Association of Contemporary Church Historians

(Arbeitsgemeinschaft kirchlicher Zeitgeschichtler)

John S. Conway,Editor. University of British Columbia

Newsletter – December 1997 – Vol. III no 12

Dear Friends,

A very happy and joyous Christmas to you all!

“Theologically Christmas Day is the greatest occasion for rejoicing offered to sinful mankind; but this aspect of it is so august and so great that the human mind refuses to contemplate it steadily, perhaps because of its own littleness, for which of course it is in no way to blame. It prefers to concentrate its attention on ceremonial observances,expressive generally of good will and festivity, such as, for instance, giving presents andeating plum-puddings”. Joseph Conrad, Last Essays

Contents

1) Conference Reports:

a) Darmstadt Declaration b) G.S.A.,Washington D.C. c) Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte, Wittenberg, Germany

2) Journal Articles: D.Bergen, “Wehrmacht Chaplaincy”, C.Strohm, “Faith and Resistance”, L. Siegele-Wenschkewitz, “Evangelical Academies”, M.P.Berg, “Austrian Socialists and Church after 1945”

3) Book reviews: a) Fleischner and Phayer, Cries in the Night, b) Sittser, Cautious Patriotism

4) Work in progress: a) Mark Lindsay, b) John Abbott

1a) A recent conference in Arnoldsheim, Taunus, considered the significance of the Darmstadt Declaration of 1947, and its role in the thinking of the German Evangelical Church in the post-war period. Its origins came from the dissatisfaction with the lack of concreteness of the previous Stuttgart Declaration of 1945. Its authors, principally Barth, Niemoller and H-J Iwand, centred on the “erroneous paths” which the German people and Church had previously followed, particularly their nationalist and anti-Marxist sentiments, and sought to prepare the way for a better future. The controversy this aroused about the correct political course of the Church caused much dissension for many years. Papers were read by Dr. Hartmut Ludwig (Berlin), Joachim Perels (Hannover), Martin Kramer (Magdeburg) and Kurt Nowak (Leipzig), which also considered the longer term impact of this Declaration in both the FRG and the GDR. (from a report submitted by Brian Huck (Mainz and Pennsylvania).

1b) The 21st annual meeting of the German Studies Association was held in Washington. D.C. at the end of September. Of the 138 sessions, approximately a dozen had some relevance to contemporary church history, two of which, though they precede our time period, may be of interest. Chris Clark (Cambridge), known for his fine book on the Prussian Mission to the Jews, compared Napoleon’s Concordat with Friedrich Wilhelm’s Prussian Union. Although Napoleon was noted for his cynicism (I became a Muslim to win Egypt, etc.) and Friedrich Wilhelm for his piety, Clark saw a similar raison d’etat in each case. Both leaders saw a renewal of religion and the church as useful to the stability of the state; both expected to gain prayers for the head of state, etc,; and the clergy expected to gain greater stability in their organization and a more solid base for financial support. The second topic from this earlier period explored “Judaism as constructed by German Protestant Theology”. One ironic theme showed that the Protestant advocates of careful historical analysis paid no attention the history of first century Judaism, accepting instead the view of Phariseeism in the New Testament. Two students of Gerhard Besier (Heidelberg) presented their research, Gerhard Lindemann from his completed dissertation on “The fate of Christian pastors of Jewish descent in Hanover, 1925- 1955”, and Christian Binder from his ongoing work on “Christians of Jewish descent in the Baden State Church”. Each paper involved fine research into a difficult and important chapter of German church history, with regional evidence on questions overlapping religious and racial categories, especially regarding the so-called “Mischlinge”. In neither situation did Christians of Jewish descent fare well, although individual acts of bravery could be found. These papers may appear in a future issue of Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte, with Robert Erickson’s commentary. Gerhard Besier presented a useful review of the present controversy over the Scientology movement in Germany, and Doris Bergen updated her work on German military chaplains in World War II. If this GSA meeting is any indication, it does seem as if the significance of religious issues in modern history might be making some headway. (Robert Ericksen, Olympic College, Bremerton.)

1c) Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte 1997 conference, Wittenberg, 6 – 9 November. “Religion and Denomination – Foundation of Current and Future societies in Europe?” Inevitably a meeting in the refectory of the Augustinian monastery was forced to face the legacy of the Reformation, though in a singularly Germano-centric manner. M.Treu, Director of Wittenberg’s Lutherhalle, began with a pithy introduction to the Confessio Augustana as a document of unity or separation, and was followed by two papers on “Political religion” and “Denominational elements in the totalitarian systems of the 20th century”. The former concentrated on such contemporary issues as the challenge of Islamic fundamentalism, but did not discuss the question of a pluralistic education or the need for a common European foreign policy. The latter discussed “Widerstand” in its German context, but at the expense of comparisons with other resistance movements elsewhere in Europe – what made Germany different begged for an answer. Nicholas Hope raised the question of why cradle-to-grave welfare secularism had succeeded after 1945 beyond all reasonable religious hope, but could have said more about the Scandinavian initiatives to pursue peace and ecumenism, especially in the inter- war period. All of us might do well to take a rain check on 1) the gains and losses of the mainline churches, and the plurality of smaller denominations in this century, and 2) the fateful ‘Anpassung’ of the churches to political ideologies (a Volkskirche could be racialist or socialist), and the fact that the agencies of human destruction – poison gas or the mass murder of the Jews – were not stopped by Christians. National power-politics corrupted the churches at the expense of Christian and Judeo-Christian fellowship. Emeritus Bishop Rogge, bless him, left us with the text for Sunday, November 9th: Luke 17: 20-24. (Nicholas Hope, c/o Wiss-Theol.Seminar, Heidelberg University).

2) Journal Article: Doris Bergen, “‘Germany is our Mission – Christ is our Strength’ The Wehrmacht Chaplaincy and the ‘German Christian’ Movement,” CHURCH HISTORY, 66/3 (September 1997), 522-36. This is an excellent essay by one of our Newsletter colleagues on a topic that has not had much coverage in the English-language literature. The amount of material on the U.S. army chaplaincy during World War II is fairly sizeable, and the Chaplains’ Corps even had its own official historian. A good study of the German chaplaincy would be a useful contribution, so it is valuable to have Doris Bergen’s exploration of the role of the ‘Deutsche Christen” in the Wehrmacht. Many of them won appointments as chaplains, and the movement actively propagated its pro-Nazi Christianity through religious literature distributed to the troops. But there was also a confluence with the “mainline” Protestants, since almost all chaplains echoed the German Christian view that Germany’s religious traditions reinforced National Socialism and that Christianity and Judaism were naturally opposed. Although the regular military chaplaincy (including the military bishop, Franz Dohrmann) was cool to the pesky German Christians, their success in infiltrating the corps was considerable. Bergen estimates that approximately thirty percent of the Protestant chaplains had German Christian connections of one kind or another. Their impact was amplified by the fact that virtually no clergy associated with the Confessing Church gained admittance to the chaplaincy. They also had a voice in pastoral care to the armed forces through the officially sanctioned religious literature, much of which was produced by German Christian presses and writers, and religious propaganda which they sent directly to the front. The decision of the authorities to issue only New Testaments (i.e. omitting the Old Testament altogether) and the production of a “de- judaized” military songbook reflected the impact of their views, if not direct personal influence. The commonality of their mission with that of the Wehrmacht chaplaincy could be seen in the message of “manly Christianity”, one that emphasised soldierly virtues: hardness, self-sacrifice and heroism. Since their movement was radically antitheological, they rejected considerations of doctrine as bookish, Jewish and effeminate. Instead they propagated a simple, vague notion of Christianity which allowed easy incorporation of Nazi ideology. Their image of God had “no contours”; the message had nothing to do with the basic teachings about Jesus, sin or judgement, but they still offered the promise of God. They defined the church in racial terms as a community of “pure Germans” devoted to the exclusion of Jews, Jewish influence, and “non-Aryans”, that is, converts from Judaism and their descendants. They even hoped to meld Protestant and Catholic Germans into a “National Church”. In short, Christianity and the church were means to this end of national unity. Ironically the ideology of the dominant Nazis, such as Bormann, Himmler, Goebbels and Hitler himself, was militantly anti- Christian. A number of measures were taken to curtail the size of the chaplaincy and to reduce its numbers. Even the German Christians were not spared as their distorted Nazi Christianity was rejected, on the grounds that their claim to synthesize National Socialism and Christianity implied that the Nazi worldview by itself was inadequate. Still they tried to prove their worth by encouraging the fighting spirit of the troops, and the more they did so, the more they were caught in the trap of helping to legitimise German brutality and strengthening their ideological opponents in the Nazi Party. In their struggle for survival, the German Christian chaplains displayed loyal commitment to the goals of Hitler’s war, thereby giving assent to its atrocities, murder and genocide. In so doing, they undermined their moral authority as independent agents of the Christian message and betrayed the God they professed to serve. Richard Pierard, Indiana State University, Terre Haute.

Three further new journal articles are of interest: Christoph Strohm, “Die Bedeutung von Kirche, Religion und christlichen Glauben im Umkreis der Attentaeter des 20 Juli 1944″, in Zeitschrift fur Kirchengeschichte, 1997/2, pp 213 ff. L Siegele-Wenschkewitz, ” ‘Hofprediger der Demokratie’, Evangelische Akademien und politische Bildung in den Anfangsjahren der Bundesrepublik Deutschland”, in Zeitschrift fur Kirchengeschichte 1997/2, pp 236 ff. Matthew P.Berg, “Between Kulturkampf and Vergangenheitsbewaltigung. The SPO. the Roman Catholic Church and the problem of reconciliation”, in Zeitgeschichte (Innsbruck), 1997 no 5/6

3) Book reviews: a) Michael Phayer and Eva Fleischner, Cries in the Night. Women who challenged the Holocaust. With a foreword by Nechama Tec. Kansas City: Sheed and Ward 1997. xxi + 143 pp. US $15.95.

This short but vivid memoir of seven Catholic women who assisted Jews to escape from Nazi persecution and annihilation is both a heartfelt tribute and an attempt to record, for an English-speaking audience, their bravery and courage at a time of utmost peril. It is not the authors’ intention in any sense to provide an alibi for the Catholic Church. Rather they seek to add to the fullness of the record of the Holocaust by rescuing from obscurity or forgetfulness the actions of a few courageous women whose deeds provide a ray of sunshine in this otherwise dreadfully dark chapter of history. As such the authors’ aim is similar to David Gushee’s fine book The Righteous Gentiles of the Holocaust (Fortress Press 1994). Nor are they forgetful that Protestant women, such as Marga Trocme, played a similar role. The seven examples they have chosen come from France, Poland, Germany and Hungary but all were united in their abhorrence of the effects of the Nazis’ racial inhumanity. As care-givers, some by profession and others by conviction, they also had a bountiful compassion which refused to be limited by any sense of cautious prudence. As Catholic women, their efforts were not always applauded by their male superiors. Margarete Sommer, for instance, working in Berlin for the Catholic charity organisation, was frequently rebuffed by the presiding Cardinal Bertram, and Gertrud Luckner did not fare much better in Freiburg. But both were determined to do what they could to provide practical assistance and comfort, warning their Jewish friends of the Gestapo’s imminent moves, and organising relief packages and even cash where possible. In 1943 the Gestapo caught up with Luckner and sent her off to the bestial Ravensbruck concentration camp, where she barely survived. But from 1945 onwards she carried on in the same spirit, and was finally able to raise enough funds to build a new home for victims of the Holocaust in Israel. Mother Matylda Getter in Poland and Germaine Robiere in France were alike in resolving to take swift and necessary action to rescue Jews even if their church leaders were silent. Part of their motivation was undoubtedly the frustration they felt at such ambivalence and prevarication. For them, the suffering individual came first. They shared a conviction, a passion, a willingness to fight, and so humanitarian, nationalist and Christian sympathies could be fused. As Germaine said, rescuing Jews was “the Christian life of the moment”. She was impulsive, impetuous but nonetheless extraordinarily determined not to allow herself to become a bystander or to share the shame of her countrymen in not doing enough to help. In Vichy France, Marie-Rose Gineste was more fortunate in having the open support of her bishop, for whom she smuggled dangerous literature to the parishes on her bicycle, and found homes for refuge in remote farmhouses, while Germaine Bouquet was deeply influenced by the famous Jewish educator Jules Isaac, for whom she provided a safe haven in 1943-4, enabling him to undertake his seminal work “Jesus and Israel”. Equally notable were the actions of Margrit Slachta in Hungary whose sense of patriotic devotion went hand in hand with the principle of brotherly love and an obligation to Christ. As the head of a noted Social Sisterhood, she used her aristocratic connections to call on the Hungarian bishops to protest and to oppose the bureaucrats’ inhuman treatment of the Jewish minority. But when rebuffed she refused to give in, and in 1943 actually travelled to Rome to see the Pope himself. His apparent sympathy, even if not matched by any prophetic protest, sustained her efforts to challenge both the state and the church hierarchy in order successfully to rescue many of the Jews of Budapest after the Nazi take-over of power in March 1944. These were women who cared. But in the post-war world their valiant witness was a standing reproach to the church, most of whose members had collaborated with the enemy or remained passive while the Jews were being murdered. Their stories were ignored, and they themselves even felt guilty that they had not been able to do more, and perplexed by the moral ambiguity of the Catholic Church. Yet they played their role, especially Gertrud Luckner, in preparing the ground for the eventual abandonment of Catholic anti-Judaism in 1965. As powerless women, their contributions to a new era of Christian-Jewish reconciliation fully merit the tributes given in this book. It deserves a wide readership. J.S.C.

b) Gerald R. Sittser, A Cautious Patriotism: The American Churches and the Second World War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997. 317 pp. $39.95.

Sittser, a professor of religion and philosophy at Whitworth College in Spokane, Washington, has produced the first full-length study of the role which the U.S. churches played in World War II. To be sure, this reviewer had contributed a chapter on World War II to Ronald A. Wells, America’s Wars: Christian Perspective (Mercer University Press, 1992) and a long entry on the topic to the Dictionary of Christianity in America (InterVarsity Press, 1990), but Sittser’s volume goes into much greater depth and detail. His thesis is that the churches practiced a “cautious patriotism” with regard to the conflict, unlike World War I where American Christians plunged unreservedly into the war effort or Vietnam where the Christian community was deeply divided about it. The churches were loyal to the endeavour but not blindly or fanatically patriotic. Churchmen believed that America had a divine destiny and the Allied cause was righteous, but they refused to see the war as a holy crusade and repeatedly called for the spiritual revitalisation of the church. They tried to strike a balance between nationalism and internationalism, political realism and religious idealism, and priestly concern and prophetic criticism. They sought to minister to the needs of the nation, but not at the expense of their commitment to justice and peace. They saw the war as a spiritual conflict that called for a resurgence of religious influence in world affairs.

Sittser maintains that the manner in which the churches expressed their cautious patriotism varied from issue to issue and event to event, and often they were deeply divided over matters of strategy and how they religiously interpreted the war. Still, they were united in their basic beliefs about American democracy, freedom, and religion, and they were convinced that the transcendent God calls all nations to repent, even America. Also, the victory would be of little value if the peace did not strengthen the church and advance the cause of Christianity in America.

Besides just making statements and pronouncements, the churches involved themselves in the war abroad through the chaplaincies and denominational programs for servicemen and civilians. Some churchmen even took part in the fight at home for civil liberties and racial justice. In a great many ways they sought to mitigate the moral costs of war, alleviate human suffering, and apply Christian principles to the postwar peace.

The book’s methodology is a content analysis of thirty-nine religious periodicals (both denominational and nondenominational) published in the years 1939-1945, and the year-books or annual meeting reports of eleven different denominations during this time. The author also looked at many of the books written by theologians and church leaders. His industry in collecting and analysing data on what churches and their officials were saying and doing is admirable.

Sittser’s most interesting chapters have to do with the crisis facing church leaders in the pre-war era and the debate over entering the war. Also noteworthy are his treatment of the issue of theodicy – how to reconcile the goodness of God with the badness of war – and the efforts to link democracy with the Christian faith. Other topics include the churches’ influence on wartime society, actions in the mobilization for war, involvements with the military hierarchy, their less than impressive record in the civil rights struggle, relief efforts, and planning for life in the postwar world.

We are indebted to Sittser for marshalling so much information and providing many helpful insights. At the same time he calls attention to the ambiguities in their positions and deep divisions in their ranks, even as they were doing their utmost to support the war with a cautious patriotism. On the other hand, his apparent lack of understanding of European history limits his perceptions, and he neglects some topics which I feel belong in the discussion, above all, President Roosevelt’s use of civil religion to rally the American people behind the war effort. In short, the book is a useful study but more work remains to be done on the religious aspects of the American involvement in World War II. Richard Pierard, Indiana State University, Terre Haute.

4a) Work in progress: Mark Lindsay, Western Australia: “Covenanted Solidarity: The theological bases for Karl Barth’s opposition to Nazi antisemitism and the Holocaust”

In the historiography of Holocaust and Church Struggle studies, Karl Barth occupies a strangely marginalised position. Historians have acknowledged his seminal role in the founding of the Confessing Church, his pivotal involvement in the composition of the Barmen Declaration, and his leadership of the ecclesiastical resistance to the Nazi regime. By contrast, his vehement rejection of Nazi antisemitism and the resultant Holocaust, as well as his forceful advocacy of the need to assist the persecuted Jews, have received scant attention. Historians have displayed an unwillingness to encounter the theological issues involved in Barth’s position with any penetrating depth, and have likewise shied away from Barth’s massive “Church Dogmatics”, in which his most profound defence of the Jews is located. Most historical monographs of Nazi antisemitism and the Holocaust, if they mention Barth at all, do so in a critically negative fashion, usually assuming that Barth was either anti-Judaic himself or simply uninterested in the question. My thesis seeks to counteract this received wisdom by focussing, not only on Barth’s explicitly political pamphlets, but also on his dogmatic theology from the early 1920s through the “Church Dogmatics” period. I look at how Barth treats the motif of ‘Israel’ and, more importantly, how his own conceptions of revelation, Christology and election stand in deliberate antithesis to the Nazified versions of the same. The Nazis adopted and then perverted these theological motifs in an effort both to deify the regime and Hitler, and to demonise the Jews and thus to justify their mass murder. I seek to show that Barth’s usage of these concepts was at once a recapturing of theological orthodoxy and, more significantly, a basis from which his defence of the Jews could be, and was, launched. Barth was no mere armchair theologian, but was socially and politically active throughout his career. Barth’s pro-Israel hermeneutic was no aberration but rather the extension of his social(ist) praxis from his earlier pastoral work in rural Switzerland, and hence found practical expression during the Nazi years. The conclusion of this dissertation is that the overwhelming weight of evidence, in contrast to previous historical assessments, shows that Barth was both actively involved in resisting the Nazis’ antisemitic violence, and that this praxis was grounded securely in his profound Christocentric theology.

4b) John Abbott, Chicago. My dissertation -in-progress is an extended study of Bavarian rural politics from the 1980s to 1933. My narrative focus is the Bayerischer Bauernbund, the surprisingly durable protest party in rural Altbayern from 1893 to the Machtergreifung. Thematically, I am most interested in the intersections between rural social and cultural development, on the one hand, and political behaviour, on the other. I have found myself drawn to consider the evolution of the Catholic political establishment, and the process by which the Church, as the self-designated guardian of tradition, in reality became the chief instrument of rural modernization. In my view, the main impetus came from the network of Catholic lay associations, co-operatives and schools, providing a series of new accommodations and syntheses. Nineteenth-century rural Bavaria had a large, rising class of independent peasant proprietors, whose social ascent had found no equivalent in Catholic culture, dominated as it was by local priests and Catholic nobility. The rise of organisations such as the Bauernbund created new spaces in public life; in this respect they allowed for a “re-masculinization” of Catholic lay culture, and helped to contain and domesticate the conspicuous anti-clerical impulses of many peasants These associations helped to introduce and popularize a new role model, a new type of Catholic “public man” who combined religious piety with educational achievement, and technical expertise with a popular touch. Their emphasis was on technocratic virtues, representing the advantages of modern, efficient organization. These peasant co-operatives, despite their origins in a vaguely anti-capitalist rhetoric, became important schools of peasant capitalism in the first decades of this century. The results were to change substantially the face of popular Catholicism in the countryside. The rise of a new Catholic meritocracy in rural affairs marked an important change in church attitudes towards education, giving new scope for upward social mobility. In tandem with the Centre/BVP parties, these associations became important transmission links between peasant youth and the wider world of opportunity, opening careers to rural talent, as reflected in government service or office. These developments also point to a shift of power within the Church milieu. Where priests had once enjoyed a virtual monopoly over village affairs, the long-term impact of peasant literacy, of an associational life increasingly independent of clerical (and aristocratic) tutelage, and of the rise of an essentially ‘bourgeois” Catholic lay leadership, was to force a redefinition of clerical authority and competence., though more glacial than episodically linear, and frequently influenced by events from outside. But the differences in Catholic culture between 1900 and 1933 are striking. I try to suggest that this “silent” cultural revolution occurring within Catholicism prior to 1933 produced developments roughly similar to the socio-cultural transformations broadly identified with the original Protestant Reformation. As such, they paved the way for the emergence of the kind of political alignments seen in the CDU/CSU since 1945.

A complete list of the books reviewed in 1997 can be found by consulting our Website.

All the best for a happy Christmas and the New Year.

John Conway

Association of Contemporary Church Historians

(Arbeitsgemeinschaft kirchlicher Zeitgeschichtler)

John S. Conway, Editor. University of British Columbia

Newsletter – November 1997 – Vol III, no 11

Dear Friends.

For Remembrance Day: The Past

When we would reach the anguish of the dead,

hose bones alone, irrelevant, are dust,

But of ourselves we know we must, we must

To some obscure but ever-bleeding thing

Unreconciled, a needed solace bring,

Like a resolving chord, like daylight shed.

Or do we through time reach back in vain

To inaccessible pain?

Frances Cornford

Contents

1) Journal article: Klemperer on Bonhoeffer

2) Book reviews

a) W.D.Halls, Politics, Society and Christianity in Vichy France

b) A.Jarlet, Oxford Group and Churches in Northern Europe, 1930- 1945

c) ed H.Lehmann, Saekularisierung, Dechristianisierung, Rechristianisierung im neuzeitlichen Europa

d) T.Sandkuehler, Endloesung in Galizien. Der Judenmord in Ostpolen und die Rettungsinitiativen von Berthold Beitz, 1941- 1944

3) Churches in the G.D.R.

4) Work in progress: Kyle Jantzen

1) David Diephouse kindly sent in the following contribution: The more theologically inclined Kirzkeit-Listler may be interested in Klemens von Klemperer, “Beyond Luther? Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Resistance against National Socialism”, Pro Ecclesia, Vol 6/2, Spring 1997, pp 184-198. Klemperer argues that “if Bonhoeffer moved beyond Luther’s theology, he never really departed from him”. He seeks to show that the roots of Bonhoeffer’s commitment to resistance and responsible action can be found in his rediscovery/reappropriation of, among other things, Luther’s understanding of sin, suffering, and redemption (e.g. theology of the cross). The apparent contradictions between Bonhoeffer’s activism and the traditional Lutheran canon, Klemperer concludes, represent a paradoxical affirmation of the “relevance of Luther’s theology in our world come of age”. A thought-provoking piece.

2) Book Reviews

2a) W.D.Halls, Politics,Society and Christianity in Vichy France, Oxford/Providence,USA: Berg Books 1995 419pp

Controversy over the fate of France during the years of humiliation from 1940-45 between the supporters of resistance and those of collaboration has continued unresolved for more than fifty years. W.D.Halls’ masterly account of the experiences of the French churches is therefore both timely and valuable. Rich in its archival explorations, insightful into the dilemmas confronting the church leaders as well as the laity, this study is written from a helpful ecumenical point of view which includes significant comparisons between the majority French Catholics and the minoirty, but still influential, French Protestants. Halls’ treatment therefore supersedes earlier more partial or apologetic accounts such as those by Duquesne or Pierard, and gives added depth to the work of Marrus and Paxton, or more recently the single chapter in Phillippe Burrin’s, Living with Defeat. While his wide-ranging investigations lead him to paint an inclusive panorama, his sympathies clearly lie with those who staunchly resisted the Nazi- led encroachments on church activities, or heroically gave help to the most persecuted of the Nazi victims, the Jews.

The military defeat of 1940 was both unprecedented and calamitous. The churches were whole-heartedly nationalistic, but at the same time resented the kind of second-class status forced on them by the secularist and anticlerical policies of the Third Republic. Its overthrow and replacement by the authoritarian regime of Marshal Petain seemed therefore to be a welcome chance to reverse the errors of the past, and a genuine opportunity to embark on national renewal. Petain appeared to be a leader worthy of estimation in contrast to the lack-lustre politicians of the Third Republic, his values seemed to be much more in tune with Catholic ideals, and his military record inspired confidence that he would be able to carve out a new place for France in a war-torn Europe. The alternatives, either of capitulating to German domination, or of believing in possible victory by the perfidious English (shades of Joan of Arc!), were equally unpalatable. Hence the enormous veneration and trust given by the church leaders to Petain. Once given, this stance was difficult if not impossible to renounce, as it would have questioned the authority of the church’s hierarchy, never ready to admit that they had been mistaken. Even when Petain’s inability to uphold his goals, or when his minister Laval’s craven subservience to the Nazi overlords became more obvious, the church leaders clung to their belief in Vichy’s beneficence.

To begin with, the Catholic church gained substantially with the revocation of many of the impediments imposed earlier. The Protestant leader, Boegner, similarly joined Petain’s National Council in the belief that here was an opportunity effectively to re- christianize France through repentance and reform. Only later, as the Nazis’ depredations grew, and especially with their onslaught on the Jews, did this sympathy erode rapidly. At the same time, Halls makes it clear that even the most devoted followers of Petain’s line were not deluded for theological reasons. None of them embraced Nazism or its fascist equivalent. At most, opportunism, political hostility to Communism, or a profound despair about France’s situation, led this small minority of collaborationists to support the Germans. By contrast the majority of the lower clergy were immune to such blandishments and indeed were revolted by the idea of collaboration. They gave a lead on the local level to the resistance, especially on humanitarian grounds, and many paid a terrible price. At least 800 priests were arrested and deported to German concentration camps, where many perished. But the dilemmas were manifest. Given their support of Petain, the bishops particularly could only see armed insurrection by the Resistance Maquis as “terrorism” or “banditry”, which they had to oppose. On the other hand, some, like the Archbishop of Toulouse, were resolute in defending publicly Christian values such as the sanctity of life (including Jewish lives). The most notable underground protest, Temoignage Chretien, was organised by Catholic priests in Lyons. So too the Protestants were strongly influenced by the own memories of earlier persecutions, and by the resistance ideas of Karl Barth, and so adopted an increasingly oppositional stance on theologically-based grounds.

Halls is particularly good on the variety of ways in which church members sought to protect or assist the Jews, as also on the differing strategies adopted by the clergy in counselling their parishioners whether or not to accept the “draft” for labour in German factories. Loyalty to the Marshal dictated obedience to Vichy decrees, but in fact many priests advised listening to personal conscience on this matter – a significant alteration in Catholic practice.

As the German defeat loomed, and the reputation of the Vichy regime visibly declined, the ambivalence of the church leaders only increased As a Protestant, Halls prefers the more prophetic stance adopted by a few outspoken clergymen. He could have been more sympathetic to the pastoral approach adopted by the majority of the bishops, whose concern for the preservation of sacramental life, and for the fate of their flocks, obliged them to seek accommodations. But in this they were not alone. Virtually all the European church leaders caught up in the political and ideological maelstroms of the second world war faced equally formidable dilemmas. Prudence and tradition prompted them to safeguard the churches’ institutional existence. Equally they could not fail to be conscious that open defiance against the Vichy regime or its Nazi controllers would not only contradict their concept of national loyalty, but would lead to a high price to be paid by those valiant enough to heed their call. The responsibility for causing such additional suffering was undoubtedly a major deterrent.

Halls rightly concludes that the ambiguities of the churches’ positions, especially those of the most prominent bishops, were very understandable and uncomfortable. They were not as resolute as their counterparts in Denmark or Holland, but they did not capitulate as the German bishops had done. Halls believes they could have asserted themselves more vigorously, but wrongly concludes that they were held back by the silence of the Vatican. This very Protestant view is too simplistic. In fact, the prospect of an eventual victory by the Anglo-American-Soviet Allies was neither foreseeable nor widely welcome, but the need to maintain pastoral care was a daily reality. On the other hand, the younger clergy showed themselves more ready to support the resistance, and more open to new ventures like the worker-priest experiment, or to the benefits of ecumenical contacts. Such developments served the church well in the long run, and paved the way for a more reformist mood as evidenced in the Second Vatican Council. J.S.C.

