Tag Archives: Sarah Thieme

Review of Manfred Gailus, Gläubige Zeiten. Religiosität im Dritten Reich

Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 28, Number 1/2 (Spring/Summer 2022)

Review of Manfred Gailus, Gläubige Zeiten. Religiosität im Dritten Reich (Freiburg: Herder 2021). 223 pages. ISBN 9783451033391.

By Sarah Thieme, University of Münster

With his monograph “Gläubige Zeiten”, Manfred Gailus, also one of the editors of this journal, succeeds in providing a compact synthesis of his many years of research on the history of religion during the National Socialist era and his thesis of a “religious revival” (p. 15) provides a convincing framework for his account. This well-executed study is rich in examples and quotations from contemporaneous actors that bring the story to life for the broader audience to whom he is presenting the current state of research on the “return of religiosity” (“Wiederkehr des Religiösen”) (p. 11) from 1933 to 1945. These years were marked by diverse faiths and a multitude of (often hybrid) creeds, an intensification of religious action, competition between religious actors and conflict over questions of faith.

The book is divided into four main chapters – I. Christian Denominations and Nazism; II. New Faith Movement; III. Jews, Antisemitism and “Kristallnacht”; IV. War, Christians and the Holocaust – with varying numbers of sub-chapters. Instead of an introduction, Gailus precedes the chapters with a short section entitled “Concepts, Questions, Problems” in which he introduces his topic and the central question of his study: “What did the Germans believe in during the Hitler era?” (p. 8). Given it has been shown that 95% of Germans belonged to a Christian denomination during the Nazi regime and the “astonishing mixture of individual faiths” (p. 10) and “hybride Doppelgläubigkeiten” that Gailus has identified – in particular, those blending Christian faith and Nazi confession – the study sets out to analyse the traditional Christian characteristics in relation to the reshaping and partial new imprints of religiosity that occurred during the “Third Reich” and, thereby, offer an interpretation of the Nazi era in terms of the history of religion. The author proposes that the Nazi era was a “time of faith”, “Gläubige Zeiten” with a “high conjuncture” of faith and faithfulness (p. 11). Methodologically speaking, Gailus claims to look from above, from a “bird’s eyes view” (p. 11), though it should be noted that his altitude varies significantly throughout the book. Given his own extensive research, he flies in very close to Protestantism, while remaining more distant from Catholicism, the perspective on which is primarily literature-based and, therefore, more superficial. Gailus also flies particularly close to Berlin, the geographical focus of his own research and most of the examples he cites.

The first chapter on the two main Christian denominations is particularly compelling. Gailus convincingly develops the argument that there was a significant “religious experience” (p. 15) in 1933 that can be perceived as a turning point which raised hopes for a re-Christianisation, especially within Protestantism. As evidence of this shift, the author refers to a deluge of confessional publications and the mass marriages of Berlin stormtroopers, which, by being initiated by enthusiastic Protestant pastors, demonstrates that the Nazi state welcomed such confessional commitment, at least initially. Gailus tells the story of the so-called “Church Struggle” or “Kirchenkampf” as an internal Protestant conflict between the völkisch-antisemitic religious movement “Deutsche Christen”, which dominated many regional churches, and the internal church opposition to it, the “Bekennende Kirche”. The internal tension between these groups permeated all levels of the church, creating disputes amongst church leaders and intellectuals and local disputes within the parishes. The Apostle Church in Berlin provides a particularly vivid illustration, which included blockades of the church space, fights on the pulpit and loud counter-sermons.

Using the Protestants as a starting point, Gailus evaluates the “performance” of the Catholics, whom he suggests were “less moved” (p. 23) in 1933. It is noticeable that the author analyses Catholics in a more general way and provides fewer examples of local and regional actors. He focuses primarily on the Reichskonkordat, the treaty between the Nazi government and the Vatican made in the summer of 1933 and whose observance the Church and the Nazis struggled over in the following years. To summarise, Gailus emphasises that although Catholic religiosity and Nazi faith were not mutually exclusive, in comparison to the Protestants, who he considers as fairly open to National Socialism, he considers the Catholics, overall, as more reserved and sceptical and, thus, increasingly pushed out of the public eye by the National Socialists. A stronger appreciation of the internal-Catholic plurality and diversity of forms of behaviour would have been desirable. It would also have been preferable if the developments between 1933 and the start of the war had been examined more closely. Having said that, Gailus succeeds exceedingly well in his interpretation of Protestantism, which he vividly portrays as a divided “many-voiced and dissonant choir without a conductor” (p. 37-8).

In order to do justice to the breadth of the religious field, given the great competition over questions of faith and a multitude of religious confessions that occurred at the time, the second chapter covers the new faith movements in the “Third Reich”, i.e. the völkisch movements, the so-called “God-believers”/“Gottgläubige”, and religious factions within the NSDAP.

First, he uses the example of the heterogeneous “Deutsche Glaubensbewegung” and the “Ludendorff Movement” to show the dynamics of the new-religious awakening that occurred from 1933 onwards. The churches in particular saw the “neo-pagans”, whom they overestimated, as a great threat. However, the Nazi state, which initially allowed the völkisch faith movements to continue, wanted to prevent a religious division of the “Volksgemeinschaft” and increasingly undermined the new-religious groups from 1936 onwards as the new faith was to serve National Socialism. Young, fanatical National Socialists in particular – usually SS men, party functionaries and civil servants from industrial-urban regions, often from the fringes of Protestantism – saw the NSDAP and SS as their new religious community and called themselves “Gottgläubige”. From 1936 on, they were officially recognised as a third denomination despite not having an organisational context, an explicit programme of faith or a religious practice of their own.

