Status and official names
The many changes in the Church throughout its history are reflected in its several name changes. These include: * 1817–1821: The church union was still being regulated by Prussian officials, and no official name was taken up for it yet. Informal names reported elsewhere included Prussian Union of Churches and the Union of Churches in Prussia. * 1821–1845: Evangelical Church in the Royal Prussian Lands – theHistory
The Calvinist (Reformed) and Lutheran Protestant churches had existed in parallel after Prince-Elector John Sigismund declared his conversion fromRoyal attempts to merge Lutherans and Calvinists
One year after he ascended to the throne in 1798, Frederick William III, being ''summus episcopus'' (Supreme Governor of the Protestant Churches), decreed a new common liturgical agenda (service book) to be published for use in both the Lutheran and Reformed congregations. The king, a Reformed Christian, lived in a denominationally mixed marriage with the Lutheran Queen Louise (1776–1810), which is why they never partook of Communion together.Wilhelm Hüffmeier, "Die Evangelische Kirche der Union: Eine kurze geschichtliche Orientierung", in: ''"... den großen Zwecken des Christenthums gemäß": Die Evangelische Kirche der Union 1817 bis 1992; Eine Handreichung für die Gemeinden'', Wilhelm Hüffmeier (compilator) for the Kirchenkanzlei der Evangelischen Kirche der Union (ed.) on behalf of the Synod, Bielefeld: Luther-Verlag, 1992, pp. 13–28, here p. 16. A commission was formed in order to prepare this common agenda. This liturgical agenda was the culmination of the efforts of his predecessors to unify the two Protestant churches in Prussia and in its predecessor, theQuarrels over the union
In 1821, the administrative umbrella comprising the Protestant congregations in Prussia adopted the name Evangelical Church in the Royal Prussian Lands (german: link=no, Evangelische Kirche in den Königlich-Preußischen Landen).Wilhelm Hüffmeier, "Die Evangelische Kirche der Union: Eine kurze geschichtliche Orientierung", in: ''"... den großen Zwecken des Christenthums gemäß": Die Evangelische Kirche der Union 1817 bis 1992; Eine Handreichung für die Gemeinden'', Wilhelm Hüffmeier (compilator) for the Kirchenkanzlei der Evangelischen Kirche der Union (ed.) on behalf of the Synod, Bielefeld: Luther-Verlag, 1992, pp. 13–28, here p. 13. At Christmas time the same year, a common liturgical agenda was produced, as a result of a great deal of personal work by Frederick William, as well by the commission that he had appointed in 1798. The agenda was not well received by many Lutherans, as it was seen to compromise the wording of theOld Lutheran schism
By 1835, many dissenting Old Lutheran groups were looking to emigration as a means to findingProtestant churches in Prussia's new provinces
In 1850, the predominantly Catholic principalities ofForeign commitment of the Church
At the instigation of Frederick William IV the Anglican Church of England and the Evangelical Church in the Royal Prussian Lands founded the Anglican-German Bishopric in Jerusalem, Anglican-Evangelical Bishopric in Jerusalem (1841–1886). Its bishops and clergy proselytised in the Holy Land among the non-Muslim native population and German immigrants, such as the Templers (religious believers), Templers. But Calvinist, Evangelical, and Lutheran expatriates in the Holy Land from Germany and Switzerland also joined the German-speaking congregations. A number of congregations of Arabic or German language emerged in Beit Jalla (Ar.), Beit Sahour (Ar.), Bethlehem, Bethlehem of Judea (Ar.), German Colony (Haifa) (Ger.), American–German Colony, American Colony (Jaffa) (Ger.), Jerusalem (Ar. a. Ger.), Nazareth (Ar.), and Alonei Abba, Waldheim (Ger.). With financial aid from Prussia, other German states, the , the , and others, a number of churches and other premises were built. But there were also congregations of emigrants and expatriates in other areas of the Ottoman Empire (2), as well as in Argentina (3), Brasil, Brazil (10), Bulgaria (1), Chile (3), Egypt (2), Italy (2), theStructures and bodies of the ''Evangelical State Church of Prussia''
The Evangelical State Church of Prussia stayed abreast of the changes and was renamed in 1875 as the Evangelical State Church of Prussia's older Provinces (german: link=no, Evangelische Landeskirche der älteren Provinzen Preußens). Its central bodies were the executive Evangelical Supreme Church Council (german: link=no, Evangelischer Oberkirchenrat, EOK, est. in 1850, renamed the Church Chancery in 1951), seated in Jebensstraße # 3 (Berlin, 1912–2003) and the legislative General Synod (german: link=no, Generalsynode). The General Synod first convened in June 1846, presided by Daniel Neander, and consisting of representatives of the clergy, the parishioners, and members nominated by the king. The General Synod found agreement on the teaching and the ordination, but the king did not confirm any of its decisions. After 1876 the general synod comprised 200 synodals, 50 laymen parishioners, 50 pastors, 50 deputies of the Protestant theological university faculties as ex officio members, and 50 synodals appointed by the king.Wilhelm Hüffmeier, "Die Evangelische Kirche der Union: Eine kurze geschichtliche Orientierung", in: ''"... den großen Zwecken des Christenthums gemäß": Die Evangelische Kirche der Union 1817 bis 1992; Eine Handreichung für die Gemeinden'', Wilhelm Hüffmeier (compilator) for the Kirchenkanzlei der Evangelischen Kirche der Union (ed.) on behalf of the Synod, Bielefeld: Luther-Verlag, 1992, pp. 13–28, here p. 19. The Evangelical State Church of Prussia's older Provinces had substructures, called ecclesiastical province (german: link=no, Kirchenprovinz; see Ecclesiastical province#Evangelical State Church in Prussia, ecclesiastical province of the Evangelical State Church of Prussia), in the nine pre-1866 political provinces of Prussia, to wit in the Province of East Prussia (homonymous ecclesiastical province), in Berlin, which had become a separate Prussian administrative unit in 1881, and the Province of Brandenburg (Ecclesiastical Province of the March of Brandenburg for both), in the Province of Pomerania (1815–1945), Province of Pomerania (homonymous), in the Province of Posen (homonymous), in the Rhine Province and since 1899 in the Province of Hohenzollern (Ecclesiastical Province of the Rhineland), in the Province of Saxony (homonymous), in the Province of Silesia (homonymous), in the Province of Westphalia (homonymous), and in the Province of West Prussia (homonymous). Every ecclesiastical province had a provincial synod representing the provincial parishioners and clergy, and one or more wikt:consistory, consistories led by general superintendents. The Ecclesiastical Province of Pomerania, ecclesiastical provinces of Pomerania and Silesia had two (after 1922), those of Saxony and the ''March of Brandenburg'', three – from 1911 to 1933 the latter even four – general superintendents, annually alternating in the leadership of the respective consistory. The two western provinces, Rhineland and Westphalia, had the strongest Calvinist background, since they included the territories of the former Duchies of Duchy of Berg, Berg, Duchy of Cleves, Cleves, and Duchy of Jülich, Juliers and the Counties of County of Mark, Mark, County of Tecklenburg, Tecklenburg, the Siegerland, and the Siegen-Wittgenstein, Principality of Wittgenstein, all of which had Calvinist traditions. Already in 1835, the provincial church constitutions (german: link=no, Provinzial-Kirchenordnung) provided for a general superintendent and congregations in both ecclesiastical provinces with presbyteries of elected presbyters. While this level of parishioners' democracy emerged in the other Prussian provinces only in 1874, when Otto von Bismarck, in his second term as Minister President of Prussia, Prussian Minister-President (9 November 1873 – 20 March 1890), gained the parliamentary support of the National Liberal Party (Germany), National Liberals in the Prussian Landtag, Prussian State Diet (german: link=no, Landtag). Prussia's then minister of education and religious affairs, Adalbert Falk, put the bill through, which extended the combined Rhenish and Westphalian presbyterial and consistorial church constitution to all the ''Evangelical State Church in Prussia''. Therefore, the terminology is differing: In the Rhineland and Westphalia a presbytery is called in german: link=no, Presbyterium, a member thereof is a ''Presbyter'', while in the other provinces the corresponding terms are ''Gemeindekirchenrat'' (''congregation council'') with its members being called ''Älteste'' (''elder''). Authoritarian traditions competed with liberal and modern ones. Committed congregants formed ''Kirchenparteien'', which nominated candidates for the elections of the parochial Presbytery (church polity), presbyteries and of the provincial or church-wide general synods. A strong ''Kirchenpartei'' were the ''Konfessionellen'' (''the denominationals''), representing congregants of Lutheran tradition, who had succumbed in the process of uniting the denominations after 1817 and still fought the Prussian Union. They promoted Neo-Lutheranism and strictly opposed the liberal stream of , promoting rationalism and a reconcialition of belief and modern knowledge, advocated by Protestantenverein, Deutscher Protestantenverein.Claus Wagener, "Die evangelische Kirche der altpreußischen Union", p. 24. A third ''Kirchenpartei'' was the anti-liberal ''Volkskirchlich-Evangelische Vereinigung'' (VEV, established in the mid-19th century, ''People's Church-Evangelical Association''), colloquially ''Middle party'' (german: link=no, Mittelpartei), affirming the Prussian Union, criticising the Higher criticism, Higher criticism in Biblical science, but still claiming the freedom of science also in theology. The middle party's long-serving president and member of the general synod (1891–1915) was the known law professor (German People's Party, DVP), who co-authored the Weimar Constitution.Eckhard Lessing, "Gemeinschaft im Dienst am Evangelium: Der theoligische Weg der EKU", in: ''"... den großen Zwecken des Christenthums gemäß": Die Evangelische Kirche der Union 1817 bis 1992; Eine Handreichung für die Gemeinden'', Wilhelm Hüffmeier (compilator) for the Kirchenkanzlei der Evangelischen Kirche der Union (ed.) on behalf of the Synod, Bielefeld: Luther-Verlag, 1992, pp. 29–37, here p. 36. By far the most successful ''Kirchenpartei'' in church elections was the anti-liberal '' Union'',Eckhard Lessing, "Gemeinschaft im Dienst am Evangelium: Der theologische Weg der EKU", in: ''"... den großen Zwecken des Christenthums gemäß": Die Evangelische Kirche der Union 1817 bis 1992; Eine Handreichung für die Gemeinden'', Wilhelm Hüffmeier (compilator) for the Kirchenkanzlei der Evangelischen Kirche der Union (ed.) on behalf of the Synod, Bielefeld: Luther-Verlag, 1992, pp. 29–37, here p. 32. being in common sense with the ''Konfessionellen'' in many fields, but affirming the Prussian Union. Therefore, the ''Positive Union'' often formed coalitions with the ''Konfessionellen''. King William I of Prussia sided with the ''Positive Union''. Before 1918 most consistories and the ''Evangelical Supreme Church Council'' were dominated by proponents of the ''Positive Union''. In 1888 King William II of Prussia could only appoint the liberalTerritorial and constitutional changes after 1918
With the end of the Prussian monarchy in 1918 also the king's function as ''summus episcopus'' (Supreme Governor of the Evangelical Church) ceased to exist. Furthermore, the Weimar Constitution of 1919 decreed the separation of state and religion. Thus its new constitution of 29 September 1922Eckhard Lessing, "Gemeinschaft im Dienst am Evangelium: Der theologische Weg der EKU", in: ''"... den großen Zwecken des Christenthums gemäß": Die Evangelische Kirche der Union 1817 bis 1992; Eine Handreichung für die Gemeinden'', Wilhelm Hüffmeier (compilator) for the Kirchenkanzlei der Evangelischen Kirche der Union (ed.) on behalf of the Synod, Bielefeld: Luther-Verlag, 1992, pp. 29–37, here p. 35. the ''Evangelical State Church of Prussia's older Provinces'' reorganised in 1922 under the name Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union (german: link=no, Evangelische Kirche der altpreußischen Union, EKapU or ApU). The church did not bear the term ''State Church'' within its name any more, taking into account that its congregations now spread over six sovereign states. The new name was after a denomination, not after a state any more. It became a difficult task to maintain the unity of the church, with some of the annexing states being opposed to the fact that church bodies within their borders keep a union with German church organisations. The territory comprising the ''Ecclesiastical Province of Posen'' was now largely Polish, and except of small fringes that of Province of West Prussia, West Prussia had been either seized by Second Polish Republic, Poland or Free City of Danzig, Danzig. The trans-Niemen part of East Prussia (Klaipėda Region) became a League of Nations mandate as of 10 January 1920 and parts of Province of Silesia, Prussian Silesia were either annexed by Czechoslovakia (Hlučín Region) or Poland (Autonomous Silesian Voivodeship, Polish Silesia), while four congregations of the Rhenish ecclesiastical province were seized by Belgium, and many more became part of the Mandatory Saar (League of Nations). The Evangelical congregation in Hlučín, annexed by Czechoslovakia in 1920, joined thereafter the Silesian Evangelical Church of Augsburg Confession of Czech Silesia. The Polish government ordered the disentanglement of the ''Ecclesiastical Province of Posen'' of the ''Evangelical State Church of Prussia's older Provinces'' – except of its congregations remaining with Germany. The now Polish church body then formed the (german: link=no, Unierte Evangelische Kirche in Polen, pl, link=no, Ewangelicki Kościół Unijny w Polsce),Wilhelm Hüffmeier, "Die Evangelische Kirche der Union: Eine kurze geschichtliche Orientierung", in: ''"... den großen Zwecken des Christenthums gemäß": Die Evangelische Kirche der Union 1817 bis 1992; Eine Handreichung für die Gemeinden'', Wilhelm Hüffmeier (compilator) for the Kirchenkanzlei der Evangelischen Kirche der Union (ed.) on behalf of the Synod, Bielefeld: Luther-Verlag, 1992, pp. 13–28, here p. 22. which existed separately from the Evangelical-Augsburg Church in Poland until 1945, when most of the former's congregants fled the approaching Soviet army or were subsequently denaturalised by Poland due to their German native language and expelled (1945–1950). The ''United Evangelical Church in Poland'' also incorporated the Evangelical congregations in Pomerellia, ceded by Germany to Poland in February 1920, which prior used to belong to the ''Ecclesiastical Province of West Prussia'', as well as the congregations in Soldau and 32 further East Prussian municipalities,Konrad Müller, ''Staatsgrenzen und evangelische Kirchengrenzen: Gesamtdeutsche Staatseinheit und evangelische Kircheneinheit nach deutschem Recht'', Axel von Campenhausen (ed. and introd.), Tübingen: Mohr, 1988 (=Jus ecclesiasticum; vol. 35), p. 96; simultaneously Göttingen, Univ., Diss., 1948. . which Germany ceded to Poland on 10 January 1920, prior belonging to the ''Ecclesiastical Province of East Prussia''. A number of congregations lay in those northern and western parts of the Province of Posen, which were not annexed by Poland and remained with Germany. They were united with those congregations of the westernmost area of West Prussia, which remained with Germany, to form the new Posen-West Prussian ecclesiastical province. The congregations in the Marienwerder (region), eastern part of West Prussia remaining with Germany, joined the ''Ecclesiastical Province of East Prussia'' on 9 March 1921. The 17 congregations in East Upper Silesia, ceded to Poland in 1922, constituted on 6 June 1923 as (german: link=no, Unierte Evangelische Kirche in Polnisch Oberschlesien, pl, link=no, Ewangelicki Kościół Unijny na polskim Górnym Śląsku). The church formed an old-Prussian ecclesiastical province until May 1937, when the German-Polish Accord on East Silesia, German Polish Geneva Accord on Upper Silesia expired. Between 1945 and 1948 it underwent the same fate like the ''United Evangelical Church in Poland''. The congregations in Eupen, Malmedy, Kelmis, Neu-Moresnet, and St. Vith, located in the now Belgian East Cantons, were disentangled from the ''Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union'' as of 1 October 1922 and joined until 1923/1924 the ''Union des églises évangéliques protestantes de Belgique'', which later transformed into the United Protestant Church in Belgium. They continue to exist until this very day. The congregations in the territory seized by the Free City of Danzig, which prior belonged to the ''Ecclesiastical Province of West Prussia'', transformed into the Regional Synodal Federation of the Free City of Danzig (german: link=no, Landessynodalverband der Freien Stadt Danzig). It remained an ecclesiastical province of the ''Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union'', since the Danzig Senate#Alternative meanings, Senate (government) did not oppose cross-border church bodies. The Danzig ecclesiastical province also co-operated with the ''United Evangelical Church in Poland'' as to the education of pastors, since its Polish theological students of German native language were hindered to study at German universities by restrictive Polish pass regulations. The congregations in the ''League of Nations mandate of the Klaipėda Region'' (german: link=no, Memelgebiet) continued to belong to the . When from 10 to 16 January 1923 neighbouringIdentity and self-conception in the Weimar years
