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Nazifying Christian Theology: Walter Grundmann and the Institute for the Study and Eradication of Jewish Influence on German Church Life

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Susannah Heschel
Susannah Heschel
Affiliation:
Ms. Heschel is the Abba Hillel Silver Associate Professor of Jewish Studies at Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio.
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Extract

The Third Reich's Kirchenkampf (church struggle) is sometimes mistakenly understood as referring to the Protestant churches' resistance to National Socialism. In fact, the term refers to an internal dispute between members of the Bekennende Kirche [Confessing Church (hereafter BK)] and members of the Deutsche Christen [German Christians (hereafter DC)] over control of the Protestant church. While not all members of the BK opposed Hitler's policies, the movement called for an autonomy of the church from National Socialist legal measures, particularly the racial laws, motivated both by theological and political considerations. The DC, by contrast, sought to introduce National Socialist policies and ideology into the church, especially Nazi racial laws, and modify church doctrine in accord with National Socialist ideology. Yet the antisemitism at the heart of the DC has been either ignored or marginalized by most historians. Indeed, some historians have incorrectly suggested that the DC underwent a dissolution at the end of 1933, from which it never recovered, or have presented the DC as a political creation of National Socialism, ignoring its theological roots.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 63 , Issue 4 , December 1994 , pp. 587 - 605
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1994

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References

I would like to thank several colleagues for their careful and critical reading of this article as it developed: Prof. Robert Ericksen, Olympic College; Prof. Donald Niewyk and Prof. Richard Cogley, both at Southern Methodist University. I would also like to thank the many gracious archivists who assisted me in gathering material for this ongoing research project. I am especially grateful to Dr. David Marwell, Berlin Document Center; Pastor Heinz Koch, LKA Eisenach; Frau Marget Hartleb, University Archive, Jena; Dr. Freifrau von Boselager, Foreign Ministry Archive, Bonn; Dr. Renger, University Archive, Heidelberg; and the archivists at the YIVO Institute, New York, the Zentralarchiv der Kirche, Berlin, and the Bundesarchiv in Potsdam.

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