As German Protestants in the state of Thuringia prepared to cast their votes in the church elections of July 1933, leaders of the Volkskirchenbund (People's Church League), a liberal faction in the Thuringian Landeskirchentag (regional synod), made a fateful decision. Rather than running their own candidates as they had in previous elections, they recommended that members cast their votes for the Deutsche Christen (German Christians), a pro-Nazi faction that sought to establish a uniquely “German” form of Christianity based on “blood” and “race.”Footnote 1 The Deutsche Christen went on to capture forty-six of the fifty-one seats filled by direct elections, an overwhelming majority that allowed them to realign their church's theology, liturgy, and membership according to Nazi ideology over the next twelve years. The Volkskirchenbund, on the other hand, was reduced to an Arbeitsgemeinschaft (study group) and ceased to exist as an independent church-political faction.Footnote 2
How is one to explain the capitulation of Thuringia's religious liberals at this critical moment in the history of their church? To what extent were they motivated by fear, fatalism, opportunism, or enthusiasm? Did they abandon the goals they had been working toward or simply adopt a different strategy for fulfilling them? A close analysis of the Volkskirchenbund during the Weimar and early Nazi eras indicates that pragmatic and strategic considerations were at least as important as ideological affinity. Although leaders of the Volkskirchenbund ultimately determined that cooperation with the Deutsche Christen was necessary, they did not take this step until they were convinced that other options had been exhausted. Their story illustrates one of the more complicated paths toward Christian complicity in the Third Reich.
I. Liberal Protestantism and “Nazi Conceptions of Christianity”
As early as 1933, Swiss theologian Karl Barth declared that the emergence of the Deutsche Christen was the culmination of two centuries of theological modernism.Footnote 3 Barth's claim was the beginning of a long tradition—one that continues to the present day—of associating liberal theology with the “German-Christian heresy” and conservative theology with resistance to it. This explanation matched the perceptions of many pastors and theologians in the Confessing Church (opponents of the Deutsche Christen) during the Third Reich, and, in the postwar era, it provided a rationale for excluding religious liberals from positions of leadership in the churches, whether or not they had been affiliated with the Deutsche Christen.Footnote 4
Although theologians and church historians have challenged this simplistic narrative,Footnote 5 it remains largely intact at the popular level and continues to appear in academic works like Richard Steigmann-Gall's The Holy Reich, which argues that liberal Protestant theology was the inspiration for Nazi conceptions of Christianity.Footnote 6 The fact that liberal Protestant associations in states like Thuringia and Baden went over to the Deutsche Christen in 1933 would seem to support such an assertion.Footnote 7 On the other hand, much of the recent research on the German churches during the Nazi era reveals support for Nazism as well as the Deutsche Christen from across the theological spectrum, not just among religious liberals.Footnote 8 Local and regional studies as well as biographies of individual participants in the Kirchenkampf (church struggle) have revealed theological and ideological diversity on both sides of the conflict, and there has been at least some recognition of the religious liberals who rejected the Deutsche Christen but were unable to accept what they considered to be a narrow and stifling orthodoxy on the part of the Confessing Church.Footnote 9 However, close analysis of the extent to which pre-1933 church-political alignments mapped onto church politics during the Third Reich remains underdeveloped.
This article explores the “ideological traffic” between religious liberalism and völkisch (racist-populist) movements by examining events leading up to the capitulation of the Thuringian Volkskirchenbund and its partial integration with the Deutsche Christen.Footnote 10 It will explore the interplay of secular and church politics during the Weimar era and assess the extent to which Volkskirchenbund members embraced, opposed, or accommodated themselves to völkisch conceptions of Christianity. Equally important, it will trace their decision-making processes during the early months of the Nazi era, highlighting the motives and perceptions of key players as well as diverse responses among leaders and rank and file members of the association. It will demonstrate that leaders of the Volkskirchenbund did not rush into the arms of the Deutsche Christen in July 1933; anxiety and resignation were prominent alongside of cautious optimism and occasional expressions of enthusiasm. In the case of Thuringia, the path from religious liberalism to völkisch Christianity was not as smooth as Barth or Steigmann-Gall would have us believe.
