La Unión Prusiana de Iglesias (conocida con otros muchos nombres ) fue un importante organismo eclesiástico protestante que surgió en 1817 a partir de una serie de decretos de Federico Guillermo III de Prusia que unían a las denominaciones luterana y reformada en Prusia . Aunque no fue la primera de su tipo , la Unión Prusiana fue la primera que se produjo en un importante estado alemán.
Se convirtió en la organización religiosa independiente más grande del Imperio alemán y, posteriormente, de la Alemania de Weimar , con unos 18 millones de feligreses. La iglesia sufrió dos cismas (uno permanente desde la década de 1830, otro temporal entre 1934 y 1948), debido a cambios en los gobiernos y sus políticas. Después de ser la iglesia estatal favorita de Prusia en el siglo XIX, sufrió interferencias y opresión en varias ocasiones en el siglo XX, incluida la persecución de muchos feligreses.
En la década de 1920, la Segunda República Polaca y Lituania , y en las décadas de 1950 a 1970, Alemania del Este , la República Popular de Polonia y la Unión Soviética , impusieron divisiones organizativas permanentes o temporales, eliminaron congregaciones enteras y expropiaron propiedades eclesiásticas, transfiriéndolas a usos seculares o a diferentes iglesias más favorecidas por estos diversos gobiernos. En el transcurso de la Segunda Guerra Mundial , las propiedades de la iglesia fueron dañadas o destruidas por bombardeos estratégicos y, al final de la guerra, muchos feligreses habían huido del avance de las fuerzas soviéticas. Después de la guerra, desaparecieron provincias eclesiásticas completas tras la huida y expulsión de los alemanes que vivían al este de la línea Oder-Neiße .
Los dos períodos de posguerra vieron importantes reformas dentro de la Iglesia, fortaleciendo la participación democrática de los feligreses. La Iglesia contaba con muchos teólogos de renombre como miembros, incluidos Friedrich Schleiermacher , Julius Wellhausen (temporalmente), Adolf von Harnack , Karl Barth (temporalmente), Dietrich Bonhoeffer y Martin Niemöller (temporalmente), por nombrar solo algunos. A principios de la década de 1950, el cuerpo eclesiástico se transformó en una organización paraguas, después de que sus provincias eclesiásticas anteriores asumieran la independencia a fines de la década de 1940. Tras la disminución del número de feligreses debido a la crisis demográfica alemana y la creciente irreligión , la Iglesia se absorbió en la Unión de Iglesias Evangélicas en 2003.
Los numerosos cambios que ha experimentado la Iglesia a lo largo de su historia se reflejan en sus diversos cambios de nombre. Entre ellos se incluyen:
Las iglesias calvinistas (reformadas) y protestantes luteranas habían existido en paralelo después de que el príncipe elector Juan Segismundo declarara su conversión del luteranismo al calvinismo en 1617, y la mayoría de sus súbditos seguían siendo luteranos. Sin embargo, había crecido una minoría calvinista significativa debido a la recepción de miles de refugiados calvinistas que huían de la opresión de la Contrarreforma católica en Bohemia , Francia ( hugonotes ), los Países Bajos y Valonia o inmigrantes de Jülich-Cléveris-Berg , los Países Bajos , Polonia o Suiza . Sus descendientes constituían la mayor parte de los calvinistas en Brandeburgo. La cuestión durante muchas décadas fue cómo unirse en una sola iglesia.
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Un año después de ascender al trono en 1798, Federico Guillermo III, siendo summus episcopus (Gobernador Supremo de las Iglesias Protestantes), decretó una nueva agenda litúrgica común (libro de servicios) que se publicaría para su uso tanto en las congregaciones luteranas como en las reformadas. El rey, un cristiano reformado, vivió en un matrimonio mixto denominacionalmente con la reina luterana Luisa (1776-1810), por lo que nunca participaron juntos de la comunión. [1] Se formó una comisión para preparar esta agenda común. Esta agenda litúrgica fue la culminación de los esfuerzos de sus predecesores para unificar las dos iglesias protestantes en Prusia y en su predecesor, el Electorado de Brandeburgo .
Se llevaron a cabo importantes reformas en la administración de Prusia después de la derrota del ejército de Napoleón en la batalla de Jena-Auerstedt . Como parte de estas reformas, las estructuras de liderazgo separadas tanto de la Iglesia Luterana (con su órgano principal, el Lutherisches Oberkonsistorium ( Consistorio Superior Luterano ) de toda Prusia, 1750-1808, y las Iglesias Reformadas (con sus órganos principales, el Französisches Oberkonsistorium / Consistoire supérieur (Consistorio Supremo Francés) de toda Prusia, 1701-1808, y el Kirchendirektorium (Directorio de la Iglesia) reformado de habla alemana de toda Prusia, 1713-1808) fueron abolidas y las tareas de las tres administraciones fueron asumidas por la Sektion für den Kultus und öffentlichen Unterrich t (Sección para el culto y la instrucción pública), también competente para la iglesia católica y las congregaciones judías, formando un departamento en el Ministerio del Interior prusiano . [1]
Desde la Reforma, las dos denominaciones protestantes de Brandeburgo tenían sus propios gobiernos eclesiásticos bajo el control estatal a través de la corona como Gobernador Supremo. Sin embargo, bajo el nuevo absolutismo entonces en boga, las iglesias estaban bajo una supervisión estatal burocrática civil a cargo de una sección ministerial. En 1808, el reformado Friedrich Schleiermacher , pastor de la Iglesia de la Trinidad (Berlín-Friedrichstadt) , publicó sus ideas para una reforma constitucional de las iglesias protestantes, proponiendo también una unión. [2]
Bajo la influencia del movimiento centralizador del absolutismo y la era napoleónica , después de la derrota de Napoleón I en 1815, en lugar de restablecer las estructuras de liderazgo denominacional anteriores, todas las comunidades religiosas fueron colocadas bajo un solo consistorio en cada una de las entonces diez provincias prusianas . [1] Esto difería de la antigua estructura en que el nuevo liderazgo administraba los asuntos de todas las religiones: católicos, judíos, luteranos, menonitas , moravos y calvinistas (cristianos reformados).
En 1814, el Principado de Neuchâtel había sido restituido a los Hohenzollern con sede en Berlín , quienes lo habían gobernado en unión personal desde 1707 hasta 1806. En 1815, Federico Guillermo III acordó que este territorio francófono pudiera unirse a la Confederación Suiza (que todavía no era una federación integrada, sino una mera confederación ) como el Cantón de Neuchâtel . El cuerpo eclesiástico de los neuchâtelianos predominantemente calvinistas no tenía rango de iglesia estatal sino que era independiente, ya que en el momento de su fundación en 1540, la Casa principesca gobernante de Orléans-Longueville (Valois-Dunois) era católica. Además, no existía ninguna congregación luterana en Neuchâtel. Por lo tanto, la Iglesia Reformada del Cantón de Neuchâtel no fue un objeto de la política de Unión de Federico Guillermo.
En enero de 1817, la sección de culto e instrucción pública se separó y se convirtió en el Ministerio de Asuntos Espirituales, Educativos y Médicos de Prusia , generalmente llamado Ministerio de Culto (Kultusministerium). [1] Karl vom Stein zum Altenstein fue nombrado ministro. Las iglesias reformadas y la iglesia luterana fueron administradas por un solo departamento dentro del mismo ministerio. El ministerio introdujo la toga de predicación ( ‹Ver Tfd› en alemán: Talar ) como la vestimenta clerical habitual. [1]
El 27 de septiembre de 1817, Federico Guillermo anunció, a través de un texto escrito por Eylert, que la congregación de la corte y guarnición reformada de Potsdam , dirigida por el predicador de la corte Rulemann Friedrich Eylert , y la congregación de la guarnición luterana, ambas utilizando la Iglesia de la guarnición calvinista , se unirían en una congregación cristiana evangélica el Día de la Reforma , el 31 de octubre, el 300 aniversario de la Reforma . [1] Ya el día anterior, los luteranos y los cristianos reformados celebraron juntos la Cena del Señor en la Iglesia luterana de San Nicolás de Berlín . [1]
El 7 de noviembre, Federico Guillermo expresó su deseo de que las congregaciones protestantes de Prusia siguieran este ejemplo y se convirtieran en congregaciones unidas . [1] Los luteranos de la iglesia estatal luterana de Nassau-Saarbrücken y los calvinistas de la zona sur del Sarre ya habían formado una iglesia unida en administración el 24 de octubre (Saarbrücken Union ). Sin embargo, debido al papel constitutivo único de las congregaciones en el protestantismo, ninguna congregación fue obligada por decreto del rey a fusionarse. Así, en los años siguientes, muchas congregaciones luteranas y reformadas siguieron el ejemplo de Potsdam y se convirtieron en congregaciones fusionadas, mientras que otras mantuvieron su antigua denominación luterana o reformada.
Especialmente en muchos lugares del Rin, los luteranos y los calvinistas fusionaron sus parroquias para formar congregaciones protestantes unidas. [3] Cuando Prusia finalmente recibió un parlamento en 1847, algunos cargos de liderazgo de la iglesia incluyeron un asiento en la primera cámara de miembros no electos, pero designados (sucedida por la Cámara de los Lores de Prusia a partir de 1854).
Se tomaron varias medidas para determinar el número de pastores que se convertirían en pastores de la Unión. A partir de 1820, los candidatos al ministerio debían declarar si estaban dispuestos a unirse a la Unión. Toda la facultad de teología de la Universidad Federico Guillermo de Renania en Bonn pertenecía a la Unión. También se formuló un voto de ordenación ecuménica en el que el pastor declaraba lealtad a la Iglesia Evangélica.
En 1821, la agrupación administrativa que comprendía las congregaciones protestantes en Prusia adoptó el nombre de Iglesia Evangélica en las Tierras Reales de Prusia ( en alemán: Evangelische Kirche in den Königlich-Preußischen Landen ). [4] En la época navideña de ese mismo año, como resultado de una gran cantidad de trabajo personal de Federico Guillermo, así como de la comisión que él había nombrado en 1798, se elaboró una agenda litúrgica común. La agenda no fue bien recibida por muchos luteranos, ya que se consideró que comprometía la redacción de las Palabras de Institución hasta el punto de que no se proclamaba la Presencia Real . Más importante aún, la creciente coerción de las autoridades civiles en los asuntos de la iglesia fue vista como una nueva amenaza a la libertad protestante de un tipo no visto desde el Papado.
