Prussian Union of Churches - History - Under Nazi Reign - Government Response To The Schism

Government 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 Mark's Church (Berlin-Südende).

Marga Meusel, since 1932 director of the Evangelical Welfare Office for Berlin's borough of Zehlendorf (a part of today's 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 were 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: 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: 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 (Bartholomew Church (Berlin), and praeses of the city synod of Berlin).

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. 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 (German) (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 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.

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 (German), and Julius Richter (German).

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.

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 Hamburg-Hamm), 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 Bremen, of Nassau-Hesse and of 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: Rat der Evangelisch-Lutherischen Kirche Deutschlands, colloquially Lutherrat, Luther council) as their own umbrella organisation. The brethren councils of the Lutheran destroyed churches of Brunswick, Lübeck, Mecklenburg, the Free State of Saxony, Schleswig-Holstein, and 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 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 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 – 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 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.

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 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 (Melanchthon Church, Spandau), 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.

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.