Within the NSDAP, Gailus considers the “Gottgläubigen” among the “ideological rigorists”, one of three distinct religious-political factions within the party, although they did not express their religious-political conflicts openly. In addition to this group, with their radical anti-church and anti-Christian attitudes, there was a large group of “Christian National Socialists” in the middle and lower levels of the party hierarchy, who desired a synthesis of beliefs, and thirdly, the “centrists” who wanted to avoid the NSDAP’s break with the large Christian portion of the population because of the power politics. Thus, the NSDAP left the solution to the religious question open. Based on the membership statistics, however, the party remained a Christian one. Nevertheless, Gailus considers the religious dimension of the Nazi movement as an expression of the religious revival, which he exemplifies, inter alia, with the so-called “Lebensfeiern”.

The third chapter is less strongly oriented towards the thesis of the “religious revival”. In this chapter, Gailus explores the perspectives of religious actors on Jewish people and their behaviour during the November pogrom of 1938. He shows how Judaism was declared “evil” by Nazi salvation beliefs and how this added a religious dimension to racist antisemitism. Following Saul Friedländer, the author puts forward the thesis of “redemptive anti-semitism” unfortunately without explaining the concept in more detail. He also elucidates how both denominations supported racist exclusion by issuing so-called “Aryan certificates”. According to the author, the churches and the new Nazi faith conformed in their “Frontstellung” – against people of Jewish faith. Due to his statement that Jews “were not an independent player in… the religious field” (p. 89), they appear merely as objects in the depiction of this chapter.

With regard to his question about the national-socialist religious foundation of antisemitism, Gailus regrettably omits the perpetrators of the violence in his examination of the actors and reactions of Christians to the so-called “Kristallnacht”. He emphasises the silence of the churches as institutions and, at the same time, shows that many Christians, especially Protestants, agreed to the racist pogrom. A small number of individual clergymen spoke out against the events publicly in sermons. However, they themselves then had to reckon with attacks and arrests, as is demonstrated through several case studies. To explain the pogrom from the point of view of Nazi believers, the author monocausally refers to an “expulsion campaign” or “Austreibungsaktion” against the “evil” (p. 110).

The fourth and final chapter, containing the most sub-chapters, focuses on the relationship between the Second World War, Christians and the Shoa. Beginning with the observation that although there was some enthusiasm and support, especially from the “Deutsche Christen”, the mood at the start of the war was less euphoric than in 1914, Gailus traces expressions of joy, for example, in field post letters. He also discusses the official change in Nazi church policy at the beginning of the war, which was, in practice, still characterised by the fact that the Church’s religious practice was restricted and even attacked. The effects of the war also increasingly restricted religious life on the “home front”. Based on recent research by, for example, Olaf Blaschke and Thomas Brodie, the author emphasises that if we move beyond the dominant narrative according to which all Catholics were victims of National Socialism and suffering because of the war, Catholic Germans also approved of and participated in the war. With regard to the development of Nazi faith over the course of the war, Gailus argues that the trend towards “de-confessionalisation” was in sharp decline, as Nazi faith could not adequately explain the mass deaths, yet, at the same time, the “post-Christian utopias” (p. 145) of some Nazi leaders became even more radicalised.

The brief sub-chapter on the Shoa explores the attitudes of Protestants and Catholics towards the Holocaust. The author stresses that only individual theologians spoke out publicly against the persecution of the Jews and that the Church institutions remained publicly silent about the Shoa despite their knowledge – mediated, for example, through Wehrmacht soldiers. Instead, the Church hierarchy chose the path of less successful petitions to Nazi leaders. Overall, Gailus emphasises that “Christian silence” (p. 160) was widespread. In addition, there had been a “de-solidarization” (p. 160) against Jewish people in the ecclesiastical sphere and “non-Aryans” were excluded from congregational life. Moreover, Protestant theologians, in particular, were actively involved in the genocide. Thus, he ultimately concludes that the Holocaust was “performed out of a Christian society” (p. 163) in which only a few protested publicly.

In sum, Manfred Gailus convincingly presents his thesis that the years from 1933 to 1945 were “faith-filled times” characterised by religious revivals of not only the two Christian denominations but also the völkisch, “gottgläubige” and Nazi believers. He conveys his argument and the current state of research vividly to a broader audience, writing in a clear and richly pictorial manner, citing numerous examples and allowing contemporary source quotations to guide the narrative, which makes the volume a pleasure to read. Source classifications, research debates and comprehensive analyses are sometimes somewhat lacking; especially with regard to the target audience, some explanations of terms (e. g. “political religion”; “redemptive anti-semitism”; …) would have been helpful. Nevertheless, the sections on Protestantism and Nazi faith, which are based on the author’s own extensive studies, are particularly convincing.

The religions studied are analysed as imagined religions, that is, they are conceptualised in terms of their discourses, confessions, church official statements and theologies. Therefore, theologians, clergy and intellectual thinkers are the main actors encountered in this volume. The level of religious practice, the performance of worship and the everyday life of the Church are not brought as clearly into view. This is regrettable, especially because in this way the lived religiosity of women could have also been taken into account more effectively. Nevertheless, and in conclusion, I unreservedly recommend this generally comprehensible overview of the history of religion during the Nazi era as an introduction to the topic and the current debates in the scholarship.

