes Against the Protestants. Madigan intentionally echoes David Kertzer’s 2002 book, The Popes Against the Jews: The Vatican’s Role in the Rise of Modern Anti-Semitism, signaling the intensity with which the Vatican pursued a campaign to suppress Italian Protestantism in a sustained manner for decades. In fact, from the period of Italian unification in the second half of the nineteenth century until well beyond the fascist period, these anti-Protestant efforts consumed more of the Vatican’s attention than its battle against Italy’s Jews. But while the Church’s antisemitism is well known, it’s antipathy toward the so-called “Protestant danger” has been unexplored in English-language scholarship until now. Madigan explains the Vatican’s outsized response to Protestant activity, which, by any measure, remained miniscule, by showing that Protestants posed an existential threat to Catholic hegemony and the pope’s ambitions to establish a confessional state.

The main source material that Madigan draws upon comes from the pontificate of Pius XI (1922-1939), the records of which only became available in 2006. But the story begins in the Risorgimento in the mid-nineteenth century and the triumph of a new liberal order that brought religious tolerance in the form of openness to non-Catholic religious confessions. Into this environment emerged evangelical Protestant missionaries from England and America, many of whom were Italian immigrants who had converted to a form of Protestantism in their new country and later returned to Italy. Methodists, Baptists, Pentecostals, the Salvation Army, the YMCA, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Adventists brought with them an evangelical style of preaching that emphasized conversion and an array of educational, medical, and social programs that benefited the Italian lower classes and peasantry. The fact that this Protestant missionary activity mapped onto a global trend of Protestant expansion in this period was all the more concerning for the Vatican, especially after World War I and the growth of Anglo-American power.

The first significant Vatican official to spill much ink on the dangers of Protestantism was Pietro Tacchi Venturi, a Jesuit who served in an incredibly powerful position as intermediary between the pope and Mussolini. Venturi succeeded in portraying Protestants not only as heretics but also as enemies of the fascist state by linking Protestantism to a long list of political and social movements that the Church opposed. Despite sounding dissonant to a twenty-first century ear, Italian evangelicals in the 1920s were associated with socialism, Freemasonry, Judaism, and women’s rights. Madigan tells us that Pope Pius XI was gravely concerned about the reported growth of these Protestant groups but that Mussolini was less convinced that their tiny numbers would pose a threat to his power. In the 1920s, only 1 in 10,000 Italians were Protestant. Moreover, he was cognizant of international public opinion and did not want to unnecessarily antagonize the Anglo world. In this dynamic, as in so many other parts of this story, we see clear parallels between the treatment of religious minorities in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.

A major turning point came in 1929, when the Lateran Pacts recognized papal sovereignty over Vatican City and made Roman Catholicism the official religion of the state. Immediately following the Lateran Pacts, the government passed a law guaranteeing rights of free speech on religious matters to non-Catholic groups. With this law, Mussolini was showing the world that he was not bowing to Catholic aims to make Italy a confessional state. Protestants were initially encouraged by the new law, but it soon became clear that the Catholic hierarchy found plenty of room for interpretation about what the law covered.

The key figure in interpreting and enforcing the law in the 1930s was the papal nuncio to Italy, Francesco Borgongini-Duca. It was Borgongini who argued that proselytizing should not be considered protected speech. According to his logic, potentially any activity enacted by the Protestant groups could be considered to include proselytizing, even meetings held in private homes. Borgongini also clamped down on the sale or distribution of Bibles, when they were discovered to be Protestant Bibles. An interesting side note we learn from Madigan’s sources is that often ordinary Catholics were so poorly catechized that they could not distinguish a Protestant from a Catholic Bible or even know that different versions existed.

For all of these efforts, Tacchi Venturi, Borgongini, and Pius XI found only limited success in suppressing Protestant growth. Pentecostalism and the Jehovah’s Witnesses were criminalized in 1935, although local government authorities did not always enforce it. In the end, none of the evangelical groups were eliminated from Italian society but instead they proved resilient, if still small in number.

This book makes an important contribution to our understanding of the symbiotic yet competitive relationship between the Vatican and the Italian fascist state. The parallel narratives of Catholic persecution of Jews and Catholic suppression of Protestants shows not that they were equal in measure or in consequence, but that they both represented an outsider status that was not compatible with Catholic aims of religious purity or fascist aims of ethnic purity.

Review of Andrew Chandler, British Christians and the Third Reich: Church, State, and the Judgement of Nations

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 29, Number 1/2 (Summer 2023)

Review of Andrew Chandler, British Christians and the Third Reich: Church, State, and the Judgement of Nations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022). Pp. x + 422. ISBN: 9781107129047.

By Kyle Jantzen, Ambrose University

Andrew Chandler has written an engaging study of the substantial preoccupation and response of diverse British Christians to Nazism, the German “Church Struggle,” the persecution of the Jews, and the Second World War. Chandler has been immersed in this history for over 30 years, and the resulting depth of knowledge shines through in the thoroughness of his research and the perspicacity of his historical judgments.

At the outset, Chandler argues that British Christians and the Third Reich is an argument for the validity of a transnational approach to British history—one exploring not those networks rooted in the British Empire but rather those networks rooted in “that liberal moral consciousness which extended the boundaries of conventional politics in the age of mass democracy” (1). He aims to demonstrate “that the relationship between British Christianity and the Third Reich is indeed a solid subject and that it is one of significance” (2) to the ways we find patterns in and write about the past, and does so by means of a chronological study drawing on a rich array of sources, including correspondence, memoranda, published books, polemical pamphlets, British parliamentary debates, records of various church assemblies, and the vast output of both church and secular press.

As the study of British Christians rather than simply British churches, Chandler’s work explores the way Christians and Christian thinking about Nazi Germany was brought to bear in ecclesiastical, political, and cultural spheres. To that end, he begins with an overview of the way in which British Christianity (Anglican, Catholic, and Free Church) was engaged with both domestic and international political concerns, through a wide variety of institutions, conferences, and (especially) publishing endeavours. Doctrinal concerns, Chandler notes, did not generally stand in the way of interaction and cooperation among the many Christian leaders and intellectuals he analyzes. These include various Anglican prelates (Cosmo Lang, Herbert Hensley Henson, William Temple, Arthur Headlam, George Bell, Arthur Stuart Duncan-Jones) and lay leaders (James Parkes, Sir Wyndham Deedes), Catholic standouts (Cardinal Bourne, Arthur Hinsley, Christopher Dawson, Michael de la Bedoyere), and Free Church notables (Henry Carter, J.H. Rushbrooke, Alfred E. Garvie, Nathaniel Micklem, William Paton, J.H. Oldham, Dorothy (Jebb) Buxton, Bertha Bracey, Corder Catchpool) whom he describes in a series of helpful biographical sketches near the beginning of the book (33-50). These are among the primary figures in Chandler’s study, the ones whose words and deeds stand in for “British Christians” more generally. It could be argued, of course, that these men and women were hardly representative of British Christians as a whole, but as spokespersons for broad swathes of British Christianity, they represent at least the attitudes and ideas in play at the leadership level of the churches—ideas communicated through church hierarchies and denominational networks, as well as through a myriad of church publications.

Chandler frames his history in five eras: during 1933-1934, British Christians first encountered Nazi Germany, developed views about it, and explored potential responses; 1935-1937 was marked by debates about whether to accept or oppose Nazism, in which Christians tended to land on the critical side; 1938-1939 introduced urgent debates about “German expansion and western Appeasement,” new and more violent attacks against Jews in Germany, and the growing likelihood of war; from 1939-1943, Britain led the war effort for democracy and against Nazi-occupied Europe, and Christians grappled with the “themes of collaboration, complicity, and resistance;” and 1943-1949 revolved around conceptual debates about “justice and judgment” and real problems of Allied occupation and humanitarian crises (8-9).

In the first section, on the period of the Nazi seizure and consolidation of power, Chandler argues “it was not true” that international opinion was slow to note and criticize Hitler’s regime (51). Yet there were doubts about whether the Treaty of Versailles would bring a lasting peace and many political attacks against democracy. Within weeks of the Nazi seizure of power, British Christians understood that Nazism was a challenge to the international system, a danger to both its political opponents and German Jews, and a dictatorial threat to German churches. While those like the Quaker Corder Catchpool in Berlin and International Student Services official James Parkes in Geneva served as important sources of information, others like Archbishops Lang of Canterbury and Temple of York consulted with government representatives and British Jewish leaders and launched debates in the House of Lords. Laypeople like Quaker Bertha Bracey established organizations like the Germany Emergency Committee, while churchmen of all stripes wrote protests in the church press.

During the eruption of the German “Church Struggle,” British Christians learned much about the diverse positions of Christians in Germany towards the Nazi state. “What is at once striking,” Chandler notes, “is the strength of the British response to these affairs” (86). The Archbishop of Canterbury’s Council on Foreign Relations was the site of much of the early conversation about the German turmoil, with information supplied by ecumenical figures like Bishop Bell of Chichester. Indeed, Arthur Stuart Duncan-Jones, Dean of the Chichester Cathedral, travelled to Germany and met pro-Nazi “German Christians,” opponents who would eventually form the Confessing Church, and even (surprisingly) Hitler himself. The result was a nuanced view of the situation, but also one that urged caution with respect to intervening in German church affairs (90).

Chandler describes the growing conflict between Bishops Headlam of Gloucester and Bell—the former overly sympathetic to the Hitler regime and prone to antisemitic remarks and the latter (along with Archbishop Lang) increasingly critical of the Nazi regime and its allies in the German Christian Movement. Bell also became quite involved in the emerging Jewish refugee crisis, while Archbishop Temple attempted to intercede with Hitler himself—just one of many interventions by British Christians against the German government. Chandler explains that by the summer of 1934, the German Foreign Office was expressing concern over the effect of German church affairs on international opinion, and British protests against antisemitism were also growing prominent. International Christian gatherings like the 1934 Baptist World Congress and the Life and Work Conference in Fanø were also taken up with the German church situation.

