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

Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 29, Number 3/4 (Fall 2023)

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

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

Translated from the German by Martin R. Menke

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 29, Number 1/2 (Summer 2023)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Quincentennial Commemoration of the Protestant Reformation in Secularized Germany

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 21, Number 4 (December 2015)

The Quincentennial Commemoration of the Protestant Reformation in Secularized Germany

By Hartmut Lehmann

Germany is one of the most secularized countries of Europe and in fact of the world. In particular in the Eastern part of Germany, that is the region of the former German Democratic Republic, the Christian churches hold very little influence. For our purposes, it is important to note that these regions were also the original sites of the Protestant Reformation, for example the cities of Eisenach, Erfurt and Wittenberg.

Of the roughly eighty million inhabitants of Germany, a little more than one-third are registered as members of the Roman Catholic Church, a little less than one-third as members of one of the Protestant churches, and the last third as non-church members. Of the Catholics, with some local variations, about ten percent are actively involved in church matters, while about three percent of Protestants can be considered as active church-members. In other words: the vast majority of Germans do not attend church regularly and are not interested in church life. The social and cultural value of attending church has been declining dramatically, in particular since the late 1960s. Today, cultural and sporting events often take place Sunday morning during the same time as church services. As the up-keep of churches is expensive, both established churches have begun to sell church buildings. [1]

In recent years, the number of people who decide to officially leave the church has remained high. Motives vary. Catholics who leave their church often claim that they do so because they are disturbed by cases of child molestation; Protestants who leave the church often cite financial reasons. I should add that the number of parents who decide to have their children baptized is also declining. Couples who still marry in church mostly do so not because of religious reasons, but because churches offer such an impressive atmosphere. The one indicator of church involvement that remains relatively strong is church burials with a pastor or priest.

In our context, we should also take into account that Germany has become a country of immigrants. Currently about ten percent of the adult population is of non-German background and between one-quarter and one-third of school children have immigrant parents. In some school districts, children who come from a household with a different cultural tradition make up the majority of students; in others they are a small minority. Approximately half of immigrants to Germany come from a Christian background; the other half are Muslim. Not all, however, actively practice their religion. When discussing the possibilities of commemorating the quincentennial of the Protestant Reformation in Germany, these statistics must be kept in mind.

The preparations for the quincentenary began in 2008 when the German federal government, several state governments, and several cities with a special connection to the history of the Reformation, together with the Evangelical Church of Germany, created an organizational framework for the upcoming event.[2] Moreover, the organizers proclaimed 2008-2017 the “Luther decade.” Each year a special aspect of the Protestant Reformation’s heritage, and of Martin Luther’s legacy, is highlighted.

During 2008, that is in the first half of the Luther decade, several motives characterized the collaborative actions of the state and church. First, the organizers of the quincentennial commemoration consider the Protestant Reformation a watershed event in the course of German history, indeed, as one speaker noted, of world history. For instance, the bill introduced in the German federal parliament for financing some of the preparations was called “Ein Ereignis von Weltrang”, that is, “an event of universal importance.”[3] The speakers who proposed the bill believed that the beginning of the Protestant Reformation was nothing less than a turning point in world history. They supported their view with arguments based on culture rather than with theological or religious considerations.

A second motive was somewhat more pragmatic: the organizers sought to support tourism in those regions in Eastern Germany where the Reformation had its roots. The argument that the Reformation could be used to generate tourism was not new. In 1983, when the East German government celebrated Luther’s five-hundredth birthday, it hoped to attract thousands of tourists from around the world. For representatives of the so-called Luther lands, this argument is still valid today. Politicians do not hesitate to emphasize the economic value of the commemorative events leading up to 2017. For representatives of the church, the tourists from abroad constitute a kind of international pilgrimage to the original sites of the Reformation. Both politicians and church representatives agree that these original sites should be preserved as best as possible. In fact, most of the money granted by the federal government is invested in preservation projects.[4]

