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The Architecture of Faith under National Socialism: Lutheran Church Building(s) in Braunschweig, 1933–1945

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 April 2015

FRIEDRICH WEBER  and
CHARLOTTE METHUEN
FRIEDRICH WEBER
Affiliation:
University of Braunschweig
CHARLOTTE METHUEN
Affiliation:
Theology and Religious Studies, University of Glasgow, 4 The Square, Glasgow G12 8QQ; e-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

It has frequently been assumed that church building ceased after the National Socialists came to power in Germany in 1933. This article shows that it continued, and considers the reasons why this was the case. Focussing on churches built in the Church of Braunschweig between 1933 and 1936, it explores the interactions between emergent priorities for church architecture and the rhetoric of National Socialist ideology, and traces their influence on the building of new Protestant churches in Braunschweig. It examines the way in which Braunschweig Cathedral was reordered in accordance with National Socialist interests, and the ambiguity which such a reordering implied for the on-going Christian life of the congregation. It concludes that church building was widely understood to be a part of the National Socialist programme for creating employment, but was also used to emphasise the continuing role of the Church in building community. However, there is still much work to be done to investigate the ways in which churches and congregations interacted with National Socialism in their day-to-day existence.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 66 , Issue 2 , April 2015 , pp. 340 - 371
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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References

1 BBL, 186–7, 318–19. Compare also http://www.vernetztes-gedaechtnis.de/ (accessed 13 Feb. 2013), especially the excellent timeline. It was this government that in 1932 made it possible for Hitler to become a German citizen.

2 Kuessner, Dietrich, ‘Die Braunschweiger Landeskirche im 20. Jahrhundert’, in Weber, Friedrich, Hoffmann, Birgit and Engelking, Hans-Jürgen (eds), Von der Taufe der Sachsen zur Kirche in Niedersachsen: Geschichte der Evangelisch-Lutherischen Landeskirche in Braunschweig, Braunschweig 2010, 349–462Google Scholar at pp. 378–9. Compare also Kuessner, Dietrich, Ansichten einer versunkenen Stadt: die Braunschweiger Stadtkirchen, 1933–1950, Wendeburg 2012Google Scholar.

3 Under the 1919 Weimar constitution, the German Landeskirchen were reordered and church leadership separated from structures of state government. In Lutheran churches, this constitution gave new importance to synods and generally meant the introduction of an elected Landesbichof. Braunschweig's first Landesbischof, Alexander Bernewitz, was bishop from 1923 until 1933: Büttner, Ursula, Weimar: die überforderte Republik, 1918–1933, Stuttgart 2008, 269–72Google Scholar; Kuessner, ‘Braunschweiger Landeskirche’, 361–7; BBL, 55–7.

4 Kuessner, ‘Braunschweiger Landeskirche’, 382–3; BBL, 62.

5 For Beye's trial see Kuessner, Ansichten, 181–93.

6 Kuessner, ‘Braunschweiger Landeskirche’, 385–91; BBL, 304–5.

7 Kuessner, ‘Braunschweiger Landeskirche’, 384–5.

8 Gailus, Manfred, Protestantismus und Nationalsozialismus: Studien zur nationalsozialistischen Durchdringung des protestantischen Sozialmilieus in Berlin, Cologne 2001, 415Google Scholar. For studies of other Landeskirchen see Gailus, Manfred und Krogel, Wolfgang (eds), Von der babylonischen Gefangenschaft der Kirche im Nationalen: Regionalstudien zu Protestantismus, Nationalsozialismus und Nachkriegsgeschichte 1930 bis 2000, Berlin 2006Google Scholar.