2b) Anders Jarlert, The Oxford Group Revivalism and the Churches in Northern Europe, 1930-1945. (Bibliotheca Historico- Ecclesiastica Lundensis 35). Lund University Press 1995. 526pp

This doctoral thesis from the University of Lund provides more than a specific account of the “Oxford Group Revivalism” in Northern Europe. It also aims at an assessment of this particular movement as compared to other similar revivalist movements, notably those in Scandinavia in the 19th century. The author has set up a very ambitious project, an impression amply confirmed by his bibliography, and in his introduction where Jarlert defines the scope of his material. He is determined to do justice to the complex, international and contemporary character of the Oxford Group, by examining its “vision and strategy, doctrine and theology, mentality and function”. Moreover the author has researched a remarkably wide range of sources, reflecting the specific features of this revivalist movement. He has examined not only printed and unprinted literature, but also conducted numerous personal interviews. It is no wonder that he is therefore able to provide many new insights. In particular he sheds light on the history of the Oxford Group’s activities in Sweden, which is an important supplement to previous investigations, since, strangely enough, Swedish developments have been left aside, while attention has been directed towards the corresponding (though slightly differing) developments in Norway and Denmark. No less interesting is his analysis of the Oxford Group’s involvement during the Nazi period in Germany. He is certainly aware of the more or less spectacular attempts, undertaken by the “leaders” from the international team, to convert key persons from the leadership of the Nazi Party, among them Heinrich Himmler. His intention, however, is not to indulge in sensational revelations. On the contrary, he provides a balanced, comprehensive account of this episode (especially pp 405-408). There can be no doubt that this research is important. But the length of his account – 440 pages of text – reflects a weakness, since the multitude of details threatens to dominate at the cost of the main theses. Moreover, it appears that Jarlert pays too little attention to the individual role of the undisputed leader of the Oxford Group, Frank Buchman, in particular, or to the leaders of the international team in general, considering that the analysis seeks to depict a new type of revivalist movement over against the traditional pietist and/or nationalist movements of the 19th century. Remarks of this kind, however, by no means weaken the overall impression of a solid and well-researched doctoral thesis. Jens Holger Schjorring, Aarhus Faculty of Theology, Denmark

2c) Saekularisierung, Dechristianisierung, Rechristianisierung im neuzeitlichen Europa. Bilanz und Perspektiven der Forschung. ed. Hartmut Lehmann (Veroeffentlichungen des Max-Planck- Instituts fuer Geschichte 130) Goettingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1997. 335 pp DM 72.00

For many decades disputes have continued over the meaning of the term “Secularisation” in modern European history. Many liberal intellectuals have seen this process as an irreversible and desirable development in human progress, leading as Max Weber once said to the “de-mystification of the world”, to the abandonment of outdated superstitious ideas from earlier ages, and to the growth of a rationalist, humanistic approach to life Their historians therefore ignored or downplayed the role of religion, either public or private, and concentrated solely on materialist factors as causative of events. Other scholars have questioned such hubristic assumptions and instead have described the evident, often politically-motivated, elimination of Christianity’s public role in society as a de- christianisation. Yet others have pointed to the equally apparent revival of spiritual movements, especially among the lesser- regarded sects, and to the clear evidence of re-christianisation of segments of the European population. There is therefore no consensus to be found about the significance of the three terms used in the title of this collection of essays which arose out of a conference held in Goettingen in 1994, and published under the auspices of the renowned Max Planck Institute. The book serves to provide us with a broad and scholarly overview of the state of the debate, and in fact reflects the widely divergent opinions on such controversial topics. Alois Hahn makes the valid point that the unresolved religious divisions left over from the Reformation destroyed the unitary framework of earlier centuries which provided coherence in political and social affairs. The resulting competing pluralism of views has only been accelerated in more recent years by the effects of international migration, communication and technology. Nevertheless, despite deliberate attempts to relegate religion in any of its forms from public affairs in many states, the sociological and hence political evidence of the continuing influence of religious ideas is undeniable. Hence secularisation should be used as a descriptive rather than as a prescriptive term. F.W.Graf seconds this plea by pointing to the long history and polemic character of each of these three terms. Churchmen and anti-clericals alike have mounted their campaigns and proposed their answers to these developments with scant respect to the need for precise definitions or tolerance of opposing views. Graf stresses the importance of recognising the continuing influence of traditional imagery, especially in the festivals of the church year, in counterpoint to the inevitable changes in historical settings. It is far too soon to talk of irreversible tendencies. The same theme is taken up by other contributors who warn against too functional or reductionist a view, or against dissolving these topics into an incalculable agglomeration of individualistic subjectivities. A pluralist approach would show, as van Rooden notes from the Netherlands, that each epoch has a distinctive mix of characteristics with qualities of gain and loss. The term “de-cristianisation” is at best to be limited to the public sphere, though as David Hall rightly points out, it is not to be equated with the separation of church and state, which in America enabled the many churches to thrive. On the other hand, less is said here about the clear loss of plausibility of Christian doctrines, due largely to the churches’ own mutual antagonisms, or even more so to their mistaken bestowal of theological justification to politically disastrous developments, such as the German Christians support for Nazism. No less significant have been the changes in gender roles, and the abandonment of rigid moral codes. Much can be learnt from the comparisons of conditions in Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, USA, Switzerland, Poland and Russia, as described by this international team of authors, though it is a pity that the British Isles were entirely missing. The interplay of historical, nationalistic, political and social factors is certainly too complex for any easy generalisations. Dmitri Furman writing about present-day Russia goes so far as to claim that “the results of all rationalisation and secularisation processes are not the victory of rationalism, nor the return to religion, but rather a kind of irrational, adogmatic eclecticism, a kind of ideological mist, a multi-coloured, ever-changing, Chameleon-like shifting of beliefs and ideas.” It is small wonder that confusion rather than consensus is the result. In the two final essays Wolfgang Schieder and Hartmut Lehmann attempt to find a balance. The former points out that these subjects have long been researched in France, England and Holland, but only in recent years in Germany, and have hardly begun to be studied in Poland or Russia. Furthermore, none of the participants has really come to terms with where to start or how to proceed. Almost all have their own predispositions or subjective agendas. Finding a mutually acceptable “objectivity” on such a slippery subject as “Religion” is almost impossible, especially in the “longue duree” And how can any such discussions be widened to take account of the impact of non-European religions? Hartmut Lehmann concludes that the problems of finding adequate terminologies to describe the transformations of religious life and belief in Europe over the past three centuries remains unresolved. Greater precision is indispensable. So too are more individual studies, especially desirable on topics overlapping both history and geography, such as the concepts of morality, death, mission or millenarianism. But at the same time secular historians need to take more account of religious factors as a formative, if no longer normative, aspect of the total picture. These essays can only help to provide some initial promptings towards such a goal. J.S.C.

2d) Thomas Sandkuehler, Endloesung in Galizien. Der Judenmord in Ostpolen und die Rettungsinitiativen von Berthold Beitz, 1941- 1944. Bonn: Dietz 1996 592pp

This is a book of extraordinary quality. Using German and Polish archives, the author was able to present a more detailed account of the mass murder procedures for a specific area than any other work with which I am familiar. I can think of no other country or province where the murder of the Jews was accomplished under more cruel circumstances. Although, of course, Germans were implicated in this horrendous crime, the worst perpetrators were Ukrainians, for which reason Sandkuehler takes explicit exception to the Goldhagen thesis. The author found convincing evidence both for and against Raul Hilberg’s well-known contention that Jews acquiesced passively to their fate. Readers of this newsletter will be especially interested in the third part of the book which outlines Beitz’s efforts, and those of his wife, to save Jews. Beitz was a person of deep Protestant principles and convictions, who had never succumbed to Nazi propaganda or joined the party. When he was sent to Eastern Poland to work in a managerial position for an oil company, he was shocked by the brutality of Germans and Ukrainians. He witnessed, for example, the murder of a child in its mother’s arms. Beitz was able to employ Jews for several years because of the German need for oil. He was under constant pressure to surrender them, but Beitz found he could “control” the local SS officer, Friedrich Hildebrand. During tennis matches or hunting trip he would convince Hildebrand to leave his Jews alone. Altogether, Beitz probably saved about 100 Jews. The number would have been higher, but Beitz himself was drafted into the army in 1944 and had to leave his position in Galizia. Michael Phayer, Marquette University, Milwaukee

3) Churches in the G.D.R. In the May 1997 issue, I noted the publication by the Landtag of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern of three volumes about life in the G.D.R. Three further volumes have now appeared, and in the sixth, there are two separate chapters devoted to religious conditions in this area. The first is written by a Catholic author, Bernd Schafer, with a general overview of church policies, while the second consists of four regional studies around Rostock and Stralsund. These can again be consulted in Regent College Library.

4) Work in progress: Kyle Jantzen

Nationalism and the Protestant Clergy. I am undertaking an analysis of parish clergy from three church districts in Wuerttemberg, Brandenburg and Saxony during the period of the Third Reich. Based on sources from the Evangelical Central Archive in Berlin, the Wuerttemberg Land Church Archive in Stuttgart, as well as parish, city and church district archives in Brandenburg, Saxony and Wuerttemberg, I am attempting to evaluate clerical nationalism on the local level and relate it to the church politics of the German Church Struggle.

Ever since Friedrich Baumgaertel’s _Wider die Kirchenkampf- Legenden_ appeared in 1958, doubts have been raised about the popular notion that the German Protestant clergy was neatly split into camps of supporters and opponents of National Socialism and Nazi church policy. Since then, historians of the German Church Struggle have generally recognised that Protestant clergy welcomed the new Nazi regime in 1933. Nonetheless, the historiography of the German Church Struggle has been dominated by a dualistic paradigm pitting theologically orthodox members of the Confessing Church against pro-Nazi “German Christians” and their racial theology. Implicit in this dualism is the notion that the Confessing Church was ultimately an anti-Nazi movement as well. This view had its basis in the many memoirs of clergy and chronicles of the Church Struggle written during and immediately after the Nazi era, most by those loyal to the Confessing Church. The martyrdom of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and imprisonment of Martin Niemoller – and the attention they received – strengthened the impression that the Confessing Church was active in resistance to the Nazi regime. The weakness of this interpretation was that it conflated opposition to the “German Christian” movement and the Nazi church policy with opposition to the National Socialist regime itself. In reality, many Protestant clergy – even if they opposed the application of Nazi racial ideology and administrative interference in the churches – believed wholeheartedly in the Nazi movement and its national and racial ideology, during and after 1933. They spoke of themselves as National Socialists, endorsed the foreign policy of the Third Reich, and helped to legitimate Adolf Hitler’s leadership.

Protestant pastors announced that the emergence of Adolf Hitler was a gift from God, and many regarded his life as a divine mission. Pastors praised the Nazis for their anti-Bolshevism, and emphasised the sobriety and piety of the new Fuehrer. Some who opposed the Nazi church policy still joined the Party out of a sense of duty to the national renewal. Generally the Protestant clergy lo oked eagerly for the recovery of German pride and power, regardless of their church-political orientation. This paradox creates problems for the interpretation of the Church Struggle and demands a closer examination of the pastors’ records throughout Germany. Kyle Jantzen, Instructor, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon. PhD cand. McGill University, Montreal (Ed.’s note: see also introduction to J.S.Conway, The Nazi Persecution of the Churches, re-issued edition 1997)

With all best wishes to you all,

John S.Conway

Association of Contemporary Church Historians

(Arbeitsgemeinschaft kirchlicher Zeitgeschichtler)

John S. Conway, Editor. University of British Columbia

Newsletter- October 1997- Vol.III, no.10

Contents

1) Conference announcement – ASCH-Seattle – Jan. ’98

2) Book reviews:

a)Festschrift for John Moses.

b)Baumann, Protestantismus und Frauenemanzipation (Germany)

c) Davis, A Long Walk to Church (Russia)

d) Sells, A Bridge Betrayed (Bosnia)

Dear Friends,

To those of you in the northern hemisphere starting a new academic session, my very best wishes. I am most grateful to those who have sent in contributions, which enables this month’s reviews to have a truly ecumenical flavour. You may be interested to hear that, after 34 issues, our membership statistics look like this: USA 63, Germany 23, Canada 39, Australia 5, U.K. 7, Switzerland 2, Denmark, Belgium, Poland, Norway, South Africa, Austria, and Holland 1 each. New members are always welcome.

1) The next meeting of the American Society of Church History will be held in Seattle from January 8th-11th. Of particular interest to our members will be two sessions on Protestant Responses to Political Change in Germany 1933-1990, one organised by Brian Huck, Pennsylvania, and one by Matthew Hockenos, New York University. The contact person is Richard Kieckhefer, = kieckhefer@nwu.edu

2) Book Reviews:

a) Power, Conscience and Opposition. Essays in German History in honour of John A.Moses, ed. A.Bonnell, G.Munro and M.Travers. New York: P.Lang 1996 538pp

John Moses, in whose honour this voluminous Festschrift has been prepared, is one of Australia’s foremost historians, and the contents reflect his wide interests not only in German history, on which he has written extensively on such topics as the foreign policy of the Kaiserreich, trades unionism, the Fischer controversy, and the relations of church and state, but also on German-Australian issues. The 26 essays dedicated to him range therefore widely, but can be grouped into four thematic blocs. The first deals with questions of ideology and power from the Kaiserreich to the Third Reich, the second with democratic opposition in Germany, the third is somewhat opaquely entitled “Rethinking German history”, while the fourth is devoted to German Australian perspectives. A bibliography of Moses’ publications and a tabula gratulatoria conclude the book.

In the first section, Peter Overlak describes the idea of German “mission” as promoted by German academics during the Kaiserrreich and its relation to naval armament in the context of Germany’s Weltpolitik. These predecessors of the “spirit of 1914” exemplified the logic of the ideas of Germany’s elite, and thus in part support Fischer’s view that the first world war was not an accident. Peter Hempenstall’s account of the difficulties of writing the biography of Wilhelm Solf, one of this elite, shows the predicament historians can sometimes find themselves in, when asked by the family to write on “objects” of academic interest. Douglas Newton’s analysis of the disillusionment of some of the Germanists working for British intelligence at the end of the war describes an interesting episode in bureaucratic in-fighting in the wake of the Versailles Peace Conference. The Germanists, in particular Alfred Zimmern, James Headlam-Morley and Edwyn Bevan, all recommended nourishing the new German Republic, and opposed a harsh peace which, in their view, destroyed the hopes of stabilizing the situation. Maybe this is one of the reasons why the British public was not, as Martin Travers suggests, particularly alarmed by Hitler’s rise to power in 1933.

The second part analyses democratic oppositional movements in 19th and 20th century Germany, from 1817-48 (Walter Grab) to Wilhelm Leuschner’s resistance activities against Hitler (G.Besier). I found three essays particularly interesting. John Conway describes bourgeois German pacifism during the first world war, which was overwhelmed by the patriotic outburst of the “spirit of 1914”; his essay provides a good contrast to the “dominant” paradigm as described by Overlak. Gregory Munro focusses on the War Guilt question and German Catholicism, with examples from the Allgemeine Rundschau of Munich, which shows that religious cleavages in Germany also affected their interpretation of war guilt. Finally Julian Jenkins’s analysis of the ecumenical movement in the Weimar Republic and Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s role in it not only underlines the difficulty of bridging the gap between German nationalism and western liberal ideas, but also helps to explain why the conservative protestant tradition had little problem accepting Hitler as the saviour of the German nation. The third part is somewhat of a mixed bag, including, among others, essays by Wolf Gruner on the French Revolution and German identity, Peter Monteath on concentration camp memorials, Bernd Hoppauf on Ernst Junger as an early example of “forgetting” the Holocaust. and Georg Iggers on common bases of 19th century European historiographical thought. Irmline Veit-Brause’analysis of twists in historicism handed down a more lenient verdict than Iggers, and was most interesting. Less so were two weak papers by Immanuel Geiss and Ulf Sundhausen which were too simplistic, and should have been revised. The final section deals with German-Australian perspectives, covering topics such as the immigration of 1848 intellectuals to Australia (Gerhard Fischer), Australian reactions to the Franco- Prussian war (Alan Corkhill), and Fascism and the second world war (J.S.Klan). I particularly enjoyed Johannes Voigt’s richly documented study of how the transportation of criminals to Australia served as a model for debates in Germany on the same theme. The generally high standard of academic research not only reflects positively on the authors, but even more so on John Moses, who gave the impulse to pursuing many of the themes and perspectives here. We are all grateful to him for his fine initiatives, to which this book is a fitting tribute. Matthias Zimmer, University of Alberta, Edmonton

b) Ursula Baumann, Protestantismus und Frauenemanzipation in Deutschland 1950 bis 1920, Frankfurt: Campus Verlag 1992 383pp

Ursula Baumann opens her book with an observation by Virginia Woolf. It may be, Woolf postulated, that the history of opposition to the emancipation of women is as interesting as the story of that liberation itself.(7) Bauman’s study confrims Woolf’s point. The history of the relationship between Protestantism and women’s movements in Germany from 1850 to 1920 is above all a tale of obstruction and resistance: not only from obstinate theologians and wary husbands and fathers, but from conservative church women eager to distance themselves from what they considered the excesses of the bourgeois, let alone working-class, women’s movements. True to Woolf’s prediction, that story of opposition is both interesting and important; moreover, like women’s history itself, it intersects with every aspect of individual and collective life. In fact, one of Baumann’s most significant achievements is her integration of often disparate subfields of history. Church history, women’s history, political and social history – all come together here. This is a work inspired by Rudolf von Thadden’s call to write ‘Kirchengeschichte als Gesellschaftgeschichte’, informed by Thomas Nipperdey’s synthesis of religion, politics and culture, and committed to gender as a central category of historical analysis. Scholars interested in German conservatism, secularization, and class struggles, as well as those concerned with religious or women’s issues, will find this book a valuable resource.

Bauman’s lucid introductory chapters situate her topic in the context of German respnses to modernization. Industrialization, urbanization, and secularization produced anxiety among Protestant churchmen. Insecure about the future of the church, they saw demands for women’s rights as related threats to ecclesiastical relevance. Women in their own ranks occupied an ambivalent position. As descendants of Eve, they could somehow be blamed for humanity’s fall. But as the most loyal participants in church life, as Christian wives and mothers, they also represented the last, best hope for spiritual rejuvenation. According to Baumann, this two- pronged stereotype – woman as both scapegoat and cure-all for social and ecclesiastical ills – characterized organized Protestantism in Germany until well into this century. Baumann emphasizes the conservatism of Protestant responses to women’s issues. Indeed, her narrative shows a marked, but not inevitable, move to the right within German Protestantism, theologically, socially and politically from the 1840s until after the First World War.

Baumann divides her study into five chronological periods. The first, from about 1830 to 1880, laid the groundwork for subsequent developments; it witnessed both the foundation of a middle-class women’s movement in Germany and the birth of the Diakonissenwesen, which established a tradition of Protestant female charitable work. During phase two, about 1890, a critique of the subordination of women emerged within German Protestantism. Baumann spends most time on the third phase, from the late 1890s to 1912. It saw the founding of the three German women’s organizations that would shape the church’s formal response to women’s causes for the next decades: the Deutsch- Evangelische Frauenbund (DEF), the kirchlich-sozialen Frauengruppen, and the Evangelische Frauenhilfe. Conservatives dominated all three, although their rivalries and differences were often intense. During phase four, from about 1912 to 1918,: Protestant responses to women’s movements – and to workers’ and liberal causes in general – became increasingly hostile. The war exacerbated a trend to the right. In 1918, the DEF cut ties to the secular Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine (BDF), whose advocacy of female suffrage the DEF refused to endorse. Thus, by phase five, 1918-1919, the women’s groups, like dominant voices within German Protestantism as a whole, were positioned for hostility to the new republic. For leading members of the women’s organizations, hatred of Versailles and nostalgia for the Kaiserreich found political expression in the Deutschnationale Volkspartei (DNVP). Baumann points out the irony that the DNVP, home to so many vociferous opponents of female suffrage, itself benefited disproportionately from women’s votes in the first elections of the fledgling republic (259).

Throughout the book Baumann stresses the heterogeneity of German Protestantism – its orthodox and liberal camps, its regional variations, its ability to produce surprising alliances across theological and political lines. For example, Adolf Stoecker the Hof- und Domprediger best known for his antisemitic Christian Social Movement, emerges as a constant supporter of women’s rights in the church. Baumann calls him the “conservative modernizer par excellence” (118). Also conspicuous is the prominent role of single women. From Amalie Sieveking (born 1794), the pioneer of female charitable work, to Elisabeth Malo (born 1855), outspoken proponent of women’s full participation in the church, and Elisabeth Gnauck-Kuehne (born 1850), whose 1894 address to the Evangelisch-Sozialen Kongress represented women’s triumph over the silence imposed by St. Paul’s injunction (89), the individuals who dominate Baumann’s story remained unmarried. In 1910, Baumann indicates, almost half the DEF’s members in Hanover were single women (126). Here we see how desperately scarce opportunities for women outside the home must have been in pre-1918 Germany.

Baumann is at her best when she uses her outstanding published and archival sources to personalize her subject. For example, she draws an effective contrast between Amalie Sieveking’s vision of autonomous women’s charitable organizations and Johann Hinrich Wichern’s concept that women, as supposedly responsible for human sinfulness, owed the male world both abnegation and obedience (53). Baumann’s book loses some appeal, however, when it devolves into a purely organizational history replete with details and acronyms. Two long chapters dealing with the period around 1899 tend most in this direction.

Baumann’s research is meticulous but some important areas remain underexplored. She emphasizes Protestant heterogeneity but pays no attention to the Reformed tradition or its legacy in Germany. She mentions Christian antisemitism but does not develop the connection between hostility to Judaism – or to some constructed image of what it was – and antagonism, or in Stoecker’s case openness, towards women’s rights. Baumann moves very quickly through the final chapters, on the World War and revolution, so that I at least was left somewhat disappointed. Drawing attention to these gaps is intended less as a criticism than an indication of both the stimulating, creative qualities of the work and the need for research in related areas. Like recent contributions by Nancy Reagin, A German Women’s Movement: Class and Gender in Hanover, 1880-1933 (1995) and George Mosse, The Image of Man: the Creation of Modern Masculinity (1996), Baumann’s book helps to deepen our understanding of gender in the Kaiserreich. More importantly, like Reagin and Mosse, Baumannn shows that attention to issues of gender in turn sheds new light on every facet of the past, including the life of the church. Doris Bergen, Notre Dame University

c) Nathaniel Davis, A Long Walk to Church: A Contemporary History of Russian Orthodoxy. Boulder, Co.:Westview Press 1995.

It is always risky to write on something so contemporary as the Russian Orthodox church, especially its life in the post-Soviet era, but Davis has done his work well. Moreover, as an observer of the Russian scene for well over four decades, he has excellent qualifications to do so. He began travelling to Russia in the 1950s, completed a dissertation on religion and the communist governments in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe at the Fletcher School in 1960, and spent thirty-six years in the U.S. Foreign Service. He was frequently posted to Moscow and served as President Lyndon Johnson’s senior adviser on Soviet and East European affairs. After retiring he assumed a professorship at Harvey Mudd College and devoted his scholarly endeavour to preparing this modern history of Russian Orthodoxy. The book is a prodigious effort that draws primarily on printed Russian sources and archives which have been opened since 1991, but he also reveals an intimate knowledge of existing scholarship in the field. The endnotes comprise one-third of the entire text. The title comes from an experience he had forty years ago in a provincial town. He was looking for a church and asked an elderly woman if there was a church near by and how he might get to it. Her response was: “It’s a long, long walk to church”. This reflected how many churches had been closed during the communist era. Particularly in the east and north of Russia one could travel hundreds of kilometres to reach the nearest functioning church. For many Russians it was truly a long walk to church. He shows that twice in the history of the Soviet state the regime virtually drove the institutional church to its death – the Stalinist 1930s and the slow stagnation of the Brezhnev era. Fortuitous events saved the church both times – the Second World War, with Stalin’s more permissive attitude towards the church, and the millenium of the baptism of Rus in 1988 along with Gorbachov’s pragmatism. Davis recognises that Orthodoxy is a living faith and shows clearly that in spite of official hostility and the oft-expressed desire to extinguish religion, the church was so much part of the Russian psyche that it could not be rooted out. The opening chapter briefly sketches out the position of the church from the Bolshevik Revolution to World War II. This is familiar ground which numerous writers have covered. The turn around that occurred during and immediately after the war is also well-known. The treatment of the church during the Krushchev and Brezhnev years is dealt with in considerably more detail and is accompanied by some statistical material. The millenium of 1988 and the Orthodox Church’s recovery of its institutional strength in 1988-91 makes especially interesting reading. Very informative but less inspiring is the account of the strife within the church over the revelation of KGB activities within its ranks and the splintering resulting from nationalistic secessionist movements. In the second half of the book the focus shifts from the institutional history to the integral elements of the church itself – the clergy, underground congregations, monastic institutions and their personnel, theological education, publications (including Bibles), finances, and the laity. Davis concludes that considerable continuity in the history of the church existed and that a progressive decline in communist dedication to its extinction took place. As in pre-Soviet Russia a certain kind of symbiotic relationship between church and state existed. However, Gorbachov’s moves in the area of democratization and new thinking in foreign policy led to the Russian Orthodox Church losing its status as the protected church of the state. This removed the shield against challenge and schism; the Greek Catholics, Ukrainian Autocephalists, and Protestant evangelicals quickly moved to assert themselves. Resurgent nationalism was a mighty force against Russian Orthodoxy as well. Yet the fragmentation of the Soviet Union had the effect of strengthening the church in the vast Russian Federation, and one wonders whether forces seeking national salvation will seek to co-opt the church. Will the church be a ready instrument for Russification, discipline, control and order as it once was, such as in the struggle against the Mongol Tartars, the 17th century Time of Troubles, or in the 19th century doctrine of Official Nationality? A major challenge facing the church today is the superficial Christianity of the population and how to respond to this with an effective spiritual outreach. The Baptists and evangelical sects are hoping to fill this vacuum, although Davis tells us far too little about their role in the new Russia. All in all, this is a rich book, full of insights and information about the post-Soviet church, and deeply appreciative of the role of religion in Russian history. Richard Pierard, Indiana State University. (Dick Pierard spent a month in Russia this spring teaching a course on church, state and religious liberty at the Moscow Theological Seminary of the Evangelical Christians-Baptists).

d) Michael A.Sells, The Bridge Betrayed. Religion and Genocide in Bosnia, Berkeley: U.of California Press, 1996. 244 pp

Michael Sells’ indictment is graphic, detailed and horrifying. He asserts that the genocide of Bosnia’s Muslims in the recent civil war was orchestrated and justified by Christian extremism and intolerance. Both Orthodox Serbs and Catholic Croatians joined in the propagation of a vibrant “Christoslavism”, which combined the mobilization of historical religious mythology and the use of ethnic stereotypes to embark on a campaign of “extermination of the Turkifiers”. Serbs made use of nationalist literary traditions invented in the nineteenth century, or appealed to the fervent one- sided memories of the battle of Kosovo six hundred years ago. Croats, including their President Tudjman, openly called for the eradication of the “Asiatic influence” of the dangerous forces of Islam, and the creation of a defensible frontier for “Europe”. Unspeakable horrors were perpetrated in the name of such “ethnic cleansing” but the popular justification was made in religious- ethnic terms. Massacres of Bosnian Muslim women, for example, were defended as necessary as revenge for alleged plans by Bosnian Muslims to seize Serb women and put them in harems. The mass murders in the so-called safe area of Srebenica, under the very eyes of an UN contingent, were gruesomely accompanied by extensive measures to eradicate all traces of the Muslims ever having lived there. The Serbian Orthodox Church in Bosnia made the same mistake as the Catholic Church had made earlier in Croatia; it allowed itself to become the servant of religious nationalist militancy. Serb bigotry was fuelled by highlighting the motif of Muslims as Christ killers and race traitors, and by building a massive new cathedral in Belgrade on the spot where Ottoman Turks had allegedly burned the bones of the Serbian saint Sava. So too in Croatia, despite protests by Cardinal Kuharic of Zagreb against war crimes in Herzogovina, his own previous record of glorifying Croatia’s thirteen hundred years of Catholic history, and his attempts to deny the atrocities of the Ustacha government in Croatia during the second world war, gave a more accurate picture of Croatian Catholic attitudes, which were only enhanced by the phenomenal cult of the Virgin at Medjugorje. Nor are the bystanders let off the hook. Western church leaders seem to have been too much influenced by the long-held stereotype that the Balkan peoples have been prone to maniacal violence for centuries, so that no influential protests against the genocide proceeding there have been made. Nor did the Pope made any explicit reference to the excesses of his followers in such places as Mostar, but instead spoke with equal fervour of the suffering of all peoples in the area. However well intentioned, such appeals were of little comfort to the immediate victims. Sells’ vision is for Bosnia to return to the pluralistic kind of society it enjoyed during the Tito years, when all religions lived side by side, and valued the historic treasures of their respective artistic creativity, so needlessly and deliberately destroyed by both Serbian artillery and Croatian militias. His warning of how easily religious intolerance can be stirred up in the service of political extremism is a timely reminder that the Christian record of the past still needs to be dealt with if such recurrence of intolerance under a religious veneer is not to tarnish church history once again. J.S.C

With best wishes from a wet autumnal Vancouver, John S.Conway jconway@unixg.ubc.ca

Association of Contemporary Church Historians

(Arbeitsgemeinschaft kirchlicher Zeitgeschichtler)

John S. Conway, Editor. University of British Columbia

Newsletter – September 1997 – Vol III, no.9

Dear Friends,

August has been a holiday month, but I have pleasure in sending you two reviews of books by distinguished Canadian

scholars, one from Quebec and one from Ontario.