II. Thuringian Politics and Church Politics, 1918–1923
The revolution in November 1918 that led to the abdication of Emperor Wilhelm II on the national level also led to the abdication of territorial princes in the various states, and these state-level abdications threw the Landeskirchen (regional churches that had been administered by the state governments) into momentary disarray. As delegates from throughout Germany gathered in Weimar to draw up a new national constitution, states and Landeskirchen were drafting constitutions as well, and in some cases, administrative boundaries were redrawn. Thuringia itself was a new state that came into being when seven smaller principalities in “Middle Germany” joined together in 1920.Footnote 11 The Protestant Landeskirchen of most of these same states were unified under a single church administration at roughly the same time.Footnote 12
Initially, many German Protestants feared that churches once governed by relatively benevolent princes and their bureaucratic appointees would now be subject to the whims of state-level governments that were revolutionary and anticlerical. These fears subsided somewhat when the new national constitution separated church and state in such a way that the churches were largely free from state control, though states continued to collect church taxes, maintain university-level theology faculties, and provide religious instruction in the schools.Footnote 13 Although this outcome was relatively favorable from the standpoint of churchgoers, provocations on the part of Thuringia's socialist governments in the early 1920s as well as inadequate state funding of the churches were ongoing sources of irritation and anxiety for many of Thuringia's Protestants.Footnote 14
From September 1921 to December 1923, Thuringia was governed by a coalition of socialist parties (Social Democrats, Independent Socialists, and, in 1923, Communists as well) under the leadership of August Frölich.Footnote 15 Frölich and his Marxist colleagues were deeply suspicious of the churches, which they saw as a front for bourgeois interests, purveyors of wartime propaganda, and a waste of money in light of the number of churches and clergy compared to the number of people who showed any interest in them.Footnote 16 They discussed—but did not follow through on—the reduction of the theological faculty in Jena and the privatization of church finances, arguing that state funding for church affairs amounted to taking bread from the mouths of the poor and handing it over to the forces of reaction that were responsible for their poverty.Footnote 17 The most provocative move by this government, from the perspective of many church-going Protestants, was the abolition in 1921 of two state-recognized religious holidays, Repentance Day and Reformation Day and their replacement with May Day and Revolution Day. Church leaders pressed the regime to reverse these measures, and churchgoers registered their disapproval by keeping their children out of school on the former holidays and attending religious services in record numbers.Footnote 18
It was during this same period that democratically-elected leaders of the Thuringian Landeskirche did most of their work on the new church constitution. Completed in 1924, it provided for a Landeskirchentag elected by all men and women who were members of the church, regardless of their theological orientation or the extent of their religious practice. This was a controversial move, because although over 95% of the population was Protestant, less than 25% attended church.Footnote 19 Religious liberals were able to prevent the church constitution from requiring adherence to a particular statement of faith, though it did affirm that the Thuringian Landeskirche was “in its origin and essence a church of the Lutheran confession.”Footnote 20 At the same time, it declared the Thuringian Landeskirche to be a “homeland of Protestant freedom and toleration,” and it guaranteed the rights of theological and church-political minorities at the parish level.Footnote 21
A side effect of democratic church governance was the emergence of church parties representing distinct interests and ideologies. The Volkskirchenbund (hereafter VKB) was on the “left” of the church-political spectrum, though its members insisted they were promoting theological pluralism and political neutrality within the churches rather than a particular theological or political orientation.Footnote 22 In fact, the VKB drew much of its support from theologically liberal pastors and theologians in the urban centers of Jena, Weimar, Meiningen, Gotha, and Eisenach, and its most prominent members had been involved in broader networks of religious liberals like the Vereinigung der Freunde der Christlichen Welt (Union of Friends of the Christian World) prior to the World War I.Footnote 23 The party on the “right,” the Christliche Volksbund (Christian People's League, hereafter CVB), championed traditional Lutheran doctrine and a literal interpretation of the Bible over and against the corrosive effects of religious liberalism, secularism, and indifference. Given that confessional Lutherans had been well-organized since the mid-nineteenth century and had held an advantage under the conservative princes of Reuß (jüngere Linie), Altenburg, and the two Schwarzburg principalities, it is not surprising that these regions were strongholds of the CVB throughout the Weimar era.Footnote 24 A third faction in the Landeskirchentag was the Einigungsbund (Unification League, hereafter EB). The EB was a smaller “middle party” that promoted pragmatic cooperation and unity in spite of theological differences. Though it favored toleration and rejected the fundamentalism of the CVB, most of its members could not endorse the theological modernism that was so prominent in the VKB.Footnote 25 Thuringia's tripartite church-political framework (liberal, conservative, and middle) was common among German Landeskirchen during the late imperial and Weimar eras.Footnote 26
All church parties in Thuringia included women in their lists of candidates, though there were never more than three (approximately 5% of the seats) in any Landeskirchentag. In the church elections of 1926, the VKB included thirteen women among its candidates, almost as many as the other church parties combined, though Margarethe Witzmann and Annemarie Stötzer were the only ones high enough on the lists to gain seats.Footnote 27 Behind the scenes, male party leaders assessed potential female candidates on the basis of their perceived electability, including their political orientation and popularity with women's organizations.Footnote 28 VKB member Helene Glaue, President of the Jena Women's Association and a former Democratic representative in the Thuringian state legislature, complained that women were being used for decorative purposes in church-political campaigns rather than accepted as legitimate colleagues.Footnote 29 Though the VKB was slightly more inclusive of women than the other parties, the church-political sphere remained as patriarchal as the local parish.
III. Volkskirche, Volksbildung, and (Volks)Gemeinschaftschule
Despite Germany's defeat in World War I, the economic and political crises that followed in its wake, and the provocations of Thuringia's socialist and anticlerical regime, Thuringia's religious liberals were surprisingly optimistic during the early postwar period. The collapse of bureaucratic-monarchical church administrations throughout Germany was unsettling, but it was also an opportunity to free the churches from their association (whether real or perceived) with political reaction, class bias, and rigid dogma. Rather than a Staatskirche (state church), Pastorenkirche (pastors’ church), or Bekenntniskirche (a church requiring adherence to a particular Christian doctrine or creed), they wanted their Landeskirche to be a free and democratic Volkskirche (people's church).Footnote 30