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16 Gailus, Manfred, ‘Keine gute Performance: die deutschen Protestanten im “Dritten Reich”’, in Gailus, Manfred and Nolzen, Armin (eds), Zerstrittene ‘Volksgemeinschaft’: Glaube, Konfession und Religion im Nationalsozialismus, Göttingen 2011, 96–121Google Scholar, quotation at pp. 102–3. For the complex and often contradictory reactions of German Protestants to the rise of National Socialism see Scholder, Klaus, Die Kirchen und das Dritte Reich, I: Vorgeschichte und Zeit der Illusionen, 1918–1934, Berlin 1977, esp. pp. 212–38Google Scholar, 277–99.

17 Tuchel, Johannes, ‘Nationalsozialismus und christliche Kirchen’, in Endlich, Stefanie, Geyler-von Bernus, Monika, and Rossié, Beate (eds), Christenkreuz und Hakenkreuz: Kirchenbau und sakrale Kunst im Nationalsozialismus; Katalogbuch zur Austellung, Berlin 2008, 9–14Google Scholar at p. 9.

18 Heschel, Aryan Jesus, 5, citing the work of Mosse, George, The crisis of German ideology: intellectual origins of the Third Reich, New York 1964Google Scholar, repr. 1998, and Stern, Fritz Richard, The politics of cultural despair: a study in the rise of the Germanic ideology, Berkeley 1961CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Strohm, Die Kirchen im Dritten Reich, 15. Alfred Rosenberg's antisemitic and anti-Christian work, Der Mythos des 20. Jahrhunderts: eine Wertung der seelisch-geistigen Gestaltenkämpfe unserer Zeit, originally printed Munich 1930, had by 1943 been reprinted at least eleven times and sold over a million copies. For his thought see Steigmann-Gall, The holy Reich, 91–101.

20 For the 25-point programme of the NSDAP see http://www.dhm.de/lemo/html/dokumente/nsdap25/index.html (accessed 11 Feb. 2013). From 1933 this National Socialist affirmation of positive Christianity became a call to ‘active Christianity’: Steigmann-Gall, The holy Reich, 115–26. For anti-democratic and anti-Communist attitudes amongst Protestants compare also Büttner, Weimar, 272–6. Gerhard Besier argues that the Catholic Church ‘tried to represent itself as the guarantor of the successful fight against Bolshevism’: ‘Anti-Bolshevism and antisemitism: the Catholic Church in Germany and National Socialist ideology, 1936–1937’, this Journal xliii (1992), 447–46 at p. 452. Many Protestants held similar attitudes.

21 Nolzen, Armin, ‘Nationalsozialismus und Christentum: konfessionsgeschichtliche Befunde zur NSDAP’, in Gailus, and Nolzen, , Zerstrittene ‘Volksgemeinschaft’, 151–79, esp. pp. 154–62Google Scholar.

22 Figures for Protestants joining and leaving the church in Braunschweig are given for the period 1918–1932 in Kuessner, ‘Die Braunschweiger Landeskirche im 20. Jahrhundert’, 371. Membership statistics show a decline between 1924 and 1930, and an increase from 1933 to 1940. However, the increase in 1939 and 1940 may represent war-induced population shifts (pp. 376, 388).

23 See Steigmann-Gall, The holy Reich, 86–113.

24 Preface to the Barmen Declaration: http://www.ekd.de/glauben/bekenntnisse/barmer_theologische_erklaerung.html (accessed 11 Feb. 2013), with link to an English translation (here slightly amended).

25 Gailus, Protestantismus und Nationalsozialismus, 124–8.

26 Schmidt, Kurt Dietrich, Einführung in die Geschichte des Kirchenkampfes in der nationalsozialistischen Zeit, ed. Reller, Jobst, Hermannsburg 2009, 189Google Scholar. For the continuing stability of the Volkskirche in Braunschweig see Kuessner, Ansichten, 348–68.

27 See Schmidt, Einführung, 226–31; Herbert, Karl, Der Kirchenkampf: Historie oder bleibendes Erbe?, Frankfurt-am-Main 1985, 197–202Google Scholar, 204–10; and Meier, Kurt, Der evangelische Kirchenkampf, III: Im Zeichen des zweiten Weltkrieges, Gottingen 1984, 43–62Google Scholar.