In the section covering 1935-1937, Chandler argues that the growth of a movement favouring rapprochement with Germany should not lead us to undervalue the resistance that remained within liberal democratic society. “British Christians were often found to be an expressive element of this [resistance], and they played a prominent part in maintaining a critical consensus when it might easily have lost its force and subsided” (139). Germany was, after all, still a racial dictatorship. Jews were, afterall, still a persecuted minority there. Christians too were still harassed and persecuted. Concentration camps still threatened, and the refugee crisis continued to grow. Indeed, while the direct interventions of British Christians waned, having grown less successful with the increasing confidence of the National Socialist state, new humanitarian ventures became a means by which British Christians could respond to the crisis in the German church, state, and society.

For instance, Quaker Dorothy Buxton travelled to Germany and spoke out (somewhat controversially) against the concentration camps in which the Hitler regime incarcerated its political opponents. Bishop Bell was reluctant to follow her lead, especially with a new round of conflict in the German “Church Struggle.” Public speeches and letters of protest concerning the treatment of the German churches were offered up by a range of British Christians: former Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, Bell, Temple, Bishop Henson of Durham, Moderator of the Federal Council of Free Churches Sidney Berry, and others. All of these protests found their way to Berlin, and Bell also visited Germany, meeting with both political and ecclesiastical leaders. An important moment came in November 1935, when Bell introduced a motion expressing “sympathy ‘with the Jewish people and those of Jewish origin’ in Germany” in the Anglican Church Assembly. When opposition to the motion emerged, Bishop Henson gave an impromptu and explosive address denouncing Nazi Germany, carrying the day (157-159). At the same time, on the ground, Catchpool and other Quakers in Berlin were attempting to aid concentration camp prisoners and protect Jewish institutions under threat.

The year 1936 saw yet more British Christian criticism of Nazi Germany, with a sharpening focus on its pagan and totalitarian nature. Alongside these continuing protests, there were new examples of concrete action, such as the creation of the International Christian Committee for Refugees, chaired by Bell and supported by Lang in an effort to aid so-called non-Aryan Christians (not least, children) in need of new homes outside of Germany. But the reports of British Christians visiting Germany were mixed. A.J. Macdonald of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Council on Foreign Relations played down the situation, arguing that German pastors just wanted to get on with their work and that only those who opposed the state politically landed themselves in trouble. Bell found the situation much more serious, though his German church contacts were pessimistic about and even reticent of foreign intervention. And the Congregationalist Principal of Mansfield College (Oxford), Nathaniel Micklem, discovered an underground German church fearful of arrest by secret police. In 1937, attention shifted to Roman Catholic opposition to Nazism with the publication of Pope Pius XI’s Mit brennender Sorge (“With Burning Concern”) encyclical. British Catholics were well aware of how much relations between Germany and the Catholic Church had deteriorated. Meanwhile, Anglican and Quaker attempts to raise money for non-Aryan Christian refugees fared poorly and the ongoing argument between Bishops Headlam and Bell over the church’s stance towards Germany only muddied the waters. But the arrest and incarceration of Confessing Church leader Martin Niemöller sparked a new round of British Christian protests in late 1937 (195-195).

Concerning the build-up to the Second World War, Chandler asks how the morality of the appeasement policy and the presence of a significant pacifist minority coexisted with the ever-growing refugee crisis and the public scandal concerning Pastor Niemöller, “the most famous political prisoner in the world” (204). On the one hand, Chandler notes,

Appeasement sought to avoid another Great War and this resolve possessed the authority of a national consensus. In March 1938 the Church Times pronounced, ‘Is it not the law of God to try friendship and understanding?’ From the spring of 1938 the policy of the Chamberlain government found the winds of Christian opinion blowing supportively in its sails. (208)

On the other hand, criticisms such as Duncan-Jones’ The Struggle for Religious Freedom in Germany described the religious mysticism of Nazi Germany as “fundamentally irreconcilable” with Christianity and lambasted the oppression and “cruelty of Moloch” (205-206). Buxton, Bell, Lang, Micklem, and others continued to protest Niemöller’s incarceration, while the refugee crisis grew ever worse with the annexation of Austria. Bell, in particular, understood that political events were overshadowing the “Church Struggle” and that British Christian intervention no longer had any effect whatsoever in Germany (218-219).

But if the Munich Agreement had been greeted with calls for a national day of thanksgiving (Lang) and if Te Deums rang out in Catholic churches, the Kristallnacht Pogrom of November 1938 brought all that to a halt, shocking British Christians and shattering hopes for peace. Archbishop Lang published an indignant letter (“A Black Day for Germany”) which was later affirmed by the Church Assembly. The Catholic Herald described Nazi “sub-human behaviour” while the Baptist Times argued, “The time for silence is past.” As the Munich consensus disintegrated, British Christians invested new energy into refugee work, which was boosted by the government decision to allow child refugees to enter Britain. Sponsorships abounded. Church statements grew firmer, too. In a March 1939 House of Lords speech, Lang urged “the massing of might on the side of right,” and when Hitler launched the war in September, he announced in the same chamber that, “I shrink indeed from linking our broken lights and our fallible purposes with the Holy Name of God, yet I honestly believe that in this struggle, if it is forced upon us, we may humbly and trustfully commend our cause to God” (260, 269).

Chandler devotes no less than 100 pages to the period of the Second World War. In the main, he notes how, with London as the international capital of a war-torn continent, British Christians engaged in new patterns of association and collaboration, not least between Protestants and Catholics and between Christians and Jews. Through these, Christians responded to the moral challenge of National Socialist ideology and politics. In the main, the European conflict was justified by Christian leaders of all kinds as a “righteous war” (273). Hitler and Nazism were condemned as evil, even as church leaders expressed sympathy for the German people, whom they regarded as deceived and led astray. Many German exiles came to London, where they collaborated with German and British Christians on publications and radio broadcasts. Though relations with the German churches were effectively severed by the war, fragments of news painted a bleak picture. The moral stance of most leading British Christians discouraged the idea of a negotiated peace, though the Vatican was working diplomatic channels intensely and ecumenical representatives in Geneva kept their hopes alive.

Among Catholics, Cardinal Hinsley, Archbishop of Westminster, rose to prominence as a supporter of the war. At a 1940 National Day of Prayer Mass broadcast by the BBC, he declared, “Can any Christian now hear with indifference that clarion call to defend the right; to protect the souls of millions of our brethren cruelly assailed and oppressed?” The war, he continued, was a “just crusade for the deliverance from evil which rests its strength on force alone” (287). Similar rhetoric abounded across the Christian spectrum, as the war gave rise to a vast literature on politics, religion, and morality, including Bell’s Christianity and World Order, published by Penguin (296). And debates broke out, like the one between those who regarded Germans as possessing an essentially Nazi national character and thus collectively guilty, such as senior British diplomat Sir Robert Vansittart, and those who believed there were good Germans who could be cultivated and supported in the fight against Hitler, like Bell.

New relationships—particularly among laypeople—brought Protestants and Catholics closer together in a common cause, captured in historian Christopher Dawson’s call for “‘a return to Christian unity’ in the name of civilisation” (301). Similarly, the Council of Christians and Jews was established in 1942 “to co-operate in the struggle against religious and racial persecution” (310). When the British government was slow to distinguish the mass murder of Jews as a special crime in the fall of 1942, Archbishop Temple and Viscount Cecil (Free Churches) led a protest at Royal Albert Hall. That December, the Council of Christians and Jews took up a paper entitled, “Discussion of Present Extermination Policy of Nazi Government in Respect of European Jewry” (322). Various condemnatory statements were publicized by Christian leaders, but as they learned ever more about the annihilation of the Jews over the course of 1943, Temple and others expressed concern that the government’s response was far too timid. Repeated attempts to influence official policy were largely fruitless (343-349).

As the war progressed and Allied victory could be imagined, British Christians raised questions about the morality of war, the nature of a just peace, and the Christian principals that might inform a new postwar order. A Peace Aims group, spearheaded by the Presbyterian William Paton, worked to outline the Christian moral basis for peace and the political reconstruction of Europe. Striking the balance between justice and vengeance proved to be a key challenge. Any hopes that Christian leaders might shape the international settlement of the conflict were dashed by mid-1944. Much to their chagrin, retribution had emerged as the British aim with respect to Germany, and the fire-bombing of German cities illustrated the extent to which “total war” had taken hold (355-361).

After the defeat of Germany, even as the International Military Tribunal prepared to try representative German war criminals, British Christians like Bishop Bell and Wesleyan Methodist Henry Carter began the task of organizing humanitarian relief. A “Save Europe Now” campaign was launched. A new organization, Christian Reconstruction in Europe, was formed and was soon folded into the British Council of Churches as the Department of Interchurch Aid and Refugee Service. Additionally, Carter chaired the new World Council of Churches’ Ecumenical Refugee Commission. Meanwhile, Bishop Bell and Methodist Gordon Rupp met with other ecumenical representatives of the World Council of Churches in the Process of Formation in Stuttgart in October 1945, making contact with the emergence Evangelical Church in Germany. It was here that Martin Niemöller and Otto Dibelius drafted the famous Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt. Despite its shortcomings, it opened the door for the German churches to re-enter the ecumenical realm. As for the Nuremberg Trials, Chandler details the controversial opposition of Bishop Bell, who sought to limit the extent of this judicial process (379-387).

A short “Endings and Legacies” chapter offers brief summaries of the postwar careers of some of the main characters in Chandler’s study, many of whom he regards—probably rightly—as underappreciated. In an interesting discussion of the place of German theology in postwar Britain, Chandler explains the rise of Christian writing about the German “Church Struggle,” German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and the biographies of Confessing Church leaders. He also explains the rise of new points of contact between the Christian denominations and also between Christians and Jews. Finally, he demonstrates how leading British scholars of the history and theology of the German churches under Nazism had personal links to important British Christians of that era.

