Bundesarchiv Bild 183-1985-0109-502, Kirchenwahl

The German Evangelical Church (german: Deutsche Evangelische Kirche) was a successor to the German Evangelical Church Confederation from 1933 until 1945. The

German Christians Christianity is the largest religion in Germany. It was introduced to the area of modern Germany by 300 AD, while parts of that area belonged to the Roman Empire, and later, when Franks and other Germanic tribes converted to Christianity from t ...

, an

antisemitic Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism. Ant ...

and

racist Racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to inherited attributes and can be divided based on the superiority of one race over another. It may also mean prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism ...

pressure group and ''Kirchenpartei'', gained enough power on boards of the member churches to be able to install Ludwig Müller to the office of ' in the 1933 church elections. The German Evangelical Church Confederation was subsequently renamed the German Evangelical Church. In 1934, the German Evangelical Church suffered controversies and internal struggles which left member churches either detached or reorganised into German Christians-led dioceses of what was to become a single, unified Reich Church compatible with Nazi ideology for all of

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

. In 1935, in wake of controversies and church struggles, the Ministry for Church Affairs removed Ludwig Müller and installed a committee headed by Wilhelm Zoellner to lead the confederation. As a result, the German Evangelical Church regained partial support as some of the member churches that left rejoined. In 1936, the Zoellner committee denounced German Christians and increasingly leaned towards the

Confessing Church The Confessing Church (german: link=no, Bekennende Kirche, ) was a movement within German Protestantism during Nazi Germany that arose in opposition to government-sponsored efforts to unify all Protestant churches into a single pro-Nazi German ...

and its positions. In 1937, the Nazis removed the Zoellner committee and reinstalled German Christians into the leading position. In 1937–1945, the German Evangelical Church was controlled by

and the Ministry. It was no longer considered a subject to the ''

Kirchenkampf ''Kirchenkampf'' (, lit. 'church struggle') is a German term which pertains to the situation of the Christian churches in Germany during the Nazi period (1933–1945). Sometimes used ambiguously, the term may refer to one or more of the follo ...

'' (struggle of the churches) to

Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Germany from 1933 until his death in 1945. He rose to power as the leader of the Nazi Party, becoming the chancellor in 1933 and the ...

. It officially disbanded in 1945 after the war ended. It was succeeded by the

Evangelical Church in Germany The Evangelical Church in Germany (german: Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland, abbreviated EKD) is a federation of twenty Lutheran, Reformed (Calvinist) and United (e.g. Prussian Union) Protestant regional churches and denominations in German ...

in 1948.

Name

It is also known in

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ...

as the Protestant Reich Church (german: Evangelische Reichskirche) and colloquially as the Reich Church (german: Reichskirche).

Overview

In 1933, the

took leadership in some member churches of the German Evangelical Church Confederation. A new designation was voted on and adopted, with the organisation now being called the German Evangelical Church. In its early stages, it remained a loose confederation of churches just like its predecessor. It included a vast majority of

Protestants Protestantism is a Christian denomination, branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Reformation, Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century agai ...

in what was now

, excluding those affiliated with the free churches like the Evangelical Lutheran Free Church. In a 1933 voting to the ''Reichssynode'', the German Christians were able to elect Ludwig Müller, a pro-Nazi pastor, to the office of ' ("Reich Bishop"). On 20 December 1933, Müller merged the church's Protestant youth organisations into the Hitler Jugend without consulting their leadership or any member churches. Many in the German Evangelical Church resisted this idea and a discussion began. Müller tried to silence it by introducing discipline and using powers of the elected office. His attempts failed, prompting

to meet with Protestant leaders on 25 January 1934. Although the meeting ended with Protestant churches declaring their loyalty to the state, removing Müller was not a subject to discussion for Hitler. After that, member churches began to either reorganise or detach from the German Evangelical Church. Initially, there was little resistance to the attempt to introduce elements of Nazi ideology into church doctrine. Most of the resistance came from confessing communities (''bekennende Gemeinden'') within "" and "" (see below) and the ''

Pfarrernotbund The ''Pfarrernotbund'' ( en, Emergency Covenant of Pastors) was an organisation founded on 21 September 1933 to unite German evangelical theologians, pastors and church office-holders against the introduction of the Aryan paragraph into the 28 Pro ...

