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British and German High Churchmen in the Struggle against Hitler

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

James Bentley
James Bentley
Affiliation:
Rector of All Saints, Stretford, Manchester
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Extract

The struggle of the Confessing Church', wrote Otto Dibelius, ‘was a struggle of theologians, backed by a very small group of courageous laymen’. The importance of Karl Barth among these theologians was soon recognised. Even today in England and Germany many write almost as if Barth had been the sole theological resource of Hitler's protestant opponents: ‘It was he who nerved the Confessing Church in Germany to resist the attempts of the Nazis to corrupt the Christian witness, and who was driven into exile for doing so’. This is an exaggeration. My purpose here is to draw attention to the Catholic or high church movement in this same struggle. The theological ideas of this movement can be shown to have influenced, directly or indirectly, a considerable number of the protestants who opposed Hitler.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 23 , Issue 3 , July 1972 , pp. 233 - 249
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1972

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References

page 233 note 1 Otto Dibelius, In the Service of the Lord, trans. Mary Ilford, 1965, 162.

page 233 note 2 A. Frey, Cross and Swastika, trans. J. S. McNab, 1938, 137 ff.; Duncan-Jones, A. S. The Strugglefor Religious Freedom in Germany, 1938, 40–42Google Scholar.

page 233 note 3 Vidler, A. R., The Church in an Age of Revolution, 1961, 217Google Scholar. This received opinion found in Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 3rd. ed. 1957, i. 896: ‘In seiner machtigen Polemik gegen die “Deutschen Christen” wurde er zum Rückhalt der “Bekennenden Kirche” ‘.; cf. Bracher, K. D., Sauer, W., and Schulz, G. Die National-sozialistische Machtergreifung, 2nd. ed. Kéln und Opladen, 1962, 335Google Scholar, and Zahrnt, Heinz, Die Sache mit Gott, München 1966, 114Google Scholar

page 233 note 4 Stahlin, W., Via Vitae, Lebenserinnerungen, Kassel 1968, 92Google Scholar ff.

page 233 note 5 ‘The Preparation in History for Christ' in Lux Mundi, ed. C. Gore, 1889, 127–78.

page 233 note 6 W. Stahlin, op. cit. 96–7.

page 234 note 1 Quoted in A. R. Vidler, op. cit. 191.

page 234 note 2 The Revd. Dykes, J. B., Eucharistic Truth and Ritual: a letter to the Rt. Revd the Lord Bishop of Durham, 3rd. ed. 1874, 95Google Scholar.

page 234 note 3 For the socialists, see the circle around Ronald Knox at Oxford in Waugh, E.R. A. Knox, 1959, 90Google Scholar ff., and Noel, ConradJesus the Heretic, 1939Google Scholar, cap. v: ‘Why Catholics should be Socialists’, cap. vi: ‘Why Socialists should be Catholics’. For hesitations about the Liberal Party see dean Liddon's letter 13 January 1879, in Johnston, J. O.Life and Letters of H. P. Liddon, 1904, 229Google Scholar. It was rumoured that Mr. Gladstone favoured disestablishment: Letters of Lord Blachford, ed. G. E. Marindin, 1896, 360; Morley, J.Life of Gladstone, 1903, iii. 501–2Google Scholar. Disestablishment was supported openly, e.g., by Boycott, D. M.Short History of the Oxford Movement, 1933, 163Google Scholar.

page 234 note 4 ‘Thoughts after Lambeth’, in T. S. Eliot Selected Essays, 2nd. ed. 1934, 372.

page 234 note 5 Knox, E. A., Reminiscences of an Octogenarian, 1847–1934, 1934, 302Google Scholar.

page 234 note 6 This particular stance was not, for the most part, found outside high church circles, where the attitude to Church-State relations would very likely have been quite acceptable to Hitler. On 13 December 1941 he observed, ‘Against a Church that identifies itself with the State, as in England, I have nothing to say’. Hitler's Table Talk, trans. N. Cameron and R. H. Stevens, 1953, 143.

page 235 note 1 Op. cit. 97.