In the early postwar years, especially in 1919, Die Freie Volkskirche, a journal closely associated with the VKB, published declarations from liberal Protestant groups throughout Germany that called for democratic governance, theological pluralism, and churches that stood above political parties and narrow class interests—all key elements of the liberal Protestant Volkskirche ideal.Footnote 31 Martin Rade, professor of theology in Marburg and editor of the liberal Protestant paper Christliche Welt, hoped the churches would “encompass the entire nation, the monarchist elements as well as the socialists and communists.”Footnote 32 In fact, there was general agreement that Social Democracy and the churches had to reach an understanding, “for without this piece the church is not a Volkskirche.”Footnote 33 Regaining the trust of well-educated skeptics was just as important, which meant that churches would have to accept and adapt to the discoveries of modern science, including academic approaches to religion. Only then could they refute accusations of backwardness and “assert [their] role as a ‘cultural force in the life of the nation.’”Footnote 34 Democratization would bring previously alienated groups back into the fold by giving them co-determination in church affairs.Footnote 35
Behind such proposals was a sense of historic opportunity for the churches as well as the fear that they would fail to meet its challenges. A local manifesto by religious liberals in Weimar and Gotha, published in Freie Volkskirche in September 1919, illustrates this mixture of hope and anxiety:
We believe that in our hour of need, new creative powers of religious-ethical life are ready to emerge from the secret depths of the German national soul. We do not want a church of no faith or little faith that lags behind the times, that misses the right moment and stands apart from life . . . We want to bind the creative powers of religion with the spiritual life of the present moment, for we are convinced that each era must make its own contribution to a deeper grasp of the eternal religious truth the Bible conveys to us.Footnote 36
While the reference to “new creative powers” (neue schöpferische Kräfte) emerging from the “German national soul” (der deutschen Volksseele) suggests a connecting thread between liberal Protestant ideals and völkisch conceptions of Christianity, the proposals that appeared in Freie Volkskirche differed from völkisch ideals in their emphasis on ideological and political pluralism within a democratic framework, as well as the absence of overt references to race or the “Jewish Question.”Footnote 37
Similar impulses led religious liberals to invest themselves in Volksbildung (people's education) projects of various kinds.Footnote 38 In the decades leading up to World War I, many of these efforts had been directed at bourgeois skeptics. Martin Rade's Christliche Welt, the book series Religionsgeschichtliche Volksbücher (designed to transmit current theological research to a popular audience), Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart (Religion Past and Present), and university extension courses (Ferienkurse) for pastors and religion teachers were all intended to raise awareness of contemporary theological scholarship among well-educated Germans, the “countless supporters . . . that are merely waiting until we are there, in order to join us.”Footnote 39 Heinrich Weinel (professor of New Testament in Jena) was confident that modern theology would carry the day if only it could reach a broad enough audience, and his friend and colleague, Hermann Gunkel (professor of Old Testament in Göttingen), thought he perceived “a deep longing for religion” throughout German society.Footnote 40
World War I and the social and political crises that followed in its wake led to an even greater sense of urgency as well as a stronger emphasis on the cultural integration of the industrial working class.Footnote 41 In the minds of idealistic reformers, not only had working-class citizens earned (through their wartime sacrifices) the right to participate fully in German culture, their participation was necessary in order to overcome deep postwar antagonisms and recover the sense of unity many Germans had experienced in 1914. Such sentiments were a significant lift to the nascent Volkshochschulbewegung (adult education movement) that enjoyed a dramatic expansion in the early years of the Weimar era, and in which Thuringia played a prominent role.Footnote 42
The Volkshochschule Thüringen, an organization founded in 1919 by Wilhelm Rein, Heinrich Weinel, Herman Nohl, and Reinhard Buchwald, was inspired by the idea that “the renewal and restoration” of the German people required “a new interest on the part of all of its children in the great joint ownership of our spiritual heritage.”Footnote 43 To this end, the founders hoped to establish a Volkshochschule in every major city in Thuringia, with additional outreach to every town and village through traveling libraries, theaters, and choral groups.Footnote 44 Embracing the Neue Richtung (new direction) in adult education, they adopted an innovative pedagogy that emphasized seminars and discussions rather than lectures to a mass audience. They also championed academic freedom, fostered a politically neutral climate, and gave adult learners a role in determining administrative and curricular affairs.Footnote 45
Given the similarities between the liberal Volksbildung and Volkskirche agendas, it is not surprising that some of Thuringia's leading religious liberals were enthusiastic supporters and participants. In addition to Heinrich Weinel, who served as the first president of the Volkshochschule Thüringen, Ada Weinel (former president of the Association for Religious Education), August César (editor of Freie Volkskirche), Friedrich Burbach (district superintendent in Gotha), Emil Fuchs (pastor in Eisenach), and Paul Glaue (professor of theology in Jena) were all signatories of the “Appeal” in the first issue of Blätter der Volkshochschule Thüringen.Footnote 46 Freie Volkskirche also lent its support in numerous articles in 1919, and both Heinrich and Ada Weinel taught courses at the Volkshochschule in Jena (Heinrich on religion and Ada on education).Footnote 47
Liberal Volksbildung proponents had no desire to radically alter existing power arrangements or the distribution of wealth, both of which seemed unimportant in comparison with the cultivation of a deep emotional bond among people who shared a common national identity.Footnote 48 The goal was to heal divisions among those “who were otherwise so passionately divided, bourgeois and worker, educated and uneducated, city and countryside.”Footnote 49 Social Democracy, with its emphasis on class conflict, was an opponent rather than a partner, and the aim was to draw working-class Germans away from it. Nevertheless, Reinhard Buchwald recommended that the teachers study Karl Marx, not in order to become Social Democrats themselves but to better understand working-class students for whom contemporary economic issues were more relevant than Dürer or Goethe.Footnote 50 Heinrich Weinel advocated a similar openness in religion courses offered through the Volkshochschulen:
Here, each should be heard and each should be glad to be able to hear the others. The Catholic should lecture and lead seminars on his religion just like the Protestant, the Jew and the Dissident . . . It is only right for our believers and unbelievers to allow those with different beliefs to explain what they believe and why they believe it. A spirit of reconciliation and understanding must go forth from the Volkshochschulen.Footnote 51
Intellectual engagement with Marxism, the interplay of different religious and ideological orientations (including Judaism), and codetermination in curricular matters would all be swept away when the Nazis transformed the Volkshochschule Thüringen into the Deutsche Heimatschule Thüringen in 1933.Footnote 52 For all the shortcomings of the liberal Volkshochschule model, these differences should be kept in mind.
