Contemporary Church History Quarterly
Volume 31, Number 4 (Winter 2025)
Review of Jan H. Wille, Das Reichskonkordat: Ein Staatskirchenvertrag zwischen Diktatur und Demokratie, 1933-1957. (Paderborn: Brill-Schöningh, 2024). Pp. 481.
By Martin Menke, Rivier University
This volume, the latest in the blaue Reihe published by the Kommission für Zeitgeschichte, is a useful reference work for those seeking to understand the long-term effects of the concordat between the German state and the Holy See, concluded in 1933 and still in effect today. That said, the volume’s five parts vary in their scholarly richness. The author, Jan H. Wille, currently serves as an associate at the Helmut Schmidt University of the Armed Forces in Hamburg.
The work under review is his revised dissertation, which the late Thomas Großbölting supervised before his untimely death. Like most German dissertations, it begins with a lengthy discussion of existing literature and investigatory approaches. The author asserts that the concordat of 1933 was one of a series of treaties negotiated between churches and the German state in the twentieth century. Generally, the concordat is not considered a Staatskirchenvertrag, as those concluded by the German government and the Protestant churches are. Most historians of the concordat consider it a diplomatic agreement between two sovereign entities.
