Buchenwald

The word means "beech forest" in German. It was here, overlooking Weimar, Germany (about 15 minutes by train from Erfurt) that the Nazis built the prison facilities, forced labor and death camp of Buchenwald. The town of Weimar is known as one of the centers of German culture with familiar names to some like Goethe, Schiller, Nietzsche and Bauhaus. The SS built the camp in the early 1930s to hold political prisoners. During the Night of Broken Glass action, between November 1938 and February 1939, the SS imprisoned hundreds of Jewish men from the region, killing 650 people and telling those remaining to leave (See Thuringian State archival records in Weimar and Gotha). During the war the Nazis also imprisoned Russian soldiers, Jehovah's Witnesses and homosexuals. A local company from Erfurt, Topf and Sons, developed the crematoria and ventilation systems for the SS death ovens. It is said that on a clear day, Topfs' engineers could see the chimney smoke from their drafting room windows in Erfurt. After the war, former prisoners began commemorating their experiences on site (there is little left of the original camp buildings). The Soviet and GDR officials used this place as an opportunity to articulate their propaganda and political myth of Antifascist resistance to Nazism. On the ridgline overlooking the valley, they erected a monumental structure. If you are interested in seeing some of these photos, please click here.
For more information on Buchenwald, please see the link in English to the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation.

Primary source 4: Protestant sermons from Erfurt

@ the Evangelical Central Archives (EZA)

I went back to the central church archives in the eastern part of Berlin-Kreuzberg today. The Protestant Church played a very important role in Germany at the turn of 20th century and I am interested in how this role looked for the first part of my study. I think this period has much to tell historians about our analysis of culture and Germany's struggle with modernity in the early Weimar Republic, and subsequently, Nazism and after 1945. I think this history may also have something to tell us about how Germans deal with fear today (See Sabine Bode's new book on German Angst. I am reviewing it for H-German in the early spring of 2008).

In the Imperial period (1880-1914/18), Protestant Church leaders strongly advocated for the Prussian monarchy and actively girded Germans for war as did most Protestant leaders across western Europe at that time. Most Germans were Protestant and in Thuringia they made up an overwhelming majority of the population. Most churches presided over districts drawn across their city maps. They estimated the numbers of people living in their districts from anywhere between 12,000 and 18,000 individual souls. They saw themselves as important administrators for those areas and supported many civic efforts and relief programs. Even before the First World War, many churches found themselves strapped for the necessary resources. In 1918/19 most churches experienced a wave of members leaving and found themselves surrounded by more and more non-believers, smaller alternative Christian communities like the Jehovah's Witnesses, Adventists and Baptists, and hostile elements in the new communist movement. Still, between 300 and 500 people regularly attended services and those numbers doubled for the church holiday services.

I found a few sermons and church bulletins from ministers in Erfurt and Magdeburg (in Saxony-Anhalt). Protestant ministers never seemed to be too far away from talking about fear and that gives me an important view to how a few ministers expressed fear and and how they offered ways for Germans to deal with those fears. The number one fear was for one's soul and then for the souls of other believers around the reader or listener. They also discussed the fear of death and how to deal with death, but also questioned the way the Prussian state would order Germans to commemorate death, reminding their public about death as a religious form of sacrifice or eternal damnation.

The first sermon also imagines a hostile world and paints a picture of a type of community that I find interesting for its vision and how it would later influence newer forms of political culture in Germany in some interesting and important ways. The second source is a set of excerpts from a sermon and bulletin from another pastor in Erfurt. He reacted to Germany in the wake of its defeat in the First World War and preached a path for Germany's renewal through a Christian spiritual re-awakening at a time when Germans were pulling apart their society.