In 2008, in addition to a board of trustees (Kuratorium), state and church officials also created an academic advisory council (Wissenschaftlicher Beirat zur Lutherdekade). This body, consisting with few exceptions of Protestant scholars from Germany, suggested that each year within the Luther decade should have a special focus with themes covering the arts, music and politics. The board advised that each theme should be understood broadly rather than by simply focusing on the events of October 1517. Doing so would highlight the contribution of Protestantism to the development of the modern world. In keeping with this goal, the advisory council also issued a number of theses, twenty-three in all, which expanded on this argument.[5] Readers of these theses were told that Protestantism had strongly influenced much of the progress within the Western world including civil political liberties and progress in the arts, economics, and social justice. For Catholics and other non-Protestants, the twenty-three theses intimated a strong message of Protestant triumphalism.

From the beginning, representatives placed the life and work of Martin Luther into the very centre of the campaign. Politicians and church officials followed the advice of experts in the advertising field who argued that a successful campaign needed a distinct personal face. Everyone agreed that there was no alternative to Luther’s face.

To whom did these actions appeal?[6] By 2013, if I am not mistaken, when half of the Luther decade was over, the various regional and local actions had reached primarily two groups: tourists who visited Wittenberg, among them many devout Protestants, and educated middle-class Protestants. The Wittenberg tourists enjoyed local guided tours and local events. The most popular event was a public meal similar to Luther’s 1525 wedding dinner. Members of the educated Protestant middle-class (the typical “Bildungsbürger”) enjoyed superb concerts and exquisite art exhibitions. Many of the concerts played the impressive music of Johann Sebastian Bach; many of the art exhibitions included paintings by Luther’s contemporary, Lukas Cranach.

In other words, after five years of preparing for the 2017 event, the activities arranged by the quincentennial commemoration organizers only appealed to non-Protestants and non-church members if they were attracted by music or art. In addition, if I am not mistaken, no special effort was made to communicate the heritage of the Protestant Reformation to groups of non-German origin. No doubt, this would not have been an easy task. What I deplore, however, is that neither the state nor the church officials in charge of preparing for the big event in 2017 developed a concept and program to reach the members of those groups who are not well acquainted with the German Protestant tradition. Moreover, organizers made no effort to address the members of Free Churches in Germany and elsewhere.

Since 2013 – halfway through the Luther decade — some changes and new motives are emerging. For reasons yet to be clarified, church officials among the organizers of the quincentennial commemoration are making an even stronger effort to strengthen the profile and the identity of their own flock: that is of those Protestants for whom Protestant church life is still important.

For example, church officials decided to hold a Protestant church congress (Deutscher Evangelischer Kirchentag) in 2017, together with the festivities of the quincentenary. With this decision, they ensure that a sizable crowd of faithful Protestants will attend the commemorative events. I should add that there was also the possibility to stage an ecumenical church congress (Ökumenischer Kirchentag). Such an ecumenical church congress would have given a completely different focus to 2017. Obviously, this possibility was exactly what the Protestant church did not favour, making it seem as if they wanted to claim Luther as their exclusive property.

In this same spirit, in 2014 the Protestant Church published a small book titled Rechtfertigung und Freiheit (Justification and Liberty).[8] The title is indicative of the content: It suggests that only Lutherans possess the correct understanding of the doctrine of justification by faith alone, and that only Protestants can claim to have contributed substantially to modern civil liberties. In contrast, the progress in ecumenical activities since the Second Vatican Council is not mentioned.[9] A few months earlier, a commission consisting of members of the Lutheran World Federation and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity had published a treatise with the title From Conflict to Communion: Lutheran-Catholic Common Commemoration of the Reformation in 2017.[10] While the Protestant church representatives in Germany distribute their own booklet in large numbers, they completely ignore the joint Catholic-Lutheran statement.