28 Hermann Göring married his second wife, Emmy, in a Lutheran Church and had his daughter Edda baptised: Steigmann-Gall, The holy Reich, 120.

29 Kuessner, ‘Kunst und Kirche’, 161. Leistikow was neither a German Christian nor, after 1935, an adherent of the Confessing Church, but saw himself as a ‘man of the middle’ who sought to preserve ‘traditional Christianity’ in the congregations: idem, Ansichten, 224, 229. See also BBL 376.

30 Strohm, Die Kirchen im Dritten Reich, 86.

31 For examples see Kuessner, Ansichten, 328–32. Traditional hymns, prayers and the catechism were also amended by the ‘Institute for the Study and Eradication of Jewish Influence on German Church Life’: Heschel, Aryan Jesus, 113–28.

32 Cited according to Kuessner, ‘Kunst und Kirche’, 161. Roughly translated, this means: ‘Lord God, be with the Führer, that his work will be yours. / Lord God, be with us, that his work may be ours. / That our work may be his. / Lord God, be with us all.’

33 This view was not only held by Germans: in 1936 ‘A minister's wife’ from Scotland reported from Berchtesgarten that ‘on a wooded hillside above stood the modest house towards which the eyes of the valley folk turn many times a day – the home of their much-loved Führer’. In the local Protestant church ‘the pastor prayed for the sick and needy, for the Government, and for “Our Leader.” For however it may be with theologians and ecclesiastics, the ordinary Church member in Germany, like many of the pastors, is able quite simply to combine loyalty with Adolf Hitler with “pure religion and undefiled”’: ‘Sunday in Hitler's village’, Life and Work: The Record of the Church of Scotland vii (1936), 423–4.

34 Kuessner, Ansichten, 333–8.

35 Kuessner, Dietrich, ‘Widerstehen oder bauen?’, in Rammler, Dieter and Strauss, Michael (eds), Kirchenbau im Nationalsozialismus: Beispiele aus der braunschweigischen Landeskirche, Wolfenbüttel 2009, 53–5Google Scholar at p. 54; cf. Kuessner, Ansichten, 341–4.

36 Campenhausen, Axel von, Staatskirchenrecht, 3rd edn, Munich 1996, 44–5Google Scholar.

37 Rossié calculates that between 1933 and 1944 more than 560 new churches (at least 370 Catholic and 190 Protestant), 50 chapels and 40 parish halls or centres were built, and 450 buildings – often historically significant churches – were remodelled or reordered: ‘“Symbolhafte Sprache, die aus der Weltanschauung entspringt”: Kirchliche Kunst im Nationalsozialismus’, in Endlich, Geyler-von Bernus and Rossié, Christenkreuz und Hakenkreuz, 96–110 at p. 96. This programme was explored in the exhibition ‘Christenkreuz und Hakenkreuz: Kirchenbau und sakrale Kunst im Nationalsozialismus’ (Berlin–Munich 2008/9). Compare also Langmaack, Gerhard, Evangelischer Kirchenbau im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert: Geschichte, Dokumentation, Synopse, Kassel 1971, 61–6Google Scholar.

38 Müller, Helmut, ‘Landeskirchliche Neubaumassnahmen in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus’, in Rammler, and Strauss, Kirchenbau im Nationalsozialismus, 56–72Google Scholar at pp. 70–2.

39 Prolingheuer, Hans, Hitlers fromme Bilderstürmer: Kirche und Kunst unterm Hakenkreuz, Berlin 2001, 63–4Google Scholar, citing examples from Brandenburg.

40 Kuessner, ‘Kunst und Kirche’, 157. Similar increases can be observed in other Landeskirchen.

41 Rossié calculates that 430 new churches were built between 1933 and 1937, and 130 between 1938 and 1944: ‘Symbolhafte Sprache’, 96, and ‘Kirchenkunst und Ideologie’, in Rammler and Strauss, Kirchenbau im Nationalsozialismus, 44–9 at p. 44.