Table of Contents

1) Conference announcement: Wittenberg, November 1997

2) Book reviews: Baum, The Church for Others, Vance, Death so Noble

3) Journal article: Heilbronner and Muhlberger, “Catholics in 1933”

4) Member’s publication: Hilmar Pabel on Erasmus

1) Conference announcement. The 1997 meeting of the Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte group, together with LUISA (Luther in Sachsen- Anhalt), will be held in Wittenberg from November 6-9th, on the subject of “Religion and Denominations – Foundations of Current and Future Societies in Europe?” Papers will be offered by M. Funcke, Bonn, N.Hope, Glasgow, D.Pollack, N.Hjalm, J.Bowden, London, under the leadership of Profs. Martin Onnasch, Jorg Ohlemacher, Peter Steinbach. The address is Luisa@esc.de

2a) Gregory Baum, The Church for Others. Protestant Theology in Communist East Germany. Grand Rapids,Michigan: William Eerdmans Publishing Co. 1996 xvii + 156pp US $ 15.00

Gregory Baum was brought up in Berlin but was forced to flee by the Nazis as a teenager. He subsequently has become Canada’s leading Catholic theologian with a strong interest in ecumenical affairs. In 1992 a return visit to Berlin gave him an opportunity to study the fate of the East German churches, particularly the Protestants, during the unlamented forty years of communist rule. To his surprise, he found that the Protestant theology advanced there was a pastoral and intellectual achievement very different from the kind of liberation theology he knew from Latin America. This short insightful work seeks to analyse the contours of this notable accomplishment, to make his findings available to a North American audience, and at the same time to explain the “brilliant contextual theology that steered a Protestant church through an important period of its history”. It is a most welcome addition to our awareness of these issues. In recent years, West German critics have taken considerable pains to denigrate all aspects of life under communist control, including the role of the churches of the German Democratic Republic. Their leaders have been depicted as complicit in maintaining the regime’s undemocratic totalitarianism, and even as willing accomplices of the notorious Stasi. This is, as Baum suggests in his introduction, all part of the wide-spread tendency in Germany, supported by the government, to equate the dictatorship of the GDR with that of Nazi Germany, and in so doing to co-operate with certain historical revisionists who want to minimize the singular and unparalleled horror of the Nazi period. Baum, however, describes the ideas and actions of the GDR church leaders, not from the biased reports of the hostile state, but from their own evaluations of their tasks and theological understandings. He thus strikes a much more positive note, which is both a welcome contrast to many German commentaries, a pioneering work for a Catholic theologian, and a fine ecumenical achievement. In 1945 the East German churches emerged from their twelve years of Church Struggle against Nazism and hoped to begin again in freedom. The initial attitudes of the Soviet military commanders were surprisingly favourable. But after the establishment of the communist-controlled state in 1949, they soon found themselves once again under dictatorial rule. The new state was determined to root out all potential opposition from class enemies, and in particular to control all aspects of education and youth work. Not surprisingly the church leaders reverted to the tactics which had seemed efficacious against the Nazis, adopted a fortress mentality, raised the drawbridge against any Marxist assaults, and stood watch on the ramparts eagerly hoping for rescue from their allies in West Germany. Ten years later, the defects of this defensive posture were apparent. The churches had become locked in a ghetto-like existence, and were increasingly irrelevant to the society at large. They had lost the battle to maintain their influence on young people, and communist indoctrination seemed to be succeeding. A group of the younger clergy, therefore, sought a new stance which would face up to the new reality of the permanence of their imposed “socialist society”. They sought a new pastoral relationship which would re-define their mission and encourage Christians to assume responsibility for the society in which they were, however reluctantly, obliged to live and exercise their witness. The price to be paid was to abandon nostalgia for the past, to forgo their hopes of the restoration of their former privileged position, and more practically to cut many of their links with the church in West Germany. At the same time the East German regime moderated its policies, recognising that rooting out the churches’ influence would take a lot longer than the Marxist ideologues imagined. The way was open for a new arrangement, though the church leaders were careful to avoid any grounds for the accusation that they were accepting an ideological loyalty to or accommodation with the communist-dominated state. The government, for its part, put pressure on the churches to support its claims for international recognition, and used its power to promote sympathetic pastors in the state-supported faculties of theology. Church delegates were allowed to travel to international conferences to argue in favour of the independent existence of the G.D.R. or its alleged “peace policies”, such as presented at the Christian Peace Congresses based in Prague. By such means the state sought to gain acceptance for its political aims, while the church sought to dispel communist suspicions that it was a Trojan horse working for the overthrow of the regime, and at the same time avoiding counter- charges that it had become a mere lackey of the new state. Baum’s chief concern is with the theology developed in this tension-ridden setting, which “allowed the Christian community to reflect critically on the church’s own past and draw important lessons from it, to invent and evaluate new pastoral approaches and policies, to react to initiatives taken by the government, and to respond to the challenges of a new historical situation”.(p.20) This theology rejected two extreme positions: either to deny any legitimacy to the G.D.R. regime, or to surrender to an uncritical acceptance of the socialist state. Rather, the church leaders called for a recognition that God had called them to exercise their ministry in this particular place, and to seek ways to bring the Christian message to bear on all of its concerns, social and political, as well as personal. Such a witness called for recognition of the theologically problematic character of the Constantinian era, and the associated idea of the duty of Christendom to act as the normative and regulative body providing ethical and spiritual guidance in society. Instead, in the new situation, Christians should discover a more biblically based sense of community. Baum rightly points out two distinguishing and important features: discernment of place (Ortsbestimmung) and the learning process (Lernprozess). The former called not merely for the abandonment of the privileged position of the past, but for an acknowledgement that the church in a secularized society could no longer command but only serve as a creative witnessing minority. The latter invited a critical examination of the church’s past record, including its too close reliance on former governments, its neglect of the industrial masses, and the need to take seriously the Marxist critique of religion. The impulse for this theology came from the fact that most of these leaders had been members of the Confessing Church during the Church Struggle against Nazism, and heeded the critical post-war evaluations, such as the Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt and the more concrete Darmstadt declaration of 1947. This latter had called for a renunciation of the church’s traditional nationalism and militarism, and chided the church for thinking too much about preserving its own institutional autonomy instead of supporting the victims of Nazi violence. Baum rightly notes that, as a result, the East German church made strenuous efforts to overcome the legacy of antisemitism and frequently expressed both its repentance for its past attitudes towards Judaism, and an explicit solidarity with Israel, a view which the GDR state greatly disliked. This impulse was also much influenced by the theology of the Swiss theologian, Karl Barth, whose proto-Calvinist writings, his critique of the “establishmentarianism” of Lutheran orthodoxy, his optimistic assessment of Marxist socialism and his anti- Americanism, all seemed to suit the new East German church situation. In the 1960s and 1970s this theology was greatly strengthened by the reception of the prison writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, martyred by the Nazis in 1945. Bonhoeffer’s call for radical reform, abandonment of past shibboleths, and in particular his appeal for the church to become “the church for others” – here excellently summarised by Baum (p.87-102) – was eagerly taken up by his former associates such as the Presiding Bishop in East Berlin, Albrecht Schonherr. Bonhoeffer’s stress on the ethical and pastoral witness of the church provided the basis on which the church could minister in the new reality, seeking to play its role as a witnessing church, not against, not beside, not for, but within Socialism. Undoubtedly many of these leaders were ready to believe that the socialist regime could live up to the humanistic idealism it propagated, or when it did not, were prepared, like Heino Falcke, to call for “an improvable socialism”. They called this “critical solidarity” or “discriminating co-operation”, and appealed for a constructive dialogue. This illusion, that here was a preferable political and social order to the discredited forms of western capitalism, was shared by most of these church leaders. Hence their grievous disappointment in 1989-90 at the haste with which their congregations supported re-unification with West Germany. As one bishop ruefully remarked afterwards: “the consensus in the church must have been smaller than we then thought”. Baum clearly finds this theology appealing. He correctly notes that it was enthusiastically endorsed in the 1970s and 1980s by such international bodies as the World Council of Churches. In these circles it appeared as a model of Christian pastoral witness and service fully in line with the new emphasis on the church becoming “the voice of the voiceless”, and giving a prophetic lead to a world still too much attached to the ethos of capitalism and exploitation, especially in the Third World. This aspiration for a world transformed, witnessing to the values of peace and justice, and expressing solidarity with the oppressed in their struggle for emancipation, even when coupled with a consciousness of human sin, was and remains very appealing, especially to theologians with left-wing views. But just how much support it received from the GDR’s rank and file church members remains unclear. The harsh fact is that the church’s nominal membership dropped drastically during these years from 80% to 31% of the population, and is probably even less today. It must also be acknowledged that there was a certain elitism in this small band of church leaders, who sometimes did not take pains to contradict the view that theirs was a superior theology to that propounded in West Germany. Their optimistic assessment of their role in the “real socialism” of the GDR was to be cruelly thwarted by secular events, particularly the collapse of the Soviet Empire. But they continued to believe that theirs was the better way, and hence have been deeply hurt by all the discredit poured upon them in the years since 1990, and in effect have been reduced to an impotent silence. Baum’s sympathetic portrayal of this experiment and the theology behind it, at least sets the record straight by faithfully depicting how these ideas were developed in the difficult and tense situation of the communist dictatorship. He rightly defends these theologians from the charge that they were communist stooges, or alternatively, naive innocents who were taken in by the duplicities of the regime. Since he only briefly discusses the actual church- political practices of the period, he avoids any detailed analysis of the more problematic questions of the church leaders’ dealings with the Stasi, or the charge that they silently failed to protest the regime’s tyrannical injustices.. This is a theological not a historical treatise. Shortly after 1989 one of these leaders commented: “In the beginning there was too much praise; now there is too much blame”. Baum’s skilful account seeks to achieve a more balanced assessment. Particularly helpful is his account of the ideas which enabled the church to steer between total repudiation or total assimilation in the Marxist society, rejecting both pietistic individualism and subservient conformism, in favour of taking the risk of faith in the service of the wider community, in line with Bonhoeffer’s legacy. It was just this kind of witness which was reflected in the World Council’s radical stance of the 1980s with its call for the church to support the ideals of peace, justice and the integrity of creation. This theme indeed was central to the GDR churches’ activity, and can be seen as formative in the growth of the protest movements which eventually helped to bring down the regime. This vision of “God’s Shalom” in today’s world remains a powerful impulse, and owes much to the GDR theologians’ interpretations of faith as discipleship. Now that political events have irrevocably altered the life of the East German churches, in effect leading to an annexation of the East without recognizing the positive and constructive elements of their experience, Baum’s evaluation of this legacy is a fitting and thoughtful tribute to a notable endeavour. J.S.C.

2b) Jonathan F.Vance: Death so Noble: Memory, Meaning, and the First World War. Vancouver: UBC Press 1997. xv + 319pp. Can $39.95

The casualties suffered on the Western Front in the First World War were so numerous, so unexpected, and so emotionally overwhelming that the people of every country involved were obliged to find some way of coming to terms with these irreparable losses. Personal, corporate and national grief had to be assuaged. For the victors, these sacrifices could be seen as a necessary price in a just war; for the vanquished there was not even this consolation. Jonathan Vance is to be congratulated on his fine achievement in spelling out how Canadians met this collective need to commemorate their war-time participation, suffering and death. Canada was not alone in contributing a usable mythology for this purpose, and Vance’s study is one of several in this genre, notably those by Jay Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning, George Mosse, Fallen Soldiers, or Modris Ekstein, Rites of Spring. But his success in pulling together the previous Canadian writings and sources, including his splendid use of illustrations – a very desirable recourse in such a book – is altogether admirable, excellently researched, finely published, and to a large extent convincing. Vance begins with the entirely valid point that the memory, and subsequent mythology, of Canada’s war became so appealing because it filled explicit needs. For some it was consolatory; for others, explanatory. It could also be didactic, inspirational or even entertaining. Above all it served to remind the survivors of their good fortune, and to enable them to alleviate their hurt by paying tribute to their fallen comrades. Their leaders quickly exploited the war for their own political purposes, either to break the stranglehold of British imperial control, or to seek to forge a stronger internal bond in the Confederation. Moralists could claim that victory was a deserved reward for defeating German aggression. Others sought ways to fashion a usable past out of the war. After 1918, far more Canadians sought to celebrate their triumph on the battlefield than were appalled by the senselessness and slaughter of the trenches. The idea of having fought for the preservation of intrinsic Canadian values against the “barbarous Hun” was staunchly maintained, and played no small part in 1939 when such participation was again invoked. The attempts by some liberal clergymen, energetic but wrong-headed ladies in the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, and a few radical academics, to challenge this interpretation was largely in vain. And the widespread acceptance and nurture of this Canadian war mythology brought about the eclipse of Canadian pacifism. Vance is also correct to point out that the Canadian clergy and chaplains were staunch upholders of the righteousness of the Allied cause. At the same time, they readily enough equated the soldiers’ sacrifices with the sacrifice of Christ. Thus their suffering and loss could be reconciled with Christian idealism. This imagery found its way on to numerous war memorials, persisting in Canada long after it had been challenged elsewhere. In front of several CPR stations, the angel of victory bears the fallen soldier to heaven. So too churchmen provided the argument that the loss of 60,000 Canadian youths was not in vain, since they had become “immortalized” in the service of their country – and Christ. Both the liturgy and imagery of the annual Remembrance Day parades still invokes this Christian symbolism even if often transmuted into secularized or “multicultured” forms. By turning the soldiers’ graveyards into dignified gardens of the dead across the face of France, the spiritual character of their sacrifice could be emphasized. The statuary on Vimy Ridge became and remains the cathedral of Canadian war memorials, symbolizing both national pride and collective loss in a semi-Christian allegorical but very impressive manner. The paradox was that, even though many (most?) veterans returned with a strong opposition to “organized religion”, nevertheless they accepted and reinforced the image of Jesus and his passion as a fellow sufferer. By such means could meaning be given both to the enormity of the sacrifices and the greatness of the cause. To be fair, Vance could have made more of the fact that most chaplains returned from the war disillusioned by their earlier glorification of war and the crusading militarism of their sermons. On this point the recently-published Bickersteth diaries give trenchant witness. Many chaplains sought to carry over the spirit of war-time fellowship into civilian life, but found little response for any large-scale acceptance of the need for political and social reform. Comradeship was welcome but communism was not. Nevertheless, Vance suggests, Canadians were much slower than others at being disillusioned by the impact and memory of the war. For years they remained attached to the edifying, romanticised and necessarily sanitized version put out for home consumption. One reason lay in the fact that there was no available alternative either in literature or painting. Another was that Canadians wanted it that way. Perhaps Vance could have been on stronger ground if he had been able to quantify such assertions. But he rightly points out how valuable was the image of the civilian-soldier defending the decent values of his Canadian homeland, and commemorating this sense of dedication in annual reunions in the years that followed. Such themes, as spelled out by poets, artists and regimental histories, outweighed the more critical voices who sought to focus on the mismanagement of the war or on the senseless slaughter of young lives. Today the vast majority of Canadians have never fought in a war. They find it difficult, eighty years later, to see why so many men were seduced by the notions of imperial loyalty, or heroic warfare, and took part so readily in far-off battles from which they did not return. Vance’s skill is to show how and why these now- faded ideals not only gave Canadians the impulse to join in but were preserved in post-war commemorations. This spirit was best incorporated in John McCrae’s famous appeal to maintain the faith “In Flanders Field”, which is still recalled with sincere fidelity in countless annual ceremonies and not just by Canadians. Mobilizing this idealism for the cause of a new Canadian national consciousness proved, however, to be problematic. Vance rightly stresses that the rhetoric of the war’s mythology was too often contradicted by peace-time realities. The belief that the sacrifices of the war would lead to an assimilated Canadian population united around the ideals of national greatness and social justice for which the dead had allegedly fought, was and is still unrealised. Nevertheless Vance’s conclusion is eminently fair. The memory of the Great War in Canadian hearts was not artificially induced, nor imposed from above. Rather it sprouted from the grief, the hope, and the search for meaning of a thousand Canadian communities. J S.C.

3) Journal article: O Heilbronner and D.Muhlberger, “The Achilles Heel of German Catholicism: ‘Who voted for Hitler?’ Revisited” in European History Quarterly, vol 27, no 2, April 1997, p.221 ff.

4) Hilmar Pabel, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C. has just published the following: Conversing with God: Prayer in Erasmus’ Pastoral Writings, U.of Toronto Press 1997; also “Erasmus of Rotterdam and Judaism” in Archiv fuer Reformationsgeschichte, 87 (1996), 9-37.

Best wishes to you all, especially those starting a new academic season. John S.Conway jconway@unixg.ubc.ca

Association of Contemporary Church Historians

(Arbeitsgemeinschaft kirchlicher Zeitgeschichtler)

John S. Conway, Editor. University of British Columbia

Newsletter August 1997 – Vol III, no 8

Contents

1) Niemoller debate

2) Conference paper precis

– Bergen: “Military chaplains . . .”

– Munro: “The Reich Church Ministry . . . ”

3) Book reviews:

Carpenter, Robert Runcie

Misselwitz, Nicht laenger mit dem Gesicht nach Westen

Swoboda, Revolution of the Candles

Holmes and Keele, When Truth was Treason

4) Journal articles:

R.Sun, “Catholic-Marxist competition . . .”

R.Birn, Goldhagen review

5) Book note: Mission Matters

1) Niemoller’s most famous quotation: “First they came for the Communists . . . ” In the June issue of this Newsletter, I drew attention to an article by Ruth Zerner on this subject in the book “Jewish-Christian Encounters”. Drew Kadel of the Burke Library, Union Theological Seminary, New York has now sent me a response he published in the Journal of Religious and Theological Information, Vol 2 (2) 1996, which disputes Zerner’s findings. Instead, Kadel asserts, this quotation was probably first made during the Cold War of the 1950s, and did not include any reference to Jews. He bases this claim on his view that the purpose was to point to the failure of organised groups to co-operate together in resisting evil. Hence the inclusion of the Communists, Socialists and the Trades Unions, but also the omission of the Jews who were in no position to mobilize resistance He believes the quotation stems from the time of Niemoller’s active opposition to Adenauer’s anti- Communist and pro-armament policies, i.e. any time between 1950 and 1959. He therefore disputes Franklin Littell’s long-held view that this quotation was first and frequently used during Niemoller’s visits to the United States in 1946-7. Littell recalls conversations with the staff member of Church World Service at the time, Marlene Maerten, affirming this earlier date. Kadel dismisses this as the “somewhat equivocal report of an eyewitness many years after the fact (which) should not be regarded as entirely authoritative”. Littell, he avers, only put his view in writing in 1986 i.e. “forty years after Niemoller’s American tour – a longer lapse of time than between the crucifixion and the writing of Paul’s epistles”. But Kadel himself blatantly claims as his authoritative source a letter from Niemoller’s daughter written in 1991! To be sure Kadel is right in saying that such famous and evocative quotations take on a life of their own, and get adapted and adopted for different purposes. But the fact that they have not (yet) found written documentation from the 1940s does not prove Littell and Zerner’s view incorrect. As a librarian, Kadel should know that just because a book is not on the shelf does not mean it doesn’t exist. Furthermore I find Zerner’s explanation of the saying’s origins more convincing, i.e. that Niemoller listed the Nazis’ victims in the order in which they were attacked. First the Communists, then the Socialists and the Trades Unions, and then the Jews. This also explains the omission of the Catholics whom Niemoller always believed had compromised any possible resistance by signing the Concordat. (It is all the more curious to find the Catholics included on posters and cards being sold at the U.S.Holocaust Memorial Museum!) Niemoller emerged from seven years of concentration camp deeply impressed by the sufferings of those oppressed by the Nazis, and hence it was only to be expected that he should mention them in his immediate post-war speeches. Even though he had earlier held traditional anti-Judaic prejudices, his experiences in prison opened his eyes to the enormity of the Nazi antisemitic persecution, as clearly proved by the Kristallnacht, the news of which shocked even the inmates of Sachsenhausen. In my view, identification with the victims, and regret at the indifference of the bystanders, rather than the need to organise political resistance in the 1950s, was the main purpose of this quotation. JSC

2) Conference Paper Precis. a) The following is a digest of Doris Bergen’s presentation at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in May on the topic of “Between God and Hitler: German military chaplains and the crimes of the Third Reich”. Scholarship over the past decades has exploded the myth that the German military had little to do with the crimes of the Third Reich. But what about the Wehrmacht chaplains? What roles did they play? My paper used military and ecclesiastical records, chaplains’ memoirs and papers, and soldiers’ letters to address this question. I focussed on two points: first, that German military chaplains, whether they embraced Nazi ideology or not, were eye- witnesses to atrocities against civilians, including genocide of the European Jews. Secondly, the chaplains’ presence and overwhelming silence was not neutral. Instead, the moral prestige of their office, together with their ties to the historic Christian churches, helped to legitimate the Nazi war of annihilation in the eyes of its proponents. Contemporary evidence allows us to situate specific chaplains in locations where it was impossible not to witness the mass murder of civilians. Moreover, hostile Nazi authorities required chaplains to place themselves in areas of heavy fighting (the so-called Uriah law). About a thousand German clergymen, Protestant and Catholic, served as military chaplains throughout the war. Their responses to German brutality varied: some echoed Hitler with their own crusades against Jews, Communists, and Slavs; many sought to deflect criticism from a heavily propagandized military by downplaying or denying Christianity’s Jewish roots. Some tried to obstruct the crimes of the regime. But even combing archives and published sources uncovers fewer than ten such heroes. And on close examination, only one of these cases of resistance involved official military chaplains. I recounted in some detail that one case – Belaya Tserkov, Ukraine, August 1941 – where two chaplains tried but failed to stop the slaughter of Jewish children. Two factors, I suggested, help explain the weakness of resistance among military chaplains. The first was the selection procedure. Candidates were carefully screened by military authorities, church officials, and the Gestapo. All three agencies worked to keep out potential trouble-makers. Secondly, chaplains themselves were acutely aware of their precarious situation as representatives of the church in the hostile Nazi cause. Afraid of confirming anti- Christian views that they were traitors who softened up the troops, they insisted instead on their manliness, anti-Judaism, and ability to boost morale. In the process, they replicated in their own work the very Nazi ideas that threatened Christianity. Doris Bergen. Notre Dame University

b) Gregory Munro teaches at the Australian Catholic University, Brisbane. His paper was given at the Australian Conference of European Historians, July 1997 “The Reich Church Ministry in Nazi Germany 1935-1938.” By the beginning of 1935, Nazi church policy was in serious disarray. Within the Nazi leadership fears were held concerning the adverse impact on domestic and foreign policy of the volatile relationship between Church and State. In 1933 Hitler had given his support to the formation of a single unified Protestant church, dominated by the German Christian Faith Movement,under a Reich Bishop. But this had been frustrated by the opposition of the Pastors’ Emergency League and by the 1934 Barmen Declaration’s theological resistance to any such attempt to reduce the Churches to a mere instrument of Nazi policy. Since the latter half of 1934 negotiations between the Roman Catholic Church and the Reich government for the implementation of the Concordat had largely broken down amidst accusations of bad faith on both sides. In this situation Hitler summoned Hanns Kerrl (1887-1941) to be Head of a newly-created Ministry of Church Affairs in July 1935. Kerrl was the only Minister with an explicit commitment to reach a synthesis between Nazism and Christianity. Much to the ire of leading Nazis, Kerrl maintained that Christianity provided an essential foundation for Nazi ideology and that the two forces had to be reconciled. In the short term, at least, it appears that Hitler hoped to recover the initiative in the Church Struggle by returning to the official NSDAP policy of neutrality. The available documents suggest that Hitler temporized between two approaches to the question of the Churches. On the one hand, the predominant radical elements in the Party wanted to reduce clerical influence in German society as quickly as possible – and by force if necessary. On the other hand, Hitler clearly had much to gain from any possible peaceful settlement whereby the Churches would give at least implicit recognition to the supremacy of Nazi ideology in the public realm and restrict themselves solely to their internal affairs. In 1935 Kerrl scored some initial successes in reconciling the differing parties in the Church Struggle. However, by the second half of 1936, his position was clearly undermined by NSDAP hostility, and by the refusal of the churches to work with a government body which they regarded as a captive or stooge of the Nazi Party. Hitler gradually adopted a more uncompromising and intolerant stance, probably under the growing influence of ideologues such as Bormann, Rosenberg and Himmler, who were loathe to entertain any idea of the new Germany having a Christian foundation even in a token form. This paper is based on the records of the Reich Church Ministry, formerly in the GDR and now available more readily to western scholars. This material allows a more detailed investigation into the functions and objectives of the Reich Church Ministry than has hitherto been possible. Greg Munro

3) Book reviews:

a) Humphrey Carpenter, Robert Runcie – The Reluctant Archbishop, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1996

Humphrey Carpenter, the son of a former Bishop of Oxford, the chronicler of J.R.Tolkien and his coterie, and the biographer of Benjamin Britten, would seem well-qualified to write an archiepiscopal biography. However, this attempt is highly disappointing, consisting largely, as Carpenter admits, of transcriptions of taped interviews, spiced by unsubstantiated speculation about the Runcie’s private lives. One chapter is devoted to the adventures of Terry Waite, and another to the unfortunate suicide of an Oxford don – neither of which adds much to any understanding of the archbishop’s career. It is hardly surprising that both Runcie and his wife were stringently caustic and disappointed with the result – a sentiment shared by this reviewer. Carpenter does however point out correctly that the job facing every Archbishop of Canterbury is an impossible one. His hugely varied levels of involvement in both Church and State, his primacy among the world-wide Anglican Communion, and his pastoral responsibilities in an often divided and fractious Church of England have to be carried out with only the slenderest of staff appointments. The expectations placed on one man’s shoulders are horrendous, and frequently competing. It is small wonder that Runcie’s skill lay in steering a middle line and avoiding too strong a stand on issues, such as the ordination of women, until at least some sort of consensus had emerged. Carpenter spends too much time tracing how this equivocal stance was due to Runcie’s use of multiple script writers whose services were infrequently acknowledged, but whose contributions enabled him to keep the Church on an even keel. But any deeper analysis is lacking. This is more of a gossip column than a biography. As such it is an opportunity missed, and fails to meet the standard set by George Bell’s life of Archbishop Davidson. Scholarship has suffered, but presumably the documents remain available for another and a better attempt later. J.S.C.

b) Hans J.Misselwitz, Nicht laenger mit dem Gesicht nach Westen: Das neue Selbstbewusstsein der Ostdeutschen, Berlin: Dietz Verlag 1996, 128 pp. Hans Misselwitz, director of politische Bildung for the Land Brandenburg, left a career as a biochemist to study theology in the mid-1980s at the Protestant church seminary in East Berlin. He and his wife organized one of the most important peace groups in the East German church. After the “Wende”, he served in the first freely-elected East German Parliament and helped to negotiate unification with West Germany. Misselwitz describes the political and economic demoralization of East Germans since unification, as West Germans take the lead in transforming East German society. He argues that East Germans too often see themselves – or let themselves be defined – as victims of history. He calls on them to draw on their experience of living under Communism and participating in the “Wende”, and to become active political agents seeking a more just and socially- conscious political order. Key to the future, he argues, is that the two Germanies remember their common history. The division of Germany followed from the rise and fall of Nazism. Germans now need to make common cause in representing “the other Germany”, i.e. those who opposed Hitler and his totalitarian ideology, the Communists, Social Democrats and members of the Confessing Church. This book will be of particular interest to historians who wish to trace the aspirations and frustrations of East Germans who helped to bring about the “Wende” and who now try to find their own voice in a new country. John Burgess

c) Jorg Swoboda, The Revolution of the Candles: Christians in the Revolution of the German Democratic Republic, ed. Richard Pierard, trans.Edwin Arnold, Macon,Georgia: Mercer U.P. 1996 pp xxxii + 203. The cover to this book, a Dore etching of the New Jerusalem, is misleading. As a translation, abridgement, and revision of a book first published in Germany in 1990, this work draws on diaries, letters, and other first-person accounts of East German Baptists, who participated in the “Wende”. Of particular interest is a chronicle of events from the end of 1987, when the state began to clamp down on alternative groups meeting in the church’s free space, to the beginning of 1990, when church leaders helped to organize and moderate the Round Tables that ran the country until free elections were held in March. This book persuasively demonstrates that events in Berlin, Leipzig and Dresden took place independently, yet came to a head at the same time. The American editor, Richard Pierard (who personally experienced some of these events) provides an excellent overview of key developments in East German politics and church-state relations. The book also documents the church’s response to the emigration question, police mistreatment of peaceful demonstrators, and the hope, as well as the ambivalence, that characterized East German reactions to unification. A set of concluding reflections by Pierard touches on issues which have emerged with greater clarity since the “Wende”, such as whether or not the church accommodated itself too much to the state. No other book in English captures the East Germans’ own voices so well, though scholars will desire access to German materials that provide a more complete picture. John Burgess

d) ed. B.R.Holmes and A.F.Keele, When Truth was Treason. German Youth against Hitler. The story of the Hellmuth Huebener Group. Based on the narrative of Karl-Heinz Schribbe, with documents and notes. Urbana and Chicago: U of Illinois Press 1995. 425pp

The short tragic life of Hellmuth Huebener was notable for two reasons: he was probably the youngest person sentenced to death for high treason by the notorious Nazi Volksgerichtshof and executed at Ploetzensee on October 27th 1942. He was also the only Mormon to suffer this fate. Subsequent attempts by some American Mormons to depict Huebener as a heroic example of Mormon resistance to Nazism foundered on the fact that the German Mormons quickly and decisively dissociated themselves from the actions of this17-year old member of their community. And the evidence clearly shows that most German Mormons supported the Nazis’ political programme, and like other American-derived sects, with the signal exception of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, were at pains to adopt a low profile about their religious affiliations for fear of repression. Huebener and his three friends were representative neither of German youth nor of German Mormonism. Nevertheless the story deserves to be better known of how they secretly listened to BBC broadcasts for several months, and subsequently distributed translations of this anti-Nazi propaganda in leaflet form in and around the working-class districts of Hamburg. The evidence makes it clear that Huebener was a precocious youth whose scepticism about Nazi propaganda drove him to tell the real truth – as revealed by the BBC. There is little to show that he was impelled to undertake this foolhardy action because of his Mormon upbringing, not that his small group of friends had any coherent idea of resistance or what it entailed. Neither theological nor political justifications seemed to be uppermost in these teenagers’ minds. Yet they paid a terrible price when telling the truth was treason. Huebener was guillotined, the other sentenced to lengthy terms of imprisonment. But even afterwards the German Mormon community was most reluctant to discuss their fate, or the lack of personal support they received in their hour of need. Holmes and Keele have now compiled as full an account of this episode as possible, on the basis of the memoirs of one of the group, Karl-Heinz Schribbe, who survived and later emigrated to Utah. Schribbe’s memoir is more of a personal narrative than an account of Huebener’s significance. But the editors have added useful notes to fill in the background, and have collated and translated surviving trial records in a valuable documentary section, which includes the texts of several of the incriminating leaflets. Making this material available in English to a wider audience is to be welcomed, even if the attempt to put Huebener into a larger context is rather strained. JSC

4) Journal articles: Raymond Sun, “Catholic-Marxist Competition in the Working-class districts of Cologne during the Weimar Republic,” in The Catholic Historical Review, Vol. LXXXIII, no 1, January 1997, p.20-43. Ruth Birn, Chief Historian, War Crimes Section, Canadian Dept. of Justice has written an incisive and highly critical review of Goldhagen’s Hitler’s Willing Executioners in The Historical Journal, Vol 40, no. 1, March 1997, p.195 ff.