Let me add that leading members of the Protestant church in Germany regularly stress their intention to celebrate the quincentenary from an ecumenical perspective (“ökumenische Perspektive“). Two leading bishops have travelled to Rome and invited Pope Francis to come to Germany in 2017. It is not known whether he will accept the invitation. Moreover, Protestant and Catholic church officials organize an ecumenical service as part of the festivities in 2017. Both churches have announced that this service will take place on March 11, 2017, in Hildesheim and will be devoted to the “Healing of Memories”. Local churches are encouraged to organize ecumenical services of their own. Also, Protestant and Catholic bishops intend to undertake a joint trip, a kind of ecumenical pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Details of all of these events have yet to be made public, and this at a time when the complete program for 2017 has already been printed on high-gloss paper and distributed.

Before concluding, let me turn to a specific problem. Although it is certainly correct to characterize the Germany of today as a highly secularized country, one should also note that religious sensibilities still play a critical role in German society. There are widespread feelings of xenophobia, of which religious prejudice seems to be a strong element.

Two groups are targeted more than any other: Jews and Muslims. Antisemitism has a long tradition in Germany just as in many other countries. After Nazi atrocities that culminated in the Holocaust, Germans with political or cultural responsibilities have attempted to ensure that antisemitism never again plays a role within German public life. But, as some antisemitic incidents demonstrate, their efforts have not been completely successful. In recent years, as the number of immigrants with a Muslim background has increased, islamophobia has also captured the minds of some Germans, especially in the former East. In turn, some young Muslims living in Germany have become particularly antisemitic.

In our context, these observations are important because Martin Luther – and please remember he is the person who has been put into the very center of the campaign for 2017 — wrote some strident and highly controversial tracts both against Jews and against Muslims. We cannot deny that these writings are an inseparable part of Luther’s heritage and we should not attempt to ignore or suppress them as we approach 2017. As one can easily understand, within the Germany of the post-Holocaust era, Luther’s writings against the Jews are extremely disturbing, in particular because the Nazis used Luther as a voice of authority in their policy of racial extermination.[11] If one considers the Holocaust as a fundamental rupture in modern civilization (“elementarer Zivilisationsbruch“), Luther’s standing and Luther’s reputation are deeply affected.

It is therefore not surprising that the board of trustees of the Luther decade has asked the academic advisory council to prepare a memorandum discussing the context and the background of Luther’s diatribes against the Jews. For two reasons, this memorandum, published in 2014, is a remarkable statement. On the one hand, the authors make crystal-clear that they distance themselves from Luther’s antisemitic writings. On the other hand, they claim that Luther’s anti-Jewish resentments were not at the very center of his theological teachings, adding that Luther respected other views and that the secular authorities within the new Protestant states did not follow Luther’s advice.[12] Most recently, however, this view has been revised. In a long article about Luther’s perception of Jews in context of his theology, Dorothea Wendebourg demonstrates that Luther’s hostile attitude towards Jews was an integral part of his theology.[13] More importantly, the members of the synod of the Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland, in their meeting on November 11, 2015, unanimously passed a proclamation in which they distanced themselves most strongly from Luther’s anti-Jewish writings. They state that Luther connected central elements of his theology with anti-Jewish paradigms; that German Protestants followed Luther’s antisemitic arguments for many centuries; that they are ashamed and deeply deplore this failure; and that out of this failure they feel a special responsibility to confront any kind of hostility against Jews.[14]

By contrast, as of now, Luther’s writings against the Turks with their horrendous statements about Islam and the prophet Muhammed have not become part of the public debate in Germany.[15] The academic advisory council has not been asked to discuss this issue. I should like to add that Luther has also written about other topics in a way that cannot be reconciled with the political and ethical opinions in Western societies at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Let me just call to your attention Luther’s most disturbing statements about people with disabilities, his verdict of humanist scholars like Erasmus, his condemnation of the peasants who did not want to live as slaves, or his sharp rejection of those Protestants who believed in baptizing adults. From today’s perspective, these writings are obviously politically incorrect.

