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Review of Andreas Pangritz, Die Schattenseite des Christentums. Theologie und Antisemitismus

Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 31, Number 1 (Spring 2025)

Review of Andreas Pangritz, Die Schattenseite des Christentums. Theologie und Antisemitismus. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2023.

Dirk Schuster, University of Vienna

Theology and antisemitism: to be honest, the subtitle of the book initially led me to believe that this was yet another classic theological-apologetic attempt to negate the Christian inﬂuence in the development of antisemitism. Fortunately, Andreas Pangritz, Professor Emeritus of Systematic Theology at the University of Bonn, proved me wrong. With his book, based on a lecture at the University of Bonn in 2020, Pangritz wants to achieve exactly the opposite. He follows the basic assumption that there is a connection between Christian theology and antisemitism (11). Accordingly, the main thesis is that antisemitism is essentially Christian antisemitism and that the importance of Christian theology in the formation of antisemitism should not be underestimated (17).

In the second chapter, Pangritz addresses the problematic distinction between the terms anti-Judaism and antisemitism. He shows that the distinction between a theologically-argued hostility towards Jews and a racially argued antisemitism, which has been repeatedly postulated since the end of the Second World War, has not stood the test of time. On the contrary, such a distinction harbors the danger that (Christian) hatred of Jews is trivialized by juxtaposing it with antisemitism. Pangritz proposes “not to speak of a break, but rather of a transformation of the traditional Christian ‘doctrine of contempt’ (Lehre der Verachtung) into the modern forms of antisemitism” (35). It remains unclear, however, why Pangritz returns to the concept of anti-Judaism later in the book (e.g. 119). The term has been overused by Christian apologetics, and Pangritz himself has pointed out that the academic distinction between anti-Judaism and antisemitism has not produced any new insights or meaningful differentiations. (30). Conceptual clarity would have been helpful here, especially since Pangritz argues well with Léon Poliakov, Peter Schäfer and even Reinhard Rürup that “antisemitism” should be used in its most general sense: “The word ‘antisemitism’ denotes hostility, hatred and contempt of all kinds against Jews and Judaism; this does not exclude differences in motivation, but includes them” (33). However, this small point is the only criticism I can make in the entire book.

In Chapter Three, Pangritz argues cogently why Christian theology included a self-image that was explicitly directed against the existence of Judaism from its inception. The theological interpretation that Christians had replaced Jews as the chosen people of God inevitably led to antisemitism. From this particular Christian perspective, the Jews’ refusal to recognize Jesus as the Messiah means nothing other than denying the Christian claim to truth.

Pangritz devotes an entire chapter to Martin Luther and his radical hatred of Jews. Here, too, he succeeds in demonstrating how Luther’s inﬂammatory writings served as a reservoir for the development of the scientific antisemitism in later centuries. Accordingly, Pangritz also denounces the attempts of Protestant theologians to separate Luther the reformer from Luther the anti-Semite in order to trivialize the latter as a negligible, even marginal phenomenon in history. True to the motto: what must not be, does not exist.

In German national Protestantism, which unified German national identity and the Protestant faith, the anti-Jewish ideas of Protestant theologians ultimately culminated in an “antisemitism of redemption” (as coined by Saul Friedländer). It is correct that Pangritz emphasizes the admiration of such Protestant leaders as Theophil Wurm and Otto Dibelius for the most popular antisemite of the late nineteenth century, Adolf Stoecker. The antisemitic outbursts of church representatives during the Third Reich therefore can no longer be attributed solely to the German Christians (Deutsche Christen)—a disingenuous shifting of blame that still happens far too often in German-speaking countries, though, fortunately, less frequently in America. This juxtaposition of good (Confessing Church) and evil (German Christians), or “intact” and “broken” regional churches, as is still standard in Protestant church historiography, is ultimately just another attempt to serve one’s own myth of victimization instead of dealing seriously with anti-Jewish theology and its history within one’s own (Christian) faith.

In his conclusion, Pangritz once again addresses different scholarly views on possible straightforward connections between Luther and Hitler. Whether these connections are direct or indirect is ultimately not of decisive importance, and Pangritz does not make a deﬁnitive statement here, either, which is not necessary. Instead, he concludes with an appeal: “Within Christian theology today, there is still consensus on the condemnation of antisemitism. The question remains, however, whether this condemnation also translates into a willingness to repent regarding anti-Jewish thought patterns in theology and, in particular, in theological education” (192).

The book deserves a broad audience. For non-theologians, the book offers a number of suggestions for focusing more on Christian theology and its inherent hostility towards Jews when dealing with the phenomenon of antisemitism. For theologians, on the other hand, to whom the book is primarily addressed, the book represents an excellent critical self-reﬂection of their own faith. Anyone, whether an active scholar or a lay Christian, who still holds the view that the murderous antisemitism of the last two centuries did not originate in Christian hatred of Jews should read this book.

Review of John A. Moses, Anglicanism: Catholic Evangelical or Evangelical Catholic? Essays Ecumenical and Polemical. A Homage to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Hans Küng, Martin Luther and John Henry Newman

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 27, Number 3 (September 2021)

Review of John A. Moses, Anglicanism: Catholic Evangelical or Evangelical Catholic? Essays Ecumenical and Polemical. A Homage to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Hans Küng, Martin Luther and John Henry Newman (Adelaide: ATF Press, 2019), pp.xxxiii + 155.

By Andrew Chandler, University of Chichester

John Moses is a distinguished scholar of German history, not least admired for his standard two-volume study of German trades unions from Bismarck to Hitler, published in 1982, and, more recently, his book The Reluctant Revolutionary: Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Collision with Prusso-German History (2009). He is also an Anglican priest, and of a kind that is getting harder to find these days. This collection of recent essays finds him entering with gusto into contemporary church debates and bringing with him a good deal of his academic experience and weight. In many respects it is tempting to sense that as a historian and as an Anglican Moses has much in common with John Conway, the founding father of this journal. But here Moses has to confront a number of distinctive giants at large in the landscapes of Australian Anglicanism. In particular, there is the question of the Diocese of Sydney.

In his foreword to the book, Mark Lindsay welcomes Moses warmly into the realm of contemporary theological angst, affirming the proper place of a historian in all such things. This may seem all too obvious, but then the authority of the historical craft, and of historical knowledge altogether, has for some years now become increasingly obscure to those who oversee the life and work of most of our Protestant churches. When a moment of vital significance turns up historians are seldom to be found in the counsels of authority. If anything, they are likely to be deliberately excluded from them, though they might now and then be recruited to write introductory paragraphs. Evidently, we are all expected to return to a vigorous state of primitive Christianity as though nothing of significance has occurred across the intervening centuries. But there may be other reasons to maintain this state of ignorance. The historian of the modern church is not quite a tame creature. The churches prefer a show of loyalty, while those in charge of them care not at all to be criticised. Historians tend to do this rather freely, particularly when provoked. The historian of the Reformation may unhelpfully point out doctrinal contradictions or emphasize acts of violence. The historian of secularization will certainly prove to be bad for morale. As for the historians of the Third Reich, it is much safer to leave them in their university departments than to invite them to observe patterns and parallels. And why should there be any, after all?

John Moses has certainly not been tamed; nor has he submitted to obscurity or been shunted unprotestingly into the pleasant groves of academe, much as he may enjoy being there. He acknowledges, generously, the influence of those who have taught him across a long and busy life. In this book he is wonderfully adamant that he has a voice for the contemporary Church and that he is, if quite necessary, prepared to raise it. He, like many other unhappy observers, observes that Anglican Sydney is a diocese ‘captured’ by a narrow, rigid – indeed, ideologized – conservative evangelicalism. Moses himself has inevitably been a casualty of this obscurantism. But he has not fallen silent, not least because he has too confident, and too profound, a sense of the traditions in which he has been nurtured. All of the lectures and essays in this volume present these qualities vividly and they make it a book well worth reading.