5) Book note: eds, L Price, J. Sepulveda and G.Smith, Mission Matters, (Studies in the intercultural History of Christianity Vol 103) Frankfurt, Bern, New York: Peter Lang. 1997 232 pp This book is a collection of 16 essays, mostly by postgraduate researchers at the University of Birmingham and the Selly Oak Colleges under the supervision of Werner Ustorf, Professor of Mission. Section 1 is entitled ‘Mission History: Reassessing some Legacies’, and includes Ustorf’s own chapter on the inner history of the German Protestant Mission Boards from 1924-1949, drawn from the minute books compiled at the time. In this percipient chapter Ustorf discusses the problematic attitudes of German Protestant missionaries towards the Nazi movement and subsequent regime. Almost all missionaries were caught up in the excitement of 1933 and believed that here was a great opportunity to bring the nation back to God. But the accent on Germany’s special character and destiny under Hitler clashed with the whole ecumenical emphasis of the International Missionary Council. The result was an increasingly unresolvable dilemma of having to choose between contradictory loyalties, a struggle of distinguishing between God’s mission and a specific German-Protestant syndrome. The German missions headquarters had little hesitation in co- operating with Nazi organisations preparing for the return of the German colonial empire, while at the same time working with the IMC, which was still largely paying for the “orphaned” German missions seized during the first world war. But they were highly ambivalent about the ideas of giving independence to such “younger churches”. Equally ambivalent was the mission attitudes towards the Jews. Antisemitic sentiments were evident, but mission to the Jews could not be abjured or considered dispensable. The solution was to approve of the Nazis’ task of keeping the Jews in check, but only by Christian means i.e. trying to convert them. But even this provoked sharp reactions from the Nazi authorities. None of the German missions abroad survived the second world war unscathed, but nevertheless attempts were made after 1945 to revive the old pattern with stress on how much theses missionaries had suffered (by expulsion from the field or internment) and a good deal of self-pity for their being inextricably involved in the fate of their nation, but in the belief that their grave experiences under Nazism gave them “something very special to offer to the younger churches”. It was a good many years before a new climate appeared in Germany, and a recognition that the day of colonial foreign missions had ended. Only in 1994 was the former Berlin Missionary Society dissolved, and the old imperial ideas faded away. JSC

With best wishes to you all

John S.Conway

jconway@unixg.ubc.ca

Association of Contemporary Church Historians

(Arbeitsgemeinschaft kirchlicher Zeitgeschichtler)

John S. Conway, Editor.

University of British Columbia

Newsletter July 1997 – Vol III, no 7

Contents

1. Conference announcement

2. Book reviews

Hope, German and Scandinavian Protestantism
Chandler, Brethren in Adversity
Davidson, Selwyn’s Legacy

Dear Friends,

I have been in UK for most of June, and had the pleasure of meeting some of you there. It is always nice to be in visual as well as electronic contact. I hope your summer of researches goes well, and look forward to hearing about your progress. Doris Bergen was last heard of deep in a Moscow archive, while John Moses is moving to Armidale, NSW. My thanks to those who have supplied contributions. Do keep sending them, if you have read anything which you would like to share with our members.

1. Conference announcement

The 1998 meeting of the Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte group, under the leadership of Gerhard Besier (Heidelberg) will be held near Lund, Sweden from 27th August to Sept.1st 1998. Conference arrangements are being made by Prof Ingmar Brohed (no address yet given). If you want more information, I can supply some.

2. Book reviews

a) Nicholas Hope. German and Scandinavian Protestantism 1700- 1918. (Oxford History of the Christian Church). Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995. Pp.xiii, 685. $120.00

(This review appeared in German Studies Review, Vol XX, N.1, February 1997, p.143-4)

Nicholas Hope’s extensive longitudinal survey of Protestantism in the lands around the Baltic presents a graphic picture of a mainly- rural churchscape, far from the seats of power, and set in its old, poor, customary, contemplative and unhurried ways. He is concerned not so much with theology and politics, although the latter intrudes frequently, given the anomalous religious situation left over from the Thirty Years War. Essentially he seeks to describe the situation of the local parishes, from the end of the disastrous seventeenth century until the equally disastrous collapse into a politically-dominated war culture from 1914-1918.

In 1700, war, disease and famine still stalked these lands. Life was undoubtedly nasty, brutish and short; and the people turned either to pagan rituals or to the church for consolation. Two major issues preoccupied the rural clergy for most of the eighteenth century: how to win their parishioners over from the powers of darkness and how to comfort the suffering multitude overcome with grief. But, even after two centuries, the Lutheran inheritance was everywhere in danger. Pastors were repeatedly urged to pray not only for deliverance from Papist aggression and the infidel Turk, but also to guard against the heretical influences of Calvinists and other sectarians, seeking to distort, falsify or suppress the true Gospel.

In the eighteenth century, the situation improved, largely due to the seminal work of the “Pietists” – a term Hope dislikes. The influence of Spener and Francke stressed the need for warm pastoral care, drawing extensively from models in Holland and England. Despite conflicts with the establishment clergy, this new enthusiasm spread rapidly and was soon popular especially in the smaller courts and amongst the lesser nobility. Vernacular preaching and the spread of devotional literature became significant vehicles for disseminating these ideas. Count Zinzendorf’s Moravians laid great stress on lay leadership. And as W.R.Ward in his Protestant Evangelical Awakening (1992) has already pointed out, the growth of trade and travel enabled the widespread propagation of well-edited and cheap devotional literature, so that Puritan classics like Pilgrim’s Progress in numerous editions and translations became staple influences for generations in many humble homes. They were also the principal armament of the missionary movement which spread the word from Greenland’s icy mountains to India’s coral strands.

Nevertheless, despite attempts to centralise and rationalise the anomalous variety of church orders or to improve the training of the parish clergy, resistance to change from historic ways remained strong. Even with the abolition of serfdom in the eastern areas, and the spread of enclosures, parish habits seemed immune to reform. The wretchedly paid rural clergy remained dependent on the local gentry’s favour, and often dictation, as to how services were to be conducted. Edicts from above, most notably the Prussian King’s attempts to impose religious uniformity on Lutheran and Reformed congregations by the formation of a United Church, ran into overwhelming resistance.

Throughout the nineteenth century, the state’s desire to use the clergy as minor civil servants prompted, as in England, a countervailing movement to restore the Church’s more ancient patterns of authority, ritual and values. The universities too continued to value their traditions and ceremonies rather than concentrate on practical training. The impact of Protestant revivals led to an increasingly conservative clerical and lay tone. At the same time, both Protestant and Catholic romantics sought to revive older traditions in church music and architecture. Here lay the roots of opposition to a more liberal or national Protestantism seeking a new relationship to the nation-state after German political unification took place. It was strong enough to prevent the emergence of any national Protestant church, and to cling on to the local autonomy of the past in the individual Landeskirchen. Vigorous debate about the character of the Volkskirche continued for years, up to and including 1933.

For its part, the state sought to maintain the Protestant clergy as minor officials, even when bureaucrats took over many of the their secular duties; the clergy sought to maintain their historic privileges, even when population changes eroded their authority in providing social cohesion and moral education. Neither side before 1918 wanted disestablishment, or recognition of Germany’s plural denominational character. The resulting compromise was profoundly unsatisfactory; in David Diephouse’s phrase, the clergy found themselves in a state to which they could only partially relate, and a society they could only partially control. The pastoral problems caused by rapid urban and industrial growth proved too much for the essentially rural-based church structures in all of northern Europe. A deepening sense of crisis over the churches’ role as moral guardians of society was one of the reasons why the German clergy tried to recapture lost ground by embracing militaristic patriotism so enthusiastically in 1914. But the patriarchal patterns of the past no longer sufficed, and in Germany they were abolished for ever in 1918.

Hope’s multilingual erudition is formidably impressive. So too is his judicious impartiality on topics which have aroused fiercely sectarian strife. Such comparative surveys necessarily leave gaps, but this work can be highly commended as an informative work of reference, and as a thoughtful analysis of the Protestant place in modern European history.

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b) Andrew Chandler, ed., Brethren in Adversity.

Bishop George Bell, The Church of England and the Crisis of German Protestantism, 1933-1939, Church of England Record Society U.K 1996 L35/$63 (Dr Chandler is director of the George Bell Institute at Queen’s College, Birmingham)

Scholars intensely interested in the church-state struggle in the Nazi era will welcome enthusiastically this collection of documents taken mainly from the papers of Bishop George Bell of Chichester and Archbishop Cosmo Lang, which treat this dark period in the history of the Christian Church and its relations with the evil powers of Nazism. It is also of considerable interest to know that there now exists a ‘George Bell Institute’ hopefully established to mine the voluminous collection of his and other papers at Lambeth Palace.

Dr Chandler indicates (p.14) that “This book is essentially about information and interpretation”, and it is ideally organised to fulfil this purpose, for from Chandler’s long introduction the reader gets a firm grasp of the issues highlighted by the documents, and a solid, reliable interpretation to guide one through the original sources. On the German church crisis he also analyses closely the differences between several main British protagonists, especially Bishop Bell and Bishop A.C.Headlam of Gloucester.

Notable is the extent of the contacts these British churchmen entertained with “official” Germans, from Hitler to Hess, Ribbentrop and even Alfred Rosenberg. One is also impressed by the degree to which British churchmen attempted to see the Nazi and German leaders in as positive a light as possible. For example, illustrative of this is Bell’s rather sympathetic portrayal of Ribbentrop’s attempts to have his youngest child baptised (pp 89- 92), as is the Bishop’s description of the controversial bishop of Hanover, August Marahrens, whom he called a “fine, godly old man” (pp.100-101).

Appeasement is a predictable leitmotiv in these documents with Dr. A.J.Macdonald, ‘librarian’ of the Church of England’s Council; on Foreign Relations and its head, Bishop Headlam, as outstanding examples of this tendency. It is perhaps somewhat curious that, in the light of Headlam’s rather wrongheaded views amply attested to in this documentation, Chandler feels his “experience as an ecumenical thinker and politician incontestable” (p.11). Another valuable contribution is to illustrate the good deal of British confusion about the German situation. For example, Headlam, Macdonald and Bell all seem to have thought that German girls belonged to the Hitler Youth (p.151, Headlam; p.110 Macdonald; p. 138 Bell). Even more remarkable were Headlam’s allegations that the theology of the extreme German Christians was closer to the Church of England than that of the oppositional and persecuted Confessing Church (p.152). These documents also underscore the well-known fact that neither Bell nor the bulk of British observers had any real mastery of the German language, which certainly harmed their ability to get a first-hand impression of the situation even though they took great pains to visit Germany at the time.

What is perhaps mildly disappointing about this collection is that it tends to repeat in places information which is already readily available. For example, the collection reproduces almost verbatim from Canon Jasper’s biography of Bell the famous memorandum on the German situation at the end of 1938 (p144-49). Moreover, my impression is that occasionally rather too much appears here that is well known, and too little is included of fresh insights, especially from Bell’s most extensive and valuable papers. Here I was particularly struck by the gaps surrounding some of the major German crises of those years, especially those connected with the persecution of the Jews in Germany. While the German Protestant struggles of 1933-34, and again 1937, are rightly given extensive coverage, no documents are included which would more immediately reflect the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, and especially the aftermath of the 1938 Sudeten crisis and Kristallnacht. Indeed this crucial year receives attention in only two, albeit longer, documents, while the 1939 entries are unfortunately confined to a brief wartime (!) exchange of two letters between Bell and Karl Barth. Yet for Bell 1938-9 was the critical and dramatic period of his activity, especially his eleventh hour rescue of ‘nonaryan’ German pastors before the Nazi invasion of Poland.

It is encouraging to see that this collection makes an attempt to provide useful biographical information. At the same time it is to be regretted that the dates of the persons mentioned are sometimes incomplete, even though these could easily have been ascertained. It is also mildly regrettable that some important international church figures, such as the president of the United Lutheran Church in America, Dr Frederick Knubel (in Chandler’s defence he is called ‘Nubel’ in the document – p 147) are not identified, that Dr Franz Hildebrandt is relegated to a brief footnote (p.156), and that the ‘nonaryan’ refugee pastor ‘Gordon’ mentioned on p 128 is not identified as Ernst Gordon, with whom Bell had an extensive correspondence.

In conclusion, this is nonetheless an encouraging beginning, and one can be confident that in his new directorial function Chandler will continue to provide insightful interpretations and primary material for both the scholarly and generally interested public. Indeed given the fragmentary and dated nature of the several studies extant on Bishop Bell, it is to be hoped that Chandler will consider tackling an up-to-date comprehensive biography of this fine man and Christian.

Ronald Webster, York University, Toronto, Ontario.

c) Allan K.Davidson, Selwyn’s Legacy. The College of St John the Evangelist 1843-1992, Auckland, N.Z. 1993, 412 pp.

Antipodean church history is little known, because little of it has yet been written. It is therefore most welcome to have Allan Davidson’s well-researched, insightful and splendidly illustrated history of St John’s College, Auckland, the premier institution for the Anglican Church in New Zealand. It is all the more welcome because the problems and issues he so deftly describes were and are very similar to those experienced by parallel institutions in other parts of the British Empire, as the Church of England sought to replicate its institutional life and ideas around the globe. So too his survey of the main features involved in training the clergy over the past 150 years will be easily recognisable by many members of our Association.

George Augustus Selwyn was appointed to be the first bishop of New Zealand in 1840, at the early age of 32. He had all the right credentials and connections, and had already developed comprehensive and visionary ideals of how a missionary bishop should carry out his responsibilities. His was the task of bringing episcopal authority to the scattered efforts of the Church Missionary Society which had already initiated a series of mission stations for the Maori inhabitants, but also to provide for the welfare of the increasing number of British settlers eager to establish themselves in the remote but promising fertile lands of the new colony. Selwyn’s view of training for the priesthood was in part shaped by his vision of the mediaeval period, and in part by his conviction that the bishop and his cathedral should play a central role in the life of the new church. He believed that the bishop should have a small group of young men associated with him, living in his house and under his spiritual direction, benefiting from his library and learning, and then ready to be sent out to undertake whatever pastoral duties he saw as a priority. Just as Augustine and his monks had come from Rome to Christianize England so long ago, so his successors should emulate his example in the far-flung Southern Ocean. The vastness of his diocese, the multiplicity of the tasks he resolved to embark on, and his somewhat imperious, if likeable, personality all combined to fashion the early Church of England ministry in New Zealand and Melanesia. To his credit, Selwyn was eager to build a partnership between the Maori and the settlers, and resolved to have both sets of young men integrated in his newly-founded College. But difficulties soon arose over the different visions of the future entertained by each group, which were not helped by Selwyn’s own clear preference for the high- minded Oxford style of learning he knew best. Unfortunately too, while he was able to attract some wealthy donors to provide funds for a few initial buildings, and successfully obtained a tract of land at some distance from the centre of white settlement in Auckland, immediate funds for the day-to-day running of this training college were lacking and remained so for decades. Placing the College under a succession of Wardens, all of whom were brought out from England, put an almost intolerable burden of inadequate resources on these men, whose term was often regrettably short. In addition the clashes between high-church and evangelical emphases were soon enough repeated in New Zealand, and the College was often regarded with suspicion by one side or the other. Selwyn’s attempt to build a monastic-like centre with frequent daily services was hardly suited to the pioneering style of rural ministry desired by the growing number of sheep ranchers. Furthermore the still scattered communities in both the North and South Islands resented attempts to centralize all ministerial training in or near Auckland in the far north. Successive bishops elsewhere wanted their own local seminaries. So the grand attempt to build one structure for the whole province never really succeeded.

As settlement grew, so did the complications of having rival churches and rival theories of ministry. Attempts to affiliate St John’s to the new university in Auckland, in order to raise the level of academic training, met with strong opposition from the advocates of secular education (as in western Canada), as well as from bishops still adhering to Selwyn’s ideas of personal instruction and example. Assimilationists argued in favour of brining Maori candidates to St John’s as a means of unifying the country on the British model, with the result that specific training in the Maori language virtually disappeared for decades. Personality difficulties led to frequent clashes between the Wardens’ interpretation of their responsibilities and those of the Board of Governors, which itself was divided over regional or churchmanship alignments, Above all, it is notable and hardly surprising that Anglicanism in New Zealand was totally derivative, since most of its leaders continued to be imported from England, or more latterly trained there.

For its first hundred years St John’s had a very chequered existence. Geography, the lack of financial resources, and strong diocesan identity fostered parochialism, and prevented the emergence of one viable national theological college. As late as the 1950s the ethos was still that of a sedate cathedral institution, a male, celibate enclave, complete with mortar boards, and gowns, Sung Eucharist and Compline.

But over the past thirty years, new winds of change have been felt. In the 1960s a plan of union with the Methodists was proposed, which later, as in other places, proved abortive. But their training institutions found a near-merger on St John’s campus, which opened some new horizons. In 1976 women were admitted to ordination, leading to a striking change in the composition of the college community. New sympathies arose for the Maori heritage and new approaches for Maori ministries and liturgies were tried out. The author, Davidson, an ordained Presbyterian, became the first non- Anglican to be appointed to the teaching staff in 1972, and has since written extensively on the church in New Zealand. At the same time, the rapid spread of Auckland’s suburbia led to a dramatic rise in the value of Selwyn’s trust lands, and hence at last to much increased resources for the Trust’s educational activities. But, as elsewhere, the lively debates about priorities in the training of ordinands were felt in New Zealand too. The need for contextual relevance, cross-cultural sensitivity, regard for gender issues and partnership between Maori and Paheka all added and still add to the complexity of theological education. It was impossible to get the balance right to satisfy all the contending voices in the churches. Davidson’s comments on developments in the most recent years are understandably restrained. His service is really to have brought to life the variety and vigour of those high-minded English clerics who inherited Selwyn’s legacy and sought to transplant his ideas and practices into the exotic lands of the southern seas. This is a splendid record of the part St John’s has played in fostering Anglicanism, and now ecumenism, in all its various forms, throughout Aotearoa New Zealand, Melanesia, the Pacific and beyond.

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All the best to you all,
John Conway
jconway@unixg.ubc.ca

Association of Contemporary Church Historians

(Arbeitsgemeinschaft kirchlicher Zeitgeschichtler)

John S. Conway,Editor. University of British Columbia

Newsletter June 1997 – Vol III, no 6

Contents

Dear Friends.

1) New books

2) Journal article: Minkenberg, Civil Religion and German Unification

3) Book reviews:

Gilbert, The Boys
McLeod, Piety and Poverty

4) Holocaust Conference in Russia

5) Bonhoeffer Website.

1) New Books

a) Those interested in the post-war reconstruction of German universities may like to note the excellently factual and critical account by Peter Respondek, Besatzung, Entnazifixierung, Wiederaufbau. Die Universitaet Muenster 1945-1952, Agenda Verlag, Muenster 1995,

b) The Legacy of the Holocaust: Two separate collections of essays drawn from the proceedings of the Second Remembering for the Future Conference held in Berlin in 1994, but edited by the same people, have recently appeared. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science dedicates its November 1996 issue to this theme, published by Sage Periodical Press, Thousand Oaks, London and New Delhi, and _From Prejudice to Destruction: Western Civilisation in the Shadow of Auschwitz_ is published by LIT Verlag, Muenster. Both contain articles by several of our Association’s members. giving a thoughtful analysis of the events and consequences of the Holocaust, with numerous references to the impact of Christian antisemitism, and the need to take remedial measures. Luckily, and thanks to the editing of Jan Colijn and Marcia Littell, there is no overlap between the volumes, and both deserve to be studied as an excellent commentary on the present state of Holocaust enquiries in its widest international context.

c) A similar work in the same area of studies is _Jewish-Christian Encounters over the Centuries. Symbiosis,Prejudice, Holocaust,Dialogue_ American University Studies, P.Lang, New York 1994, edited by Marvin Perry and Frederick Schweitzer. Their aim is clearly to present this topic in a positive setting, in the hope that “two millenia of strife can be replaced by a new era in which common interests and shared commitments can be the basis for our relationships, even while recognising the deep divisions which divide us”. “If in fact Jews and Christians are really members of the same family, who have suffered a long and painful estrangement, reconciliation should be possible”. In any case, “Christians and Jews must now, more than ever, share sentry duty against evil”. One of our members, Susannah Heschel, contributes an informative article on “The Image of Judaism in New Testament Scholarship in Germany (in the 19th Century)”, and John Pawlikowski ably sums up the present state of research on the Vatican and the Holocaust, finding himself much in agreement with the judgements of Michael Marrus. Ruth Zerner has a nice short piece on the origins of Martin Niemoller’s famous dictum about the indifference of the bystanders, and Michael McGarry evaluates the positive impact of Nostra Aetate #4 in 1965 which he believes moved Catholics from a position of ignorance to interest, from contempt to appreciation, and from proselytism to dialogue. This Declaration is to be taken as a striking example of the most significant change in Christian doctrine in this century. The essays in this book provide excellent witness to this hopeful development.

2) Journal Article:

Michael Minkenberg’s interesting paper given to the GSA in Seattle last October on Civil Religion and German Unification is now printed in German Studies Review, Vol XX, no 1, February 1997, p.63-81.

3) Book reviews:

Martin Gilbert, The Boys. Triumph over adversity, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London 1996, 511 pp.

The most horrifying book I have read this year is Martin Gilbert’s newly-published The Boys, an account of the Holocaust by child survivors. In the summer and winter of 1945, 732 teenagers, mostly from Poland, were brought to England under the auspices of the Committee for the Care of Children from Concentration Camps. Nearly fifty years later more than a hundred of them were persuaded to set down their reminiscences, and from these Martin Gilbert has skilfully compiled a collective biography, whose cumulative impact cannot fail to have a sober, even shattering effect.

The first half of the book is a chronological description of the waves of suffering and adversity which engulfed these children as the Germans began their deliberate and systematic campaign to eradicate the Jewish communities of eastern Europe. From September 1939 they were successively and irrevocably deprived of their of their childhood security, their schooling, their possessions, their relatives and their immediate families. Each chapter describes in detail the infamous process which overwhelmed these children – the ghettoisation, the deportations, the slave labour camps, the transfer to Auschwitz, Buchenwald or Belsen, the death marches, and, for this handful, their often miraculous survival in the midst of mass murder and brutal exploitation. Deprived of their parents and siblings, often at the flick of an SS guard’s truncheon, the majority were also forced to endure a constant regimen of fear and hunger. Necessarily they developed survival skills, even when survival seemed pointless. But somehow they endured to the end. Incident after incident from these memoirs is collated into a collective picture of atrocity and horror. Gilbert’s skill lies in fitting together each interlocking instance into the larger picture in order to let the recollected stories stand as a factually accurate record with a minimum of connecting commentary. At the same time his sensitivity and sympathy for these orphaned victims shines through.

The second half of the book which gives details of their rehabilitation and adapting to British life is necessarily anti- climatic. At first the Home Office granted them a two-year temporary stay, expecting them all to emigrate further. But the Mandatory authorities in Palestine blocked the way until 1948 for those who desired to share the Zionist-inspired goal of Aliyah. The majority opted to stay in Britain and were finally allowed to do so. The Central British Fund which paid their expenses worked hard to integrate them as quickly as possible and to find opportunities for gainful employment despite their lack of schooling for so many years. For those who came to London, a thriving club was established which provided them with the comradeship so desperately sought as an antidote to the burden of the past. The ’45 Aid Society, later called the Primrose Club, enabled many to find their way in this new setting, and still brings them together for an annual banquet. Most have since become extraordinarily well settled, and lovingly record their success in rebuilding their lives with children and grandchildren, who form a replacement, though never a substitute, for the families they so horrendously lost. As their chairman recently remarked: “On the one hand we have recovered. On the other hand we have been damaged, a damage that is not outwardly visible. We have integrated so well that even our own families are not aware of our trauma. Yet there is not a day that goes by that does not evoke some painful memory of the past. Nothing, but nothing, has eased the suffering. We have enjoyed the luxury of living. But we lost our parents when we were young, and the family life that could have been ours was denied us. That is why the memory is so painful. It gets worse. I do not talk about it, but I feel like screaming: Why?, Why?, Why?”

This tribute to the collective will to survive by this small handful of youngsters is not only a valuable historical account but a striking record of their ability to triumph over adversity. It will rightly take its place in the large body of survivors’ testimonies, so that those fortunate enough never to share such appalling tribulations will be enabled, indeed obliged, not to forget.

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Hugh McLeod, Piety and Poverty: Working-Class Religion in Berlin, London and New York 1870-1914. New York: Holmes and Meier 1996, US $45.00

(The following review appeared first on the H-Net list H-PCAACA)

High McLeod challenges the widespread assumption that members of the industrial working class are likely to be alienated from religious life. McLeod’s three case studies offer abundant evidence of varied religious practices and attitudes among sections of the working classes in Berlin, London and New York from 1870 to 1914. Yet the author is not content to criticize theoretical approaches that cannot account for this diversity. Instead, he offers useful models for the analysis of working-class religion beyond the three cities he has studied.

To explain complex patterns of religious belief and practice, McLeod examines the social, ethnic, and intellectual environments in which working-class religion developed. In Berlin, close links between the conservative elites and the dominant Lutheran church inspired liberal and bourgeois hostility to religion and this influenced working-class estrangement from the church. An “extensive and deep alienation, not only from the church, but from Christianity in general” (107) developed further as socialists created an alternative working-class culture in the city. In contrast, religious pluralism in London encouraged strong religious commitment among middle-class liberals and provided politically attractive religious environments for some workers. While most others spurned regular church attendance, London’s working-class culture was usually not hostile to Christianity. In New York, churches became the focus of identity for many members of the ethnically fragmented working class, particularly the Irish. The most exciting sections of the book for students of popular culture are the last two chapters, investigating the fabric of working-class religious life beyond church attendance. McLeod rejects the view that working-class religious life was an exclusively female phenomenon. Relying mainly on evidence from London, he argues that working-class men participated in some religious activities, including debates, church-affiliated sports activities, and services led by particularly notable speakers. Women embraced different religious practices, such as mothers’ meetings and life- cycle observances. Though in Berlin conflict between secular men and their more religious wives was relatively common, in London – and to some extent in New York – “male and female forms of religiosity” coexisted, though women’s religious activity was often more “intense” (173).

In all three cities, religion played a role in working-class peoples’ lives. Observances with religious content often marked rites of passage, including baptism, confirmations or bar-mitzvahs, and in some places weddings and funerals. Working-class celebrations of holy days also reveal a vital religious sense, and in London and New York, McLeod suggests, private prayer was common among the working-class, even if regular church attendance was not. Many of the strengths of this book come from its comparative approach. This methodology is ideally suited to testing existing conceptual approaches and developing more viable ones with broad applicability, which McLeod does impressively. But, as he notes, the availability of different kinds of sources for each case complicates his task. The richest material comes from London, and oral histories are used to particularly good effect. The sources on Berlin are more institutional, which makes it difficult to study less formal religious practice in that city. While religion appears less important in the Berlin working class, perhaps the kinds of sources McLeod exploited so profitably in London would have revealed a more complex picture in the German capital as well. Overall, Pity and Poverty is a useful and interesting book. It challenges simplistic approaches and offers a range of compelling factors to consider in thinking about working-class religion. This reader found the rich evocation of religious belief and practice among working-class people – who attended church only rarely – particularly valuable.

Pennsylvania State University
Andrew August

4) Holocaust Conference in Russia

Gordon Mork, Purdue University, sends this personal report:

In Russia it is spelled with an X. From May 4-7th the Second International Symposium, “The Lessons of the Holocaust and Contemporary Russia” took place in Moscow, sponsored by the Russian Research and Educational Holocaust Centre and the Marc Bloch Centre of the Russian State University for the Humanities. There were over sixty speakers on the programme. most of whom were from Russia and the former USSR, but also from Israel, France, Poland, and the USA. It was an amazing experience.

The opening session coincided with a Yom Hashoa commemoration, which overflowed the auditorium of the “Central House of the Men of Letters”. Russian friends noted the irony of holding the ceremony there; as the seat of the “official” writers’ organisation in Soviet times, it had secluded all dissidents (including many Jews) prior to 1989. Participants that evening included survivors of both the Nazi camps and the Soviet gulags, the chief rabbi of Moscow, the ambassador of Israel, a men’s chorus, and a very upbeat children’s choir. Representatives of Christian rescuers were honoured. We ended by rising to sing the Israeli anthem.

The presentations over the next three days included a combination of scholarly papers, personal recollections, calls of concern about antisemitism today, and models for Holocaust education. The keynote address was by a dynamic woman. A.E.Gerber, the president of the Holocaust Centre in Moscow and a former member of parliament.

Only one of the papers focussed directly on religious issues of special interest to our Association. James N.Pellechia and Jolene Chu, of the Watch Tower Society, presented a well-crafted paper “Teaching Tolerance: A Case Study”, which explained the role of Jehovah’s Witnesses as “a second witness to the Shoah” in the Nazi camps. Much of the material was drawn from the documentary video entitled “Jehovah’s Witnesses Stand Firm against Nazi Assault” (See review in Newsletter no 24, Vol II, no 12 – December 1996), though this video was not shown in Moscow.

Other presentations dealt with themes familiar to scholars of the Holocaust, themes which implied much about the underlying relationships between Christians and Jews. Was the Holocaust “unique”? Was it exclusive to Jews? Did Christians help Jews, or did they support the Holocaust? How and to whom should the Holocaust be taught? It is clear that the opening of archives. and the new freedom to publish documents, monographs, and teaching materials will provide many rich (and often disturbing) sources for historians and educators.

One of the major points made was that there is a continuity of antisemitism in Eastern Europe, rooted in religious and economic prejudice. Antisemitism was officially suppressed during the Soviet period but in reality was still prevalent. It was vigorously and brutally promoted by Nazi propaganda during World War II. Now, in the post-Soviet world, it is becoming manifest again. Some of the same antisemitic authors who wrote for the Nazis are being published again in the 1990s. One of the most interesting exchanges was between a scholar who defended Christian peasants in the Ukraine who sheltered him and his family during the Holocaust. He could not have survived without such help, he emphasized, and he did not want to hear that all Christians in the Ukraine were antisemitic!