'' (Emergency Covenant of Pastors) led by pastor

Martin Niemöller Friedrich Gustav Emil Martin Niemöller (; 14 January 18926 March 1984) was a German theologian and Lutheran pastor. He is best known for his opposition to the Nazi regime during the late 1930s and for his widely quoted 1946 poem " First they ca ...

. In consequence of the 1934 meeting, many member churches distanced themselves from the increasingly Nazi-controlled Reich Church due to controversies pertaining to its constitution, the nazification of its theology, leadership, incorporation of its youth organisations into the Hitler Jugend, etc. Such churches became neutral or followed the Protestant opposition to Nazism that established an alternative

umbrella organisation An umbrella organization is an association of (often related, industry-specific) institutions who work together formally to coordinate activities and/or pool resources. In business, political, and other environments, it provides resources and ofte ...

of their own that became known as the

. "Unification, World Wars, and Nazism" The Reich Church ultimately ended up being a confederation of those German Protestant churches that espoused a single doctrine named

Positive Christianity Positive Christianity (german: Positives Christentum) was a movement within Nazi Germany which promoted the belief that the racial purity of the German people should be maintained by mixing racialistic Nazi ideology with either fundamental or ...

, which was compatible with

Nazism Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) i ...

. Although it aimed to eventually become a unified

Protestant Protestantism is a Christian denomination, branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Reformation, Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century agai ...

state church A state religion (also called religious state or official religion) is a religion or creed officially endorsed by a sovereign state. A state with an official religion (also known as confessional state), while not secular, is not necessarily a t ...

for all of

, this attempt utterly failed as the German Evangelical Church became fractured into various groups that bore an unclear legal status in relation to each other: *churches with a German Christians-dominated governing board reorganising them into dioceses of the Reich Church led by

("dioceses of the German Evangelical Church" 'Bistümer der Deutschen Evangelischen Kirche''in official usage, or "" 'zerstörte Kirchen''in the parlance of the Confessing Church) *churches with a governing board without a German Christian majority merging them as members of the Reich Church, but rejected Müller as its leader (the Churches of Bavaria, of Hanover, of Westphalia, and of Württemberg) ("" 'intakte Kirchen''in Confessing Church parlance) *the

that saw itself as the true Protestant church for all of Germany, provided resistance to the German Christians-led German Evangelical Church and to its so-called dioceses ("destroyed churches"), and acted on principles of the "1934 church emergency law of Dahlem" that deemed the constitution of the German Evangelical Church "shattered" (the "Confessing Church", ''Bekennende Kirche'') Müller's influence declined after more constant clashes in the German Evangelical Church, triggering the foundation of the Ministry for Church Affairs led by

Hans Kerrl Hanns Kerrl (11 December 1887 – 14 December 1941) was a German Nazi politician. His most prominent position, from July 1935, was that of Reichsminister of Church Affairs. He was also President of the Prussian Landtag (1932–1933) and head of ...

on 16 July 1935. A decree issued by Kerrl in September 1935, appointed a committee led by Wilhelm Zoellner (Church of Westphalia) to head the Reich Church instead of Müller. It was received positively by intact churches and even confessing parts of the German Evangelical Church. In 1936, the committee denounced the teachings of the German Christians-controlled Church of Thuringia, and the regime feared that the

would gain more support due to this. In February 1937, the committee was removed by the Nazis and leading figures of the Protestant resistance like

Dietrich Bonhoeffer Dietrich Bonhoeffer (; 4 February 1906 – 9 April 1945) was a German Lutheran pastor, theologian and anti-Nazi dissident who was a key founding member of the Confessing Church. His writings on Christianity's role in the secular world have ...

