Prussian Union of Churches - History - Under Nazi Reign - After The November Pogrom

After The November Pogrom

In the night between 9 and 10 November the Nazis organised the November Pogrom. German Christians, like Bishop Martin Sasse (German) of the 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 St. Ann's Church (Berlin-Dahlem), 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 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: Institut zur Erforschung und Beseitigung des jüdischen Einflusses auf das deutsche kirchliche Leben) in Eisenach, led by Prof. Walter Grundmann. 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: 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 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.