Thuringia's religious liberals were also heavily invested in the “School Question” that generated so much controversy during the 1920s. Although the Weimar Constitution indicated that Gemeinschaftsschulen (interdenominational elementary schools) would be the norm, it left open the possibility of purely secular or confessional alternatives. The failure of the Reichstag to pass a national school law that resolved this constitutional ambiguity left the outcome of the “School Question” uncertain at both the national and state levels.Footnote 53
Religious liberals throughout Germany strongly preferred Gemeinschaftsschulen over what they referred to as Weltanschauungsschulen (schools informed by particular ideologies) that would reinforce divisions among Germans and promote parallel societies for each subculture.Footnote 54 Otto Baumgarten, professor of practical theology in Kiel, warned that if local communities were allowed to choose what type of school they wanted, Germans would be divided between a narrow fundamentalism and a strident secularism, each incomprehensible to the other.Footnote 55 Developments in Thuringia during the early 1920s seemed to confirm these fears. Socialists in the state legislature called for the establishment of at least some secular schools, arguing that the non-religious population had a right to be educated in a manner consistent with its own world view.Footnote 56 Likewise, conservative Protestants in the CVB demanded denominational schools in which their understanding of Christianity informed the teaching staff and the entire curriculum. They referred disparagingly to “the so-called Gemeinschaftsschule, in which our children must suffer harm because the Free Thinker teacher, if he is true to himself, must tear down what the Christian teacher has constructed.”Footnote 57
Both the secular and confessional agendas contrasted sharply with that of the VKB, which continued to press for interdenominational schools in which students attended separate religion classes (or opted out) but would otherwise share a common learning experience.Footnote 58 VKB member, Karl König (pastor in Urspringen and influential member of the regional church administration), expected both church and school to bring unity to “our poor, broken nation” and argued that bourgeois, rural, and working-class children should learn together regardless of their religious or secular identities.Footnote 59 Other VKB members agreed, calling on both church and state to support schools “that are not delivered up to party politics, that do not allow a class-spirit to emerge, that serve the national community [Volksgemeinschaft] rather than tearing the nation apart.”Footnote 60
As they outlined their agendas for a Volkskirche and involved themselves in Volksbildung and the “School Question,” Thuringia's religious liberals were consistently on the side of pluralism, toleration, and inclusivity—within the larger framework of a German-Protestant Leitkultur (dominant culture). Like most liberal Protestants throughout Germany, they believed that Protestant Christianity, as the truest expression of the collective German self, should occupy a privileged (though not exclusive) position in the public sphere. It was relatively easy for them to tolerate Catholics, Jews, and freethinkers—so long as those groups accepted their secondary status.Footnote 61 This toleration was bolstered by their confidence that a “free” Protestantism that embraced modern science and modern theology would naturally appeal to a grateful majority, whose integration would be voluntary rather than the result of coercion. They could not imagine their religion as a marginal phenomenon in a largely secular society, because they understood religion to be “the innermost life of the great cultures . . . the soul of the total life of the nation.”Footnote 62 This was especially true of the Germans, “who for centuries had been renowned as pioneers in the spiritual domain.”Footnote 63
IV. Thuringian Politics and Church-Politics, 1924–1929
The political situation in Thuringia changed dramatically in late 1923, when the German federal government sent in troops to suppress revolutionary activity on the part of local communists who were making preparations for a “German October.” This intervention forced the resignation of August Frölich in December 1923 and led to new state-level elections in February 1924 that gave a narrow advantage to a conservative coalition that referred to itself as the Ordnungsbund (Order League).Footnote 64 The Marxist parties were now in the opposition, but the Thuringian population remained polarized and almost evenly divided. Since the Ordnungsbund lacked a clear majority and refused to cooperate with any of the parties on the left, it had to rely on the toleration of a small number of völkisch representatives on the far right, which gave these elements more of a voice than otherwise would have been the case.Footnote 65 Nevertheless, many Protestant churchgoers were quite relieved when the Ordnungsbund took control, though liberal democrats like Weinel and César worried that the moderate center was disappearing from Thuringian politics.Footnote 66 The new government's endorsement of Gemeinschaftsschulen in 1924 and its restoration of Reformation Day and Repentance Day as state holidays in 1925 further enhanced its popularity with bourgeois and religious elements. Whereas the previous administration had barely tolerated religious instruction in the schools, the bourgeois-conservative regime indicated strong support. Music classes once again included Christian choral music, school prayers were promoted rather than discouraged, and schools more openly celebrated religious holidays.Footnote 67
The middle years of the decade also brought new developments in Thuringia's church-political landscape. The Religious Socialists, some of whom had been associated with the VKB in the early 1920s, established themselves as an independent faction in 1924 and won seven seats in the elections for the second Thuringian Landeskirchentag, which held its first session in 1927. They pressed the church to demonstrate its solidarity with the industrial working class by supporting economic and social reforms and promoting international solidarity.Footnote 68 On the opposite end of the church-political spectrum, a völkisch group called the Bund für Deutsche Kirche (League for German Church) gained three seats. Although it had little weight in comparison with the more well-established church parties, its delegates began introducing church legislation that promoted racial purity, hardline nationalism, and the removal of “Jewish elements” from Christianity.Footnote 69 The mainstream parties rejected most of the proposals of both new groups, but their presence in the Landeskirchentag reflected a growing polarization in church politics parallel to the polarization in Thuringia's secular politics.Footnote 70
Although critical of the Religious Socialists and the Bund für Deutsche Kirche for compromising the political neutrality of the church administration, the VKB defended their freedom of expression.Footnote 71 In 1925, when Emil Fuchs (formerly of the VKB but now a Religious Socialist) was under fire for his public criticism of German militarism and right-wing political movements, the VKB defended him on the grounds that if he was dismissed from his pastorate in Eisenach, his working-class supporters would abandon the church. “And then its fate is to become a bourgeois, partisan church that, no matter how powerful it is, or how long it holds out, is in fact no longer a Christian church.”Footnote 72 However, the VKB was just as generous toward the Bund für Deutsche Kirche, even when it came to their demands for a uniquely “German” form of Christianity:
If the church-political group Deutschkirche [Bund für Deutsche Kirche] wants to roll back the Jewish-Old-Testament elements in the church's proclamation and achieve a more decisive connection between what is Christian and what is German, such efforts are also fully welcome in the Volkskirchenbund; for that is the manner and strength of our association, that it defends the rights of every conscientious Protestant conviction within the church, and it knows that in the battle of ideas the truth is most likely to win out. But in addition, [we know] that Christianity and German-ness have most decisively encountered one another in the freedom-principle of the Thuringian Volkskirchenbund. For if anything is German, it is the promotion of Protestant freedom of conscience.Footnote 73
V. The Volkskirchenbund and the “Völkisch Movement”
This willingness to give a “fair hearing” to the demands of the Bund für Deutsche Kirche was part of a broader trend of engagement with the “völkisch movement” on the part of the VKB, especially from 1925 onward. Typical elements of this engagement—gestures of toleration, criticism of “excesses,” and partial affirmation—are best illustrated by Heinrich Weinel's public lecture at the annual meeting of the Bund für Gegenwartchristentum (Association for Contemporary Christianity) in the city of Coburg in 1925.Footnote 74 On this occasion, Weinel argued that Christians “cannot write off the völkisch movement, despite its excesses, any more than they could ignore the social movement. It was born out of a true need of our nation, based on facts and correct insights.” Nor did Christians “have to reject the völkisch movement as such for the sake of keeping [themselves] pure.” Although Christianity is a “religion of love that transcends nations and races and proclaims one God who is father of all people . . . it must recognize race and nation as the God-given foundations of all human life and all human love.” To be sure, it was a Christian duty to challenge “the rejection of Jesus as the savior, if he cannot be considered of Germanic or Nordic race” as well as “attacks on the Old Testament . . . the idolization of race . . . the antisemitism of hate and the civil disenfranchisement of Judaism . . . [and the] glorification of acts of violence and war.” On the other hand, Christianity should incorporate the völkisch emphasis on unique national identities, “love of homeland . . . responsibility to the race . . . public spirit, heroism and true goodness.”Footnote 75
In the late 1920s, it became more common for local chapters of the VKB to address themes like “Deutsche Frömmigkeit” (German Piety) and “Christentum und Deutschtum” (Christianity and Germanness).Footnote 76 Freie Volkskirche also ran more articles (some of them quite critical) about racial “science” and “German” Christianity. Even as they stressed the transracial and transnational aspects of Christianity, some authors asserted the relevance of race in non-religious matters—and sometimes in religious matters as well. One contributor suggested that racially-specific pastoral care would more effectively meet the needs of parishioners, and others referred to what they saw as “an interrelationship between national character and Christianity.”Footnote 77 Again, Weinel was fairly typical as he challenged some racist claims and tried to coordinate others with his Christian convictions:
The Christianity that sees all people as children of God and enfolds them with love does not have to overlook these differences in their physical and intellectual capacities . . . God did not make standardized factory goods, but many different kinds of human beings. We should understand their diversity, be happy about it, and make it so they complete one another, without hating or fighting one another and without blending together and making a grey monotony out of God's colorful creation.Footnote 78
Why did VKB members make any concessions to the völkisch movement rather than simply rejecting it as incompatible with Christian teachings?Footnote 79 The answer lies in the fact that many of them considered the völkisch movement to be analogous in importance to other groups in German society (middle-class intellectuals and the industrial working class) that the church had failed at critical moments in recent history. They believed they were living through another such moment, and the church could not afford to fail yet again.Footnote 80 As a result, and despite their misgivings, they would not risk alienating a growing segment of the population that was attracted to völkisch ideals.
In Thuringia, political developments after 1929 reinforced perceptions that the völkisch movement was far from a fringe phenomenon. Following state-level elections in 1929, völkisch elements gained even more prominence in government, most notably through the appointment of Nazi Party member Wilhelm Frick as Minister of Volksbildung. Thuringia crossed yet another threshold in 1932, when the Nazi Party won 42.5% of the vote and Thuringia became the first German state in which a member of the Nazi Party held the highest political office.Footnote 81
Nevertheless, many VKB members were still willing to challenge völkisch initiatives that threatened to divide rather than unite church and society. For example, in April 1930 Frick attempted to use his position as Volksbildung Minister to impose new school prayers that were little more than a thinly veiled Nazi manifesto,Footnote 82 professing faith in “Volkstum und Vaterland” and anticipating God's vengeance on the traitors and alien elements that were destroying Germany.Footnote 83 The Landeskirchenrat (regional church council) responded cautiously, merely stating that church administrators had not been consulted about the proposal. VKB leaders, on the other hand, were more open about their objections, though they were careful to avoid giving the impression that they were making a political statement against Nazism itself.Footnote 84 While they affirmed the legal right of the state to mandate school prayers, they denied its right to determine the content of those prayers. On religious grounds, they opposed prayers that promoted arrogance, self-righteousness, violence, and revenge. However, their strongest objections focused on the divisive nature of such prayers, which they considered to be a sin against the Volksgemeinschaft. Children would be required to pray for the punishment of their own parents or the parents of their classmates—patriotic Germans whose political convictions made them traitors in the eyes of the Nazis. If the church were to condone such prayers, it would strengthen the impression that it was merely a prop for right-wing regimes, thereby undermining its status as a Volkskirche.Footnote 85
Some VKB leaders were openly critical of the Bund für Deutsche Kirche as well, accusing its members of hypocrisy and employing their own concepts against them. In 1932, Hans Heyn (VKB President from 1930–1933) asserted that the “German” Christianity promoted by Max Robert Gerstenhauer (leader of the Bund für Deutsche Kirche) was not only unscientific but un-German. Responding to Gerstenhauer's strident antisemitism, Heyn stressed that Christianity emerged from a Jewish foundation, the first converts were Jews, and the Old Testament Prophets that Gerstenhauer described as “un-Jewish” (the only way he could justify his admiration for them) stood fully within Jewish tradition. In a not so subtle jab, Heyn argued that it was more “German” to give other peoples (including the Jews) credit for their accomplishments, and the most “German” Christianity was that which promoted freedom of conscience, respect for the convictions of others, and transnational Christian values.Footnote 86
VI. The Völkisch Wing of the Volkskirchenbund
Even as the VKB sought to navigate the new and more complicated church-political terrain and to critically engage the völkisch movement, it faced a challenge from a small but aggressive völkisch faction within its own ranks.Footnote 87 The attempts of VKB leaders to appease rather than resist this group should be seen in light of other more mundane challenges and frustrations, including limited success in attracting a younger generation of Protestants to the VKB and fears that a secession of völkisch members would further weaken the VKB's position in the Landeskirchentag.