42 For an extended discussion of the Luther Church see Endlich, Geyler-von Bernus and Rossié, Christenkreuz und Hakenkreuz, 18–40.

43 Ibid. 18–19.

44 Ibid. 7.

45 Similar uses of National Socialist imagery can be found in churches built in Cologne-Bayenthal, Hamburg-Wellingsbüttel, Ingolstadt, Lübeck and Offenbach-Bieber: Rossié, ‘Kirchenkunst und Ideologie’, 47. For images of these churches see ibid. 81 (Cologne), 46–8 (Hamburg), 78–9 (Ingolstadt), 66–9 (Lübeck) and 70–3 (Offenbach). A number of Protestant churches were built in this period in memory of significant political figures: Bremen had both a ‘Bismarck memorial church’ and a ‘Horst Wessel memorial church’ (Kuessner, ‘Kunst und Kirche’, 158–9), and in Berlin there was a ‘Hindenburg memorial church’: Rossié, ‘Kirchenkunst und Ideologie’, 45; cf. Endlich, Geyler-von Bernus, and Rossié, Christenkreuz und Hakenkreuz, 53. Nuremberg had a Gustav Adolf memorial church, built in similar style to the Luther Church but consecrated in 1930, and Berlin had a more modern one built by Bartning and completed in 1934. These dedications continued the tradition of the rather earlier Emperor Wilhelm memorial church in Berlin.

46 Thus the title of a sermon preached by Walter Kawerau at the 1936 Reichsparteitag: Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott! Das Lied Luthers gegen den Türken, das Lied des heutigen Deutschland[s] gegen den Bolschewismus, Halle 1936. In a hymnbook published in 1941 by the ‘Institute for the Study and Eradication of Jewish Influence on German Church Life’, ‘Ein feste Burg …’ was given the title ‘Heilig Vaterland. Volk vor Gott’ (‘Holy Fatherland. Volk before God’), and the phrase ‘Herr Zebaoth’, was replaced by ‘der Retter in Not’: Heschel, Aryan Jesus, 118, 120, 124.

47 Endlich, Geyler-von Bernus and Rossié, Christenkreuz und Hakenkreuz, 24.

48 Ibid. 30–1.

49 Ibid. 32.

50 Ibid. 23. Many German men joined the Sturmabteilung or Storm Troopers.

51 Ibid. 34–5.

52 Ibid. 19.

53 Ibid.

54 For Bartning's views of how church architecture should respond to the ‘signs of the times’ see his Vom neuen Kirchenbau, Berlin 1919; cf. Langmaack, Evangelischer Kirchenbau, 47–8.

55 Langmaack, Evangelischer Kirchenbau, 16. Nigel Yates observes that Lutheran churches had already developed the cruciform-plan church and the pulpit-altar arrangement which created one focus of attention in the church. These, he suggests, ‘anticipated, in a rather uncanny manner, much of the liturgical agenda of the modern church’: Liturgical space: Christian worship and church buildings in western Europe, 1500–2000, Farnham 2008, 334–8, 42.

56 Naumann, Friedrich, Jesus als Volksmann, Göttingen 1894Google Scholar, repr. in his Werke, I: Religiöse Schriften, ed. Walter Uhsadel, Opladen 1964, 371–88. For Naumann's theology see Fehlberg, Frank, Protestantismus und Nationaler Sozialismus: liberale Theologie und politisches Denken um Friedrich Naumann, Bonn 2012Google Scholar.

57 Naumann, ‘Der neue Dom zu Berlin’, Werke, i. 686–8 at p. 688. See also Langmaack, Evangelischer Kirchenbau, 360 n. 11.