In sum, Andrew Chandler’s British Christians and the Third Reich: Church, State, and the Judgement of Nations is a thoroughly researched and fascinating exploration of the moral and political engagement of leading Anglican, Catholic, and Free Church figures in Nazism, the German “Church Struggle,” the persecution of the Jews, and the Second World War. It is rich with detail from primary sources, which nicely communicates both the spirit and depth of British Christian engagement in the moral questions of the era. In true transnational historical form, it enhances our understanding of both British and German church politics during the Nazi era, along with the surprising extent to which communications flowed between the two sets of political and ecclesiastical elites.

Review of Hans-Otto Mühleisen and Dominik Burkard, Erzbischof Conrad Groeber reloaded: Warum es sich lohnt, genauer hinzusehen

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 29, Number 1/2 (Summer 2023)

Review of Hans-Otto Mühleisen and Dominik Burkard, Erzbischof Conrad Gröber reloaded: Warum es sich lohnt, genauer hinzusehen (Lindenberg: Kunstverlag Josef Fink, 2020). ISBN 978-3-95976-305-9.

By Martin Menke, Rivier University

In this volume, two historians, one emeritus at Augsburg and the other still active at Würzburg, seek to restore scholarly credibility to the politicized debate about the role Archbishop Conrad Gröber played during the years of the National Socialist regime. Ordained to the episcopate as Bishop of Meißen in 1931, he served as Archbishop of Freiburg from 1932 until he died in 1948. Mühleisen and Burkard argue, each in a separate essay, that the politics of memory and history demands that historians undertake particularly accurate scholarly research and analysis. In the historiography of the Christian churches in the twentieth century, that constitutes a grave problem, as one can see from the Concordat debate of the 1950’s onward. Today, most historians have moved beyond defensive or accusatory positions. The history of the churches, like all history, is too complex to permit generalized conclusions.

In 2015, a movement arose to repeal Gröber’s honorary town citizenship based on impressions contemporaries had of his speeches and his supposed support for the National Socialist regime, especially in 1933-34. In response, Mühleisen offers a differentiated analysis of Gröber and avoids definite judgment where ambiguity remains. Mühleisen also avoids moral judgment, which he argues is not the purpose of this historical study. He questions whether or not one can weigh moral accomplishments against moral failings to arrive at a “bottom line” judgment. In a fairly balanced account, Mühleisen discusses several lapses in judgment by Gröber, such as his decision to join the SS “booster club.” Also, Mühleisen notes that Gröber’s early public support for the regime confused the laity. While incomprehensible today, some have described membership in this organization as a protection racket. Similarly, in the first months of the new regime, Gröber emphasized his willingness to work with the new government authorities. Possible evidence for this is the Gestapo’s fear of Gröber’s fundamental opposition to the regime.

Mühleisen suggests that Gröber walked a fine line of superficial support for the regime, necessary to continue his defense of Catholic teaching, the Church, and Catholics in his archdiocese—one should remember that all-too-open opposition against the regime led to the exile of Joannes Baptista Sproll, Bishop of Rottenburg-Stuttgart. For the war years, Mühleisen shows that Gröber’s homilies and speeches often appeared to focus on matters internal to the Church but that implicitly, they contained ambiguities and meaning that suggested complying with Gröber’s interpretation of Catholic teaching would lead if not to resistance, then at least to a more critical view of the regime. In authoritarian regimes, reading between the lines of public pronouncements by individuals not affiliated with the regime became a cultivated skill.

Mühleisen emphasizes Gröber’s unrelenting insistence on Catholic moral teaching and on protecting the rights of the laity to worship and especially of the clergy to fulfill their sacerdotal duties. Mühleisen goes so far as to claim that Gröber’s constant public insistence on the rights of the Church and the faithful constitutes a form of resistance, which might not apply in the regime’s early years, but became increasingly accurate as repression worsened.

An essential element of Muhleisen’s discussion relates to a homily Gröber preached in the fall of 1942. He employed vicious antisemitic tropes, such as the Jewish striving for world domination. Mühleisen does not attempt to excuse these lapses. He does, however, note that at the same time he was making such comments, he was providing Gertrud Luckner, charged with helping non-Aryan Christians and all those persecuted, with funds to bring to persecuted communities. Mühleisen does not explain these contradictions, primarily because Gröber’s true intentions are undocumented. Mühleisen is sympathetic to Gröber but refuses to absolve him from mistakes in his relationship with the regime.

In the second essay, Dominik Burkard responds to claims by Wolfgang Proske, doctorally qualified history teacher and publisher of Täter, Helfer, Trittbrettfahrer, a series of studies on those actively involved or enabling the National Socialist regime in southern Germany. Proske considered Gröber “an unambiguous aide to the regime and tarnished by National Socialism.” Rather than undermine Proske’s arguments directly, Burkard undertakes a scholarly analysis of Proske’s sources, in particular records of the French authorities, housed in the Archives de l’occupation franҫaise en Allemagne et en Autriche. These contain a dossier on Gröber, which is unsurprising given his position in the French zone. In the dossier, Burkard found several character appraisals of Gröber and thirty-pages of documentation of sexual liaisons in which the archbishop supposedly engaged. Proske believed these documents were collected by the Gestapo Karlsruhe, from where they ended up in French hands. Burkard, however, convincingly argues otherwise.

Given some of the details in the document, Burkard dates the documents’ creation to the fall of 1947, while a French translation, whose text does not precisely mirror the German text, was produced in 1949. Burkard believes these documents were created in response to the publication of a volume of Gröber’s wartime homilies and pastoral messages, which the author considered propaganda by the archbishop. The documents’ author described Gröber as a careerist, opportunist, power-hungry, non-religious, and superficial. There is a kernel of truth in these claims. Gröber’s career involved little parish work. He spent twelve years as rector of the minor seminary in Konstanz, from where he moved to diocesan administration. He was authoritarian. Given his willingness to test the limits of public criticism of the regime, however, his faith must have had some deep roots. In a well-differentiated study, Burkard discusses Gröber’s critics within the Church, particularly Vicar General Josef Sester and inactive priest Heinrich Mohr who supported National Socialism. Sester, before he died in 1938, had filed charges of sexual impropriety against Gröber, which the Holy See rejected. Mohr and his sister, Teresa Mohr, waged a decade-long campaign against Gröber in which they accused the archbishop of moral failings and close collaboration with the regime. After discussing several other possible authors of the documents against Gröber, Burkard convincingly points to a preponderance of evidence against Teresa Mohr, whom contemporaries described as unhinged in her hatred of Gröber.

Burkard notes, without irony, that today’s critics of Gröber, like Proske, rely on documents in part created by supporters of National Socialism to make their case. Not quite as convincingly, perhaps because he does not expand on the role of the Mohr siblings in the education politics of postwar Baden, Burkard argues that they opposed Gröber’s support for the Christian Democratic Union and interconfessional public schools. They demanded his support for the resurrected Center Party and the denominationally segregated public schools that had existed before 1933. Gröber also argues that the theologian Paul Jungblut, another priest critical of Gröber, revised the original text written by Teresa Mohr. He revised the text after Gröber’s death with the hope that none of Gröber’s confidants would succeed him as archbishop.

Mühleisen and Burkard, while sympathetic to Gröber, do not offer hagiography, nor do they engage in polemics against Proske and others. Instead, they go where the evidence leads them and subject their findings to rigorous scholarly inquiry. Concerning Gröber’s actions and intentions, there can be no clear conclusion, although the preponderance of the evidence leans toward characterizing him as a critic of National Socialism. Concerning the state of public discussion and scholarly work on the churches during the Nazi era, this work stands as a model of dispassionate research.

Review of Josef Meyer zu Schlochten and Johannes W. Vutz, eds., Lorenz Jaeger: Ein Erzbischof in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 29, Number 1/2 (Summer 2023)

Review of Josef Meyer zu Schlochten and Johannes W. Vutz, eds., Lorenz Jaeger: Ein Erzbischof in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus (Münster: Aschendorff, 2020). ISBN 978-3-402-24674-0.

By Martin Menke, Rivier University

By necessity, prominent figures in the first three decades of the Federal Republic’s existence had experienced the Third Reich as young or middle-aged adults. Many of those in responsible roles during the Third Reich hid or minimized their involvement with the regime. Beginning with the revelations concerning Heinrich Globke, close aid to Chancellor Adenauer, the pasts of prominent figures came to light. Often, those responsible for such disclosures aimed to embarrass and damage the reputation of those concerned. A particular target for some were the leaders of the Christian churches in Germany, most of whose careers had begun long before 1945. Among historians, revelations of past mistakes and crimes have evolved from sensational efforts to discredit certain figures to reviewing individual biographies as part of Germany’s broader coming to terms with its past, its Vergangenheitsbewältigung. Most recently, perhaps with the benefit of distance, more methodologically sound, less agenda-driven scholarship is occurring. In this historiographical evolution, the history of the churches during the Third Reich occurred early. Unlike most attacks on leading political and cultural figures, the attacks on the Churches were often aimed at the institutions themselves. Recent scholarship on Catholic resisters, on Catholics who became National Socialists, and on members of the German hierarchy (Berning, Jaeger, Frings, Gröber, and Bertram, for example) reveals that this trend to broader history-writing is complicated by the different biographies of the historical subjects.

In the volume under review, the contributions of different generations of historians reflect this evolution. The subject is Cardinal Lorenz Jaeger, Archbishop of Paderborn, 1941-1973. Before becoming archbishop, Jaeger had served as a regular army officer in World War One, then entered the seminary. He served as Dortmund’s youth pastor and teacher during the inter-war period. Upon the outbreak of World War II, Jaeger immediately volunteered as a military chaplain. Both in his capacity as a teacher and as a military chaplain, he had to pass background checks by Nazi authorities. Various contributors, however, note that, during Jaeger’s episcopal ordination process, the regime’s security authorities reported fundamental misgivings about his appointment. As early as 1935, authorities noted his rejection of Alfred Rosenberg’s Mythos des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts. The Sicherheitsdienst [SD] and regional NSDAP offices considered him a threat to the regime. At the ministerial level, both sides tried to de-escalate conflicts in the broader context of the regime’s relations with the Catholic Church, especially in episcopal ordinations. So the Reich Minister of Church Affairs, Hans Kerrl, approved Jaeger’s ordination as Archbishop of Paderborn.