Members of the VKB had been politically diverse throughout the Weimar Republic. In the early 1920s, a small number (including three VKB delegates in the Landeskirchentag) had been Social Democrats, though by the mid-1920s, the Religious Socialists had drawn most of them into their own camp. Democrats were also few in number, but they counted among them some leading personalities such as Heinrich Weinel, Ada Weinel, August César, and Helene Glaue. Hugo Stüber (president of the VKB from 1924–1927) preferred the German People's Party, and several prominent VKB members were even further to the right, supporting the German National People's Party or the Thuringian Landbund.Footnote 88 The VKB leadership embraced this political diversity and tried to combat the perception that their faction was only open to theological and political liberalism (as opposed to theological and political pluralism).Footnote 89 From their perspective, it was harmful to link the church and its proclamation to a particular regime or political or economic philosophy, the best example being “the thorough alienation from the church of an entire class of the nation, the working class . . . through the political ties or perceived political ties of the church” under the old regime.Footnote 90
By the early 1930s, some VKB members were drawn to the Nazi Party, and their activism was a cause of concern for VKB leaders. One particularly poignant example is the controversy surrounding Pastor Erwin Langner of Großneuhausen. A former student of Rudolf Otto (professor of theology in Marburg) and veteran of World War I, Langner was fascinated by the religious implications of military life and had found his own service at the front to be a mystical experience.Footnote 91 In 1931, with the help of two likeminded colleagues, he produced eight “German Theses” calling for ceaseless prayer and work for the resurrection of the German Volk, proclaiming nation and nationality as supreme values in the Christian faith, and urging Germans to pursue the Kingdom of Heaven through sacrifice and suffering (like the soldiers who fought at the front in 1914–1918) rather than accepting a “false peace.”Footnote 92 Hoping for a VKB endorsement, he sent a copy to Heyn in August, along with a warning: “We stand before the danger that the best, most nationally-aware forces will separate themselves from the church, because they no longer see a place for their life of faith within the church . . . we are close to losing an important part of the Prot. Volkskirche.”Footnote 93
Heyn's reply was polite but evasive. He suggested a special session to discuss the theses at a VKB meeting in October, but he refused an endorsement on the grounds that it would compromise the group's official theological neutrality. After hinting that Langner had not fully embraced the spirit of the VKB, he expressed his sympathy with Langner's complaint that the VKB leadership did not include more members of the younger generation.Footnote 94 Other VKB leaders were also uncomfortable with Langner's fanaticism, but they did not want to drive him and his allies into the arms of another church-political faction. Behind the scenes, they discussed whether to invite him to give an address on the “Völkische Programm für Theologie und Kirche” at an upcoming conference in Gotha, but in the end, they decided both speaker and topic would incite too much controversy at a time when it was more important to emphasize unity and areas of consensus.Footnote 95 However, the editors of Freie Volkskirche chose to print Langner's “German Theses” in 1932 along with several responses that subjected them to withering criticism.Footnote 96
The annual report for the general meeting of the VKB in Weimar in September 1932 provides further evidence of the fraught relationship between an older generation of leaders and a younger völkisch wing. The report emphasized the political neutrality of the VKB and its willingness to include people of all political orientations, including far-right members of the “national movement.” However, it went on to note, with a hint of bitterness, that although the VKB had given right-wing members preference in recent local church elections, this gesture of good will had not been reciprocated.Footnote 97
VII. The Church Elections of 1933 and the End of the Volkskirchenbund as a Church-Political Party
Given their discomfort with völkisch initiatives and ideals between 1930 and 1932, how do we explain the capitulation of the VKB leadership in the summer of 1933? Internal communications by and among VKB leaders indicate that four developments played a key role: 1) the sudden appearance and surprisingly strong performance of a new völkisch group—the Deutsche Christen—in the church elections of January 1933, 2) frustration on the part of VKB leaders at the failure of their movement to attract a younger generation of pastors and churchgoers, 3) fear that religious conservatives would gain the advantage and transform the Thuringian church into a sectarian enclave, and 4) a simple lack of resources—they did not have enough money to run an effective campaign in the church elections of July 1933 and had to search for the next best (or least harmful) alternative.