In conclusion, let me say the following: It is, no doubt, an enormous challenge to commemorate the beginnings of the Reformation and the legacy of Martin Luther in a secularized society shaped by widespread religious prejudice. As of now, neither the state representatives nor the church officials engaged in preparing the festivities in 2017 have been able to meet this challenge fully. One may deplore this situation, as I do, or one may see it as a pragmatic answer to a challenge which may be almost impossible to meet.

Yet there is another possibility: We could try not to look back but to look at the political and moral challenges of our time. Recently, a group of American Lutheran pastors and bishops, following a proclamation by the Lutheran World Federation, have demanded that eco-justice, that is the ecological preservation of God’s creation, be placed in the very center of all activities in 2017. For the Christians of Europe, helping refugees from developing countries could be an action of similar magnitude. Luther wanted to reform flagrant grievances in the Christianity of his time (not only in his 95 theses against the misuse of indulgences of 1517 but, for example, also in his “Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation“ of 1520). Christians today should not try to imitate the reforms that he proposed some 500 years ago but attempt to do away with the flagrant deficiencies, and intolerable injustice, in today’s societies. The quincentennial commemoration of the Protestant Reformation would be a unique opportunity to do exactly that.

Notes:

[1] For a recent analysis and assessment see Detlef Pollack, “Wie steht es um die christlichen Kirchen in Deutschland? Eine Einschätzung aus soziologischer Sicht,” Forum Loccum 33, Nr. 4, 2014, pp. 9 – 15. For the political and social context see Hartmut Lehmann, Das Christentum im 20. Jahrhundert. Fragen, Probleme, Perspektiven. Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt 2012, pp. 175 – 181; id., “Ein europäischer Sonderweg in Sachen Religion,” in: Hans G. Kippenberg, Jörg Rüpke, Kocku von Stuckrad, eds., Europäische Religionsgeschichte. Ein mehrfacher Pluralismus. Vol. 1. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2009, pp. 39 – 59.

[2] My comment at the time: Hartmut Lehmann, “Die Deutschen und ihr Luther. Im Jahr 2017 jährt sich zum fünfhundertsten Mal der Beginn der Reformation. Jubiliert wurde schon oft,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 26. August 2008, Nr. 199, p. 7. Also in: id., Luthergedächtnis 1817 bis 2017. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2012, pp. 297 – 304.

[3] “Das Reformationsjubiläum im Jahre 2017 – Ein Ereignis von Weltrang. Antrag der CDU/CSU-, der SPD-, der FDP-Bundestagsfraktionen und der Bundestagsfraktion von Bündnis 90/Die Grünen,” Deutscher Bundestag, Drucksache 17/6465 vom 6. Juli 2011.

[4] Arguments can be found in: “Reformationsjubiläum 2017 als welthistorisches Ereignis würdigen. Antrag der CDU/CSU und der SPD-Bundestagsfraktion.” Deutscher Bundestag, Drucksache 16/9830, 26. Juni 2008.

[5] Perspektiven für das Reformationsjubiläum 2017. Published in Wittenberg by the office of the church and the office of the state in charge of “Luther 2017 – 500 Jahre Reformation,” undated.

[6] Hartmut Lehmann, “Fragen zur Halbzeit der Lutherdekade,” Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte/Contemporary Church History 26/2. 2013, pp. 447 – 454; id., “Unterschiedliche Erwartungen an das Reformationsjubiläum 2017,” Berliner Theologische Zeitung 28/1, 2011, pp. 16 – 27.

[7] See Hartmut Lehmann, “Vom Helden zur Null? Die Fünfhundertjahrfeier der Entdeckung Amerikas im Jahr 1992 wurde jenseits des Atlantiks ein Reinfall. Ob es hierzulande mit der Fünfhundertjahrfeier der Reformation im Jahr 2017 wohl ein besseres Ende nimmt?” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 27. Oktober 2014, Nr. 249, S. 6.

[8] Rechtfertigung und Freiheit. 500 Jahre Reformation 2017. Ein Grundlagentext des Rates der Evangelischen Kirche in Deutschland (EKD). Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus 2014.