The majority of parishioners stayed in a state of unease with the changes and many were skeptical towards the democracy of the Weimar Republic. Nationalist conservative groups dominated the general synods. Authoritarian traditions competed with liberal and modern ones. The traditional affinity to the former princely holders of the summepiscopacy often continued. So when in 1926 the leftist parties successfully launched a plebiscite to the effect of the Expropriation of the Princes in the Weimar Republic, expropriation of the German former regnal houses without compensation, the ''Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union'' called up for an abstention from the election, holding up the commandment Thou shalt not steal. Thus the plesbiscite missed the minimum turnout and failed. A problem was the spiritual vacuum, which emerged after the church stopped being a state church. F. K. Otto Dibelius, Otto Dibelius, since 1925 general superintendent ofUnder Nazi rule
In the period of the Third Reich the ''Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union'' fell into deep disunity. Most clerics, representatives and parishioners welcomed the Nazi takeover. Most Protestants suggested that the mass arrests, following the Reichstag Fire Decree, abolition of central civic rights by Paul von Hindenburg on 28 February 1933, hit the right persons. On 20 March 1933 Dachau concentration camp, the first official premise of its kind, was opened, while 150,000 hastily arrested inmates were held in hundreds of spontaneous so-called ''wild'' concentration camps, to be gradually evacuated into about 100 new official camps to be opened until the end of 1933.Claus Wagener, "Nationalsozialistische Kirchenpolitik und protestantische Kirchen nach 1933", p. 77. On 21 March 1933 the newly elected Reichstag (Weimar Republic), Reichstag convened in the Garrison Church (Potsdam), Evangelical Garrison Church ofAbolition of religious autonomy
Once the Nazi government figured out that the Protestant church bodies would not be streamlined from within using the ''German Christians'', they abolished the constitutional religious freedom, freedom of religion and religious organisation, declaring the unauthorised election of Bodelschwingh had created a situation contravening the constitutions of the Protestant churches, and on these grounds, on 24 June the Nazi Minister of Cultural Affairs, Bernhard Rust appointed August Jäger as Free State of Prussia (1933-1935), Prussian ''State Commissioner for the Prussian ecclesiastical affairs'' (german: link=no, Staatskommissar für die preußischen kirchlichen Angelegenheiten). This act clearly violated the status of the ''Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union'' as statutory body (german: link=no, Körperschaft des öffentlichen Rechts) and subjecting it to Jäger's orders (see Kirchenkampf, Struggle of the Churches, german: link=no, Kirchenkampf).Barbara Krüger and Peter Noss, "Die Strukturen in der Evangelischen Kirche 1933–1945", p. 157. Bodelschwingh resigned as Reich's Bishop the same day. On 28 June Jäger appointed Müller as new Reich's Bishop and on 6 July as leader of the ''Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union'', then with 18 million parishioners by far the biggest Protestant church body within Germany, with 41 million Protestants altogether (total population: 62 millions). Kapler resigned as president of the ''Evangelical Supreme Church Council'', after he had applied for retirement on 3 June, and Gen.-Supt. Wilhelm Haendler (competent for Berlin's suburbia), then presiding the ''March of Brandenburg Consistory'' retired for age reasons. Jäger furloughed Martin Albertz (superintendent of the Spandau deanery), Dibelius, Max Diestel (superintendent of the Cölln Land I deanery in the southwestern suburbs of Berlin), Emil Karow (general superintendent of Berlin inner city), and Ernst Vits (general superintendent of Lower Lusatia and the New March), thus decapitating the complete spiritual leadership of the ''Ecclesiastical Province of the March of Brandenburg''.Ralf Lange and Peter Noss, "''Bekennende Kirche'' in Berlin", p. 117. Then the ''German Christian'' Dr. iur. was appointed as provisional president of the ''Evangelical Supreme Church Council'', which he remained after his official appointment by the re-elected old-Prussian general synod until 1945. For 2 July, Werner ordered general thanksgiving services in all congregations to thank for the new imposed streamlined leadership. Many pastors protested that and held instead services of penance bearing the violation of the church constitution in mind. The pastors (Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, William I Memorial Church, Berlin), Fritz (Friedrich) Müller,Church under streamlined leadership
On 15 July, the Nazi government lifted state control over the ''Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union'', claiming the counter-constitutional situation were healed. Since the day Müller had become leader of the ''Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union'' he systematically abolished the intra-organisational democracy. On 4 August Müller assumed the title ''State Bishop'' (german: link=no, Landesbischof), a title and function non-existing in the constitution of the ''Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union'', and claimed hierarchical supremacy over all clerics and other employees as is usual for Catholic Bishop (Catholic Church), bishops. In the campaign for the premature re-election of all presbyters and synodals on 23 July the Nazi Reich's government sided with the ''German Christians''. Under the impression of the government's partiality the other existing lists of opposing candidates united to form the list ''Evangelical Church''. The Gestapo (est. 26 April 1933) ordered the list to change its name and to replace all its election posters and flyers issued under the forbidden name. Pastor Wilhelm Harnisch () hosted the opposing list in the office for the homeless of his congregation in Mirbachstraße # 24 (now Bänschstraße # 52). The Gestapo confiscated the office and the printing-press there, in order to hinder any reprint.Olaf Kühl-Freudenstein, "Die Glaubensbewegung Deutsche Christen", p. 104. Thus the list, which had renamed into (german: link=no, Evangelium und Kirche), took refuge with the ''Evangelical Press Association'' (german: link=no, Evangelischer Preßverband), presided by Dibelius and printed new election posters in its premises in Alte Jacobstraße # 129, Berlin. The night before the election Hitler appealed on the radio to all Protestants to vote for candidates of the ''German Christians'', while the Nazi Party declared, all its Protestant members were obliged to vote for the ''German Christians''. Thus the turnout in the elections was extraordinarily high, since most non-observant Protestants, who since long aligned with the Nazis, had voted. 70–80% of the newly elected presbyters and synodals of the ''Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union'' were candidates of the ''German Christians''. In Berlin e.g., the candidates of ''Gospel and Church'' only won the majority in two presbyteries, in Niemöller's ''Dahlem Congregation'', and in the congregation in Berlin-Staaken-Dorf. In 1933 among the pastors of Berlin, 160 stuck to ''Gospel and Church'', 40 were ''German Christians'' while another 200 had taken neither side. ''German Christians'' won a majority within the general synod of the ''Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union''Wilhelm Hüffmeier, "Die Evangelische Kirche der Union: Eine kurze geschichtliche Orientierung", in: ''"... den großen Zwecken des Christenthums gemäß": Die Evangelische Kirche der Union 1817 bis 1992; Eine Handreichung für die Gemeinden'', Wilhelm Hüffmeier (compilator) for the Kirchenkanzlei der Evangelischen Kirche der Union (ed.) on behalf of the Synod, Bielefeld: Luther-Verlag, 1992, pp. 13–27, here p. 23. . and within its provincial synods – except of Evangelical Church of Westphalia, the one of Westphalia –, as well as in many synods of other Protestant church bodies, except of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria, Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria right of the river Rhine, the Evangelical Lutheran State Church of Hanover, and the Lutheran Evangelical State Church in Württemberg, which the opposition thus regarded as uncorrupted ''intact churches'', as opposed to the other than so-called ''destroyed churches''. On 24 August 1933 the new synodals convened for a ''March of Brandenburg'' provincial synod. They elected a new provincial church council with 8 seats for the ''German Christians'' and two for Detlev von Arnim-Kröchlendorff, an esquire owning a manor in Kröchlendorff (a part of today's Nordwestuckermark), and Gerhard Jacobi (both ''Gospel and Church''). Then the ''German Christian'' majority of 113 synodals over 37 nays decided to appeal to the general synod to introduce the so-called Aryan paragraph (german: link=no, Arierparagraph) as church law, thus demanding that employees of the ''Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union'' – being all baptised Protestant church members -, who had grandparents, who were enrolled as Jews, or who were married with such persons, were all to be fired. Gerhard Jacobi led the opposing provincial synodals. Other provincial synods demanded the ''Aryan paragraph'' too. On 7 April 1933 the Nazi Reich's government had introduced an equivalent law for all state officials and employees. By introducing the Nazi racist attitudes into the ''Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union'', the approving synodals betrayed the Christian sacrament of baptism, according to which this act makes a person a Christian, superseding any other faith, which oneself may have been observing before and knowing nothing about any racial affinity as a prerequisite of being a Christian, let alone one's grandparents' religious affiliation being an obstacle to being Christian. Rudolf Bultmann and , professors of Protestant theology at the Philipps-University Marburg, Philip's University in Marburg, Marburg upon Lahn, wrote in their assessment in 1933, that the ''Aryan paragraph'' contradicts the Protestant confession of everybody's right to perform her or his faith freely. "The Gospel is to be universally preached to all peoples and races and makes all baptised persons insegregable brethren to each other. Therefore, unequal rights, due to national or racial arguments, are inacceptable as well as any segregation." On 5 and 6 September the same year the ''General Synod'' of the whole ''Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union'' convened in the building of the former ''Prussian State Council'' (Leipziger Straße No. 3, now seat of the Federal Council (Germany)).Ralf Lange and Peter Noss, "''Bekennende Kirche'' in Berlin", p. 119. Also here the ''German Christians'' used their new majority, thus this ''General Synod'' became known among the opponents as the ''Brown Synod'', for brown being the colour of the Nazi party. When on 5 September , then praeses of the unadulterated Westphalian provincial synod, tried to bring forward the arguments of the opposition against the ''Aryan paragraph'' and the abolition of synodal and presbyterial democracy, the majority of German Christian synodals shouted him down. The German Christians abused the general synod as a mere acclamation, like a Nazi party convention. Koch and his partisans left the synod. The majority of German Christians thus voted in the ''Aryan paragraph'' for all the ''Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union''. On 5 September the brown synodals passed the retroactive church law, which only established the function and title of bishop. The same law renamed the ecclesiastical provinces into bishoprics (german: link=no, Bistum/Bistümer, sg./pl.), each led – according to the new law of 6 September – by a provincial bishop (german: link=no, Provinzialbischof) replacing the prior general superintendents.Barbara Krüger and Peter Noss, "Die Strukturen in der Evangelischen Kirche 1933–1945", p. 158. By enabling the dismissal of all Protestants of Jewish descent from jobs with the ''Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union'', the official church bodies accepted the Nazi racist doctrine of anti-Semitism. This breach with Christian principles within the range of the church was unacceptable to many church members. Nevertheless, pursuing Martin Luther's Doctrine of the two kingdoms (God rules within the world: Directly within the church and in the state by means of the secular government) many church members could not see any basis, how a Protestant church body could interfere with the anti-Semitism performed in the state sphere, since in its self-conception the church body was a religious, not a political organisation. Only few parishioners and clergy, mostly of Reformed tradition, followed Jean Cauvin's doctrine of the ''Kingdom of Christ'' within the church and the world. Among them wereEmergency Covenant of Pastors
On 11 September 1933 Gerhard Jacobi gathered c. 60 opposing pastors, who clearly saw the breach of Christian and Protestant principles. Weschke and Günter Jacob proposed to found the Pfarrernotbund, Emergency Covenant of Pastors (german: link=no, Pfarrernotbund), and so they did, electing Pastor Niemöller their president. On the basis of the theses of Günter Jacob its members concluded that aAbolition of synods
On 18 September 1933 Werner was appointed praeses of the old-Prussian general synod, thus becoming president of the church senate. In September Ludwig Müller appointed Joachim Hossenfelder, Reichsfuhrer of the ''German Christians'', as provincial bishop of Brandenburg (resigned in November after the éclat in the Sportpalast, see below), while the then furloughed Karow was newly appointed as provincial bishop of Berlin. Thus the ''Ecclesiastical Province of the March of Brandenburg'', which included Berlin, had two bishops. Karow, being no ''German Christian'', resigned in early 1934 in protest against Ludwig Müller. On 27 September the pan-German ''First National Synod'' convened in the highly symbolic city of Wittenberg, where the Protestant Reformation, Reformer Martin Luther nailed the ''Ninety-five Theses'' to the door of the church in 1517. The synodals were not elected by the parishioners, but two-thirds were delegated by the church leaders, now called bishops, of the 28 Protestant church bodies, including the three intact ones, and one third were emissaries of Müller's ''Spiritual Ministerium''. Only such synodals were admitted, who would "uncompromisingly stand up any time for the National Socialist state" (german: link=no, »jederzeit rückhaltlos für den nationalsozialistischen Staat eintritt"). The national synod confirmed Müller as Reich's Bishop. The synodals of the national synod decided to waive their right to legislate in church matters and empowered Müller's ''Spiritual Ministerium'' to act as he wished. Furthermore, the national synod usurped the power in the 28 Protestant church bodies and provided the new so-called bishops of the 28 Protestant church bodies with hierarchical supremacy over all clergy and laymen within their church organisation. The national synod abolished future election for the synods of the 28 Protestant church bodies. Henceforth synodals had to replace two-thirds of the outgoing synodals by co-optation, the remaining third was to be appointed by the respective bishop.Attempted merger into the Reich Church
