Tag Archives: Diana Jane Beech

Conference Abstract: “Confessions of a Protestant Past: The Memorialisation of the Kirchenkampf in Contemporary Berlin”

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ACCH Quarterly Vol. 18, No. 3, September 2012

Conference Abstract: “Confessions of a Protestant Past: The Memorialisation of the Kirchenkampf in Contemporary Berlin”

By Diana Jane Beech, University of Cambridge

Anyone visiting Berlin for the first time will be struck by the wealth of heritage sites dedicated to remembering the tyranny of Germany’s Nazi past. From the haunting spectres of the sinister strength of the Third Reich (as epitomised by the Olympiastadion or the former home of the Reichsluftfahrtministerium) to the plethora of memorials commemorating the various victims of Nazi atrocities around the Reichstag, Berlin is a city with a showcase on both the perpetrators and the casualties of its dark history. But what of those institutions in the Third Reich like the Protestant Church, which comprised both pro- and anti-Nazi movements and, as such, do not fit neatly into Berlin’s dualistic memorial landscape?

At first glance, one would be forgiven for focusing on the bombed-out shell of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church located in the centre of Berlin’s main shopping district, which presents the Protestant Church as an innocent bystander and a tragic casualty of Allied bombings—a convenient illusion perhaps for an institution whose resistance to Nazism was less than glorious, save for the heroism of Protestant martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer or outspoken leader of the Confessing Church resistance group, Martin Niemoeller? A closer examination of Berlin’s Protestant landscape off the ‘tourist track’ nonetheless reveals the Martin Luther Memorial Church in Mariendorf, which is a lesser-known place of worship kept under lock and key due to its Nazi-inspired interior, demonstrating only too well the complicity of the Protestant Church in furthering the Nazis’ hold over the German nation. Even the St. Annen Church in Dahlem, famous for its associations with the Confessing Church, cannot escape the shadow of guilt of its fellow Protestant institutions when counterbalancing its visible, outdoor memorial against racial fanaticism, war and dictatorship with a concealed, indoor display of Doris Pollatschek’s critique of the churches’ ambivalent conduct in the Third Reich: the ‘Triptych for Auschwitz’.

And it is not just Berlin’s churches that have been affected by the parallel need to acknowledge the resistance efforts of some of their members yet, all the while, emphasising their overall ineffectiveness in preventing Nazi crimes and, in some cases, even facilitating them. Physical memorials, too, erected to honour the Confessing Church, have paled in significance against their more prominent counterparts and have been left to decay just like the reputation of the churchmen they were designed to uphold. The plaque erected opposite the ‘Topography of Terror’ at Wilhelmstrasse 36 to commemorate the meeting place of the Protestant resistance movement demonstrates this perfectly. Inconspicuously placed on a graffitied and now boarded-up YMCA building and hardly noticed by the throngs of visitors at the ruins of the SS headquarters nearby, it reflects a paradoxical obligation to remember but also to relativise this contentious aspect of Third Reich history.

By focusing on the Berlin cityscape as a whole, then, my paper seeks to show how the debate over the significance of the Protestant Kirchenkampf (Church Struggle) in the Third Reich has come to be reflected both in patterns of heritagisation and memorialisation. As well as examining the preservation of sites of historical interest, my paper will explore how aspects of Kirchenkampf history have permeated Berlin’s urban landscape, through street names, building dedications and commemorative plaques. It will explore the nature and location of the sites used, and question how in the long term these sites can not only come to shape public perceptions of the history of the Kirchenkampf, but also transmit powerful ideological messages about the value of virtue and morality in modern society.

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Review of Ulrich Bräuel und Stefan Samerski, eds., Ein Bischof vor Gericht: Der Prozeß gegen den Danziger Bischof Carl Maria Splett 1946

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ACCH Quarterly Vol. 17, No. 4, December 2011

Review of Ulrich Bräuel und Stefan Samerski, eds., Ein Bischof vor Gericht: Der Prozeß gegen den Danziger Bischof Carl Maria Splett 1946 (Osnabrück: fibre Verlag, 2005), 313pp. ISBN: 3-929759-98-5.