Conference Report: 35th Annual Conference of the Schwerter Arbeitskreis für Katholizismusforschung

Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 28, Number 1/2 (Spring/Summer 2022)

Conference Report: 35^th Annual Conference of the Schwerter Arbeitskreis für Katholizismusforschung

By Sarah Thieme, WWU University of Münster, and Martin Belz, Institute for Mainz Church History

Conference organizers: Sarah Thieme, Center for Religion and Modernity, WWU University of Münster; Martin Belz, Institute for Mainz Church History; Markus Leniger, Catholic Academy Schwerte of the Archdiocese of Paderborn

Date: 19-21 November 2021

Location: Schwerte, Germany

This conference report was first published in German at H-Soz-Kult: Tagungsbericht 35. Jahrestagung des Schwerter Arbeitskreises Katholizismusforschung. 19.11.2021–21.11.2021, Schwerte, in: H-Soz-Kult 07.02.2022, online access at: https://www.hsozkult.de/conferencereport/id/tagungsberichte-9296?title=35-jahrestagung-des-schwerter-arbeitskreises-katholizismusforschung&recno=10&q=&sort=&fq=&total=8988. We would like to thank Katharina Reuther (Münster) for assistance with the translation.

Approximately 40 scholars from the fields of church history and historiography took part in the 35^thannual conference of the Schwerter Arbeitskreis für Katholizismusforschung (working group for Catholicism research, SAK). Organised by the new speakers Sarah Thieme and Martin Belz, the conference took place as always in cooperation with the Catholic Academy in Schwerte of the Archdiocese of Paderborn. The event focused on the presentation and discussion of ongoing research work on Catholicism from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century. This year’s general debate was dedicated to the topic “I was a stranger and you welcomed me” (Matthew 25:35) – Catholicism and refugees in historical and contemporary perspective.

The church historical presentation by DOMINIK HERINGER (Mainz) dealt with the Rheinischer Reformkreis in the twentieth century. Heringer located the hotspot of the circle, whose main concern was to secure a greater national independence of the German church from Rome, in the diocese of Aachen, which was newly founded in 1930. From there, the positions of the circle und its partly national socialist affinities resonated throughout Germany. As a result, church-wide battles broke out over whether and how to renew of the church. The presenter showed that Augustin Bea SJ played a leading role, one unknown until now, in monitoring the protagonists and their actions.

LEA TORWESEN (Bochum) provided an analysis of Christian-religious sites of memory. Her historiographical presentation focused on how the writing of church history had important aftereffects socially, culturally, and politically. Looking at the example of the Dortmund church Heilige Dreifaltigkeit (Holy Trinity) (1898), she elaborated on two competing stories of memory: the attribution of meaning as a community of workers in the coal and steel industry (part of industrial culture) and the currently more powerful coding as so-called BVB-founding church of those members of the youth fellowship who founded the football club Borussia Dortmund in 1909, after disagreements with the church community (part of football-fan culture). That collective memory operated selectively can also be seen in the second case study, the “Essen Catholic Day 1968,” which emerged as another site of memory because of its uniquely turbulent nature. To this day, it is associated with protest signs, chants, and heckling. These memories erroneously made it appear that the Katholikentage (Catholic Day) were generally associated with protests. In reality, such protests did not take place in any of the other six Katholikentag-forums.

MAXIMILIAN KÜNSTER (Mainz) subsequently delivered a presentation about how Catholic seminary candidates personally experienced and interpreted the Second World War. His analysis of 867 field letters from Mainz seminarians addressed to their Head of Seminary from the battlefront, and also on other sources on teaching and studying in the years 1933-1945, allowed him to draw conclusions about how their social backgrounds and the interpretive framework they created to make sense of the war were connected. As Künster showed, their war interpretation was influenced by the traditional socialisation in family and in seminary, as well as by youth organizations and the mindset of the NS-movement. The former became particularly clear in the reception of traditional war theology, the latter through a “communalization” (Vergemeinschaftung) of one’s own military service and the interpretation of the German-Soviet War as an “anti-Bolshevist crusade.”

SANDRA FRÜHAUF (Hamburg) presented her historical PhD project on the influence of post-conciliar priest and solidarity groups in the West German Catholic church and in the context of the transformation of society as a whole between 1965 and 1989/90. The priest and solidarity groups were established from 1968 onwards in West German dioceses to implement the reforms of the Second Vatican Council and to counteract restorative tendencies. By 1970 they were present in nearly every diocese. Initially, they were dedicated to solving inner church problems, but from 1971 onwards they turned increasingly to political and social issues. To assess which forms of protest the goals of the priest and solidarity groups – democratisation, humanisation and solidarity – could be implemented, Frühauf provided a historical conceptualization of the social movements’ own analyses, rituals and what she labelled “anti-rituals.” She provided a case study: the meeting of European priest groups in Chur, Switzerland from 5-10 July 1969 and in particular, their eucharistic celebrations.

The negotiation of gender concepts in GDR Catholicism from the late 1940s to the early 1970s is a field of research that has not yet been sufficiently explored – according to the thesis of KATHARINA ZIMMERMANN (Tübingen). In her doctoral dissertation, she accordingly investigates how Catholic citizens of the GDR experienced the tension between socialist politics and Catholic teachings on the body, gender, and sexuality in everyday practices and experiences. Zimmermann presented the research design of her work and gave first insights into her research, using examples to analyse the relevance of flight, expulsion, and (sexualised) violence after 1945, with regard to the understanding of gender in GDR Catholicism.