There are seven chapters – lectures and articles for various audiences – and an Epilogue. There are also appendices, chosen with intent (one is ‘John Henry Newman’s definition of a Gentleman’). It is important to acknowledge that while Moses is clearly eager to set about his principal adversaries, the primary purpose at work is both generous and constructive. He is devoted to pursuing a picture of what Anglicanism can still seek to offer the whole Christian Church, in ecumenical vision and in liberal, reconciling gifts. One essay is ‘The case for a renewed Anglicanism’, and another, ‘The Chaos of Anglicanism: Towards unravelling the Paradox’. There follows an attractive portrait of Father Peter Bennie, a scholar-priest who comes to embody many of the virtues to which Moses is drawn. ‘The real antithesis of the Catholic Church, warns Bennie, ‘is the sect, and sectarianism ever stunts the spirit, binds the mind, and inhibits the imagination.’ (p. 107.)

One of the most attractive qualities of the book is the freedom with which Moses writes of his own life and experiences, and of the many people he has known. This reveals a truth which he plainly acknowledges: that often what divides opinionated people is their formation and education and – above all – their ongoing patterns of reading. As a schoolboy in the far North of Queensland he was impressed by Dr Wilhelm Lorenz Rechnitz, a German Jew who had become an Anglican and was now to be found teaching Latin in St Francis College. (‘The Church of England’, Rechnitz warned the young Moses, ‘is a good thing in bad hands.’) He also encountered the priests of the Brotherhood of St Barnabas, ‘a remarkable group of young men, almost exclusively “Oxbridge” educated priests’, while the bishop, John Oliver Feetham, was a figure formed very much on the same lines. As a student at the University of Queensland his eyes were opened still wider and then followed the almost-miracle of a period of post-graduate study in Germany. Here, in Munich, Moses was taught by Franz Schnabel, ‘a liberal-minded Roman Catholic scholar of immense erudition and humanity’, (p. 3) who had resisted National Socialism. A spell at the University of Erlangen followed under the benign tutelage of Waldemar Besson, Karl-Heinz Ruffmann and Walther-Peter Fuchs.

After all of this the young John Moses was hardly likely to spend the rest of his days poring over the works of James Innell Packer. Yet, as an honorary assistant curate in a Brisbane suburb for seventeen years, he would have to find a way of collaborating with a rector who had done exactly that – while the rector, for his part, found that he had to cope with his highly educated, internationally-minded curate. Significantly, it was not here that Moses the priest came unstuck, but later, in the diocese of Armidale, where he found he was required to affirm explicitly the inerrancy of the Bible, to repudiate the ordination of women and to disavow the toleration of homosexuals. ‘In an open society such as exists in Australia’, he reflects, ‘one does not expect to encounter people, let alone those calling themselves Anglican, who exhibit a mindset reminiscent of doctrinaire Nazis or Communists.’ (p. 12) Stinging words, no doubt, but words that he is well qualified to justify.

Moses can certainly take comfort in the company of giants from diverse traditions: the writings of Martin Luther, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Hans Küng and John Henry Newman suffuse the book. For him the conspicuous quality of Anglicanism lies not in the brittle rigidities of denominational existence, still less in acts of intellectual iconoclasm and ‘doctrinal terrorism’ (p. 10), but in the promise of a richly creative ecumenical vision. It is still his church and he will not abandon it. In part this is because he has found too much to love and admire in it, not that there is much sentimentality here. In one essay he observes its various tribes with a caustic eye (indeed, his description of ‘Old-fashioned “Spikes”’ is hilarious). For Moses himself the Christian faith remains unique in offering to the world a radical social ethic, expressive of love, humility, tolerance and understanding – all qualities which might never have found a home there without it. In their strenuous assertions, impositions and proscriptions the fundamentalists of Australian Anglicanism have sought to bury what is essentially true, vital and enduring in it. In this sense the book is a protest, and perhaps a warning. But it is certainly not a work of lamentation, for the general character of it remains perseveringly faithful. It would be a pity to leave it in Australia, not least because we have all come to know, in one way or another, the issues of which it speaks. Moreover, few scholars of history have stepped out of their lecture rooms to deplore, declaim and insist as bravely and cogently as this fine scholar of modern Germany.

News Note: “Campaign posters in ‘Luther country’ raise specter of anti-Semitism”

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 26, Number 1/2 (June 2020)

News Note: “Campaign posters in ‘Luther country’ raise specter of anti-Semitism”

By Christopher Probst, Washington University in St. Louis, University College

Last September, religion scholar and journalist Ken Chitwood asked me to comment on an article he was writing about the use of Martin Luther’s image and legacy in campaign posters for a far-right party, the Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (National Democratic Party of Germany, or NPD) in Thuringia. As Chitwood notes in the article, “instead of ‘Here I stand,’ the rebel monk is depicted saying, ‘I would vote NPD, I cannot do otherwise,’ alongside the party’s slogan ‘defend the homeland.’”

Together with Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia formed the heartland of the German Protestant Reformation. Luther undertook his university studies at Erfurt and also became a monk in that city. While hiding out in Wartburg Castle in Eisenach, he accomplished one of his seminal achievements when he translated the New Testament into what became High German. In 2017, Germans commemorated the five-hundredth anniversary of the German Protestant Reformation. Luther sites across the country, including Erfurt and Eisenach, played host to numerous events celebrating the anniversary. Many Germans, and Thuringians in particular, take great pride in the place that their Heimat (homeland) played in the Reformation.

In Demonizing the Jews: Luther and the Protestant Church in Nazi Germany, I demonstrated that a large number of Protestant pastors, bishops, and theologians employed Luther’s writings about Jews and Judaism – which were littered with antisemitic and anti-Judaic rhetoric – to buttress the antisemitism already present in significant degrees in Protestant circles during the era of National Socialism. Some contemporary German church historians and theologians, while recognizing that Luther attacked Jews and Judaism in stark and unseemly ways, have downplayed the impact of the reformer’s Judenschriften (writings about Jews and Judaism) in subsequent German history, including the widespread apathy toward Nazi oppression and murder of Jews exhibited by many German Protestants. Others, like Hartmut Lehmann, have highlighted this darker aspect of German Protestant history in their scholarly work.

The NPD poster includes a variation on the famous phrase “Hier stehe ich, ich kann nicht anders” (Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise), which was uttered by Luther at the Diet of Worms in defense of his understanding of the Christian gospel. Yet, it also contains the slogan “Heimat verteidigen” (defend the homeland). During the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses in April 1933, SA members stood menacingly in front of Jewish-owned storefronts holding signs that read “Deutsche! Wehrt Euch! Kauft nicht bei Juden!” (Germans! Defend yourselves! Do not buy from Jews!) The NPD posters no doubt resonate with some who both revere Luther and – unlike the great majority of Germans, including German Protestants – have no place for “foreigners” in their homeland.

The employment of Luther in NPD’s campaign did not bear fruitful results in Thuringia, as the party finished with less than 1% of the vote. Yet, in this same election, the larger far-right party, Alternative für Deutschland (Alternative for Germany, or AfD) won roughly 23% of the vote, overtaking Angela Merkel’s CDU as the second-largest party in the regional assembly. Chitwood’s article highlights the unsettling reality that, in Germany (as in the United States), xenophobia and racism, far from being relics of the past, have penetrated the body politic in ways not seen in decades.

Conference Report: “International Protestants and Nazi Germany as Viewed Through Three Lenses”

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 24, Number 1 (March 2018)

Conference Report: “International Protestants and Nazi Germany as Viewed Through Three Lenses,” German Studies Association, Atalnta, GA, October 2017.