page 235 note 2 Ibid., 96. This quotation raises the difficult question of ecclesiastical nomenclature. In this essay ‘evangelical’ is used in its English sense and implies a low churchma in some opposition to high churchmen or catholics; ‘protestant’ is used to denote someone who is not a Roman Catholic. In quotations from other writers this usage inevitably goes occasionally awry.

page 235 note 3 Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 3rd. ed. 1960, iv, 1182: ‘W. Stählin must be especially mentioned for the great influence he wielded as pastoral theologian’; under university of Münster.

page 235 note 4 Stählin, op. cit., 314, 318 ff.

page 235 note 5 Ibid., 322. Ernst Jansen Die Evangelische Michaelsbruderschaft, Kassel 1949, 3 and 13.

page 235 note 6 W. Stählin, The Mystery of God, trans. R. B. Hoyle, 1937, passim. For Stählin's continued influence on the St. Michael's Brotherhood, see E. Jansen, op. cit., 8–11 and 13.

page 235 note 7 Report by Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Gesamrmlte Schriften, ed. E. Bethge, München 1958, i. 122. Cf. the views of the Church in W. Stahlin, The Mystery of God, 128–32.

page 236 note 1 W. Stählin, Via Vitae, 307. Visiting Nashdom Abbey, after the War, Stählin felt obliged to ask Dom Gregory Dix why he wasn't a Roman Catholic: ibid., 542.

page 236 note 2 Op. cit., 140.

page 236 note 3 Introduction to the English edition of A. Frey, Cross and Swastika, 15.

page 236 note 4 Quoted in Volk-Nation-Vaterland, ed. Horst Zillessen, Gütersloh 1970, 181.

page 236 note 5 Helmut Thielicke, Theological Ethics, ii.: Politics, ed. W. H. Lazareth, 1969, 443. Thielicke, who was a member of the Freiburg Circle of the Confessing Church, was referring to Althaus's Theologie der Ordnungen, 2nd. ed. Gütersloh 1935.

page 236 note 6 Unpublished memoir: Erinnerungen, aufgezeichnet in Hermannsburg, 1954, 196 and 253 The Sohm in question is presumably Sohm, Rudolph (Kirchenrecht, Leipzig 1892Google Scholar). I am very much indebted to Pastorin G. Meyer for letting me use her father's memoir, as well as for reading this paper in typescript and making numerous valuable suggestions.

page 237 note 1 E. Jansen, op. cit., 7–8.

page 237 note 2 K. F. Reimers, Lübeck im Kirchenkampf des Dritten Reiches, Gottingen 1965; cf. the American observer S. W. Herman, It's Your Souls We Want, 1943, 143.

page 237 note 3 Their names are in Reimers, op. cit., 355. These pastors had refused to accept the authority of the D. C. Bishop Balzer: ibid., 286 ff.

page 237 note 4 W. Stählin, Via Vitae, 302 ff.

page 237 note 5 Ibid., 243 ff.

page 237 note 6 Loc. cit.

page 237 note 7 K. F. Reimers, op. cit., 78 ff; W. Jannasch, Deutsche Kirchendokumente in die Haltung der Bekennenden Kirche im Dritten Reich, Zurich 1946. Whether supporting or opposing Hitler, Niemoller's actions were impetuous. In 1933 his book Vom U-Boot zur Kanzel enthusiastically welcomed the new regime; for his extraordinary impact, once in opposition, see the letter to Heinrich Mann in Thomas Mann, Briefs, 1889–1936, Frankfurt-am-Main 1961, 420. Cf. also F. Baumgartel, Wider die Kirchenkampflegenden, Neuen-dettelsau 1959, and Keith Robbins, ‘Martin Niemoller, the German Church Struggle, and English Opinion’ in this JOURNAL, xxi (1970), 149–170. Professor Robbins kindly read an early draft of this article and made some valuable criticisms.

page 237 note 8 See the letter of 25 January 1936, in D. Bonhoeffer, Gesammelte Schriften, Band n, ed. E. Bethge, München 1959, 209 ff. N.B., even in 1937 Stählin was sufficiently close to Zoellner to ask him to write a preface to The Mystery of God.