and others were arrested. In 1939, Müller tried to regain his position in the German Evangelical Church but failed to do so. After 1937, the German Evangelical Church was not considered an issue in the ''

'' by the Nazis as it became heavily controlled by the Ministry until 1945. In August 1945, the German Evangelical Church was officially dissolved by the council of the newly founded Protestant umbrella organisation called the

Beginnings, German Christians and Nazi influence (1933–1934)

Under the

Weimar Republic The Weimar Republic (german: link=no, Weimarer Republik ), officially named the German Reich, was the government of Germany from 1918 to 1933, during which it was a Constitutional republic, constitutional federal republic for the first time in ...

, the system of state churches disappeared with the German monarchies. At this point, the unification of the Protestant churches into a single organisation seemed like a possibility, albeit a remote one. Since unification, clergy and ecclesiastical administrators had discussed a merger, but one had never materialised due to strong regional self-confidence and traditions as well as the denominational fragmentation of

Lutheran Lutheranism is one of the largest branches of Protestantism, identifying primarily with the theology of Martin Luther, the 16th-century German monk and reformer whose efforts to reform the theology and practice of the Catholic Church launched ...

Calvinist Calvinism (also called the Reformed Tradition, Reformed Protestantism, Reformed Christianity, or simply Reformed) is a major branch of Protestantism that follows the theological tradition and forms of Christian practice set down by John C ...

and

United churches A united church, also called a uniting church, is a church formed from the merger or other form of church union of two or more different Protestant Christian denominations. Historically, unions of Protestant churches were enforced by the state ...

. In 1920, Swiss Protestant churches came together in the Schweizerischer Evangelischer Kirchenbund (SEK). Following their example, the then 28 territorially defined German Protestant churches founded the Deutscher Evangelischer Kirchenbund (DEK) in 1922. This was not a merger into a single church but a loose

federation A federation (also known as a federal state) is a political entity characterized by a union of partially self-governing provinces, states, or other regions under a central federal government ( federalism). In a federation, the self-gover ...

of independent ones. The founding of the German Evangelical Church was the result of work by the ''Kirchenpartei'' of the

who had gained a large majority at the 1933 church elections. In September 1934, the merger finally failed when the

synod A synod () is a council of a Christian denomination, usually convened to decide an issue of doctrine, administration or application. The word '' synod'' comes from the meaning "assembly" or "meeting" and is analogous with the Latin word mean ...

s of two of the 28 churches, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria right of the river Rhine, the portion of Bavaria which forms today's Free State (without the Palatinate left of the Rhine), and the Evangelical State Church in Württemberg, refused to dissolve their church bodies as independent entities, and the Berlin-based '' Landgericht I'' court restored the largest church body, the by then already merged

Evangelical Church of the Old-Prussian Union The Prussian Union of Churches (known under multiple other names) was a major Protestant church body which emerged in 1817 from a series of decrees by Frederick William III of Prussia that united both Lutheran and Reformed denominations in ...

by its resolution in November the same year, thus resuming independence. Consequently, the German Evangelical Church, created as a merger, then continued to exist as a mere umbrella.

Controversies, internal struggles and conflict with the Confessing Church (1934–1937)

Some Protestant functionaries and laymen opposed the unification. Many more agreed but wanted it under Protestant principles, not imposed by Nazi partisans. The Protestant opposition had organised first among pastors by way of the Emergency Covenant of Pastors and then—including laymen—developed into grassroots meetings establishing independent synods by January 1934. At the first Reich's Synod of Confession (''erste Reichsbekenntnissynode'') held in

Wuppertal Wuppertal (; "''Wupper Dale''") is, with a population of approximately 355,000, the seventh-largest city in North Rhine-Westphalia as well as the 17th-largest city of Germany. It was founded in 1929 by the merger of the cities and tow ...