The general synod (german: link=no, Generalsynode) of the ''Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union'' decided with the majority of the ''German Christian'' synodals to merge the church in the ''German Evangelical Church'' as of 1 March 1934 on. The synods of 25 other Protestant church bodies decided the same until the end of 1933. Only the synods of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria, Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria right of the river Rhine, led by Hans Meiser (bishop), Hans Meiser, and the Evangelical State Church in Württemberg, presided by Theophil Wurm, opposed and decided not to merge. This made also the Evangelical Lutheran State Church of Hanover (one of the few Protestant churches in Germany using the title of bishop already since the 1920s, thus prior to the Nazi era), with State Bishop August Marahrens, change its mind. But the ''Evangelical Lutheran State Church of Hanover'' hesitated to openly confront the Nazi Reich's government, still searching for an understanding even after 1934. Niemöller, Rabenau and Kurt Scharf (Congregation in Sachsenhausen (Oranienburg)) circulated an appeal, calling the pastors up not to fill in the forms, meant to prove their ''Aryan'' descent, distributed by the ''Evangelical Supreme Church Council''. Thus its president Werner furloughed the three on 9 November.Ralf Lange and Peter Noss, "''Bekennende Kirche'' in Berlin", p. 120. For more and more purposes Germans had to prove their so-called ''Aryan'' descent, which usually was confirmed by copies from the baptismal registers of the churches, certifying that all four grandparents had been baptised. Some pastors soon understood, that people lacking four baptised grandparents are helped a lot – and later even rescued their lives – if they were certified to be ''Aryan'' by false copies from the baptismal registers.Klaus Drobisch, "Humanitäre Hilfe – gewichtiger Teil des Widerstandes von Christen", p. 28. Pastor Paul Braune (Lobetal, a part of today's Bernau bei Berlin) issued a memorandum, secretly handed out to pastors of confidence, how to falsify the best. But the majority of pastors in their legalism (theology), legalist attitude would not issue false copies. On 13 November 20,000 ''German Christians'' convened in the Berlin Sportpalast for a general meeting. Dr. Reinhold Krause, then president of the Greater Berlin section of the ''German Christians'', held a speech, defaming the Old Testament for its alleged "Jewish morality of rewards" (german: link=no, jüdische Lohnmoral), and demanding the cleansing of the New Testament from the "scapegoat mentality and theology of inferiority" (german: link=no, Sündenbock- und Minderwertigkeitstheologie des Rabbiners Paulus), whose emergence Krause attributed to the Rabbi Paul of Tarsos, (Sha'ul) Paul of Tarsos. Through this speech the ''German Christians'' showed their true colours and this opened the eyes of many sympathisers of the ''German Christians''. On 22 November, the ''Emergency Covenant of Pastors'', led by Niemöller, issued a declaration about the heretic belief of the ''German Christians''. On 29 November the Covenant gathered 170 members in Berlin-Dahlem in order to call up Ludwig Müller to resign so that the ''Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union'' could return into a constitutional condition.Ralf Lange and Peter Noss, "''Bekennende Kirche'' in Berlin", p. 121. A wave of protest flooded over the ''German Christians'', which ultimately initiated the decline of that movement. On 25 November the complete Bavarian section of the ''German Christians'' declared its secession.Olaf Kühl-Freudenstein, "Die Glaubensbewegung Deutsche Christen", p. 109. So Krause was dismissed from his functions with the ''German Christians'' and the ''Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union''.Olaf Kühl-Freudenstein, "Die Glaubensbewegung Deutsche Christen", p. 107. Krause's dismissal again made the radical Thuringian subsection declare its secession by the end of November. This pushed the complete Faith Movement into crisis so that its Reich's leader Joachim Hossenfelder had to resign on 20 December 1933. The different regional sections then split and united and resplit into half a dozen of movements, entering into a tiresome self-deprecation. Many presbyters of ''German Christian'' alignment retired, tired from disputing. So until 1937/1938 many presbyteries in Berlin congregations lost their ''German Christian'' majority by mere absenteeism. However the ''German Christian'' functionaries on the higher levels mostly remained aboard. On 4 January 1934 Ludwig Müller, claiming to have by his title as Reich's Bishop legislative power for all Protestant church bodies in Germany, issued the so-called ''muzzle decree'', which forbade any debate about the ''struggle of the churches'' within the rooms, bodies and media of the church. The ''Emergency Covenant of Pastors'' answered this decree by a declaration read by opposing pastors from their pulpits on 7 and 14 January. Müller then prompted the arrestment or disciplinary procedures against about 60 pastors alone in Berlin, who had been denounced by spies or congregants of ''German Christian'' affiliation. The Gestapo tapped Niemöller's phone and thus learned about his and Walter Künneth's plan to personally plea Hitler for a dismissal of Ludwig Müller. The Gestapo – playing divide et impera – publicised their intention as a conspiracy and so the Lutheran church leaders Marahrens, Meiser, and Wurm distanced themselves from Niemöller on 26 January. The same day Ludwig Müller decreed the Führerprinzip, a hierarchy of subordination to command, within the ''Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union''. Thus having usurped the power the ''German Christian'' Müller forbade his unwelcome competitor as church leader, the ''German Christian'' Werner, to discharge his duties as praeses of the ''Church Senate'' and president of the ''Evangelical Supreme Church Council''. Werner then sued Müller at the ''Landgericht I'' in Berlin. The verdict would have major consequences for the ''Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union''. Also opponents, legally consulted by Judge Günther (judge at the Landgericht court), Horst Holstein, Friedrich Justus Perels, and Friedrich Weißler, covered Ludwig Müller and his willing subordinates with a wave of litigations in the ordinary courts in order to reach verdicts on his arbitrary anticonstitutional measures. Since Müller had acted without legal basis the courts usually proved the litigants to be right.Barbara Krüger and Peter Noss, "Die Strukturen in der Evangelischen Kirche 1933–1945", p. 159. On 3 February Müller decreed another ordinance to send functionaries against their will into early retirement. Müller thus further cleansed the staff in the consistories, the ''Evangelical Supreme Church Council'' and the deaneries from opponents. On 1 March Müller pensioned Niemöller off, the latter and his ''Dahlem Congregation'' simply ignored that. Furthermore, Müller degraded the legislative provincial synods and the executive provincial church councils into mere advisory boards. Müller appointed Paul Walzer, formerly county commissioner in the Free City of Danzig, as president of the ''March of Brandenburg'' provincial consistory. In the beginning of 1936 Supreme Consistorial Councillor Georg Rapmund, member of the ''Evangelical Supreme Church Council'', succeeded Walzer as consistorial president. After Rapmund's death Supreme Consistorial Councillor Ewald Siebert followed him. In a series of provincial synods the opposition assumed shape. On 3/4 January 1934German Christian schism
Some functionaries and laymen in the ''Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union'' opposed the unification of the 28 Protestant church bodies, but many more agreed, but they wanted it under the preservation of the true Protestant faith, not imposed by Nazi partisans. In reaction to the convention and claims of the ''German Christians'' non-Nazi Protestants met in Barmen from 29 to 31 May 1934. On 29 May those coming from congregations within the ''Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union'' held a separate meeting, their later on so-called first ''old-Prussian Synod of Confession'' (german: link=no, erste altpreußische Landes-Bekenntnissynode, also ''Barmen Synod''). The old-Prussian synodals elected the ''Brethren Council'' of the ''Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union'', chaired by the Westphalian synodal praeses , then titled Praeses of the ''Brethren Council''. Further members were Gerhard Jacobi, Niemöller and Fritz Müller. In the convention, following suit on 30 and 31 May, the participants from all 28 Protestant church bodies in Germany – including the old-Prussian synodals – declared Protestantism were based on the complete Holy Scripture, the Old Testament, Old and the New Covenant. The participants declared this basis to be binding for any Protestant Church deserving that name and confessed their allegiance to this basis (see Barmen Declaration, Barmen Theological Declaration). Henceforth the movement of all Protestant denominations, opposing Nazi adulteration of Protestantism and Nazi intrusion into Protestant church affairs, was called theOld-Prussian confessing church
In autumn 1934 the Gestapo ordered the closure of the existing free preachers' seminaries, whose attendance formed part of the obligatory theological education of a pastor. The existing Reformed seminary in Wuppertal-Elberfeld, led by Hesse, resisted its closure and was accepted by the ''Confessing Church'', which opened more preachers' seminaries (german: link=no, Predigerseminar) of its own, such as the seminary in Bielefeld-Sieker (led by Otto Schmitz), Bloestau (East Prussia) and Jordan (Neumark), Jordan in the New March (both led by Hans Iwand 1935–1937), Naumburg am Queis (Gerhard Gloege), Szczecin-Zdroje, Stettin-Finkenwalde, later relocated to Groß Schlönwitz and then to Tychowo, Sławno County, Sigurdshof (forcibly closed in 1940, led byGovernment response to the schism
On 16 July 1935 Hanns Kerrl was appointed Reich's minister for ecclesiastical affairs, a newly created department. He started negotiations to find a compromise. Therefore, he dropped the extreme ''German Christians'' and tried to win moderate ''Confessing Christians'' and respected neutrals. On 24 September 1935, a new law empowered Kerrl to legislate by way of ordinances within the Protestant church bodies, circumventing any synodal autonomy. On 10 September 1935 the ''old-Prussian brethren council'' convened preparing the upcoming third ''old-Prussian Synod of Confession'' (also ''Steglitz Synod''). The brethren decided not to unite with the official ''Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union'', unless the heretic ''German Christians'' would quit it. Supt. Albertz urged the brethren council to discuss the terrible situation of Jewish Germans and Gentile Germans of Jewish descent, as it turned by the ''Nuremberg Laws'' and all the other anti-Semitic discriminations. But the Westphalian Praeses Koch threatened he would secede the ''old-Prussian brethren council'', if – in the synod – the council would advocate to pass a solidarity address to the Jews. On 26 September, Confessing synodals from all over the ''Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union'' convened for the third ''old-Prussian Synod of Confession'' in the parish hall of Berlin's Steglitz Congregation in Albrechtstraße No. 81, organised by congregants of . , since 1932 director of the Evangelical Welfare Office for Berlin's borough of Zehlendorf (a part of today's Steglitz-Zehlendorf, borough of Steglitz-Zehlendorf), appealed to the synodals to take action for the persecuted Jews and Christians of Jewish descent. In her memorandum she explained – among other things – that a third of the so-called non-''Aryan'' Protestants was unemployed due to the ever-growing number of jobs prohibited for Jews as defined by the Nuremberg Laws. She found clear words, calling the systematical impoverishment a ''Cold Pogrom'', aiming for and resulting in – as shown by the demographic development of German Jewry under Nazi persecution so far – the extinction of the German Jewry. She quoted a criticism from the Church of Sweden, saying the new god of the Germans was the ''Race'', to which they would offer human sacrifices. While Supt. Albertz and Niemöller argued to discuss the memorandum, a majority of synodals refused and the memorandum was then laid ad acta. The synodals could only gain common sense about the fact, that persons of Jewish religion, were to be baptised, if they wished so. This was completely denied by the ''German Christians'' since 1932, reserving Christianity as a religion exclusively for Gentiles, but also some ''Confessing Christians'' refused the baptism of Jews. Kerrl managed to gain the very respected Wilhelm Zoellner (a Lutheran, until 1931 general superintendent of Westphalia) to form the ''Reich's Ecclesiastical Committee'' (german: link=no, Reichskirchenausschuss, RKA) on 3 October 1935, combining neutral, moderate ''Confessing Christians'' and moderate ''German Christians'' to reconcile the disputing church parties. So also the official ''German Evangelical Church'' became subordinate to the new bureaucracy, Ludwig Müller lost his say, but still retained the now meaningless titles of German Reich's Bishop and old-Prussian State Bishop. In the course of November state ecclesiastical committees and provincial ecclesiastical committees were to be formed. Kerrl appointed a state ecclesiastical committee (german: link=no, Landeskirchenausschuss, LKA) for the ''Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union'', led by Karl Eger, and further staffed with Supreme Consistorial Councillor Walter Kaminski (Königsberg), Pastor Theodor Kuessner (praeses of the East Prussian provincial Synod of Confession), Pastor Ernst Martin (Magdeburg), Supt. Wilhelm Ewald Schmidt (Oberhausen) und Supt. Richard Zimmermann (, and praeses of the city synod of Berlin).Barbara Krüger and Peter Noss, "Die Strukturen in der Evangelischen Kirche 1933–1945", p. 162. In November Kerrl decreed the parallel institutions of the ''Confessing Church'' to be dissolved, which was protested and ignored by the brethren councils. On 19 December Kerrl issued a decree which forbade all kinds of ''Confessing Church'' activities, namely appointments of pastors, education, examinations, ordinations, ecclesiastical visitations, announcements and declarations from the pulpit, separate financial structures and convening Synods of Confession; further the decree established provincial ecclesiastical committees.Barbara Krüger and Peter Noss, "Die Strukturen in der Evangelischen Kirche 1933–1945", p. 161. Thus the ''brethren councils'' had to go into hiding. The ''Confessing Church'' in the Rhenish and Westphalian ecclesiastical provinces blocked in fact the formation of provincial ecclesiastical committees until 14 February 1936. The ''March of Brandenburg'' provincial ecclesiastical committee (est. on 19 December 1935, comprising Greater Berlin and the Province of Brandenburg) consisted of Ministerial Director retd. Peter Conze (Berlin-Halensee), Senate President Engert (Berlin-Lichterfelde West), Pastor Gustav Heidenreich (Church of the Well of Salvation, Berlin-Schöneberg), General Forest-Master Walter von Keudell (Hohenlübbichow, Brandenburg), Supt. Friedrich Klein (leader of the Nazi Federation of Pastors, Bad Freienwalde), Supt. Otto Riehl (leader of the ''Pfarrvereine der Altpreußischen Union'', a kind of trade union of pastors, Crossen an der Oder, Crossen upon Oder), and Supt. Zimmermann. This committee was also competent for the ''Ecclesiastical Province of Posen-West Prussia'', with Heidenreich holding the stake. On 6 January, the members elected Zimmermann their president. On 10 January the Reich's ecclesiastical committee empowered by ordinance the provincial ecclesiastical committees to form ecclesiastical committees on the level of the deaneries, if assumed necessary. This was the case in the deanery of Berlin-Spandau.Barbara Krüger and Peter Noss, "Die Strukturen in der Evangelischen Kirche 1933–1945", p. 163. As a gesture of reconciliation the state ecclesiastical committee for the ''Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union'' legitimised all ordinations and examinations of the ''Confessing Church'' retroactively for the time from 1 January 1934 to 30 November 1935. Nevertheless, the ''Confessing Church'' refused to accept the new examination office of the state ecclesiastical committee. But Künneth (Inner Mission) and a number of renowned professors of the Frederick William University of Berlin, who worked for the ''Confessing Church'' before, declared their readiness to collaborate with the committee, to wit Prof. Alfred Bertholet, Gustav Adolf Deissmann (Volkskirchlich-Evangelische Vereinigung; VEV.), Hans Lietzmann, Wilhelm Lütgert, and . Thus Kerrl successfully wedged the ''Confessing Church''. On 4 December 1935 the March of Brandenburg provincial Synod of Confession agreed to split in two provincial subsections, one for Greater Berlin and one comprising the political Province of Brandenburg with two provincial brethren councils, led by Gerhard Jacobi (Berlin, resigned in 1939, but quarrels between the moderate and the ''Dahlemites'' continued) and by Scharf (Brandenburg), who followed the ''Dahlemite'' guidelines.Ralf Lange and Peter Noss, "''Bekennende Kirche'' in Berlin", p. 133. At the fourth ''Reich's Synod of Confession'' in Bad Oeynhausen (17–22 February 1936) the ''Dahlemites'' fell out with most of the Lutheran ''Confessing Christians''. The first ''Preliminary Church Executive'' resigned, since its members, representing ''intact churches'', wanted to co-operate with the committees, while its members from ''destroyed churches'', especially the ''Dahlemites'' did not. The minority of moderate, mostly Lutheran ''Confessing Christians'' quit the ''Reich's Brethren Council''. Also the different provincial brethren councils within the ''Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union'' were