The last record that I shall add soon comes from among the church archives of Magdeburg in northwest neighboring Saxony-Anhalt. From these materials, I can see how German Christians battled Confessing Christians for control over local churches, their pastorships and teachings. The source I want to show you is one minister's report of his Gestapo interrogation. Those records reveal how German Christians terrorized local religious communities in the 1930s and how the Protestant church focused its resistance along these lines of Christian tradition. That said, I am still perplexed by how Christians could not muster the courage to protest the racial transformation of Germany. I think one of the keys to answering that questions may lie in the first source below and what happened to the vision of Germany as a diverse form of civil society.


1875: Imagining Germany

On May 24, 1875, the pastor from the Regler Church in Erfurt, Dr. Baerwinkel, gave a sermon at the Ulrich Church in Halle a./S. for a meeting of the Evangelical Union. His church published an edition and one copy ended up in the EZA records for the Regler Church.

What I found most interesting was how Dr. Baerwinkel talked about the kind of place his listeners should make. He invoked a story from the Old Testament book of Nehemia 4, 1-9 . That story recounts opposition to the Jewish rebuilding of Jerusalem and Dr. Baerwinkel uses this passage to paint this picture of Germany about four years after the creation of the modern German nation state in 1871. For example, he states:

We are of one opinion that the city of God we would like to build must have walls. It is necessary to give this city a mighty border so that one knows how far this territory reaches and where foreign lands begin. It must be a wall so solid that the foxes cannot find a way. Yes, this city of God, our church, must become a mighty fortress and a free place for everyone who calls out in the name of the Lord and seek shelter within its walls, but also a powerful place of arms for the battle against the unbelievers and the amoral of the world.
[...] our task here is the same as it should be in focus everywhere: proclaim the word of God, toil with our hands in the realm of God, practice the actions of the good Samaritan, take care of the sick or call sinners to repent. The is the same task we are given when we hear the sermon or fold our hands in prayer for our soul's salvation.

What I find interesting is that fortress-mentality that can almost seem ubiquitous in central Germany in the form of inscriptions on church architecture or in the verses of the Luther hymn, "A mighty fortress is our God". Even more striking to me is the reading of the Old Testament. This city of God is for believers. That does not necessarily preclude Jews, but it views everyone else as enemies. It is at once a militant and a compassionate vision of Germany. What happened to these visions are strands in my analysis for the 1920s.


1921: The German soul is sick

The second source comes from Pastor Kohlschmidt of the Augustiner Church. Pastor Kohlschmidt appears to heave been a prolific writer. The first excerpt is from his sermon, "Be at peace", in commemoration of the 400th anniversary of Martin Luther Day, which the church subsequently published in a local newspaper as a three part series. Pastor Kohlschmidt's sermon captures the sense of Germany's catastrophic loss in the wake of the First World War and the feeling of occupation by foreigners, most likely the French, but possibly others, maybe Jews or communists. Pastor Kohlschmidt believes that Germans have accepted the materialism of England and France, which in turn has fractured German society much like 400 years ago during the religious wars. So Pastor Kohlschmidt invokes Luther as the German hero and admonishes Germans to turn to Jesus Christ in order to help heal Germany's sick soul. For example, Pastor Kohlschmidt writes:

[...] 400 years have passed by since that memorable day. We write the year 1921, a year not of salvation but of disaster; a year and a time of calamity […] what kind of salvation do we need? Just like 400 years ago, we are a divided people. Back then, foreigner sat upon the throne. The foreigners are now more than ever our masters.

[…] Materialism, despite Kant and Fichte, has almost stifled the German mind. Materialism has mechanized work and flattened thinking. And it has led into a form of dogmatism […]. It has atomized society and mocked reverence. It has turned duty into egotism, truth into perjury and morality into fornication […] And so it has happened as it had to happen. If Luther were to make his way from Wittenberg to Erfurt via Halle, Leipzig and Merseburg, what would he find? What would he say?

Poor German people! Other people say that today who call for salvation and offer themselves as saviors. Economic reform, socialization, school reform, new philosophy! […]

This is about the soul of our people, not our minds or our hands. Our soul is sick and therefore our ways of thinking, our entire writing and endeavors. […] Be at peace! That is how Luther advised us 400 years ago. This peace is not something that the world can give us; only he who bore the burdens of humanity, Jesus Christ!