Barmen Barmen is a former industrial metropolis of the region of Bergisches Land, Germany, which merged with four other towns in 1929 to form the city of Wuppertal. Barmen, together with the neighbouring town of Elberfeld founded the first electr ...

between 29 and 31 May 1934, it called itself the

. On 16 July 1935,

Hanns Kerrl Hanns Kerrl (11 December 1887 – 14 December 1941) was a German Nazi politician. His most prominent position, from July 1935, was that of Reichsminister of Church Affairs. He was also President of the Prussian Landtag (1932–1933) and head of ...

was appointed Reichsminister for Church Affairs, a newly created department. He started negotiations to find a compromise and dropped the extreme German Christians, trying 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 German Evangelical Church, circumventing any synodal autonomy. Kerrl managed to gain the very respected Wilhelm Zoellner (a Lutheran, until 1931 General Superintendent of the old-Prussian ecclesiastical province of Westphalia) to form the Reich's Ecclesiastical Committee (''Reichskirchenausschuss'', RKA) on 3 October 1935, combining the neutral and moderate groups to reconcile the disputing church parties. The official German Evangelical Church became subordinate to the new bureaucracy, and Müller lost power but still retained the now meaningless titles of German Reich's Bishop and old-Prussian State Bishop. In November, Kerrl decreed the parallel institutions of the Confessing Church were to be dissolved, a move which was protested and ignored by Confessing Church leaders. On 19 December, Kerrl issued a decree which forbade all kinds of Confessing Church activities, namely appointments of pastors, education, examinations,

ordination Ordination is the process by which individuals are consecrated, that is, set apart and elevated from the laity class to the clergy, who are thus then authorized (usually by the denominational hierarchy composed of other clergy) to perform ...

s, ecclesiastical visitations, announcements and declarations from the pulpit, separate financial structures and convening Synods of Confession; further the decree established provincial ecclesiastical committees. Thus, the ''brethren councils'' had to go into hiding, and Kerrl successfully wedged the Confessing Church. The

Gestapo The (), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one orga ...

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 Ecclesiastical Committee which lost all recognition among the opposition. Kerrl now subjected Müller's chancery of the German Evangelical Church directly to his ministry and the national, provincial and state ecclesiastical committees were soon after dissolved.

German Christian takeover until dissolution (1937–1945)

Although the church was initially supported by the regime, the Nazis eventually lost interest in the experiment after it failed to supplant or absorb traditional Protestant churches. After 1937, relations between the Reich Church and the Nazi government began to sour. On 19 November 1938, as reported on in the ''Ludington Daily News'',

YHWH The Tetragrammaton (; ), or Tetragram, is the four-letter Hebrew theonym (transliterated as YHWH), the name of God in the Hebrew Bible. The four letters, written and read from right to left (in Hebrew), are ''yodh'', '' he'', '' waw'', and ...

was ordered to be erased from Protestant churches within the

Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union The Prussian Union of Churches (known under multiple other names) was a major Protestant church body which emerged in 1817 from a series of decrees by Frederick William III of Prussia that united both Lutheran and Reformed denominations in ...

by Friedrich Werner, the president of its executive board (Evangelical Supreme Church Council; EOK). His order said the name of the 'God of Israel' (which contemporarily has Judaic connotations) must be obliterated wherever it was displayed in Protestant churches. On 1 September 1939, Kerrl decreed the separation of the ecclesiastical and the administrative governance within the official Evangelical Church. The German Christian Friedrich Werner, president of EOK, won over August Marahrens, State Bishop of the "intact" Church of Hanover, and the theologians Walther Schultz, a German Christian, and Friedrich Hymmen, vice president of the Old-Prussian Evangelical Supreme Church Council, to form an Ecclesiastical Council of Confidence (''Geistlicher Vertrauensrat''). This council exercised ecclesiastical leadership for the church from early 1940 and afterwards. On 22 December 1941, the German Evangelical Church called for suited actions by all Protestant churches to withhold baptised non-

Aryan Aryan or Arya (, Indo-Iranian *''arya'') is a term originally used as an ethnocultural self-designation by Indo-Iranians in ancient times, in contrast to the nearby outsiders known as 'non-Aryan' (*''an-arya''). In Ancient India, the term ...