[9] For example the Catholic-Lutheran declaration concerning justification (Erklärung zur Rechtfertigung) issued in 1999.

[10] Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt and Paderborn: Bonifatius 2013. In German: Vom Konflikt zur Gemeinschaft. Gemeinsames lutherisch-katholisches Reformationsgedenken im Jahr 2017.

[11] Thomas Kaufmann, “Luther unter den Antisemiten. Den Wittenberger Reformator zum Zweck des Judenhasses zu vereinnahmen war möglich. Bei ihm finden sich Wendungen, die das zulassen. In Deutschland wie in vielen anderen Ländern stellen sich die protestantischen Kirchen diesem Erbe.” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 29. Dezember 2014, Nr. 301, S. 8. See also id., Luthers ‘Judenschriften’ in ihren historischen Kontexten. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2005; id., Luthers ‘Judenschriften’. Ein Beitrag zu ihrer historischen Kontextualisierung. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck 2011.

[12] Die Reformation und die Juden. Eine Orientierung. Erstellt im Auftrag des wissenschaftlichen Beirates für das Reformationsjubiläum 2017. Wittenberg 2014. See paragraph 17 about the relative importance of Luther’s anti-Jewish statements. This paragraph represented the majority opinion within the academic advisory council; a minority did not agree. For the minority, Luther’s antisemitism had deep roots within his theology.

[13] Dorothea Wendebourg, “Ein Lehrer, der Unterscheidung verlangt. Martin Luthers Haltung zu den Juden im Zusammenhang seiner Theologie,” Theologische Literaturzeitung 140, 2015, pp. 1035 – 1059.

[14] Kundgebung der 12. Synode der Evangelischen Kirche in Deutschland auf ihrer 2. Tagung: “Martin Luther und die Juden – Notwendige Erinnerung zum Reformationsjubiläum.” Bremen, 11. November 2015. Signed by the Präses of the synod, Dr. Irmgard Schwaetzer. In my view, this statement was long overdue. One sentence in this text which I quote in German: “Die Tatsache, dass die judenfeindlichen Ratschläge des späten Luther für den nationalsozialistischen Antisemitismus in Anspruch genommen wurden, stellt eine weitere Belastung für die evangelische Kirche dar” should have been supplemented by the remark that many Protestant pastors and many Protestant professors of theology strongly supported Hitler and the Nazi Party’s antisemitism. See Manfred Gailus, ed., Täter und Komplizen in Theologie und Kirchen 1933 – 1945. Göttingen: Wallstein-Verlag, 2015.

[15] Hartmut Lehmann, “Martin Luther and the Turks”: Studies in Church History VI. Christians and the Non-Christian Other. Vilnius: LKMA 2013, pp. 71 – 75.

Conference Report: Panels in Honour of Hartmut Lehmann at the 39th Annual Meeting of the German Studies Association

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 21, Number 4 (December 2015)

Conference Report: Panels in Honour of Hartmut Lehmann at the 39th Annual Meeting of the German Studies Association (GSA), Washington, DC, October 1–4, 2015

by Rebecca Carter-Chand, University of Toronto

The most recent German Studies Association conference featured a series of panels that celebrated the career of renowned historian of religion, Hartmut Lehmann. Organized by Doris Bergen, Benjamin Marschke, and Jonathan Strom, the five panels and their participants reflected the wide-ranging contributions and temporal and geographic scope of Lehmann’s career. Participants included colleagues, students, and friends from Germany, Austria, Israel, Canada, and the United States.

Lehmann Poster The panel participants began the conference with a dinner to honour Hartmut and his wife, Silke Lehmann. James Harris spoke about Hartmut’s life and career trajectory, emphasizing his close ties to the United States, which began with a high school exchange program and continued through many visiting positions at UCLA, Chicago, Harvard, and Princeton. In 1987 Lehmann became the founding director of the German Historical Institute in Washington, DC, returning to Germany in 1992 to serve as director of the Max Planck Institute for History in Göttingen. He has been professor emeritus at the University of Kiel since 2004, while continuing to visit the United States often, most recently as a visiting professor at Princeton Theological Seminary.