ALEXANDER BUERSTEDDE (Hamburg) presented his historical doctoral project on developments in the image of the priest and in the training of priests in the West German Catholic church between 1965 and 1989/90. These, he argued, could be understood as conflicts over sacrality and sacralisation in the battleground of social upheaval and post-conciliar crisis. When in the diocesan leadership of the middle 1960s the slogan was issued not to train priests for yesterday, but for tomorrow, the initial zeal for reform soon gave way to conservative attempts at containment. A case in point was the training of pastoral assistants and priests in the archdiocese of München and Freising in the early 1970s. Once trained in the roles together, men and women were separated. Looking ahead, he referred (on the one hand) to the loss of stable practices of self-transcendence (Hans Joas) during the period under study, and (on the other hand) to successful strategies of the clerical preservation of power, despite rapidly declining birthrates. Did the end of the so-called Catholic Milieu go hand-in-hand with a farewell to the priestly ideals long associated with it?

DAVID TEMPLIN (Osnabrück) used Hamburg as an example to shed light on the Catholic Church’s mission to foreigners, which grew in number and importance in the course of labor migration into the Federal Republic from the 1960s onward. He highlighted the importance of the missions for migrants, since they not only worked to provide religious orientation but also functioned as a social “infrastructure of arrival” and as an instance of the community building through their social care. At the same time, Templin described the conflicts and negotiation processes in questions of participation, financial support, and recognition of migrant structures, which flared up in the 1970s in particular, and which made it clear that social debates about migration and integration were also taking place within the Catholic church, though articulated in a particular way.

The documentary film Friedland, about the Lower Saxon border reception camp of the same name, which was watched and discussed under the moderation of Markus Leniger, provided the topic for general debate. It addressed the relationship between Catholic believers and the institution of the Catholic church as a whole and refugees, from contemporary and historical perspectives. In a dialogue between history and social ethics, special attention was paid to the motives and (faith) convictions behind, respectively, Christian and Catholic commitment to refugees, as well as argumentation structures that underlie church attempts at integration and willingness to accept.

In the first presentation of the general debate, MARKUS STADTRECHER (Ulm) used the example of the integration of refugees and expellees after the Second World War in the diocese of Augsburg to confirm the initial thesis that Christian values represented an important motivation for a culture of welcome. In addition, however, there were strategic power interests of church leaders, who tried to use the new believers towards their efforts at re-catholisation. At the same time Stadtrecher made it clear that this migration movement was characterized by a high level of rejection on the part of the local population.

Based on the migration-friendly positions of the Church Magisterium, which ascribes extensive rights to migrants as members of the “human family”, GERHARD KRUIP (Mainz) applied John Rawls’ well-known thought experiment about the human community in its original state to the global level. Under the “veil of ignorance” those involved in the original state would decide to found states, but at the same time would advocate for the greatest possible freedom of movement and open borders. According to Kruip, the application of these “ideal theories” to current problems of migration requires the consideration of reasonableness and possible negative consequences of a brain drain for the countries of origin. In his estimation, making immigration easier is also in the well-understood self-interest of Central European countries, which are heavily influenced by the powerful demographic change.

In the subsequent discussion of both presentations, the Augsburg example could be contextualised within the framework of postwar Catholicism and society and compared with other case studies (e.g. from the diocese of Limburg). On the other hand, there was a lively exchange on Kruip’s thesis, with the focus in particular on the opportunities and limits of a policy open to immigration.

Conference Overview:

Dominik Heringer (Mainz): Hotspot Aachen – Neue Erkenntnisse zum Rheinischen Reformkreis

Lea Torwesten (Bochum): Ankerpunkte des (Glaubens-)Gedächtnisses – Christlich-religiöse Erinnerungsorte des Ruhrgebiets am Beispiel der BVB-„Gründungskirche“ (1898) und des Essener Katholikentages 1968

Maximilian Künster (Mainz): Die Feldpostbriefe der Alumnen des Mainzer Priesterseminars (1939–1945)

Sandra Frühauf (Hamburg): Abschied von „Hochwürden“. Priester- und Solidaritätsgruppen als Foren kirchlicher Selbstreflektion und klerikaler Kritik

Katharina Zimmermann (Tübingen): Gender-Konzepte zwischen Katholizismus und Sozialismus. Körper, Geschlecht und Sexualität im DDR-Katholizismus 1945–1973

Alexander Buerstedde (Hamburg): Katholisches Priesterbild und katholische Priesterausbildung in der Bundesrepublik von 1965 bis 1989/90. Ein Werkstattbericht

David Templin (Osnabrück): „Ausländermissionen“: Migration, institutionelle Einbindung und Konflikte in der Katholischen Kirche am Beispiel Hamburgs, 1960–1990

„Friedland – Der Dokumentarfilm“: Film und Diskussion, Moderation: Markus Leniger

Sarah Thieme (Münster) / Martin Belz (Mainz): Einführung in das Thema der Generaldebatte: „Ich bin ein Fremder gewesen und ihr habt mich aufgenommen“ (Mt 25,35) – Katholizismus und Geflüchtete in historischer wie gegenwärtiger Perspektive

Markus Stadtrecher (Ulm): „Brüder nehmt die Brüder mit“ – Christliche Willkommenskultur und ihre Grenzen am Beispiel der Flüchtlinge und Vertriebenen im Bistum Augsburg nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg

Gerhard Kruip (Mainz): Gibt es ein Recht auf Einwanderung – wo doch alle Menschen Glieder der einen Menschheitsfamilie sind?

Review of Olaf Blaschke and Thomas Großbölting, eds., Was glaubten die Deutschen zwischen 1933 and 1945? Religion und Politik im Nationalsozialismus

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 27, Number 1 (March 2021)

Review of Olaf Blaschke and Thomas Großbölting, eds., Was glaubten die Deutschen zwischen 1933 and 1945? Religion und Politik im Nationalsozialismus (Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag, 2020). 540 pages. ISBN 978-3-593-51077-4 (paperback); 978-3-593-44223-5 (eBook).