Historians disagree on Jaeger’s affinity for the Nazi regime before his ordination. Some take his service in World War One, his conservative nationalism, his anti-Bolshevism, and his immediate volunteering as a military chaplain as proof of his affinity to the regime. In the volume, several contributors convincingly prove that Jaeger was a nationalist and a conservative who promoted patriotism, opposed the Treaty of Versailles, and believed in the divinely ordained authority of the state. Those same contributors show, however, that Jaeger’s conservatism was akin to that of the resistance leaders against Hitler, such as Stauffenberg and Goerdeler. They also point to Jaeger’s insistence on the primary importance of faith and obedience to God among Catholic youth. Jaeger was a convinced Catholic and a proud German. Some contributors argue that one needs to understand the sensibilities of the times rather than judge Jaeger with presentist attitudes. These contributors argue that contemporary historians lack an awareness of how the times limited a priest or bishop’s freedom of action during the Nazi era. Others pointed out that Jaeger, like many bishops, adopted the idiom of the Third Reich without intending to convey the same racist message as the regime did. While Jaeger visited Israel and Jordan in 1964, there is no evidence of any statements by Jaeger concerning antisemitism and the Shoah. In the volume, the question of Jaeger’s own view of Jews and of the regime’s persecution largely goes unmentioned. This raises the question of whether there is no evidence to be found or if seemed irrelevant or, worse, unpalatable to the authors and editors?

The volume’s purpose and genesis pose questions of scholarly independence. Overall, the volume primarily consists of contributions defending Jaeger by pointing out his disagreements with the regime, his insistence on the Church’s role in forming young minds, and his ministrations to his archdiocesan flock despite all harassment and persecution by the regime. Given the volume’s creation circumstances, one would have hoped for additional critical voices. The book is the result of research commissioned by the archbishop of Paderborn in 2015, designed to respond to a civic petition to revoke Jaeger’s honorary citizenship in the city. The archbishop commissioned the Theologische Fakultät Paderborn, not the city’s university or the Katholische Hochschule Nordrhein-Westphalen at Paderborn.

Given that the Archdiocese sponsors the Theologische Fakultät, more independent voices would have been welcome. Nonetheless, several authors in the study note mistakes, poorly chosen language, ambiguous statements, and more to question the narrative of a staunchly anti-National Socialist bishop. In the discussions of Jaeger’s postwar tenure, the contributors are more willing to admit his shortcomings and blind spots. For example, Jaeger found it extremely difficult to contend with the radical changes in Germany, North-Rhine-Westphalia, and within the Church in the sixties and early seventies. Demands for greater lay participation, especially in denominational public schools, and for greater moral freedom in sexual morality challenged Jaeger, contributing to his resignation in 1973.

Jaeger’s most vigorous opponent was Rudolf Augstein, publisher of the influential post-war periodical Der Spiegel. In 1965, the journal launched a full-fledged attack on Jaeger. Der Spiegel claimed that, as a military chaplain and archbishop who “got along” with the Nazi regime, Jaeger had forfeited the moral legitimacy of his office. Der Spiegel based its criticism on Guenter Lewy’s The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany, which was published in German in 1965. Lewy’s work included several erroneous interpretations of his sources, including one about a sermon by Jaeger. Der Spiegel made this false interpretation the basis of an article seeking to undermine Jaeger. Jaeger’s attorneys achieved a clarification by Der Spiegel and changes to Lewy’s manuscript by the German publisher. In the 1973 elections, Augstein again published critiques of Jaeger’s past during the Third Reich. However, the publisher received support neither from the left-wing political parties nor from any other news media.

Several contributors argue that the criticism of Jaeger’s position in the sixties and early seventies colored historians’ analysis of his actions during the Nazi period. On the other hand, other historians, foremost Joachim Kuropka, refuse to acknowledge any mistakes or missteps on Jaeger’s part during the Nazi period or later. Kuropka, in particular, succeeds in undermining the arguments of Jaeger’s most ardent critics, Wolfgang Stüken und Peter Bürger, by dissecting their analysis of the archival evidence. Unfortunately, Kuropka undermines the effectiveness of his fight with unnecessary polemics against Jaeger’s critics. Fortunately, the volume’s final essay by Dietmar Klemke offers scholars an honest analysis of Jaeger’s achievements. Klemke points out both moments in which Jaeger resolutely contradicted the Nazi regime and those in which Jaeger fell short of the expectations one might have of a Catholic bishop. Klemke argues that Jaeger should have known that opposition to bolshevism does not necessitate the support of the Nazi regime. Ultimately, Klemke argues that Jaeger belongs in a gray zone of individuals whose actions and attitudes during the National Socialist period are ambiguous.

This description seems an accurate assessment of clergy from Pius XII to many a parish priest and lay Catholic. There are those, such as the “brown priests” whom Kevin Spicer has identified, or Alfred Delp, who resisted the Nazi regime while insisting on Germany’s profound cultural mission. Catholic individuals like Jaeger, Delp, Galen, and many others find approval for their criticism of and sacrifice against the Nazi regime while beholden to patriotic, nationalist, and religious values that make them seem less than heroic in our age.

While the purpose of this volume was to intervene in the Paderborn city council’s decision on whether or not to repeal Jaeger’s honorary town citizenship, the emphasis on Jaeger’s early encouragement of ecumenicism and his role in including an opening to ecumenicism in the decisions of Vatican II, discussed in the essays by Detlef Grothmann and Dina von Fassen, and by Klemke, bears further research. Similarly, Grothmann and von Fassen noted that Jaeger’s activities concerning the diocesan territories in the Soviet zone of occupation bear further investigation.

Review of Tilman Tarach, Teuflische Allmacht. Über die verleugneten christlichen Wurzeln des modernen Antisemitismus und Antizionismus

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 29, Number 1/2 (Summer 2023)

Review of Tilman Tarach, Teuflische Allmacht. Über die verleugneten christlichen Wurzeln des modernen Antisemitismus und Antizionismus (Freiburg–Berlin: Edition Telok 2022). 224 pages. ISBN 9783981348644.

By Dirk Schuster, University for Continuing Education Krems / University of Vienna

Christian anti-Judaism – a term that still causes extreme controversy today. To put it simply, this is intended to draw a distinction from modern racial anti-Semitism and reduce Christian anti-Semitism to theological arguments alone. The reviewer has had problems with such a distinction from the very beginning, since it suggests that there is a good (Christian) and a bad (racial) hatred of Jews. Tilman Tarach uses this topic and presents a book that convincingly explains that such a distinction is no more than a relief strategy for a Christian socialized society (134). The central thesis is that the most important arguments of modern antisemitism are based on Christian antisemitism (10).

First, Tarach uses National Socialist propaganda for his analysis and demonstrates that many Nazi stereotypes came directly from the Christian context: the Jews as children of the devil, the betrayal by Judas Iscariot, etc. In the middle of the twentieth century, those images were well known by Christian people. The murder of Jesus of Nazareth remains the central element of Christian anti-Semitism up to modern anti-Semitism and forms the background of all persecutions of the Jews. Even today, in parts of Eastern Europe, the Jew is symbolically burned at Easter because he murdered Christ. We fully agree with the author’s statement that the New Testament already spread the first anti-Semitic conspiracy theory: the Jew as murderer of God (48). The desire for the annihilation of all Jews, which was already virulent before National Socialism, is based precisely on this motive: a danger emanates from the Jews. That is why the extermination of the Jews is also seen as self-defense. At this point, the author could, or even should, have referred to the minutes of the Wannsee Conference to support his arguments. In it, the motivation for the extermination of the Jews in Europe by the National Socialists as an act of self-defense is particularly clearly expressed.

The additional references, such as in Chapter 8, are particularly interesting. Tarach compares the classic anti-Semitic accusation of poisoning by the Jews, such as poisoning of wells, etc., with the arguments of modern vaccine refusers and conspiracy theorists, who argue using those same anti-Semitic narratives.

The main part of the book is made up of the sections from Chapter 9 onwards. Here Tarach clearly and comprehensibly points out, partly with recourse to existing research literature, that so-called racial anti-Semitism was invented by the churches. As early as the sixteenth century, the Jesuit order had introduced a kind of “Aryan proof” that was even stricter in its interpretation than the Nuremberg racial laws of the National Socialists. It was not until 1946 that the Jesuit order removed this section from its constitution. The same can be found in Spain since the fifteenth century. Here, like in modern anti-Semitism, blood was of crucial importance: This means that converts and their descendants were still regarded as “Jewish” since those persons would carry Jewish blood. In some Spanish areas, converts still had to wear the so-called Jew’s hat because of their “Jewish blood”. As the author rightly points out, this alone shows that a distinction between Christian anti-Judaism and modern racial anti-Semitism is untenable, because the reference to biological characteristics has long been part of Christian anti-Semitism. Conversely, it should be noted that so-called modern racial anti-Semitism is based solely on the religion factor. The Nuremberg Race Laws defined Jews and “half-Jews” solely based on a person’s religious background or the religion of his ancestors. And the anti-Semitic laws from Spain in the early modern period, introduced by the church, served as a model for the law in the Third Reich.

In chapter 12, Tarach describes very impressively how the nature of Christian anti-Semitism developed and how those narratives are still present today: The Jew rejects Christ, which is why he becomes a threat to Christian identity. The refusal of Jews to convert to Christianity has thus increased hatred of Jews over the centuries. Jews are thus understood as bearers of individuality because they do not want to belong to the Christian community, which automatically makes them a danger of wanting to destroy the Christian community and identity. The image of the destruction of German identity by the Jews can be found again in the nineteenth century in the völkisch movement. The argument remained the same and was adapted to the realities of modernity. In addition, deeply rooted stereotypes that people have been presented by the church for centuries could be served.

The last chapters go into specialized topics such as Israel and Islamic anti-Semitism. Here too the author explains that the arguments behind the various stereotypes always come from the Christian context.