One thread that ran throughout the panels was Lehmann’s ability to bring people and ideas together. Sometimes it has been countries that have come together, particularly Germany, the United States, and Israel; in other cases it has been institutions, like universities, governments, and foundations. But Lehman’s own research and publications have connected different fields that typically remain separated: early modern and modern history, religious history and social history, and the history of European Christianity and global Christianity, to name but a few.

The first panel, chaired by Peter Becker and commented on by Robert Ericksen, offered a timely reflection on Luther memory and commemoration—a topic on the minds of many historians in anticipation of the 2017 Luther year. Greta Kroeker’s paper discussed Luther’s relationship with Christian humanists and the implications of their very different views on eschatology. Christopher Close examined the first centennial Luther commemoration in 1617, contrasting local commemoration in Strasbourg and Ulm. He showed how commemoration was instrumentalized to shape a particular memory of the Reformation. Manfred Gailus contextualized Luther’s “On Jews and their Lies” within German Protestantism during the Nazi period, warning us not to overemphasize Luther’s infamous tract in shaping German Protestants’ antisemitism. Thomas Brady also considered the instrumentalization of Luther by discussing three different constructions of Luther: Luther as a Protestant hero by nineteenth century liberals; Luther as a German reactionary by nineteenth century socialists; and finally Luther as a teacher of progressive politics in the GDR.

The second panel, chaired by Richard Wetzell, with a comment by Doris Bergen, engaged the notion of secularization, suggesting some level of skepticism about its pervasiveness with the title, “Secularization? Secularism, Religion, and Violence.” Carola Dietze’s paper was premised on the idea that usual narratives of secularization are specific to European history, and offered a very different narrative with the case of the American abolitionist John Brown. Anthony Roeber’s paper placed Hartmut Lehmann’s work in conversation with the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor, discussing both scholars’ contributions in moving forward discussion on secularization. Victoria Barnett discussed the Kirchenkampf in a global context, considering how Christians outside of Germany viewed the German Church Struggle through the lens of a struggle between ethno-national religion and internationalism.

The third panel turned its attention to Pietism in a transnational context. Chaired by Kelly Whitmer and commented on by by Simon Grote, this panel included papers by Benjamin Marschke, Jonathan Strom, and Manfred Jakabowski-Thiessen. Marschke revisited the question of how to define Pietism, questioning whether we should speak of Pietism as one reform movement, and making a plea for “many pietisms.” Strom considered the role of British conversion narratives in eighteenth century German Pietism, noting that influence flowed in both directions, although more strongly from Britain to Germany. Jabobowski-Thiessen discussed the importance of networks among Pietists, in this case Württemberg Pietists in Denmark. Several of the panelists reflected on Lehmann’s contribution to Pietist studies, praising his transnational approaches.

The fourth panel, titled “Germany and America,” was chaired by Silke Lehmann; the comment was given by Andreas Daum. Martin Geyer spoke about nation building and international technical standards (including currency and standards of measurement), and the meanings that people infused into them in the nineteenth century. James Melton gave a paper on slavery, Johann Martin Bolzius, and the German-speaking Pietists who migrated to Georgia in 1734. Claudia Schnurmann’s paper explored Martin Luther in the American biographical imagination from 1799 to 1883, bringing together many of the themes from the series of panels, including Luther memory and transatlantic exchange.

The fifth panel considered Harmut Lehmann’s works and influences and was chaired by Roger Chickering. Doug Shantz offered a reassessment on Lehmann’s 1969 work, Pietismus und weltliche Ordnung in Würrtemburg. Frank Trommler spoke about “the Lehmann era in Washington” (1987-1993) and Irene Aue-Ben-David’s paper spoke to the contribution of the Max Planck Institute for History in German-Israeli research cooperation. Hartmut Lehmann concluded the panel with some brief remarks, expressing his gratitude to all of the participants and the organizers of the series of panels.