By Kevin P. Spicer, C.S.C., Stonehill College

In December 2018, at their home institution, the Westphalian Wilhelm University in Münster, Olaf Blaschke, a professor of nineteenth-century European history, and Thomas Großbölting, a professor of modern and contemporary European history, convened a diverse group of scholars to examine “What did the Germans believe 1933-1945, a New Perspective on the Relationship between Religion and Politics under National Socialism.” The conference resulted in the publication of the present volume, What did the Germans Believe 1933-1945? Religion and Politics under National Socialism, consisting of twenty unnumbered chapters divided into three parts. Blaschke’s and Großbölting’s collection follows an approach initially begun by Manfred Gailus and Armon Nolzen in their influential 2011 edited volume, Estranged ‘Ethnonationalist Community’: Faith, Denomination, and Religion under National Socialism (Zerstritten ‘Volksgemeisnchaft’ Glaube, Konfession und Religion im Nationalsozialismus; Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht). The essays in the Gailus and Nolzen collection examined the implications of the data that more than ninety-five percent of the German population belonged to either the Catholic or Protestant Church until National Socialism’s collapse in 1945, while, at the same time, at least two-thirds of these individuals also belonged to at least one National Socialist organization. The essays explored the intersection of these stark realities as Germans negotiated what it meant to be Christian and likewise members of the Volksgemeinschaft in the National Socialist state.

The essays in Blaschke and Großbölting’s volume continue this investigation in a similar vein by widening and deepening it. They ask: Where did the churches and National Socialism interact with each other? In what ways did they stand in each other’s way? How did they compete for members or prominence? And how did they promote each other’s particular concerns? For the editors, an apologetic and mistaken emphasis on resistance – “cross versus sword” narrative – has dominated the interpretative framework of studies on Christianity in Germany under National Socialism. By contrast, however, they view the period fluidly, recognizing that few Germans rejected Nazism entirely. They claim a closer tie between the two than previously articulated in the Gaius and Nolzen collection as well as by others. If one concludes that religion was a significant factor in German society in the 1920s and 30s, they raise the following questions: did National Socialism arise despite Christianity, as many historians have suggested, or did Nazism develop and establish itself precisely because of society’s Christian character? The essays of this volume primarily support the latter by exposing the interplay of National Socialism and Christianity in a variety of historical situations.

The approach is not driven by examining the hierarchy of the churches nor by scrutinizing the nature of the institutions themselves. Instead, the chapters seek to uncover individual voices and actions of ordinary Christians both inside and outside traditional church settings. As with any volume, the results are mixed. Some are thoroughly convincing, while others offer the reader only a preview of an undeveloped argument. At the same time, the essays are not as original or groundbreaking in their field as the editors suggest. Although, since the turn of the century, apologetic and simplistic works have appeared, many studies on the churches under National Socialism have parted from the “cross versus sword” narrative to uncover elements of Christian complicity that lent support to the National Socialist state and abetted its crimes. Likewise, the authors have generally ignored the role of theology as a motivational factor and neglected the legacy of the Kulturkampf on Catholics. Still, this present volume advances our knowledge of the continuity of “brownness” among Christians prior, during, and after National Socialism officially existed in Germany.

The editors title the first section of their work as “Protagonists and their Practices.” Here the essays seek to reveal the interconnectedness and “entanglement” of National Socialism and Christianity in the different “social strata and milieus” in which Christians went about their daily existence (19-20). Unfortunately, the essay by Detlef Scheichen-Ackermann, which begins this section, rambles on, as it were, as he first attempts to elucidate alternate theories to explain the attraction of Germans toward the Volksgemeinschaft before presenting five concrete reasons for political reorientation to arise among them in the first place. These events include the failed experiment in councils coupled with the 1918-1919 civil upheaval that led to a “primal fear” of Bolshevism, the disgrace of Versailles, the loss of the talents and mediating influence of Gustav Stresemann upon his untimely death in 1929, fluctuating economic crisis, and, finally, the failure of Heinrich Brüning amid the bankruptcy of political Catholicism (50). In the following chapter, Jürgen W. Falter revisits his impressive, earlier 1991 research on the voting behavior of Catholics and Protestants that led to Hitler’s ascension to power and recalls his previous hypothesis, “if there had only been Catholics, there would probably never have been a National Socialist takeover, because then the NSDAP would not have easily managed to move beyond the status of a minority party” (61). While support for the NSDAP was always significantly higher among Protestants, Falter also concludes that in the last months of the Weimar Republic, the “relatively considerable resistance of the Catholic population to National Socialism diminished” (61).

Markus Raasch, in his contribution, attempts unsuccessfully to reveal how the relatively small city of Eichstätt and its surrounding communities evolved from a clerical-inspired “black” characterization of a staunchly Catholic community to a National Socialist “brown.” He argues that a “real resilient opposition between Catholicism and National Socialism never existed” (90). In his analysis, he gives almost no consideration to the impact of Konrad von Preysing (bishop, 1932 to 1935) on Eichstätt’s interaction with National Socialism. Likewise, he interprets the appropriation of National Socialist terminology by Catholics as a “Catholicization of National Socialism based on the Nazification of Catholicism” (94). Other authors, including myself, have interpreted the Catholic leaders’ adoption of such Nazi idiom in a different light, especially when faced with the repressive tactics against such use by Prussian Minister-President Hermann Göring in 1935. Raasch’s use of evidence is also selective, ignoring relevant studies and seemingly drawing from others without citation.