dissented. While most brethren councillors of Berlin wanted to co-operate, the brethren council of Brandenburg (without Berlin), of the Rhineland and the overall old-Prussian brethren council strictly opposed any compromises. On 12 March the remaining members of the ''Reich's Brethren Council'', presided by Niemöller, appointed the second ''Preliminary Church Executive'', consisting of Supt. Albertz, Bernhard Heinrich Forck (St. Trinity in Hamm, Hamburg), Paul Fricke (Frankfurt-Bockenheim), Hans Böhm (Berlin), and Fritz Müller. This body was recognised by the brethren councils of the ''destroyed churches'' of the old-Prussian Union, of Evangelical Church of Bremen, Bremen, of Evangelical Church in Hesse and Nassau, Nassau-Hesse and of Evangelical Lutheran Church in Oldenburg, Oldenburg as well as by a covenant of pastors from Württemberg (the so-called ''Württembergische Sozietät''). On 18 March the three Lutheran ''intact churches'' announced the foundation of the ''Council of the Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Germany'' (german: link=no, Rat der Evangelisch-Lutherischen Kirche Deutschlands, colloquially ''Lutherrat'', Luther council) as their own umbrella organisation. The brethren councils of the Lutheran ''destroyed churches'' of Evangelical Lutheran State Church of Brunswick, Brunswick, Lübeck, Evangelical Lutheran Church of Mecklenburg, Mecklenburg, Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Saxony, the Free State of Saxony, Schleswig-Holstein, and Evangelical Lutheran Church in Thuringia, Thuringia as well as some Lutheran confessing congregations within the territories of the ''Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union'' recognised this umbrella. The ''Confessing Church'' was definitely split in two. However, the state brethren councils of the ''destroyed churches'' met occasionally in conferences. Under the impression of more foreign visitors in Germany, starting with the 1936 Winter Olympics, Winter Olympics the year of 1936 was a relatively peaceful period. Kerrl let the committees do, as they liked. Also the anti-Semitic agitation was softened. However, the Sinti and Roma in Berlin realised the first mass internments, in order to present Berlin ''zigeunerfrei'' for the 1936 Summer Olympics. But the less visible phenomena of the police state, like house searches, seizures of pamphlets and printed matters as well as the suppression of ''Confessing Church'' press continued. At Pentecost 1936 (31 May) the second ''preliminary church executive'' issued a memorandum to Hitler, also read from the pulpits, condemning anti-Semitism, concentration camps, the state terrorism. A preliminary version had been published in foreign media earlier. "If blood, race, nationhood and honour are given the rank of eternal values, so the Evangelical Christian is compelled by the Thou shalt have no other gods before me, First Commandment, to oppose that judgement. If the Aryan human is glorified, so it is God's word, which testifies the sinfulness of all human beings. If – in the scope of the National Socialist Weltanschauung#Other aspects, Weltanschauung – an anti-Semitism, obliging to hatred of the Jews, is imposed on the individual Christian, so for him the Christian virtue of charity is standing against that." The authors concluded that the Nazi regime will definitely lead the German people into disaster. On 7 October the Gestapo arrested Weißler, then office manager and legal advisor of the second ''preliminary church executive'', erroneously blaming him to have played the memorandum into the hands of foreign media. Since Weißler was a Protestant of Jewish descent he was not taken to court, where the evidentially false blaming would have been easily unveiled, but deported to Sachsenhausen concentration camp and tortured to death from 13 to 19 February 1937 becoming the first lethal victim of the Kirchenkampf on the Protestant side. From 2 July 1936 until 1945 Heinrich Himmler, Reichsführer SS, captured the Quedlinburg-based Quedlinburg Abbey#Church, Church of St Servatius of the ''Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union'' and profaned it as a pagan place of worship in the scope of the garbled ideas of the SS about a neo-Germanic religion. On 15 December 1936 the old-Prussian brethren council issued a declaration, authored by Fritz Müller, criticising the compromising and shortcomings in the policy of the ecclesiastical committees. On the next day until the 18th the fourth ''old-Prussian Synod of Confession'' (also ''Breslau Synod'') convened in Breslau, discussing the work of the ecclesiastical committees and how to continue the education and ordinations in the scope of the ''Confessing Church''. Meanwhile, the Olympic close hunting season had ended. The Gestapo increased its suppression, undermining the readiness for compromises among the ''Confessing Church''. Zoellner concluded that this made his reconciliatory work impossible and criticised the Gestapo activities. He resigned on 2 February 1937, paralysing the Reich's ecclesiastical committee, which thus lost all recognition among the opposition. Kerrl now subjected Ludwig Müller's chancery of the ''German Evangelical Church'' directly to his ministry and the Reich's, provincial and state ecclesiastical committees were soon after dissolved.Barbara Krüger and Peter Noss, "Die Strukturen in der Evangelischen Kirche 1933–1945", p. 164. The open gap in governance of the official ''Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union'' was filled by the still existing ''Evangelical Supreme Church Council'' under Werner and by the consistories on the provincial level. The ''Confessing Church'' now nicknamed the official ''Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union'' the ''One-Man-Church'', since Werner combined unusual power as provisional president of the ''Evangelical Supreme Church Council'' and leader of the old-Prussian financial control departments. Werner now systematically drained the financial sources of the ''Confessing Church''. Werner became the man of Kerrl. But Kerrl gave up, with Hitler and Alfred Rosenberg meanwhile completely abandoning Christianity. However, Kerrl's ministerial bureaucracy also knew what to do without him. From now on the ministry of church affairs subjected also the other Protestant church bodies, which in 1937 amounted after mergers to 23, to state controlled financial committees. Any attempt to impose a union upon all Protestant church bodies was given up. The government now preferred to fight individual opponents by prohibitions to publish, to hold public speeches, by domiciliary arrest, banishments from certain regions, and imprisonment. Since 9 June 1937 collections of money were subject to strict state confirmation, regularly denied to the ''Confessing Church''. In the period of the committee policy, unapproved collections were tolerated but now Confessing pastors were systematically imprisoned, who were denounced for having collected money. The number of imprisoned dignitaries of the ''Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union'', mostly only temporarily, amounted to 765 in the whole year of 1937. On 10–13 May 1937 synodals convened in Halle (Saale), Halle upon Saale to discuss denominational questions of the Reformed, Lutheran and united congregations within the old-Prussian Confessing Church. The Halle Synod also delivered the basis for the multi-denominational Protestant Arnoldshain Conference (1957) and its theses on the Lord's Supper. Soon after, on 1 July Niemöller was arrested and after months in detention he was released – the court sentenced him and regarded the term served by the time in detention, but the Gestapo took him right away into custody and imprisoned him in the concentration camp of Sachsenhausen and later in Dachau. The fifth ''old-Prussian Synod of Confession'' (also ''Lippstadt Synod'') convened its synodals in Lippstadt on 21–27 August 1937 debating financial matters. After the toughening of financial control the synodals decided to keep up collections, but more in hiding, and restarted regular rogations for the imprisoned, reading their names from the pulpit. In autumn 1937 the Gestapo further suppressed the underground theological education (KiHo) and systematically fought any examinations within the ''Confessing Church''. On 10 December 1937 the ministry of church affairs appointed Werner as president of the ''Evangelical Supreme Church Council''. Werner then restaffed the ''March of Brandenburg'' consistory, newly appointing Johannes Heinrich as consistorial president (after almost a year of vacancy) and three further members of ''German Christian'' affiliation: Siegfried Nobiling, Fritz Loerzer (formerly also Provost of Kurmark) and Pastor Karl Themel (Luisenstadt Congregation, Berlin). The remaining prior members were the ''German Christian'' Walter Herrmann (), Friedrich Riehm (''German Christian''), Helmut Engelhardt and von Arnim-Kröchlendorff (''Confessing Church''), Ernst Bender, and Friedrich Wendtlandt. In February 1938 Werner divested von Arnim-Kröchlendorff as chief of the financial department of Berlin, and replaced him by the Nazi official Erhard von Schmidt, who then severed the financial drainage of Berlin's ''Confessing Church''.Barbara Krüger and Peter Noss, "Die Strukturen in der Evangelischen Kirche 1933–1945", p. 167. For Hitler's birthday (20 April 1938) Werner developed a special gift. All pastors of the ''Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union'' should swear an oath of allegiance to Hitler. In May the seventh Synod of Confession of the Rhenish ecclesiastical province refused to comply, since it was not the state, which demanded the oath. The sixth ''old-Prussian Synod of Confession'' convened twice in Berlin, once in the Nikolassee Church (11–13 June 1938) and a second time in the parish hall of the Steglitz Congregation (31 July). In Nikolassee the oath was much under discussion, however, no decision was taken, but delayed – until further information would be available. At the second meeting in Steglitz a majority of synodals complied to Werner's demand. In August Martin Bormann, the Reich's leader of the Nazi party, declared that Hitler was not interested in an oath. However, the consistories demanded the oath, but in the Rhenish ecclesiastical province only 184 out 800 pastors refused to swear. In summer 1938 Kerrl reappeared on the scene with a new attempt to unite the church parties from their midst, using a federation named ''Wittenberger Bund'', initiated Friedrich Buschtöns (''German Christians''), Theodor Ellwein, and Prof. Helmuth Kittel, all members of the ''Evangelical Supreme Church Council''. Kerrl failed again.Protestants of Jewish descent
The ever-growing discrimination of Jewish Germans (including the special category of Geltungsjuden) and Gentile Germans of Jewish descent drove them ever deeper into impoverishment. The official church body completely refused to help its persecuted parishioners of Jewish descent, let alone the Germans of Jewish faith. But also the activists of the ''Confessing Church'', bothered about this problem – like Supt. Albertz, Bonhoeffer, Charlotte Friedenthal, Pastor Heinrich Grüber (Jesus Church (Berlin-Kaulsdorf)), Hermann Maas, Meusel, Pastor could not prevail with their concern to help under the umbrella of the ''Confessing Church'', since also among the opponents many, Lutherans more than Calvinists, had anti-Jewish affects or were completely occupied with maintaining the true Protestant faith under state suppression. Even though the opponents managed to fight the ''Aryan paragraph'' within the ''Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union'' (Ludwig Müller abrogated it on 16 November 1934), it took the ''Confessing Church'' until summer 1938 to build up a network for the persecuted. In early 1933 Friedrich Siegmund-Schultze proposed the foundation of an ''International Relief Committee for German (Evangelical, Catholic and Mosaic) Emigrants'' (german: link=no, Internationales Hilfskomitee für deutsche (evangelische, katholische und mosaische) Auswanderer). The project was in a tailspin since the oecumenical partners in the US demanded to exclude persons of Jewish faith, before it definitely failed because the Nazi government expelled Siegmund-Schultze from Germany. In July 1933 Christian Germans of Jewish descent had founded a self-help organisation, first named Reich's Federation of non-Aryan Christians (german: link=no, Reichsverband nichtarischer Christen), then renamed into ''Paul's Covenant'' (german: link=no, Paulusbund) after the famous Jewish convert to Christianity Paul of Tarsos, (Sha'ul) Paul of Tarsos, presided by the known literary historian . In early 1937 the Nazi government forbade that organisation, allowing a new successor organisation ''Association 1937'' (german: link=no, Vereinigung 1937), which was prohibited to accept members – like Spiero – with three or four grandparents, who had been enrolled with a Jewish congregation. Thus that new association had lost its most prominent leaders and faded, having become an organisation of so-called Mischlinge of Nazi terminology. Spiero opened his private relief office in Brandenburgische Straße No. 41 (Berlin). On 31 January 1936 the ''International Church Relief Commission for German Refugees'' constituted in London – with Supt. Albertz representing the ''Confessing Church'' – but its German counterpart never materialised. So Bishop George Bell gained his sister-in-law Laura Livingstone to run an office for the international relief commission in Berlin. She joined the office of Spiero. The failure of the ''Confessing Church'' was evident, even though 70–80% of the Christian Germans of Jewish descent were Protestants. In August 1938 the Nazi government forced Jewish Germans and Gentile Germans of Jewish descent to adopt the middle names ''Israel'' or ''Sara'' and to use them on any occasion, such as signatures, visit cards, letters, addresses and firm and name signs. It was Grüber and some enthusiasts, who had started a new effort in 1936. They forced the ''Confessing Church's'' hand, which in 1938 supported the new organisation, named by the Gestapo , but after its official recognition ''Relief Centre for Evangelical Non-Aryans''. Until May 1939 25 regional offices could be opened, led by those executive directors of the provincial Inner Mission (Germany), Inner Mission premises, who clung to the ''Confessing Church'' or the latter's other mandatees. Supt. Albertz, Pastor Adolf Kurtz (Twelve Apostles Church, Berlin), and Livingstone collaborated. The Bureau was mainly busy with supporting the re-education in other vocations, not (yet) prohibited for Jewish Germans and Gentile Germans of Jewish descent, and with finding nations of exile, who would grant immigration visa. As long as the Nazis' decision, to murder all persons they considered as Jews, had not yet been taken, the Bureau gained some government recognition as an agency, promoting the emigration of the concerned persons. In the night of 9 November 1938 the Nazi government organised the November Pogrom, often euphemised as ''Kristallnacht''. The well-organised Nazi squads killed several hundreds, set nine out of 12 major synagogues in Berlin on fire (1,900 synagogues all over Germany), 1,200 Jewish Berliners were deported to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. All over Germany altogether 30,000 male Jews were arrested, among them almost all the 115 Protestant pastors with three or four grandparents, who had been enrolled as members of a Jewish congregation. Many men went into hiding from arrestment and also appeared at Grüber's home in the rectory of the Jesus Church (Berlin-Kaulsdorf). Grüber organised their hiding in the cottages in the Allotment (gardening), allotment clubs in his parish. The Nazis only released the arrested inmates, if they would immediately emigrate. Thus getting visa became the main target and problem. While Bishop George Bell tried and managed to rescue many of the imprisoned pastors, successfully persuading the Church of England to provide them through the British government with British visa, the official ''Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union'' did not even try to intervene in favour of its imprisoned clergy. Thus none of the Protestant pastors of Jewish descent remained in or returned to office. Also the many other inmates had no advocate of such influence like the ''Church of England''. On 7 December 1938 the British organisation Hebrew Christian Testimony to Israel relinquished its location in Oranienburger Straße 20/21 to Grüber, who thus moved his Bureau thereto. Kurtz relocated his consultations, until then held in his private home in the rectory of the Twelve Apostles Church (Berlin), into the new office location. The staff of the Bureau Grüber grew to five persons on 19 December, then 30 in February 1939 and finally 35 by July the same year.Hartmut Ludwig, "Das ›Büro Pfarrer Grüber‹ 1938–1940", p. 10. Pastor Werner Sylten, who had been fired – on the grounds of his partially Jewish descent – by his employer, the ''German Christian''-dominated Evangelical Lutheran Church in Thuringia, Thuringian Evangelical