En 1822, las congregaciones protestantes recibieron instrucciones de utilizar únicamente la nueva agenda para el culto . Esto se encontró con fuertes objeciones por parte de los pastores luteranos de toda Prusia. A pesar de la oposición, 5.343 de las 7.782 congregaciones protestantes utilizaban la nueva agenda en 1825. Federico Guillermo III se fijó en Daniel Amadeus Neander , que se había convertido en su súbdito tras la anexión del territorio real sajón en 1816, y que había ayudado al rey a implementar la agenda en sus congregaciones luteranas. En 1823, el rey lo nombró preboste de la iglesia de San Petri (en aquel entonces el cargo eclesiástico de mayor rango en Berlín) y Oberkonsistorialrat (consejero consistorial supremo) y, por tanto, miembro del Consistorio de Marcher. Se convirtió en un confidente influyente del rey y en uno de sus consejeros privados y árbitro del ministro Stein zum Altenstein.
En 1818 se habían convocado 16 sínodos provinciales (en alemán, un sínodo es un parlamento de la iglesia, no el distrito al que representa). El ministro Stein zum Altenstein y el rey estaban decepcionados por el resultado, especialmente después del sínodo provincial de las Marcas, y les disgustaba la idea de la participación de los feligreses en el gobierno de la iglesia. [5] El rey prefirió entonces una organización más bien verticalista e introdujo la función de liderazgo eclesiástico de los superintendentes generales , que ya existía en algunas provincias antes de la reforma.
En 1828, Neander fue nombrado primer superintendente general de Kurmark (1829-1853). [6] Así, Neander luchó en tres campos por la nueva agenda: en el nivel gubernamental, dentro de la iglesia y entre el público en general, mediante publicaciones como Luther in Beziehung auf die evangelische Kirchen-Agende in den Königlich Preussischen Landen [7] (1827). En 1830, el rey le otorgó el título muy inusual de obispo honorario. El rey también otorgó títulos a otros colaboradores en la implementación de la Unión, con el título honorario de obispo, como Eylert (1824), Johann Heinrich Bernhard Dräseke (1832) y Wilhelm Ross (1836).
El debate y la oposición a la nueva agenda persistió hasta 1829, cuando se produjo una edición revisada de la misma. Esta liturgia incorporaba un mayor nivel de elementos de la tradición litúrgica luterana. Con esta introducción, la disidencia contra la agenda se redujo en gran medida. Sin embargo, una minoría significativa sintió que esto era simplemente un compromiso político temporal con el que el rey podría continuar su campaña en curso para establecer una autoridad civil sobre su libertad de conciencia .
En junio de 1829, Federico Guillermo ordenó que todas las congregaciones protestantes y el clero de Prusia abandonaran los nombres de luteranos o reformados y adoptaran el nombre de evangélicos . El decreto no pretendía imponer un cambio de creencia o denominación, sino que era solo un cambio de nomenclatura. Posteriormente, el término evangélico ( ‹Ver Tfd› alemán: evangelisch ) se convirtió en la expresión general habitual para protestante en el idioma alemán. En abril de 1830, Federico Guillermo, en sus instrucciones para la próxima celebración del 300 aniversario de la presentación de la Confesión de Augsburgo , ordenó a todas las congregaciones protestantes de Prusia celebrar la Cena del Señor utilizando el nuevo orden del día. En lugar de tener el efecto unificador que Federico Guillermo deseaba, el decreto creó una gran cantidad de disenso entre las congregaciones luteranas. En 1830, Johann Gottfried Scheibel , profesor de teología en la Universidad Federico Guillermo de Silesia , fundó en Breslau la primera congregación luterana de Prusia, independiente de la Unión y fuera de su organización paraguas, la Iglesia Evangélica en las Tierras Reales de Prusia.
En un compromiso con algunos disidentes, que ahora se habían ganado el nombre de Viejos Luteranos , en 1834 Frederick William emitió un decreto que establecía que la Unión solo se realizaría en las áreas de gobierno y en la agenda litúrgica, y que las respectivas congregaciones podrían conservar sus identidades denominacionales. [8] Sin embargo, en un intento por sofocar futuras disensiones de su Unión, a los disidentes también se les prohibió organizar grupos sectarios .
En contra de este decreto, varios pastores y congregaciones luteranas –como la de Breslau– creyendo que obedecer el decreto del rey era contrario a la voluntad de Dios, continuaron utilizando el antiguo programa litúrgico y los ritos sacramentales de la iglesia luterana. Al darse cuenta de este desafío, las autoridades buscaron a quienes actuaban en contra del decreto. Los pastores que fueron descubiertos fueron suspendidos de su ministerio. Si se descubría a los pastores suspendidos actuando en un papel pastoral, se los encarcelaba. Habiendo mostrado ahora su mano como un tirano empeñado en oprimir su libertad religiosa, y bajo constante vigilancia policial, la Iglesia Evangélica en las Tierras Reales de Prusia comenzó a desintegrarse.
En 1835, muchos grupos disidentes del antiguo Luterano buscaban en la emigración un medio para encontrar la libertad religiosa . [9] Algunos grupos emigraron a los Estados Unidos y a Australia en los años previos a 1840. Formaron lo que hoy es la Iglesia Luterana-Sínodo de Misuri (la segunda denominación luterana más grande de los EE. UU.) y la Iglesia Luterana de Australia , respectivamente.
En 1840, tras la muerte de Federico Guillermo III, ascendió al trono el rey Federico Guillermo IV , que liberó a los pastores encarcelados y permitió a los grupos disidentes formar organizaciones religiosas en libertad. En 1841, los antiguos luteranos que se habían quedado en Prusia se reunieron en un sínodo general en Breslavia y fundaron la Iglesia Evangélica Luterana de Prusia, que en 1972 se fusionó con las antiguas iglesias luteranas de otros estados alemanes para convertirse en la actual Iglesia Evangélica Luterana Independiente ( ‹Ver Tfd› en alemán: Selbständige Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche o SELK). El 23 de julio de 1845, el gobierno real reconoció a la Iglesia Evangélica Luterana de Prusia y a sus congregaciones como entidades jurídicas. Ese mismo año, la Iglesia Evangélica en las Tierras Reales de Prusia reforzó su autoconcepción como iglesia del Estado prusiano y pasó a llamarse Iglesia Evangélica Estatal de Prusia ( ‹Ver Tfd› en alemán: Evangelische Landeskirche Preußens ). [4]
En 1850, los principados predominantemente católicos de Hohenzollern-Hechingen y Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen , gobernados por ramas principescas católicas de la familia Hohenzollern, se unieron al Reino de Prusia y se convirtieron en la Provincia de Hohenzollern . Apenas había protestantes en la pequeña zona, pero con el apoyo de la congregación de Berlín, se construyeron estructuras. Hasta 1874, se fundaron tres congregaciones (más tarde en total cinco) y en 1889, se organizaron como un decanato propio. Las congregaciones fueron administradas por el Consejo Supremo de la Iglesia Evangélica (ver más abajo) como congregaciones de expatriados en el extranjero. El 1 de enero de 1899, las congregaciones se convirtieron en parte integral de la iglesia estatal prusiana. No se estableció una provincia eclesiástica separada, pero el decanato fue supervisado por el de Renania. En 1866, Prusia se anexionó el Reino de Hannover (convertido entonces en la Provincia de Hannover ), la Ciudad Libre de Frankfurt am Main , el Electorado de Hesse y el Ducado de Nassau (combinado como la Provincia de Hesse-Nassau ), así como los Ducados de Schleswig y Holstein (convertidos en la Provincia de Schleswig-Holstein ), todos ellos territorios predominantemente luteranos, donde los luteranos y la minoría de calvinistas no se habían unido. Después del problema con los antiguos luteranos en la Prusia anterior a 1866, el gobierno prusiano se abstuvo de imponer la Unión Prusiana a los organismos eclesiásticos en estos territorios. Además, la reconciliación de la mayoría luterana de los ciudadanos de los estados anexados con su nueva ciudadanía prusiana no se complicaría aún más por disputas religiosas. [4] De este modo, las organizaciones protestantes en los territorios anexados mantuvieron sus constituciones anteriores o desarrollaron nuevas estructuras luteranas o calvinistas independientes. [10]
Por iniciativa de Federico Guillermo IV, la Iglesia anglicana de Inglaterra y la Iglesia evangélica en las Tierras Reales de Prusia fundaron el Obispado Anglicano-Evangelical en Jerusalén (1841-1886). Sus obispos y clérigos hicieron proselitismo en Tierra Santa entre la población nativa no musulmana y los inmigrantes alemanes, como los templarios . Pero los expatriados calvinistas, evangélicos y luteranos en Tierra Santa procedentes de Alemania y Suiza también se unieron a las congregaciones de habla alemana.
Varias congregaciones de lengua árabe o alemana surgieron en Beit Jalla (Ar.), Beit Sahour (Ar.), Belén de Judea (Ar.), Colonia Alemana (Haifa) (Alemania), Colonia Americana (Jaffa) (Alemania), Jerusalén (Ar. y Alemania), Nazaret (Ar.) y Waldheim (Alemania).
Con la ayuda financiera de Prusia, otros estados alemanes, la Asociación de Jerusalén , la Asociación Evangélica para la Construcción de Iglesias y otros, se construyeron varias iglesias y otros locales. Pero también hubo congregaciones de emigrantes y expatriados en otras áreas del Imperio Otomano (2), así como en Argentina (3), Brasil (10), Bulgaria (1), Chile (3), Egipto (2), Italia (2), Países Bajos (2), Portugal (1), Rumania (8), Serbia (1), España (1), Suiza (1), Reino Unido (5) y Uruguay (1) y el departamento de asuntos exteriores del Consejo Supremo de la Iglesia Evangélica (véase más abajo) las administró. [11]
La Iglesia Evangélica Estatal de Prusia se mantuvo al tanto de los cambios y fue rebautizada en 1875 como la Iglesia Evangélica Estatal de las antiguas Provincias de Prusia ( ‹Ver Tfd› alemán: Evangelische Landeskirche der älteren Provinzen Preußens ). [4] Sus órganos centrales eran el Consejo Supremo de la Iglesia Evangélica ( ‹Ver Tfd› alemán: Evangelischer Oberkirchenrat , EOK, [12] fundado en 1850, rebautizado como Cancillería de la Iglesia en 1951), con sede en Jebensstraße # 3 (Berlín, 1912-2003 [13] ) y el Sínodo General legislativo ( ‹Ver Tfd› alemán: Generalsynode ).