A significant variable in the calculations of VKB leaders was the surprisingly strong performance of the Deutsche Christen in the church elections of January 1933. The Thuringian branch of this movement was the work of Siegfried Leffler and Julius Leutheuser, two National Socialist pastors who had left Bavaria for the more tolerant environment of the Thuringian Landeskirche. In 1929, they established the Kirchenbewegung Deutsche Christen (Church Movement of the German Christians), but it was not until 1931 that they ran candidates in local church elections (in the Altenburg district). Therefore, it was a shock to the more well-established church parties when the Deutsche Christen won sixteen seats the first time they entered candidates in state-wide church elections on January 22, 1933, making them the largest faction in the Landeskirchentag, over and against the CVB and the VKB (ten seats each), the EB (nine seats), and the Religious Socialists (six seats).Footnote 98 Given this distribution, several factions would have to work together to make policy, but which combinations were most likely, and what would be the results? Would the Deutsche Christen look for allies among the religious liberals or their conservative opponents? These questions occupied the minds of VKB leaders in the following weeks.Footnote 99
In a letter addressed to Weinel, König, and Stüber on February 2, Heyn anticipated a coalition of the Deutsche Christen and groups on “the right” (the CVB and the EB) and predicted that their first move would be to expel the Religious Socialists from the Landeskirchentag (this had already happened in the Baden Landeskirche). Heyn wanted the VKB to show solidarity with the Religious Socialists, but not to the extent of sharing their fate, and he also wanted to maintain a working relationship with the Deutsche Christen to the extent that it was possible.Footnote 100 Weinel and Stüber agreed that the VKB should support the Religious Socialists, and Weinel also thought the VKB might be able to get concessions from the parties on the right if it backed their preferred candidate for president of the Landeskirchentag.Footnote 101 However, Stüber raised the possibility of an alliance between the VKB and the Deutsche Christen: “Much more seems to connect us with the DC . . . In all questions of faith and theology I can't see the DC on the side of the Right.”Footnote 102
Meanwhile, Heyn was also reaching out to people he knew among the Deutsche Christen, including former VKB member Erwin Langner. Mixing warm congratulations with a dose of condescension, he expressed his confidence that Langner would positively influence the many others in his faction who lacked theological depth and had minimal experience in church governance. He also hoped Langner would dissuade his group from trying to impose a particular theology on the church.Footnote 103 Heyn's primary concern at this point was not the völkisch ideology of the Deutsche Christen, but the possibility that they and their allies would govern the church in an authoritarian manner and enforce either an old or new orthodoxy that would violate the consciences of many church members.Footnote 104 However, his lack of sympathy for the agenda of the Deutsche Christen was evident in a letter to VKB member Rudolf Herrmann in which he referred to “people as horrible as Lehmann and as foolish as Langner” who were now members of the Landeskirchentag.Footnote 105 Langner was just as wary of Heyn's intentions, warning him that if the church disappointed loyal National Socialists, then “there is not much hope for the future of the church.”Footnote 106
The sudden success of the Deutsche Christen was especially perplexing to Thuringia's religious liberals in light of their own failure to attract mass support. In a conversation with her daughter Katharina, Ada Weinel expressed her dismay over Hitler's popularity in 1933:
But we also wanted to be national and social, we, the people with Naumann, from the Protestant-Social Congress. But only a minority voted for us, small groups, never the great majority. Our success was very limited. We were never able to stir the masses and get them behind us. Why was that?”Footnote 107
VKB leaders felt the same way about their inability to attract a younger generation of pastors and churchgoers to their movement. Many of those pastors came from traditionally orthodox Lutheran households and opposed a religious liberalism that called into question some of their core beliefs. Others were attracted to the new Dialectical Theology championed by Karl Barth, Emil Brunner, Eduard Thurneysen, and Friedrich Gogarten (who in the mid-1920s had been a pastor in Dorndorf near Jena and a member of the VKB). From the perspective of religious liberals, the theology of Barth and his associates was a blend of dogmatism, sectarianism, and romanticism, resting largely on abrasive and strident assertions rather than sound principles of evidence and argument—and appealing for those very reasons to people who longed for authority and certainty. This new development in German theology was especially challenging to theologians like Weinel who had found historical-critical approaches to religion and the Bible to be liberating, but who now had to contend with a younger generation that accused them of being irresolute and out of step with the times.Footnote 108
Though Dialectical Theology was a disappointment and a frustration, confessional Lutheranism still seemed to be a more serious threat to the liberal Volkskirche ideal. Historically, “reactionary” elements within the church had not only demanded adherence to beliefs that many people could no longer accept, they had also used their influence in state-level governments and church administrations to undermine pastors and theologians who offered a more “modern” and “enlightened” alternative. The Apostolikumstreit (a spectacular controversy over the Apostles Creed in 1892) and the dismissal, reprimand, or blocked appointment of a whole series of liberal pastors in the decades that followed were embedded in the collective memory of Germany's liberal Protestants, including members of the VKB who continued to identify closely with their counterparts in other Landeskirchen.Footnote 109
The Deutsche Christen, despite their errors and excesses, did not demand blind faith in traditional doctrines. At the same time, they were gaining the mass support that religious liberals had longed for but never achieved, and they were doing so in the context of radically new political circumstances and the widespread perception that Germany was experiencing a “national renewal” following Hitler's appointment as chancellor. Protestant clergy across the theological and church-political spectrum believed their churches had a historic opportunity to contribute to the new Germany and demonstrate their relevance in national life.Footnote 110 VKB leaders shared this same sense of urgency as they tried to neutralize the conservative threat and weighed their own options for engagement with the Deutsche Christen.