A Polish scholar, Dr. Monika Adamczyk-Garbowska, spoke on attitudes in Poland about the Holocaust in particular and Jews in general. She touched on the links between Polish nationalism and the Catholic Church, but did not fully analyse them. Other papers implied a relationship between the upsurge of Slavic nationalism (including antisemitism) and Orthodox Christianity, without exploring the issue in depth.

Overall there was a sense of exhilaration that issues, so long suppressed in Russia, were now open for full discussion. Another Symposium is planned, but a date has not yet been set. Inquiries can be sent to Dr Ilya A Altman, of the Russian Holocaust Centre in Moscow. = altman@glasnet.ru

5) Bonhoeffer Website

This has been revised and can now be found at
http://www.iscn.com/bonhoef/ [Update: This no longer works]

With every best wish,

John S.Conway
jconway@unixg.ubc.ca e

Association of Contemporary Church Historians

(Arbeitsgemeinschaft kirchlicher Zeitgeschichtler)

John S. Conway, Editor. University of British Columbia

Newsletter May 1997 – Vol III, no 5

Contents

Dear Friends.

1) Vancouver Symposium: Christians confronting the Holocaust

2) Churches in the G.D.R.

3) Book reviews:
Franklin Littell, Hyping the Holocaust
Donald Crosby, Battlefield Chaplains

1) “Christians confronting the Holocaust” (Contributed by David Stewart, Associate Librarian, Regent-Carey Library, Regent College, Vancouver)

This symposium, sponsored by Regent College, Vancouver, was held on April 4-5th, 1997 and included lectures by John S.Conway – “Jewish-Christian Relations since 1945” and by David Gushee of Union University, Jackson, Tenn – “Characteristics and Motivations of Christian Rescuers” and “Glimpses of Light: Christian Rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust”. At the conclusion of Saturday evening’s session a panel consisting of three Holocaust survivors and one Gentile “rescuer” offered their highly compelling reminiscences.

This two day event was organized to mark the official opening of the John S.Conway Research Collection at the Regent College Library. Over the past several years Dr Conway has gradually been donating books and files to the Library, and with the approach of his retirement over the past year this transfer has accelerated. The Collection is kept separate from the main holdings of the Regent- Carey Library, which serves an enrollment of some 350 FTE students in theological studies.

At present the Conway Collection includes between 400 and 500 monograph titles, and files and pamphlets in even greater numbers. There is a great quantity of resources on the German Church Struggle, Ecumenism, the Holocaust and its many aspects, and major troves of biographical material on Bonhoeffer, Niemoller and especially Friedrich Siegmund-Schultze, including an almost full run in original copies of the noted journal “Die Eiche – 1913-1933”. Having worked extensively with John’s collection in preparation for this Symposium, I believe that the conference seems to have accomplished at least two things: a) it provided a fitting tribute for John’s distinguished career, as well as his generous gifts to the Library; b) it served remarkably to establish points of contact and mutual respect between persons of the Jewish and Christian communities.

To mark the occasion, the Regent College Bookstore has re-printed (in an attractive paperback edition) Dr Conway’s book “The Nazi Persecution of the Churches 1933-1945”, which was duly presented during the proceedings – to the author’s complete surprise and subsequent delight! Copies are now available at Can $25.95 and can be ordered from the Regent Bookstore, 5800 University Boulevard, Vancouver, B.C. V6T 2E4 (call 604-228-1620 or 1-800-663-8664; Fax: 604-224-3097. Visa and Master Charge accepted)

Dr David Gushee’s book “The Righteous Gentiles of the Holocaust: a Christian Interpretation” (Fortress Press 1994) is also available at Can $24.75.

The weekend’s lectures were recorded, and audiotapes can be ordered from the Regent Bookstore.

It is the hope of the Regent-Carey Library that this event will foster further dialogue, and that the Conway Collection will prove to be a valuable resource for research in the future. Do feel free to contact us if we can be of assistance to you. (Ivan Gaetz, Librarian, email – rgtig@unixg.ubc.ca; David Stewart, Associate Librarian,email – rgtds@unixg.ubc.ca). David Stewart, Associate Librarian

2) Churches in the G.D.R.

The Landtag of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern has recently published three volumes of verbatim transcripts of the proceedings of its own Enquete Commission, under the title “Leben in der DDR, Leben nach 1989 – Aufarbeitung und Versoehnung”. These contain several statements about the role of the churches by such noted figures as Prof. Martin Onnasch. (These volumes can be consulted at Regent College Library, Vancouver).

3) Book reviews:,

a) Littell, Hyping the Holocaust
b) Crosby, Battlefield Chaplains a) ed. F.H.Littell, Hyping the Holocaust. Scholars answer Goldhagen. East Rockaway,N.Y.: Cummings and Hathaway Publishers. 177pp $20 US

Early last year Daniel Goldhagen’s book _Hitler’s willing executioners_ appeared with tremendous publicity and exaggerated claims for its novelty and uniqueness. Its thesis of a wholesale addiction by Germans to a so-called “eliminationist antisemitism” as the single cause of the Holocaust seemed to appeal to a large number of young Germans now resolutely looking for ammunition to attack their parents and grandparents, or to elderly non-Germans eager to find reinforcement for long-held prejudices. By contrast, academic critics almost universally found much to criticize, particularly in the broad generalizations about the relationship of Germans and Jews. The book received numerous reviews in both the United States and Germany, but has since disappeared from the best-seller lists. In the wider setting, one could argue that the only answer to bad history is better history. But Professor Franklin Littell, who has spent a generation building up a significant forum of scholarly conferences on the Holocaust and the Churches, had a particular concern for joining this debate. He recognized the danger that, if Goldhagen’s views were to find wide coverage or acceptance, these endeavours to heal the wounds of the past and to create a new climate between Christians and Jews might well be endangered. He has therefore assembled a distinguished coterie of experts from Israel, Canada, Germany and the United States to refute the most blatant and unrestrained of Goldhagen’s claims, thereby seeking to restore the damage done to relations between Christians and Jews, between Germans and Israelis and other nations.

These scholars are prepared to be fair. The doyen of Israel’s Holocaust scholarship, Yehuda Bauer, for instance, is ready to agree with Goldhagen that the Holocaust is explicable and not essentially a mystery as Elie Wiesel believes.. He praises as “powerful and convincing” Goldhagen’s description of the death marches of 1945. He is however all the more critical of the indiscriminate stereotyping of German history or Nazi society in particular. In Bauer’s view, which is shared by other Jewish conservatives,Goldhagen blurred what is truly distinctive about the Holocaust by diverting attention away from the industrialized and bureaucratic character of the Nazis’ mass murder onslaught And his principal argument making endemic German antisemitism uniquely responsible is undercut by his throwaway admission in a footnote that since 1945 Germans have become model democrats. Rabbi Jacob Neusner chides his fellow Harvard graduate for his unwillingness to engage in comparisons with other antisemitic societies and for his lack of logical consistency. So too, Hans Mommsen, one of Germany’s leading historians, remains unconvinced by Goldhagen’s adoption of the extreme “intentionalist” view of the Holocaust’s origins, and is unimpressed by the first sections of the book and the “comprehensive elaborations for which there are no archival or other unpublished sources and for which the secondary literature is only called up from time to time”.

Another German contributor, Erich Geldbach, newly appointed Professor of Ecumenical Theology at the Ruhr University, Bochum, challenges Goldhagen’s claim that Germans en masse abandoned ethical norms when they killed Jews. It seemed only “natural” to ordinary Germans to “exterminate” European Jewry. But such a view, in Geldbach’s opinion, by regarding pre-Nazi Germans as already predisposed to an “eliminationist antisemitism”, not only downplays the impact of the Nazis’ extremely effective propaganda and indoctrination machinery. It also partakes of a kind of predestination theory which disallows all possibility of holding individuals morally responsible for their acts. And if the vast majority of Germans were so predisposed, why did Hitler and his closest advisers take such pains to keep the whole process secret? Goldhagen’s simplistic reductionism can only serve to lend support to those who, despite all the evidence, still refuse to face the fact of their complicity. His book therefore runs the risk of being counter- productive.

Wolfgang Gerlach, a German pastor well known for his highly critical study of the Confessing Church’s failure to support Jews during the Holocaust, is drawn to protest against the undifferentiated polemic against all Christians, and to take issue against the charge of “striking impassiveness” which ignores the historical fact that heated debates did take place, even if many Lutherans still remained trapped in their anti-Judaic theological positions, which however were bent on converting, not murdering, Jews. To be sure alert personalities of the church took refuge in a disconcerting, shocking and paralysing silence. But the few Christian martyrs such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer at least deserved a mention, and are obviously omitted because they contradict Goldhagen’s picture of an “indifferent” and “eliminationist” majority.

Three other members of our Association contribute significant essays. Hubert Locke, co-founder with Littell of the Scholars’ Conference, criticizes Goldhagen for denouncing well known Holocaust scholars when they fail to engage in his favourite method: reaching grand conclusions where the evidence is weakest. Peter Hoffmann rightly points out that revulsion against the Nazi murderous antisemitic policies was one of the principal motives for the German Resistance’s attempt to overthrow Hitler, for which so many of them sacrificed their lives. And Dick Pierard contributes a useful summary of American right-wing reactions to Goldhagen’s views, which points out that his arguments can be used to advance agendas which he clearly had not anticipated or intended. The more extreme American “deniers’ of course have condemned Goldhagen’s thesis outright, but his specious generalizations have only provided them with a further opportunity to denounce the whole Holocaust mythology lock, stock and barrel.

In summary, Eberhard Jaeckel, another distinguished Holocaust scholar, to his regret finds that the book is not a penetrating revision of previous scholarship, which might have added significant new findings. Rather it is simply a bad book, little more than a retreat to out-distanced positions, and a reversion to the most primitive of all stereotypes, “by a young man who has gained public attention but at the cost of sacrificing all scientific standing”.

JSC
b) Crosby, Battlefield Chaplains a) ed. F.H.Littell, Hyping the Holocaust. Scholars answer Goldhagen. East Rockaway,N.Y.: Cummings and Hathaway Publishers. 177pp $20 US

Early last year Daniel Goldhagen’s book _Hitler’s willing executioners_ appeared with tremendous publicity and exaggerated claims for its novelty and uniqueness. Its thesis of a wholesale addiction by Germans to a so-called “eliminationist antisemitism” as the single cause of the Holocaust seemed to appeal to a large number of young Germans now resolutely looking for ammunition to attack their parents and grandparents, or to elderly non-Germans eager to find reinforcement for long-held prejudices. By contrast, academic critics almost universally found much to criticize, particularly in the broad generalizations about the relationship of Germans and Jews. The book received numerous reviews in both the United States and Germany, but has since disappeared from the best-seller lists. In the wider setting, one could argue that the only answer to bad history is better history. But Professor Franklin Littell, who has spent a generation building up a significant forum of scholarly conferences on the Holocaust and the Churches, had a particular concern for joining this debate. He recognized the danger that, if Goldhagen’s views were to find wide coverage or acceptance, these endeavours to heal the wounds of the past and to create a new climate between Christians and Jews might well be endangered. He has therefore assembled a distinguished coterie of experts from Israel, Canada, Germany and the United States to refute the most blatant and unrestrained of Goldhagen’s claims, thereby seeking to restore the damage done to relations between Christians and Jews, between Germans and Israelis and other nations.

These scholars are prepared to be fair. The doyen of Israel’s Holocaust scholarship, Yehuda Bauer, for instance, is ready to agree with Goldhagen that the Holocaust is explicable and not essentially a mystery as Elie Wiesel believes.. He praises as “powerful and convincing” Goldhagen’s description of the death marches of 1945. He is however all the more critical of the indiscriminate stereotyping of German history or Nazi society in particular. In Bauer’s view, which is shared by other Jewish conservatives,Goldhagen blurred what is truly distinctive about the Holocaust by diverting attention away from the industrialized and bureaucratic character of the Nazis’ mass murder onslaught And his principal argument making endemic German antisemitism uniquely responsible is undercut by his throwaway admission in a footnote that since 1945 Germans have become model democrats. Rabbi Jacob Neusner chides his fellow Harvard graduate for his unwillingness to engage in comparisons with other antisemitic societies and for his lack of logical consistency. So too, Hans Mommsen, one of Germany’s leading historians, remains unconvinced by Goldhagen’s adoption of the extreme “intentionalist” view of the Holocaust’s origins, and is unimpressed by the first sections of the book and the “comprehensive elaborations for which there are no archival or other unpublished sources and for which the secondary literature is only called up from time to time”.

Another German contributor, Erich Geldbach, newly appointed Professor of Ecumenical Theology at the Ruhr University, Bochum, challenges Goldhagen’s claim that Germans en masse abandoned ethical norms when they killed Jews. It seemed only “natural” to ordinary Germans to “exterminate” European Jewry. But such a view, in Geldbach’s opinion, by regarding pre-Nazi Germans as already predisposed to an “eliminationist antisemitism”, not only downplays the impact of the Nazis’ extremely effective propaganda and indoctrination machinery. It also partakes of a kind of predestination theory which disallows all possibility of holding individuals morally responsible for their acts. And if the vast majority of Germans were so predisposed, why did Hitler and his closest advisers take such pains to keep the whole process secret? Goldhagen’s simplistic reductionism can only serve to lend support to those who, despite all the evidence, still refuse to face the fact of their complicity. His book therefore runs the risk of being counter- productive.

Wolfgang Gerlach, a German pastor well known for his highly critical study of the Confessing Church’s failure to support Jews during the Holocaust, is drawn to protest against the undifferentiated polemic against all Christians, and to take issue against the charge of “striking impassiveness” which ignores the historical fact that heated debates did take place, even if many Lutherans still remained trapped in their anti-Judaic theological positions, which however were bent on converting, not murdering, Jews. To be sure alert personalities of the church took refuge in a disconcerting, shocking and paralysing silence. But the few Christian martyrs such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer at least deserved a mention, and are obviously omitted because they contradict Goldhagen’s picture of an “indifferent” and “eliminationist” majority.

Three other members of our Association contribute significant essays. Hubert Locke, co-founder with Littell of the Scholars’ Conference, criticizes Goldhagen for denouncing well known Holocaust scholars when they fail to engage in his favourite method: reaching grand conclusions where the evidence is weakest. Peter Hoffmann rightly points out that revulsion against the Nazi murderous antisemitic policies was one of the principal motives for the German Resistance’s attempt to overthrow Hitler, for which so many of them sacrificed their lives. And Dick Pierard contributes a useful summary of American right-wing reactions to Goldhagen’s views, which points out that his arguments can be used to advance agendas which he clearly had not anticipated or intended. The more extreme American “deniers’ of course have condemned Goldhagen’s thesis outright, but his specious generalizations have only provided them with a further opportunity to denounce the whole Holocaust mythology lock, stock and barrel.

In summary, Eberhard Jaeckel, another distinguished Holocaust scholar, to his regret finds that the book is not a penetrating revision of previous scholarship, which might have added significant new findings. Rather it is simply a bad book, little more than a retreat to out-distanced positions, and a reversion to the most primitive of all stereotypes, “by a young man who has gained public attention but at the cost of sacrificing all scientific standing”.

JSC

b) Donald F.Crosby,SJ., Battlefield Chaplains: Catholic Priests in World War II, University of Kansas Press, 1994

During the Gulf War, a Catholic padre found himself beside the body of an American female soldier mortally wounded in a vehicle accident. In an action as ancient as the office itself, the padre bent over the soldier and led her through the Act of Contrition and the prayers for the dying. His reward was a faint squeeze of the hand before she died.

Donald Crosby’s study of battlefield ministry to the armed forces of the United States in the Second World War explores the similar work done by thousands of Catholic clerics overseas. He vividly portrays the intensity of this ministry and the devotion most padres felt for their men, as well as, for better or for worse, their complete identification with the crusading cause of the United States. Crosby has undertaken wide and exhaustive research in Catholic newsprint, army archival and chaplain memoir literature. He also benefited from a 1983 questionnaire sent to former military chaplains, asking them to reflect on their service and to evaluate it for

Association of Contemporary Church Historians

(Arbeitsgemeinschaft kirchlicher Zeitgeschichtler)

John S. Conway, Editor. University of British Columbia

I trust you are enjoying a blessed and relaxed Easter season.

1. Conference Reports – Tampa, Bensheim

2. Precis of paper – M.Lindsay: Barthian Dogmatics

3. New journal articles

4. Book review: J.Hutchinson: Champions of Charity by John S. Conway

1. 27th Annual Scholars Conference on Holocaust and the Churches, Tampa,Florida, March 1-4th 1997 David Diephouse reports: This was apparently the largest conference to date,attracting more than 300 attendees. There was a predictably lively session on l’affaire Goldhagen; Elie Wiesel gave a memorable address; Michael Berenbaum presented a fine assessment of Richard Rubenstein’s thought, and Michael Marrus gave an engaging paper on the never-issued Papal Encyclical on anti-semitism of 1938-9. Beyond that, papers on specifically (church-) historical topics were relatively few and far between. Among the more effective was Mark Lindsay’s making a cogent case for Barth’s Dogmatics. (See below). The program was ambitious to a fault, with as many as six papers packed into some sessions, and the resulting time constraints meant that individual presentations inevitably varied in quality. Dick Pierard sends the following additional note: At the Tampa Conference, a new book on the Goldhagen controversy was introduced and it was a brisk seller. This collection of thoughtful essays by scholars from four countries pulls no punches in critiquing Goldhagen’s Hitler’s Willing Executioners.Entitled Hyping the Holocaust: Scholars answer Goldhagen, and edited by Franklin Littell, it is available from the Philadelphia Centre on the Holocaust, Genocide and Human Rights, P.O.Box 10, Merion Station, PA 19066, ISBN 0-943025- 98-2, $20.00. This is a ‘must’ volume for anyone interested in the controversy, but Goldhagen’s admirers will find little comfort in it. (To be reviewed here next month) The German book on the debate is also worth mentioning. Julius H.Schoeps, ed., Ein Volk von Moerdern? Die Dokumentation zur Goldhagen-Kontroverse um die Rolle der Deutschen im Holocaust,Hamburg: Hoffmann & Campe 1996, DM 25.00. It contains several translated major US and British reviews and essays and even more of the German ones.

Bensheim, Rhein. The 41st annual conference of theological professors met on Feb 27th-Mar 1st to consider “Angenommene Geschichte. Kirchenkampf in Deutschland 1933-1990“. Prof. J.Mehlhausen, Tuebingen, led off with a splendid account of the Protestant historiography of the Church Struggles of this century. He made the valid point that after 1945, church historians took a very positive view of the church’s stance during the Nazi years, stressing their steadfastness in resisting the Nazi ideology, their sufferings at the hands of Nazi oppressors, and their resolute defence of the Gospel. But by the 1960s a more critical revisionist approach appeared, based not least on a fuller access to the documentation, so that the church’s failings in the Nazi period, hitherto passed over in silence, now became clearer. By contrast, after 1989, many accounts of the church’s role in the unlamented GDR were negative in tone. Mehlhausen hoped that a similar revisionist process will eventually lead to a more balanced and fairer assessment of the years under Communist rule. Heinrich Missalla gave an equally valuable account of Catholic historiography, and critically pointed the numerous “white pages” still untackled by Catholic historians, so that such subjects as the Catholic reactions to the Nazis’ persecution of the Jews are still unexplored. Similarly he was critical of the received version of the Catholic experience in the GDR, suggesting that the notion of Catholic abstention and insulation from the Communist rule doesn’t tell all the story. I presented a paper comparing the historiography of both churches from an outsider’s point of view. Luckily this meeting was organized in the best possible way. Only three papers were given in two whole days, so that there was ample time for a full discussion, which was much enhanced by the long memories of those present, including one gentleman who had been a student in Tuebingen in 1934-5! A very rewarding experience. JSC

2. Conference Paper Precis: Mark Lindsay, U of Western Australia: “Covenanted Solidarity: Barthian Dogmatics as a theological basis of union between Christians and Jews”.

It has been widely acknowledged that Karl Barth, as the principal author of the Barmen Declaration of 1934, and as a leader of the Bekennende Kirche, was a resolute opponent of the Nazi regime, particularly in regard to its policy of Gleichschaltung and its impingement on the Church. What is less freely acknowledged is Barth’s opposition to the Nazi persecution of the Jews. Indeed, some scholars such as Wolfgang Gerlach, Dick Gutteridge, and Daniel Goldhagen, have accused Barth of, at best, a passivity in the face of the Holocaust and, at worst, a theology that was sympathetic to it. That this was manifestly not the case is shown by a consideration of his dogmatic theology as it was formulated and taught during the Nazi years. As early as 1931-2, Barth was positioning himself against the predominant voelkisch politics and theology of the day. In Church Dogmatics I/1, which was written before the Machtergreifung, he consciously rejected any and every racial misappropriation of the Word of God, thus distancing himself from the presuppositions of the antisemitic Deutsche Christen. He was dismayed at the contemporary “intoxication of Nordic blood and . . . the political Fuehrer. . ” and insisted that Church proclamation must not be aligned with the features or interests of any one race, people, nation or state. This opposition to the racial-voelkisch (and therefore antisemitic) perversion of Christian doctrine was later expanded. For example, in CD I/1 -II/1, Barth located the revelation of God solely in the incarnation of Christ, which he viewed through the lenses of the orthodox an-/enhypostatic Christological formula. In contrast to his 1922 commentary on Romans, he was thus able – indeed compelled – to focus on the historicity and, therefore, the Jewishness of Jesus. As early as 1934, Barth was saying that “anyone who believes in Christ, who was himself a Jew, simply cannot be involved in the contempt and ill-treatment of Jews which is the order of the day”. Later, in December 1938, just after Kristallnacht, he declared that the decisive reason why the Church must reject Nazism lay in the latter’s antisemitism. Barth’s view of the Bible also tied him to solidarity between Christians and Jews. In contrast to Krause and the Deutsche Christen, Barth insisted that the biblical witness to revelation came to us in the inseparable form of both Old and New Testaments. The God of the Jews is the same as the God of the Christians – Yahweh-Kyrios – and his one covenant of grace permeates the entire Bible (in contrast to the Marcionite severing of the two testaments, and therefore of Christian-Jewish unity). The second major theme running through Church Dogmatics is that of election. In 1942 (CD II/2) Barth affirmed that both Israel and the Church “together in their unity” constitute the One People of God. The Church cannot be spoken of as elected, while Israel is spoken of as rejected. Rather, both together are elected, with the election of Israel being confirmed “to the present day”. Moreover, Barth insisted, if and when the Church forgets its union with the Jews, it ceases to be the Church. In this he was reaffirming Bonhoeffer’s comment of 1933 that the Church’s response to the Aryan Paragraph was the ‘articulus stantis et cadentis ecclesiae‘. It is true that Barth did not ignore the sins of Israel which he saw to be evident in the Old Testament, and he even accused Israel of having rejected the revelation of God. It is crucial to note, however, that Barth passed exactly the same judgment on the Church – so that even this solidarity of sin binds the two together. Even when he spoke ‘negatively’ of Israel, Barth always circumscribed this with a similar statement to the Church of his own day. Finally, it is worth noting that, once in Switzerland, Barth became actively involved in relief agencies engaged in aiding and rescuing Jews. From 1936, he was financially supporting those in the Confessing Church who were helping the persecuted Jews. In late June 1944, after receiving a terrifying account of the conditions in Auschwitz, he petitioned the Swiss authorities to rescue the Hungarian Jews. Both theologically and practically Barth was a keen defender of the Jews and an advocate of the need for a practical hic et nunc solidarity between Christians and Jews. Mark Lindsay

3.New journal articles: a) Chris Clark, “Confessional Policy and the limits of state action: Frederick Wilhelm III and the Prussian Church Union 1817-40” in The Historical Journal, Vol 39, no 4, December 1996, p 985- 1004. This examines the reasons for, and the failure of, F.W.III’s attempts to unify the Lutheran and Reformed churches in Prussia, revealing the limits of government power and authority in the sensitive area of confesssional policy. b) Stefan Samerski, “Der Hl. Stuhl und der Vertrag von Versailles”, in Zeitschrift fuer Kirchengeschichte, Vol 107 no 3, (1996),p 355-75. An excellently researched study of Papal diplomacy 1917-21, mainly drawing on Vatican and German diplomatic papers. c) Gary Lease, “Denunciation as a tool of ecclesiastical control: the case of Roman Catholic Modernism,” in Journal of Modern History, Vol 68, no 4, December 1996, p 819-30. This short essay makes for distressing reading. Not only does Lease cite some most unfortunate behaviour by earlier ecclesiastical hard- liners, but also describes how he personally suffered the same fate at a Southern California university as recently as 1971 when “spies” were placed in his lectures to trap him into “heretical” opinions which were then delated to opponents resulting in his dismissal. d) R.Gellately, “Denunciations in Twentieth-Century Germany,” in Journal of Modern History, Vol 68 no 4, December 1996, p.931-967. Compares the Gestapo and Stasi use of denunciations, and although not specifically about the churches, makes it clear that denunciations and institutionalized informing had a devastating effect on all forms of disobedience, much less resistance.

4. Book review: John R.Hutchinson, Champions of Charity. War and the rise of the Red Cross, Westview: Boulder, Colorado 1996, $35.00 (Although not immediately about church affairs, the themes of this book seemed to me to be relevant to our concerns, and appropriate to the Easter season. Ed.)

The Red Cross has for so long been a symbol of devoted humanitarianism that its record has rarely been subject to critical evaluation by secular historians. Everyone knows that the inspiration came from the young Swiss evangelical philanthropist, Henry Dunant, after witnessing the carnage on the battlefield of Solferino in 1859. But few know what happened next. John Hutchinson, of Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, has now remedied this gap with an account of the Red Cross’ first sixty years up to 1921, which is well-argued, original and iconoclastic. His skilful handling of multinational sources is exemplary, and his account carries conviction just because he avoids the usual hagiographical approach. Indeed, supporters of the Red Cross may find it hard to accept his major thesis, which is that the original idealistic humanitarian impulse of the 1860s only too easily got subordinated to the military and political rivalries of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The champions of organised international charity, instead of making war more civilized, became advocates of a different and more ominous sense of war-mindedness. How and why this happened is the core of Hutchinson’s finely-crafted “political economy” of the Red Cross.

Dunant’s original idealistic appeal was taken up by Gustave Moynier, whose management skills gave institutional shape to the organization which he guided for more than forty years. Moynier called the first multinational conference to consider how aid could best be provided to the wounded in war. He proposed a corps of devoted civilians whose safety and neutrality was to be guarantied by all governments and symbolized by a white armband embroidered with a red cross. Together with four colleagues he set up an International Committee of the Red Cross and skilfully lobbied all the European states and the USA, for support for his aims. The wars of 1864-70 confirmed the desirability of such an idea, bringing together both the idealism of philanthropists and the more calculated interest of military leaders. As Hutchinson shows, there was always a continuing tension between those who regarded the Red Cross’ mission as a civilizing force leading eventually to the abolition of war, and those who more narrowly aimed to mobilize these volunteers behind their militaristic and nationalist ambitions. Since it had no divisions of its own, the Red Cross could only hope to exercise moral influence on states by appealing to the nobility of its ideals. Hutchinson shows very clearly how this situation was exploited. But at the same time, the price was an increasing closeness between armies, states and their Red Cross societies, which less and less challenged the dominant trend towards the militarisation of charity. Moynier’s original belief in the Red Cross’ universal moral mission paving the way for peace was progressively abandoned. Instead by 1914 the Red Cross was regarded by peoples and governments as a valuable auxiliary for war. This trend became more pronounced as the national Red Cross societies became more respectable, enjoyed the support of aristocrats and royalty, and readily saw themselves as mobilizing support for nationalistic aims. The paradox became blatant in 1901, when one of the first Nobel Peace Prizes was awarded to Henry Dunant, who had been dismissed from the ICRC in 1867 after a financial scandal, had played no part in Red Cross activities for more than thirty years, but had finally been rescued from poverty by the sentimental wing of the highly unrespectable pacifist movement, led by such mavericks as Baroness von Suttner. This was a bitter blow to the largely-unknown Moynier, who had devoted his life to the cause. Coincidentally both men died within a few months of each other in 1910. The outbreak of war in 1914 doomed the pacifist cause. By contrast it evoked in the supporters of the Red Cross enormous, if mutually antagonistic, waves of patriotic fervour. All social classes united in wanting to serve the war wounded, as millions of men and women saw Red Cross work as an opportunity to make their personal contribution to their nation’s victory. The clash this fervent patriotism and the older ideal of impartial medical service was often glaring. Like so many of the churches, the Red advocates fell into regarding war as an ennobling adventure, believed that military action would have beneficial moral results for the whole race, demonized the enemy and even justified death in battle as a heroic and glorious sacrifice. Inevitably in the aftermath disillusionment and cynicism set in. Hutchinson skips over the details of the military events of 1914-8, but instead looks at the later attempts to rescue the cause of humanitarian charity from such distortions. Readers who want to study subsequent developments will find many of the same themes recurring in the second world war, as described in the books by Jean-Claude Favez and Dieter Riesenberger, in French and German respectively. Hutchinson’s conclusion is that the development of the Red Cross was fashioned as much by the self-interest of military and political hierarchies as by the noble ideals of its founders. The abolition of war is no nearer now than in 1863. Disease and disaster still stalk the globe. The Red Cross has played only a mitigating role, however much such a sombre finding may distress its numerous well-wishers. But the historian has no mandate to encourage wishful thinking. In this respect, Hutchinson has written a first-rate and persuasive contribution. JSC

We now have 120 subscribers from Western Australia to Poland. If you know of anyone else interested, please send their name and E- mail address. May I again invite all of you to submit contributions to this Newsletter. And if anyone has a comment on its contents which they would like to share with other members, just send it round via the collective address = kirzeit-l@unixg.ubc.ca

With very best wishes,
John Conway
jconway@unixg.ubc.ca

Association of Contemporary Church Historians

(Arbeitsgemeinschaft kirchlicher Zeitgeschichtler)

John S. Conway, Editor. University of British Columbia

Newsletter – March 1997 – Vol III, no 3

Dear Friends,

This issue is coming to you a little late, since I have been away in Germany to attend a Colloquium in Bensheim on the Rhine, about which I hope to give you a short resume next month.