Church, joined the work. Sylten found additional office rooms in the street An der Stechbahn #3–4 opposite to the southern façade of the Berlin Castle, Berlin City Castle, and on 25 January 1939 the Bureau's emigration department, led by Ministerial Counsel rtrd. Paul Heinitz, moved into the new location. Grüber's wife, Marianne, née Vits, sold her IG Farben shares to finance the rent of the new location. Livingstone led the department for the British Commonwealth, Werner Hirschwald the Latin American section and Sylvia Wolff the Scandinavian. By October 1939 all offices of Grüber's Bureau moved to An der Stechbahn. A welfare department under Richard Kobrak supported the often impoverished victims of persecution and Margarete Draeger organised the Kindertransporte. Erwin Reisner served the victims as chaplain. Inge Jacobson worked as assistant of Grüber. Sylten became his deputy. In February 1939 the Reich's ministry of the interior combined the work of all offices busy with expelling Jewish Germans and Gentile Germans of Jewish descent in the Reich's central office for Jewish Emigration (german: link=no, Reichszentrale für jüdische Auswanderung), led by Reinhard Heydrich. Adolf Eichmann came to doubtable fame for expelling 50,000 Jewish Austrians and Gentile Austrians of Jewish descent within only three months after the Anschluß. Thus he was commissioned to expel Jewish Germans and Gentile Germans of Jewish descent within the old Reich's borders. From September 1939 the Bureau Grüber had to subordinate to the supervision by Eichmann, who worked as ''Special Referee for the Affairs of the Jews'' (german: link=no, Sonderreferent für Judenangelegenheiten) in an office in Kurfürstenstraße #115–116, Berlin. Eichmann asked Grüber in a meeting about Jewish emigration why Grüber, not having any Jewish family and with no prospect for any thank, does help the Jews. Grüber answered because the Good Samaritan did so, and my Lord told me to do so. From 1 March 1939 the Nazi Reich's government commissioned the Reichsvertretung der Deutschen Juden to levy a new tax from Jewish emigrants (german: link=no, Auswandererabgabe), charging wealthier emigrants in order to finance the emigration of the poorer. The due was also used to finance the different recognised associations organising emigration. From 1 July on the Reichsvertretung remitted a monthly subsidy of Reichsmark, Reichsmark (ℛℳ) 5,000 to the ''Bureau Grüber''. Also the ''intact'' Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria, Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria right of the river Rhine co-financed the work of Grüber's organisation with annually ℛℳ 10,000. By July the office of Spiero and Livingstone had merged into the Bureau Grüber. All in all the Bureau Grüber enabled the emigration of 1,139 persons from October 1938 – August 1939 and 580 between July 1939 and October 1940, according to different sources. Minister Rust had banned all pupils of Jewish descent from attending public schools from 15 November 1938 on. So Pastor Kurtz and Vicar Klara Hunsche opened an Evangelical school in January 1939 in the rectory of the Twelve Apostles Congregation (An der Apostelkirche No. 3, Berlin). By the end of January the school moved into Oranienburger Straße # 20/21, after Grüber's Emigration department had moved out. The Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland, since July replacing the ''Reichsvertretung'' as the new and only central organisation competent for all persons and institutions persecuted as Jewish according to the Nuremberg Laws, supervised the school. Now the school became an Evangelical-Catholic oecumenical school, called ''Familienschule'', the pupils named it ''Grüber School''. By autumn 1939 a new degree of persecution loomed. The Nazi authorities started to deport Jewish Austrians and Gentile Austrians of Jewish descent to General Government, occupied Poland. On 13 February 1940 the same fate hit 1,200 Jewish Germans and Gentile Germans of Jewish descent and their Gentile spouses from the Stettin (region), Stettin Region, who were deported to Lublin. Grüber learned about it by the Wehrmacht commander of Lublin and then protested to every higher ranking superior up to the then Prussian Minister-President Hermann Göring, who forbade further deportations from Prussia for the moment.Hartmut Ludwig, "Das ›Büro Pfarrer Grüber‹ 1938–1940", p. 21. The Gestapo warned Grüber never to take the side of the deported again. The deported were not allowed to return. On 22–23 October, 6,500 Jewish Germans and Gentile Germans of Jewish descent from Baden and the Palatinate (region), Palatinate were deported to Gurs, Military Administration in Belgium and North France, occupied France. Now Grüber got himself a passport, with the help of Bonhoeffer's brother-in-law Hans von Dohnanyi from the Abwehr, to visit the deported in the Gurs (concentration camp). But before he left the Gestapo arrested Grüber on 19 December and deported him two days later to ''Sachsenhausen concentration camp'', and in 1941 to Dachau concentration camp. Sylten was ordered to shut down the Bureau, which he did until 1 February 1941. On 27 February the Gestapo arrested and deported him by end of May to ''Dachau concentration camp'', where he was murdered in August 1942. Grüber survived and was released from Dachau on 23 June 1943, after he had signed not to help the persecuted any more. The Family school was ordered to close by the end of June 1942. Draeger dived into the underground by the end of 1942, hiding in Berlin and surviving through some undaunted helpers, but was caught later and deported to Auschwitz in August 1944, where she perished. Persons hiding from deportation used to call themselves ''submarine'' (german: link=no, U-Boot). The fate of other collaborators of the Bureau: Paul Heinitz died in peace in February 1942, Günther Heinitz, Werner Hirschwald, Max Honig, Inge Jacobson, Elisabeth Kayser and Richard Kobrak were all deported and murdered in different concentration camps.Hartmut Ludwig, "Das ›Büro Pfarrer Grüber‹ 1938–1940", p. 22. Since January 1943 Pastor Braune could hide Luise Wolff in the diaconal , so she survived. Among the undaunted helpers in the ''Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union'', hiding and feeding the 'submarines', were many women, but also men, such as Bolette Burckhardt, Pastor Theodor Burckhardt, Helene Jacobs, Franz Kaufmann, Pastor Wilhelm Jannasch, Pastor Harald Poelchau, Pastor Eitel-Friedrich von Rabenau, Gertrud Staewen, Pastor Hans Urner etc. In 1945 right after the war Grüber reopened his Bureau to help the survivors, first in provisional rooms in the deaconesses' in Berlin-Kreuzberg. Then the bureau, named today Evangelical Relief Centre for the formerly Racially Persecuted (german: link=no, Evangelische Hilfsstelle für ehemals Rasseverfolgte), moved to its present site in Zehlendorf (Berlin), Berlin-Zehlendorf, Teltower Damm #124. In 1950 three-quarters of the fostered survivors were unemployed and poor. Many needed psychological help, others wanted support to apply for government compensation for the damages and suffering by the Nazi persecution. In 1958 Grüber established a foundation, running today senior homes and a nursing home, housing about a hundred survivors.After the November Pogrom
In the night between 9 and 10 November the Nazis organised the November Pogrom. ''German Christians'', like Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Thuringia, Thuringian Evangelical Church, welcomed the pogrom. For the Buß- und Bettag (16 November 1938), the ''Day of Repentance and Prayer'', then celebrated in the ''Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union'' on the penultimate Wednesday before the new begin of the Evangelical Liturgical year (First Sunday of Advent), the ''Dahlemite'' fraction of the ''Confessing Church'' decided to hold rogations for the persecuted Jews and Christians of Jewish descent. The pastors were recommended the following text: "Administer to the needs of all the Jews in our midst, who are losing for the sake of their blood their honour as humans and the opportunity to live. Help that nobody will act vengefully against them. ... Especially do not let disrupt the bond of love to those, who are standing with us in the same true belief and who are through Him like us Thy children." Elisabeth Schmitz, a congregant in the preach on the ''Day of Repentance and Prayer'' of Helmut Gollwitzer, then replacing the imprisoned Niemöller in , appealed to the ''Confessing Church'' to reject any labelling of Jews, warning that after the labelling of all the Jewish owned shops in August 1938, their destruction followed suit, so the same would also happen – "in the same conscienceless, evil and sadistic manner" – to the persons, once they would be labelled. Holding ''Synods of Confession'' had been forbidden since 1935, but now after the Olympic close hunting season had ended the authorities effectively fought the preparations and holding of the synods. Thus synods had to be prepared in secret, therefore they were not referred to by the name of their venue any more, keeping the venue as long as possible in secret. The seventh ''old-Prussian Synod of Confession'' (so-called Epiphany (holiday), Epiphany Synod) convened on 29–31 January 1939 in Berlin-Nikolassee. On 18 and 20 March 1939 Werner, the president of ''Evangelical Supreme Church Council'', severed the dismissal of opposing pastors by new ordinances, which empowered him to redeploy pastors against their will. On 6 May Kerrl supported the opening of the Institute for the Study and Elimination of Jewish Influence on German Church Life (german: link=no, Institut zur Erforschung und Beseitigung des jüdischen Einflusses auf das deutsche kirchliche Leben) in Eisenach, led by Prof. Walter Grundmann.Barbara Krüger and Peter Noss, "Die Strukturen in der Evangelischen Kirche 1933–1945", p. 166. This institute provided propaganda to all official congregations, how to cleanse Protestantism from the Jewish patrimony within Christianity. On 20–22 May 1939 the synodals convened for the eighth ''old-Prussian Synod of Confession'' in Steglitz (so-called ''Exaudi Synod''). With the beginning of the war (1 September 1939) Kerrl decreed the separation of the ecclesiastical and the administrative governance within the official ''Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union''. Werner remained administrative chief executive (president of the ''Evangelical Supreme Church Council''), an ecclesiastical executive was still to be found. Werner won Marahrens, State Bishop of the 'intact' Hanoverian Church, and the theologists Walther Schultz (''German Christian''), and Friedrich Hymmen, vice president of the ''Evangelical Supreme Church Council'', to form an ''Ecclesiastical Council of Confidence'' (german: link=no, Geistlicher Vertrauensrat), taking the ecclesiastical leadership for the ''German Evangelical Church'' from early 1940 on. Within the official ''Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union'' the same function remained void. From 1938 on the Nazis had tested the reaction of the general public to the murder of incurably sick people by films, articles, books and reports covering the subject. The murder of the handicapped and the incurably sick was euphemised as Action T4, Euthanasia. However, the so-called mercy killing of the sick did not become popular in the general public. Nevertheless, the Nazi Reich's government started to implement the murder. On 1 September 1939, the day Germany waged war on Poland, Hitler decreed the murder of the handicapped, living in sanatories, to be carried out by ruthless doctors. After first murders in a testing phase the systematic murder started in 1940.Beginning of the war
On 22 August 1939 Hitler gathered the Wehrmacht generals and explained them the archaic character of the upcoming war: "Our strength is our speed and our brutality. Genghis Khan chased millions of women and children to death, consciously and with a happy heart. History sees him only as a great founder of states. It is of no concern, what the weak Western European civilisation is saying about me. I issued the command – and I will have everybody executed, who will only utter a single word of criticism – that it is not the aim of the war to reach particular lines, but to physically annihilate the enemy. Therefore, I have mobilised my SS-Totenkopfverbände, Death's Head Squads, for the time being only in the East, with the command to unpityingly and mercilessly Invasion of Poland (1939)#Civilian losses, send men, women and children of Polish descent and language to death. This is the only way to gain the Lebensraum, which we need. Who is still talking today about the Genocide on the Armenians, extinction of the Armenians?" Hitler did not feel safe about the opinions of his generals, so he threatened them with execution, not allowing any criticical word about the planned genocide of the Poles. After the government waged war on Second Polish Republic, Poland and thus started the Second World War, male members of the ''Confessing Church'', such as Fritz Müller (member of the second ''preliminary church executive''), were preferently drafted for the army. Kerrl demanded Werner to calm down the ''struggle of the churches'', since the Wehrmacht wanted no activities against pastors of the ''Confessing Church'' during the war. So Gestapo and official church functionaries concentrated on pastors of the ''Confessing Church'', who were not drafted. In January 1940, urged by the Wehrmacht, Hitler repeated that no wide-ranging actions against the ''Confessing Church'' are to be taken, so that the Gestapo returned to selective forms of repression. But in a meeting with Nazi partisans Hitler expressed that he recognised the Wehrmacht's – even though only to a limited extent – clinging to the churches, as its weakness. As to the question of the churches he said: "The war is in this respect, as well as in many another occasion, a favourable opportunity to finish it [the question of the churches] thoroughly." Already in antiquity complete peoples have been liquidated. Tribes have been resettled just like this, and exactly the Decossackization, Soviet Union has recently given sufficient examples, how one could do that. [...] If he [Hitler] does not do anything yet about the rebelling 'shavelings', so not least because of the Wehrmacht. There [among Wehrmacht members] one is still running to field-services. [...] But in this respect the education within the SS would foreshadow the necessary development, with the SS proving – right now in the war – that schooled in Weltanschauung#Other aspects, Weltanschauung – one will be bold – without the dear God." Thus Hitler's adjutant Major Gerhard Engel recalled the conversation. With the conquest of all the eastern former Prussian territories, which Germany had ceded to Poland after World War I, and their annexation by Nazi Germany the functionaries of the ''Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union'' expected the reintegration of the ''United Evangelical Church in Poland''. But this conflicted with the Nazi intention to convert the annexed territory, especially the Warthegau under Arthur Greiser, into an exemplary Nazi dictatorship. No prior civilian German administration existed in the Warthegau, so a solely Nazi party-aligned administration was set up. Concerns respected within Germany, played no role in occupied and annexed parts of Poland. German law, as violated as it was, would not automatically apply to the Warthegau, but only selected rules. Almost all the Catholic, Jewish and Protestant clergy in the Warthegau was murdered or expelled, with the exception of some German-speaking Protestant pastors and few such Catholic priests. The mostly German-speaking ''United Evangelical Church in Poland'' under Gen.