By Diana Jane Beech, University of British Columbia

Picture the scene: It is 1933 in the Free City of Danzig (Gdańsk); a semi-autonomous city-state situated between Poland and Germany, under the special protection of the League of Nations. Life in the Free City up until now had been peaceable, with the majority of the population from Germanic heritage, yet represented abroad by Poland in an effort to ensure sufficient Polish access to the sea. For a young German Roman Catholic pastor in the Free City, a sympathetic attitude towards the Poles was indispensable, as was a knowledge of the Polish language. This was characteristic of the early career of Carl Maria Splett (1898-1964). Following his ordination into the Roman Catholic Church in 1921,  he returned to Danzig in 1924 to serve the city’s mixed German and Polish congregations.

Once the local National Socialist (Nazi) Party succeeded in taking over the government of Danzig in 1933, however, the dynamics of Splett’s ministry changed dramatically. Despite pressure from the Nazis to install their own candidate as Bishop of Danzig following Bishop Edward O’Rourke’s resignation in 1938, Carl Maria Splett was appointed to the post by Pope Pius XII. Following the annexation of Danzig to Germany in 1939, Splett was further appointed the Apostolic Administrator of the diocese of Culm. He was, thereby, firmly forced into a double-bind, in which he endeavoured to maintain friendly relations with the Poles on the one hand, and the Nazi government on the other.

Initially, Splett spurned Nazi demands and refused to prohibit the use of Polish in his diocese. Revenge murders by the Nazis of Polish-speaking pastors within Splett’s bishopric nevertheless forced him to retract his decision. He henceforth banned Polish from all churches under his jurisdiction in the spring of 1940. Under increasing pressure from the Nazi regime, Splett most controversially replaced Polish clergy with German priests, and ordered the complete removal of Polish signs and names from his diocese. In spite of all this, however, Splett is still said to have unofficially continued to support priests who continued to use the Polish language, and provided financial aid to the families of those priests arrested and murdered by the Nazis.

Splett remained in Danzig throughout the Second World War and continued to work both with and against the Nazi regime in an attempt to find his own modus vivendi to survive the war. Once Soviet troops captured the city in March 1945, Splett was arrested but released shortly afterwards. It was not until August 9, 1945, that Polish Cardinal August Hlond called for Splett’s resignation. When he refused to give up his bishopric, Polish officials arrested Splett and put him on trial for collaborating with the Nazis and oppressing the Polish people. Splett was eventually found guilty and sentenced to eight years in prison on February 1, 1946.

It is this trial which is the focus of Ulrich Bräuel and Stefan Samerski’s edited volume, Ein Bischof vor Gericht: Der Prozeß gegen den Danziger Bischof Carl Maria Splett 1946. As Bräuel and Samerski make clear in their introduction to the volume, not only has Splett’s own debatable conduct in Nazi-occupied Danzig made him one of the most disputed figures in Polish and German history, but his trial by Poland’s post-war communist regime has sparked recent debate as to whether Splett’s case was a convenient way for the communists to take up battle against the Church as a whole. In an effort to uncover whether Carl Maria Splett fell victim to the ideological agendas of two consecutive totalitarian regimes, Bräuel and Samerski have collected essays from both Polish and German academics from a wide variety of disciplines, which examine Splett’s own history, traditions, and theology. As well, his trial is analysed from both its political and legal perspectives. Even today, there are those who believe Splett acted honourably under the precarious conditions of Nazism. They refer to his trial and lengthy prison sentence in order to highlight the injustices he endured under communism. His critics on the other hand continue to view his punishment as confirming their condemnation of Splett and his anti-Polish directives during the war. It is the editors’ intention, therefore, to investigate both Splett’s actions and those of the Polish authorities that condemned him so that they can begin to reconcile the disparity of opinions that surround Splett’s life and trial.

The volume begins with a short but polemical piece by Jan Bernard Szlaga (21-24), who examines the historical legacy of Bishop Splett and firmly proclaims his belief that Splett was loyal to the Poles, yet prohibited by his powerlessness in the face of Nazi tyranny. Szlaga’s opinion piece is swiftly followed by an overview of the so-called ‘Splett debate’ in Poland by Thomas Urban (25-44), who offers a survey of the Polish reception of Splett, from his branding as a “Hitlerist” in the immediate post-war era to the steps taken towards redeeming his reputation from 1989 to the early twenty-first century.

Stefan Samerski examines the historical context surrounding Bishop Splett’s controversial behaviour during the war (45-93). He provides a comprehensive account of Splett’s formative years, his professional life in the Church, and the influences of ecclesiastical and international politics on his wartime actions. Ulrich Bräuel then provides a detailed analysis of Splett’s trial (95-143), including in his report German translations of the original Polish indictments against the bishop.