By Matthew D. Hockenos, Skidmore College

Five scholars of German church history convened a panel on October 8, 2017, at the German Studies Association in Atlanta, Georgia, to reflect on international Protestants and Nazi Germany. The panel consisted of presenters Robert Ericksen, Victoria Barnett, and Matthew Hockenos, while Rebecca Carter-Chand offered insightful comments and Christopher Probst did the introductions. All five panelists engaged the audience in a lively exchange after the presentations.

Robert Ericksen led with his paper “On Luther, Jews, and Lutherans in Nazi Germany.” He lamented that while the 500^th anniversary of Luther’s “break” with the Catholic Church was receiving widespread attention across Europe and the United States, Luther’s antisemitism—most famously on display in On the Jews and Their Lies—rarely became a major focal point of these commemorations. Despite this lapse (or intentional manipulation) of historical memory, there are indisputable signs that most Lutherans no longer try to explain away Luther’s derogatory and hateful Judenschriften, but rather condemn his anti-Jewish diatribes and antisemitism unequivocally. Ericksen believes that the contemporary renunciation of Luther’s antisemitism is a direct result of Holocaust scholarship over the past three or four decades. The advent of “Holocaust Studies,” Holocaust museums, and scholarly and media attention on the Holocaust have all contributed to the waning of the antisemitism’s social acceptability in the United States and parts of Europe. This attention on the Shoah—its sheer inhumanity and ugliness—had the effect of “inoculating” the public against contempt for Jews. While not excusing their antisemitism, Ericksen pointed out that German Protestant theologians and pastors who backed Hitler, like Gerhard Kittel and Martin Niemöller, did not have the benefit of this inoculation. Ericksen concluded with the observation that the current support for right-wing populism in Europe and the U.S. raises the concern that the post-Holocaust inoculation against antisemitism might be losing its influence.

Vicki Barnett’s paper, “A Two-Way Street: The Complex Relationships between German and U.S. Protestant leaders, 1933-1939,” examined some of the many transatlantic interactions that took place between U.S. and German Protestants during the Nazi era. These contacts included active partnerships, participation in conferences, lecture tours, and visitations by church leaders. In addition to the more well-known exchanges between the leaders of the U.S. Federal Council of Churches (FCC) and the leaders of the German Protestant Church (DEK), Barnett also explored contacts between German and American Baptists, Methodists, and Adventists. Barnett’s research demonstrates that there was no monolithic relationship between American and German Protestants, though there were tendencies. While most German Protestants were bent on convincing their American counterparts of the validity of the Nazi regime and downplayed Nazi anti-Semitism, American Protestants diverged in their opinions on the Nazi regime and the response by the German churches. For example, the German Adventist, Hulda Jost, and the German Methodist, Bishop Otto Melle, both went on extensive speaking tours in the U.S. to defend Nazism. And the German Christian (Deutsche Christen) Reich Bishop Ludwig Müller used meetings in Germany with FCC leaders to try to convince them that Nazi critics in the U.S. were misrepresenting the situation in Germany. Sharp divisions, however, developed among American Baptists between those who deplored German nationalism and antisemitism and those who wanted to give the Nazis the benefit of the doubt. The leadership of the FCC was more united in its criticism of Nazism. In an extraordinarily critical letter, Henry Smith Leiper of the FCC dressed down Ludwig Müller for thinking that his pro-Nazi propaganda campaign would gain any adherents in the FCC. The time, money, and effort expended by Americans and Germans in their interaction with each other attests to the importance they attributed to these relations. Transatlantic contacts between Protestants diminished markedly after Kristallnacht and the outbreak of the war, only to be revived after the war.

Matthew Hockenos’ paper, “Guilt, Repentance, and International Public Relations in the German Protestant Church, 1945-1948,” examined how German Protestants from the Nazi-era Confessing Church and the American Protestants in the FCC sought to reestablish close ties after the war. German church leaders were understandably horrified and dismayed by Germany’s total devastation and isolation in 1945 and wanted to ameliorate the suffering of their people. But the church’s reputation as ultra-conservative and nationalist led the Allies to take a cautious approach toward allotting the churches a leading role in German reconstruction. Church leaders believed that the only way to get the occupying powers to soften their policies and embrace the church as a partner would be to convince them that there was a German opposition to the Nazis—led by the churches—and that Germans were willing to take responsibility for the war and all the devastation that it wrought. Beginning with the Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt in October 1945 and throughout the late 1940s, church leaders went on a public relations blitz—issuing statements of guilt, meeting the occupation powers, and travelling abroad—in an effort to rehabilitate their reputation and influence occupation policies. Hockenos’ paper focused on Martin Niemöller’s five-month lecture tour in the United States from December 1946 to May 1947, during which he hoped to convince Americans that he was representative of the many good Christians in Germany who fought and prayed for an end to the Hitler menace and who were now barely eking out an existence in bombed cities. Hockenos maintained that Niemöller often stretched the truth during his addresses, embellishing his and the Confessing Church’s resistance credentials. But Niemöller’s efforts to win over American Protestants were only partially successful—Americans remained divided over the legacy of German Protestantism during the Nazi era.

Rebecca Carter-Chand observed in her comments that these three papers made the case that we only get the full picture when we examine German Protestants during this era from an international perspective. With the exception of those scholars who have focused on the ecumenical movement, a transnational approach to studying twentieth-century German church history has not been common. Perhaps its time has come.

Luther’s Evil Writings

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 23, Number 3 (September 2017)

Luther’s Evil Writings

The reformer was not only anti-Jewish, but also antisemitic. So he was understood in the Nazi era, too.

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

The original article was published in German as “Luthers böse Schriften” in Der Tagesspiegel, 18 July 2017, and is available at http://www.tagesspiegel.de/wissen/hass-auf-juden-luthers-boese-schriften/20071254.html. It is produced here in translation by permission of the author and newspaper.

Martin Luther’s late “Jewish writings” are no longer as unknown as they were for a long time—and the horror over the sharp anti-Jewish tone of the reformer is great everywhere. Heinrich Bedford-Strohm, Chair of the EKD, has repeatedly confessed in interviews that he is ashamed of such texts by the principal founder of the Protestant churches in Germany.

Was Martin Luther an antisemite? And what would that mean for the Lutheran Churches as public-law institutions? For the many churches named after him? For a city which proudly bears the name “Lutherstadt Wittenberg”? For the many schools and streets that bear his name? Or was he perhaps not antisemitic, but “merely” an anti-Judaist motivated by Christian theology?

In the writing of church history, things have been seen this way for a long time. Certainly, most would concede that Luther’s “Jewish writings” are bad, but would add that his case is not one of genuine antisemitism, but “merely” one of theologically based (though also harsh) anti-Judaism. It is often added, however, that in his youth he wrote in a friendly manner, and that later he had grown old, was suffering from physical affliction and depression, and had long been disappointed by the stubborn unteachability of his Jewish contemporaries.

He was “only” anti-Jewish, reads the official view of the Church

Margot Käßmann, commissioned by the EKD as a Reformation and Luther ambassador for the 2017 commemorative year, is not always to be envied for her job, especially when it comes to the topic “Luther and the Jews.” As far as can be seen, the Luther ambassador (like Bedford-Strohm) maintains that Luther was “anti-Jewish” in his bad omissions about the Jews, and thus not antisemitic.

It’s easy to understand. After Hitler and the Holocaust, how today can anyone—no matter their undisputed achievements and merits—be advertised as an antisemite? At their Synod in Bremen (November 2015) the EKD approved a statement “Martin Luther and the Jews – A Necessary Reminder on the Occasion of the Reformation Anniversary.” The reformers, it says, stood in a tradition of anti-Jewish patterns of thought, whose roots reached back to the beginnings of the Church. With regard to Luther’s utterances, “hatred of Jews,” “resentments,” or “invective against Jews” is the language used—the word “antisemitism” is carefully avoided. Here, as elsewhere, the view is that antisemitism exists only in cases of racial antisemitism, which had only existed since the second half of the nineteenth century. So, it is said, we cannot talk about antisemitism when it comes to Luther.