Sarah Thieme’s insightful chapter examines the metamorphosis of Advent and Christmas celebrations in the south Westphalian city of Bochum as they increasingly departed from their Christian roots. Before January 1933, an influential Protestant pastor, Philipp Klose, embraced the National Socialist “struggle” rhetoric and portrayed Christ as a militant soldier. Both Protestant and Catholic laywomen, for example, intertwined their roles in church associations, charity work, and, as individual members, in the National Socialist Women’s Organization. Such interaction resulted in cooperation between these groups in charity efforts such as the Winter Relief Program of the National Socialist Peoples’ Welfare (NSV). Church, state, and party organizations in Bochum, Thieme notes, also maintained traditional manners of celebrating Advent and Christmas, including nativity plays. In 1938, apparent national trends led the National Socialist Women’s Organization local leader to push for a reorientation of the celebrations. Ostensively, in an effort to avoid any denominational tensions, festivals of “light and joy” and adoration of a Nazified sacralized ideal for German mothers replaced Advent rites and “veneration of the blessed mother.” The war, however, brought an end to most public celebrations of the holiday season, Thieme concludes, as such events were relegated to the churches and private spheres.

Thomas Brodie’s essay on Catholic Faith during the Second World War summarizes his recent work, German Catholicism at War, 1939-1945 (Oxford, 2018), which I reviewed in CCHQ (25:2, June 2019). In that study, he sought to understand what religion meant to the German Catholic faithful during the war. For Brodie, a central contention is that Catholicism’s legitimization of the war outside of National Socialist ideology enabled Germans to support the battle on the homefront. This, of course, is not a new insight as Gordon Zahn and Heinrich Missilla came to a similar conclusion many years back. Next, Armin Nolzen contemplates the understanding of religion within the League of German Girls (BDM). He points out that there has been little investigation of this topic in the studies of this period. Although, for example, in December 1933, Reich Bishop Ludwig Müller enabled Protestant youth groups to merge with the Hitler Youth and, four years later, in 1937, the state forbade dual membership in denominational youth groups and the Hitler Youth (under which the BDM falls), there were still, by November 1939, thirty Protestant and twenty-five Catholic youth groups in existence. While Nolzen does not entirely succeed in uncovering the role of religion in the BDM, he does raise important questions for researchers to pursue.

In chapter seven, Christiane Schröder studies Protestant women’s religious communities in the Lower Saxony former regions of Calenberg and Lüneburg under National Socialism. Schröder explains that these communities have seldom been the topic of study and admits that they consisted of only 240 women. Remnants of pre-Reformation Catholic religious life, these communities required that women be Lutheran, unmarried, and at least fifty-five years old. Most came from the Hanoverian lower nobility and bourgeoisie classes. Overseen by the Klosterkammer in Hannover, which fell under the jurisdiction of the Reich and Prussian Ministry of Science, Education, and Culture, the communities were not entirely free of state supervision. Members of these communities no longer had to partake in a traditional monastic routine, but nevertheless were required to participate in a Sunday service, evening meals in common, and select prayer services while receiving rent-free apartments and a monthly allowance. For many women, these communities raised their social prestige and freed them from living with parents or relatives. Schröder freely admits that her research is in its initial stages directed toward her dissertation-in-progress. Thus far, her research has uncovered approximately twenty-six women who were members of the NSDAP, with a handful who were “old fighters.” By 1936, the state ordered the denomination requirement for entrance to be dropped, and, in its place, merely proof of Aryan ancestry. The institutions’ chronicles, Schröder’s central source, reveal the women’s collective gratitude and appreciation for Hitler, especially for destroying Bolshevism in Germany and for his initial gains in foreign policy. Support for the war, however, was mized among the women, with the chronicle authors heralding victories, but also expressing concern for the well-being and safety of German soldiers.

Martina Steber introduces the story of Augsburg’s second, possibly third-ranked composer Arthur Piechler, whose mother’s heritage was from a Jewish family that had converted to Catholicism. Steber’s interpretation is multilayered. Obtaining civil servant status in 1934 while being of mixed racial background, Piechler was an anomaly to the norm experienced by so many other Germans of similar heritage. Though persecuted on the national level by expulsion from the Reich Chamber of Music and forced labor under Organization Todt, Piechler became a pawn in the power struggle among the Reich Ministry of Propaganda and Gau (NSDAP district) and city officials. Steber views the defense of Piechler as partially ideological – his work embodied the “ideological disposition” of Gau Schwaben, which enabled the Catholic cultural conservative traits of “nationalism, anti-liberalism, anti-Bolshevism, and anti-modernism” to connect forces with National Socialism (212). Augsburg officials and bourgeoise citizens embraced Piechler’s music as representative of German art, arguing that his Ayran roots superceded his Jewish heritage. Piechler survived the war and was soon promoted by the allied occupiers to the director of Augsburg’s conservatory. He remained a “star” in Augsburg, but never gained national recognition as critics deemed his musical composition style outdated.

Finishing out the first section is Olaf Blaschke’s impressive chapter on the faith of Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg. Although Stauffenberg has been the subject of numerous studies, according to Blaschke, none have convincingly examined his religious motivations. Likewise, no historian has provided a “single motif for his affinity to National Socialism” (255). Blaschke concludes that if faith is credited for his resolute choices after 1943, then his faith must also be seen as active in his decisions before this point. He finds no “direct evidence” against such a conclusion, especially when one acknowledges the anti-liberalism of both National Socialism and Catholicism as a point of convergence.