-Supt. , having lacked official recognition by the Polish government, expected a change by the German annexation, which happened but to the opposite of the expected. In March 1940 Greiser decreed an ordinance for the Warthegau, which declared the church bodies not to be statutory bodies, as in Germany, but mere private associations. Minors under 18 years were banned to attend meetings and services, in order to alienate them from Christianity. All church property, except of a prayer hall, was to be expropriated. All pastors of the ''United Evangelical Church in Poland'' there were subjected to strict state control and expelled at the slightest suspect of criticism of the murders and expulsions carried out daily in the Warthegau. Pastors, who would dare to speak up for the Jewish heritage within Christianity, such as the ten commandments, the sanctity of life (Thou shalt not kill), the commandment of charity (Leviticus, Third Book of Moses : "Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the LORD.", Book of Hosea : "For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings.") and justice (Book of Amos Amos 5:24, 5:24: "But let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream.") as well as the opposition to racism (Book of Amos : "Are ye not as children of the Ethiopians unto me, O children of Israel? saith the LORD. Have not I brought up Israel out of the land of Egypt? and the Philistines from Caphtor, and the Syrians from Kir?"), risked at minimum expulsion and maltreatment, if not deportation into a concentration camp. Pastors were allowed to confine themselves to the genuine Christian part of Christianity, the belief in the salvation through the sacrifice of Jesus, who allegedly died for the sins of the believers – and sins were there in ever-growing number. The Warthegau remained blocked, while the functionaries of the official ''Evangelical Supreme Church Council'' managed to reintegrate the congregations of the ''United Evangelical Church in Poland'', located in Polish Greater Pomeranian Voivodship, Greater Pomerania (Pomerellia), into the newly formed ''Ecclesiastical Region of Danzig-West Prussia'' (Kirchengebiet Danzig-Westpreußen), since 1940 also comprising the congregations of Danzig's regional synodal federation, and thus competent for all congregations of united Protestant church bodies in the Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia, homonymous Reichsgau. When in October 1940 Kerrl – for the Nazi Ministry of religious Affairs – tried to take control over the churches in the Warthegau, Greiser prohibited him to do so. The reinitiated government murders of the disabled, meanwhile including even war invalids, startled proponents of the Confessing Church bodies. Representatives of the ''Confessing Church'' and the Roman Catholic Church protested at the Nazi Reich's government against the murders, which also included inmates of Christian sanatories. On 4 December 1940 Reinhold Sautter, Supreme Church Councillor of Württemberg, reproached the Nazi Ministerial Councillor Eugen Stähle for the murders in Grafeneck Castle, the latter then confronted him with the Nazi government opinion, that "The fifth commandment: Thou shalt not kill, is no commandment of God but a Jewish invention" and cannot claim any validity any more. The Catholic Bishop Clemens von Galen of the Diocese of Münster (Westphalia) was the first to protest publicly against the murders in summer 1941. In December Wurm and Adolf Bertram, Catholic Archbishop of Breslau, followed suit. The Nazi Reich's government then stopped the murders only to resume them soon later in a more secret way. The representatives of the official ''Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union'', like its then leader Werner silenced about the murders. Werner continued to streamline the ecclesiastical institutions. In early 1941 he appointed Oskar Söhngen, simultaneously member of the ''Evangelical Supreme Church Council'', as ecclesiastical leader of the ''March of Brandenburg consistory''.Barbara Krüger and Peter Noss, "Die Strukturen in der Evangelischen Kirche 1933–1945", p. 168. With the help of the Gestapo the parallel institutions of education and examination of the ''Confessing Church'' were successfully destroyed in the course of 1941. Supt. Albertz und Hans Böhm, the leaders of those educational institutions were arrested in July 1941. Söhngen protested and resigned from the consistory by the end of 1942. From 1 September 1941 on Jewish Germans and Gentile Germans of Jewish descent with three or four grandparents, who were enrolled with a Jewish congregation, and the special category of Geltungsjuden had to wear the Yellow badge. Thus the concerned congregants were easily to be identified by others. One of the rare reactions came from Vicar Katharina Staritz, competent for the synodal region of the city of Breslau. In a circular she prompted the congregations in Breslau to take care of the concerned parishioners with special love and suggested that while services other respected congregants would sit next to their stigmatised fellow congregants in order to oppose this unwanted distinction. The Nazi media heftily attacked her and the Gestapo deported her to a concentration camp (she was later released), while the official Silesian ecclesiastical province fired her. Systematic Deportation#Deportation during World War II, deportations of Jewish Germans and Gentile Germans of Jewish descent started on 18 October 1941. These were all directed to Ghettos in Nazi-occupied Europe or to ''concentration camps''. In October 1941 proponents of the ''Confessing Church'' reported about Auschwitz (concentration camp), newly opened on 23 September, that Jews were gassed there. The members of the second ''preliminary church executive'' could not believe it and did not speak up. On 8–9 November, the tenth ''old-Prussian Synod of Confession'' convened in the premises of the St. Trinity Church (Hamburg-Hamm; ''Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Hamburgian State''), outside of Prussia. Forck, member of the second ''preliminary church executive'' organised it. The synod dealt with replacing recruited pastors by female vicars, presbyters and laypersons. On 22 December 1941 the official ''German Evangelical Church'' called for suited actions by all Protestant church bodies to withhold baptised non-''Aryans'' from all spheres of Protestant church life. Many ''German Christian''-dominated congregations followed suit. The second ''preliminary church executive'' of the Confessing ''German Evangelical Church'' together with the conference of the ''state brethren councils'' (representing the ''destroyed churches'' including the ''Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union'') issued a declaration of protest. Confessing congregations in the ''Ecclesiastical Province of Pomerania'' and the ''Congregation of Neubabelsberg'' handed in lists of signatures in protest against the exclusion of the stigmatised Protestants of Jewish descent. Also the ''Evangelical Supreme Church Council'' of the 'intact' Evangelical State Church in Württemberg and its Bishop Wurm sent letters of protest on 27 January and 6 February 1942, respectively. On 17–18 October 1942 the eleventh ''old-Prussian Synod of Confession'' convened again in Hamm, Hamburg. The majority of the synodal members voted against the motion to allow Ordination of women in Protestant denominations, women to be ordained as pastors.Rajah Scheepers,"Der steinige Weg von Frauen ins Pfarramt", in: ''Treffpunkt: Zeitschrift der Ev. Matthäusgemeinde Berlin-Steglitz'', No. 5, September/October 2018, presbytery of the Matthew Church (Berlin-Steglitz), Berlin-Steglitz Matthew Church Congregation (ed.), pp. 4seq., here p. 5. No ISSN. However, the outspoken advocates of women's ordination continued to pursue their goal. On 12 January 1943 Kurt Scharf, praeses of the Province of Brandenburg, Brandenburg provincial Synod of Confession (Bekenntnissynode) and pastor in Sachsenhausen (Oranienburg), Sachsenhausen, ordained Ilse Härter and in his church, the two women wearing the full ministerial robes, as the first women in Germany as pastors equal to their male colleagues. Until 1943 almost all the remaining Jewish Germans and Gentile Germans of Jewish descent have been deported to the concentration camps. Thus on 10 June, the Reichssicherheitshauptamt dissolved the ''Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland'' and deported the tiny rest of its collaborators 6 days later to Theresienstadt. There about 800 Protestants of Jewish descent from all German church bodies founded a Protestant congregation. Pastor Hans Encke (Cologne) had ordained parishioners from his congregation, who were to be deported and wanted to work as chaplains at the place, where they would come to. The only German Jews and German Gentiles of Jewish descent, who were in fact not deported, were those living in so-called ''privileged Anti-miscegenation laws#Nazi Germany, mixed marriage'', which in 1933 amounted to about 40,000 couples nationwide. Shortly before the next old-Prussian Synod of Confession, in early October 1943 the old-Prussian Brethren Council of the Confessing Church decided to generally allow the ordination of women, followed by the ordination of Annemarie Grosch, Sieghild Jungklaus, Margarethe Saar, Lore Schlunk, and Gisela von Witzleben altogether on 16 October 1943 in Lichterfelde (Berlin), Lichterfelde (a locality of Berlin). On the twelfth ''old-Prussian Synod of Confession'' (16–19 October 1943) in Breslau the synodals passed a declaration against the ongoing Shoah, murder of Jews and the handicapped which was read from the pulpits in the confessing congregations. It backed its decisions with the commandment Thou shalt not kill, later issuing leaflets and brochures with guidelines for the parishioner. But overall, the persecutions and arrestments – as well as the increasing weariness in the long duration of the war with 72 weekly work hours – made most members acquiesce.Wartime impact on the church
The Allied Strategic bombing during World War II on Germany first reached the areas of the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland, Rhenish and the Evangelical Church of Westphalia, Westphalian ecclesiastical provinces of the ''Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union'' (especially in the Ruhr Area). The massive devastations of inhabited areas of course also included church buildings and other church-owned real estate. In the course of the ever intensifying further spreading Allied bombing the ''Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union'' suffered substantial losses of church structures in all ecclesiastical provinces, especially in the cities, including many buildings of considerable historical and/or architectural value. In the city of Berlin e.g., out of the 191 churches belonging to the ''Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union'' 18 were completely destroyed, 68 were severely damaged, 54 had considerable, 49 had light damages and 2 remained untouched. The ''March of Brandenburg consistory'' was badly damaged in early 1944 and burnt completely out on 3 February 1945. The offices were relocated to Baršć/Forst in Lusatia and into the rectory of the Holy Trinity Church (Berlin), Trinity Congregation (Berlin-Friedrichstadt) as well as into rooms in Potsdam. Consistorial President Heinrich Fichtner, replacing Söhngen since 1943, Bender, August Krieg, von Arnim, Paul Fahland, Paul Görs and Hans Nordmann stayed in Berlin. In 1944 the ''Evangelical Supreme Church Council'' moved partly into the premises of the ''Stolberg-Stolberg Consistory'' in Stolberg, Saxony-Anhalt, Stolberg at the Harz and partly to Züllichau. When Soviet soldiers first entered into the territory of the ''Ecclesiastical Province of East Prussia'' in late 1944, the ''Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union'' decided to relocate church archives from endangered East and West Prussia into central parts of Prussia, where more than 7,200 church registers were finally rescued. But with the Soviet offensives starting in January 1945 (see Vistula-Oder Offensive, January–February, with the follow-up of the East Prussian Offensive, January–April, the East Pomeranian Offensive and the Silesian Offensives, February–April) the Red Army advanced so speedily, that there was hardly a chance to rescue refugees, let alone archives of congregations in Farther Pomerania, Neumark#World War II, eastern Brandenburg and from most congregations of the Silesian ecclesiastical province, as was recorded in a report about the situation in the ecclesiastical provinces (10 March 1945). By the end of the war millions of parishioners and many pastors were fleeing westwards.Postwar
With the end of the war the tragedy of church members, the destruction of churches, and the loss of church archives had no end. The United Kingdom, the US, and the USSR had agreed in the Potsdam Agreement to absorb all the expellees from Poland proper and from the Former eastern territories of Germany, German territories newly annexed by Poland (March 1945) and by the Soviet Union. Thus an ever-growing number of parishioners was expelled. Especially all representatives of German intelligentsia – including Protestant clergy – were systematically deported to the west of the Oder-Neiße Line. On 7 May 1945 Otto Dibelius organised the forming of a provisional church executive for the ''Ecclesiastical Province of the March of Brandenburg''. In the ''Ecclesiastical Province of Saxony'' the ''Confessing Christian'' Lothar Kreyssig assumed the office of consistorial president. In June an overall provisional church executive, the Council of the ''Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union'' (german: link=no, Rat der Evangelischen Kirche der altpreußischen Union) emerged, acting until December 1948 mostly in Middle Germany, since traffic and communication between the German regions had collapsed. On 13 June 1945 the Westphalian ecclesiastical province under Praeses Karl Koch unilaterally assumed independence as Evangelical Church of Westphalia. From 1945 on the Province of Hohenzollern, Hohenzollern provincial deanery fell under the provisional supervision by the ''Evangelical State Church in Württemberg''. On 1 April 1950 the deanery joined that church body and thus terminated its subordination to the supervision by the ''Evangelical Church in the Rhineland''. On 15 July Heinrich Grüber was appointed Provost of St. Mary's and St. Nicholas Church, Berlin, St. Nicholas' Church in Berlin and Dibelius invested him on 8 August in a ceremony in St. Mary's Church, Berlin, St. Mary's Church, only partially cleared from the debris. Wurm invited representatives of all Protestant church bodies to Treysa for 31 August 1945. The representatives of the six still existing ecclesiastical provinces (March of Brandenburg, Pomerania, Rhineland, Saxony, Silesia, and Westphalia) and the central ''Evangelical Supreme Church Council'' of the ''Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union'' used the occasion to take fundamental decisions about the future of the ''Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union''. The representatives decided to assume the independent existence of each ecclesiastical province and to reform the ''Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union'' into a mere umbrella organisation ("Neuordnung der Evangelischen Kirche der altpreußischen Union"). Dibelius and some Middle German representatives (the so-called Dibelians) could not assert themselves against Koch and his partisans, to maintain the ''Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union'' as an integrated church body. The three ecclesiastical provinces of Danzig, East Prussia, and Posen-West Prussia, all completely located in today's Poland, today's Russian Kaliningrad Oblast and Lithuania Minor#After World War II (Soviet Union and modern-day), Lithuania Minor, were in the process of complete vanishing after the flight of many parishioners and pastors by the end of the war and the post-war Expulsion of Germans carried out by the Polish and Soviet governments in the years of 1945–1948.Wilhelm Hüffmeier, "Die Evangelische Kirche der Union: Eine kurze geschichtliche Orientierung", in: ''"... den großen Zwecken des Christenthums gemäß": Die Evangelische Kirche der Union 1817 bis 1992; Eine Handreichung für die Gemeinden'', Wilhelm Hüffmeier (compilator) for the Kirchenkanzlei der Evangelischen Kirche der Union (ed.) on behalf of the Synod, Bielefeld: Luther-Verlag, 1992, pp. 13–27, here p. 24. In December the lawyer and Supreme Church Councillor Erich Dalhoff issued his assessment that the newly formed provisional executive bodies on the overall and provincial levels of the ''Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union'' are to be regarded legitimate under the given emergency circumstances. As to cooperation of all the Protestant church bodies in Germany strong resentments prevailed, especially among the Lutheran church bodies of Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria, Bavaria right of the river Rhine, ''the Hamburgian State'', Evangelical Lutheran State Church of Hanover, Hanover, Evangelical Lutheran Church of Mecklenburg, Mecklenburg, Evangelical Lutheran Church of Saxony, the Free State of Saxony, and Evangelical Lutheran Church in Thuringia, Thuringia, against any unification after the experiences during the Nazi reign with theInto the 1950s