Luther was taken up with the expulsion of the Jews

Thomas Kaufmann, the Göttingen church historian who stands beyond reproach as an expert in the Reformation period, came to the conclusion in his study Luthers Juden (2014) that Luther’s Jew hatred had included motifs that went beyond traditional Christian anti-Judaism. In addition to Luther’s central theological anti-Judaism, Kaufmann also attributes “premodern antisemitism” to the reformer. Luther ‘s recommendations to sixteenth-century authorities and church leaders, which he described as “severe mercy,” were notorious: destruction of synagogues, homes, and writings; confiscation of money and property; forced labor; prohibition of Jewish worship services; and, as the ultima ratio, the expulsion of Jewish communities from city and country. With relation to Luther’s evil writings, the church historian Kaufmann speaks of “a literary final solution of the Jewish question.”

It is well known that by 1933 a powerful antisemitism had spread among Protestant theologians. Did they get it from Martin Luther? Pastor Siegfried Nobiling, who held a position in the “Zum Guten Hirten” (“Good Shepherd”) parish (Berlin-Friedenau) since 1928, professed in a 1932 statement on National Socialism: “In conclusion, I can confess quite sincerely that National Socialism was for me destiny and experience.”

“The interests of the race,” he said, “are always valid only to the extent that they are useful to the nation as a whole. We see in Judaism the spiritual-biological poisoning of our race.”

Already in 1932, Nobiling joined the “Faith Movement of the German Christians” (DC). There he met numerous like-minded colleagues.

For the theologian-generation of 1933, the Reformations of the sixteenth century and with them Luther’s image of the Jews lay far in the background. There were, first and foremost, other impulses directly and personally experienced, which were closer to them and which determined their attitudes toward Jews. Paramount for the anti-Jewish conditioning of this generation were, for example: the historian Heinrich von Treitschke, the Berlin court preacher Adolf Stoecker, the influential theology professor Reinhold Seeberg, then also the antisemitic and Christian “Association of German Student Fraternities” (VVDSt); and the unloved Weimar democracy, which was maligned as the “godless republic.”

In the Nazi era, there was a remarkable Luther revival

The sense of religious excitement of 1933, marked by the antisemitic “German Christians,” also included a remarkable Luther revival: the reformer as German national hero, as the prototype of the quintessential German man and fighter. Not infrequently, historical lines of tradition were drawn from Luther to Hitler—by Protestants themselves, and with pride. In the “Advent” parish (Prenzlauer Berg), “German Christian” member Haertel spoke on December 12, 1933, about “Luther and the Jews.” It must be the task of the “German Christians” to fully re-establish Luther’s clear position in the “Jewish question,” which Hitler had taught anew.

In the Spandau “Luther” parish, in parallel with the passing of the “Nuremberg Laws,” the parish church council decided in September 1935 to undertake the immediate free distribution of one thousand copies of “Luther and the Jews” as well as the procurement of display cases for Streicher’s Der Stürmer. In March 1937, Johannes Schleuning, a superintendent in Berlin East, referred in particular to Martin Luther and Adolf Stoecker as Christian champions against Judaism, in an article entitled “Judaism and Christianity.” He praised the most recent special issue of Der Stürmer on the “Jewish question” and emphasized that Christ had been an “Aryan,” a Nordic hero, as described by Houston Stewart Chamberlain.

In contrast to the “Nuremberg Laws,” which were widely endorsed in the “German Christian” press, silence prevailed throughout the Protestant milieu after the Kristallnacht pogroms of 1938. Explicit approval of the excesses was rare, but it did occur. On November 20, 1938, the “German Christian” theologian Immanuel Schairer wrote a commentary on the events, expressly referring to Luther’s “On the Jews and their Lies.” Immediately after the pogroms, the Thuringian Protestant bishop, Martin Sasse, printed extracts from Luther’s “Jewish writings” and sent them to Thuringian pastors. The intense Protestant antisemitism of the Hitler period fed on many sources—not only religious or theological—and mainly on those which were closer to the protagonists historically and biographically than Luther’s “Jewish writings.” Thus, on the one hand, these writings were not needed at all to generate the massive antisemitic confessions in the churches of the Hitler period. Since 1933, however, everywhere Luther’s “Jewish writings” were dug out and disseminated in the media, they reaffirmed the already-existing Protestant antisemitism and gave it additional legitimation.

Even before 1933, Luther’s “Judenschriften” had to be regarded as a serious derailment

Even before the year 1933, Luther’s “Jewish writings” had to be regarded as a serious derailment in the eyes of unbiased readers. After Hitler and the Holocaust, these writings stand in a changed historical context, which once again places the texts in a different light and makes Luther’s verbal derailments even more serious.

The current 2017 memorial year is the first Lutheran and Reformation commemoration ever to make the existence and explosiveness of the “Jewish writings” known to a broader public. This is to be welcomed as a historical clarification. For today’s Protestant churches, however, it is not easy to deal with this problematic heritage. In the long run, euphemistic assessments such as “anti-Judaism” or the discordant metaphor of the regrettable “shadows” of the great theologian will not suffice. One also wonders what the Protestant “learning history,” much invoked during the 2017 commemorative year, is supposed to mean, considering the churches’ performance (after 400 years of learning time) during the “Third Reich.”

Luther the confession-founder will not be taken away from anxious church contemporaries. The reformer is historically significant, and that will continue into the future. Still, the current image of Luther will have to keep changing. His status as a monumental figure will diminish, while the Luther-dilemma associated with his antisemitism will grow.

The author is Professor of Modern History at the Centre for Antisemitism Research at the Technical University of Berlin.

Review of Harry Oelke, Wolfgang Kraus, et. al., eds., Martin Luthers “Judenschriften”. Die Rezeption im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 23, Number 3 (September 2017)

Review of Harry Oelke, Wolfgang Kraus, et. al., eds., Martin Luthers “Judenschriften”. Die Rezeption im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2016), 338 Pp. ISBN: 978-3-525-55789-1.

By Christopher Probst, Washington University in St. Louis, University College

On October 31, 1517, the irascible yet erudite German monk Martin Luther is said to have posted his Ninety-Five Theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, touching off a massive theological and political controversy that has come to be known as the Protestant Reformation. Outside of this, his most famous exploit, Luther also (in conflict with the norm of clerical celibacy) married Katharina von Bora and translated the New Testament into German. Yet, it is his deeply antagonistic relationship with Jews and Judaism, as evidenced in his writings about them—the so-called “Judenschriften”—that, on the eve of the 500^th anniversary of the events at Wittenberg, provoked the academic conference upon which the present volume is based.

The volume is a product of the conference “The Reception of Luther’s ‘Judenschriften’ in the 19^th and 20^th Centuries,” which was held at Erlangen University in October 2014. The contributors, who number more than a dozen, represent fields that include Protestant church history, Protestant systematic theology, religion, Jewish studies, and Catholic theology. As the book’s title suggests, the collection of essays covers a broad chronological range; the thematic terrain is wide as well. This breadth is one of the volume’s greatest strengths. The essays addressing nineteenth-century reception of Luther’s Judenschriften are especially welcome, as are Christian Wiese’s insightful treatment of Jewish and antisemitic Luther lectures in the Kaiserreich and the Weimar Republic and Volker Leppin’s analysis of Luther’s Judenschriften in the light of the editions prior to 1933. Yet, there are some problematic elements as well, including some of the conclusions reached about Protestant reception of the Judenschriften during the Third Reich. These will be addressed (together with the volume’s strengths) after a summary of the contents.