The overall verdict on Tarach’s book can only be: Anyone who deals with the subject of anti-Semitism or church history should read this book.

Article Note: Harry Legg, “Non-Jewish ‘Full Jews’: The Everyday Life of a Forgotten Group Within Nazi Germany”

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 29, Number 1/2 (Summer 2023)

Article Note: Harry Legg, “Non-Jewish ‘Full Jews’: The Everyday Life of a Forgotten Group Within Nazi Germany,” Journal of Holocaust Research 36 no. 4 (2022): 299-326.

By Kyle Jantzen, Ambrose University

In this article, Harry Legg, a PhD student at the University of Edinburgh, analyzes the everyday lives of “non-Jewish ‘Full Jews’”—Germans who did not identify religiously or culturally as Jews but who were categorized as “Full Racial Jews” according to the 1935 Nuremberg Laws. Focusing on a case study of the Eisig family, he argues that the experience of persecution of these “Jews” (he places the term in quotation marks to emphasize that it was the Nazis who identified them as Jews, and not they themselves) was fundamentally different than the experience of persecution among German Jews (quotation marks absent) who did identify religiously and/or culturally as Jews.

Legg begins by noting that these important distinctions and the dramatically different lived experiences behind them are generally ignored in the secondary literature about Jewish persecution in Nazi Germany (300-308). While German Jews suffering persecution turned more and more inward towards their own religious and cultural community for support and sustenance, the same was not true for the “Jews” who had assimilated into Christian and/or secular German life and who had no Jewish community to turn to once the Nazi regime began to marginalize and then persecute them.

The author notes that the concepts of wealth and status are particularly useful in assessing the lived experiences of these “Jews”—those racially identified as Jews who were non-Jewish in other respects. Simply put, in many cases, entrepreneurial wealth and respect within the wider community replaced support from Jewish communities to which they did not belong, and allowed non-Jewish “Jews” to obtain temporary relief from Nazi persecution. “Though these factors could not halt the progressive slide of ‘full Jews’ toward expulsion from Germany, they could soften the daily experience of this relentless march. They could also vitally alter the form that this expulsion would ultimately take.” (310)

The bulk of the article revolves around Ludwig and Amalie Eisig, who formally withdrew from their Göppingen Jewish community soon after their wedding, who baptized their children as Protestants, and who thoroughly embraced both German nationalism and Christianity. Their experiences, and those of their children (son Konrad suffered greatly from educational persecution), bear out the two key aspects of Legg’s argument: that the Eisigs’ wealth and social standing in the wider (non-Jewish) community slowed and softened the process by which they suffered social isolation and persecution in their southwest German corner of Nazi Germany (from which they eventually emigrated, thanks in large part to their wealth); and that, on the other hand, having little to no connection to Jews who belonged to the Jewish religious and cultural community in their town, they were more socially isolated in the times and places in which that protection was useless and all who were identified as racial Jews suffered at the hand of the Hitler regime.

In sum, this article adds important nuances to our understanding of diverse Jewish experiences in Nazi Germany, reminding us that Nazi racial categories often had little at all to do with the lived experiences of Germans of Jewish descent—not least for those assimilated into Christian communities.

Of special interest to historians studying the Jewish refugee crisis of the 1930s and attempts to support “non-Aryan Christians” in their efforts to immigrate to Britain, the United States, and other (primarily Western) countries, Legg devotes an appendix to the question, “Who were the so-called Nichtglaubensjuden?” As he argues, “Despite the fact that ‘Jewishness’ at the time was not just a religious identity, but also a secular one, there are multiple reasons to suggest that a sizeable proportion of the 19,716 Nichtglaubensjuden (non-believing Jews) listed in the 1939 census also did not self-identify as secular Jews. We can also safely conclude that the majority had not recently resigned from the Jewish community.” (323)

Conference Report: Otto Dibelius. New Research on a Protestant Figure of the Century

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 29, Number 1/2 (Summer 2023)

Conference Report: Otto Dibelius. New Research on a Protestant Figure of the Century

By Michael Heymel, Independent Scholar and Central Archives of the Protestant Church in Hessen and Nassau (retired)

From October 5-7, 2022, an international conference devoted to new research on the German Protestant leader Otto Dibelius took place in Marburg. It was organized by LUKAS BORMANN (Philipps University of Marburg) and MANFRED GAILUS (TU Berlin). Sixteen scholars of Protestant theology, history, culture, and religion presented papers on Otto Dibelius (1880-1967), contributing to a new perspective on this outstanding personality of German Protestantism, more than 30 years after the publication of the first and so far only biography.

The conference program, which was divided into seven thematic blocks, began with an overview of the scholarship on Dibelius. MARTIN STUPPERICH (Hannover), whose father Robert Stupperich wrote a Dibelius biography, spoke as a personal witness. In 1967, his father was commissioned by a group around Kurt Scharf to write a biography in which he tried to capture the merits of the honoured teacher. This the publisher rejected, and so Martin then took on the difficult task of revising the first version together with his father. By his account, he and his wife, the historian AMREI STUPPERICH, wrote a significant part of the text. The emphasis was now on Dibelius’ main theme, namely the new independence of the church after 1919, insisting also to include the persecution of the Jews, since the accusation of antisemitism had been neglected by Robert Stupperich. Even in 1989, per Martin, when the biography was published, Dibelius was not perceived as an antisemite.

The next two lectures were devoted to the mentalities of the Imperial era. ALBRECHT BEUTEL (Münster) traced Dibelius’ career up to the First World War and described him as an ambitious church reformer who based his parish program on that of Emil Sulze. Appealing to a popular preaching style while organizing the complexity of his parish, he adopted ideas not only from Calvin but also from the Church of Scotland and its small congregations, which he knew from a study visit. His aim was to encourage active participation in the parish community. Dibelius saw himself as a modern Lutheran and kept his distance from Pietism. For him, the epitome of Germanness was Preussentum (Prussianism, like Bismarck and Queen Luise) was the epitome of Germanness. He interpreted the outbreak of war in 1914 as a “revelation from God”. During the Imperial period, Dibelius showed no signs of antisemitism.

WOLF-FRIEDRICH SCHÄUFELE (Marburg) went into more detail about Dibelius’ work in the First World War and came to the conclusion that although his war sermons had expressed pastoral concerns, they were strongly influenced by nationalistic phraseology and were far removed from reality. As head pastor in Lauenburg, Dibelius looked after soldiers in 1914, and a year later organized patriotic rallies in Berlin-Heilsbronnen. His ideal was the Christian state, whose morality was to be guaranteed by the church and Christianity. He considered it vital for the Wilhelmine Empire to exist as a world power. Dibelius believed in a Christian-German mission, interpreting the Great War as a just and holy war in which God was at work as Lord of History. It seemed hardly conceivable to him that God could work in such a way that would break the political power of Germans. In 1918, Dibelius joined the German National People’s Party (DNVP). At war’s end, he promoted the stab-in-the-back legend and denounced the Versailles Treaty as a satanic construct.

In the next thematic section, which revolved around the church as guardian after 1919, BENEDIKT BRUNNER (Mainz) examined the public and journalistic activities of Dibelius during the Weimar Republic in an online presentation. Dibelius stood for the national church [Volkskirche] for more than fifty years. In 1919, he saw the time had come for a free, powerful people’s church [Volkskirche]. He was the most highly informed man in the Prussian Church, publishing in seven journals by 1933. He also campaigned for religious education in state schools and called on people to rally around the Protestant church to resist de-Christianization. In 1925, Dibelius became General Superintendent of the Kurmark, at the top of the Prussian Church. In a widely publicized debate with Karl Barth, he defended the empirical church as one that bears responsibility for the people, while Barth criticized Dibelius’ triumphalist language and attitude.

TODD H. WEIR (Groningen), whose lecture was co-written and translated into German by MAURICE BACKSCHAT (Münster), examined Dibelius’ work in the Apologetische Centrale founded in Berlin-Spandau in 1921, which grappled with secularism and the ‘godless’ movement and advanced a ‘Christian world view’. Karl Barth found the language of the apologists dangerous. Dibelius considered Barth a dogmatist who was disconnected from the reality of the world and who could barely see the mission of the church. After 1945, Dibelius continued his apologetics into the Cold War. He understood the people’s church [Volkskirche] as the antithesis to secular culture and the institution which could confront secularism. In nationalism he saw positive religious energy, even as he himself participated on the apologetic front against Nazism and the German Christians (DC). By 1933, he found it increasingly difficult to distinguish himself from the right-wing fringe in his apologetics.

The fourth thematic section, which dealt with Dibelius in public debate, was opened by LUKAS BORMANN (Marburg), who gave a lecture on Dibelius’ most influential publication, the book Das Jahrhundert der Kirche [The Century of the Church] (1926), which went through six editions. It was written for an educated middle-class readership. According to Dibelius’ argument, the Lutheran Reformation purged the church. In contrast, he saw a global wave of the church and developed a Protestant cultural program that used ethnic (völkisch) and nationalist terminology. By demons he meant freethinkers, Jews, and Catholics. While sects and free churches focused on specific groups, the Protestant church encompassed the whole people. Dibelius later distanced himself from his view that the Protestant church could live with any state system. More recent research (e.g. Wolfgang Huber, Hartmut Fritz, and Benedikt Brunner) judges his program critically. It didn’t reach the general public. Instead of understanding the church as a polyseme, he polarized it and got caught between the fronts of a many-sided Protestantism.

In his online lecture, BRANDON BLOCH (Wisconsin) focused on the West German reception of Dibelius’ writing Obrigkeit [Authority] (1959). As bishop and Council Chair in the Protestant Church in Germany [EKD], situated between the divided German states, Dibelius represented a traditionally anti-communist position, while the [Confessing Church] Councils of Brethren in the EKD pleaded for a new role for the church. In 1958, East German bishops declared their loyalty to East Germany. In this context, Dibelius wanted to say something about the nature of state authority in the modern age. The term “government” (Romans 13) no longer seemed to him to be a correct translation for this. His authority document unleashed a debate in which conservative Lutherans saw an analogy between the GDR and the Third Reich, while the circle around Karl Barth and the Councils of Brethren rejected the document. Through his reactionary conservatism, Dibelius may have strengthened counter-reactions that promoted the transformation of the Protestant church into a church open to democracy and society.