El Sínodo General se reunió por primera vez en junio de 1846, presidido por Daniel Neander y compuesto por representantes del clero, los feligreses y miembros nominados por el rey. El Sínodo General llegó a un acuerdo sobre la enseñanza y la ordenación, pero el rey no confirmó ninguna de sus decisiones. [5] Después de 1876, el Sínodo General comprendía 200 sinodales, 50 feligreses laicos, 50 pastores, 50 diputados de las facultades universitarias teológicas protestantes como miembros ex officio y 50 sinodales designados por el rey. [14]
Las provincias más antiguas de la Iglesia Evangélica Estatal de Prusia tenían subestructuras, llamadas provincia eclesiástica ( ‹Ver Tfd› alemán: Kirchenprovinz ; ver provincia eclesiástica de la Iglesia Evangélica Estatal de Prusia ), en las nueve provincias políticas de Prusia anteriores a 1866, a saber, en la Provincia de Prusia Oriental (provincia eclesiástica homónima), en Berlín, que se había convertido en una unidad administrativa prusiana separada en 1881, y la Provincia de Brandeburgo (Provincia Eclesiástica de la Marca de Brandeburgo para ambas), en la Provincia de Pomerania (homónima), en la Provincia de Posen (homónima), en la Provincia del Rin y desde 1899 en la Provincia de Hohenzollern (Provincia Eclesiástica de Renania), en la Provincia de Sajonia (homónima), en la Provincia de Silesia (homónima), en la Provincia de Westfalia (homónima) y en la Provincia de Prusia Occidental (homónima).
Cada provincia eclesiástica tenía un sínodo provincial que representaba a los feligreses y al clero provinciales, [15] y uno o más consistorios dirigidos por superintendentes generales . Las provincias eclesiásticas de Pomerania y Silesia tenían dos (después de 1922), las de Sajonia y la Marca de Brandeburgo , tres –de 1911 a 1933 esta última incluso cuatro– superintendentes generales, que se alternaban anualmente en la dirección del respectivo consistorio.
Las dos provincias occidentales, Renania y Westfalia, tenían el trasfondo calvinista más fuerte, ya que incluían los territorios de los antiguos ducados de Berg , Cléveris y Juliers y los condados de Mark , Tecklemburgo , Siegerland y el principado de Wittgenstein , todos los cuales tenían tradiciones calvinistas. Ya en 1835, las constituciones de las iglesias provinciales ( en alemán: Provinzial-Kirchenordnung ) preveían un superintendente general y congregaciones en ambas provincias eclesiásticas con presbiterios de presbíteros elegidos.
Aunque este nivel de democracia de los feligreses surgió en las demás provincias prusianas recién en 1874, cuando Otto von Bismarck , en su segundo mandato como ministro-presidente prusiano (9 de noviembre de 1873 - 20 de marzo de 1890), obtuvo el apoyo parlamentario de los liberales nacionales en la Dieta Estatal Prusiana ( ‹Ver Tfd› en alemán: Landtag ). El entonces ministro de educación y asuntos religiosos de Prusia, Adalbert Falk , presentó el proyecto de ley, que extendía la constitución combinada de la iglesia presbiterial y consistorial renana y westfaliana a toda la Iglesia Evangélica Estatal de Prusia . [16] Por lo tanto, la terminología es diferente: en Renania y Westfalia, un presbiterio se denomina en alemán Presbyterium y un miembro del mismo es Presbyter , mientras que en las otras provincias los términos correspondientes son Gemeindekirchenrat ( consejo de congregación ) y sus miembros se denominan Älteste ( anciano ).
Las tradiciones autoritarias compitieron con las liberales y modernas. Los feligreses comprometidos formaron Kirchenparteien , [17] que nominaban candidatos para las elecciones de los presbiterios parroquiales y de los sínodos generales provinciales o de toda la iglesia . Un Kirchenpartei fuerte eran los Konfessionellen ( los denominacionales ), que representaban a los feligreses de tradición luterana, que habían sucumbido en el proceso de unificación de las denominaciones después de 1817 y todavía luchaban contra la Unión Prusiana. Promovieron el neoluteranismo y se opusieron estrictamente a la corriente liberal del Kulturprotestantismus , promoviendo el racionalismo y una reconciliación de la creencia y el conocimiento moderno, defendida por el Deutscher Protestantenverein . [18]
Un tercer Kirchenpartei fue el antiliberal Volkskirchlich-Evangelische Vereinigung (VEV, establecido a mediados del siglo XIX, Asociación Evangélica de la Iglesia Popular ), [19] coloquialmente Partido del Medio ( ‹Ver Tfd› Alemán: Mittelpartei ), que afirmaba la Unión Prusiana, criticaba la Alta crítica en la ciencia bíblica , pero aún reclamaba la libertad de la ciencia también en teología . El presidente de larga data del partido del medio y miembro del sínodo general (1891-1915) fue el conocido profesor de derecho Wilhelm Kahl ( DVP ), quien fue coautor de la Constitución de Weimar . [20]
El partido que más éxito tuvo en las elecciones eclesiásticas fue, con diferencia, el partido político antiliberal Unión Positiva , [19] que compartía el sentido común con los Konfessionellen en muchos campos, pero que afirmaba la Unión Prusiana. Por ello, la Unión Positiva formó a menudo coaliciones con los Konfessionellen . El rey Guillermo I de Prusia se puso del lado de la Unión Positiva . [18] Antes de 1918, la mayoría de los consistorios y el Consejo Supremo de la Iglesia Evangélica estaban dominados por defensores de la Unión Positiva . [21] En 1888, el rey Guillermo II de Prusia sólo pudo nombrar al liberal Adolf von Harnack como profesor de teología en la Universidad Federico Guillermo de Berlín tras largos debates públicos y protestas del Consejo Supremo de la Iglesia Evangélica . [22]
El creciente segmento social de los trabajadores entre los feligreses evangélicos tenía poca afinidad con la Iglesia, que estaba dominada en sus pastores y funcionarios por miembros de la burguesía y la aristocracia. Una encuesta realizada a principios de 1924 determinó que en 96 iglesias en Berlín , Charlottenburg y Schöneberg , solo entre el 9 y el 15% de los feligreses asistían realmente a los servicios. [23] Las congregaciones en los distritos obreros, que a menudo comprendían varias decenas de miles de feligreses, por lo general contaban con apenas un centenar de feligreses en los servicios regulares. [24] Guillermo II y su esposa Augusta Viktoria de Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg , que presidía la Asociación Evangélica para la Construcción de Iglesias, a menudo financiaban la construcción de iglesias para congregaciones pobres y promovían programas masivos de construcción de iglesias, especialmente en los distritos obreros, pero no pudieron aumentar el atractivo de la Iglesia estatal para los trabajadores. Sin embargo, esto le valió a la reina el apodo de Kirchen-Juste . [24] Un mayor impulso alcanzó la obra caritativa de la Iglesia Estatal, que fue muy llevada adelante por la Misión Interna y el trabajo diaconal de las diaconisas .
El antisemitismo moderno , que surgió en la década de 1870, con su destacado defensor Heinrich Treitschke y su famoso oponente Theodor Mommsen , hijo de un pastor y más tarde premio Nobel , encontró también partidarios entre los defensores del antijudaísmo protestante tradicional promovido por el predicador de la corte prusiana Adolf Stoecker . El nuevo rey Guillermo II lo destituyó en 1890 por su agitación política a través de su Partido Social Cristiano antisemita , el neopaganismo y los escándalos personales. [25]
La unión de la mayoría de los clérigos y funcionarios eclesiásticos más destacados con las élites tradicionales prusianas hizo que la Iglesia del Estado considerara la Primera Guerra Mundial como una guerra justa. Los pacifistas, como Hans Francke (Iglesia de la Santa Cruz, Berlín), Walter Nithack-Stahn ( Iglesia Memorial de Guillermo I , Charlottenburg [una parte del Berlín actual]) y Friedrich Siegmund-Schultze (Evangelik Auferstehungsheim , Friedensstraße No. 60, Berlín) constituían una minoría pequeña, pero creciente, entre el clero. [26] La Iglesia del Estado apoyó la emisión de nueve series de bonos de guerra y se suscribió a sí misma para bonos de guerra por un valor de 41 millones de marcos (ℳ) . [27]
Con el fin de la monarquía prusiana en 1918, también dejó de existir la función del rey como summus episcopus (gobernador supremo de la Iglesia Evangélica). Además, la Constitución de Weimar de 1919 decretó la separación del estado y la religión . Así, en su nueva constitución del 29 de septiembre de 1922 [28], la Iglesia Evangélica Estatal de las antiguas provincias de Prusia se reorganizó en 1922 bajo el nombre de Iglesia Evangélica de la antigua Unión Prusiana ( ‹Ver Tfd› en alemán: Evangelische Kirche der altpreußischen Union , EKapU o ApU). [4] La iglesia ya no llevaba el término Iglesia Estatal en su nombre, teniendo en cuenta que sus congregaciones ahora se extendían por seis estados soberanos. El nuevo nombre se debía a una denominación, ya no a un estado. Mantener la unidad de la Iglesia se convirtió en una tarea difícil, ya que algunos de los estados anexionistas se oponían al hecho de que las entidades eclesiásticas dentro de sus fronteras mantuvieran una unión con organizaciones eclesiásticas alemanas.
El territorio que comprendía la provincia eclesiástica de Posen era ahora en gran parte polaco, y con excepción de pequeñas franjas, el de Prusia Occidental había sido confiscado por Polonia o Danzig . La parte trans- Niemen de Prusia Oriental ( región de Klaipėda ) se convirtió en un mandato de la Sociedad de Naciones a partir del 10 de enero de 1920 y partes de la Silesia prusiana fueron anexadas por Checoslovaquia ( región de Hlučín ) o Polonia ( Silesia polaca ), mientras que cuatro congregaciones de la provincia eclesiástica renana fueron confiscadas por Bélgica , y muchas más pasaron a formar parte del Mandato del Sarre (Sociedad de Naciones) .