A thoughtful introduction by Harry Oelke sets out three elements addressed in the work: 1.) the volume’s “hermeneutical balance” between the original historical context of the Judenschriften and the history of their reception and impact in the era of the modern German state, 2.) the intention of the work, which is driven in part by the need to address historical lacunae on the reception history of the Judenschriften, and 3.) its conceptual structure. This structure consists of six parts. The first part, comprising two essays, provides a material overview of two fundamental areas of Luther research: the reformer’s life (Anselm Schubert) and his work (Volker Leppin). The second section deals with the reception of the Judenschriften in the era from the Restoration (or, the Vormärz) to the end of the Kaiserreich. Martin Friedrich addresses the theme of “Luther and the Jews” in Prussia until 1869, while Hanns Christof Brennecke deals with the reception of the Judenschriften in the era of the Erweckungsbewegung and Bavarian Confessionalism. Christian Wiese examines the interplay between Jewish interpretations of Luther and antisemitic reception of the Judenschriften in the Kaiserreich and the Weimar Republic.

In the third section of the volume, the thorny issue of Protestant reception of Luther’s Judenschriften during the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich is addressed. Gury Schneider-Ludorff’s essay analyzes the theme “Luther and the Jews” in its theological perspective in the era between the two World Wars. Essays on reception of the Judenschriften in the Confessing Church (Siegfried Hermle) and in the German Christian movement (Oliver Arnhold) follow. The fourth section of the book examines German Protestant discourse on the Judenschriften in the era following the Second World War. The reception of the Judenschriften in the field of church history is examined by Harry Oelke, while Reiner Anselm analyzes the theme in ethics and systematic theology. A third essay by Stephen G. Burnett addresses the reception of the Judenschriften in the Anglo-American context; Burnett reminds us that these writings did not become an issue in this context until the second half of the twentieth century.

In the penultimate section of the book, the lens is widened to include Catholic and international ecumenical contexts. Lucia Scherzberg examines Catholic perceptions of “Luther and the Jews” while Wolfgang Kraus analyzes the theme as it has been addressed in official church pronouncements since the Second World War. The final section of the book features two thought-provoking summary analyses of the conference proceedings and the volume (Berndt Hamm and Johannes Heil).

Several essays stand out for their contributions to the history of the impact of Luther’s Judenschriften in modern German history. Volker Leppin’s essay is especially valuable. It demonstrates, through fastidious attention to detail, that the Judenschriften appeared as part of collected editions of the reformer’s broader work and in individual editions alike from the sixteenth century to the twentieth. Notably, Leppin corrects the faulty notion forwarded by some twentieth-century German church historians that Luther’s Judenschriften somehow were not readily available to German Protestants during Weimar and the Third Reich. Leppin’s conclusion is clear and emphatic: “What effect Luther’s Jewish writings actually had on the adaptation of antisemitic racism in ecclesiastical circles cannot be decided on the basis of the editorial position. But this much is clear: the texts were available at any time—even on the eve of the Third Reich” (37). He provides a trove of evidence to this effect, including a list of dozens of primary sources that demonstrate the point. Thus, the Judenschriften were most certainly read by many German Protestants from the 1920s to the 1940s.

Christian Wiese’s incisive essay on Jewish and antisemitic Luther lectures during the Kaiserreich and the Weimar Republic demonstrates that Jewish scholars working in the early twentieth century—Hermann Cohen and Leo Baeck are placed at the center of Wiese’s analysis—offered, yes, a historical critique of those aspects of Luther’s theology that were hostile to Jews and Judaism, but also a picture of the reformer as a “symbolic embodiment of a tradition of tolerance and emancipation” (110) (i.e., an embodiment of those elements of the Enlightenment tradition that were not only laudable but vital to Jewish life in the public square). Jewish intellectuals, who “were looking for positive links to the central figure of the Reformation so central to the German-Protestant cultural consciousness,” thus forwarded an image of Luther that would enable them to integrate more fully into German culture and society (119-120). Tragically, this portrait of the reformer “was almost completely ignored by contemporary Protestantism and remained therefore tragically ineffective” (110).

Berndt Hamm’s summarizing analysis of the volume’s content is both thoughtful and, in places, problematic. Hamm highlights and expounds upon eight salient points raised in the conference and the volume. While taken together, they are all relevant and meaningful; a few, in particular, are worth examining closely. The first point reads, “Luther’s Judenschriften are evidently both present and not present in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.” As the volume’s essays demonstrate, there certainly are periods during which, and pockets of German society in which, the Judenschriften are less present than one might expect, including in the work of some Jewish intellectuals during the nineteenth century. Yet, they are more present in the Confessing Church during the Third Reich than either Hamm or Siegfried Hermle would have us believe. While the virulence of the application of Luther’s recommendations to, for example, burn down Jewish synagogues and confiscate sacred Jewish writings is certainly more pronounced and vulgar in the writings of the radical German Christian wing of the Protestant church, the generally more urbane application of Luther’s anti-Jewish recommendations is more than “hardly” present (315) in the writings of Confessing Church figures. There is also little recognition here of the fluid Protestant “middle” or “neutrals,” who represented roughly a third of the German Protestant clergy during the Third Reich.

Hamm’s third point is especially valuable. He notes that, until fairly recently, scholarly research on the Protestant Reformation and Luther has not emphasized enough the “theological connections between the aggressive exasperation in Luther’s late Judenschriften and the apocalyptic-anti-satanic fundamental character of his theology since 1520 …”, which included, for example, his view of the pope as the antichrist (317-318). The Dutch Reformed church historian Heiko A. Oberman was the first to make this important observation, which was a crucial step toward Protestant Reformation and Luther scholars more directly recognizing and confronting the antisemitism in Luther’s works.

The fifth point contains both cogent analysis and a very curious conclusion. Here, Hamm confronts the prickly problem of the terminology that should be employed when discussing hostility and hatred toward Jews and Judaism. In other words, should scholars use the term “anti-Judaism” or “antisemitism”—or, perhaps, both? Or, a different term altogether? Kyle Jantzen reflected on this problem in a previous issue of CCHQ. The present author also discussed it (Probst, Demonizing the Jews). Hamm rightly notes that the term “antisemitism” is, in a sense, absurd, because, in its application it always refers not to hatred toward Semites more broadly, but to Jews. In the late nineteenth century, when the term was coined by Wilhelm Marr, antisemites connected language and culture to race, resulting in a term that, ironically, sounded “respectable” to these less vulgar (but still no less hateful) proponents of anti-Jewish animus.

In modern scholarship, “the term ‘antisemitism’ has now been established in such a way that it defines a judenfeindlich attitude [an attitude of hostility toward Jews] which socially excluded and legally disadvantaged members of the Jewish religion or their descendants, or at least intended such exclusion” (319). Because Luther (and others) often used theological or religious arguments to denigrate Jews and Judaism, many scholars, including many church historians, have argued that Luther was “only” engaging in anti-Judaic thought, not antisemitic agitation. Hamm acknowledges this problem. Yet, curiously, he suggests as a solution—one that he rues as “unrealistic”—that scholars “renounce the linguistically misleading concept of antisemitism and replace it in general with the concept of anti-Judaism” (320). The problem of terminology is indeed very real. But, as the term “antisemitism” was originally meant to signify hatred of Jews on the basis of their race while “anti-Judaism” has predominantly been used to connect anti-Jewish hatred to religion, it is likely that neither term will satisfy those examining the issue in a scholarly fashion. It is also true that understanding the precise motivations for anti-Jewish hatred—while valuable to scholars and laypersons alike—is cold comfort to the historical victims of such hatred.