JOLANDA GRASSEL-FARNBAUER (Marburg) dealt with Dibelius’ attitude to the “women question.” In doing so, she referred to the text Wir rufen Deutschland zu Gott [We call Germany to God] (1937) published by Dibelius and Martin Niemöller and to critical reactions from contemporary readers. The writing reacted to Nazi church politics and settled accounts with the German Faith Movement. In the last chapter, the authors commented on the women’s movement. They felt that women had defied their destiny when they took up paid work and sought education and public work because they were wives and mothers first. Agnes von Zahn-Harnack and the theologian Meta Eyl contradicted this, while Gertrud Eitner noted that the writing ran close to Nazi ideology. Although many women were active in the Confessing Church (BK), there was an ambivalent attitude towards women. While Dibelius allowed theologically educated women to serve in the church, they were not allowed to preach in church services and he refused to the end to ordain women.

The fifth section focused on National Socialism and “Church Struggle.” According to MANFRED GAILUS (Berlin), on the day of Potsdam (March 21, 1933), Dibelius welcomed the National Socialist Jewish policy of the first weeks of Nazi rule. Using völkisch rhetoric, he had already expected “the influx of fresh blood” in April 1932 and had seen the reawakening of faith. For him, too, the solution to the Jewish question was not to allow any immigrants from the East. Dibelius’ antisemitic attitude is well documented. He only had problems with the German Christians [DC] when he was deprived of administrative power. As an adviser to the regional Confessing Church [BK] of Brandenburg, he remained a man of the middle and did not stand for a BK parish, as the BK pastors did. Dibelius desired a great, strong, and autocratically-governed Germany but opposed the DC church government. After 1945, in the context of the Cold War, a negative image of Dibelius emerged in Eastern Germany and a positive one in Western Germany.

ANDREAS PANGRITZ (Osnabrück), who described Dibelius as an antisemite with a clear conscience, examined Dibelius’ relationship to Judaism, which is still little researched. After 1945, Dibelius glossed over his attitude. In an article from 1948, looking back on the Kristallnacht Pogrom, he did not say why the church was silent at the time, but only that it had become a duty of honor in the BK to help persecuted Jews. He also claimed that, after the euthanasia program, he had no longer been able to recognize the Nazi state as an authority, adding that he had employed two non-Aryans. A half-Jewish woman had been working for him as a secretary since 1934. As early as 1928, Dibelius admitted that he had always been an antisemite. Regarding the boycott of Jewish businesses, he wrote on April 9, 1933, in the Evangelisches Sonntagsblatt Berlin that international business capital and the press were in Jewish hands and that Jewry abroad was stirring up anti-Germany sentiment, that Jews were a foreign race, and that Eastern Jews were of dubious moral quality.

TETYANA PAVLUSH (Cardiff) was scheduled to contribute on Dibelius’ stance on denazification. She was unable to attend.

Instead, MICHAEL HEYMEL (Limburg) followed with a lecture on the relationship between Dibelius and Martin Niemöller. In a sketch of their personalities, he pointed out that a conflict of authority between the two only emerged when they met in church leadership positions. Both were Prussians, convinced monarchists and homeless national Protestants who welcomed Hitler’s rise to power, but then found themselves in the church opposition to the DC. In the Church Struggle they had acted as temporary allies, since Dibelius was only involved in the beginnings of the BK as an observer and his involvement only began in June 1934. The contrary position that Niemöller took after the end of the war was rooted in the BK’s internal divisions. This can be seen in the different assessments of the Treysa church conference. Niemöller saw Dibelius as the administrator of a church apparatus, while his opposite number saw him as a representative of an outdated church minority position.

The three lectures in the following thematic section were dedicated to the post-war period. CLAUDIA LEPP (Munich) analyzed the work of Dibelius as Bishop of Berlin (1945-1966) from four angles. In 1945, Dibelius acted as a mover and shaker in the Prussian Council of Brethren by taking up his old office again, consolidating the old structures and preventing a new order in the spirit of the Dahlemite Council of Brethren. He also took on DC and NS pastors. Secondly, in his sermons and pastoral letters, he took on the role of an interpreter of times who wanted to shape the life of the people. He compared the Federal Republic with Weimar and the GDR with the Nazi state. Thirdly, he acted as an anti-communist church fighter who valued legal security and freedom of expression in the GDR. At that time, 90 percent of the GDR population belonged to a Christian church. Dibelius fought in vain against the [Communist] Youth Consecration (Jugendweihe) because the majority of the church people were not prepared to resist. Fourthly, as a national Protestant unity fighter, he campaigned for German reunification. After 1957 he was no longer allowed to enter the GDR, but remained formally Bishop for both East and West Berlin until 1966.

HANSJÖRG BUSS (Siegen) dealt with the political and ecclesiastical opponents of the Berlin Bishop Dibelius in East Germany. He was the only East German church representative on the EKD (Evangelical Church in Germany) Council and the face of the Protestant church in the 1950s. During this time, the Protestant Church in the GDR lost support. In memory of the infamous Potsdam sermon in 1933, an actor portrayed him as a cold warrior in a GDR television film. This corresponded to the tendency of the regime, which saw him as an ideological opponent, and of the press media, which caricatured him as a “NATO bishop” and the person who brought the H-bomb. With its somewhat antisemitic undertones, the GDR polemic actually strengthened Dibelius’ support in the West. In 1958, opposition to him increased among pastors in the working group in Berlin-Brandenburg. Günter Jacob, General Superintendent of Neumark since 1946, became his opponent. He did not adhere to a unified EKD and after 1960 turned against the basic order of Berlin-Brandenburg, which was tailored to Dibelius and the episcopal office.

SIEGFRIED HERMLE (Munich) examined Dibelius’ time as EKD Council Chair (1949-1961) based on his reports to the EKD Synod. The eleven-member council was intended to provide leadership and administration. Eleven people ran for the position of chair in 1949, with the clear majority of votes going to Dibelius, with Lilje as deputy. Niemöller was no longer someone about whom people could agree. For Dibelius, the focus of church life was on the regional churches. They did not want central management; only occasionally did the council need to speak publicly on their behalf. In Dibelius’ eight reports, the church-state relationship took up a lot of space. He saw that the church in Bonn was protected, but in the GDR it was increasingly exposed to propaganda. It should not allow itself to be exploited in the play of political forces. On military issues, he recognized different opinions but positioned himself against the Brotherhoods (Bruderschaften), a contrast that continues to have an impact in debates on peace issues to this day. The conservative majority of council members followed his lead.

The last thematic section dealt with Dibelius in international relations. THEA SULMAVICO (Halle) characterized Dibelius’ stance in the rearmament debate as ambivalent. The GDR press reacted to the military pastoral care contract he signed (1957) with polemics. In his 1949 work The Limits of the State, Dibelius criticized modern war. However, his criticism of the secular state was only directed against the GDR, not against the Federal Republic. For him, the Fatherland ranked higher than the state. For Dibelius, it was a question of national honor to ensure the defense of his own country. He invoked the great danger from the East and, after atomic and hydrogen bomb tests, judged the Soviets militarily superior over the West. He accused Niemöller and Heinemann of political propaganda and said that Lutherans were better at distinguishing between political questions and questions of faith than the Barthians. However, Dibelius’ unpolitical nature was not always accepted by both sides.

BERND KREBS (Berlin) spoke about Dibelius and Poland. In the 1920s, the theme was Germans under Polish rule. Two thirds of them left Poland. General Superintendent Juliusz Bursche advocated the integration of all Protestants into the Polish state. Convinced of the German mission in the East, Dibelius presented himself as strongly nationalistic in support of the interests of German Protestants in Poland. Before 1914 there were a million Protestant Christians there; after the war 350,000. German pastors were oriented to the DNVP and were considered political leaders of German identity (Deutschtum). Tensions increased in the mid-1920s. At that time, Nazi politics put the Protestant church in Posen under massive pressure. German Protestants were therefore disappointed with National Socialism. Poland remained an area of diverse cultures, and the desired Germanization failed. After 1945, Dibelius turned to the Lutherans in Poland.

An announced lecture on Dibelius’ commitment to the ecumenical movement had to be canceled due to the absence of KATHARINA KUNTER (Helsinki/Finland).

HARTMUT LEHMANN (Kiel) concluded by asking whether we now really knew who Dibelius was and whether what we had heard was coming together to form a new picture. Three facets can be recognized: 1. The pragmatic church prince Dibelius, who always claimed leadership positions. 2. The man of the political right who consistently fought the left. Like the average German Protestant of his time, he supported antisemitism and, at the beginning, also National Socialism. He integrated various positions in the EKD council. 3. Dibelius missed the opportunity to reorient the Protestant Church after 1945. An alternative approach in the sense of repentance and conversion was at least conceivable. The question of what would have happened if Dibelius had behaved differently as a church leader before and after National Socialism obviously went beyond historical research. LEPP and HERMLE noted that in this case Dibelius would not have been himself and would not have risen to the church leadership positions he held.

The conference took place with a mixture of several generations of research and a constructive atmosphere, although tensions were noticeable in the evaluation of Robert Stupperich’s work and the topic of antisemitism. One complaint would be “gaps” with regard to ecumenism and denazification. The statements about the imperial Dibelius, his relationship to Weimar, the still open question of antisemitism and Dibelius’ “tragic” post-war role between Eastern polemics and his slow retreat from it were noteworthy. The conference contributions are to be published in an anthology.