La congregación evangélica de Hlučín , anexionada por Checoslovaquia en 1920, se unió posteriormente a la Iglesia Evangélica de Silesia de Augsburgo Confesión de Silesia Checa . El gobierno polaco ordenó la desvinculación de la Provincia Eclesiástica de Posen de las antiguas provincias de la Iglesia Evangélica Estatal de Prusia , a excepción de sus congregaciones que permanecieron con Alemania. El ahora cuerpo eclesiástico polaco formó entonces la Iglesia Evangélica Unida en Polonia ( ‹Ver Tfd› alemán: Unierte Evangelische Kirche in Polen , polaco: Ewangelicki Kościół Unijny w Polsce ), [29] que existió separada de la Iglesia Evangélica de Augsburgo en Polonia hasta 1945, cuando la mayoría de los congregantes de la primera huyeron del ejército soviético que se acercaba o fueron posteriormente desnaturalizados por Polonia debido a su lengua materna alemana y expulsados (1945-1950).
La Iglesia Evangélica Unida en Polonia también incorporó las congregaciones evangélicas en Pomerellia , cedidas por Alemania a Polonia en febrero de 1920, que anteriormente pertenecían a la Provincia Eclesiástica de Prusia Occidental , así como las congregaciones en Soldau y otros 32 municipios de Prusia Oriental, [30] que Alemania cedió a Polonia el 10 de enero de 1920, que anteriormente pertenecían a la Provincia Eclesiástica de Prusia Oriental . [29]
Varias congregaciones se encontraban en las partes norte y oeste de la provincia de Posen , que no fueron anexadas por Polonia y permanecieron con Alemania. Se unieron con las congregaciones de la zona más occidental de Prusia Occidental, que permanecieron con Alemania, para formar la nueva provincia eclesiástica de Posen-Prusia Occidental . Las congregaciones de la parte oriental de Prusia Occidental que permanecieron con Alemania se unieron a la Provincia Eclesiástica de Prusia Oriental el 9 de marzo de 1921. [30] [31]
Las 17 congregaciones en la Alta Silesia Oriental , cedidas a Polonia en 1922, se constituyeron el 6 de junio de 1923 como Iglesia Evangélica Unida en la Alta Silesia Polaca ( ‹Ver Tfd› alemán: Unierte Evangelische Kirche in Polnisch Oberschlesien , polaco: Ewangelicki Kościół Unijny na polskim Górnym Śląsku ). [32] La iglesia formó una antigua provincia eclesiástica prusiana hasta mayo de 1937, cuando expiró el Acuerdo de Ginebra germano-polaco sobre la Alta Silesia . [29] Entre 1945 y 1948 sufrió el mismo destino que la Iglesia Evangélica Unida en Polonia . Las congregaciones de Eupen , Malmedy , Neu-Moresnet y St. Vith , situadas en los actuales cantones belgas orientales , se separaron de la Iglesia evangélica de la antigua Unión Prusiana a partir del 1 de octubre de 1922 y se unieron hasta 1923/1924 a la Union des églises évangéliques protestantes de Belgique , que más tarde se transformó en la Iglesia Protestante Unida de Bélgica . Siguen existiendo hasta el día de hoy.
Las congregaciones en el territorio confiscado por la Ciudad Libre de Danzig , que anteriormente pertenecían a la Provincia Eclesiástica de Prusia Occidental , se transformaron en la Federación Sinodal Regional de la Ciudad Libre de Danzig ( ‹Ver Tfd› en alemán: Landessynodalverband der Freien Stadt Danzig ). [30] Siguió siendo una provincia eclesiástica de la Iglesia Evangélica de la antigua Unión Prusiana , ya que el Senado de Danzig (gobierno) no se oponía a los cuerpos eclesiásticos transfronterizos. [29] La provincia eclesiástica de Danzig también cooperó con la Iglesia Evangélica Unida en Polonia en cuanto a la educación de pastores, ya que sus estudiantes de teología polacos de lengua materna alemana se vieron impedidos de estudiar en universidades alemanas por las restrictivas regulaciones de pases polacos.
Las congregaciones en el mandato de la Sociedad de Naciones de la Región de Klaipėda ( en alemán: Memelgebiet ) continuaron perteneciendo a la Provincia Eclesiástica de Prusia Oriental . Cuando entre el 10 y el 16 de enero de 1923 la vecina Lituania conquistó el territorio mandatorio y lo anexó el 24 de enero, la situación de las congregaciones allí se volvió precaria. El 8 de mayo de 1924 Lituania y las potencias mandatorias Francia , Italia , Japón y el Reino Unido firmaron la Convención de Klaipėda , otorgando autonomía a los habitantes de la Región de Klaipėda. Esto permitió a la Iglesia Evangélica de la antigua Unión Prusiana firmar un contrato con el gobierno autónomo de Memel ( ‹Ver Tfd› alemán: Landesdirektorium ) bajo Viktoras Gailius el 23 de julio de 1925 para mantener la afiliación de las congregaciones con la Iglesia Evangélica de la antigua Unión Prusiana .
Las congregaciones evangélicas de la región de Klaipėda se separaron de la provincia eclesiástica de Prusia Oriental y formaron la Federación Sinodal Regional del Territorio de Memel (Landessynodalverband Memelgebiet), siendo clasificada como una provincia eclesiástica directamente subordinada al Consejo Supremo de la Iglesia Evangélica con un consistorio propio en Klaipėda (establecido en 1927), dirigido por un superintendente general (al principio Franz Gregor, después de 1933 Otto Obereigner ). [29] El 25 de junio de 1934, el pequeño cuerpo eclesiástico del enclave oldenburgiano Birkenfeld se fusionó con la provincia eclesiástica renana.
The 1922 constitution of the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union included much stronger presbyterial structures and forms of parishioners' democratic participation in church matters. The parishioners of a congregation elected a presbytery and a congregants' representation (‹See Tfd›German: Gemeindevertretung). A number of congregations formed a deanery (‹See Tfd›German: Kirchenkreis), holding a deanery synod (‹See Tfd›German: Kreissynode) of synodals elected by the presbyteries. The deanery synodals elected the deanery synodal board (‹See Tfd›German: Kreissynodalvorstand), in charge of the ecclesiastical supervision of the congregations in a deanery, which was chaired by a superintendent, appointed by the provincial church council (‹See Tfd›German: Provinzialkirchenrat) after a proposal of the general superintendent.
The parishioners in the congregations elected synodals for their respective provincial synod – a legislative body – which again elected its governing board the provincial church council, which also included members delegated by the consistory. The consistory was the provincial administrative body, whose members were appointed by the Evangelical Supreme Church Council. Each consistory was chaired by a general superintendent, being the ecclesiastical, and a consistorial president (‹See Tfd›German: Konsistorialpräsident), being the administrative leader.
The provincial synods and the provincial church councils elected from their midst the synodals of the general synod, the legislative body of the overall Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union. The general synod elected the church senate (‹See Tfd›German: Kirchensenat), the governing board presided by the praeses of the general synod, elected by the synodals. Johann Friedrich Winckler held the office of praeses from 1915 until 1933. The church senate appointed the members of the Evangelical Supreme Church Council, the supreme administrative entity, which again appointed the members of the consistories.
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.[29] 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 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.[33] 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. Otto Dibelius, since 1925 general superintendent of Kurmark within the Ecclesiastical Province of the March of Brandenburg, published his book Das Jahrhundert der Kirche (The century of the Church[34]), in which he declared the 20th century to be the era when the Evangelical Church may for the first time develop freely and gain the independence God would have wished for, without the burden and constraints of the state church function. He regarded the role of the church as even the more important, since the state of the Weimar Republic – in his eyes – would not provide the society with binding norms any more, thus this would be the task of the church.[35] The church would have to stand for the defense of the Christian culture of the Occident. In this respect Dibelius regarded himself as consciously anti-Jewish, explaining in a circular to the pastors in his general superintendency district of Kurmark, "that with all degenerating phenomena of modern civilisation Judaism plays a leading role".[36] His book was one of the most read on church matters in that period.[35]
While this new self-conception helped the activists within the church, the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union could not increase the number of its activists. In Berlin the number of activists made up maybe 60,000 to 80,000 persons of an overall number of parishioners of more than 3 million within an overall of more than 4 million Berliners.[35] Especially in Berlin the affiliation faded. By the end of the 1920s still 70% of the dead in Berlin were buried accompanied by an Evangelical ceremony and 90% of the children from Evangelical couples were baptised. But only 40% of the marriages in Berlin chose an Evangelical wedding ceremony.
Whereas in 1913, before the end of the monarchy, 20,500 parishioners seceded from the old-Prussian Church, the numbers soared – during the separation of the religions and the Free State of Prussia – to 133,379 in 1919 and 163,819 in 1920.[37] However, these secessions were still compensated by baptisands and migrants. In the early and mid-1920s the annual number of secessions amounted to about 80,000.[37] From 1928 to 1932 annually about 50,000 parishioners seceded from the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union.[35]
In the field of church elections committed congregants formed new Kirchenparteien, which nominated candidates for the elections of the presbyteries and synods of different level. In 1919 Christian socialists founded the Covenant of Religious Socialists. As reaction to this politicisation the Evangelisch-unpolitische Liste (EuL, Evangelical unpolitical List) emerged, which ran for mandates besides the traditional Middle Party, Positive Union and another new Kirchenpartei, the Jungreformatorische Bewegung (Young Reformatory Movement).[38] Especially in the country-side, there often were no developed Kirchenparteien, thus activist congregants formed common lists of candidates of many different opinions.[38]
In February 1932 Protestant Nazis, above all Wilhelm Kube (presbyter at the Gethsemane Church, Berlin, and speaker of the six NSDAP parliamentarians in the Prussian State Diet) initiated the foundation of a new Kirchenpartei, the so-called Faith Movement of German Christians (‹See Tfd›German: Glaubensbewegung Deutsche Christen, DC), participating on 12–14 November 1932 for the first time in the elections for presbyters and synodals within the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union and gaining about a third of the seats in presbyteries and synods.[39]
In the inter-war years the general synod convened five times.[29] In 1927 it decided with a narrow majority to maintain the title general superintendent instead of replacing it by the title bishop.[29] The same general synod voted for the admittance of women as vicars.[29] The old-Prussian Church and the Free State of Prussia formalised their relationship by the concordat of 31 May 1931.[29] By this concordat the church was given a say in appointing professors of Protestant theology and the contents they teach in Prussia's state universities, whereas the Free State could veto the appointment of leading functionaries.[29]
After the system of state churches had disappeared with the monarchies in the German states, the question arose, why the Protestant church bodies within Germany did not merge. Besides the smaller Protestant denominations of the Mennonites, Baptists or Methodists, which were organised crossing state borders along denominational lines, there were 29 (later 28) church bodies organised along territorial borders of German states or Prussian provinces.[40] All those, covering the territory of former monarchies with a ruling Protestant dynasty, had been state churches until 1918 – except of the Protestant church bodies of territories annexed by Prussia in 1866. Others had been no less territorially defined Protestant minority church bodies within states of Catholic monarchs, where – before 1918 – the Roman Catholic Church played the role of state church.