While discussing his seventh point, Hamm opines that Luther’s Judenschriften “did not produce this new racial-biological antisemitism” and that the Nazi regime carried out the mass murder of millions of Europe’s Jews “without any argumentative support from the authority of Luther.” In short, so Hamm, “For the masterminds of the crimes, Luther’s writings on the Jews were only a completely marginal aspect.” This logic is problematic on more than one level. First, here as elsewhere, Hamm reduces Nazi antisemitism to its “racial-biological” variety. For two decades, Burleigh and Wippermann’s thesis about the Nazi “racial state” has largely held as the most accurate characterization of what the Nazis created in Germany. Yet, Alon Confino argued convincingly in A World Without Jews: The Nazi Imagination from Persecution to Genocide that the Nazis imagined a world in which the very memory of Jewish existence, including their culture and religion, would be eradicated. This is why Nazis burned Hebrew Bibles and synagogues in November 1938. If Confino is correct, then the starkest aspects of Luther’s antisemitism, including, but not limited to, the burning down of synagogues and the confiscation of the sacred writings of Judaism provided for many German Protestants a vision of the world that had affinities with the one envisioned by the Nazi regime. This is something more than merely the “disturbing parallelism” suggested by Hamm (321).

Did the Nazis base their murderous plans for the Jews of Europe on Luther? No. But, did the Nazis need the support of Protestants, who represented roughly sixty percent of the German population, not only to gain and retain power, but also to lend, together with other vaunted cultural institutions, a certain moral legitimacy to their repression of Jews and other persecuted groups? Actually, in important ways, they did (Ericksen, Complicity in the Holocaust: Churches and Universities in Nazi Germany). It is also important to recognize, as Leppin’s essay demonstrates, that Luther’s Judenschriften were readily available in numerous editions to German Protestants during the Third Reich. Further, a significant number of German Protestant pastors, theologians, and Luther scholars—including, for example, Erich Vogelsang, Wolf Meyer-Erlach, Georg Buchwald, and Walter Holsten—interacted in significant ways with the Judenschriften in their published work (Probst, Demonizing the Jews). Luther’s writings about Jews and Judaism were certainly not the driving force behind Nazism and the Holocaust. But, they were no small part of the German Protestant cultural milieu.

The strengths of the present volume include its chronological and thematic depth and its inclusion of scholars working outside the boundaries of German Protestantism, namely, scholars working in Catholic theology and Jewish studies. Given its weaknesses, it will no doubt engender debate among lay readers, but perhaps especially among Luther, Reformation, and Holocaust historians.

Review of Stiftung Topographie des Terrors and Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand, eds., “Überall Luthers Worte …” – Martin Luther im Nationalsozialismus

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 23, Number 3 (September 2017)

Review of Stiftung Topographie des Terrors and Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand, eds., “Überall Luthers Worte …” – Martin Luther im Nationalsozialismus (Berlin: Stiftung Topographie des Terrors, 2017). 271 Pp., ISBN 978-3-941772-33-5.

By Dirk Schuster, University of Potsdam

“Luther’s words are everywhere …” – this quote by Dietrich Bonhoeffer from 1937 correctly reflects the public perception of the Reformation Jubilee in Germany today. It is therefore hardly surprising that the Berlin Topography of Terror Documentation Center chose the words of Bonhoeffer as the title holder for an exhibition on Martin Luther in National Socialism, to be seen in Berlin from April 28 to November 5, 2017. The exhibition catalog illustrates impressively that there was a broad reception of Luther at the time of the Third Reich. The catalog is divided into three periods: the years 1933 to 1934, the period from 1935 to 1938, and the years of the Second World War. In addition, it offers seven essays by well-known scholars, which concisely and intelligibly summarize the current state of the research and, based mostly on the authors’ own work, the respective subject areas. At this point, the main criterion of the catalog can already be formulated. The documentation, including the introductory texts, is written in German and English, in contrast to the essays. These are only written in German with an English abstract. For an internationally renowned documentation center like the Topography of Terror, such an approach is somewhat incomprehensible. The German and English description of the presented objects emphasizes the intention to address an international audience against the backdrop of the Reformation Jubilee. Why this was not implemented with regards to the essays remains an open question and might irritate non-German speakers.

The first part of the catalog impressively illustrates the instrumentalization of Luther as the “German faith hero” in the first two years of the Third Reich by using photographs and covers of contemporary publications. Several Protestant representatives drew an additional historical and theological continuity line from Luther to Hitler. Publications and celebrations such as the 450^th anniversary of the reformer in 1933and the celebration of the 400^th anniversary of the Bible translation in 1934 illustrate the reference to Luther at this time. Likewise, many new church buildings were named after the reformer, the most well-known example being the Martin Luther Memorial Church in Berlin-Mariendorf, consecrated in 1935. On the theological level, in the early years of the Nazi regime, Luther’s doctrine of the two kingdoms was the center of church-political debates concerning the relationship between the church and the state. But this was increasingly changing in the mid-1930s. As a result of the exclusion of the Jews forced by the National Socialists, Luther’s antisemitic “Jewish writings” were increasingly placed at the center of the reformer’s reception. These writings often served as justification for the persecution of the Jews from a theological point of view. It is somewhat surprising that the section on the state-church relationship is mainly related to the view of the National Socialists, Bonhoeffer, Niemöller, and other representatives of the Confessing Church. The German Christians with their theological line of continuity of Jesus-Luther-Hitler are hardly mentioned in this section.

Chapter 2 illustrates the legitimacy of the antisemitism of the National Socialists by the German Christians, using the example of the pamphlet by the Thuringian regional bishop, Martin Sasse. In his preface, Sasse referred to the connection between Luther’s birthday on November 10 and the November pogroms in Germany of 1938, in order to present Luther as the greatest antisemite of his time, who had always warned against the Jews (p.118 f.).

Chapter 3 deals with references to Luther in the Second World War. The first section shows documents and pictures, including clergymen who stylized Luther as the heroic leader in their war sermons, even though there was no comparable war enthusiasm among church representatives as there had been in 1914. A separate sub-chapter is about the Institute for the Study and Eradication of Jewish Influence on German Church Life, which was founded by Protestant regional churches on May 6, 1939, and which Susannah Heschel addressed in her highly-respected book, The Aryan Jesus. [1] The documents and books presented in the catalog clearly illustrate how this institute was intended to create a “German” Christianity and thus to complete Luther’s “unfinished” reformation, as Walter Grundmann, the director of the institute, pointed out in his opening lecture in 1939.[2]

The seven essays at the end of the catalog summarize the current state of research on Protestantism in Germany from the Kaiserreich to the Third Reich in compressed form. Hartmut Lehmann shows that Luther was already formed into a German hero in the Kaiserreich. Together with “völkisch” patterns of thought, the idea arose that the German people were meant to have a special destiny in the world. Heinrich Assel, on the other hand, addressed the inner-theological discourses on the Lutheran heritage at the beginning of the 1930s, which were often characterized by the acceptance of an authoritarian leadership state. Beate Rossié, Stefanie Endlich, and Monica Geyler-von Bernus describe the different Lutheran images in the Third Reich, whereby the German Christians, in the sense of the Nation-Socialist point of view, linked Luther with combat. Cornelia Brinkmann on hymnal reforms and Manfred Gailus on the reception of Luther’s Jewish writings show once again that not only the German Christians used Luther. Representatives of the so-called intact regional churches, as well as representatives of the Confessing Church, also developed antisemitic reform ideas these areas. Olaf Blaschke still devotes himself to the “well-intentioned antisemitism” in Catholicism at the background of National Socialism, and Peter Steinbach treats the churches’ dealings with their own guilt and responsibility after 1945.