Contents

1) Web-site change

2)Congratulations

3) Obituaries: Heiner Grote, Jorgen Glenthoy

4) New issue of journal: Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte Vol 8, no 2, 1996

5) Video review: Hanged on a twisted cross.

6)Book reviews: Bishop Galen of Muenster

1) Gordon Mork, Purdue (gmork@purdue.edu) reports that our Web-site has been changed to:

index.htm

2) Congratulations to our colleague Gerhard Besier, Professor for Church History in Heidelberg, on his being nominated for membership at the prestigious Historisches Kolleg in Munich for 1997-8. This distinguished appointment brings together two or three German historians, and one foreign scholar, for a year’s sabbatical in Munich, so that they can finish their on-going researches without any teaching burdens. Dr Nicholas Hope of the Dept. of History, Glasgow, another of our members and the author of an impressive study of German and Lutheran Protestantism in the 18th and 19th centuries, has been appointed to take over Besier’s responsibilities in Heidelberg for next year. I see this as an excellent example of international collaboration. Now, if only the Scots would select a Canadian! We are all delighted by this news, and wish them both a very successful tenure.

3) Obituaries:

Heiner Grote: 1934-1996

Those of us who were privileged to have known Heiner Grote will be greatly saddened to learn that he passed away on Oct 23rd 1996, after thirty years as a scholarly expert at the Konfessionskundliches Institut, Benheim, Germany.

As a result of a swimming accident, Heiner was paraplegic since his teens, but overcame the myriad difficulties beyond those dictated by his condition: leaving behind his beloved Leipzig for West Germany in the late 1950s to become an ordained pastor and social historian, and to devote his professional life to the questions tangential to German Protestantism in our times. Among essays on such subjects as Christian-Jewish relations or Luther, Heiner Grote wrote several volumes, making a valuable contributionto our understanding of the relationship between Socialism and Religion in the Bismarck era (Sozialdemokratie und Religion: eine Dokumentation fuer die Jahre 1863 bis 1875, Tuebingen 1968); to the history of the ‘Evangelischer Bund’ (Protestanten auf dem Wege. Geschichte des Evangelischen Bundes, Goettingen 1986 – co-authored with Walter Fleischmann-Bisten) and shortly before his early death, to an important interpretation of the pronouncement of the Roman Church from Pius IX to the present (Was verlautbart Rom? Eine Dokumentation fuer die Praxis, Goettingen 1995).

Firmly committed to, but just as often equally critical of the role of Protestantism in German history, Heiner, along with his wife Nora, was a most tolerant “Gespraechspartner” and gracious host to many of us over the years. My own dialogues with him go back to the 1970s, and I am sure a number of other scholars will also have lively recollections of some of the many discussions held in his Bensheim office, and equally of valuable correspondences over the years. It is moreover a measure of the man that, in the face of determined opposition of his church superiors, including their special dispensation to marry (Frau Grote is of Jewish origin), his ecumenical spirit, his pronounced sense of independence, his formidable intellectuality, all vanquished such impediments, making his ideally suited to participate in an open debate with men and women of many persuasions on both sides of the Atlantic. His friends and colleagues will miss him very much.

Ronald Webster, York University, Toronto, Canada

Jorgen Glenthoy: 29.11.1922 – 24.10.1996

Jorgen Glenthoy’s Interesse fuer das Zeitgeschichte wurde in seinen Studienjahre geweckt. Als Student der Theologie waehrend der deutschen Okkupation verfolgte er mit Befriedigung das Heranwachsen einer nationalen Gegenwehr gegen die Besatzungsmacht. Ein Schluesselereignis war dabei die Rettungsaktion fuer die daenischen Juden im Oktober 1943. Jorgen Glenthoy lebte in einem Wohnheim in unmittelbarer Naehe der Synagoge und wurde direkt an der Planung und Durchfuehrung der Flucht beteiligt. Mit gleicher Anteilnahme reagierte er empoert auf die Nachricht von der Ermordung des daenischen Dichterpfarrer Kaj Munk am 5 Januar 1944. Mit solchen Erfahrungen als Hintergrund nahm Jorgen Glenthoy wenige Jahre spaeter, als er inzwischen Pfarrer in Jutland geworden war, ein wissenschaftliches Studium der kirchlichen Zeitgeschichte auf, insbesondere Leben und Werk von Dietrich Bonhoeffer. In der fuenfziger Jahren fuehrte er mehrere laengere Archivreisen in Deutschland durch. Damit leitete er eine enge Freundschaft und Zusammenarbeit ein mit Pioniergestalten wie Wilhelm Niemoeller und Eberhard Bethge. Die ersten Ergebnisse seiner Forschung waren Aufsaetze wie “Bonhoeffer und die Oekumene” (Mundige Welt II) sowie Uebersetzungen ins Daenische von Bonhoeffer- Werken wie “Widerstand und Ergebung” u.a. Sein wissenschaftliches Hauptwerk was indes “Dokumente zur Bonhoeffer-Forschung 1928-1945” (mit auswertenden Kommentaren und Analysen), 1969 erschienen und als Lic. Abhandlung von der Theologischen Fakultaet der Universitaet Aarhus angenommen. Jorgen Glenthoy war an der Herausgabe von der neuen Ausgabe von Bonhoeffers Werken massgeblich beteiligt, insbesondere Bd 16: Konspiration und Haft 1939-45. Dieser Band ist kurz nach seinem Tod in Herbst 1996 erschienen. Aber ueber die Bonhoeffer-Forschung hinaus uebte Jorgen Glenthoy eine umfassende Taetigkeit als Schriftsteller aus. Nicht zuletzt widmete er sich Fragen der daenischen Kirchenpolitik wie Widerstand gegen die Ordination von Frauen, gegen Zuege einer staatskirchlichen Politik oder einer “Entsakralisierung” der gottesdienstlichen Liturgie. Seine erbitterte Oppositionshaltung gegen die mehrheitliche Tendenz in der Volkskirche brachte ihn zunehmend in die Rolle des Aussenseiters, wobei er eine leitende Verantwortung fuer eine hochkirchlich orientierte Minoritaet uebernahm und darin eine Paralellitaet zu dem deutschen Kirchenkampf in den Jahren der Hitler-Herrschaft erblicken wollte. Jens Holger Schjorring, Aarhus

4) The latest issue of KZG is devoted entirely to South Africa, with articles by A.Boyens, G.Besier, R.Mayer and Keith M. Zondi, along with a useful bibliography on this area, as well as the usual 100 page bibliography of recent books in our area of study.

5)Video review: Hanged on a twisted cross: The Life,Convictions and Martyrdom of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, produced by Lathika International Film and Entertainment Inc, distributed by Vision Video, Box 540, Worcester, Pennsylvania 19490,USA 120 mins/color 1996 US $29.95 approx

This new American video, with a script loosely based on the book “Bonhoeffer: A life in Pictures” edited by Bonhoeffer’s biographer and closest friend Eberhard Bethge, has the merit of presenting Bonhoeffer’s life and death through a skilful collage of family photographs, interwoven with news-reel clips from the 1930s, mainly of Nazi rallies, and too frequently of Adolf Hitler at his bombastic worst. The tone throughout is one of the struggle between one individual’s Christian conviction and the intimidating power of a totalitarian dictator, determined to wipe out all opposition. So the emgmorksis is placed firmly on Bonhoeffer the political martyr with full illustrations of the prisons and concentration camps in which he was incarcerated and finally murdered. His early life and theological training is well depicted to show the importance of his family connections, and rightly suggests that it was these, and his international and ecumenical friendships, which led Bonhoeffer in 1933 to oppose the enthusiastic support given by the majority of the German Protestants for the new Nazi regime. His participation in the Confessing Church’s struggle to preserve the truth of the gospel against all nationalistic and racist perversions and propaganda is equally well stressed. On the other hand, despite extensive quotations from his writings – in voice-over translation – the significant influence of Bonhoeffer as a theologian is underplayed. Only limited excerpts from the later “Letters and Papers from Prison” are read, and none of his more challenging pronouncements on the future on the church are mentioned. As a result Bonhoeffer’s enormous and world-wide influence in the 1950s and 1960s is left unmentioned and unexplained. The film seems designed to honour a dead conspirator rather than a living theologian. One can only assume that this political, untheological bias arises out of the compilers’ aversion to Bonhoeffer’s challenges to their kind of theology. It is also not helped by an American commentator who glaringly and unnecessarily mispronounces names, which can only offend the purist.

Trying to cover all the political events in a short two hours also gives a rather rushed and breathless impression. The awful dilemmas and ambiguities of intelligent Germans are hinted at but not fully developed, even though the tragedy of the man Bonhoeffer is well portrayed.

I preferred the shorter but deeper compass of the earlier BBC film produced some years ago by Malcolm Muggeridge. Viewers of this video would do well to go on to tackle Bethge’s magnificent and more thoughtful biography, or turn to the latest editions of Bonhoeffer’s works, now being translated and published by the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. John Conway

6) Book review

A Catholic Bishop in Nazi Germany

(This review appeared earlier on H-German)

ed. P. Loeffler, _Bischof Clemens August Graf von Galen: Akten, Briefe und Predigten 1933-1946 _ , Vol I: _1933-1939_, Vol II: 1939-1946_, Second revised and enlarged edition (Veroeffentlichungen der Kommission fuer Zeitgeschichte, Reihe A: Quellen, Vol. 42) Paderborn: Schoeningh 1996 1476pp DM ISBN 3-7867-1394-4 (cloth), 3-506-79840-5 (paper)

These two volumes are a second, revised and enlarged edition of a work first published in 1988 (also in two volumes), and edited by the former archivist of the Muenster diocese, Freidrich Loeffler. The enlargement, in fact, consists only of 12 additional documents, amounting to forty-two pages in all, none of which substantially changes the picture we already have. Although admirably edited, as before, to the commendably high standards of the Catholic Commission for Contemporary History, the horrendous cost of this work, despite undoubted subsidies from the Catholic church in Germany, will make it unlikely to be a best-seller. But, presumably for the sake of completeness, this now appears a second time in order to include a few more items which have turned up since 1988, as well as adding an updated bibliography of the most recent publications relating to the career of the subject. Given the enormous initial task of reconstructing this material, much of which was lost when the diocesan archive was almost totally destroyed by British bombing during the war, the editor’s perseverance is to be commended.

Bishop Galen is now best remembered for his outspoken sermons of July and August 1941 denouncing the crimes of the Gestapo, especially the murder of thousands of German mentally- handicapped patients in specially controlled mental hospitals during the so-called “euthanasia” programme. These sermons were delivered at the very moment when the Nazi course of military aggression was at its peak, and, if Goebbels had had his way, would have led to the bishop’s being strung up on a lamp-post outside his own cathedral. He only survived because Hitler decided to delay vengeance until the war was won.

It was this act of defiance which presumably led Pope Pius XII to create Galen a Cardinal at his first Consistory after the war in late 1945 – the first time the diocese of Muenster had been so honoured. Unfortunately Galen died suddenly only a few weeks after returning from receiving his red hat in Rome.

Clemens August Graf von Galen came from a highly aristocratic Westgmorklian family, which had been accustomed to holding high office in both church and state. As such, Galen could not be described as having sympathies for the democratic Weimar Republic, and was even more staunchly opposed to the threat of communism. His disdain for Adolf Hitler and his mob of rowdy thugs was equally obvious, though in 1933, when the Nazis achieved power, Galen’s antipathy was tempered by the fact that a fellow Westgmorklian aristocrat, Franz von Papen, was to become Vice-Chancellor. Neither of them could foresee how rapidly Papen’s influence was to be eroded.

Galen was appointed bishop, at the age of fifty-five, in September 1933 (which is where the documents in these volumes begin), and set himself the task of building up his diocese, with the result that Muenster became even more the heartland of “black reaction”, as his Nazi opponents viewed it. Nazi ideologies like Alfred Rosenberg were determined to challenge this citadel, and many of the documents provided here outline the fierce controversies caused by Rosenberg’s provocative appearance in Muenster in 1935. They also show how soon and how vigorously the Nazis’ campaign to dominate the public scene, especially all aspects of education, was launched, in the expectation that their frothy brew of ultra-nationalist, racist, anti-communist and anti-clerical rhetoric would capture the hearts and minds of most Germans. Galen’s untiring and energetic responses to this flagrant attack are here fully documented.

It is clear that Galen saw himself as the defender of traditional Catholic doctrine and of the autonomy of the Church, which he mistakenly thought had been safeguarded by the newly-signed Concordat of July 1933. His stature as a prince of the church and his family background led him to tireless attempts to reject any interference by the Nazi upstarts, seeking to control or limit the operations of the church. He was especially vigorous in upholding the heritage of the Christian past of Muenster and Westgmorklia against the pseudo-pagan ideology of the Nazi extremists. But at the same time this appeal to the rich heritage of Germany’s saints and heroes of the past led him to being susceptible to the allurements of other, more political, aspects of Nazism, such as the restoration of Germany’s dignity and honour after the humiliation of the Versailles Treaty. Hitler’s promise to restore Germany’s national honour therefore met with his warm approval.

One clear trend is evidenced from many of the internal documents covering his correspondence with other members of the Catholic hierarchy. In defence of the church’s position, Galen found the conduct of his superiors, especially the aged Presiding Bishop, Cardinal Bertram of Breslau, to be far too reticent and diplomatic. He never shared the Cardinal’s belief that the Nazi government would willingly uphold the terms of the 1933 Concordat if sufficiently lengthy remonstrances were forwarded to Hitler’s office. Instead, Galen insisted, this kind of secret negotiation only baffled the ordinary Catholics suffering from the innumerable pin- pricks of Nazi officialdom, while unable to see that any improvements were forthcoming. Galen wanted a much more forceful and public confrontation against these encroaching impertinencies, and sought to rally the faithful of his diocese to be on their guard against all such attempts to strangle church life and institutions. But his advice was not accepted by Bertram, and every time he urged a stronger line to be taken, the Cardinal backed down. Clearly Galen, who rather enjoyed the epithet of “The Lion of Muenster”, was frustrated by such pusillanimity, and even courted persecution in order to defend his diocesan territory. But he was unsuccessful in getting any more challenging line adopted.

When war broke out in 1939, Galen, like so many other German conservatives, was prepared to believe that Germany was only attempting to break the stranglehold imposed on her by encircling foes, and was quite ready to endorse the war effort in religious terms, being anxious not to allow the Nazis to accuse Catholics of displaying less fervour for the war effort than other members of the community But at the same time, he was not at all prepared to allow war-time necessity to be used as an excuse to cripple the church by further curtailing its activities or associations, or commandeering its buildings. The confiscations of monasteries and nunneries, the closing of church schools and the refusal of paper supplies for church publications were, as we now know, all part of the Nazis’ deliberate plot to demolish the church’s bastions, and it is clear that Galen was very much aware of the damage being done. Still he went on believing that such actions were just the work of underlings in the Nazi Party, and that Hitler, had he known of them, would have corrected these excesses – again a very typical attitude found among German conservatives.

But by 1941 Galen had had enough. He decided to ignore the advice of his colleagues and to launch a very public demonstration in defence of the rights of the church. His feelings of outrage were only strengthened by the growing number of representations made to him by parishioners concerned about the fate of their relatives in mental hospitals, whose sudden and mysterious deaths shortly after being transferred in Gestapo-organised buses from church hospitals to those run by the state, aroused waves of panic and alarm. Unfortunately these volumes do not give us any indication of the sources of information about these murderous policies which Galen was receiving at the time. Nevertheless he resolved to “go public” in the most demonstrative manner, even if this brought about his immediate arrest, or even banishment from his diocese. He therefore prepared three sermons of protest, which included full details of the Gestapo’s lawless iniquities, and ordered them to be secretly printed and circulated even before he spoke. To gain effect, he delivered these sermons in his own cathedral, dressed in the full insignia and vestments of a bishop, so that, if arrested as he stepped down from the pulpit and taken away by the Gestapo, the whole town would know of this insult to the majesty of his office. In fact, the Nazis were taken by surprise, and were unable to prevent the very wide circulation of these outspoken denunciations of the regime, which were quickly spread from hand to hand, and even appeared in other parts of Europe, and also were used as very effective propaganda by the BBC. But, of course, Galen denied having any political intentions. He still apparently thought that the Nazis could be recalled by fervent exhortations to uphold the concepts of German law and traditional Christian moral values.

Courageous as these actions were in defence of the Church’s traditional concerns for its flock, it has to be noted that these documents contain not a single instance of Galen’s being ready to make similar protests against the even more heinous Nazi crimes against the Jews. Indeed it would seem clear that Galen, like so many other German conservatives, shared much of the prevalent anti-semitic attitudes of his day, especially the widespread assumption that the Jews were powerfully represented in the Communist leadership of the Soviet Union. Consequently, his ardent support for the Nazis’ war of liberation against the “godless atheism” of the Bolsheviks, as expressed in a pastoral letter of September 1941, no doubt influenced him in remaining silent on the events of the Holocaust. Such was the ambivalence, or the dilemma, of this section of the German populace. His national loyalties remain firm to the end. Germany’s defeat by the Allies was a major disaster, and in no way could be celebrated as a liberation. In fact, as the American troops advanced into his diocese Galen withdrew to a remote country convent to avoid the coming of the “barbarians”.

Subsequently, after May 1945, he was at pains to make it clear to the officials of the British Military Government installed in Muenster, that he was not prepared to collaborate in this renewal of Germany’s shame. He denied any idea of German collective guilt, readily enough supported the view that the Catholic church had been the first victims of the Nazi onslaught, and sought to retrieve all the church’s privileges and possessions from earlier days. Not surprisingly he was highly critical of the whole de- Nazification process, and caused all sorts of difficulties for the British, who in return tried to block his being allowed to go to Rome for his installation as a Cardinal. While these documents provide us with Galen’s side of the story, it is not difficult to see how intransigent a conservative nationalist he remained, despite all. In this stance, he was in fact not untypical of his class and caste, and his legacy was in fact to be reflected in the stubborn defence of these clerical positions during the immediate post-war years when the new German government was established.

The value of these documents will be to allow a clearer picture of the extent to which Catholic apologists are justified when they argue that the bishops’ stance during the Nazi years was successful in preventing the whole-scale apostasy of the Catholic population, or that any more open protest would have endangered needlessly the lives of millions of Catholics. On the other hand, they also show how the bishops’ illusions about the character of the Nazi regime prevented any mobilization of Catholic resistance, especially on the most vital issue of the persecution of the Jews. When it came to the rights of the Catholics, Galen showed what could be achieved, and his stance has been fully lauded by Catholic historians ever since. But his upbringing and experience did not lead him to recognise that, under the demonic rule of Nazi racial totalitarians, a much broader sense of compassion and commitment was called for. This was the tragedy of German Catholicism, which it is only now seeking to overcome.

John S.Conway.

With ever best wish to you all,

John S.Conway
jconway@unixg.ubc.ca

Association of Contemporary Church Historians

(Arbeitsgemeinschaft kirchlicher Zeitgeschichtler)

John S. Conway, Editor. University of British Columbia

Newsletter (Vol III, no 2) – February 1997.

Contents

1) New Web-site

2) Conference announcement

3) Gordon Mork, “Situation update – Oberammergau Today”

4) Book Reviews:

a) Peter Hoffmann, Stauffenberg reviewed by John S. Conway

b) Theodor Thomas, Women against Hitler reviewed by Doris Bergen

Dear Friends,

1) New Web-site: Thanks to the kind efforts of Gordon Mork, Purdue, our Association’s Newsletters are being “archived” on the following web-site, and can be retrieved from

2) The 27th Annual Scholars’ Conference on the Holocaust and the Churches: “Hearing the Voices: Teaching the Holocaust to Future Generations”, will take place at the Tampa Airport Marriott Hotel, Tampa, Florida from March 2nd-4th. Not many sessions are devoted to our theme, but our members Mark Lindsay, Perth, Australia and Robert Levy, Eastern Washington are due to give papers. We shall look forward to their report on the proceedings.

3) Situation Update:

Oberammergau Revisited

by Gordon Mork

Throughout 1996 controversy continued in the village of Oberammergau over the Passion Play. In March the town council was elected, and the future of the Passion Play was the major local issue; the council will have a major role in preparing and presenting the play in the year 2000. Local elections in Oberammergau are complex because, in addition to the well-known Christian Social Union and Social Democratic Parties, there is a proliferation of local parties with names like “Dorfpolitik neu ueberdacht”, “Fuer unser Dorf” and “Freie Waehlergemeinschaft”. The March election created a divided council, with some members whom we might call “traditionalists”, some “reformers” and a shifting “moderate” group which holds the balance of power. In key test votes for leadership positions in the new council, the traditionalists won, 14 votes to 7.

Among the town councillors elected were Dr Rudi Zwink and Christian Stueckl, each of whom had ambitions to be the play director for 2000. Zwink, a practising dentist, had portrayed Chrust in 1980 and 1984. He led the list “Fuer unser Dorf”, which ran under the banner “auf den Wurzeln bewaehrter Traditionen”. Stueckl, employed as a theatre professional in Munich, was on the list “Dorfpolitik neu ueberdacht”. His position was “auf dem Vergangenen aufbauend neue Wege suchen, die den Menschen von heute gerecht werden”. As a long-haired young man in his 20s, Stueckl had been elected play director for 1990 by a council vote of only 9 to 8. Over substantial local objections he had introduced several significant reforms, seeking to purge the play of antisemitism and allow women a wider role, while retaining the basic framework of the play.

In the council election Zwink appeared to be the most popular man in town, winning his seat with the largest popular vote of any candidate.

In an attempt to settle the situation once and for all, a group of citizens used the new Bavarian initiative and referendum procedure to force a decision on whether or not the traditional 19th century text and music by Othmar Weis, Joseph Daisenberger and Rochus Dedler would be used again in 2000. The referendum took place on April 1996, when an overwhelming majority, 74%, supported the traditional form.

Traditionalists and reformers each then began competing initiative petitions for another referendum to name either Zwink or Stueckl as the new play director, which proved to be hotly contested, both men making public presentations. Each mounted their own exhibition in the community centre, showing their theatrical experience. Numerous handbills were mailed to all households.

Zwink wrote: “Als einer der Christusdarsteller von 1980 und 1984 ist mir das Daisenberger-Dedler Passionspiel so sehr ans Herz gewachsen, dass es mein grosstes Anligen ist, dass unser Passionspiel in der Form erhalten bleibt, wie wir es kennen und lieben gelernt haben. . . ”

Stueckl responded: “Sollten sich die Oberammergauer mehrheitlich fuer mich entscheiden, werde ich meine berufliche Erfahrung und meine ganze Kraft dafur verwenden, dass die Passionspiele im Jahre 2000, auf den Erfolg von 1990 aufbauend, noch aussagekraftiger, ueberzeugender und erfolgreicher werden”. Stueckl’s new photo showed a shorter haircut, and he announced that he would appoint experienced men from prominent local families as his co-workers.

The campaign was vigorous, but not as bitterly divisive as some of the controversies of previous years. Neither side claimed that “outsiders” were trying to manipulate “their” play. Both contenders agreed to observe the guidelines set forth by the town council, and both pledged they would turn over all intellectual property rights to the town.

On Sept. 29th the election took place, all votes being cast at the local schoolhouse. Christian Stueckl won with 1449 votes against Rudi Zwink’s 1150. In the local paper, Stueckl was quoted as saying “ich freue mich, dass es mit der Passion weitergeht und nicht still steht. Dieses Ergebnis ist auch ein Votum dafur, dass sich das Spiel weiter entwickeln soll.” On both sides individuals called for “reconciliation”.

The result is therefore something of a surprise. Apparently the majority of Oberammergauers favour moderate reforms, as long as the framework and the musical score handed down from the 19th century remain the basis of the play.

4) Book reviews:

a) Peter Hoffmann, Stauffenberg. A Family History, 1905-1944, Cambridge University Press 1995, 424 pp.

Peter Hoffmann is without doubt the leading English-speaking authority on the German Resistance movement against Hitler. He now adds to his numerous publications on this topic with this revised and translated edition of his biography of the Stauffenberg brothers, which first appeared in Germany in 1992. Claus, Count von Stauffenberg’s crucial role in the unsuccessful plot to murder Hitler on July 20, 1944 has, of course, been exhaustively researched and argued about. Hoffmann’s present objective is to put him into his family setting and background, and to give as true a picture as possible of the Stauffenberg brothers without distorting the evidence.

Readers of this Newsletter will be looking for the moral or spiritual roots of the anti-Nazi conspirators. To what extent were they religiously motivated? Hoffmann states that Stauffenberg, as a good Catholic, was led to his decision to undertake the plot, not by the prospect that Germany would lose the war, as some critics have mistakenly claimed, but by his revulsion against the Nazi atrocities, especially the mass murders of Jews and Poles on the eastern front. The proclamation he helped to prepare for the day after Hitler’s overthrow emphasised the persecution of the Jews as a major reason for the insurrection by including it in a general condemnation of the Nazi crimes.

Stauffenberg and his two brothers, Berthold and Alexander, were born as aristocrats and educated as elitists. When in 1918 the institutional support for such values was overthrown, these young men turned instead to the kind of elitist and esoteric nationalism espoused by the elderly poet Stefan Georg, whose mystical dreams about national and philosophical rebirth were sufficiently vague and romantic to attract an idealistic following. Under his auspices these brothers saw themselves as modern knights in armour, ready to defend their country against all its foes. Hoffmann’s account of Stauffenberg’s involvment in this circle, which has never before been described in depth, is very welcome Undoubtedly this was a powerful and lasting bond, but Hoffmann does not suggest that Stefan Georg’s ideas, more than other factors, led to the July plot. Nor does he enter at all into the delicate debates about the homosexuality or at least homo-eroticism of the Georg circle.

From the absence of any sustained reference to the Stauffenberg wives, one can only assume these relationships were not too significant.

Inevitably the central chapters, covering the preparations for and the execution of the July plot, re-tell this sad story, as revealed often before. But Hoffmann adds significant new details, culled from his latest researches. These in fact only show more explicitly the dilemmas and problems such an insurrection faced For example, it is clear that, in the midst of war, the idea of radically altering the nation’s leadership by violence must be both personally and politically risky. To obtain the support of the army’s generals, the conspirators had to show that Hitler was a dangerous criminal. But any challenge to Hitler’s authority could be accused of stabbing the nation in the back in its hour of danger. At the same time, to obtain a hearing abroad, these men had to declare themselves opposed to all Nazi gains, but to gain support at home, they could not offer less than the Nazis. So too, the only opportune time would come when the populace, as well as the generals, were sufficiently disillusioned by the war, but before the enemy armies enforced capitulation. In the eyes of several commentators, such as Patricia Meehan in her book “The Unnecessary War: Whitehall and the German Resistance to Hitler”, the British and Allied Governments were greatly to blame for their failure to support the resisters, as equally they had been culpable in not calling Hitler’s bluff in 1938. This debate is, in my view, wrong-headed in its over-estimation of British capabilities, and Hoffmann is surely right to show, on the basis of his most careful assessment of all the evidence, that the conspirators were aware that there was no chance of getting such support from abroad. But they nevertheless felt compelled to carry out their plot even without any realistic prospect of success, as the only way of showing to the world that there were men in Germany who opposed the Nazi evil and staked their lives upon their opposition. As Berthold Stauffenberg said: “the most terrible thing is knowing that we cannot succeed and yet that we have to do it, for our country and our children”.

The strength of this book is the meticulous detail, especially about Claus Stauffenberg’s military career. His brother Berthold is a more shadowy figure, while Alexander played almost no role. Claus was attracted to the professional army for the noblest of reasons His upbringing naturally taught him that service to the state was the aristocrat’s true and highest destiny. Of course, it helped to have connections in the establishment. Hoffmann rightly points out the extent to which antagonism to the Nazis was caused by their anti-aristocratic radicalism. But Stauffenberg belonged to the younger set of the conspirators, disappointed by the caution of the old guard, and looking for more than a return to the good old days of Weimar or even of the Empire. Hoffmann is unrelenting in giving an unexpurgated account of Stauffenberg’s betrayal by some of his fellow-conspirators. But the question still remains as to why, even given his undoubtedly courageous resolve, was he, as a heavily-injured man, the only one offering to carry out the assassination attempt?

Hoffmann’s excellent re-telling of the fateful developments on July 20 is as gripping as before. The technical difficulties of the plot were enormous, the political difficulties even more so. He guides us through these events, making clear his admiration for the plotters’ heroism even in failure. He is surely correct that Stauffenberg had little hope of success or survival, but believed it imperative that Germany should attempt to liberate herself from the criminals who governed her. This account will undoubtedly help to clarify some of the fifty-year old debates about the political realism of the plot, though there will still be those who wonder whether, given the probability of failure, and the subsequent execution of at least two hundred leading individuals who would undoubtedly have played a prominent part in rebuilding Germany after the war, the conspirators would not have been more prudent to wait until the Nazis were defeated anyway. Hoffmann is however critical of those who have cast doubts on Stauffenberg’s integrity, and of those plotters who so hastily tried to dissociate themselves. In his view, “the impulses which made the Stauffenberg brothers mortal enemies of the National Socialists arose from their views on service and justice.” Their hopes for national regeneration and a renewal of Germany’s honour was to be cruelly thwarted; yet “their deliberate self-sacrifice presents a continuing challenge to contemporaries and successors alike”. This well-crafted tribute to their memory will undoubtedly help to keep alive this aim.

John S.Conway

John Conway

b) Theodore N.Thomas, Women against Hitler: Christian Resistance in the Third Reich, Westport CT; Praeger/Greenwood 1995 261pp, $US 49.95

(This review appeared earlier on H-German)

Theodore Thomas’ book pays tribute to the women of the Confessing Church. Through his attention to these women and their roles, he puts a human face of the Church Struggle – the much documented contest for control of institutionalized Protestantism in Nazi Germany. Thomas’ argument has two main parts. On one level, he seeks to recover the presence of women for the record of the Protestant church under Nazism. To that end, he demonstrates the ways in which women played active and indeed “crucial roles in the Confessing Church, although historians have ignored them” (p.23). The second component of his argument is more speculative. He suggests that the post-war “emergence of women as recognized, official leaders within the Protestant Church” in Germany was a direct result of women’s engagement in the cause of the Confessing Church (p.xxiii) Unlike their predecessors in the Reformation, Thomas maintains “the Confessing women succeeded in establishing the social and ideological gains they won during the Church Struggle” (p.115). He summarizes his findings and his focus in three words: resistance, persecution, and emergence.