In fact, a merger was permanently under discussion, but never materialised due to strong regional self-confidence and traditions as well as the denominational fragmentation into Lutheran, Calvinist and United and uniting churches. Following the Schweizerischer Evangelischer Kirchenbund (Swiss Federation of Protestant Churches) of 1920, the then 29 territorially defined German Protestant church bodies founded the Deutscher Evangelischer Kirchenbund (German Federation of Protestant Churches) in 1922, which was no new merged church, but a loose confederacy of the existing independent church bodies.
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 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.[41]
On 21 March 1933 the newly elected Reichstag convened in the Evangelical Garrison Church of Potsdam, an event commemorated as the Day of Potsdam, and the locally competent Gen.-Supt. Dibelius preached.[41] Dibelius downplayed the boycott against enterprises of Jewish proprietors and such of Gentiles of Jewish descent in an address for the US radio. Even after this clearly anti-Semitic action he repeated in his circular to the pastors of Kurmark on the occasion of Easter (16 April 1933) his anti-Jewish attitude, giving the same words as in 1928.[42]
The Nazi Reich's government, aiming at streamlining the Protestant churches, recognised the German Christians as its means to do so. On 4 and 5 April 1933 representatives of the German Christians convened in Berlin and demanded the dismissal of all members of the executive bodies of the 28 Protestant church bodies in Germany. The German Christians demanded their ultimate merger into a uniform German Protestant Church, led according to the Nazi Führerprinzip by a Reich's Bishop (‹See Tfd›German: Reichsbischof), abolishing all democratic participation of parishioners in presbyteries and synods. The German Christians announced the appointment of a Reich's Bishop for 31 October 1933, the Reformation Day holiday.
Furthermore, the German Christians demanded to purify Protestantism of all Jewish patrimony. Judaism should no longer be regarded a religion, which can be adopted and given up, but a racial category which were genetic. Thus German Christians opposed proselytising among Jews. Protestantism should become a pagan kind heroic pseudo-Nordic religion. Of course the Old Testament, which includes the Ten Commandments and the virtue of charity (taken from the Torah, Book of Leviticus 19:18: "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."), was to be abandoned.
In a mood of an emergency through an impending Nazi takeover functionaries of the then officiating executive bodies of the 28 Protestant church bodies stole a march on the German Christians. Functionaries and activists worked hastily on negotiating between the 28 Protestant church bodies a legally indoubtable unification on 25 April 1933 three men convened, Hermann Kapler, president of the old-Prussian Evangelical Supreme Church Council– representing United Protestantism – August Marahrens, state bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran State Church of Hanover (for the Lutherans), and the Reformed Hermann-Albert Hesse, director of the preacher seminary in Wuppertal, to prepare the constitution of a united church which they called the German Evangelical Church too.[43]
This caused the later confusion when the streamlined Reich church and the Confessing Church alike identified as being the legitimate church of that name. The Nazi government compelled the negotiators to include its representative, the former army chaplain Ludwig Müller from Königsberg, a devout German Christian. The plans were to dissolve the German Evangelical Church Confederation and the 28 church bodies and to replace them by a uniform Protestant church, to be called the German Evangelical Church (‹See Tfd›German: Deutsche Evangelische Kirche).
On 27 May 1933 representatives of the 28 church bodies gathered in Berlin, and, against a minority voting for Ludwig Müller, elected Friedrich von Bodelschwingh, head of the Bethel Institution and member of the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union, Reich's Bishop, a newly created title.[44] The German Christians strictly opposed that election, because Bodelschwingh was not their partisan. Thus the Nazis, who were permanently breaking the law, stepped in, using the streamlined Prussian government, and declared the functionaries had exceeded their authority.
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 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 Prussian State Commissioner for the Prussian ecclesiastical affairs (‹See Tfd›German: Staatskommissar für die preußischen kirchlichen Angelegenheiten).
This act clearly violated the status of the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union as statutory body (‹See Tfd›German: Körperschaft des öffentlichen Rechts) and subjecting it to Jäger's orders (see Struggle of the Churches, ‹See Tfd›German: Kirchenkampf).[45] 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).[46]
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.[45] Jäger furloughed Martin Albertz (superintendent of the Spandau deanery[47]), 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.[48]
Then the German Christian Dr. iur. Friedrich Werner 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.[45] 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 Gerhard Jacobi (William I Memorial Church, Berlin), Fritz (Friedrich) Müller, Martin Niemöller, Eberhard Röhricht (all the three Dahlem Congregation, Berlin) and Eitel-Friedrich von Rabenau (Apostle Paul Church, Berlin, formerly Immanuel Church (Tel Aviv-Yafo), 1912–1917) wrote a letter of protest to Jäger. Pastor Otto Grossmann (Mark's Church Südende, Berlin within Steglitz Congregation) criticised the violation of the church constitution in a speech on the radio and was subsequently arrested and interrogated (July 1933).[48]
On 11 July German-Christian and intimidated other representatives of all the 28 Protestant church bodies in Germany declared the German Evangelical Church Confederation to be dissolved and the German Evangelical Church to be founded. On 14 July Hesse, Kapler and Marahrens presented the newly developed constitution of the German Evangelical Church, which the Nazi government declared to be valid.[45] The same day Adolf Hitler discretionarily decreed an unconstitutional premature re-election of all presbyters and synodals in all 28 church bodies for 23 July.[49]
The new synods of the 28 Protestant churches were to declare their dissolution as separate church bodies. Representatives of all 28 Protestant churches were to attend the newly created National Synod to confirm Müller as Reich's Bishop. Müller already now regarded himself as leader of that new organisation. He established a Spiritual Ministerium (‹See Tfd›German: Geistliches Ministerium, seated in Berlin, Marchstraße # 2 in the former premises of the German Evangelical Church Confederation), being the executive body, consisting of four persons, who were not to be elected, but whom he appointed himself.
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.[50] On 4 August Müller assumed the title State Bishop (‹See Tfd›German: 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 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 (Good Samaritan Church, Berlin) 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.[51] Thus the list, which had renamed into Gospel and Church (‹See Tfd›German: Evangelium und Kirche), took refuge with the Evangelical Press Association (‹See Tfd›German: Evangelischer Preßverband), presided by Dibelius and printed new election posters in its premises in Alte Jacobstraße # 129, Berlin.[52] 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,[53] and in the congregation in Berlin-Staaken-Dorf.[54] 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[55] and within its provincial synods – except of the one of Westphalia –,[55] as well as in many synods of other Protestant church bodies, except of the 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 (‹See Tfd›German: 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.[51]
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 Hans von Soden, professors of Protestant theology at the Philip's University in 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."[56]
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[57] (Leipziger Straße No. 3, now seat of the Federal Council (Germany)).[58] 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.[59]
When on 5 September Jakob Emil Karl Koch, 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.[58] 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.[60] The same law renamed the ecclesiastical provinces into bishoprics (‹See Tfd›German: Bistum/Bistümer, sg./pl.), each led – according to the new law of 6 September – by a provincial bishop (‹See Tfd›German: Provinzialbischof) replacing the prior general superintendents.[61]
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.[62] Only few parishioners and clergy, mostly of Reformed tradition, followed John Calvin's doctrine of the Kingdom of Christ within the church and the world.[63]
Among them were Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who demanded the church bodies to oppose the abolition of democracy and the unlawfulness in the general political sphere.[64] Especially pastors in the countryside – often younger men, since the traditional pastoral career ladder started in a village parish – were outraged about this development. Herbert Goltzen, Eugen Weschke, and Günter Jacob, three pastors from Lower Lusatia, regarded the introduction of the Aryan paragraph as the violation of the confession. In late summer 1933 Jacob, pastor in Noßdorf (a part of today's Forst in Lusatia/Baršć), developed the central theses, which became the self-commitment of the opponents.
In reaction to the anti-Semitic discriminations within the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union the church-aligned Breslauer Christliches Wochenblatt (Breslau Christian Weekly) published the following criticism in the October edition of 1933:
"Vision:
Service. The introit faded away. The pastor stands at the altar and begins:
›Non-Aryans are requested to leave the church!‹
Nobody budges.
›Non-Aryans are requested to leave the church!‹
Everything remains still.
›Non-Aryans are requested to leave the church!‹
Then Christ descends from the Crucifix of the altar and leaves the church."
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 Emergency Covenant of Pastors (‹See Tfd›German: Pfarrernotbund), and so they did, electing Pastor Niemöller their president.[58] On the basis of the theses of Günter Jacob its members concluded that a schism was a matter of fact,[65] a new Protestant church was to be established, since the official organisation was anti-Christian, heretical and therefore illegitimate.[66][67] Each pastor joining the Covenant – until the end of September 1933 2,036 out of a total of 18,842 Protestant pastors in Germany acceded – had to sign that he rejected the Aryan paragraph.[58]
In 1934 the Covenant counted 7,036 members, after 1935 the number sank to 4,952, among them 374 retired pastors, 529 auxiliary preachers and 116 candidates. First the pastors of Berlin, affiliated with the Covenant, met biweekly in Gerhard Jacobi's private apartment. From 1935 on they convened in the premises of the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA, ‹See Tfd›German: Christlicher Verein Junger Männer) in Wilhelmstraße No. 24 in Berlin-Kreuzberg, opposite to the headquarters of Heinrich Himmler's Sicherheitsdienst (in 1939 integrated into the Reichssicherheitshauptamt, RSHA) in Wilhelmstraße # 102. In 1941 the Gestapo closed the YMCA house.[68]
On 18 September 1933 Werner was appointed praeses of the old-Prussian general synod, thus becoming president of the church senate.[61] 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.[61] 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 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" (‹See Tfd›German: »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.