The catalog, which reproduces the printed parts but not the contents of the listening stations in the exhibition, is a very good example of the present-day public discussion about the church in National Socialism. Scholars who are familiar with the subject won’t find anything new, but this is not the aim of such an exhibition. The exhibits, and above all, the documents, photographs, and books, show how Luther was instrumentalized more than 400 years after his Reformation. If you cannot visit the exhibition, which can be seen until November 5, 2017, in Berlin, this very good exhibition catalog can be recommended.

[1] Susannah Heschel, The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008).

[2] Walter Grundmann, Die Entjudung des religiösen Lebens als Aufgabe Deutscher Theologie und Kirche (Weimar 1939).

Conference Report: “Re-Forming the Church of the Future: Bonhoeffer, Luther, Public Ethics,” Union Theological Seminary, New York, April 7-9, 2017

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 23, Number 1/2 (June 2017)

Conference Report: “Re-Forming the Church of the Future: Bonhoeffer, Luther, Public Ethics,” Union Theological Seminary, New York, April 7-9, 2017

By Katie Day, United Lutheran Seminary, Philadelphia

On this spring weekend marking the 72^nd anniversary of the execution of theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer by the Nazis in their last, bloody, days, scholars gathered to consider his legacy in light of the 500^th anniversary of the Reformation as well as current political shifts. Over 130 scholars and church leaders gathered from the U.S., Germany, the U.K. and South Africa as part of the annual Bonhoeffer Lectures in Public Ethics, held alternately in Germany and North America, a partnership of Union Seminary and the International Bonhoeffer Society (English Language Section). This year’s event was sponsored by Union’s Bonhoeffer Chair in Theology and Ethics, and coordinated by its scholar, Dr. Clifford Green. It was appropriate that reflections on Bonhoeffer take place within the spaces where the young theologian’s thought had been significantly formed in stays in 1930-31 and briefly in 1939: Union Theological Seminary and Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem.

The diversity and credentials of the presenters was impressive and included historians, theologians, ethicists, church leaders (including Bishop Heinrich Bedford-Strohm) and even the former Prime Minister of Australia, the Honorable Kevin Rudd. Together they brought the life and theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer into engagement with five different historic contexts: Continue reading →

Review of Christopher J. Probst, Demonizing the Jews: Luther and the Protestant Church in Nazi Germany

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 19, Number 1 (March 2013)

Review of Christopher J. Probst, Demonizing the Jews: Luther and the Protestant Church in Nazi Germany (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2012), xiv + 251 Pp., ISBN 978-0-253-00098-9.

By Kyle Jantzen, Ambrose University College

Probst-Demonizing Christopher Probst has written an insightful analysis of the ways in which Protestant reformer Martin Luther’s anti-Jewish writings were used by German Protestants during the Third Reich. Fundamental to Probst’s work is his consistent use of Gavin Langmuir’s distinction between non-rational anti-Judaism (antipathy rooted in theological differences or other symbolic language which stand apart from and not against rational thought) and irrational antisemitism (antagonism rooted in factually untrue and slanderous accusations against Jews). In contrast to the idea that pre-modern anti-Jewish thought was generally religious and therefore anti-Judaic while modern anti-Jewish thought is political or racial and therefore antisemitic, Probst sees both anti-Judaic and antisemitic elements in the language of Luther and the twentieth-century German theologians, church leaders, and pastors who invoked him (3-4, 6, 17-19). In light of this, Demonizing the Jews is a book about historical continuity.

One of Probst’s important contributions is to show how complex and paradoxical antipathy towards Jews could be in Nazi Germany. Indeed, Demonizing the Jews begins with two snapshots from the life of Pastor Heinrich Fausel of Heimsheim, Württemberg. First, we learn that in 1934 Fausel gave a public lecture on the “Jewish Problem” in which he recycled Martin Luther’s harsh pronouncements against the Jews of his day. Then, we discover that in 1943 Fausel and his wife sheltered a Jewish woman during the Holocaust. What was it about his attitudes towards Jews, Probst wonders, that enabled him to condemn Jews as a “threatening invasion” of a “decadent” people and yet rescue one of them? (1) Was Fausel antisemitic or anti-Judaic?

More importantly, Probst asks what role Luther’s writings about Jews and Judaism might have played in the life of Fausel. More broadly, he wonders: “Was the generally anemic response to anti-Jewish Nazi policy on the part of German Protestants due at least in part to the denigration of Jews and Judaism in Luther’s writings, to a more general traditional Christian anti-Judaism, or to some other cultural, social, economic, or political factors particular to Germany in the first half of the twentieth century?” (8). Here Probst has identified an important gap in the literature, for he has found no study which has thoroughly analyzed the use of Luther’s anti-Judaic and antisemitic writings in Nazi Germany (6). This he sets out to do, employing not the classic texts of Dietrich Bonhoeffer or Karl Barth, but rather less prominent writings which he argues more completely capture the “conventional views” of German clergy (7, 19-20). No doubt many scholars will assume, with the author, that “surely many Protestants in Hitler’s Germany might have read Luther’s recommendations and sensed the congruities with the gruesome antisemitic program unfolding around them” (13).

Probst analyzes the history of German Protestant anti-Judaism and antisemitism in six well-organized chapters. And overview of Protestantism in Nazi Germany and a careful examination of Luther’s writings about Jews set the stage for his analysis of the twentieth-century appropriation of the sixteenth-century reformer’s ideas. Four chapters make up the heart of the work—one devoted to academic theologians from across the church-political spectrum and three devoted to clergy from the Confessing Church, the German Christian Movement, and the non-affiliated “middle”—the largest group within the German Protestant clergy of the Nazi era.

Overall, what Probst finds is that German Christian clergy, theologians, and church leaders “consistently embraced Luther’s irrational antisemitic rhetoric as their own, frequently pairing it with idealized portraits of ‘Teutonic’ or ‘German’ greatness, anti-Bolshevism, and anti-Enlightenment sentiment” (14). Confessing Church clergy and theologians tended to emphasize “Luther’s non-rational anti-Judaic arguments against Jews” but generally remained silent about his antisemitic outbursts and usually tried to distance themselves from the racial antisemitism of the German Christians and the Nazi state. Clergy from the middle of the church-political spectrum drew on both anti-Judaic and antisemitic aspects of Luther’s Jewish writings, often sliding into xenophobic stereotypes of Jews, such as the Jew as usurer (14).

In his opening chapter on Protestantism in Nazi Germany, Probst draws on Shulamit Volkov’s argument that antisemitism became a “cultural code” in Wilhelmine Germany, deeply embedded in society even during times when political antisemitism waned. He also highlights the importance of the ongoing publication of the Weimar edition of Luther’s Werke, including volume 53 containing On the Jews and Their Lies and On the Ineffable Name and on the Lineage of Christ, which was published in 1919. Probst also explains the importance of the “Luther Renaissance,” the revival of scholarly interest in Martin Luther which unfolded in the interwar era, noting its openness to nationalistic and antisemitic sentiments (26). As an example of the nationalistic, political, and even racial nature of German theology in the Weimar and Nazi eras, Probst assesses three works of the Erlangen theologian Paul Althaus: “The Voice of the Blood” (1932), Theology of the Orders (1934), and Völker before and after Christ (1937). What stands out here is the importance Althaus gave to the notion of the racial or blood-bound Volk as an elevated community established by God. It is in this context that Luther became important for German Protestants during the interwar era, both as national hero and (less so) as an antisemitic model (37-38).