58 Naumann, Friedrich, ‘Die Kirche der Zukunft’, Werke, i. 564–5Google Scholar at p. 564, repr. KuK v (1928/9, 118. The principles of church architecture are discussed in a series of articles in KuK v/3 arising from the ‘Third Congress on Church Building’ (1928). See also Rammler and Strauss, Kirchenbau im Nationalsozialismus, 12, and Kuessner, ‘Kunst und Kirche’, 162. The hall-church was popular in early nineteenth-century Reformed church architecture: Yates, Liturgical space, 61.

59 Horn, Curt, ‘Der evangelische Kirchbau unserer Tage’, KuK v (1928/9), 81–95Google Scholar at p. 86.

60 The round Church of the Resurrection in Essen, designed by Bartning and consecrated in 1930, is a good example: Horn, ‘Der evangelische Kirchbau unserer Tage’, 81–4, and ‘Die liturgische Grundeinstellung im Werke Otto Bartnings’, KuK vii (1930), 99–104; Wilhelm-Kaestner, Kurt, ‘Die kunstlerische Form der Essener Kirche’, KuK vii (1930), 105–11Google Scholar; cf. Langmaack, Evangelischer Kirchenbau, 59. For other churches designed by Bartning between 1928 and 1934 see Langmaack, Evangelischer Kirchenbau, 55, 63, 333; cf. Hirzel, Stephan, ‘Otto Bartning und der Kirchbau’, KuK vii (1930), 112–16Google Scholar, and Hirzel, Stephan and Bartning, Otto, ‘Die Gustav-Adolf Kirche in Berlin’, KuK xi (1934), 17–30Google Scholar.

61 This is clear from the chronological overview in Langmaack, Evangelischer Kirchenbau, 53–129. See also Yates, Liturgical space, 144–7, and Holger Brülls, ‘“Deutscher Gotteshäuser” Kirchenbau im Nationalsozialismus: ein unterschlagenes Kapitel der deutschen Architekturgeschichte’, in Endlich, Geyler-von Bernus and Rossié, Christenkreuz und Hakenkreuz, 85–95, esp. pp. 86–91.

62 Thus, in 1933, Winfried Wendland commented in an article on ‘The Church of the Third Reich and Art’ that ‘Now that the individualism of the expressionists and impressionists has been overcome, a new form of ecclesiastical art, urgently needed by our Volk, will emerge from the newly blooming community life [Gemeindeleben], led by a strong new church. … Also necessary is a new architectural politics, no longer dependent on haphazard decisions by parliamentary majority and the groups who happen to be in the church councils, but authoritatively led by the Reichskirche in conjunction with the independent artists who offer themselves to serve the church’: ‘Die Kirche des dritten Reiches und die Kunst’, KuK x (1933) 39–40 at p. 40. Both before and after 1933 the journal Kunst und Kirche included extensive discussions of typographical fonts and of different artistic representations of Christ. Noticeably, from 1936 onwards, the journal was set entirely in Gothic type, rather than the Latin type with Bauhaus-style title used in the early volumes.

63 Hübner, Fritz, ‘Bekennende Kirche als kunstschöpferische Macht’, Junge Kirche iii (1935), 501–4Google Scholar at pp. 501–2; cf. Prolingheuer, Hitlers fromme Bilderstürmer, 58–9.

64 Hübner, ‘BK als kunstschöpferische Macht’, 503.

65 Prolingheuer, Hitlers fromme Bilderstürmer, jacket text. See also Mertin, Andreas, ‘Verstrickung oder Komplizenschaft?’ Tà katoptrizómena: Magazin für Kunst, Kultur, Theologie, Ästhetik lxxiv (2011): http://www.theomag.de/74/am374.htm (accessed 14 Feb. 2013)Google Scholar.

66 Kuessner, ‘Kunst und Kirche’, 161, cf. his Ansichten, 127–9.

67 In 2009 this building programme was the subject of an exhibition in Braunschweig's Brüdernkirche (exhibition catalogues: Kirchenbau im Nationalsozialismus; Friedrich Weber [ed.], Kirchenbau von 1933 bis 1945, Wolfenbüttel 2009 [identical to Rammler and Strauss, Kirchenbau im Nationalsozialismus, 11–34]).