Research Report: KU Leuven Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies Research Group on the History of Contemporary Religious Identities and Ideas

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 29, Number 1/2 (Summer 2023)

Research Report: KU Leuven Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies Research Group on the History of Contemporary Religious Identities and Ideas

By Dries Bosschaert, KU Leuven

In the transition to the 21^e millennium, the Leuven historian Roger Aubert reflected on the future of the discipline of contemporary church history. He emphasized the adage ‘nova et vetera‘: in order to develop, the discipline should both learn from the past and draw inspiration from insights from other disciplines. [1] It is the same adage that I used in my inaugural lecture for presenting the future research lines of the KU Leuven Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies Research Group on the History of Contemporary Religious Identities and Ideas. [2] Research done within this group will deal with contemporary church history with a particular focus on the development of (religious) identities. Three theoretical lines were developed in this lecture: the historical study of identity formation, the role of (religious) concepts within it and the opportunities that methodological innovation can offer. Examples from the long 1960s were used to illustrate all this. Indeed, what makes these years so fascinating, according to historian Hugh McLeod, is the fact that within them “perhaps the biggest change was the weakening of the collective identities that had been so important in the years before”. [3] This transition, but just as much revolutionary events during these years such as the Second Vatican Council, makes this a particularly fascinating period for the discipline of contemporary history of church and theology when it seeks to focus on identity formation.

A strong tradition of research on identities already exists within the discipline of church history, but in the past these studies were often characterized by their focus on important figures and/or on identities described in a static or monolithic way. In light of developments in social and cultural history, the inaugural address pleaded to complement the classical church-historical approach in a threefold way: By focusing more strongly on ‘forgotten’ or marginalized identities; by doing justice to the intersectionality of identities in which religion is one of the categories that interacts within identity formation with various other relevant categories such as gender and social class; and by paying attention to the creativity in which individuals will combine different religious elements from their own and other traditions to develop their own, and thus often hybrid, identity.

This threefold approach offers opportunities to study individual (religious) identities in the past, but does not yet help so much to thematize the collectivity of these identities. The second part of the lecture therefore focused on how historical individuals function within an intellectual sociability: milieus of actors and institutions that share intellectual frameworks, shape them and interact with other milieus from this background. In light of the aforementioned Second Vatican Council, the church historian Philippe Chenaux often refers for example to the importance of the Leuven theological milieu in the preparation and as an influence on the council. [4] In the historical search for these collective identities and/or intellectual milieus, certain concepts often play a key role. For example, in that same Leuven context concepts such as ‘Christian humanism’ or ‘personalism’ played a key role. These central concepts are often picked up from other milieus – in the case of Catholic identity formation, by the way, they are often concepts from one’s own historical tradition – but are then creatively filled in with new meaning on the basis of one’s own identity. Dutch cultural theorist Mieke Bal speaks of ‘travelling concepts‘ to designate these concepts. [5] Hence the plea in this lecture to approach collective identities in recent church history and/or theological milieus from these ‘travelling religious concepts’. Indeed, it is often these central concepts, the concepts that are foundational to one’s identity, that will play a central role in the collective narrative and myth-making processes of collectives. To push the example further, it appeared in the identity debates surrounding the Catholic University of Leuven that ‘Catholic’ identity was interpreted through references to this Christian humanist or personalist basis.

Finally, the discipline of contemporary church history faces methodological challenges. While it can draw on a strong tradition of archival and text-historical research, this has not yet enabled to bring all stories to life and, moreover, often makes it difficult to map the identity of the social categories described above and the use of religious concepts within them. This explains the plea to keep innovating methodologically as well. Two avenues seem particularly worth exploring in this regard. Firstly, that of oral history, which can make it possible to tap into a whole field of unexplored sources within contemporary church history, the memories of those who lived it or helped shape historical processes. In addition, the lecture indicated the added value of the Digital Humanities to facilitate research. For instance, historical network analysis offers added value to analyse and visualise historical relational data in a structural way. It is one thing to speak metaphorically about these theological environments and milieus, another by studying whether there are indeed underlying links between certain figures that constitute these environments and their intellectual reference points. These and other strands will be further developed in the coming years in our own research or as part of some start-up research projects:

The Digital Synopsis Vatican II project which is committed to digitizing conciliar material and developing a collaborative online platform for the study of the genesis and reception of religious normative texts.
The Auxiliaires de l’Apostolat research project that seeks to map and study the identities and common vocation of a particular network of lay women in church and society;
The REACT project which aims to study the phenomenon of ‘bystandership’ in cases of transgressive behavior and/or abuse of power in Catholic contexts from a historical, practical theological, and social psychological perspective;
For an overview of the team and their individual work, see criid.be.

In addition, members of the research group actively contribute to:

The international project Vatican II: Legacy and Mandate (vatican2legacy.com) which aims to write a cross-cultural history and commentary of the documents of the Second Vatican Council;
The Jocist Women Leaders Project (jocistwomen.josephcardijn.com) that studies the influence of the thought and method of Joseph Cardijn in the international Jocist movements with a specific attention to the role of women in its shaping.
The RESILIENCE research infrastructure (resilience-ri.eu) that aims to facilitate the connection between theology and religious studies and the European Union’s science policy with its focus on data management and FAIR data (i.e. European Open Science Cloud programme).

Notes:

[1] Roger Aubert, “Les nouvelles frontières de l’historiographie ecclésiastique,” Revue d’Histoire Ecclésiastique 95, no. 3 (2000): 757–81.

[2] A full version of this inaugural lecture will appear as Dries Bosschaert, Is there a Future for Contemporary Church History? Exploring Identities in the Long Twentieth Century through Travelling Religious Concepts, in Louvain Studies 2023 (forthcoming).

[3] Hugh McLeod, The Religious Crisis of the 1960s (New York : Oxford university press, 2007), 259.

[4] Philippe Chenaux, Le Temps de Vatican II: Une Introduction à l’histoire Du Concile, Pages d’histoire (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 2012).

[5] Mieke Bal, Travelling Concepts in the Humanities: A Rough Guide (Toronto : University of Toronto, 2002).

Letter from the Editors (Spring/Summer 2022)

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 28, Number 1/2 (Spring/Summer 2022)

Letter from the Editors (Spring/Summer 2022)

By Kyle Jantzen, Ambrose University

Dear Friends,

After a long hiatus, once more the editors are pleased to present a new issue of Contemporary Church History Quarterly. This issue–a combined spring/summer volume–begins with the translation and reprint of an article by Manfred Gailus reassessing the high-profile Protestant churchman Otto Dibelius.

Otto Dibelius’ memorial plaque in Berlin-Lichterfelde. By OTFW, Berlin – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5404813

Five reviews follow, including two on book-length studies by Gailus, a leading Berlin church historian. Sarah Thieme tackles Gläubige Zeiten. Religiosität im Dritten Reich while Christopher Probst assesses Gegen den Mainstream der Hitlerzeit. Der Wuppertaler Theologe Helmut Hesse (1916-1943).

On the Catholic side, Martin Menke reviews Michael Hesemann’s study, Der Papst und der Holocaust. Pius XII. und die geheimen Akten im Vatikan. Further afield, Björn Krondorfer examines Jeremy Best’s book, Heavenly Fatherland: German Missionary Culture and Globalization in the Age of Empire, while Kyle Jantzen reviews the James Strasburg study, God’s Marshall Plan: American Protestants and the Struggle for the Soul of Europe.

Three notes follow the reviews. Kyle Jantzen reports on two studies relating to Mennonites, Nazism, and the Holocaust, one a special issue of the Mennonite Central Committee journal Intersections and the other a Ben Goossen research article on Mennonite novelist and Holocaust denier Ingrid Rimland. Finally, Sarah Thieme reports on a conference devoted to Catholic historical research in Germany.

Finally, it is with sadness that I announce that long-time editor Matthew Hockenos is resigning from the CCHQ editorial team. Matthew was an important member of the group that converted the late John Conway’s newsletter into what is now Contemporary Church History Quarterly and has been an anchor on the editorial team ever since. We wish him well in his scholarly work, and look forward to reading his future publications on the German churches during and after the Hitler era.

Once again, we hope this issue of CCHQ interests and educates, and look forward to continuing to bring you news, reviews, and commentary on contemporary religious history with a focus on Germany and Europe in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

On behalf of the editorial team,

Kyle Jantzen, Ambrose University

The Old Picture Is No Longer Valid: Why the Time Is Ripe for a Reassessment of the Ecclesiastical Figure of the Century, Otto Dibelius

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 28, Number 1/2 (Spring/Summer 2022)

The Old Picture Is No Longer Valid: Why the Time Is Ripe for a Reassessment of the Ecclesiastical Figure of the Century, Otto Dibelius

By Manfred Gailus, Technical University of Berlin; translated by Kyle Jantzen, Ambrose University

He was long regarded as the outstanding personality in the twentieth-century Protestant Church: Otto Dibelius (1880 – 1967). But what is missing is an overall picture of the leading theologian and “virtuoso power politician” and his work, especially during the National Socialist era, complains the Berlin history professor Manfred Gailus. An international Dibelius conference from October 5th to 7^th (2022) in Marburg is intended to close this gap.

This article was originally published in Zeitzeichen, February 2022, p. 14-17. It is reprinted here with the kind permission of the publisher. You can view the original German article with images here.

It has grown quieter around Otto Dibelius. When the fiftieth anniversary of his death came in January 2017, few remembered him. No prominent memorial event, no scholarly conference, hardly any articles by well-known theologians or historians in newspapers or magazines. In Berlin, he was remembered in church services, but that was more of a small form – appreciation on the back burner. Perhaps the exuberant commemoration of the Reformation in 2017 also played a role: “Luther” was on everyone’s lips and drowned out the Protestant figure of the century, Dibelius. But by this time, “lower case” commemoration of the once highly revered Bishop of Berlin had long been in vogue. In 1980 things looked different. At that time, the renowned Tübingen church historian Klaus Scholder, in a highly regarded lecture in the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, spoke on the centenary of Dibelius’ birth. On the 40th anniversary of his death in 2007, the Münster theologian Albrecht Beutel gave a lecture in the Berlin Cathedral about the powerful church leader and, referring to Scholder, characterized Dibelius as a singular “Prussian church prince”.