The first chapter, giving an overview of the Church Struggle, draws on standard accounts by John Conway and Klaus Scholder. The rest of the book relies heavily on information gathered through “eyewitness interviews” with 28 participants in the Confessing Church. The result is both intimate and very readable. His “narrative introduction”, for example, sets a poignant tone by telling stories of three Confessing Church women – Felicitas Veder, Tabea Immer, and Emmi Hof. Use of oral testimony and personal correspondence enables Thomas to examine aspects of German church life in the 1930s and 1940s that are invisible in the written records. Chapter Two on “Confessing laywomen in the church struggle” identifies some of the church secretaries, patronesses, and teachers who made the Confessing Church function at the local level. The third and most personal chapter deals with pastors’ wives. Here his efforts generated numerous and detailed accounts. Chapter Four, on “Theologinnen” in the Confessing Church, necessarily involves a much smaller group of women and hence a narrower source base. In this case too oral sources are imperative.

Thomas’ energy in identifying these women and in conducting interviews with them is commendable. But his use of these findings is somewhat problematic and even misleading in places. There appears little effort made to verify the information received. Studies of human memory reveal its malleability and mutability. The best historical studies using interviews as sources test them against other voices or address issues of believability up front. Thomas does neither. As a result, some of the intriguing information he provides loses credibility. For example, he repeats the claim by Irmgard Vogel’s children that their mother, a pastor’s wife, regularly altered church records to conceal Jewish grandparents in people’s family trees (p.62). If this is true, it is a stunning example of a kind of resistance to the Nazi regime that is conspicuously absent from existing accounts of the German churches. But Thomas’ single sentence on this matter gives readers no way to assess the validity of this claim. How old were Vogel’s children at the time? How often did she commit such acts? Given the many reasons that either Vogel or her children might fabricate or embellish such a story, it is difficult to accept Thomas’ acceptance of their version of events at face value.

Throughout his study, Thomas emphasizes resistance. The title makes the point twice. But do these phrases accurately describe the situation he depicts? He shows how women furthered the cause of the Confessing Church, but is such activity tantamount to opposing Hitler? Loyal German nationalists and even committed Nazis were numbered among the Confessing ranks. The scholarly works by Uriel Tal and Wolfgang Gerlach have demonstrated that members of the Confessing Church were by no means immune to the antisemitism typical of many circles in German society. Although Gerlach’s book appears in the bibliography, Thomas nowhere acknowledges these findings. Instead, through his silence on the subject of complicity, he implies that the Confessing Church and its adherents, male and female, were resisters pure and clear. Sadly, that claim does not hold. Thomas scoured the cities and towns of Germany for the moving accounts of heroism that he presents. These stories are crucial, but in order not to mislead readers, they must be presented in the context of the indifference, passivity, and even active co-operation of the majority of Germans in the Third Reich. Thomas would have done well to heed John Conway’s warning against “hagiographical” accounts of the church struggle which try to demonstrate Protestant resistance, even if it means “suppressing certain facts”.

Thomas’ empathetic discussion of women’s struggle for official standing within the church is admirable, and his contention that advances made during World War II furthered the cause of women’s ordination is convincing. But he suggests that this progress towards equality occurred only within Confessing circles. In fact, women played very similar roles within the so-called German Christian movement, the pro-Nazi antagonist of the Confessing Church. Women served a German Christian vicars too, and wives of pastors in the movement also filled in for their husbands during wartime. Lay women were secretaries, publicists, organizers and patronesses of the German Christian cause. It may be tempting to assume that commitment to women’s rights went hand in hand with opposition to pro-Nazi variants of Christianity. But the facts do not bear out that assumption. As Claudia Koonz has shown, women, their traditional roles, and even their efforts to circumvent or expand these roles, could all be enlisted in the Nazi cause. Thomas knows Koonz but does not test his hypothesis against her conclusions.

An intriguing aspect of Thomas’ book is the attention he pays to so-called non-Aryans in the Confessing Church. Certain Confessing women, he observes, were defined as “non-Aryans” under Nazi law or took action on behalf of Jews and “non-Aryan Christians”. He attributes state and police measures against these women to the fact that they were Christians. But is this claim justified? His own evidence suggests probably not. For example, he claims (p.41) that “women as well as men sat in German prisons for their faith during the Church Struggle”. However, the people he goes on to discuss were not arrested for activities connected to the Confessing Church. Instead, they were charged with “conspiring to falsify documents, deal in grocery coupons on the black market, and transfer identification papers to Jews in hiding”. The director of the operation died for his activities. He was a “Jewish-Christian Physician”, Thomas tells us. In general the “martyrs” he describes are overwhelmingly people defined by the Nazis as “non-Aryans” – whom Thomas calls “Jewish-Christians”. Friedrich Weissler, Anneliese and Hans Kauffmann, Inge Jacobsen and Hildegard Jacoby, five of the six martyrs of the Confessing Church named (p.43-5), were all officially ‘non-Aryan”. Can they simply be counted among those who gave their lives for the Confessing Church? Without evidence to the contrary, it seems more accurate to describe them as victims of the Nazi assaults on Jews, Judaism and so-called Jewish blood.

Thomas has performed a valuable service with this book. The photographic essay alone provides a moving testimony to the women who gave so much to the Confessing Church. But readers who approach this book in isolation may come away with a somewhat skewed perception of the role of the Protestant churches in the Third Reich. “Resistance, persecution and emergence” are catchy and appealing. But they fail to capture the complex and often painful reality of Christian responses to National Socialism.

Doris Bergen,

University of Notre Dame

With best wishes

John S.Conway

jconway@unixg.ubc.ca

Association of Contemporary Church Historians

(Arbeitsgemeinschaft kirchlicher Zeitgeschichtler)

John S. Conway, Editor. University of British Columbia

Newsletter – January 1997 Vol. III, no.1

Contents

Doris Bergen, “The Goldhagen Debate”

Ranier Laechele, “Anselm Doering-Manteuffel and Kurt Nowak, eds, Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte. Urteilsbildung und Methoden. (Konfession und Gesellschaft, Beitraege zur Zeitgeschichte), Vol 8, Stuttgart: Kohlhammer 1996”

Kurt-Victor Selge, “Theological Studies in Berlin”

Dear Friends,

A very joyous and successful New Year to you all! I am most grateful for all the contributions which have reached me, as you will see by the attributions enclosed. Please keep them coming.

The Goldhagen Debate:

We are much obliged to Doris Bergen for sending us the text of an address she gave on the recent book by Daniel Goldhagen, which I thought would be interesting for church historians to share.

Daniel Goldhagen, Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, Knopf, New York 1996, 619pp

Goldhagen’s new book focuses on the perpetrators of the Holocaust. His questions are simple. Who were the killers? What motivated them? How did they perform their murderous deeds? The answers he offers are just as straightforward. The killers were first and foremost Germans, motivated by a uniquely German variety of “eliminationist antisemitism”. Far from reluctant or indifferent, he argues, they were “willing executioners”, enthusiastic and even eager to perform their grisly tasks.

Goldhagen describes his book as a “radical revision of what has until now been written” about “why the Holocaust occurred” Probably no single work could live up to such a claim, and Goldhagen too falls short of his ambitions. Nevertheless he has done more than stir up another round of debate in the often fractious field of Holocaust studies. His insistence on the centrality of antisemitism is an important corrective to some recent trends. However, a propensity to overstate and oversimplify his case and to dismiss the work of others makes him vulnerable to criticism.

In the first and least compelling part, Goldhagen argues that antisemitism was both the necessary and sufficient condition for the Holocaust. He dates what he considers the uniquely German variety of eliminationist antisemitism back to the 19th century, and contends that, as soon as conditions became propitious, what had been a latent murderous urge burst forth into genocidal reality. He is right to point out that some studies of the perpetrators have played down or ignored antisemitism altogether. But the sweeping overview of German history that he offers is not likely to convince sceptics. Other scholars – people like Uriel Tal, Robert Wistrich, James Harris and Donald Niewyk – have written more carefully and subtly about German and European antisemitism. Readers interested in the role of Christianity and the churches are likely to be particularly frustrated by Goldhagen’s sweeping generalizations and failure to make crucial distinctions, between confessions, regions, eras and individuals. In general, his tendency to repeat himself, lapse into social science jargon and make inaccurate, sometimes unsubstantiated claims can turn reading these early chapters into a chore.

In Part II, Goldhagen establishes himself as a member of the “intentionalist” historiographical camp. In this section, he opts for finer distinctions, and refers repeatedly to the specific Nazi leaders who devised an ideology of death and developed the agenda for its implementation, even if the specific means toward that destructive end evolved in response to changing conditions. Readers in the field will find little new here.

Parts III, IV and V present the core of Goldhagen’s original research. These sections examine three “case studies”: the police battalions, Jewish “work”, and the death marches. His detailed look at the police battalions posted in eastern Europe is powerful and brutally graphic, but much of the material is familiar since the 1992 publication of Christopher Browning’s acclaimed “Ordinary Men”. Goldhagen does make two important correctives: unlike Browning he does take seriously the antisemitism of the killers, and he tries to give a clearer picture of what these men did when they were not slaughtering Jews. His reconstruction of the off-duty life of the killers makes for chilling reading. He juxtaposes their bowling matches, theatre events, and spousal visits with their sadistic, vicious killing of Jewish children, women, and old people. The result is a view of the members of the police battalions as perpetrators of a genocide embedded in specific social and cultural contexts.

His discussion of the brutal, murderous “work” used to kill Jews is passionate and draws our attention to conditions in some lesser- known camps. Work was not a productive relationship but a means of torture, humiliation and death. Nevertheless this depressingly familiar view brings little new to anyone who has read even a small part of vast memoir literature written by survivors.

Goldhagen’s most significant contribution may be his description and analysis of the forced death marches. Survivor testimony and memoirs, such as those of Elie Wiesel and Gerda Weissman Klein have given us many powerful accounts of these atrocities. But Holocaust scholarship has been largely silent on this aspect of the Shoah, perhaps because of the lack of documentation. Goldhagen brings this part of the story to the centre and raises important questions about how we explain the tenacity of the killers, even in the face of certain defeat. His answer, not surprisingly, is to point to the eliminationist antisemitism identified in the opening pages of his book. It was the Germans’ “lust” for “Jewish blood”, Goldhagen would have us believe, that drove them to continue hounding, torturing and killing their victims even when that carnage meant violating orders rather than obeying them.

His evidence is compelling, and his use of photographs deepens the emotional impact of his discussion. His focus on the forced marches of women is especially valuable in a field sometimes characterized by a restrictive gender-blindness. But does the moving story he tells us in this section really substantiate his claim of a uniquely German eliminationist antisemitism? A more nuanced reading of the evidence might find additional – and perhaps complementary – explanations for the Germans’ persistence: a desire to destroy the evidence of their criminality, rage at the Jews for refusing to die and let Nazi war aims be realized, a desperate need to retain control of some part of the once massive Nazi “empire”, a pathetic attempt to prove their own usefulness in the safety of the home front rather than risk despatch to zones of combat either on the eastern or western front. After these vivid case studies, the last section seems rather anticlimatic and even redundant. His tone becomes more tempered and cautious, and he softens some of his introductory claims. In fact, these final chapters suggest that some additional editing of the earlier material might have reduced the amount of controversy and misunderstanding he aroused. Still, he ends on a confident note which conceals the many questions left unanswered and even unaddressed. How did German antisemitism fit into the network of interlocking prejudices – against people deemed handicapped, Gypsies, homosexuals, Slavs and so many others – that constituted Nazi ideology? Was “eliminationist antisemitism” really uniquely German, or commonly found elsewhere also? Or did the specific German contribution lie rather in the success in mobilizing the entire society in pursuit of this genocidal goal? Did the “excess” brutality and sadism of the killers reflect nothing but an unflinching hatred of Jews, or might it also have stemmed from a wider perverse attempt to purge the remnants of more universal moral instincts?

The book leaves us with much to ponder. It is all the more regrettable that there is no bibliography, which could guide readers to those questions here left open or outside the scope of his inquiry.

Doris Bergen, University of Notre Dame

Methodology in Contemporary Church History – the German view

Anselm Doering-Manteuffel and Kurt Nowak, eds, Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte. Urteilsbildung und Methoden. (Konfession und Gesellschaft, Beitraege zur Zeitgeschichte, Vol 8, Stuttgart: Kohlhammer 1996 288pp DM 79.-

Die mittlerweile zehn Baende der Reihe “Konfession und Gesellschaft” lassen klar erkenned, dass die Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte eine eigene, ernstzunehmende Disziplin innerhalb der Kirchengeschichte ist. Herausgegeben von A.Doering- Manteuffel, M Greschat, J-C Kaiser,W Loth und K.Nowak stehen diese Baende fuer eine ueberkonfessionelles Forschungskonzept, das die fortdauernde Durchdringung von Konfession und Gesellschaft, Kirche und Gemeinwesen, Theologie und allgemeiner Wissenschaftsentwicklung in den Blick nimmt.

Die dreizehn Aufsaetze dieses Bandes erfuellen in ihrem Bereich das Ziel der Herausgeber, naemlich eine Zustandsbeschreibung der Kirchlichen Zeitgeschichte im internationalen Zusammenhang zu liefern. Acht Beitraege widmen sich dabei zunaechst den Theorien in der deutschen kirchlichen Zeitgeschichtsschreibung. Wie ein roter Faden ziehen sich durch diese Texte die Fragen nach dem Verhaeltnis zwischen kirchlicher Zeitgeschichte und allgemeiner Geschichtswissenschaft sowie nach der Rolle der Kirchengeschichte im Zusammenhang der Universitaetstheologie.

Ueberaus lesenswert und abgewogen beschreibt der Erlanger Historiker Werner K.Blessing in seinem einleitenden Aufsatz, ‘Kirchengeschichte in historische Sicht’ den Erkenntniswert derselben fuer die ‘saekularisierte’ Welt des 19 und 20 Jahrhunderts. Auf dieser Spur kann dann der Leipziger Kirchenhistoriker Nowak am Phaenomen der ‘Zivilreligion’ klassische Themen zeigen, die der interdisziplinaeren Forschung noch harren. Thematisiert wird in diesem Band auch eine seit Jahren schwelende Auseinandersetzung in der deutschen Kirchlichen Zeitgeschichte zur ‘klerikalisierung’ der zeitgeschichtlichen Forschung im Umfeld der Zeitschrift “Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte”.

Doering-Manteuffel nimmt in seinem Beitrag ‘Griff nach der Deutung’ eine sozialgeschichtlich orientierte Kirchengeschichte in Schutz und wirft dem Heidelberger Kirchenhistoriker Gerhard Besier vor, in seinen Publikationen zu den Kirchen in der DDR moralischen Verurteilungen vor wissenschaftlichen Befunden der Vorzug zu geben. Besier wiederum weist in seinem stellenweise polemischen Text mit dem Titel ‘Methodological Correctness’ dies zurueck und belegt Doering-Manteuffel mit dem Vorwurf der ‘Etikettierung’.

Jenseits dieser Auseinandersetzung belaesst es der Giessener Kirchenhistoriker Greschat nicht bei der theoretischen Eroerterung von Kirchengeschichte und Sozialgeschichte. Vielmehr loest er das Postulat der Interdisziplinaritaet am Beispiel der Barmer Synode der Bekennenden Kirche von 1934 ein. Dabei kann er konkret die Gefahr einer Theologisierung von Themen der Kirchengeschichte beschreiben. Dass sich Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte auch erfolgreich mit der Geschichte des eigenen Fach beschaeftigen kann, zeigt der spannende Beitrag von J-C Kaiser, der schildert die Entstehung der Kirchenkampfkommission der EKiD wie auch deren Verwicklung in personal- und kirchenpolitische Querelen.

Eine ‘Diskussionsbeitrag’ will Ute Gause mit ihrem Beitrag ‘Geschlecht als historische Kategorie’, leisten. Auf dem Hintergrund der wichtigen Positionen der Geschlechtergeschichte fordert sie eine feministische Kirchengeschichtsschreibung, die die Frauen als ‘Subjekt der Geschichte’ ernst nimmt. Dass die katholische Seite nicht zu kurz kommt, zeigen die drei Beitraege von A.Holzem, K.Gabriel und W.Schroeder. Holzem stellt gaengige Theorien im Umfeld der Katholizismusforschung vor, wobei dem Rezensenten der Abschnitt zur Froemmigkeitsgeschichte besonders anregend erschien. Gabriel und Schroeder wiederum wenden sich konkreten Forschungsvorhaben in Gestalt des deutschen Katholizismus der fuenfziger Jahre zu. ‘Katholische Milieu’ und ‘katholische Gewerkschaftsbewegung’ lauten hier die Stichworte.

Die ‘Perspektiven des Auslands’ schliesslich nehmen J.M.Mayeur, Hugh McLeod und D.Diephouse wahr. Der tour d’horizon des Pariser Historikers zur histoire religieuse folgt die ausserordentlich anregende Studie McLeods, der seinen Blick auf die kirchlich- religioesen Verhaeltnisse in London, New York und Berlin richtet. Differenziert und selbstkritisch praesentiert der Verfasser ein Stueck urban history, dass so manche liebgewordenes Klischee zerbrechen laesst. Zum Schluss, prasentiert Diephouse, ungeruehrt von den hiesigen Auseinandersetzungen, ein gelungenes Beispiel dafuer, dass in der Vielfalt der Ansaetze eine ‘creative combination of ideas’ liegt. Anhand der Biographie des wuerttembergischen Landesbischofs Wurm benutzt er Ergebnisse der modernen Sozialgeschichte, um den Kirchenfuehrer in seinen Widerspruechen zu verstehen.

Alles in allem liegt hier ein gelungenes Buch vor, das eine ausgezeichnete Basis fuer die weiteren Bemuehungen im Bereich der Kirchlichen Zeitgeschichte darstellt und zugleich zum Nachdenken ueber das Verhaeltnis von Theologie und Geschichte anregt.

Rainer Laechele, University of Giessen

Theological Studies in Berlin by Prof. Kurt-Victor Selge (translated by JSC)

1) When the Berlin Wall came down, there were four separate Protestant theological faculties or institutes in Berlin:

a) the “Theological Section” of the Humboldt University, heir to the great tradition of Schleiermacher and Harnack, with 70 students, but under state control

b) the “Sprachenkonvikt” in East Berlin, with about 120 students, a church-run facility, which after 1961 developed into a full Faculty, but did not have state accreditation for its degrees.

c) the Kirchliche Hochschule in West Berlin-Zehlendorf, founded first in 1935, and refounded in 1945, with around 700 students

d) the Protestant Theological Institute of the Free University, mainly for the training of teachers of religion.

2) With the reunification of the country, there was a clear desire to reunify theological studies in Berlin. In fact, the only feasible solution was to unite them all under the umbrella of the Humboldt University, which from 1812 to 1935 had been the only and widely- respected Faculty. This process took two stages: first, in October 1990, on the same day as political unification took place, the Sprachenkonvikt was united with the Theological Section; in July 1992, the Kirchliche Hochschule moved from Zehlendorf and was similarly incorporated in the Humboldt University, bringing with it its fine library, now housed at Waisenstrasse 28, 10179 Berlin. Several Professors and lecturers from the ‘Section’ were dismissed as former agents of the Stasi, while a larger number from all three institutions retired on age grounds. The new Faculty has 22 professors (reducing by 2002 to 18) and some lecturers. At the moment the Faculty has some 700 students. Lectures and seminars are held in the old university building on Unter den Linden, in the Theological Seminar rooms in the Burgstrasse, in a tower of the Berlin Cathedral, and in the Faculty Library, which is 15 minutes away. This is where the future development will take place when a new building is erected, and the Burgstrasse building, where the Dean now is, reverts to other purposes.

3) In the seven years since the reorganisation of the Faculty, it is still possible to notice the differences between the students coming from West or East. The Faculty is one or the four or five largest in Germany, but many students come there just because it is in Berlin. Financial pressures affect all of Berlin’s three universities: the chair of Ancient Church History is, for example, still not filled. Nevertheless the example set by this Faculty shows how unification can be achieved successfully, and a great deal of money saved thereby. Its academic strengths lie in the field of patristics and early Judaism, as well as in Protestant history from the Reformation to Schleiermacher. Prof-Dr.K-V. Selge

With every best wish for your endeavours in 1997

John Conway

jconway@unixg.ubc.ca

Association of Contemporary Church Historians

(Arbeitsgemeinschaft kirchlicher Zeitgeschichtler)

John S. Conway, Editor. University of British Columbia

Newsletter no 24 Vol II, no 12 – December 1996

Contents “Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte Colloquium, Heidelberg”

Friedl Lang, “Hitler’s visit in 1934 to the Oberammergau Passion Play – an eye-witness account”

Review: Saul Friedman, The Oberammergau Passion Play: A Lance against Civilisation, Southern Illinois U.Press 1984

“Jehovah’s Witnesses: A new documentary video-Stand Firm” Index of books reviewed or noticed in 1996

Dear Friends,

New Format: As you see I have adopted a new format, by establishing a new LIST = KIRZEIT-L. This avoids printing out all your addresses on the first page. But if you need to know, please write and ask. Please write anyway. I am always glad to receive contributions, reviews of new books, notices of church developments, conference reports etc. Also suggestions for improvements will be most welcome. JSC

Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte Colloquium, Heidelberg

Early last month I went to Heidelberg to attend a colloquium on the subject of Religion and Civil War, with special reference to Northern Ireland and Bosnia. It was good to see a number of you there. The underlying topic was the question: has religion done more to stimulate or to overcome the current outbursts of murder, bloodshed, plunder and bigotry, which seem to have been the hallmarks of the conflict in both areas? We had a representative of Sinn Fein present, who outlined his party’s programme, which, to me at least, was surprisingly secular and socialist, not to say utopian. When pressed by others from N.Ireland, he had to admit that, while his party was opposed to violent solutions, there were a number of adherents who had ties to the I.R.A. But we also heard that deliberate incitement of religious hatreds was not part of the current scene. Instead, religious affiliation was more a kind of identity card, serving to separate the population into rival camps, with all too little opportunities for ecumenical contacts. The influence of those members of the clergy seeking reconciliation was notably weak, and the struggle should rather be placed in a wider economic and political context.

In Bosnia, on the other hand, the religious factor was considered more significant. We heard a chilling report from a very well informed observer who claimed that no serious effort was being made to overcome the long and entrenched hostilities between the Serbian Orthodox, the Croatian Catholics and the Bosnian Muslims. Moreover, the attempts of outside church bodies such as the World Council of Churches or the Conference of European Churches were dismissed as nothing more than “Reconciliation Tourism”.

I came away very much sobered and disillusioned. I would like to hear from any of you who were also there if you came to similar conclusions. JSC

Hitler’s visit in 1934 to the Oberammergau Passion Play – an eye-witness account – by Friedl Lang

(Prof. Gottfried Lang, son of Anton Lang, who played Christ in three successive Passion Plays, grew up in Oberammergau, and himself participated in the Passion Play as a young boy. He was also, as he describes, much involved with the Catholic youth movement, and as a result was obliged to leave Germany in 1937. He subsequently came to Canada and the USA, and eventually became Prof. of Anthropology at the University of Colorado. He now lives in Santa Fe. We are greatly obliged to Prof. Lang for this Zeitzeugenbericht.)

1934 marked the 300th anniversary of Oberammergau’s Passion Play. In 1633 the plague had approximately halved the village population, which led to a vow to perform the Passion Play every ten years, beginning in the following year 1634. After 1670 the Play was performed on the decennial years.

At that time, 1934, I was student at the Realschule in Weilheim, which had suddenly become “politicized” shortly after the Nazis came to power in the previous year. Many of my schoolmates now appeared in Hitler Youth (HJ) uniforms. Even some of the teachers suddenly wore the Hakenkreuz insignia on their jacket lapels. But those of us in the boarding school accommodation were warned by its director, a priest and a W.W.1 veteran, not to join the HJ., on the grounds that this whole Nazi movement was a thing which would not last.

Also we were Catholics, and our parents supported the Bavarian Volkspartei, so we were not very happy about the course of events – all the more so when the SA and HJ demonstrated on Sunday mornings during Sunday masses and called those of us who refused to join the HJ “schwarze Hunde”. So it was a real relief when I was allowed to transfer to the Benedictine Monastery School at Ettal, near Oberammergau, for the next school year.

In 1930 the stage for the Passion Play had been rebuilt and modernized. I was an altar boy when Cardinal Falhaber had come to bless these new facilities, and of course was much impressed by the ceremony. Like all boys and girls of my age, I participated in both the 1930 and 1934 performances, taking part in both the morning crowd scene of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem and in the so-called “lebende Bilder” (Tableaux) in both morning and afternoon.

By the time of the 1934 Passion Play I had become an active member of the Catholic Youth Movement, and was very much involved with its Jungschar groups, for boys under 16. About twenty of us met regularly one a week in the cabin of the soccer field, under the leadership of our “Praeses”, the curate of the parish, who was known for his excellent sermons, which invariably pointed out the moral and religious decline of the time and the need to do something about it. He never mentioned the Nazis, but of course we knew what he was talking about. Eventually he was prohibited from preaching.

As part of my activity in the Catholic youth movement I went from house to house collecting subscriptions to the weekly newspaper Junge Front which was, we thought, a strong voice against Nazism. I think I was able to get about 40 subscribers. Then suddenly it did not appear, and I was told it had been banned. After some time the package of newspapers arrived again, under the new name Michael. But it too was eventually banned. Delivering the paper on my bicycle was very exciting because most of the subscribers were obviously not in sympathy with what the Nazis were doing. Some of them would involve me in a discussion, especially the older people who longed for a return of the “good old days” or others who confided in me, saying how terrible the political and moral state of the country was.

I think many of those longing for the “good old days” were loyal to the Bavarian crown. King Ludwig II had donated to the village a massive monument depicting Christ crucified with Mary and John at the foot of the cross, and had employed many Oberammergauers while building his nearby castle at Linderhof. Every August 24th the villagers celebrate the King’s Birthday with bonfires on the mountains and a huge fiery cross halfway up the local Kofel Mtn. (This event is still celebrated today). Others were not so romanticaly inclined, or were fearful that the policing of the population or even a war might be the goal of the Nazi regime. In 1934 none of the emergency measures on food or other amenities had as yet been introduced; nor was the Gestapo as yet a household word. So people still felt they could talk. Besides, the Passion Play and tourism in general was bringing many foreigners, especially British and Americans. By 1935, however, the situation changed, possibly because by then the Nazis had firm control over the whole country.

The Passion Play attracted not only tourists, but also many young people, including the Catholic Youth Movement members. As an active member of the Jungschar I got involved in providing tickets and sleeping quarters for these young people, often when members of the Sturmschar (the Catholic youth for older boys famous for their outdoor life and travels) wrote and enquired. Outside the village but close to the Passion Play theatre my family had a large barn, used mainly for storage. We helped to fix up the loft with hay, so that we could accommodate as many as 15 people there. My friend Karl’s father was the executive secretary of the village corporation responsible for the sale of tickets to the play. He was also a practising Catholic, so that when these young people came to us, he would always provide cheap tickets. Sometimes only standing room was available, which cost a mere 25 cents! What was important to us was that we got to know young Catholics from many parts of Germany, which again helped us in our conviction that we were not alone.

I used to sell German and English Passion Play texts to passers-by on their way to the theatre. Our house was right on the Theaterstrasse, and I stood in front of the shop door, a little elevated above the street level, which gave me a good view of the people passing on their way to the theatre. In late July or August, suddenly a black open Mercedes drove by. On its front fender was the swastika flag, and suddenly some people yelled “Heil Hitler”. The car swept on to the theatre, where Hitler was given a prominent seat. He actually sat through the whole performance, lasting from 8 a.m. to noon, and again from 2 p.m. to 6. During the play an annoucement was made to the cast that the “Fuehrer” would come onto the stage to shake hands with the actors. But I did not myself attend. I was told that Hitler was impressed by the Play and promised to see that it would always be performed according to the ancient vow. Saying that this was a great cultural achievement and true to the villagers of Oberammergau, he shook hands with all the principal actors (including my father who then played the role of Prologue). The only major actor who refused to come on stage was Kaiaphas (my maternal uncle).

What influence did Hitler’s visit have on the villagers? Those who called themselves “traditionalists” (without much of a religious conviction) may well have been convinced by Hitler’s “promise” to assure the Passion Play’s decennial performance. Others who had already joined the NSDAP were influenced by the idea that Hitler stood for strong leadership, obviously needed to keep the socialists and communists in check. Clearly Hitler represented a new time, a new approach to economic problems and an end to the uncertainties of the Weimar Republic. But there were also those who felt highly ambivalent about these new political changes. Some, like my parents, were already aware of such new institutions as the Dachau concentration camp, where political opponents of any color were incarcerated. A priest relative of my moher’s one day appeared after a long absence with a shaved head. When asked if this was the latest style, he jokingly remarked that this depended on your political “Einstellung”., and that Dachau was indeed the place where one could familiarize oneself with the “der Mode des Tages”.

We in the Jungschar understood little of the political implications of Nazism. We knew that at school history textbooks were being rewritten, though none of our teachers at Ettal used them. In the meantime, those of us who reached our 16th birthday moved from the Jungschar to the Sturmschar. In the Easter holidays of 1935 Karl and I were selected to join a group of Sturmschar on a trip to Rome. We camped there, wore off-white shirts with big silver buttons, and stood in cruxiform formation in front of St Peter’s to receive the Pope’s blessing. Then with banners flying we marched to the Colosseum, where our leaders made speeches reminding us that, like Peter and Paul, we also had to suffer for the ultimate victory of Christ. On our way back to Germany, our buses were stopped at the border in Constance. The guards seized our cameras, our shirts and buckles, tents, banners etc, and took our names. After running the guantlet of a bevy of abusing HJ boys, we were allowed to proceed to Munich. There the police were already waiting for us. We were again arrested, and taken to the Police Headquarters where our passports were checked and our names registered. In the morning they let us go.