page 238 note 1 O. Dibelius, In the Service of the Lord, 111–12.

page 238 note 2 A. Nygren, The Church Controversy in Germany, trans. G. C. Richards, 1934, 84, n. 1.

page 238 note 3 K. Barth, Die Kirchliche Dogmatik, Band rv. i: Die Lehre von der Versöhnung, Zürich 1960, 799–800; D. Bonhoeffer, Ethics, ed. E. Bethge, trans. N. H. Smith, Fontana edition 1964, 334. On this cleavage between Barthians and Anglo-Catholics see Keith Robbins, art. cit., 161. In The Nature ofCatholicity, 1941, Daniel Jenkins used Barth's arguments to attack the Anglo-Cadiolic position without any reference to the German Church Struggle.

page 238 note 4 Die Kirchliche Dogmatik, Band 11. 1: Die Lehre von Gott, 1958, 194; cf. the whole section, 194–200. Hitler, for his part, complained that Christianity was ‘a rebellion against Natural Law': op. cit., 10 October 1941, 51.

page 238 note 5 A. Frey, op. cit., 157; cf. Barth ibid., 195: ‘Der Logik der Sache gemass musste es uberall da, wo man der natürlichen Theologie auch nur den kleinen Finger gibt, zur Leugnung der Offenbarung Gottes in Jesus Christus kommen’.

page 239 note 1 Dibelius op. cit., 218–19; Asmussen was deprived of office from 1934 to 1945: Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 3rd. ed. 1957, i. 649. After the War he and Stählin edited a volume of essays, Die Katholizitat der Kirche, Stuttgart 1957. Cf. Stählin, Via Vitae, 505 f.

page 239 note 2 E. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: a Biography, trans, under the editorship of E. Robertson, 1970, 389.

page 239 note 3 Letters and Papersfrom Prison, ed. E. Bethge, Fontana edition 1959, 109–10.

page 239 note 4 E. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 360.

page 239 note 5 Georg Prater, Kdmpfer wider Willen, Erinnerungen des Landesbischofs von Sachsen, Metzingen 1969, 34 and 255. According to Hahn, Schleinitz dressed as a Lutheran pastor but had the ascetic features of a Roman Catholic priest; the Deutsche Christen rudely nick-named him ‘Jesuitenfratze’.

page 239 note 6 Ibid., 255. For Prater's own attitude during the Church Struggle, see G. Prater Lasset uns halten an dent Bekenntnis, Schleswig-Holstein 1960.

page 240 note 1 Quoted in A. Nygren, op. cit., 26, n. 1. For Dibelius's own account of his experiences during the Third Reich, see In the Service of the Lord, 81–2 and 135–69.

page 240 note 2 M. Bendiscioli, Nazism versus Christianity, trans. Gerald Griffin, n.d., 130.

page 240 note 3 Dibelius op. cit., 174.

page 240 note 4 A. S. Duncan-Jones, op. cit., 29.

page 240 note 5 W. Stählin, Via Vitae, 429.

page 240 note 6 The Mystery of God, 164–5.

page 241 note 1 Op. cit., 125.

page 241 note 2 Ibid., 128; cf. 131.

page 241 note 3 A. M. Ramsey, op. cit., 8 and 203.

page 241 note 4 W. Stählin, Via Vitae, 203. After a few months his relatives and friends secured his release from prison on condition that he became a soldier. He thus avoided being sent to a concentration camp.

page 241 note 5 Ibid., 337.

page 241 note 6 F. Heiler, The Spirit of Worship, with an additional essay on Catholicity, Eastern, and Evangelical, trans. W. Montgomery, 1926, 182.

page 241 note 7 F. Heiler, in Northern Catholicism, ed. N. P. Williams and C. Harris, 1933, 486.

page 241 note 8 Via Vitae, 337.