Many readers will appreciate Probst’s careful analysis of Luther’s Judenschriften. Importantly, Demonizing the Jews strives to place Luther and his anti-Judaic and antisemitic rhetoric in proper historical context, noting the prevalence of negative stereotypes of Jews in the later Middle Ages, the frequency of accusations of host desecration leveled against Jews, the extent of anti-Jewish prejudice among church leaders (including reformers like Martin Bucer and Andreas Osiander), and the presence of important anti-Judaic and antisemitic publications, including Anthonius Margaritha’s The Whole Jewish Faith, in which a converted Jew made numerous provocative charges about his former coreligionists. Probst surveys Luther’s writings on Jews from the moderate and somewhat philosemitic That Jesus Christ Was Born a Jew (1523) to the sharply anti-Judaic and crudely antisemitic On the Jews and Their Lies and On the Ineffable Name and on the Lineage of Christ (both 1543), demonstrating both the importance of Luther’s theological opposition to Judaism and the extent to which his harsher attacks were “steeped in late medieval anti-Jewish paranoia” (50). While Probst places Luther carefully in his sixteenth-century context and cautions against various simplistic interpretations of Luther’s anti-Jewish writings (early vs. late Luther, anger over the absence of Jewish conversions, declining health and increasing upset in old age), he refrains from offering a decisive explanation for Luther’s antipathy towards Jews and Judaism (51-58). What is clear is that the Luther’s antisemitic social program was ignored for over three hundred years, until it was revived in a completely decontextualized manner by Nazi propagandists and Weimar-era Protestant writers.

Turning his attention to academic theologians from both the Confessing Church and the German Christian Movement in chapter three, Probst again sets his historical discussion carefully in context, briefly explaining the politicization of German universities and academic theology in the Third Reich. Surveying four theologians—Eric Vogelsang of Königsberg University; Wolf Meyer-Erlach of Jena University; Hermann Steinlein, pastor of Ansbach; and Gerhard Schmidt of Nuremberg Seminary—the author finds that “German Christian theologians usually adopted Luther’s irrational antisemitic rhetoric as their own, often coupling it with notions that included idealized portraits of ‘Teutonic’ or ‘German’ greatness and anti-Enlightenment sentiment” (81). Confessing Church theologians tended to employ Luther’s anti-Judaic arguments only but still usually supported the Nazi state’s antisemitic program, which mirrored Luther’s own antisemitic recommendations. As Probst concludes, “We have seen here that a Confessing Church pastor, a Confessing Church theologian, and two German Christian theologians all agree that Luther was ‘correct’ to be antisemitic, or at least ‘anti-Jewish’” (82).

Chapters four through six ask how Confessing Church, German Christian, and non-aligned parish and higher clergy used Luther’s anti-Jewish writings in the course of their parish duties or church leadership. Probst returns to the subject of the opening pages of the book, Pastor Heinrich Fausel, who was in fact a member of the Confessing Church. The Heimsheim pastor espoused a relatively apolitical theology, though one marked by the theology of the orders of creation. Like so many of his colleagues from across the Reich, Fausel advocated the close connection between the German Volk and the Christian God. The resurrection of Germany “after bad times” (Probst’s words, not Fausel’s) depends on Christian devotion to God, which Probst describes, perhaps optimistically, as “explicitly scriptural and spiritual—and in no way political.” (94) Probst goes on to explain how, in the course of wartime suffering and the destruction of property, Fausel proclaimed the name of Jesus to be the source of forgiveness, healing, and victory. Statements like these, I would argue, are in fact much more political than the author suggests, given the context in which they arise.

When Fausel gave a public lecture on the Jewish Question in 1934, he refused to engage with biological notions of Jewishness but limited his discussion to the spiritual realm, where the person of Christ determined the fate of the Church, the peoples of the world, and the Jews. Fausel highlighted Jewish disobedience and stubbornness, using Isaiah 5 and its description of God’s vineyard, which Israel neglected to care for. Even as he began to discuss Jews in the New Testament, Fausel explained the “Jewish Question” as a “besetting” problem and described the “terrifying foreign invasion” of Jews since the nineteenth century as a threat Germany had to defend itself from. That said, Fausel affirmed that opposition between Jews and gentiles in the New Testament was only about Christ and not about race. Still, Israel’s rejection of Christ was, in Fausel’s words, a “unanimous rejection by an entire Volk, its leaders included,” even though (as the pastor explained) Jesus came to earth as part of the Jewish Volk (96). When Fausel discussed Luther’s views about Jews, he noted the reformer’s early positivity, but then explained how Luther dissociated himself from Jews and later unleashed his “full wrath” on them (96-97). Fausel noted how Luther saw the Jews as Christ’s enemies, how he recommended that the political authorities undertake severe measures against them, and how he lost hope for their conversion (97).

Throughout this section, Probst is careful to note that Fausel drew not only on Luther’s theological (non-rational) anti-Judaic sentiments, but also on his socio-political (irrational) antisemitic recommendations. Indeed, Fausel went on to speak approvingly of the state’s efforts to protect the German Volk from the Jews. He opposed Jewish-gentile intermarriage and supported restrictions to the number of Jewish civil servants in Germany. Though his arguments derived primarily from theology (for Probst, non-rational anti-Judaism), the practical outworking of this theology was Fausel’s approval of the distinctly antisemitic social and political measures undertaken by the Nazi state.

Most curiously (again), despite these views, Fausel and his wife later hid and cared for a Jewish woman during the Second World War, an act Probst has no real explanation for, on account of the lack of clear evidence. Rightly, he notes that people often act at variance with their stated beliefs, noting also that Fausel may have had something of a change of heart, given that he later signed the Württemberg Ecclesiastical-Theological Society’s 1946 Declaration on the Jewish Question—a frank confession of collective guilt from Protestants who realized they had been bystanders to the persecution of Jews (97-99, 171-172).

Probst agrees with Wolfgang Gerlach that even Confessing Church clergy did not support protection for Jews in Nazi Germany (113). Though he argues that they focused primarily on the biblical or theological aspects of Luther’s anti-Jewish writings, he adds that they reached “too easily for irrational and/or xenophobic reasoning in their writings and lectures” (116). If this was the case for Confessing Church clergy, Probst demonstrates that German Christian clergy were even more likely to draw on the explicitly antisemitic aspects of Luther’s writings. “The German Christian literature is overwhelmingly laden with strident attacks on Jews based on irrational conceptions about them. They are said to possess ‘fanatical hatred’ and ‘pernicious power.’ They are the ‘scum of mankind.’” Indeed, German Christians used terms like “Jewish Bolshevism” while urging the Nazi state to wage a “defensive struggle” against Jewish “Volk-disintegrating” power. Probst concludes: “Ultimately, many in the German Christian movement believed it was a matter of annihilate or be annihilated.” (142) As might be expected, non-aligned clergy from the Protestant middle landed somewhere between the Confessing Church and German Christian positions—more likely to invoke Luther’s non-rational anti-Judaic arguments against Jews but also more likely to elevate the German Volk as an order of creation and generally ready to support National Socialism and to identify Jews with Bolshevism (168-169).

One criticism of Demonizing the Jews might be its limited research base. It is to the author’s advantage that he analyzes individual anti-Jewish writings in good depth, but it is somewhat problematic to draw nuanced conclusions about the differences between Confessing Church, German Christian, and non-aligned clergy from such a small sampling of theological writings. That said, nothing I have seen in the parish archives of church districts from diverse regions of Nazi Germany would contradict Probst’s findings.

In the end, it is easy to agree with Probst’s conclusion that the anti-Judaic and antisemitic writings and lectures of German Protestant clergy “reinforced the cultural antisemitism and anti-Judaism of many Protestants in Nazi Germany” (172). Most importantly, however, by applying Langmuir’s more sophisticated definitions of anti-Judaism and antisemitism—both sentiments existed in the writings of Martin Luther and in those of his twentieth-century followers in Nazi Germany—Probst has demonstrated how deeply the continuities of anti-Jewish sentiment stretch from Nazi Germany back through the centuries to Luther and beyond. Surely there can be little question that Christian anti-Judaism and antisemitism contributed significantly to the dehumanization of the Jews, fueling the ideological fire that became the Holocaust.