The editors designate the essays in section two, “Ideological and Religious Motives,” though, in many ways, they continue themes present in the first part. Klaus Große Kracht, for example, investigates five large gatherings of Catholics in Berlin in 1933. In my 2004 study, Resisting the Third Reich: Catholic Clergy in Hitler’s Berlin (DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press), I covered the same ground and reached similar conclusions. During these events, Catholics appropriated Nazi language and imagery, expressing nationalistic language and a desire to serve the German Reich. Große Kracht argues that this is the period before anticlericalism dominated the politics of the National Socialist state. He also highlights the nationalistic rhetoric of Father Marianus Vetter, a Dominican religious and celebrated preacher, who, I too, covered, making similar points, in Hitler’s Priests: Catholic Clergy and National Socialism (DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2008). As previous studies have shown, once the bishops lifted their prohibition against membership in the National Socialist Party, many Catholics worked for a positive relationship between the state and church. Große Kracht’s essay affirms these earlier findings.

Miloslav Szabó’s essay reaches beyond the borders of the German Reich to Slovakia to examine priests’ affinity for National Socialism. He is fond of Roger Griffin’s 2007 term “clerical fascism” that distinguishes between those priests who defended “fascist ideology” and those clergymen who only succumbed to the “temptations of ‘national rebirth’” to combat Bolshevism and liberalism. Szabó takes significant issue with my use of the term “brown priest” and the discussion thereof by Thomas Forster in Priests in the Era of Radical Change: Identity and Life of Catholic Parish Clergy in Upper Bavaria 1918 to 1945 (Priester in Zeiten des Umbruchs: Identität und Lebenswelt des katholischen Pfarrklerus in Oberbazern 1918 bis 1945, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014). Evidently, Szabó did not read Hitler’s Priests theoretical first chapter that covers analogous ground or Forster’s insightful contextual discussion of the term. Szabó divides “brown priests” into two categories: “clerical National Socialists” who, in their support of National Socialism, turn against the Church and eventually replace doctrine with ideology and “clerical fascists” who agitate for National Socialism but remain loyal to Catholicism and their ordinaries. To illustrate his use of the terms, Szabó presents three case studies. He identifies the first two priests of his study, Fathers František Boháč and Viliam Ries, as “clerical National Socialists” who worked tirelessly to implement National Socialist ideology radically. Szabó’s third cleric, Father Josef Steinhübl, is labeled a “clerical fascist” who endeavored to reconcile Catholicism with National Socialism, especially as a prominent agitator for the Carpathian German Party that represented the German minority in Slovakia. Szabó’s essay is informative and well-researched, though, I believe, he could have been more aware in his analysis of the geographical and situational uniqueness of the clerics that he studies. His categorization of Monsignor Jozek Tiso as a “clerical fascist minimum” (clerical-faschistisches Minimum) is also somewhat perplexing and not entirely helpful.

In chapter twelve, Holger Arning invites the reader to ponder the difference between trust (vertrauen) and faith (glauben) in the year 1934, specifically as it appears in the articles in Unser Kirchenblatt, the Münster diocese’s newspaper. He informs us that the term trust can “inspire true confidence” both in the Church and the leader (322). By 1934, the relationship between Church and state, however, had radically altered following the murder of Erich Klausener during the Röhm Purge – a turning point on which Arning and I agree. While the word Führer (leader) repeatedly appears in the pages of the newspaper, affirming the validity of the National Socialist leadership principle (Führerprinzip), authors of the newspaper articles use it more often in a Catholic context, reinforcing the Church’s authoritarian ideal and hierarchical system and aligning it with the kingship of Christ. (In 1925, Pope Pius XI had established the feast of Christ the King in response to anti-clericalism, secularism, and nationalism). Arning interprets this as the “adaptation of the editors to the new political circumstances” without specifically approving National Socialist ideology (326). In its rhetoric about Hitler, the newspaper was positive, but more often than not, referred to him by his official title as Chancellor. Arning concludes that in 1934 in the articles in Unser Kirchenblatt, Catholic trust “in Hitler and National Socialism was unstable,” and any confidence expressed in National Socialism was self-serving (343).

In a chapter on religious rites under National Socialism, Hans-Ulrich Thamer offers an insightful point about the nature of worship and ritual. For those who withdrew membership in their respective Christian denominations and legally became “believers in God” (Gottgläubigen), they did not immediately forfeit public expressions of their ingrained religious traditions. They brought these with them and, in turn, consciously or unconsciously influenced the structure of newly created National Socialist rites. Ample photos illustrate Thamer’s captivating argument. The second section ends with Christopher Picker’s ambitious essay on the belief and convictions of Palantine Protestants from 1933-1945. Focusing on the March 1934 Resolution of Palatine Protestants that proclaimed support for Reich Bishop Ludwig Müller as well as for the German Christians and placed the Palatine regional church “entirely at the disposal of the National Socialist state and its aid organizations,” the essay uncovers the overwhelming support of Protestant Christians in this region for National Socialism and the Nazi state (371). Picker devotes much of the article to National Socialism’s initial years of rule with little emphasis on the later years. Perhaps a more balanced focus would yield a more nuanced portrait of Palentine Protestantism under National Socialism.