On 24 February 1950 the ''Evangelical Supreme Church Council'' proposed an extraordinary ''General Synod'', which convened on 11–13 December in Berlin. The synod elected Lothar Kreyssig as chair (praeses) of the synod and voted for a new Church constitution on 13 December, and again in a second meeting on 20 February 1951. On 1 August 1951 the new constitution (german: link=no, Ordnung der Evangelischen Kirche der altpreußischen Union) took effect.(ABl. EKD 1951 p. 153) It transformed the ''Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union'' (german: link=no, Evangelische Kirche der altpreußischen Union (ApU/EKapU)) into a mere umbrella organisation and did away with the ''Evangelical Supreme Church Council'', replacing it by the ''Church Chancery'' (german: link=no, Kirchenkanzlei), as its administrative body. The governing body, ''Church Senate'' led by the Praeses of the General Synod (disbanded by 1933), became the ''Council of the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union''. The heads of the Church body now bore the title ''President of the Council'' (german: link=no, Vorsitzende(r) des Rates der Evangelischen Kirche der altpreußischen Union) and led for terms of two years. The Council consisted of the presidents of the member churches, the Praeses of the General Synod, members of each member church appointed by their respective synods, the Chief of the Church Chancery, two representatives of the Reformed parishioners and two general synodals, who were not theologians. Until the appointment of the first head in 1952 President Dibelius, the former president of the ''Evangelical Supreme Church Council'', and its other members officiated per pro as chief and members of the Church Chancery. In 1951 the Bavarian Bishop Hans Meiser, then president of the United Evangelical Lutheran Church of Germany, criticised the continuation of the ''Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union'' as an umbrella, since it lacked a denominational identity, despite the membership of the ''Prussian Union''. On 5 April of the same year Karl Steinhoff, then Minister of the Interior of the GDR, opposed the continued identity of the ''Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union'', especially the use of the term "Prussian" in its name.Wilhelm Hüffmeier, "Die Evangelische Kirche der Union: Eine kurze geschichtliche Orientierung", in: ''"... den großen Zwecken des Christenthums gemäß": Die Evangelische Kirche der Union 1817 bis 1992; Eine Handreichung für die Gemeinden'', Wilhelm Hüffmeier (compilator) for the Kirchenkanzlei der Evangelischen Kirche der Union (ed.) on behalf of the Synod, Bielefeld: Luther-Verlag, 1992, pp. 13–28, here p. 14. The ''Evangelical Supreme Church Council'' replied that the term ''old-Prussian Union'' refers to a denomination, not to a state, so the name was not changed. On 5 May 1952 the ''Council of the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union'', met for the first time and elected from its midst as ''President of the Council''. On 2 July Held met Otto Grotewohl, Minister President of the GDR, for his first official visit. The government of the GDR continued to protest the name, so in a general synod on 12 December 1953 the synodals decided to drop the term ''old-Prussian'' from the name, though confirming that this did not mean the abandonment of the denomination of the ''Prussian Union''. Furthermore, the synod opened the possibility of admitting non-Prussian United and uniting churches to the umbrella. The ''Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union'' used to be abbreviated in German as ''ApU'' or ''EKapU'', the renamed ''Evangelical Church of the Union'' (german: link=no, Evangelische Kirche der Union) chose the abbreviation ''EKU''. In 1960 the synod of the EKU called on the Germans in the east not to leave the GDR. In November the same year the Evangelical State Church of Anhalt, comprising a territory which had never been a part of Prussia, joined the EKU. Since the 1950s the GDR opposed the cross-border co-operation of the ''Evangelical Church of the Union''. Especially after the Berlin Wall was built, the GDR hardly allowed its citizens to visit the Federal Republic of Germany and often denied Westerners entrance to the GDR. However, the GDR tolerated the cooperation to some extent because of the considerable subsidies granted by the two western member churches to the four (from 1960 on, five) eastern member churches, which allowed the GDR National Bank and later its Staatsbank to pocket the western Deutsche Marks, which were otherwise hard to earn by GDR exports to the west, while disbursing East German marks to the eastern churches at the arbitrarily fixed rate of 1:1, since GDR citizens and entities were forbidden to hold unlimited sums of western currency the western churches could not help it. Its synodals from the East and the West would meet simultaneously in Berlin (East) and Berlin (West), while messengers would keep up the communication between them. On 9 May 1967 the ''Evangelical Church of the Union'' decided a committee for the reconstruction of the Berlin Cathedral, Supreme Parish and Cathedral Church in East Berlin. The government of the GDR did not oppose the work of the committee due to the resulting inflow of Deutsche Marks. On 9 April 1968 the GDR adopted its Constitution of East Germany#1968 constitution, second constitution, formalising the country's transformation into a communist dictatorship. Thus the GDR government deprived the church bodies in the GDR of their status as statutory bodies (german: link=no, Körperschaft des öffentlichen Rechts) and abolished the Church tax, which automatically collected parishioners' contributions as a surcharge on the income tax. Now parishioners would have to fix the level of their contributions and to transfer them again and again on their own. This, together with the ongoing discrimination of church members which let many secede from the church, effectively eroded the financial situation of the Church bodies in the East. While in 1946 87.7% of the children in the Soviet Zone were baptised in one of the Protestant Churches the number dropped in 1950 to 86.4% of all children born in the GDR, with 80.9% in 1952, 31% (1960) and 24% (1970). The percentage of Protestant parishioners among the overall population decreased from 81.9% (1946), to 80.5% (1950), 59% (1964) and to merely 23% in 1990. By its new constitution of 1968 the GDR Government demoted all churches from "Public-law Corporations" to mere "Civil Associations" and thus could force the EKU member Churches ''Evangelical Church of Silesia'' and the ''Pomeranian Evangelical Church'' to remove the terms ''Silesia'' and ''Pomerania'' from their names. The first then chose the new name ''Evangelical Church of the Görlitz Ecclesiastical Region'', the latter ''Evangelical Church in Greifswald''. On 1 October 1968 the Synod of the ''Evangelical Church of the Union'' prepared for the worst and passed emergency measures establishing regional synods for East and West in the event of a forceful separation of the Union. The eastern synodal Hanfried Müller, a Stasi spy (camouflage name: IM Hans Meier) – by far not the only spy in the Church – demanded the separation of the Union. However, the majority of the synod opposed it and the ''Evangelical Church of the Union'' maintained its unity until 1972. In July 1970 , the Praeses of the ''Evangelical Church in the Rhineland'' was invited for a meeting in Berlin (East) to discuss the further cross-border work of the ''Evangelical Church of the Union''. However, when he attempted to enter East Berlin in October he was denied entrance. So in 1972 the ''Evangelical Church of the Union'' was forced to separate into two formally independent bodies, indicated by the name affixes ''Bereich Bundesrepublick Deutschland und Berlin West'' (Region/range Federal Republic of Germany and Berlin West) and ''Bereich Deutsche Demokratische Republik'' (Region/range German Democratic Republic; GDR) with East Berlin being subsumed under the GDR. The councils of the western and the eastern region met monthly in East Berlin.Wilhelm Hüffmeier, "Die Evangelische Kirche der Union: Eine kurze geschichtliche Orientierung", in: ''"... den großen Zwecken des Christenthums gemäß": Die Evangelische Kirche der Union 1817 bis 1992; Eine Handreichung für die Gemeinden'', Kirchenkanzlei der Evangelischen Kirche der Union (ed.) on behalf of the Synod, Bielefeld: Luther-Verlag, 1992, pp. 13–28, here p. 25. The GDR government was not after terminating this cooperation.Wilhelm Hüffmeier, "Die Evangelische Kirche der Union: Eine kurze geschichtliche Orientierung", in: ''"... den großen Zwecken des Christenthums gemäß": Die Evangelische Kirche der Union 1817 bis 1992; Eine Handreichung für die Gemeinden'', Kirchenkanzlei der Evangelischen Kirche der Union (ed.) on behalf of the Synod, Bielefeld: Luther-Verlag, 1992, pp. 13–28, here p. 26. The subsidies from the West continued and were still allowed for the aforementioned reasons. The situation changed decisively with the end of the GDR dictatorship in 1989. In 1990 the ''Evangelical Church in Greifswald'' readopted its original name of ''Pomeranian Evangelical Church''. In 1991 the two ''Evangelical Churches of the Union'' reunited. With effect of 1 January 1992 the two regions were administratively reunited. The EKU then comprised 6,119 congregations in spread over seven member churches. In 1992 the ''Evangelical Church of the Görlitz Ecclesiastical Region'' dropped its unwanted name and chose the new name of ''Evangelical Church of Silesian Upper Lusatia''. Due to the increasing irreligionism, lower birth rates since the 1970s, and few Protestant immigrants, the Protestant churches in Germany are undergoing a severe decline in parishioners and thus of parishioners' contributions, forcing member Churches to reorganise in order to spend less. For this reason, the Synod of the ''Evangelical Church of the Union'' decided in June 2002 to merge their organisation with theDoctrinal sources
Belief and teaching were based on a number of confessions accepted by the church. These were theEcclesiastical provinces of the church
The church was subdivided into regional ecclesiastical provinces, territorially mostly resembling the political provinces of Prussia belonging to Prussia before 1866. Each ecclesiastical province had at least one consistory, sometimes more with special competences, and at least one general superintendent, as provincial spiritual leader, sometimes more with regional competences.Number of parishioners
Governors, governing bodies and chairmen of the church
Between 1817 and 1918 the incumbents of the Prussian throne were simultaneously Supreme Governors (summus episcopus) of the Church. Since 1850 – with the strengthening of self-rule within the church – additionally the Evangelical Supreme Ecclesiastical Council (Evangelischer Oberkirchenrat, EOK) became the administrative executive body. Its members, titled supreme consistorial councillors (Oberkonsistorialrat, [Oberkonsistorialräte, plural]) were theologians and jurists by vocation. With the end of the monarchy and the summepiscopacy in 1918 and the separation of religion and state by the Weimar constitution in 1919 the church established by its new Church Order (Lutheran), church order (constitution) an elected governing board in 1922, called the church senate (Kirchensenat), to which the EOK, with reduced competences, became subordinate. The church senate was presided by the praeses of the general synod. With the Nazi regime's interference causing the violation and de facto abolition of the church order, new bodies emerged such as the state bishop (Landesbischof) in 1933, deprived of his power in 1935, the state ecclesiastical committee (Landeskirchenausschuss) since 1935 (dissolved in 1937) and finally the de facto usurpation of governance by the illegitimately appointed president of the EOK since (till 1945). By the end of the war a spontaneously formed provisionally advisory board (Beirat) appointed a new president of the EOK. In 1951 the EOK was renamed into church chancery (Kirchenkanzlei), followed by renaming the church body into Evangelical Church of Union in December 1953.Supreme governors (1817–1918)
*1817–1840:Praesides of the general synod and the synod of the EKU
Before 1922 the praeses only presided over the legislative body of the church, the generalGeneral synod (1846–1953)
* 1846: (*1775–1869*) * 1847–1875: no general synods held * 1875–1907: (*1817–1907*) * 1907–1915: ? * 1915–1933: (*1856–1943*) * 1933–1934: (elected by the illegitimate so-called ''brown general synod'', deposed by State Bishop Ludwig Müller (theologian), Ludwig Müller on 26 January) * 1934–1945: Friedrich Werner (reappointed by Landgericht Berlin, Landgericht Berlin I on 20 November, de facto deposed in 1945) * 1945–1950: vacancy * 1950–1970: Lothar Kreyssig (titled Praeses of the synod of the EKU since 1953)Synod of the Evangelical Church of the Union (1953–1972)
* 1950–1970: Lothar Kreyssig * 1970–1976: Helmut Waitz (*1910–1993*), since 1972 for the eastern region onlyWestern region (1972–1991)
*1972–1976: *1976–1988: Christof Karzig (*1934) *1988–1991: (*1936)Eastern region (1972–1991)
*1970–1976: Helmut Waitz, till 1972 for the undivided synod *1976–1982: (*1939*) *1982–1988: Herbert Karpinski (*1932) *1988–1991: Dietrich Affeld (*1928–2007*)Reunited synod (1992–2003)
*1992–1994: Dietrich Affeld, later unmasked as Stasi spy IM "Dietrich" *1994–1998: Manfred Kock (*1936) *1998–2003: Nikolaus SchneiderPresidents of the Evangelical Supreme Ecclesiastical Council (1850–1951)
The Evangelical Supreme Ecclesiastical Council (Evangelischer Oberkirchenrat, EOK) was the leading executive body, and de facto the governing body between 1918 and 1922, and again between 1937 and 1951, however, then during the schism paralleled by the alternative old-Prussian state brethren council. * 1850–1863: , administrative jurist (*1803–1863*) * 1863–1864: , jurist and politician (*1813–1874*), per pro * 1865–1872: , administrative jurist (*1797–1874*) * 1872–1873: , theologian (*1806–1873*), per pro * 1873–1878: , ecclesiastical lawyer and politician (*1812–1885*) * 1878–1891: , jurist (*1826–1893*) * 1891–1903: , administrative jurist (*1831–1903*) * 1903–1919: , jurist (*1844–1920*) * 1919–1924: , jurist (*1855–1927*) * 1925–1933: , jurist (*1867–1941*); resigned after the church had been subjected to state control * 1933: , theologian (*1879–1953*), per pro; deposed by the Prussian State Commissioner August Jäger * 1933–1945: , jurist (*1897–1955*), appointed by August Jäger, later confirmed by the brown general synod; deposed in 1945 * 1945–1951: Otto Dibelius, bishop, per pro; appointed by the provisional advisory board (Beirat)Chairman of the church senate (1922–1934)
* 1922–1933: , qua praeses of the general synod * 1933–1934: , qua praeses of the illegitimate so-called ''brown general synod'', deposed by State Bishop Ludwig Müller (theologian), Ludwig Müller on 26 JanuaryParallel governing bodies during the Nazi reign
Due to the interference of the Nazi regime in the internal affairs of the old-Prussian church favorites of the regime could usurp governing positions, and lost them again when dropping into disgrace. The protagonists of the confessing old-Prussian church declared the schism to be matter of fact and formed their own governing bodies on 29 May 1934, called the State Brethren Council (Landesbruderrat) of the Evangelical Church of the Old-Prussian Union.State Brethren Council (1934–1949)
* 1934–1936: (*1876–1951*), chairman titled praeses * 1936–1939?: Friedrich (Fritz) Müller (*1889–1942*, poisoned), chairman * 1939?–1949: The brethren council was a collegiate bodyChairman of the church senate (1934–1951)
* 1934–1945: Friedrich Werner, reappointed by verdict of the Landgericht Berlin, Landgericht Berlin I on 20 November, de facto deposed in 1945 * 1945–1951: vacancy, church senate then renamed to Council of the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian UnionState Bishop
On 4 August 1933 Ludwig Müller declared himself old-Prussian State Bishop (Landesbischof), after the State Commissioner for the Prussian ecclesiastical affairs, August Jäger, had conveyed him per pro its leadership. The German Christians (movement), German Christians confirmed him with their majority in the illegitimate ''brown general synod'' on 5 September 1933, by changing the church order only creating the function of state bishop. By creating the state ecclesiastical committee (Landeskirchenausschuss) for the old-Prussian church Müller lost all his governing competences, but retained the title. * 1933–1935(1945): Ludwig Müller (theologian), Ludwig Müller; deposed on 3 October 1935 by the old-Prussian state ecclesiastical committeePresident of the state ecclesiastical committee for the old-Prussian Church
* 1935–1937: (*1864–1945*), resigned since overcoming the schism turned impossible * 1937–1945: governance de facto wielded by Friedrich WernerCouncil of the Evangelical Church of the (old-Prussian) Union
The new church order of 1 August 1951, accounting for the transformation of the integrated old-Prussian church into an umbrella, replaced the vacant church senate by the Council of the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union (Rat der Evangelischen Kirche der altpreußischen Union). Also the followers of the State Brethren Council (Landesbruderrat) could be reintegrated into the church. In December 1953 the term ''old-Prussian'' was skipped from the names of the church (since: Evangelische Kirche der Union, EKU) and its bodies. The praeses of the general synod was a member of the council, but only spiritual leaders of one of its member churches were elected chairpersons with the one exception of Kurt Scharf, who became only later bishop. Therefore, the chairperson was also called the leading bishop (Leitender Bischof) even though this title is not used for the spiritual leaders of three of the former member churches. Due to the intensifying East German obstruction of cross-border cooperation within the Evangelical Church of the Union it formed separate governing bodies for the regions of the GDR with East Berlin and West Germany with West Berlin in 1972. The bodies reunited in 1991.Leading bishops and chairmen of the Council (1951–1972)