The specifically ecclesiastical influences on Splett’s life and trial are covered in the volume by both Thomas A. Amann, who writes on the aspects of ecclesiastical law that affected Splett’s case (145-169), and by Daniel Fickenscher, who provides an insight into how national languages have been traditionally used in Roman Catholic church services and confessions (172-204). Hans-Werner Rautenberg examines the problem surrounding language usage even further in his chapter on the patchwork nature of ethnicities in western Prussia and the impact that this particular mosaic of languages, cultures, and beliefs has had on Catholic liturgical practice in the area (206-246).

Since the analysis of the historical contexts surrounding Splett’s life and trial would not be complete without an appreciation of the political climate in which he was prosecuted, the volume ends with a focus on the communist Polish state, which determined Splett’s fate. Miroslaw Piotrowski’s examination of the Church and the state in Poland in the initial years after the Second World War offers a chronological account of the state’s increasing hostility against the Catholic Church (247-261). This is followed by Lukasz Kamiński’s study on propaganda trials in Poland between 1945 and 1956 (263-280), which provokes thought as to how Splett’s own case fits into the trope of such ‘show’ trials. The final word in the volume is, however, left to Stephan H. Pfürtner (281-313), who considers the case of Bishop Carl Maria Splett as a “Zeitzeugnis”, or a true product of its time. By demonstrating the fine boundaries between secular and spiritual obligations, and between duties to two distinct nationalities and cultures, Pfürtner closes the volume with the assertion that Splett’s life was ultimately shaped by his love for humanity—an expression of the love of Jesus Christ which he preached about on a daily basis.

Ein Bischof vor Gericht encourages its readers, before defending or condemning his actions, to view Carl Maria Splett as a figure firmly trapped by the  competing demands of his Catholic tradition, his almost dual nationality, and, most importantly, by the consecutive political climates of National Socialism and communism in which he strove to exist. What Bräuel and Samerski’s edited work has done, therefore, is expose the importance of thoroughly appreciating the historical contexts behind not just the lives of churchmen in Nazi-occupied territories, but also behind their post-war legacies, which may have been shaped and distorted by post-war ideologies and political agendas. All in all, this collection of essays should be praised for shedding much-needed light on the historical standing of churchmen such as Carl Maria Splett, who acted and subsequently defended their actions in the best way their historical predicaments allowed them to.

 

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Review of Wolfgang Sommer, Wilhelm Freiherr von Pechmann: Ein konservativer Lutheraner

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ACCH Quarterly Vol. 17, No. 2, June 2011

Review of Wolfgang Sommer, Wilhelm Freiherr von Pechmann: Ein konservativer Lutheraner (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2010), 255 Pp. ISBN 978-3-525-55005-2.

By Diana Jane Beech, University of British Columbia

Wilhelm Freiherr von Pechmann was one of the most influential laymen active in the German Protestant Church in the early twentieth century. Born into a well-respected family on 10 June 1859 in Memmingen, Bavaria, von Pechmann was raised with a profound respect for his German homeland and was christened and educated into the specifically Protestant tradition. From an early age, von Pechmann saw himself as both “christlich und deutsch” (Christian and German). The compatibility of these religious and national identities came under question, however, much later in his life when Adolf Hitler and his Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP) came to power in Germany. From this point on, von Pechmann became engaged in a continual struggle not only against the Nazi State and its blatant intention to ‘de-Christianise’ the German nation, but also against his own Lutheran church, which he saw as all-too-submissive to Nazi hegemony.

Having been thrust into the world of work as a legal advisor to the Bayerische Handelsbank in Munich in 1886 following the untimely death of his father, von Pechmann never allowed his new professional obligations to distract him from his true passions of national politics and church affairs. As early as 1901 he was called to serve as the lay representative of the Munich diocese on the Bavarian General Synod. In 1909 he was called to the most prominent office of the Bavarian Protestant church as President of its highest instrument of church administration—the Oberkonsistorium. Only his professional standing as a lawyer and not as a theologian prevented his proposed presidency from coming into fruition.

In 1913 the University of Erlangen put an end to von Pechmann’s status as a layman by awarding him an honorary degree in theology. From 1919 to 1922 he thus became the first elected President of the Provincial Synod of the Bavarian Protestant church. His influence within ecclesiastical circles was not just restricted to a regional level, however, as he quickly grew in prominence within the worldwide Lutheran community as well as within the administration of the national German Protestant Church. For example, between 1921 and
1927, he headed the German Protestant Church Congresses in Stuttgart, Bethel, and Königsberg.

