Susannah Heschel's Aryan Jesus is an important—and disturbing—examination of the radical theological project known as the Institute for the Study and Eradication of Jewish Influence on German Religious Life (Institut zur Erforschung und Beseitigung des jüdischen Einflusses auf das deutsche kirchliche Leben, hereafter “Institute”). Founded in 1939, headquartered in Eisenach, and led by Jena theology professor Walter Grundmann, the Institute participated in the pro-Nazi German Christian Movement's attempt to create a new Germanic Christianity in which Jesus was recast as an Aryan warrior fighting against Jews and Judaism. As Grundmann put it, “The elimination of Jewish influence on German life is the urgent and fundamental question of the present German religious situation” (2). These are telling words, because they set the stage for Heschel's primary argument, that the Institute was not so much a theoretical exercise in academic theological antisemitism as it was an active quest to marshal the spiritual resources of the German churches in support of Hitler's racial revolution.
The Institute would contribute to this cause by rooting out all Jewishness from the scripture, liturgy, hymnody, and vocabulary of the German Church and, most importantly, from the person of Jesus. In her opening chapter, Heschel examines the pre-existing theological arguments on which the Institute was eventually based: that Jesus was not a Jew but rather a Galilean opponent of Judaism, that the Old Testament should be purged from the Christian Bible, and that Christianity should be reformed in the image of the German racial community (26). Ultimately, it was the March 1939 Godesberg Declaration which set the stage for the Institute by asserting that Christian churches could not be international, that National Socialism was an extension of Martin Luther's efforts, and that Christianity repudiated Judaism (81–82).
On this basis the Institute was called into existence, employing working groups, conferences, and publications to mobilize German Christian theologians, church leaders, and parish clergy. Its members attempted to reinvent the Christian Bible, stripping it of all “Jewish influence” and inserting inspiring Teutonic writings. The result, a dejudaized New Testament called Die Botschaft Gottes (The Message of God), was released in 1940. Another project involved the publication of a new nationalistic, militaristic hymnal.
For Heschel, a key issue faced by the Institute was “determining precisely what constituted the Jewish within Christianity, a problem that was debated endlessly” (141). Critics in the Nazi Party were scornful, arguing that Christianity was so intrinsically Jewish that it should be discarded altogether, while Confessing Church opponents argued that the Institute's commitment to “German Christianity” was heterodox.
Heschel examines the men who were drawn into orbit of the Institute, whether German Christian clergy or professors like Grundmann's Jena colleagues Wolf Meyer-Erlach and Heinz Eisenhuth. Heschel focuses most closely on the career of Grundmann himself, from his theological training under Adolf Schlatter and Gerhard Kittel to his early career under Saxon Bishop Friedrich Coch and his subsequent move to Thuringia. Heschel argues that Grundmann and other members of the Institute were not simply motivated by careerism, though they certainly benefitted from their attachment to the Institute and the academic opportunities it provided. Rather, “their theological anti-Judaism brought them to support National Socialism because of its antisemitism” (200).
In her final chapter, Heschel explains how the Institute's influence did not end with its closure in 1945. Rather, the network of academics it fostered enabled these German Christian churchmen to slip through the postwar denazification process with ease, falsely claiming to be experts in Jewish studies who had merely struggled to preserve the Christian Church under Nazism. Heschel demonstrates how the academic work done in the Institute was counted as legitimate scholarly work in the postwar era, and how the scholarly network around the Institute advanced many careers. Grundmann became a respected East German theologian, even as he and others continued to emphasize both the violence and depravity of the Jews and the fundamental enmity between Jesus and the Jews of his day in their scholarly writing—even if they no longer attacked contemporary Jews and Judaism. Perhaps not surprisingly, Grundmann slid smoothly into the role of communist collaborator, regularly spying on his fellow East German churchmen for the Stasi.
The chief importance of Aryan Jesus is Heschel's portrayal of the Institute as an example of the close ideological affinity between Nazism and Christianity. She argues that Nazism needed Christian antisemitism as a basis for its radical racial program. National Socialism did not reject Christianity or replace it with a political religion; “rather, Nazi ideology was a form of supersessionism, a usurpation and colonization of Christian theology, especially its antisemitism, for its own purposes” (8). Even further, she suggests that the theological work of the Institute was “a similar effort at supersessionism in reverse, taking over elements of Nazi racial ideology to bolster and redefine the Christian message” (8). This is arresting, but off the mark since Grundmann and his colleagues never sought to replace Nazism with their own movement. Still, Heschel consistently demonstrates how closely German Christian theology mirrored Nazi ideology, with both deifying the German race, proclaiming Hitler as Savior, portraying the Jews as an arch-enemy, linking Jesus and Germany as struggling heroes victimized by a Jewish crucifixion, and striving to purge Germany of Jews and Jewish influences. Simply put, what Nazism proposed in the political sphere was mirrored by what the Institute proposed in the theological sphere. To drive home her point, Heschel notes that important church figures Gerhard Kittel (in 1933) and Siegfried Leffler (in 1936) publicly offered murder as an option for dealing with the Jewish problem, long before the Final Solution (9–10).
Heschel is particularly sensitive to context and timing. Most impressive is the way she makes the connection between the founding of the Institute and the events of the November 1938 Kristallnacht pogrom. Less than a week after the pogrom, Thuringian Bishop Martin Sasse issued a pamphlet, Martin Luther on the Jews: Away with Them!, urging the destruction of Jewish property. Simultaneously, German Christian leader Gerhard Hahn sent several Protestant bishops a proposal calling for the formation of an “Office for the Dejudaization of the Church.” As the author of the proposal stated, “Only when the dejudaization of the Christian church is accomplished can the German Volk, with its religious faith, internalize and support this struggle of the Führer and help him to fulfill God's covenant with the German Volk” (76). Within days, Grundmann put forward the plan that resulted in the formation of the Institute, with a threefold mandate of research, publication, and education. Such a profound theological reinforcement of Kristallnacht is striking, and it bolsters Heschel's case that German Christian assertions of Jewish spiritual degeneracy were really quite similar to Nazi assertions of Jewish racial degeneracy.
In the end, Heschel concludes that Grundmann and his fellow theologians were “working towards the Führer,” basing their activities on the assumption that their goals matched those of Hitler's movement (72). As Leffler proclaimed, “We cannot think of Adolf Hitler without Martin Luther” (283). Nazism was not antagonistic toward Christianity, but rather elevated Christian antisemitism “to a more intense level and transformed it from theory to action” (285). Aryan Jesus is not only a clear demonstration of the Christian legitimization of the Nazi Holocaust, but also a provocative entrance into the current debates about the relationship of Nazism and Christianity and the identification of Nazism as a political religion.