s from all spheres of Protestant church life. Many German Christian-dominated congregations followed suit. The Confessing Church's executive together with the conference of the state brethren councils (representing the Confessing Church adherents within the destroyed churches) issued a declaration of protest.Published in ''Kirchliches Jahrbuch für die Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland''; vol. 60-71 (1933–1944), Joachim Beckmann (ed.) on behalf of the Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland, Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 1948, pp. 482–485. ISSN 0075-6210. After World War II,

Theophil Wurm Theophil Heinrich Wurm (7 December 1868, Basel – 28 January 1953, Stuttgart) was the son of a pastor and was a leader in the German Protestant Church in the early twentieth century. Wurm was active in politics. He was a member of the Christia ...

, Landesbischof of Württemberg, invited representatives of the surviving German regional Protestant church bodies to Treysa for 31 August 1945. As to co-operation between the Protestant churches in Germany, strong resentments prevailed, especially among the Lutheran church bodies of Bavaria right of the river Rhine, the Hamburgian State, Hanover,

Mecklenburg Mecklenburg (; nds, label= Low German, Mękel(n)borg ) is a historical region in northern Germany comprising the western and larger part of the federal-state Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. The largest cities of the region are Rostock, Schweri ...

Saxony Saxony (german: Sachsen ; Upper Saxon German, Upper Saxon: ''Saggsn''; hsb, Sakska), officially the Free State of Saxony (german: Freistaat Sachsen, links=no ; Upper Saxon: ''Freischdaad Saggsn''; hsb, Swobodny stat Sakska, links=no), is a ...

, and

Thuringia Thuringia (; german: Thüringen ), officially the Free State of Thuringia ( ), is a state of central Germany, covering , the sixth smallest of the sixteen German states. It has a population of about 2.1 million. Erfurt is the capital and lar ...

, against any unification after the experiences during Nazi rule. It was decided to replace the former German Federation of Protestant Churches with the new umbrella Evangelical Church in Germany, provisionally led by the Council of the

, a naming borrowed from the Reich's brethren council organisation.

Reichsbischöfe

Friedrich von Bodelschwingh Friedrich "Fritz" von Bodelschwingh (; 14 August 1877, Bethel – 4 January 1946), also known as Friedrich von Bodelschwingh the Younger, was a German pastor, theologian and public health advocate. His father was Friedrich von Bodelschwingh the El ...

(1933) * Ludwig Müller (1933–1945)

References

Notes Bibliography * Baranski, Shelley
"The 1933 German Protestant Church Elections: ''Machtpolitik'' or Accommodation?"
''Church History'', Vol. 49, No. 3 (Sep., 1980), pp. 298–315. * Beckman, Joachim, (ed.). Published in ''Kirchliches Jahrbuch für die Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland''; vol. 60-71 (1933–1944), Joachim Beckmann (ed.) on behalf of the Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland, Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 1948, pp. 482–485. ISSN 0075-6210. * Krüger, Barbara & Noss, Peter (1999) "Die Strukturen in der Evangelischen Kirche 1933–1945", in: Kühl-Freudenstein, Olaf, et al. (eds.)''Kirchenkampf in Berlin 1932–1945: 42 Stadtgeschichten'' (Studien zu Kirche und Judentum; vol. 18) Berlin: Institut Kirche und Judentum pp. 149–171. * Krüger, Barbara & Noss, Peter, "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, here p. 160. * Schneider, Thomas M. (1993) '"Reichsbischof Ludwig Müller: eine Untersuchung zu Leben und Persönlichkeit." ''Arbeiten zur kirchlichen Zeitgeschichte'', Series B: Darstellungen; 19. (384 pp) Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

External links

Review of "The Holy Reich"
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Nazi Germany and Protestantism Government of Nazi Germany Christian denominations founded in Germany Protestant denominations established in the 20th century 1933 establishments in Germany 1945 disestablishments in Germany Christian organizations established in 1933 Religious organizations disestablished in 1945