The third part of the book focuses on “Interpretive Discourse,” as each essay connects themes and underlying patterns in the belief of Christians under National Socialism. Uwe Puscher examines the role of völkisch (ethnonationalist) religion in Nazi Germany. According to him, there were at most five thousand individuals who adhered to some form of völkisch religion under Hitler. Puscher chooses specifically not to focus on völkisch religion itself, but on Oskar Stillich, an economist, sociologist, and pacifist who dedicated a part of his career to studying völkisch thought and religious ideology, uncovering its racist and nationalistic aims. Removed in 1933 from his position at Humbolt University in Berlin, Stillich went into inner emigration, as it were, though he continued to research and write. He died on January 1, 1945. Though the chapter is informative on Stillich, it does not connect particularly well to the overall themes of the volume. Likewise, in an ambitious and wildly focused essay, Christoph Auffarth writes about contradictions in the theological interpretations he found among various professors at the University of Marburg under National Socialism. Despite the presence of National Socialist supporter Ernst Benz on its faculty, Marburg University’s faculty of theology maintained its allegiance to the Confessing Church, the branch of German Protestantism that sought freedom from Nazi state oversight and interference. In the next chapter, Manfred Gailus offers reflections on Christians in Nazi Germany by emphasizing both the impact of the 1933 Reich Concordat on Catholics and the high percent of Protestant clergy embracing National Socialism. For him, there should be “no talk of a block of ‘Christian resistance’ or Catholic resistance” (449). At the same time, there was “no clear strategy of religious policy on the part of the NSDAP or the Nazi state.” Instead, both entities approached religion with a “trial and error” mentality (455). Gailus is also one of the few authors who directly addresses the link between Christian and racial antisemitism. Then he concludes, “faith, denomination, and religion were hotly debated topics since 1933, and they occupied most Germans during this epoch more than before and more than afterward in the twentieth century” (461).

Lucia Scherzberg’s essay continues her ongoing study of the National Socialist Priests’ Circle that was the focus of her recent book, Between Party and Church: National Socialist Priests in Austria and Germany 1938-1944 (Zwischen Partei und Kirche: Nationalsozialistische Priester in Österreich und Deutschland 1938-1944, Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag, 2020), which I reviewed in the last issue of CCHQ (26:3, September 2020). In her chapter, she focuses on Father Franz Sales Seidl, a priest of the Passau diocese and one of a few Catholic priests involved in the Eisenach based Institute to Research and Eradicate the Jewish Influence on German Church Life. An active and enthusiastic member, Seidl contributed a three-part study, “Ethnonationalist Elements in the Roman Liturgy,” in which he proposed how to purify the Catholic liturgy of Jewish elements and to recover its so-called Germanic and Nordic roots. Despite the antisemitic and radical nature of his ideas, Seidl and his fellow National Socialist-inclined priests remained traditionally clerical, entirely opposed to any changes in the priesthood.

Mark Edward Ruff offers a thought-provoking essay by comparing the similarities between the “political and religious landscapes of the present with that of National Socialism” to uncover the hybridism of religious belief (493). He asks, “If a 66-year old evangelical Christian spends two hours a week in his church and twenty hours watching Fox News, the question arises which institution has the decisive influence on him. To draw a parallel with the National Socialist era, the following example may be given: If a 28-year old Protestant…in the Nazi era attended church once a month and was politically active for ten hours a week, one wonders what influence had the greatest impact on him” (508). To this end, he concludes, “in many cases, it is much more the political actors who not only draw the line between the religious and the secular but also determine and change the context of faith and its forms” (510).

Finally, Isabel Heinemann offers an overview of the volume by providing a summary of the arguments. She points out five areas of connection: First, although Germany was overwhelmingly Protestant, Catholicism dominated the subjects of the collection’s essays. In part, she believes this fact rests on the need for historians to challenge and dismantle interpretations that emphasize the fundamental resistance of the Catholic Church and Catholics to National Socialism. Second, the connection between faith and racism enabled Christians to integrate racist ideology into the practice of their faith easily. Third, during wartime, most Christians had “no problem with violence against Jews or Bolsheviks” (521). Fourth, the interplay between faith and gender appeared conspicuously, especially the relationship between Christian men and women during the war. Fifth, the interaction of religion and politics highlights the fact that the regime used “sacred symbolism and religious ritual to legitimize its rule and to exalt its own worldviews” (526). Upon pointing out these five areas of connection, Heinemann proposes topics for further study, which include moving beyond Germany to the occupied regions; expanding the time-period of focus (beyond 1933-1945); studying the relationship between faith and war as they tie to the question of annihilative ideology; and investigating the ties between Christian antisemitism and racism, empirically. Lastly, Heinemann recommends exploring the relationship of ethnonationalism to religion, the topic that Rebbeca Carter-Chand and I explore in our upcoming edited volume on ethnonationalism, antisemitism, and Christianity in the era of the two world wars.

Overall, this worthwhile volume provokes more questions than it answers. Still, this posture of inquiry is important as it will advance our understanding of Christian belief under National Socialism. Likewise, as we ponder the convergence of politics and faith in the essays of this volume, Mark Edward Ruff’s chapter, in particular, make for essential reading during this polarized election season.

Review of John Carter Wood, ed., Christianity and National Identity in Twentieth-Century Europe. Conflict, Community, and the Social Order

Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 23, Number 1/2 (June 2017)

Review of John Carter Wood, ed., Christianity and National Identity in Twentieth-Century Europe. Conflict, Community, and the Social Order (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2016), 211 pages, ISBN 9783525101490.

By Sarah Thieme, University of Münster

John Carter Wood has edited a volume which considers religion and its impact on politics, more precisely, the relationship between Christianity and “national identity” and the discourses about this interaction in the “long” twentieth century in Europe. In his introductory essay, the editor stresses the volumes’ focus on the intertwining between national and Christian identities. Rather than having an adversarial relationship, churches and nations often engaged in various partnerships in the twentieth century, Wood argues. Beginning with the changed conditions which shaped their relationship, he claims that the biggest challenges for Christianity were the growing state power—in particular, totalitarianism—and secularisation, which he describes as subjective secularisation. Theses common themes connect the following essays.

The inclusion of Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox perspectives is commendable, as it highlights not only conflicts about national identity within one confession, but also points to conflicts between various denominations and allows comparisons. Continue reading →