68 Kuessner, ‘Kunst und Kirche’, 163.

69 Rammler and Strauss, Kirchenbau im Nationalsozialismus, 16–17. Kuessner, Ansichten, 218–33.

70 Kuessner, ‘Kunst und Kirche’, 162, and Ansichten, 222–3.

71 Leistikow opposed the idea that National Socialists should leave the Church, and in 1935 was arrested and tried for protesting when a group of SS-men did so: Kuessener, Ansichten, 226–9.

72 Rammler and Strauss, Kirchenbau im Nationalsozialismus, 18–19.

73 Ibid. 19.

74 Ibid. 22–3. See also Kuessner, Ansichten, 260–3.

75 ‘Eine Baugesinnung, die den Geist eines volkshaft-gebundenen seelischen Reichtums in herzlicher Innigkeit atmet’: Brandes, R. A.: ‘Die kulturelle Erneuerung und die protestantische Kirche’, KuK xi (1934), 31–4Google Scholar at p. 34; cf. also Rammler and Strauss, Kirchenbau im Nationalsozialismus, 23, and Kuessner, ‘Kunst und Kirche’, 164. Thanks to Birgit Hoffmann, archivist of the Braunschweig Landeskirche, for her assistance in identifying Brandes.

76 Rammler and Strauss, Kirchenbau im Nationalsozialismus, 24–7. See also Kuessner, Ansichten, 263–9.

77 For the theology underlying this representation and further examples see Heschel, Aryan Jesus, especially pp. 41–55.

78 Rammler and Strauss, Kirchenbau im Nationalsozialismus, 23.

79 Ibid. 20–1. See also Kuessner, Ansichten, 256–60.

80 Rammler and Strauss, Kirchenbau im Nationalsozialismus, 20–1: report of the laying of the foundation stone of the chapel in Rühme, Braunschweiger Allgemeiner Anzeiger, 15 June1936.

81 Ibid. 28–9.

82 Kuessner, ‘Kunst und Kirche’, 166.

83 For the reordering of Braunschweig Cathedral see Tim Lorentzen, Ideologische Usurpation: die nationalsozialistische Umgestaltung der Stiftskirchen zu Braunschweig und Quedlinburg als Zeichenhandlung (Quellen und Beiträge zur Geschichte der Braunschweigischen Landeskirche xv), Wolfenbüttel 2005; cf. Fuhrmeister, Christian, ‘Purifizierung, Moderne, Ideologie: zur Umgestaltung des Braunschweiger Doms im Nationalsozialismus’, in Rammler, and Strauss, Kirchenbau im Nationalsozialismus, 87–101Google Scholar, and Kuessner, Ansichten, 295–323.

84 For these developments see Lorentzen, Ideologische Usurpation, 23.

85 Ibid. 19.

86 It was originally assumed that an earlier crypt had been filled in; when this assumption proved incorrect, a crypt was excavated: Fuhrmeister, ‘Purifizierung, Moderne, Ideologie’, 92–6.

87 For this (mis-)appropriation of history see Lorentzen, Ideologische Usurpation, 43–9.

88 Ibid. 53.

89 Bernhard Ritter, Karl, ‘Kirche und Denkmalpflege, KuK xv/4 (1938), 3–7Google Scholar at p. 5; cf. Kuessner, ‘Kunst und Kirche’, 167–8.

90 Lorentzen, Ideologische Usurpation, 3.

91 This is very apparent from the building projects described in Kunst und Kirche throughout this period.

92 Kuessner, Ansichten, offers useful insights in this area; cf. Gailus's study of liturgy and parish life in one ‘nazified’ church, the Good Shepherd in Berlin-Friedenau: Protestantismus und Nationalsozialismus, 161–75.