Despite being deeply conservative and “deutschnational” at heart, von Pechmann showed
great distain for the advent of National Socialism in Germany in the 1930s. From the very
beginning of the so-called Third Reich (1933-1945), he took aversion to both the totalitarian claims of Hitler and his NSDAP, and, in particular, the politico-religious heresy of the Glaubensbewegung Deutscher Christen (German Christian Movement). To initiate protest against Nazism, von Pechmann engaged in potentially risky correspondence with pastors, academic theologians, bishops, ecclesiastical lawyers, publicists, and politicians. In 1933, he became a card-carrying member of the Bekennende Kirche (Confessing Church), and fostered close relations with anti-Nazi theologian Karl Barth and Confessing pastor Martin Niemöller.

Von Pechmann’s increasing activism against Nazism brought him most notably into conflict with many of his fellow conservative Lutherans, in particular the leader of the Bavarian Protestant Church of the time, Provincial Bishop Hans Meiser. Von Pechmann believed that Meiser acted spinelessly against Nazi demands, and he was particularly disappointed with Meiser’s reluctance to defend the Jews and other so-called ‘non-Aryan’ Christians from Nazi persecution. As a result of his deep dismay over the compromising conduct of Bishop Meiser and other Lutherans of the period, von Pechmann took the radical step of not only resigning his positions in the church administration but also of legally leaving the Protestant Church which he had faithfully served for so long. Years later, after the fall of the Third Reich, he converted to Roman Catholicism and remained a Catholic until his death in Munich in 1948.

In his endeavour to demonstrate how Wilhelm Freiherr von Pechmann eventually came to abandon his willingness to accept episcopal direction and to become instead one of the most forthright opponents of Nazism to emanate from the German Protestant Church, Wolfgang Sommer presents an in-depth biographical account of von Pechmann’s life. Sommer begins with von Pechmann’s formative years in Memmingen and Augsburg and continues through to his eventual rejection of German Protestantism during the final years of his life. Accordingly, the initial chapters of Sommer’s work are devoted to detailing von Pechmann’s background, and his early struggles to locate himself neatly within both a political party and within the German Protestant Church. To depict von Pechmann firmly as a product of his time, Wolfgang Sommer pays great attention to the political developments and challenges facing von Pechmann throughout his life, with entire chapters devoted to the First World War (1914-1918), the November Revolution of 1918, and the reconstitution of German Protestantism during the Weimar Republic (1918-1933). In order to reveal the relevance of von Pechmann for world Protestantism and not just for the national German Church, Sommer also devotes a chapter to his impact on ecumenical relations and his collaboration with the worldwide Lutheran community.

Unsurprisingly, the largest section of Sommer’s study concentrates on the years of Germany’s National Socialist dictatorship and von Pechmann’s increasing opposition not only to Nazi measures but also to the actions of his own Lutheran church. By detailing von Pechmann’s timely recognition of the pitfalls of Nazism and his constant warnings to Bishop Meiser to refrain from assimilation to the Nazi Weltanschauung, Sommer effectively presents von Pechmann as the virtuous thorn in the side of the spineless Bavarian church.

Sommer continually emphasises von Pechmann’s morality and righteousness by contrasting his readiness to protest against the Nazi persecution of the Jews with Bishop Meiser’s reluctance to oppose the measures. This technique downplays the reality of the situation for Meiser, however. As the leader of one of the only Protestant churches in Nazi Germany not to come under the national administration of the Deutsche Christen, Meiser had an unspoken obligation not to infuriate unnecessarily Nazi authorities in order to protect the autonomy of his church and, by extension, that of German Protestantism per se. Although von Pechmann’s humanitarian, political, and theological insight was arguably impeccable
under the brutal conditions of Nazism, by overlooking the precarious predicament of the
Bavarian Bishop, Sommer enhances von Pechmann’s reputation at the expense of those churchmen in more complex and critical situations. Whilst Wolfgang Sommer should be praised, therefore, for shedding light on a man who was influential to the German Protestant Church despite not being a theologian himself, it is nonetheless important that his work is not used to disparage the efforts of those who were firmly trapped by the shackles of their Protestant and specifically Lutheran vocations.

 

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