*1951–1957: (*1897–1957*), praeses of the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland *1957–1960: Kurt Scharf, then one of the provosts of the Evangelical Church in Berlin-Brandenburg *1960–1963: Joachim Beckmann (*1901–1987*), praeses of the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland *1963–1969: (*1901–1989*), praeses of the Evangelical Church of Westphalia *1970–1972: (*1909–1997*), bishop of the Evangelical Church of the Görlitz Ecclesiastical Region (formerly Evangelical Church of Silesia till 1968)Western region bishops (1972–1991)
*1972–1975: (*1916–1984*), praeses of the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland *1975–1981: (*1909–2006*), praeses of the Evangelical Church of Westphalia *1981–1987: (*1921–1999*), praeses of the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland *1987–1991: (*1930), praeses of the Evangelical Church of WestphaliaEastern region bishops (1972–1991)
*1972–1976: (*1930), bishop of the Evangelical Church in Greifswald (formerly Pomeranian Evangelical Church till 1968) *1976–1979: (*1917–2009*), bishop of the Evangelical Church of the Ecclesiastical Province of Saxony *1979–1983: (*1932), church president of the Evangelical State Church of Anhalt *1984–1987: (*1923–1996*), bishop of the Evangelical Church in Berlin-Brandenburg (eastern synod) *1987–1989: Horst Gienke, resigned under synodal pressure after unmasking as Stasi spy IM "Orion" *1989–1991: (*1929–2000*), bishop of the ecclesiastical region of GörlitzReunited church bishops and chairmen (1992–2003)
*1992–1993: Joachim Rogge, bishop of the Evangelical Church of Silesian Upper Lusatia (formerly Ecclesiastical Region of Görlitz till 1992); later unmasked as Stasi IM "Ferdinand" *1994–1996: (*1934–1996*), praeses of the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland *1996–1998: (*1944), bishop of the Pomeranian Evangelical Church (formerly Evangelical Church in Greifswald till 1991) *1998–2000: (*1944), church president of the Evangelical State Church of Anhalt *2000–2003: (*1938), praeses of the Evangelical Church of WestphaliaSee also
*References
Further reading
* Bigler, Robert M. ''The Politics of German Protestantism: The Rise of the Protestant Church Elite in Prussia, 1815-1848'' (Univ of California Press, 1972) * Borg, Daniel R. ''The Old Prussian Church and the Weimar Republic: A Study in Political Adjustment, 1917-1927'' (University Press of New England, 1984) * Clark, Christopher. "Confessional policy and the limits of state action: Frederick William III and the Prussian Church Union 1817–40." ''Historical Journal'' 39.#4 (1996) pp: 985–1004In German
* ''Akten zur deutschen auswärtigen Politik'': Series D (1937–1945), 13 vols., Walter Bußmann (ed.), vol. 7: 'Die letzten Wochen vor Kriegsausbruch: 9. August bis 3. September 1939', Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1956, p. 171. . * Helmut Baier, ''Kirche in Not: Die bayerische Landeskirche im Zweiten Weltkrieg'', Neustadt an der Aisch: Degener (in commission), 1979, (=Einzelarbeiten aus der Kirchengeschichte Bayerns; vol. 57). . * Felicitas Bothe-von Richthofen, ''Widerstand in Wilmersdorf'', Memorial to the German Resistance, Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand (ed.), Berlin: Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand, 1993, (=Schriftenreihe über den Widerstand in Berlin von 1933 bis 1945; vol. 7). . * ''Die Bekenntnisse und grundsätzlichen Äußerungen zur Kirchenfrage'': 3 vols., Kurt Dietrich Schmidt (ed.), Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1934–1936, vol. 1. . * Ursula Büttner, "Von der Kirche verlassen: Die deutschen Protestanten und die Verfolgung der Juden und Christen jüdischer Herkunft im »Dritten Reich"", in: ''Die verlassenen Kinder der Kirche: Der Umgang mit Christen jüdischer Herkunft im "Dritten Reich"'', Ursula Büttner and Martin Greschat (eds.), Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998, pp. 15–69. . * F. K. Otto Dibelius, Otto Dibelius, ''Das Jahrhundert der Kirche: Geschichte, Betrachtung, Umschau und Ziele'', Berlin: Furche-Verlag, 1927. . * Klaus Drobisch, "Humanitäre Hilfe – gewichtiger Teil des Widerstandes von Christen (anläßlich des 100. Geburtstages von Propst Heinrich Grüber)", in: ''Heinrich Grüber und die Folgen: Beiträge des Symposiums am 25. Juni 1991 in der Jesus-Kirche zu Berlin-Kaulsdorf'', Eva Voßberg (ed.), Berlin: Bezirkschronik Berlin-Hellersdorf, 1992, (=Hellersdorfer Heimathefte; No. 1), pp. 26–29. . * Gerhard Engel, ''Heeresadjutant bei Hitler: 1938–1943; Aufzeichnungen des Majors Engel'', Hildegard von Kotze (ed. and comment.), Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1974, (=Schriftenreihe der Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte; vol. 29). . * Erich Foerster, ''Die Entstehung der Preußischen Landeskirche unter der Regierung König Friedrich Wilhelms des Dritten; Nach den Quellen erzählt von Erich Foerster. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Kirchenbildung im deutschen Protestantismus'': 2 parts, Tübingen: Mohr, 1905 (pt 1) and 1907 (pt 2). . * Frederick William III and Daniel Amadeus Gottlieb Neander, ''Luther in Beziehung auf die evangelische Kirchen-Agende in den Königlich Preussischen Landen'' (11827), Berlin: Unger, 21834. . * Herbert Frost, ''Strukturprobleme evangelischer Kirchenverfassung: Rechtsvergleichende Untersuchungen zum Verfassungsrecht der deutschen evangelischen Landeskirchen'', Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1972, partly identical with Cologne, University of Cologne, Univ., Habilitationsschrift, 1968. . * Wolfgang Gerlach, ''Als die Zeugen schwiegen: Bekennende Kirche und die Juden'', reedited and accompl. ed., Berlin: Institut Kirche und Judentum, 21993, (=Studien zu Kirche und Israel; vol. 10). . An earlier version appeared as doctoral thesis titled ''Zwischen Kreuz und Davidstern'', Hamburg, University of Hamburg, Univ., Diss., 11970. * Arthur Goldschmidt, ''Geschichte der evangelischen Gemeinde Theresienstadt 1942–1945'', Tübingen: Furche-Verlag, 1948, (=Das christliche Deutschland 1933 bis 1945: Evangelische Reihe; vol. 7). . * Martin Greschat, "Friedrich Weißler: Ein Jurist der Bekennenden Kirche im Widerstand gegen Hitler", in: ''Die verlassenen Kinder der Kirche: Der Umgang mit Christen jüdischer Herkunft im "Dritten Reich"'', Ursula Büttner and Martin Greschat (eds.), Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998, pp. 86–122. . * Martin Greschat, ""Gegen den Gott der Deutschen": Marga Meusels Kampf für die Rettung der Juden", in: ''Die verlassenen Kinder der Kirche: Der Umgang mit Christen jüdischer Herkunft im "Dritten Reich«'', Ursula Büttner and Martin Greschat (eds.), Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998, pp. 70–85. . * Martin Greschat (ed. and commentator), ''Zwischen Widerspruch und Widerstand: Texte zur Denkschrift der Bekennenden Kirche an Hitler (1936)'', Munich: Kaiser, 1987, (=Studienbücher zur kirchlichen Zeitgeschichte; vol. 6). . * Israel Gutman, Daniel Fraenkel, Sara Bender, and Jacob Borut (eds.), ''Lexikon der Gerechten unter den Völkern: Deutsche und Österreicher'' [Rashût ha-Zîkkarôn la-Sho'a we-la-Gvûrah (רשות הזכרון לשואה ולגבורה), Jerusalem: Yad VaShem; dt.], Uwe Hager (trl.), Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2005, article: Heinrich Grüber, pp. 128seqq. . * ''Heinrich Grüber. Sein Dienst am Menschen'', Peter Mehnert on behalf or the Evangelische Hilfsstelle für ehemals Rasseverfolgte and Bezirksamt Hellersdorf (ed.), Berlin: Bezirkschronik Berlin-Hellersdorf, 1988. . * Gunnar Heinsohn, ''Worin unterscheidet sich der Holocaust von den anderen Völkermorden Hitlerdeutschlands?'', lecture held for the ''Deutsch-Israelische Gesellschaft'', Berlin, on 22 April 1999 at the Gemeindehaus of the Jewish Community of Berlin, p. 3. . * Ernst Hornig, ''Die Bekennende Kirche in Schlesien 1933–1945: Geschichte und Dokumente'', Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1977, (=Arbeiten zur Geschichte des Kirchenkampfes: Ergänzungsreihe; vol. 10). . *Wilhelm Hüffmeier, "Die Evangelische Kirche der Union: Eine kurze geschichtliche Orientierung", in: ''"... den großen Zwecken des Christenthums gemäß": Die Evangelische Kirche der Union 1817 bis 1992: Eine Handreichung für die Gemeinden'', Wilhelm Hüffmeier (compil.) for the Kirchenkanzlei der Evangelischen Kirche der Union (ed.) on behalf of the Synod, Bielefeld: Luther-Verlag, 1992, pp. 13–28. * Wilhelm Hüffmeier and Christa Stache, ''Jebensstraße 3. Ein Erinnerungsbuch'', Berlin: Union Evangelischer Kirchen in der EKD, 2006. * ''Justus Perthes' Staatsbürger-Atlas: 24 Kartenblätter mit über 60 Darstellungen zur Verfassung und Verwaltung des Deutschen Reichs und der Bundesstaaten'' (11896), Paul Langhans (comment.), Gotha: Perthes, 21896. . * ''Kirchliches Jahrbuch für die Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland''; vols. 60–71 (1933–1944), Joachim Beckmann (ed.) on behalf of the Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland, Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 1948. ISSN 0075-6210. * Alfred Kleindienst and Oskar Wagner, ''Der Protestantismus in der Republik Polen 1918/19 bis 1939 im Spannungsfeld von Nationalitätenpolitik und Staatskirchenrecht, kirchlicher und nationaler Gegensätze'', Marburg upon Lahn: J.-G.-Herder-Institut, 1985, (=Marburger Ostforschungen; vol. 42). . * Michael Kreutzer, Joachim-Dieter Schwäbl and Walter Sylten, "Mahnung und Verpflichtung", in: ''›Büro Pfarrer Grüber‹ Evangelische Hilfsstelle für ehemals Rasseverfolgte. Geschichte und Wirken heute'', Walter Sylten, Joachim-Dieter Schwäbl and Michael Kreutzer on behalf of the Evangelische Hilfsstelle für ehemals Rasseverfolgte (ed.; Evangelical Relief Centre for the formerly Racially Persecuted), Berlin: Evangelische Hilfsstelle für ehemals Rasseverfolgte, 1988, pp. 24–29. . * Barbara Krüger and Peter Noss, "Die Strukturen in der Evangelischen Kirche 1933–1945", in: ''Kirchenkampf in Berlin 1932–1945: 42 Stadtgeschichten'', Olaf Kühl-Freudenstein, Peter Noss, and Claus Wagener (eds.), Berlin: Institut Kirche und Judentum, 1999, (=Studien zu Kirche und Judentum; vol. 18), pp. 149–171. . * Olaf Kühl-Freudenstein, "Berlin-Dahlem", in: ''Kirchenkampf in Berlin 1932–1945: 42 Stadtgeschichten'', Olaf Kühl-Freudenstein, Peter Noss, and Claus Wagener (eds.), Berlin: Institut Kirche und Judentum, 1999, (=Studien zu Kirche und Judentum; vol. 18), pp. 396–411. . * Olaf Kühl-Freudenstein, "Die Glaubensbewegung Deutsche Christen", in: ''Kirchenkampf in Berlin 1932–1945: 42 Stadtgeschichten'', Olaf Kühl-Freudenstein, Peter Noss, and Claus Wagener (eds.), Berlin: Institut Kirche und Judentum, 1999, (=Studien zu Kirche und Judentum; vol. 18), pp. 97–113. . * Günther Kühne and Elisabeth Stephani, ''Evangelische Kirchen in Berlin'' (11978), Berlin: CZV-Verlag, 21986. . * Ralf Lange and Peter Noss, "''Bekennende Kirche'' in Berlin", in: ''Kirchenkampf in Berlin 1932–1945: 42 Stadtgeschichten'', Olaf Kühl-Freudenstein, Peter Noss, and Claus Wagener (eds.), Berlin: Institut Kirche und Judentum, 1999, (=Studien zu Kirche und Judentum; vol. 18), pp. 114–147. . *Eckhard Lessing, "Gemeinschaft im Dienst am Evangelium: Der theologische Weg der EKU", in: ''"... den großen Zwecken des Christenthums gemäß": Die Evangelische Kirche der Union 1817 bis 1992: Eine Handreichung für die Gemeinden'', Wilhelm Hüffmeier (compil.) for the Kirchenkanzlei der Evangelischen Kirche der Union (ed.) on behalf of the Synod, Bielefeld: Luther-Verlag, 1992, pp. 29–37. * Hartmut Ludwig, "Das ›Büro Pfarrer Grüber‹ 1938–1940", in: ''›Büro Pfarrer Grüber‹ Evangelische Hilfsstelle für ehemals Rasseverfolgte. Geschichte und Wirken heute'', Walter Sylten, Joachim-Dieter Schwäbl and Michael Kreutzer on behalf of the Evangelische Hilfsstelle für ehemals Rasseverfolgte (ed.; Evangelical Relief Centre for the formerly Racially Persecuted), Berlin: Evangelische Hilfsstelle für ehemals Rasseverfolgte, 1988, pp. 1–23. . * Kurt Meier, ''Kirche und Judentum: Die Haltung der evangelischen Kirche zur Judenpolitik des Dritten Reiches'', Halle upon Saale: Niemeyer, 1968. . * Christine-Ruth Müller, ''Dietrich Bonhoeffers Kampf gegen die nationalsozialistische Verfolgung und Vernichtung der Juden: Bonhoeffers Haltung zur Judenfrage im Vergleich mit Stellungnahmen aus der evangelischen Kirche und Kreisen des deutschen Widerstandes'', Munich: Kaiser, 1990, (=Heidelberger Untersuchungen zu Widerstand, Judenverfolgung und Kirchenkampf im Dritten Reich; vol. 5), simultaneously handed in at the University Ruperto Carola Heidelbergensis, Diss., 1986. . * Wilhelm Niesel, ''Kirche unter dem Wort: Der Kampf der Bekennenden Kirche der altpreußischen Union 1933–1945'', Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1978, (=Arbeiten zur Geschichte des Kirchenkampfes: Ergänzungsreihe; vol. 11). . * Peter Noss, "Berlin-Staaken-Dorf", in: ''Kirchenkampf in Berlin 1932–1945: 42 Stadtgeschichten'', Olaf Kühl-Freudenstein, Peter Noss, and Claus Wagener (eds.), Berlin: Institut Kirche und Judentum, 1999, (=Studien zu Kirche und Judentum; vol. 18), pp. 558–563. . * Peter Noss, "Schlussbetrachtung", in: ''Kirchenkampf in Berlin 1932–1945: 42 Stadtgeschichten'', Olaf Kühl-Freudenstein, Peter Noss, and Claus Wagener (eds.), Berlin: Institut Kirche und Judentum, 1999, (=Studien zu Kirche und Judentum; vol. 18), pp. 574–591. . * Enno Obendiek, "Die Theologische Erklärung von Barmen 1934: Hinführung", in: ''"... den großen Zwecken des Christenthums gemäß": Die Evangelische Kirche der Union 1817 bis 1992: Eine Handreichung für die Gemeinden'', Wilhelm Hüffmeier (compilator) for the Kirchenkanzlei der Evangelischen Kirche der Union (ed.) on behalf of the Synod, Bielefeld: Luther-Verlag, 1992, pp. 52–58. * Eberhard Röhm and Jörg Thierfelder, ''Juden – Christen – Deutsche'': 4 vols. in 7 parts, Stuttgart: Calwer-Verlag, 1990–2007. . * Hans-Rainer Sandvoß, ''Widerstand in Kreuzberg'', altered and ext. ed., Memorial to the German Resistance, Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand (ed.), Berlin: Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand, 21997, (=Schriftenreihe über den Widerstand in Berlin von 1933 bis 1945; No. 10). ISSN 0175-3592. * Hans-Rainer Sandvoß, ''Widerstand in Steglitz und Zehlendorf'', Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand (ed.), Berlin: Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand, 1986, (=Schriftenreihe über den Widerstand in Berlin von 1933 bis 1945; No. 2). ISSN 0175-3592. * Hans-Rainer Sandvoß, ''Widerstand in Wedding und Gesundbrunnen'', Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand (ed.), Berlin: Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand, 2003, (=Schriftenreihe über den Widerstand in Berlin von 1933 bis 1945; No. 14). ISSN 0175-3592. * Hans-Walter Schmuhl, ''Rassenhygiene, Nationalsozialismus, Euthanasie: Von der Verhütung zur Vernichtung "lebensunwerten Lebens", 1890–1945'', Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1987, (=Kritische Studien zur Geschichtswissenschaft; vol. 75); simultaneously handed in as doctoral thesis in Bielefeld, University of Bielefeld, Diss., 1986 under the title: ''Die Synthese von Arzt und Henker'', (print), (ebook), p. * Stefan Schreiner, "Antisemitismus in der evangelischen Kirche", in: ''Heinrich Grüber und die Folgen: Beiträge des Symposiums am 25. Juni 1991 in der Jesus-Kirche zu Berlin-Kaulsdorf, Eva Voßberg (ed.), Berlin: Bezirkschronik Berlin-Hellersdorf, 1992, (=Hellersdorfer Heimathefte; No. 1)'', pp. 17–25. . *Synode der Evangelischen Kirche der Union, "Erklärung zur theologischen Grundbestimmung der Evangelischen Kirche der Union (EKU)", in: ''"... den großen Zwecken des Christenthums gemäß": Die Evangelische Kirche der Union 1817 bis 1992: Eine Handreichung für die Gemeinden'', Wilhelm Hüffmeier (compil.) for the Kirchenkanzlei der Evangelischen Kirche der Union (ed.) on behalf of the Synod, Bielefeld: Luther-Verlag, 1992, pp. 38–49. * Claus Wagener, "Die evangelische Kirche der altpreußischen Union", in: ''Kirchenkampf in Berlin 1932–1945: 42 Stadtgeschichten'', Olaf Kühl-Freudenstein, Peter Noss, and Claus Wagener (eds.), Berlin: Institut Kirche und Judentum, 1999, (=Studien zu Kirche und Judentum; vol. 18), pp. 20–26. * Claus Wagener, "Die Vorgeschichte des Kirchenkampfes", in: ''Kirchenkampf in Berlin 1932–1945: 42 Stadtgeschichten'', Olaf Kühl-Freudenstein, Peter Noss, and Claus Wagener (eds.), Berlin: Institut Kirche und Judentum, 1999, (=Studien zu Kirche und Judentum; vol. 18), pp. 27–75. . * Claus Wagener, "Nationalsozialistische Kirchenpolitik und protestantische Kirchen nach 1933", in: ''Kirchenkampf in Berlin 1932–1945: 42 Stadtgeschichten'', Olaf Kühl-Freudenstein, Peter Noss, and Claus Wagener (eds.), Berlin: Institut Kirche und Judentum, 1999, (=Studien zu Kirche und Judentum; vol. 18), pp. 76–96. * ''Wider das Vergessen: Schicksale judenchristlicher Pfarrer in der Zeit 1933–1945'' (special exhibition in the Eisenach#Luther House, Lutherhaus Eisenach April 1988 – April 1989), Evangelisches Pfarrhausarchiv (ed.), Eisenach: Evangelisches Pfarrhausarchiv, 1988. .External links
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