page 242 note 1 The Spirit of Worship, 186. For Vilmar and Lohe in Heiler's movement see Northern Catholicism, 481, and Heiler's essay on Catholicity in the 2nd ed. of Die Religion in Ge-schichte und Gegenwart, trans. R. A. Wilson in Twentieth Century Theology in the Making, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan, 1970, iii. 12a; among the Berneuchener see Oskar Planck in Frei für Gott und die Menschen, ed. Lydia Präger, Stuttgart 1959, 295, E. Jansen, op. cit., 12, and W. Stählin, The Mystery of God, 165.

page 242 note 2 Heiler believed re-union with Rome to be the inevitable consequence of th e Anglo-Catholic movement: J. Pelikan, loc. cit.

page 242 note 3 Northern Catholicism, 482.

page 242 note 4 The Spirit of Worship, 10–11.

page 242 note 5 Northern Catholicism, 487.

page 242 note 6 Introduction to A. Frey, op. cit., 22; cf. 16.

page 242 note 7 Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 3rd. ed. 1959, iii. 380. (For Heiler's clash with the National Socialists: ibid., 145.) Müller was Hitler's candidate. For an assessment of his qualities see J. S. Conway, The Nazi Persecution of the Churches, 1933–1945, 34–5, and Otto Dibelius In the Service of the Lord, 140–1.

page 243 note 1 N. Micklem, The Box and the Puppets, (1888–1953), ‘957.’ 12.

page 243 note 2 H. H. Kelly, No Pious Person, ed. G. Every, 1960, 108.

page 243 note 3 T. S. Eliot ‘Thoughts after Lambeth’ in Selected Essays, 2nd ed. 1934, 369, and ‘Catholics and International Order’ in Essays Ancient and Modern, 1936, 131 and 122; cf. The Idea of a Christian Society, 1939, 120.

page 243 note 4 ‘The Confessing Church and the Ecumenical Movement’ in The Sufficiency of God, ed. R. C. Mackie and Charles C. West, 1963, 142.

page 243 note 5 N. Micklemj op. cit., 107. As chairman of the Stockholm Theological Commission, Deissmann had organised with George Bell the first British-German Theological Conference in 1927: see Mysterium Christi, ed. G. K. A. Bell and D. Adolf Deissmann, 1930. v.

page 244 note 1 Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 3rd ed. i960 iv. 378. Lilje was General Secretary of the German S.C.M. from 1927 to 1935. In 1928 he became a member of the executive committee of the World S.C.M. and in 1932 a vice-president.

page 244 note 2 E. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 148–9.

page 244 note 3 Via Vitae, 511. Th e St. Michael's Brotherhood promoted exchanges not only with Anglicans but also with Roma Catholic religious orders, notably the Benedictines: R. Mumm ‘Okumenische Modelle’ in Okumene in Schule und Gemeinde, ed. F. Hasselhoff and H. Krüger, Stuttgart 1971, 210. For initial hesitation in ecumenical matters see the article ‘Hochkirchliche Bewegung’ in Lexikon fur Theologie und Kirche, Freiburg 1960, v. 398.

page 244 note 4 Duncan-Jones, in Northern Catholicism, 477; Heiler, The Spirit of Worship, 187.

page 244 note 5 ‘Bekennende Kirche und Okumene’ in Bekennende Kirche, ed. Joachi m Beckman and Herbert Mochalski, München 1952, 191.

page 244 note 6 R. C. D. Jasper George Bell, Bishop of Chichester, 1967, 165.

page 244 note 7 Ibid., 59.

page 244 note 8 Letters of Herbert Hensley Henson, ed. E. F. Braley, 1951, 64. For Henson's approval, see More Letters of Hensley Henson, ed. E. F. Braley, 1955, 56.

page 245 note 1 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 283.

page 245 note 2 H. E. Sheen, Canon Peter Green: a biography of a Great Parish Priest, 1965. Green part in an ecumenical study group arranged by William Temple just before the outbreak of World War II. It was attended by Dr. E. Gerstenmaier, who was at this time at odds with Bonhoeffer because of the former's decidely anti-Barthian theology. They were soon to come together as members of the resistance: Bethge, op. cit., 574, 423 ff.

page 245 note 3 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Gesammelte Schriften, Munchen 1959, ii. 184.