The general synod (‹See Tfd›German: 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 right of the river Rhine, led by 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.[69] 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.[70] 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.[71] But the majority of pastors in their 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" (‹See Tfd›German: jüdische Lohnmoral), and demanding the cleansing of the New Testament from the "scapegoat mentality and theology of inferiority" (‹See Tfd›German: Sündenbock- und Minderwertigkeitstheologie des Rabbiners Paulus), whose emergence Krause attributed to the Rabbi (Sha'ul) Paul of Tarsos.[69] 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.[69] 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.[72]
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.[73] So Krause was dismissed from his functions with the German Christians and the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union.[74] Krause's dismissal again made the radical Thuringian subsection declare its secession by the end of November.[73] This pushed the complete Faith Movement into crisis so that its Reich's leader Joachim Hossenfelder had to resign on 20 December 1933.[74] 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.[75] 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.[76] 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.[72]
The same day Ludwig Müller decreed the Führerprinzip, a hierarchy of subordination to command, within the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union.[77] 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.[78] Since Müller had acted without legal basis the courts usually proved the litigants to be right.[79]
On 3 February Müller decreed another ordinance to send functionaries against their will into early retirement.[80] 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.[72]
Furthermore, Müller degraded the legislative provincial synods and the executive provincial church councils into mere advisory boards.[79] 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.[79]
In a series of provincial synods the opposition assumed shape. On 3/4 January 1934 Karl Barth presided a synod in Wuppertal-Barmen for Reformed parishioners within the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union; on 18/19 February a so-called free synod convened the Rhenish opponents and the Westphalians met at the first Westphalian Synod of Confession on 16 March.[72] On 7 March the so-called free synod for the Ecclesiastical Province of the March of Brandenburg, much influenced by the Reformed pastor Supt. Martin Albertz, elected its first provincial brethren council, comprising Supt. Albertz, Arnim-Kröchlendorff, Wilhelm von Arnim-Lützow, sculpturist Wilhelm Groß, Walter Häfele, Justizrat[81] Willy Hahn, Oberstudienrat[82] Georg Lindner, H. Michael, Willy Praetorius, Rabenau, Scharf, Regierunsgrat[83] Kurt Siehe, and Heinrich Vogel, presided by Gerhard Jacobi.[84]
The Gestapo shut down one office of the provincial brethren council after the other.[85] Werner Zillich and Max Moelter were the executive directors, further collaborators were Elisabeth Möhring (sister of the opposing pastor Gottfried Möhring at St. Catharine's Church in Brandenburg upon Havel) and Senta Maria Klatt (Congregation of St. John's Church, Berlin-Moabit). The Gestapo summoned her more than 40 times and tried to intimidate her, confronting her with the fact that she, being partly of Jewish descent, would have to realise the worst possible treatment in jail.[86] In the eleven deaneries covering Greater Berlin, six were led by superintendents, who joined the Emergency Covenant of Pastors.[79]
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 (‹See Tfd›German: 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 Jakob Emil Karl Koch, 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 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 Theological Declaration). Henceforth the movement of all Protestant denominations, opposing Nazi adulteration of Protestantism and Nazi intrusion into Protestant church affairs, was called the Confessing Church (‹See Tfd›German: Bekennende Kirche, BK), their partisans Confessing Christians, as opposed to German Christians. Later this convention in Barmen used to be called the first Reich's Synod of Confession (‹See Tfd›German: erste Reichsbekenntnissynode).
Presbyteries with German Christian majorities often banned Confessing Christians from using church property and even entering the church buildings. Many church employees, who opposed, were dismissed.[87] Especially among the many rural Pietists in the Ecclesiastical Province of Pomerania the opposition found considerable support. While the German Christians, holding the majority in most official church bodies, lost many supporters, the Confessing Christians, comprising many authentical persuasive activists, still remained a minority but increased their number. As compared to the vast majority of indifferent, non-observing Protestants, both movements were marginal.
One pre-1918 tradition of non-ecclesiastical influence within church structures had made it into the new constitution of the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union of 1922. Many of the churches, which had been founded before the 19th century, had a patron holding the ius patronatus, meaning that either the owner of a manor estate (in the countryside) or a political municipality or city was in charge of maintaining the church buildings and paying the pastor. No pastor could be appointed without the consent of the patron (advowson). This became a curse and a blessing during the Nazi period. While all political entities were Nazi-streamlined they abused the patronage to appoint Nazi-submissive pastors on the occasion of a vacancy. Also estate owners sometimes sided with the Nazis. But more estate owners were conservative and thus rather backed the opposition in the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union. So the congregations under their patronage could often keep or appoint anew a pastor of the intra-church opposition.
On 9 August 1934 the Second National Synod, with all synodals again admitted by the Spiritual Ministerium, severed the uniformation of the formerly independent Protestant church bodies, disenfranchising their respective synods to decide in internal church matters. These pretensions increased the criticism among church members within the streamlined church bodies. On 23 September 1934 Ludwig Müller was inaugurated in a church ceremony as Reich's Bishop.
The Lutheran church bodies of Bavaria right of the river Rhine and Württemberg again refused to merge in September 1934. The imprisonment of their leaders, Bishop Meiser and Bishop Wurm, evoked public protests of congregants in Bavaria right of the river Rhine and Württemberg. Thus the Nazi Reich's government saw, that the German Christians aroused more and more unrest among Protestants, rather driving people into opposition to the government, than domesticating Protestantism as useful beadle for the Nazi reign. A breakthrough was the verdict of 20 November 1934. The court Landgericht I in Berlin decided that all decisions, taken by Müller since he decreed the Führerprinzip within the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union on 26 January, the same year, were to be reversed.[79] Thus the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union reconstituted on 20 November 1934. But the prior dismissals of opponents and impositions of loyal German Christians in many church functions were not reversed. Werner regained his authority as president of the Evangelical Supreme Church Council.
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 (‹See Tfd›German: Predigerseminar) of its own, such as the seminary in Bielefeld-Sieker (led by Otto Schmitz), Bloestau (East Prussia) and Jordan in the New March (both led by Hans Iwand 1935–1937), Naumburg am Queis (Gerhard Gloege), Stettin-Finkenwalde, later relocated to Groß Schlönwitz and then to Sigurdshof (forcibly closed in 1940, led by Dietrich Bonhoeffer). These activities completely depended on donations. In 1937 the Gestapo closed the seminaries in the east. Iwand, on whom in 1936 the Gestapo had inflicted the nationwide prohibition to speak in the public, reopened a seminary in Dortmund in January 1938. This earned him an imprisonment of four-month in the same year.
On 11 October 1934 the Confessing Church established in Achenbachstraße No. 3, Berlin, its own office for the examination of pastors and other church employees, since the official church body discriminated against candidates of Nazi opposing opinion.[55] Until 1945 3,300 theologists graduated at this office. Among their examiners were originally professors of the Frederick William University of Berlin, who refrained from examining after their employer, the Nazi government, threatened to dismiss them in 1935. After this there were only ecclesiastical examinators, such as Walter Delius (Berlin-Friedrichshagen), Elisabeth Grauer, Günther Harder (Fehrbellin), Günter Jacob, Fritz Müller, Wilhelm Niesel (auxiliary preacher Wuppertal-Elberfeld), Susanne Niesel-Pfannschmidt, Barbara Thiele, Bruno Violet (Friedrichswerder Church, Berlin), and Johannes Zippel (Steglitz Congregation, Berlin).[86] On 1 December 1935 the Confessing Church opened its own Kirchliche Hochschule (KiHo, ecclesiastical college), seated in Berlin-Dahlem and Wuppertal-Elberfeld. The Gestapo forbade the opening ceremony in Dahlem, thus Supt. Albertz spontaneously celebrated it in St. Nicholas' Church Spandau, Berlin. On 4 December, the Gestapo closed the KiHo altogether, thus the teaching and learning continued underground at changing locations. Among the teachers were Supt. Albertz, Hans Asmussen, Joseph Chambon, Franz Hildebrandt, Niesel, Edo Osterloh, Heinrich Vogel, and Johannes Wolff.[88]
Meanwhile, Niemöller and other Confessing Church activists organised the second Reich's Synod of Confession in Berlin's Dahlem Congregation on 19 and 20 October 1934. The synodals elected by all confessing congregations and the congregations of the intact churches decided to found an independent German Evangelical Church. Since the confessing congregations would have to contravene the laws as interpreted by the official church bodies, the synod developed an emergency law of its own.[89] For the destroyed church of the old-Prussian Union they provided for each congregation, taken over by a German Christian majority a so-called brethren council (‹See Tfd›German: Bruderrat) as provisional presbytery, and a Confessing congregation assembly (‹See Tfd›German: Bekenntnisgemeindeversammlung) to parallelise the congregants' representation. The Confessing congregations of each deanery formed a Confessing deanery synod (‹See Tfd›German: Kreis-Bekenntnissynode), electing a deanery brethren council (‹See Tfd›German: Kreis-Bruderrat).
If the superintendent of a deanery clung to the Confessing Church, he was accepted, otherwise a deanery pastor (‹See Tfd›German: Kreispfarrer) was elected from the midst of the Confessing pastors in the deanery. Confessing congregants elected synodals for a Confessing provincial synod as well as Confessing State synod (‹See Tfd›German: Provinzial-, resp. Landes-Bekenntnissynode), who again elected a provincial brethren council or the state brethren council of the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union (colloquially old-Prussian brethren council), and a council of the Confessing ecclesiastical province (‹See Tfd›German: Rat der Bekennenden Kirche of the respective ecclesiastical province) or the council of the Confessing Church of the old-Prussian Union, the respective administrative bodies.
Any obedience to the official bodies of the destroyed church of the old-Prussian Union was to be rejected. The Confessing Christians integrated the existing bodies of the opposition – such as the brethren councils of the Emergency Covenant of Pastors, and the independent synods (est. starting in January 1934) -, or established the described parallel structures anew all over the area of the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union in November 1934.[55]
The rivalling German Evangelical Church of the Confessing Church movement constituted in Dahlem. The synodals elected a Reich's Brethren Council, which elected from its midst the executive Council of the German Evangelical Church, consisting of six.
In Berlin Confessing Christians celebrated the constitution of their church on the occasion of the Reformation Day (31 October 1934). The Gestapo forbade them any public event, thus the festivities had to take place in closed rooms with bidden guests only. All the participants had to carry a so-called red card, identifying them as proponents of the Confessing Church. However, 30,000 convened in different convention centres in the city and Niemöller, Peter Petersen (Lichterfelde) and Adolf Kurtz (Twelve Apostles Church) – among others – held speeches. On 7 December the Gestapo forbade the Confessing Church to rent any location, in order to prevent future events like that. The Nazi government then forbade any mentioning of the Kirchenkampf in which media whatsoever.