1925: Totenfest: commemorating death and dealing with fear

In a second piece from an Augustiner Church's bulletin from 1925, Pastor Kohlschmidt talks about the holiday commemorating the dead. According to Pastor Kohlschmidt, this festival did not always exist in Germany. Over one hundred years earlier, Kaiser Wilhelm Friedrich III had ordered Prussians to remember those who had sacrificed their lives in the wars against Napoleon. Here, Pastor Kohlenschmidt claims that Germans have forgotten the origins of this festival, but asserts a deeper meaning behind the notion of death than simply dying for a nation state's wars on earth. Pastor Kohlschmidt invokes the fear of death without salvation and admonishes his readers that they really should be more concerned with where they end up in the afterlife. For example, he writes:

Is that really the deepest meaning of Totenfest? Are we allowed to say that dying means becoming blessed? No, the Holy Scriptures says that only those who die in the Lord are blessed. How many have died and have not wanted to know about the Lord while living? How often is the inscription, “Here rests in the Lord”, only an untrue form of speaking? More true is the word:

“Who acts according to my word,

To him I open the gates of peace;

Who transgresses against me, will not find what he seeks!

I come knocking at your door.”

Therefore Totenfest should remind us that we too must die. The earnest, bitter earnest question should press upon us and never let go, “Where do I want to spend eternity?"

Just who felt this fear of damnation is unclear. The churches presided over districts with populations in the tens of thousands, but only 300 to 400 regularly attended services. So on the one hand, the fear of damnation may not have had that much of an affect on Germans. On the other hand, however, there were significant groups of practicing Christians and that will influence their views of Germany, the Weimar Republic and the idea of Germany's renewal through religious practice.

Research in the Evangelical Central Archives in Berlin-Kreuzberg

I have spent the last two days looking through the records of the central archive in Berlin for the collections of the Evangelical Church of Germany (EKD) and the Evangelical Church of the Union, the former Prussian state church (EKU) (See the reading room on the left). I am searching for records from local churches in hopes of finding sermons, petitions or letters from people in the communities in my study, Erfurt, Magdeburg and Nuremberg. I am particularly interested in any materials that can give me a sense of how German Protestants reacted to the growing anti-Semitism and political violence after the First World War. Protestant Christians made up a majority in my areas of study. So I want to see what fear looks like from a Christian’s point of view and how they dealt with the presence of fear resulting from the rise in more violent forms of politics from more radical leftwing working class groups and racist rightwing associations.

I found interesting sources dating back into the 1870s that I think are worth presenting here at some point. For example, I found a sermon from 1875 in which the minister shapes the Christian vision of a community in the form of a fortress. Notably, the minister draws that vision from the Book of Nehemiah 4, 1-9 in which the Jews must raise a wall to defend Jerusalem from their enemies. I also found a judicial case from 1911-1915, which offers a window into how marital relations and gender shaped a legal investigation and the very physical feeling of fear that influenced the accuser's willingness to tell the truth. The case involves the expert opinions of the local minister, the district doctor and police chief. So there is quite a wealth of material, but one should also be prepared to sift through stacks of documents and read really bad handwriting. It makes getting outside on a beautiful fall afternoon essential and makes me miss my yoga teacher and regular classes back home.

The majority of the correspondence that I have found in these administrative records, however, involves the requests of specific congregations and their ministers for things like pensions, health care support and additional ministers. The early and late periods of the 1920s witnessed massive inflation, unemployment and housing shortages. These findings in themselves tell me that these congregations were more focused on different concerns about old age, health, housing and adequate ministers for spiritual and educational need than the kinds of issues in my work.