page 245 note 4 Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 335. In 1936 Bonhoeffer published an essay on ‘Christ in the Psalms’, drawing on a tradition of Anglo-Catholic writing going back at least as far as Benson, R. M., War Songs of the Prince of Peace, 1901Google Scholar; cf. Bosanquet, Mary, The and Death of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 1968, 152Google Scholar.

page 245 note 5 Julius Rieger in I Knew Dietrich Bonhoeffer, ed. W.-D. Zimmermann and R. G Smith, trans. K. G. Smith, 1966, 97.

page 245 note 6 Kuhns, W., In Pursuit of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 1967, 92Google Scholar.

page 245 note 7 Ibid., 93.

page 246 note 1 Gesammelte Schriften, i. 269–70.

page 246 note 2 Landgrebe, Wilhelm, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: ein Blutzeuge aus jüngster Zeit Giessen 1958, 14Google Scholar.

page 246 note 3 H. H. Kelly, op. tit., 82; S. Paget and J. M. C. Crum, Francis Paget, Bishop of Oxford, 1913, 50.

page 246 note 4 Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 335.

page 246 note 5 Ibid., 523 ; cf. Bethge's own comments on the relationship, 388. The Sydow was another protestant brotherhood, see Lydia Prager, op. cit., 231 ff.

page 246 note 6 Bethge, op. tit., 379–80.

page 246 note 7 Ibid., 693; Stählin Via Vitae, 318 ff.

page 246 note 8 Bethge, op. cit., 432.

page 247 note 1 Stählin, The Mystery of God, 161–2; Heiler, The Spirit of Worship, 182; Bonhoeffer, Gemeinsames Leben, München 1939, trans. J. W. Doberstein 1954, 1 f.

page 247 note 2 The Wittenberg Articles are printed in translation Neelak Tzirnagel, Henry VIII and the Lutherans, St. Louis, Missouri, 1965, 255–86. They put forward the notion of a common life similar to that established at Finkenwalde. In spite of his disagreement with Bonhoeffer on the subject of State Universities, Wilhelm Stählin tried unsuccessfully to start a seminary on these lines: Via Vitae, 333.

page 247 note 3 Heiler, The Spirit of Worship, 182; Mary Bosanquet, op. cit., 152, Wolf-Dieter Zimmermann in I Knew Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 107 and no ; Georg Mentz, Die Wittenberger Artikel von 1536, Leipzig 1905.

page 247 note 4 S. W. Herman, op. cit., 142.

page 247 note 5 Quoted by Leo Stein, I Was in Hell with Niemoller, n.d., 46.

page 247 note 6 Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 790–2 and 850.

page 248 note 1 Op. cit., 15.

page 248 note 2 In Germans Against Hitler, ed. E. Zimmermann and H.-A. Jacobsen, trans. Allan and Lieselotte Yahraes, Bonn i960, 255; cf. the analysis of Church-State relations made in 1927 by Professor Friedrich Giess, quoted by S. W. Herman, op. cit., 115.

page 248 note 3 R. C. D. Jasper, Arthur Cayley Headlam, 1960, 290–301; Keith Robbins, art. cit., 165.

page 248 note 4 Christopher Sykes, Troubled Loyalty, 1968, 419.

page 248 note 5 Ibid., 18–19, 34–7, an d 108–9. Von Trott was extremely friendly with Sheila Grant Duff, who belonged to an Anglo-Catholic family, but she has written to me to say that they spoke little about religion.

page 249 note 1 R. C. D. Jasper, George Bell, 49.

page 249 note 2 A Brief Sketch of the Church of England, 1929, 124.

page 249 note 3 R. C. D. Jasper, George Bell, 203 and 208.

page 249 note 4 Ritter, Gerhard, The German Resistance, Carl Goerdeler's Struggle against Tyranny, trans. R. T. Clark, 1958, 50Google Scholar.

page 249 note 5 A. Speer, Inside the Third Reich, trans. Richard and Clara Winston, 1970, 313.

page 249 note 6 Hermelinck, H., Das Christentum in der Menschheitsgeschichte von der Französischen Revolution bis zur Gegenwart, Tübingen 1953, iii. 259Google Scholar.