Hitler was informed about the proceedings in Dahlem and invited the leaders of the three Lutheran intact churches, Marahrens, Meiser and Wurm. He recognised them as legitimate leaders, but expressed that he would not accept the Reich's Brethren Council. This was meant to wedge the Confessing Church along the lines of the uncompromising Confessing Christians, around Niemöller from Dahlem, therefore nicknamed the Dahlemites (‹See Tfd›German: Dahlemiten), and the more moderate Lutheran intact churches and many opposing functionaries and clergy in the destroyed churches, which had not yet been dismissed.
For the time being the Confessing Christians found a compromise and appointed – on 22 November – the so-called first Preliminary Church Executive (‹See Tfd›German: Vorläufige Leitung der Deutschen Evangelischen Kirche, 1. VKL), consisting of Thomas Breit, Wilhelm Flor, Paul Humburg, Koch, and Marahrens. The executive was meant to only represent the Reich's Brethren Council to the outside.[90] But soon Barth, Hesse, Karl Immanuel Immer and Niemöller found the first Preliminary Church Executive to be too compromising so that these Dahlemites resigned from the Reich's Brethren Council.
Between end of 1934 and March 1937 the central office of the Preliminary Church Executive was located in the Burckhardt-Haus of the school for social workers (‹See Tfd›German: Lehrhaus für Gemeindehelferinnen der ev. Kirche) of the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union in Berlin's then # 27, Friedbergstraße (now Rudeloffstraße).
With the verdict of the Landgericht I, and this turn in Hitler's policy Jäger resigned from his office as state commissioner. Müller refused to resign as Reich's bishop but had to unwind all measures taken to forcefully unite the church bodies. So besides the Confessing Church of the old-Prussian Union, founded in October 1934 also the official, German Christian-dominated Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union reconstituted in November.
The second old-Prussian Synod of Confession (also old-Prussian Dahlem Synod) convened in Berlin-Dahlem on 4 and 5 March 1935. The synodals decided that the Confessing Church of the old-Prussian Union should unite with the destroyed official Church of the old-Prussian Union. The synodals further adopted a declaration about the Nazi racist doctrine. The same month the declaration was read in all confessing congregations, that the Nazi racist doctrine, claiming there were a Jewish and an Aryan race, was pure mysticism. In reaction to that the Nazi government arrested 700 pastors, who had read this declaration from their pulpits. The official church ordered to read a declaration demanding the parishioners' obedience to the Nazi government. On Sunday Judica (7 April 1935) Confessing pastors held rogations for the imprisoned Confessing Christians. From then on every Tuesday the brethren councils issued updated lists with the names of the imprisoned.
Since the 28 Protestant church bodies in Germany levied contributions from their parishioners by a surcharge on the income tax, collected and then transferred by the state tax offices, the official church bodies denied the confessing congregations their share in the contributions. Each congregation had its own budget and the official church authorities transferred the respective share in the revenues to the legitimate presbytery of each congregations, be it governed by German Christians or Confessing Christians.
The Nazi Reich's government now intended to drain this financial influx by a new decree with the euphemising title Law on the Wealth Formation within the Evangelical Church Bodies (11 March 1935).[91] Thus the Nazi Reich's government subjected the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union to governmental financial control. All budgets and remittances were to be confirmed by state comptrollers. On 11 April an ordinance ordered that salaries were only to be remitted to orderly appointed employees and all future appointments of whomsoever, would only take effect with the consent of the financial departments.
Consistorial Councillor von Arnim-Kröchlendorff, a proponent of the Confessing Church, was appointed leader of the financial department for Berlin. He turned out to ignore the rules and to largely use his scope of discretion.[92] But many other financial departments were chaired by sharp Nazi officials. Thus Confessing congregations outside of Berlin built up a new network of escrow accounts.[92] It became especially difficult to defray the salaries of the officially non-confirmed employees. Confessing Christians of laity and Covenant pastors, still undisputedly receiving a full salary from the official church, agreed to substantial contributions to maintain the Confessing Church.
On 4 to 6 June 1935, two weeks after the Nuremberg Laws had been decreed, the synodals of the Confessing Church convened in Augsburg for the third Reich's Synod of Confession. Disputes between the intact churches of Bavaria right of the river Rhine and Württemberg with the first preliminary church executive could be settled. So Niemöller, Hesse and Immer returned into the Reich's Brethren Council. Prof. Barth, refusing to sign the newly introduced oath of all professors to Hitler, had been dismissed from his chair at the Rhenish Frederick William's University of Bonn and remigrated to Switzerland, where he was appointed professor at the University of Basel. But the synodals did not adopt a declaration, prepared by Supt. Albertz, condemning the Nuremberg Laws. Wurm was elected speaker of the Confessing Church.
Right after this synod the Nazi Reich's government intensified its fight against the Confessing Church. Since the orderly courts often approved litigations against German Christian measurements, because they usually lacked any legal basis, on 26 June 1935 the Nazi government passed a law, which would ban all suits about church questions from being decided by orderly jurisdiction.
Instead – as was typical for the Nazi government – they established a new parallel authority, the Decision-Taking Office for Affairs of the Evangelical Church (‹See Tfd›German: Beschlußstelle in Angelegenheiten der Evangelischen Kirche). Thus the Nazi government cut off the Confessing Church from appealing to courts.[93] All lawsuits on church matters, some still pending since 1 May 1933, were to be decided by the Decision-Taking Office. Orderly courts could not overrule its decisions. With this power the Decision-Taking Office blackmailed the Confessing Church to compromise. The Decision-Taking Office refrained from acting as long as the Confessing Church co-operated. In fact the Decision-Taking Office only acted up after the compromises failed in 1937. In the following years of compromising Hermann Ehlers became a legal advisor of the old-Prussian brethren council, until he was arrested from June to July 1937, which made him quit his collaboration.
On 16 July 1935 Hanns Kerrl was appointed Reich's minister for ecclesiastical affairs, a newly created department.[92] 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.[94]
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On 10 September 1935 the old-Prussian brethren council convened preparing the upcoming third old-Prussian Synod of Confession (also Steglitz Synod).[55] 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.[95] 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 Südende, Berlin.
Marga Meusel,[96] 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.[97] 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.[98]
While Supt. Albertz and Niemöller argued to discuss the memorandum, a majority of synodals refused and the memorandum was then laid ad acta.[99] 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.[100]
Kerrl managed to gain the very respected Wilhelm Zoellner (a Lutheran, until 1931 general superintendent of Westphalia) to form the Reich's Ecclesiastical Committee (‹See Tfd›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 (‹See Tfd›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).[101]
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.[102] 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.[102]
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 upon Oder), and Supt. Zimmermann.[101] 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.[103]
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.[20]), Hans Lietzmann, Wilhelm Lütgert, and Julius Richter.[103]
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.[104]
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.[103] 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 Bremen, of Nassau-Hesse and of Oldenburg as well as by a covenant of pastors from Württemberg (the so-called Württembergische Sozietät).[105]
On 18 March the three Lutheran intact churches announced the foundation of the Council of the Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Germany (‹See Tfd›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.[104] 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.[103]
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."[106] The authors concluded that the Nazi regime will definitely lead the German people into disaster.[70]
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.[107] 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.[108]
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.[55]
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.[103] 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.[109]
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.[109] 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.[103] 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.[55] The Halle Synod also delivered the basis for the multi-denominational Protestant Arnoldshain Conference (1957) and its theses on the Lord's Supper.[55] 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.[55] 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 Wilhelmstadt, Berlin), 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.[110]
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.[111] 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.[112]
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.[113] 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 Werner Sylten 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,[114] 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 (‹See Tfd›German: 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 (‹See Tfd›German: Reichsverband nichtarischer Christen), then renamed into Paul's Covenant (‹See Tfd›German: Paulusbund) after the famous Jewish convert to Christianity (Sha'ul) Paul of Tarsos, presided by the known literary historian Heinrich Spiero.[115] In early 1937 the Nazi government forbade that organisation, allowing a new successor organisation Association 1937 (‹See Tfd›German: 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.[116] 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.[117] 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 Bureau Grüber, but after its official recognition Relief Centre for Evangelical Non-Aryans.[118] Until May 1939 25 regional offices could be opened, led by those executive directors of the provincial Inner Mission premises, who clung to the Confessing Church or the latter's other mandatees.[119]
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.[120] 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.[121][122] 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 clubs in his parish.[123]
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.[124] 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[125] relinquished its location in Oranienburger Straße 20/21 to Grüber, who thus moved his Bureau thereto.[126] 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.[127] Pastor Werner Sylten, who had been fired – on the grounds of his partially Jewish descent – by his employer, the German Christian-dominated 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 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.[127] 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.[128] Sylten became his deputy.[129]
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 (‹See Tfd›German: 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.[130] 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 (‹See Tfd›German: Sonderreferent für Judenangelegenheiten) in an office in Kurfürstenstraße #115–116, Berlin.[131] 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.[132]
From 1 March 1939 the Nazi Reich's government commissioned the Reichsvertretung der Deutschen Juden to levy a new tax from Jewish emigrants (‹See Tfd›German: 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 (ℛℳ) 5,000 to the Bureau Grüber.[133] Also the intact Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria right of the river Rhine co-financed the work of Grüber's organisation with annually ℛℳ 10,000.[134] By July the office of Spiero and Livingstone had merged into the Bureau Grüber.[135] 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.[136]
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.[137] 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.[138]
By autumn 1939 a new degree of persecution loomed. The Nazi authorities started to deport Jewish Austrians and Gentile Austrians of Jewish descent to 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, 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.[139] The Gestapo warned Grüber never to take the side of the deported again.[140] 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 were deported to Gurs, 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.[139] 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.[139] 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 (‹See Tfd›German: 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.[141] Since January 1943 Pastor Braune could hide Luise Wolff in the diaconal Hoffnungstal Institution, so she survived.[141]
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.[142]
In 1945 right after the war Grüber reopened his Bureau to help the survivors, first in provisional rooms in the deaconesses' Bethany Hospital in Berlin-Kreuzberg.[143] Then the bureau, named today Evangelical Relief Centre for the formerly Racially Persecuted (‹See Tfd›German: Evangelische Hilfsstelle für ehemals Rasseverfolgte), moved to its present site in Berlin-Zehlendorf, Teltower Damm #124. In 1950 three-quarters of the fostered survivors were unemployed and poor.[144] 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.