It struck me that Erfurt was still growing with industrialization after the First World War. Many people left the churches right after the First World War because of their disappointment in the way the churches had so whole heartedly supported the Kaiser and Imperial Germany’s war aims (Dr. Roeber notes that this was also an international trend after the war). The churches noted larger and larger populations in their districts because of Erfurt’s growing economy, but also added that large numbers of these residents were socialists, communists, freethinkers, Catholics, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Adventists and Baptists and expressed a militant attitude toward them. On most Sundays there were perhaps only 300 to 400 people at a service. On religious holidays like Easter the numbers more than doubled. So thousands of Germans did not attend for one reason or another, but, interestingly, they were sending more and more of their children to the church schools in their districts (why?). Therefore, the church councils requested the need for more ministers to teach the growing numbers of children in their religion classes. Several churches either built whole new worship houses or requested an additional minister and spent much of the 1920s dealing with the issues of finance in their correspondence with the upper levels of the national church administration.

So far at least, I have not found many records of how Christians responded to the earlier period of violence that is the focus of my study, i.e., the political assassinations from 1921-1922 or the wave of Anti-Semitism in 1923. Why that is the case, is not clear. In part it involves the type of records I am examining, but there might be more (I have found other records elsewhere that I will present in due time). From the little I did find, some Christians viewed the world in terms of believers and non-believers, i.e., Socialists, Communists and even other Christian sects that had erred in their view. The authors of these sources make an effort to remind their audience about how scared Christians were of the anti-religious and anti-private property actions of Communists during the revolutionary period and the wave of people leaving the churches in 1918/19. Where Jews fit into this picture is an interesting question. The sermon that I found from 1875 raises some of these questions for consideration, especially how Jews and others fit into a Christian world view of community through a reading of the Book of Nehemiah. The discussion of actual Jewish neighbors, interestingly, does not appear as a topic. I think that is an important question for the possibility of more diverse and tolerant communities, especially in times of economic crisis. So I wonder why this is the case. That said, it appears that more everyday issues of money, housing and health shaped the concerns of these individuals rather than larger political or moral issues resulting from the spate of political assassinations or reports of violence directed against Jews or defenders of civil society.

Writing letters to church officials noticeably increased with the rise of the Nazi movement and their seizure of power in 1933. Erfurt became a bastion of the German Christians in the State of Thuringia in the years leading up to the seizure of power. These Christians sought to aryanize Protestantism and very closely align it with Hitler and Nazi racial doctrine. The letters in support of aryanization, however, reveal different ideas about how Protestantism should be Nazified, e.g., removing the Old Testament because it was Jewish or even getting rid of Christianity all together because it was scientifically outdated.

The records from Magdeburg reveal a high level of struggle within the local churches and their governing bodies between 1933 and 1938 over Christianity, i.e., the struggle between the “German Christians” and the “Bekennende Kirche”. "Bekennen" means confessing or professing the ideals of Christianity in this case, but "bekennen" can also convey the sense of coming out and admitting one's responsibility. Many of these letter are from people who were interested in bringing the churches and their evangelical mission in line with Hitler and the Nazi State, but there are also letters (so far fewer) from people invoking a kinder and more tolerant Christianity. They made no bones about how Nazism contradicted Christian teachings and bluntly expressed their mistrust of the Nazi State. There are even cases of Germans questioning the Nazi sterilization programs as early as 1933.

In one case, there was a letter justifying the Nazis' eradication of the communists because of their “enemy” status. From this first culling of the materials, not too many Germans invoked Christianity in response to the violence in the earlier period that is my focus. They did invoke Christianity in the early Nazi period, but that in turn led to a rift within the churches. Interestingly, few seemed to question German or Nazi treatment of Jews or the persecution of political opponents. Why not remains an interesting question. What is just the more pressing material needs of everyday life? Was it the Christian individual's focus on one's own Christian community? the understanding that the others did not belong? the appeal of Nazism? ignorance? apathy? What had happened to Christian notions of compassion for others among Christians in general? Why did fear of one's standing before God in final judgment not urge more to worry about their actions or inaction on earth and in the world around them? These are questions worth pondering for our own understanding of the contemporary world and the visions of our own communities as well.