A final element in VKB calculations was the rather banal matter of finances. Since the mid-1920s, VKB leaders had been concerned about whether the three Mark annual dues were sufficient to cover expenses (and whether raising them would simply lead to a corresponding decline in membership). They tried to economize by coordinating their meetings with those of other associations, reducing the amount of printed material sent out to members and appealing for prompt payment of dues as well as extra donations from those who were able.Footnote 111 Following the elections in January 1933, those appeals grew more urgent, and Heyn had to explain to members that printers and other service-providers were still awaiting payment. Just weeks before the state-mandated church elections of July 1933, Heyn asked for additional contributions and suggested that once the accounts were balanced it would be necessary to discuss the future of the organization (specifically, whether it should continue its church-political activity or reduce its role to that of a discussion group).Footnote 112
In fact, by that time VKB leaders had already considered dropping out of the race. Rudolf Herrmann and Karl König thought the best option would be for the VKB to merge with the Deutsche Christen. Heyn was opposed but explained that he would quietly step aside if the weight of opinion was against him. Although he supported limited cooperation in areas of mutual interest, he was not convinced that the Deutsche Christen would defend VKB priorities like theological pluralism and the political neutrality of the church.Footnote 113 Even so, Heyn remained convinced that the rigid orthodoxy of the “right” was more dangerous than the radicalism of the Deutsche Christen. In a letter to Wilhelm Schubring, editor of the Deutsche Protestantenblatt, Heyn explained that the Deutsche Christen were more suitable allies than the “Jahrhundert der Kirche Leute” (“Century-of-the-Church People”), a disparaging reference to Otto Dibelius, the nationally prominent, theologically conservative church superintendent in Berlin.Footnote 114 However, if the Deutsche Christen wielded their power in a way that harmed the church, the VKB would have to oppose them, even if that made the VKB unpopular or led to the persecution of its members.Footnote 115
By mid-July, an alliance with the Deutsche Christen appeared to be the only viable option. An announcement regarding the elections scheduled for July 23 explained that “The Thur. Volkskirchenbund will not set up its own lists for these elections, not only for financial and logistical reasons, but above all because in the opinion of the majority of our friends in Thuringia, our church-political goals are represented by the Deutsche Christen.”Footnote 116 A few members expressed their dismay or disappointment with the decision, but most seem to have been in favor of it.Footnote 117 What was left of the VKB became a small study group under Heyn's leadership, continuing its struggle against neo-heathenism (a reference to the German Faith Movement) and “reactionary” forces within the church.Footnote 118
In the wake of these events, VKB members went in a variety of different directions. Karl König and Hugo Stüber followed the path of Erwin Langner and joined both the National Socialist Party and the Deutsche Christen.Footnote 119 Heinrich Weinel held onto his democratic convictions and remained officially non-aligned, but during the Kirchenkampf, he was sharply critical of the Confessing Church for what he perceived to be its divisiveness and theological narrowness.Footnote 120 August César, Hans Heyn, and Paul Glaue were aligned with the Wittenberger Bund, an association that attracted disciples of Gogarten as well as religious liberals who opposed the Deutsche Christen but could not accept the conservative theology that was dominant in the Confessing Church.Footnote 121 Heyn tried to avoid direct engagement in church politics but encouraged the small number who remained with the VKB to support the Wittenberger Bund and to see the Confessing Church as an ally against the Deutsche Christen.Footnote 122
Throughout the years of the Third Reich, local chapters of the VKB continued to meet in Jena, Weimar, Eisenach and Meiningen to discuss the status of the church and promote the VKB agenda.Footnote 123 A meeting of the Eisenach chapter in March 1942, in which nineteen participants heard a keynote speaker evaluate the Volkstestament of the Deutsche Christen, was fairly typical of VKB activity during this period.Footnote 124 The Wittenberger Bund was more politically engaged, joining with moderates in the Thuringian Confessing Church to challenge the Deutsche Christen on matters of theology, to reject the exclusion of church members on the basis of race or nationality, and to demand accommodations for pastors and parishioners who were not aligned with the Deutsche Christen. Their efforts had little effect on official church policy, but they helped maintain a sense of community and solidarity among those who opposed the existing state of affairs.Footnote 125
VIII. Conclusions
Was there a “growing pro-Nazi thrust” in liberal Protestantism, and did liberal Protestant theology “in many ways flow directly into the theology of the German Christians,” as Steigmann-Gall claims?Footnote 126 The VKB's preference for pluralism (political as well as theological) and democratic governance within the Landeskirche; its members’ openness to dialogue with Marxists, Religious Socialists, and Jews; and its critique of the most overt forms of racism and antisemitism indicate that the connections were more complicated. To be sure, theological orientation was a contributing factor when VKB leaders decided to support the Deutsche Christen in 1933, but this influence was indirect, because antipathy toward dogmatic conceptions of Christianity led them to grasp at other options. The Deutsche Christen appeared to be the least harmful choice rather than the fulfillment of their hopes and dreams. Though a few VKB members became enthusiastic supporters of Nazism, the majority were complicit in more subtle ways, most notably through their toleration of racism and völkisch ideology as an acceptable alternative to rigid orthodoxy and narrow sectarianism. Recognition of the ambiguity of the situation and the ambivalence of VKB decision-makers is necessary if we hope to understand the complicity of earnest Christians who preferred something other than a racist and xenophobic movement like the Deutsche Christen—but then gave it their support in order to accomplish certain strategic goals.
Church historian Gerhard Besier has noted that at the end of the Weimar Republic, many Protestant pastors worried that their church might once again “miss an opportunity of the first order to be helpfully of service to the people.”Footnote 127 The sense of historic opportunity (and perhaps the last chance)—to realize the Volkskirche ideal, to rescue an embattled and divided nation, to remedy the mistakes of the past—was a powerful motivator, as was the fear that the church would fail to meet the needs of the hour. For the Thuringian Volkskirchenbund, such hopes and fears shaped responses to the growing influence of völkisch elements in both church and state. Enjoying only modest support themselves despite years of struggle to win back those who were alienated from the church, they witnessed the sudden rise of a new movement that—for all its faults—seemed to hold the masses “like soft wax in the hand.”Footnote 128 The “preservation of freedom of conscience, of the spirit of Luther and Jesus, of German idealism” against the threat of religious “reaction” seemed to require that the VKB step aside for the “young world” of the Deutsche Christen.Footnote 129 Ironically, their dream of a free, democratic, and culturally relevant Volkskirche led them to support—at least momentarily—an authoritarian group determined to impose its militant and racist ideology on the church and its members.