In the night between 9 and 10 November the Nazis organised the November Pogrom. German Christians, like Bishop Martin Sasse 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.[145] ... 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."[146]
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 Dahlem, Berlin, 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.[147]
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 (‹See Tfd›German: Institut zur Erforschung und Beseitigung des jüdischen Einflusses auf das deutsche kirchliche Leben) in Eisenach, led by Prof. Walter Grundmann.[148] 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.[148] 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 (‹See Tfd›German: Geistlicher Vertrauensrat), taking the ecclesiastical leadership for the German Evangelical Church from early 1940 on.[148] 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.
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 Death's Head Squads, for the time being only in the East, with the command to unpityingly and mercilessly 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 extinction of the Armenians?"[149] 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 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.[110] 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.[110] 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 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 – one will be bold – without the dear God." Thus Hitler's adjutant Major Gerhard Engel recalled the conversation.[150]
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. Paul Blau, 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.[151] 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.[152]
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 (Third Book of Moses 19:18: "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 6:6: "For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings.") and justice (Book of Amos 5:24: "But let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream."[153]) as well as the opposition to racism (Book of Amos 9:7: "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 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 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.[110]
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.[154] 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.[155]
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.[156] 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.[110] Supt. Albertz und Hans Böhm, the leaders of those educational institutions were arrested in July 1941.[156] 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.[157]
Systematic deportations of Jewish Germans and Gentile Germans of Jewish descent started on 18 October 1941.[158] 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.[55] Forck, member of the second preliminary church executive organised it. The synod dealt with replacing recruited pastors by female vicars, presbyters and laypersons.[55]
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.[159] 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.[160] Confessing congregations in the Ecclesiastical Province of Pomerania and the Congregation of Neubabelsberg[161] handed in lists of signatures in protest against the exclusion of the stigmatised Protestants of Jewish descent.[162] 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.[163]
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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 women to be ordained as pastors.[164] However, the outspoken advocates of women's ordination continued to pursue their goal. On 12 January 1943 Kurt Scharf, praeses of the Brandenburg provincial Synod of Confession (Bekenntnissynode) and pastor in Sachsenhausen, ordained Ilse Härter and Hannelotte Reiffen in his church, the two women wearing the full ministerial robes,[165] as the first women in Germany as pastors equal to their male colleagues.[166]
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.[167] There about 800 Protestants of Jewish descent from all German church bodies founded a Protestant congregation.[168] 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.[169] The only German Jews and German Gentiles of Jewish descent, who were in fact not deported, were those living in so-called privileged mixed marriage, which in 1933 amounted to about 40,000 couples nationwide.[170]
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, Ruth Wendland and Gisela von Witzleben altogether on 16 October 1943 in Lichterfelde (a locality of Berlin).[164] On the twelfth old-Prussian Synod of Confession (16–19 October 1943) in Breslau the synodals passed a declaration against the ongoing murder of Jews and the handicapped which was read from the pulpits in the confessing congregations.[171] It backed its decisions with the commandment Thou shalt not kill, later issuing leaflets and brochures with guidelines for the parishioner.[55] 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.
The Allied Strategic bombing during World War II on Germany first reached the areas of the Rhenish and the 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.[172] 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 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.[156] In 1944 the Evangelical Supreme Church Council moved partly into the premises of the Stolberg-Stolberg Consistory in 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, 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.
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 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 (‹See Tfd›German: 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 Hohenzollern provincial deanery fell under the provisional supervision by the Evangelical State Church in Württemberg.[173] 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 in Berlin and Dibelius invested him on 8 August in a ceremony in St. Mary's Church, only partially cleared from the debris.[174]
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, 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.[175] 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.[176]
As to cooperation of all the Protestant church bodies in Germany strong resentments prevailed, especially among the Lutheran church bodies of Bavaria right of the river Rhine, the Hamburgian State, Hanover, Mecklenburg, the Free State of Saxony, and Thuringia, against any unification after the experiences during the Nazi reign with the German Evangelical Church. But it was decided to replace the former German Federation of Protestant Churches by the new umbrella Evangelical Church in Germany, provisionally led by the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany, a naming borrowed from the brethren council organisation.
Until 1951 all the six still existing ecclesiastical provinces of the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union assumed new church constitutions declaring their independence.[175] In 1946 the Silesian ecclesiastical province, presided by Ernst Hornig, held its first post-war provincial synod in then already Polish Świdnica. But on 4 December 1946 Hornig was deported from Wrocław beyond the Lusatian Neisse, where he took his new seat in the German part of the divided Silesian city of Görlitz. In 1947 the Polish government also expelled the remaining members of the Silesian consistory, which temporarily could continue to officiate in Wrocław. Görlitz became the seat of the tiny territorial rest of the Silesian ecclesiastical province, constituting on 1 May 1947 as the independent Evangelical Church of Silesia.
All of the church property east of the Oder-Neiße Line was expropriated without compensation with the church buildings mostly taken over by the Roman Catholic Church in Poland, and most of the cemeteries were desecrated and devastated. Very few churches – namely in Silesia and Masuria – are owned today by Protestant congregations of the Evangelical-Augsburg Church in Poland (see e.g. Churches of Peace). In the Kaliningrad Oblast most property of the Ecclesiastical Province of East Prussia had been taken by the state and is serving profane purposes these days.
Fled and expelled parishioners from the old-Prussian eastern ecclesiastical provinces as well as fled and expelled Protestants from Czechoslovakian, Hungarian, Lithuanian, Polish, or Romanian church bodies – altogether amounting to maybe 10 millions, who happened to strand in one of the remaining ecclesiastical provinces were to be integrated. The church founded a relief endowment (‹See Tfd›German: Evangelisches Hilfswerk), helping the destitute people.
The six surviving ecclesiastical provinces transformed into the following independent church bodies, to wit the Evangelical Church in Berlin-Brandenburg, the Pomeranian Evangelical Church, the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland, the Evangelical Church of the Ecclesiastical Province of Saxony, the Evangelical Church of Silesia, and the Evangelical Church of Westphalia. The Rhenish and the Westphalian synods constituted in November 1948 for the first time as state synods (‹See Tfd›German: Landessynode) of the respective, now independent church bodies.
In 1947 at a meeting of delegates of the six surviving ecclesiastical provinces they confirmed the status quo, with the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union having transformed into a league of independent church bodies. In July 1948 the provisional executive of the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union had to convene separately in East and West, because the Soviets blocked the interzone traffic after the introduction of the Deutsche Mark in the Bizone and the French zone of occupation.
The schism was not yet fully overcome, since only the most radical German Christians had been removed or resigned from their positions. Many neutrals, forming the majority of clergy and parishioners, and many proponents of the quite doubtable compromising policy in the times of the struggle of the churches assumed positions. It was Dibelius' policy to gain the mainstream of the parishioners. Thus the strict opposition of the Dahlemites and Barmensians continued to maintain their conventions in the old-Prussian brethren councils. On 14 January 1949 representatives of the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union decided to reconcile the groups and founded a committee to develop a new church constitution. On 15 August 1949 the Evangelical Supreme Church Council, presided by Dibelius, issued the proposal of the committee for a new constitution, which would bring together the Westphalians striving for the complete unwinding of the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union, the Dahlemites and Barmensians as well as the Dibelians.
The bulk of the mainstream parishioners shared a strong skepticism, if not even objection, against communism, so did Dibelius. So after the foundation of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in the Soviet zone of occupation on 7 October 1949 Dibelius was often defamed in the East as propadandist of the western Konrad Adenauer government.
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.[175] On 1 August 1951 the new constitution (‹See Tfd›German: Ordnung der Evangelischen Kirche der altpreußischen Union) took effect.[177] It transformed the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union (‹See Tfd›German: 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 (‹See Tfd›German: 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 (‹See Tfd›German: 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.[175] 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.[178] 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 Heinrich Held 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.[4] 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 (‹See Tfd›German: 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.[175] 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.[178]
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 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 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 (‹See Tfd›German: 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 Karl Eduard Immer, 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.[4] The councils of the western and the eastern region met monthly in East Berlin.[179] The GDR government was not after terminating this cooperation.[180] 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.[180] The EKU then comprised 6,119 congregations in spread over seven member churches.[180] 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 the Union of Evangelical Churches, which took effect 1 July 2003. This is an umbrella organisation combining all independent Protestant regional united and uniting churches in Germany.
Belief and teaching were based on a number of confessions accepted by the church. These were the Augsburg Confession, the Apology of the Augsburg Confession, the Smalcaldic Articles, Luther's Large Catechism as well as his Small Catechism and the Heidelberg Catechism.[181] Some Lutheran congregations within the Church also accepted the Formula of Concord.[181] Whereas congregations of French Reformed tradition agreed to teach in harmony with the Gallic Confession and the Church discipline.[182] Through the Polish annexation and expulsion of parishioners the Pomeranian Evangelical Church had lost all its united Protestant and Reformed congregations, thus having become purely Lutheran. Among its accepted confessions of faith were only Lutheran ones.[183]
After the ecclesiastical provinces had assumed independence between 1945 and 1950 they characterised themselves differently. Berlin-Brandenburg, Saxony and Silesia conceived themselves as churches of the Lutheran Reformation, with the Saxon provincial church comprising core places of Luther's life and work (Wittenberg, Eisleben).[65] The churches of Berlin-Brandenburg, Saxony and Silesia comprised mostly Lutheran congregations, some Reformed congregations (Silesia after the Polish annexation and expulsion of parishioners a single one) and few united Protestant congregations.[65]
In Berlin-Brandenburg the Reformed congregations formed an own deanery (Kirchenkreis) not delineated along territorial boundaries but confessional differences.[65] The Reformed deanery continued to exist after the merger of Berlin-Brandenburg with the church in Silesian Upper Lusatia now also including the Silesian Reformed congregation. The Evangelical Church in the Rhineland and that of Westphalia are churches united in administration according to the self-conception.[65] Whereas many Rhenish congregations are indeed united in confession, the Westphalian church sees Lutheran and Reformed traditions as equally ranked.[65] The Evangelical State Church of Anhalt again is a church united in confession with all its congregations being united in confession too.[65]
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.
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 (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.
Before 1922 the praeses only presided over the legislative body of the church, the general synod, thereafter also over the church senate, the new governing body.
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.
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.
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.