You rarely hear such superlatives these days. The old and sometimes strongly heroic image of Dibelius is fading. It clearly doesn’t fit anymore. It is time to draw a new picture of Dibelius that meets today’s scholarly standards and integrates his drawback in addition to his undeniable skills, achievements, and merits. He will certainly remain a major figure, but he will lose some of his shine. Until now, little has been written about his aggressive war sermons from 1914 to 1918 in the relevant Dibelius literature. His leading role in the Greater Berlin regional association of the warmongering “German Fatherland Party” from 1917 to 1918 should not be ignored. Despite the important study by Hartmut Fritz (1998), his permanent agitation against the Weimar Republic as a “godless republic” has not been adequately investigated. His performance in the “Third Reich” requires considerable corrections. His attitude towards Judaism, including a consistent veritable antisemitism, was never integrated into an overall picture of this colorful Protestant personality. In short: until now the only biography has been the highly apologetic biography by Robert Stupperich (1989). The time is now ripe for a new biographical study that situates the life and work of this controversial church leader in twentieth century political and social history, assessing his modes of action from this perspective. In what follows, Dibelius’ role in the late phase of Weimar and during the Third Reich will be discussed.

Dibelius did not like the Weimar Republic and tended to vilify it as a lifeless “godless republic” out of a proud ecclesiastical attitude. A few weeks before Hitler came to power, in a lecture on the “reawakening of faith in the present”, he lamented the devastating effects of secularization, materialism, individualism, and a general decline in values. But he also saw light at the end of the tunnel. He pinned his hopes on the “national movement” of the moment, including the National Socialists. With its appeal to a “community of blood ” [“Blutsgemeinschaft”] and “ethno-national community” [“Volksgemeinschaft”], it rebelled against the internationalism of class struggle ideas. Their goal: a new, strong ethnic group, had not been “conceived by the sharp calculating mind of a Jew.” Rather, it came from “emotion,” “instinct,” from “impulses of the blood.” The national movement was fighting for ideals that were not conceived by man, but felt “in his blood,” precisely in what was “creatively determined” for him. Although it was not yet possible to say how the struggle within National Socialism for the religious foundations would end, one thing was certain: it was possible for a “consciously Protestant life of faith” to develop within the National Socialist movement, too.

End of the “Godless Republic”

Dibelius had high hopes for the spirit of the anti-republican opposition to Weimar, especially a strong upsurge in faith and the liquidation of an epoch of unbelief. That was his expectation. From this perspective, January 30, 1933, appeared to be a fulfillment. Joy and deep satisfaction at the end of the “Godless Republic” determined the thoughts of the acting General Superintendent of the Kurmark during the first months of Hitler’s “Cabinet of National Concentration.” Now we rule, too – something like this could be used to capture his immediate sense of that moment. The smashing of the “godless movement” took place to the applause of Protestant church leaders. The rapid increase in church membership withdrawals suddenly stopped. Religious instruction was reintroduced in the modern, secular progressive schools [Reformschulen]. “Non-Aryan” lawyers in courts were forcibly expelled by SA troops. The Easter message of the Prussian church leadership spoke of “joy at the awakening of the deepest forces of our nation.” Dibelius preached as a political theologian on the “Day of Potsdam” in a euphoric mood of optimism on the big stage. He witnessed the act of state in the Garrison Church up close and was deeply moved by the ceremonial handshake between Hindenburg and Hitler.

Dibelius also justified the April 1, 1933, boycott of Jews to other countries. In his “Wochenschau” [“Week in Review”] in the Evangelisches Sonntagsblatt [Protestant Sunday Paper] of April 9, he reaffirmed his positive attitude towards Nazi Jewish policy: the “Jewish element” (he wrote) had played a leading role in all the dark events of the last 15 years. “German national life” was endangered by the Jewish immigration from the East. Nobody could seriously object to the suppression of Jewish influence. Two things had to happen in order to solve the “Jewish question”: blocking off Jewish immigration from the East and strengthening the German way of life so that it did not succumb to a “foreign race.” In May, Dibelius expressed great joy at the National Socialist redesignation of May 1st as “National Labour Day” and praised “People’s Chancellor Hitler” and Goebbels’ “brilliant organizational talent.”

At the Kurmark Church Congress at the end of May, in the Potsdam Garrison Church, Dibelius praised the changes since January 30: the dirt had disappeared from the streets, the poisonous class hatred had been removed from the soul; children were receiving religious instruction again and adults were again returning to church. At the subsequent rally in front of Potsdam’s city palace, Dibelius allowed a prominent member of the Reich leadership of German Christians (Deutsche Christen, or DC), Pastor Friedrich Peter, to make political appeals to the Protestant youth.

The measures taken by the National Socialist state commissar August Jäger at the end of June 1933 marked a turning point: all Prussian church general superintendents were temporarily suspended, including Dibelius. After the end of Jäger’s state intervention, Dibelius was able to resume his official duties, but in fact he no longer had any administrative powers. The church elections of July 23, ordered at short notice by the state, brought a massive two-thirds-to-three-quarters majority for the DC. They now dominated the Prussian church government. In this precarious situation, Dibelius sent a pointed letter aimed at understanding to the new church leadership, which was dominated by radical German Christians. It was untenable, he complained, for a general superintendent to be considered politically unreliable in a church that had joyfully committed itself to the new state. He now wanted to clarify his “actual position.” Even as a student around 1900, he had been fighting against Judaism and social democracy. He had remained true to this attitude to this day. He referred to his sermon on the “Day of Potsdam.” In it he acknowledged a spirit that stood up for the greatness of the Fatherland with determination. After the sermon, the Prussian Prime Minister Goering had shaken his hand with warm words of thanks. Likewise, at the request of Reichsminister Goebbels, he spoke to America over the radio to defend the new state against atrocity propaganda from abroad. Although he was critical of the DC, he had always tried to establish good contacts with them. Thus he had invited Ludwig Müller – the DC’s designated candidate for Reich Bishop– to deliver the major address to the church congress in the Kurmark church province. According to Dibelius in mid-July 1933, the rhythm and goals of their work contained much that corresponded to his own style and goals. He had repeatedly asked himself whether his type of work was not so closely related to the intentions of the DC that a mutual quarrel was intolerable from a church point of view. Because of the state commissar’s intervention, he had finally had to take a stand for the church. Finally, Dibelius wanted an understanding as to how things should continue with him personally. It should not be, he said, that the agitation of a small circle could easily remove a general superintendent from office.

The DC no longer responded to this request. The powerful wave of the DC movement within Protestantism had pushed Dibelius aside. In September he received his letter of dismissal for early retirement from the future Nazi Reich Bishop Müller. Dibelius had played no part in the first steps of opposition to DC ecclesiastical dominance in 1933. Rather, that came from the opposition election list “Gospel and Church” in July and the founding phase of the Pastors’ Emergency League in September. After weeks of waiting, a solution emerged in the fall. At the request of relatives, Hermann Goering had exerted his influence over the appointment of the retired general superintendent. On December 1, 1933, Dibelius took up the post of curate in San Remo on the Italian Riviera. Ostensibly, he was looking for this opportunity to take a break from church politics and time for personal reflection.

Overall, Dibelius’ behavior in the decisive year of 1933 had proven to be hesitant, shaky, and ambivalent. When he returned to Berlin on June 3, 1934, critical decisions in the Church Struggle had been made – without him. He had not been present at the constitution of free confessional synods from the beginning of 1934, at the Ulm Day of Confession in April, or at the first Reich Confessing Synod at the end of May 1934 in Barmen. He was absent when the house of the church was ablaze, and when he returned the fronts in the Church Struggle had formed.

Man of the Middle

At the request of Kurt Scharf, Dibelius helped establish a Confessing Church (Bekennende Kirche, or BK) in the Mark Brandenburg. During the Church Struggle, he was and remained a “man of the middle,” of church-political moderation, of balance. He did not belong to the decisive wing of the Confessing Church around Martin Niemöller, Martin Albertz, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Karl Barth. His church-political attitude corresponded more to the accommodating course of the moderate wing represented by the three Lutheran bishops of Hanover, Bavaria, and Württemberg. He was not involved as a synodal member to the BK synods of Dahlem, Augsburg and Bad Oeynhausen. He did not sign the confidential memorandum of the second Provisional Church Leadership of the BK to Hitler at the end of May 1936, and he was rather distant towards its peace liturgy against the threat of war at the end of September 1938. Lastly, he was not one of the accused in the “examination process” (December 1941), through which the regional elite of the BK Berlin-Brandenburg were sentenced to sometimes considerable prison terms for illegal teaching and examination activities at the illegal church seminary.

Dibelius’ real problem in the “Third Reich” were the German Christians with their ethno-nationalist Christian theology and their aggressive claim on the church government. This dissent gave rise to various conflicts and personal clashes. But that was not general resistance to the Nazi regime, rather only opposition to a parallel movement to the Hitler party within Protestantism. Additionally, he criticized aspects of the Nazi worldview and Nazi religious policy, where these proclaimed anti-Christian goals. In 1937, this brought him into a legal dispute with Reich Church Minister Hanns Kerrl.

However, during the war years, Dibelius developed a certain inner distance from the regime. Kurt Gerstein’s eyewitness reports about the murder of the Jews in the East (August 1942) may have played a role in this. Dibelius maintained contacts with the church unification work of Württemberg Bishop Theophil Wurm and with the conservative Freiburg resistance group around Walter Eucken and Gerhard Ritter. But resistance against the state was not permissible for a devout Christian and avowed Lutheran, according to Romans 13 and because of the [nineteenth-century] “New Lutheran” [neulutherische] two-kingdoms doctrine. So Dibelius remained what he had always been during the “Third Reich”: a Christian-conservative churchman, a Prussian-German national Protestant, whose religious mentality had been formed by the currents prevailing in the late German Empire (Heinrich von Treitschke, Adolf Stoecker, Union of Associations of German Students). It was indelibly marked by ethno-national [völkisch] sympathies and notoriously anti-Jewish and at times antisemitic tendencies.

A thorough, up-to-date, new Dibelius biography seems urgent today—as well as a thoroughly renovated Dibelius picture as part of a contemporary ecclesiastical culture of remembrance.