As we learned much later, one of our leaders, from the Catholic Youth headquarters in Dusseldorf was arrested and shot by the SA. All of this was for us a persecution of Christianity, and we felt it would only get worse. But those of us who lived in the provincial remoteness of Oberammergau, though anti-Nazi, were ruefully ignorant of the world-shaking implications of Nazism.

An opposing view:

Saul Friedman, The Oberammergau Passion Play: A Lance against Civilisation, Southern Illinois U.Press 1984

(I include my short review of this book, written in 1989, to give an idea of how others regard the Passion Play)

Professor Friedman’s analysis of the passion play and its milieu is markedly hostile. Sustained polemic makes for invigorating reading and Friedman’s 200 pages of invective will not disappoint. This vestige of mediaeval bigotry, he claims, has been touted unjustifiably as a major world tourist attraction by playing on the credulity and superstition of those gullible enough to seduced by their neighbourhood travel agency. The play itself, he affirms, survived from the earliest years because of the church’s encouragement of religious zealotry, a deep-seated arrogance and anti-Semitism not uncommon in Bavarian peasants or art, and a developed pursuit of profit. Thanks to the work of gifted editors, the play has become a spectacle for foreign tourists, unwilling or unable to recognise its basic prejudice and vitriol against the Jews. The anti-Semitic overtones of the play, Friedman asserts, are dangerous. Too many scenes go far beyond the gospel narratives in depicting the Jews in the worst light: the portrayal of the crucifixion is shown to be solely Jewish-inspired; the Romans are exonerated; and the discontinuity between Christianity and Judaism is frequently stressed. It is not a hymn to reconciliation, but rather an exhortation to revenge. No wonder the villagers, and presumably their audiences, were immune to any appeals for sympathy from their fellow citizens of Jewish origins during the Nazi era. Friedman investigates closely the political attitudes of Oberammergau in the 1930s, when in honour of Hitler’s visit, “never were Oberammergau’s Jewish mobs more violent, never have the scribes and Pharisees who invoke the mob been more vehement than this year”. What particularly distresses Friedman has been the villagers’ sttempts since 1945 to deny any sympathy for Nazism and their refusal to alter the play’s text to remove its most offensive parts [This has been subsequently achieved: JSC] It remains, he says, despite some tinkering, essentially a lance against civilisation, a witness to the durability of both anti-Semitism and cupidity.

To all of this, it can only be said that Friedman seems to live in an ivory tower. Religious pilgrimages and shrines have alwys produced their zealotry and commercialism. The high-minded efforts of advocates of Christian-Jewish reconciliation have made considerable advances but it would be wishful thinking to expect such theological revision to begin in an Alpine village. The Oberammergauers’ pride in their play is matched by a conservative distrust against the meddling of outsiders. Having myself been to the passion play twice, I found that a repeat visit was disappointing, not because of the survivals of anti-Judaism, but rather because the mobilization of hosts of amateur actors is neither great art nor great theatre. The Oberammergau passion play is essentially a primitive peasant pageant. JSC

Jehovah’s Witnesses:

A new documentary video _Stand Firm_ portraying the Nazi persecution of this sect, published by the Watchtower Society in Brooklyn, has recently been released. The German-language version premiered at the Ravensbruck Concentration Camp Memorial on November 6th.

This is an hour-long and excellently edited account, which incorporates extensive survivor testimony, as well as commentary by historians of Nazi Germany, such as Dietlef Garbe, Susannah Heschel, and myself. It is very suitable for showing to audiences interested in the Nazi persecution of religious groups, and while narrowly focussed on the sufferings of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, conveys the atmosphere of the steadfast resistance especially in the concentration camps to which some 1200 were sent, and where 200 were murdered for their refusal to abandon their beliefs. The video is presumably available from your local Jehovah’s Witnesses’ meeting hall. See also Christian Science Monitor, Nov.6th 1996, p 1 and 13. JSC

May I take this final opportunity for 1996 to wish you all a very blessed and happy Christmas, and to send you my very best wishes for all your endeavours for 1997.

Dona nobis pacem

John S.Conway

Dept. of History, University of British Columbia,

Vancouver, B.C. V6T 1Z1, Canada

jconway@unixg.ubc.ca

.Index of books reviewed or noticed in 1996 – Newsletters 13-24 (Vol II, 1-12). Newsletter no. in brackets (All reviews by JSC unless noted)

Bergen D, The Twisted Cross The German Christian Movement in the Third Reich (15)

Besier G, Der SED Staat und die Kirche 1983-1991 (R.Goeckel) (22) Bickersteth Diaries (19)

Clark C, The Politics of Conversion (18)

Crerar D, Padres in No Man’s Land (14)

Goeckel R, Die evangelische Kirche und die DDR (G.Besier) (20)

Hering R, Theologische Wissenschaft und Dritte Reich (13)

Huttner M, Britische Presse und nationalsozialistische Kirchenkampf (13)

Laechele R, Ein Volk,Ein Reich,ein Glaube (D.Diephouse) (18)

Lehmann B, Katholische Kirche und Besatzungsmacht in Bayern (17) Loest E, Nicolaikirche (15)

Marshall Joan, A solitary Pillar. Montreal’s Anglican Church and the Quebec Revolution (21)

Mau R, Eingebunden in den Realsozialismus? (20)

Mehlhausen J. ed., und uber Barmen hinaus (13)

Passelecq G and Suchecky B, L’encyclique cache de Pie XI (M Phayer) (21)

Pollmann K ed., Der schwierige Weg in die Nackriegszeit. Die evangluth.Kirche in Braunsweig 1945-50 (21)

Reichrath.H, Ludwig Diehl (12)

Rendtorff T. ed., Protestantische Revolution (J.Burgess) (23)

Schlie U, Kein Friede mit Deutschland (13)

Schneider T.M., Reichsbischof Ludwig Muller (D.Bergen) (21)

Siebert W, Das Maedchen das nicht Esther heissen darf (22)

Siegele-Wenschkewitz L. ed., Theologische Fakutaten im Nationalsozialismus (13)

Tomaszewski I and Werbowski T, Zegota. The rescue of Jews in Poland (12)

Vollnhals C and Brauer S, In der DDR gibt es keine Zensur (20)

Wilhelmy H, Aus meinem Leben (23)

Winter J, Sites of memory, sites of mourning (15)

Zeilstra, J.A., European Unity in Ecumenical Thinking 1931-48 (13)

Association of Contemporary Church Historians

(Arbeitsgemeinschaft kirchlicher Zeitgeschichtler)

John S. Conway, Editor. University of British Columbia

Newsletter no 23 (Vol II, no 11) – November 1996

Contents

Journal Articles

Jay P.Corrin, “H.A.Reinhold: Liturgical Pioneer and Anti-Fascist,” Catholic Historical Review, Vol. LXXXII no 3, July 1996.

Francis Latour, [the Vatican in WWII], Guerres Mondiales, April 1996, no. 182.

Book Reviews

Heinz Wilhelmy, Aus meinem Leben, Evangelischer Presseverlag Pfalz, Speyer 1996, 310 pp.

Trutz Rendtorff, ed., Protestantische Revolution? Kirche und Theologie in der DDR: Ekklesiologische Voraussetzungen, politische Kontext, theologische und historische Kriterien, Goettingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1993, 357 pp., reviewed by John Burgess

Dear Friends,

German Studies Association Conference, Seattle Oct. 10-13th It was good to see a number of our members at this conference, and to have the opportunity of exchanging news and views.

Unfortunately, the sessions, as usual, were too short to have any really productive academic discourse, and the setting in one of Seattle’s unmemorable airport hotels was decidedly unacademic! But good to know that the scholarly enterprise continues in full flood.

Journal articles:

Jay P.Corrin of Boston University contributes an interesting article to the Catholic Historical Review, Vol. LXXXII no 3, July 1996, describing the career of “H.A.Reinhold: Liturgical Pioneer and Anti-Fascist”. Fr Reinhold was one of the few German Catholic priests who early on recognised the incompatibility of Christianity and Nazism, while his superiors were still beguiled by Hitler’s charisma, or saw Nazism as an effective bulwark against the greater danger of Bolshevism. Reinhold’s attempts to rally those Catholics who shared his views, and his resolute warnings made to churchmen abroad, led to his being persecuted by the Gestapo. Abandoned by the Catholic hierarchy, he was driven into exile, finally landing up in Minnesota, where he found a welcome audience for his stimulating ideas about liturgical reform. But even in the USA, notably in New York, his efforts to spread the truth about the Nazi plans to attack the churches were disbelieved, and like Waldemar Gurian, Luigi Sturzo and others, he was forced to eke out a meagre and isolated existence. No apologies were ever received when events proved him right. And even his last bishop advised him not to publish his autobiography as this would only cause public contention over long-dead issues and damage the reputation of distinguished Catholics. So his brave struggle against intolerance, illiberalism and clerical fascism were all too often ignored by Anglo-American Catholics in their obsession with the battle against international Communism. Prof. Corrin’s article is an excellent, if belated, act of reparation. JSC

Prof. F.W.Graf, Munich, gives an interesting description of the career and Nachlass of the Jena liberal theologian,Heinrich Weinels (1874-1936) in Zeitschrift fur Kirchengeschichte, Vol 107, no 2, 1996, pp 201-31.

In the same issue, Christopher Spehr prints and comments on the Gestapo’s report on the Confessing Church’s Bad Oeynhausen Synod 1936, pp 232-247.

Francis Latour contributes a provocative article to the April 1996 issue, no 182, of Guerres Mondiales, p.105-21, which outlines the efforts of the Holy See to defend its interests during the First World War. The rivalries of the warring powers endangered the Vatican’s position not only in Europe but also in the mission field and the Holy Land. Despite its discreet diplomacy, the Vatican was unsuccessful in its efforts to obtain a peace settlement, and managed only to hold the line in defending its own ecclesiastical policies. The contrast between the Holy See’s universal spiritual claims and its actual political leverage had only grown greater.The war, and the subsequent peace negotiations of 1919, from which the Vatican was deliberately barred, brought home to the Pope and his advisors the sobering and unwelcome fact that that the Holy See’s temporal influence had been severely reduced. Who could suspect that the Vicar of Christ, and the world’s oldest diplomatic entity had political ambitions? But such suspicions existed then, and still do.

Book Reviews:

Heinz Wilhelmy, Aus meinem Leben, Evangelischer Presseverlag Pfalz, Speyer 1996, 310 pp.

Pastor Heinz Wilhelmy’s account of the Church Struggle in his small rural parish in the Palatinate was written not long before he died in 1980. But the impulse to write came from the most traumatic experience of his life, when he witnessed the brutal mass murder of the Jews of the Ukrainian town of Berditschew, shortly after the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. This ghastly event profoundly shattered his loyalties as a German, a Christian and a pastor. It subsequently led to a far-reaching metanoia and dominated his post-war career in his parish – a tribute to which is appended by Klaus Enders.

This spiritual conversion was all the more remarkable since Wilhelmy, as he readily admits, had welcomed the new Nazi regime with open arms only a few years earlier. In 1933, like many of the younger clergy, he had thrown his support behind the efforts of the so-called “German Christians” to bring about a revolution in the church, patterned on that imposed by Hitler in the state, which sought to overcome the encrusted parochialism of the local churches, such as the Palatinate, and warmly embrace the new task of national renewal. This kind of hot-headed radicalism, based on the kind of volkisch theology so prevalent at the time, led to the success of the “German Christians” in capturing the majority of the provincial church structures and the installation of “German Christian” bishops, such as Ludwig Diehl in Speyer.

By 1934, however, these illusion collapsed like soap bubbles. After Wilhelmy had read the Barmen Declaration and heard about the murders of Roehm and his clique, he began to change his tune. Luckily he preserved several of his sermons which are here reproduced in full and which give an excellent flavour of the heated debates of those days. His outspoken comments on the errors of the Nazi ideologues soon got him into trouble with the local Nazi officials. His resolute support for the Confessing Church after 1935 further alienated him from both the political and religious leadership in the Palatinate. But this combative determination to uphold the integrity of the church did not extend to any open criticism of the purely political actions of the state – and in this regard Wilhelmy shared the same limitations as most of the Confessing Church. Their attempts to harmonize these divergent loyalties became more difficult, especially after Martin Niemoller’s arrest in July 1937, and under the incessant pressure of the Nazi authorities to keep silent. Wilhemy’s practice of praying by name for all the Confessing Church members imprisoned or disciplined by the Gestapo was a particular cause for friction. Never one to speak diplomatically, Wilhelmy modelled himself on Luther’s steadfastness in defence of the Gospel.

But in November 1938, the Palatinate church authorities, obviously desiring to rid themselves of this tiresome trouble- maker, ordered his immediate suspension from office and the complete cessation of his pay. Neither his parishioners’ strong support, nor his lengthy defence of his actions, disclaiming any intention of attacking the regime’s policies (and this immediately after the notorious November pogrom!) availed him anything. Luckily in May 1939 he was inducted into the army shortly before the Gestapo ordered his arrest. Since the army did not acknowledge the Gestapo’s jurisdiction over its members, Wilhelmy escaped their clutches for six long years. In May 1945 he returned to his parish and resumed his pastoral duties.

This autobiography was written nearly twenty years ago as an act of expiation. The decision of the Palatinate Church’s publishing house to print it now can be regarded as a form of overdue rehabilitation for one who was left in the lurch by his church superiors and who never received any subsequent retraction or apology. The publication of this memoir is therefore a belated but welcome gesture.
JSC

ed. Trutz Rendtorff, Protestantische Revolution? Kirche und Theologie in der DDR: Ekklesiologische Voraussetzungen, politische Kontext, theologische und historische Kriterien, Goettingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1993, 357 pp (Despite this book appearing in 1993, I thought this excellent review by John Burgess, Associate for Theology, Presbyterian Church,USA, would be helpful to complement other reviews about the DDR churches in recent issues of this Newsletter. JSC)

In the 1980s, the East German church provided a free space in which alternative groups met to discuss issues of peace, justice, and the environment. Their critical rhetoric seemed to express the discontent of much of the population. By 1989, hundred of people were regularly gathering in churches prior to demonstrating publicly against state policies. Particular congregations such as the Gethsemane Kirche in East Berlin and the Nikolaikirche in Leipzig became synonymous with the “peaceful revolution”. Within a couple of years, public attitudes towards the church had shifted. The “midwife” – even “mother” – of the revolution had become more akin to a prostitute. Journalists, former dissidents, even some historians accused the church of having stabilized the East German state for too many years. Reports of Stasi infiltration of the church, including the recruitment of key church leaders as “unofficial collaborators”, further undermined its reputation.

This collection of essays first presented at a colloquium in 1992 critically assesses these issues, seeking to determine just what role the church and theology played during the 40 years of communist rule. The list of authors reads like a “Who’s Who” of observers of the East German church. West German authors include Reinhard Henkys, journalist, author of numerous articles on this topic, and editor of “Kirche im Sozialismus” for many years the premier western journal on the East German church; Uwe-Peter Heideingsfeld, who worked in the offices of the E. K D. as liaison for the eastern church; Gerhard Besier, church historian whose co- publication of secret Stasi files on the East German church created much controversy; and F.W.Graf, professor of theology in Hamburg. East German authors include Dietlef Pollack, sociologist of religion at the University of Leipzig, who has a special interest in the church’s alternative groups; Guenter Krusche, General Superintendent in East Berlin; Kurt Nowak, professor of church history, and Wolf Kroetke, professor of theology in East Berlin.

In general, the essays dispute the contention that the peaceful revolution was either “Protestant” or a “revolution”. While the church supplied important impulses for reform, offered a space in which protest could crystallize, and channelled it into constructive dialogue, Pollack emphasises the contingency of events and disputes that any group consciously directed them.. Graf gives the church even less credit, and sees it as having stabilized the regime.

As well, the essays agree that the East German church went wrong in assuming that Marxist-Leninist socialism was reformable. By locating itself as a “church within socialism”, the East German church took seriously the need to respond to the realities of its own society but failed to see that the entire system was bankrupt. Nor did it have the theological resources to critique the foundations or the ideologically-based practices of the regime. Graf takes this argument to an extreme, arguing that the East German church adopted Romantic ideas of community. Because the church viewed capitalism as resting on an individualism and egotism that were counter to the gospel, its theology resulted in implicit support for “socialism” however vaguely defined. As a result it failed to develop an adequate understanding of the need for democracy and pluralism.

While other authors qualify this “affinity of Protestantism for socialism”, none of the essays argues persuasively that the church’s theology made any major contribution to the rise of a protest movement within the church and society. Even Kroetke, who argues that Bonhoeffer’s ideas were of value to the alternative groups, uses most of his essay to portray how various parts of the East German church (especially in the theology faculties) misused or instrumentalized Bonhoeffer’s theology for their own purposes.

Nonetheless the book is rich in information, bibliographical suggestions, and reflections on the challenge of writing kirchlicher Zeitgeschichte (see especially the essays by Besier and Nowak). The inclusion of some of the discussion which followed each paper adds to the value of the volume; one gets a sense of the give-and-take and critical questions that arose. As can be seen from the spate of subsequent publications, the situation of the East German church will continue to be of interest to a wide group of scholars and church leaders for years to come.

John Burgess.

With every best wish to you all,
John Conway
jconway@unixg.ubc.ca

Association of Contemporary Church Historians

(Arbeitsgemeinschaft kirchlicher Zeitgeschichtler)

John S. Conway, Editor. University of British Columbia

Newsletter no. 22 (Vol II, no 10) – October 1996

Contents

Articles:

Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte, Vol 9, no 1, 1996, essays on the two German dictatiorships.

J.S.Conway, “The European Churches’ search for a new international order 1919-89” in C.Baechler and C.Fink, The establishment of European Frontiers after two world wars, P. Lang: Berne 1996.

Book reviews:

Gerhard Besier, Der SED-Staat und die Kirche 1983-1991. Hoehenflug und Absturz. Berlin: Propylaen Verlag 1995, reviewed by Robert Goeckel.

Winfried Siebert, Das Maedchen, das nicht Esther heissen darf: Eine exemplarische Geschichte. Leipzig: Reklam Verlag 1996, reviewed by Marion Grau.

Kurt Nowak, ed., Adolf von Harnack als Zeitgenosse: Reden und Schriften aus den Jahren des Kaiserreichs und der Weimarer Republik. Vol 1: Der Theologe und Historiker; Vol 2: Der Wissenschaftsorganisator und Gelehrtenpolitiker. Berlin/New York De Gruyter Verlag DM 460.00 and Johanna Jantsch, Der Briefwechsel zwischen A. v. H und Martin Rade (1879-1930): Theologie auf dem oeffentlichen Markt, Berlin/New York: De Gruyter Verlag 1996, ca. 920 Seiten, reviewed by Uwe Rieske-Braun.

Dear Friends,

Since I shall be away in Germany at the end of the month, attending the meeting of the Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte group in Heidelberg, next month’s Newsletter will have to be somewhat delayed. My apologies, but I hope to return to the usual date by December.

New issue of journal:

Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte, Vol 9, no 1, 1996 prints eight essays on the subject of Resistance to the two German dictatorships of this century. The authors examine both the comparable, but also the distinguishing features of the Resistance movements before and after 1945. Despite the common repressive features of both the Nazi and Communist regimes, their ideological goals were directly antithetical. Correspondingly those who opposed them had widely differing goals and strategies. The churches’ role is carefully examined, especially the issues of their compliance with, or opposition to, the dictatorships. Attention is paid to the hefty debates over their alleged collaboration, which essentially revolve around the character of the church as a public institution. Their apologists’ argument, both after 1945 and 1989, is that they “durch ihre Kooperation das Schlimme vielleicht gefoerdet, das Schlimmste aber verhindert haben”. On the other hand, the resisters’ claims are known to be subject to legend-building. The obstacles to evaluating the extent of theologically-based resistance are readily apparent, and are here specifically analysed in a number of case studies.

Book reviews:

In August I sent you a review by Gerhard Besier of the German edition of Bob Goeckel’s “The Lutheran Church and the East German State”. I therefore thought it would be valuable to have a review by Bob of Gerhard’s third volume on the same subject.

Gerhard Besier, Der SED-Staat und die Kirche 1983-1991. Hoehenflug und Absturz.
Berlin: Propylaen Verlag 1995. 976pp, DM 98.00

Judging from the prodigious work of Gerhard Besier, the current angst of Germans regarding the competitivesness of Standort-Deutschland seems exaggerated. With this in-depth and extensively-footnoted volume Besier has completed in three years his trilogy on the history of church-state relations in the former GDR. Like the earlier volumes, this one relies primarily on the author’s extensive use of church, state, party, and secret police archives. No scholar has more exhaustively researched the documentary record of this relationship. Since his 1992 book, in which he charged the Protestant churches with Kumpanei (complicity) with the regime, Besier’s interpretation has been clear if controversial; his treatment of the denouement of the GDR in this volume remains consistent. In his view, this complicity was facilitated not only by the penetration of the church by the Stasi – often a result of personal avarice and psychological needs of church leaders – but also by an identification with the idea of socialism among many Protestant leaders. Hence his argument that this complicity continued even after the collapse of communism, as manifested in the apologetic writing of church history, and the debates over the church’s role in contemporary Germany.

Besier’s treatment is heavily informed by his critique of the politicization of the EKD, which has “increasingly steered a decisively leftist course” (p.112). On numerous occasions he attacks the “interlinking of personnel between parties and churches” (p.263), stressing particularly the close relationship between the EKD and the SPD. In his view the East German churches likewise tilted towards the SPD, engaging in high-level diplomacy and promoting “polit-tourism” to the GDR. Besier suggests that the alleged complicity with the SED regime is an all-German phenomenon: “even after the church reunification there is a split going through the Protestant church, which has its origins only minimally in the twenty-year division of the EKD” (p.479). West German church journalists are viewed largely as apologists, even myth-makers for the “Church within Socialism”.

Yet his evidence gives room for considerable nuance as well. He discusses cases of disagreement between the EKD and the GDR churches over such issues as nuclear deterrence and pacifism. The EKD and GDR churches had drifted apart considerably by the 1980s, despite the continuous consultations which Besier chronicles. His research also suggests that the SED was hardly unified regarding the impact of these inter-German ties: as in earlier periods, so in the 1980s, some in the SED saw the leftist shift in the EKD as an opportunity to influence West German foreign policy; others saw it as a threat to efforts to separate themselves from all contacts with the west. The churches’ affinity with the SPD, which this reviewer would confirm, was in fact more of a bane than a boon for them in their relationship with the Communists, who had viewed social democracy as the chief enemy since 1917.

The author’s rich detail regarding the leading church personalities also reveals more nuance and change than the complicity theory suggests. He portrays, for example, how Bishop Johannes Hempel of Saxony moved from a stance critical of Berlin-based church-state summitry, to one asserting a “basic trust between church and state” in 1985, and then back to a critical stance in the waning years of the GDR. Besier tends to deal in heroes and villains, but even his heroes, such as Bishop Gottfried Forck of Berlin-Brandenburg and Dean Heino Falcke of Erfurt, are steeped in “socialism in the colours of the GDR” and his villains, such as General Superintendant Gunter Krusche of Berlin, became critical as the revolution gathered steam in 1989.

The heroes and villains are largely determined by their stance regarding the “groups”, namely the non-religious dissent that arose in the 1980s and devloped largely under the auspices of the church. The state’s attempts to use the church to discipline and domesticate this dissent are amply demonstrated by Besier, as well as the churches’ responses. The pattern of the 1970s – internal church dissent which increased the bargaining of the church with the regime – was replaced by one of opposition outside the control of either the church hierarchy or the regime.

Despite this changed context Besier underscores aspects of continuity in state policy. The differentiation policy developed in the 1950s remained throughout a fundamental tenet of the state’s strategy. For example, the regime sought to set the regional churches against Berlin-Brandenburg with its more active dissident community. He chronicles the regime’s steadfast and repeated rejection of meetings with the churches on such issues as educational discrimination and altenatives to military service. The detachment of SED officials from societal reality loomed larger in 1985-9, but was certainly characteristic of the entire GDR period. Misperception by both church and state is an undercurrent of this analysis; the church tended to assume more benign intentions on the part of the regime and to overestimate its ability to reform socialism; the regime assumed a coherent antagonistic long-term strategy on the part of the churches and overestimated the hierarchy’s ability to control its ranks.

Yet misperceptions remove the moral onus from the actors and this is certainly far from Besier’s intention. Collaboration with the Stasi and the compromising statements of church leaders are a major focus of this work, but hardly dominate it to the extent that they do in his journalistic contributions to such magazines as Spiegel and Focus. To be sure, the collaboration with the regime in efforts to dampen dissent by Manfred Stolpe, former leading church administrator and now SPD premier of the state of Brandenburg, receive extensive treatment. But Besier is fair: no one is spared from scrutiny, including conservatives such as Hans-Wilhelm Ebeling (pastor in Leipzig and founder of the German Social Union Party) and Stefan Heitmann (former Saxon church leader and a major CDU politician in Dresden) (p.668-9,696). Besier might have plumbed more deeply the moral onus in some cases which were major issues at the time, such as the arrest and removal from church service of Vicar Lothar Rochau for environmental activism in 1983. Also underplayed here are the church debates surrounding Chernobyl and the efforts to create a United Evangelical Church in the GDR.

As a social scientist this reviewer would like to have seen more discussion of the broader political context of developments in the relationship. For example, the church debate over “basic trust between church and state” occurred against the backdrop of the Soviets’ cancellation of Honecker’s planned visit to West Germany in 1984, and his apparent efforts at damage limitation in inter-German relations. Or the criticism of the rigged local elections of May 1989 should be placed in the context of the Soviet’s own multicandidate elections in 1989. The general refusal of the SED to introduce Soviet-style perestroika comes up short as a contextual factor in the Church-State relationship.

Besier’s interpretation is controversial in the church today, particularly given his extrapolation that the church is unable to come to terms with its past. The historian is amply rewarded for the effort of a careful reading of this detail-laden book.

Robert Goeckel, State University of New York. Geneseo

Winfried Siebert, Das Maedchen, das nicht Esther heissen darf: Eine exemplarische Geschichte. Leipzig: Reklam Verlag 1996

Winfried Siebert is a lawyer who saw an article in a law journal about a special appeal in 1938. On August 11, 1938, the Protestant pastor Friedrich Luncke reported the birth of his daughter Esther to the authorities. But he was refused permission to call the girl Esther because it was a “typical Jewish” name. Pastor Luncke fought the issue all the way through the courts, but in vain. Esther is a name that is “not German”.

Winfried Siebert, whose daughter is also called Esther, got interested and researched the case. He then looked for the family and for the woman who wasn’t allowed to be called Esther, but who resumed her name after the war. Eventually he found her. This interesting unconventional book recounts the struggle for a name. It is both a personal document and a psychogram of German law at the time, with overtones of the national psychology. Why did the pastor insist on calling his daughter Esther? It would have been easy enough to choose another name. But quite possibly this was in a small way a form of resistance to the regnant Nazi ideology.

Marion Grau,Tubingen

Contribution to book:

In ed. C.Baechler and C.Fink, The establishment of European Frontiers after two world wars, P.Lang: Berne 1996, J.S.Conway contributed an article (p.71-80) on “The European Churches’ search for a new international order 1919-89” which examines the strengths and weaknesses of liberal churchmen’s thinking about the reconstruction of the European state system after both wars, particularly through such agencies as the World Alliance for Promoting Intenational Friendship through the Churches, and later the Prague-based Christian Peace Conference.

Adolf von Harnack:

Uwe Rieske-Braun, Aachen, reports on new publications and a revival of interest in Harnack’s life and work. ed. Kurt Nowak, Adolf von Harnack als Zeitgenosse: Reden und Schriften aus den Jahren des Kaiserreichs und der Weimarer Republik.Vol 1: Der Theologe und Historiker; Vol 2: Der Wissenschaftsorganisator und Gelehrtenpolitiker. Berlin/New York: De Gruyter Verlag DM 460.00! Zwar sind die hier abgedruckten Schriften Harnacks bereits andernorts veroeffentlicht, doch die Einfuehrung des Herausgebers verdient besonderes Interesse. Uwe herself has now published a shorter work about H’s earlier career: Uwe Rieske-Braun, Moderne Theologie. Der Briefwechsel Adolf von Harnack – Christoph Ernst Luthardt 1878-1897, Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag 1996, 154 pp DM 48. In dieser Edition werden insbesondere Harnacks Abloesung von der bekenntnisorientierten Theologie und seine Beziehung zu Albrecht Ritschl, die Kontroverse um Harnacks Edition der “Didache” 1884, und die Quellen anlaesslich der gescheiterten Berufung Harnacks nach Leipzig im Winter 1885/6 dokumentiert. Die spannungsreiche Beziehung zu Chr. Ernst Luthardt (1838-1902), die H. trotz der bald gravierenden theologischen Distanz zum einflussreichen Vertreter des bekenntnisorientierten Luthertums gepflegt hat, ist theologisch und auch menschlich bewegend.

Angekuendigt sind auch: Johanna Jantsch, Der Briefwechsel zwischen A. v. H und Martin Rade (1879-1930): Theologie auf dem oeffentlichen Markt, Berlin/New York: De Gruyter Verlag 1996, ca. 920 Seiten. Dieser Briefwechsel wirft ein helles Licht auf mannigfache Auseinandersetzungen und Debatten, in die Harnack und Rade verstrickt waren – etwa nach den Veroeffentlichung des 1.Band des Lehrbuchs der Dogmengeschichte 1885, und beleuchtet besonders instruktiv die Gruendungsphase de “Christlichen Welt”.

Stefan Rebenich, Theodor Mommsen und Adolf Harnack:

Wissenschaft und Politik im Berlin des ausgehenden 19. Jahrhunderts, ca. 800 Seiten – liegt noch nicht vor. Zwei weitere Arbeiten, eins in Bonn, eins in Leipzig, sind in Vorbereitung.

Uwe Rieske-Braun, Aachen

All best wishes,
John S.Conway
jconway@unixg.ubc.ca