By the early 1970s, the West German Protestant churches became involved in the increasingly bitter conflict surrounding the production and use of nuclear energy. While the nuclear issue remains as controversial and divisive as ever in Germany today, no historical analysis has yet been offered to explain the reasons that the churches especially in West Germany have become avid participants in this debate for decades.
To be sure, leaders and members of the Protestant churches had taken part in quite a number of public controversies since the foundation of the Federal Republic. Early in the 1950s the church was drawn into the rearmament debate and was struggling with the concept of a just war. It was divided on the issue of nuclear arms, but critical voices were growing stronger.Footnote 1 Momentous changes in the country's social and political fabric affected the church just as any other institution. The student revolt and the major shift in cultural outlook and political self-understanding after 1968 affected teachers and students of theology alike.Footnote 2 The first major economic crisis of West Germany, the Vietnam War, and the reception of Critical Theory (i.e., the surge of Neo-Marxism), created an atmosphere of cultural pessimism among the educated elite, while a new form of left-wing terrorism (especially by the so-called Rote Armee Fraktion, “Red Army Faction”) contributed to a general feeling of insecurity. All this, however, did not yet destabilize the country's overall faith in the predictability of modern civilization. It was really the energy crisis of 1973 that made many people seriously reflect upon their future, whether they could continue a comfortable lifestyle, or whether an economy heavily reliant on automobile production could be sustained. It is clear that the Protestant church in West Germany could not have avoided these pressing issues even if they had wanted to do so.Footnote 3 The peace movement that permeated its ranks grew louder and stronger. Discussions within the church about industry, the environment, and energy became more frequent around 1970; by the mid-1970s the churches had already created the position of environmental officers (Umweltbeauftragte), usually pastors, whose task it was to do research, inform the congregations, and act as mediators.Footnote 4
In this article, I will attempt to explain the role of the West German Protestant church between 1970 and 1990 in the conflicts that surrounded the nuclear industry by looking at three aspects of the issue. The first comprises the intersections of environmental activism and motifs of faith. I use the term “motif” to describe repetitive elements within a narrative that constitute a pattern of recognition and carry with them a deeply symbolic meaning.Footnote 5 I will then, in a second step, analyze how the issue of nuclear technology in particular pertains to these motifs and how through these the church became both stage and actor in environmental politics. In the third step, I will try to answer the question of why these conflicts were so bitter and vehement, and I will offer the thesis that this can be derived from the specific German historical experience. For the time being, and merely for practical reasons, I will not attempt a comparative perspective with respect to the Catholic Church or the situation in other European countries, as useful as this may eventually prove to be. It needs to be mentioned, however, that in East Germany environmental deprivation and the fear of nuclear power were important items on the list of many grievances East German pastors and parishioners expressed in their protests against the SED regime.Footnote 6 Yet these concerns had become a vehicle for a growing frustration with the political system in East Germany as such, with its appalling mismanagement and corruption, and thus had a different significance and meaning than in the open and affluent society of the Federal Republic. Therefore my analysis focuses on the specifity of the West German case until the fall of the wall.
Religious Motifs in Antinuclear Protests
As the West German Protestant church was drawn into the conflict over nuclear energy, it essentially faced two challenges. First, it was struggling to find both a theological and political position on the matter. Second, it was confronted with new problems concerning pastoral care in parishes located near nuclear-industry sites. As the public became increasingly concerned about the perceived dangers of environmental pollution and energy shortages, the church leadership was unprepared to offer solutions or even solace. The congregations most affected by the construction of nuclear facilities eagerly awaited some sort of guidance. They demanded a clear and unambiguous episcopal statement (ein bischöfliches Wort).Footnote 7 How were Christians to deal with this set of new challenges? The congregations, as can be discerned from letters to the bishops, felt abandoned with their worries.Footnote 8 Over time, however, new strategies emerged from the political activists among the pastors, along with the intellectual leaders in theology at the universities. Their aims were vehemently stated in pamphlets, leaflets, and other forms of public discussion. Archival sources suggest that by the middle of the 1970s new spheres of public discourse had come into being without central coordination. They bundled together a distinct group of religious motifs, connected to a set of recurring arguments and rhetorical strategies.Footnote 9
First, there was the tendency to bolster political arguments with prophetic visions. Religious perceptions are always molded by the confrontation with death and the fundamental human experience of contingency. In technologically advanced societies, the achievements of the thermo-industrial revolution pushed elementary fears of scarcity, poverty, and death toward the margins of human existence.Footnote 10 Public safety, health, hygiene, mobility, comfort, and affluence rested on the availability of energy and the technologies of its transformation. Around 1970, however, the notion of crisis was gripping the imagination of many West Germans. It was nurtured by a new insecurity concerning the predictability of modern civilization's path, especially relating to the availability of resources.Footnote 11 The diagnosis that permeated the public sphere was that of a crisis of growth. The Club of Rome's “The Limits to Growth” came as a shock and immediately became a best seller in 1972.Footnote 12 It was perceived as a Malthusian nightmare in which the reading public was confronted with the vision of an unsustainable lifestyle that would deplete the world's resources, ultimately leading to a global disaster. The authors of the study have always resisted being seen as prophets of doom.Footnote 13 Nevertheless, the prognosis carried with it an element of secular prophecy, which became a powerful tool in the environmental discourse. The underlying motive was the wish for the prophecy to destroy itself by bringing about the political decisions that in turn would help to undermine its premises. Dire warnings and forceful pleas were strategies to undermine the prognosis itself.Footnote 14 It did not take long until voices within the congregations made themselves heard, reminding the public of the “prophetic calling” of the church (Prophetisches Amt).Footnote 15 In times of crisis and affliction the church should assume the role of the voice in the wilderness and exercise the old tradition of penance.
This has, of course, been a central and venerable motif of religious self-awareness for centuries, and indeed, the church was well prepared to apply this old rhetorical exercise when it faced new threats and dangers. The prophetic experience as a fundamental part of religious life could be found in the early Christian congregations as well as in the chiliastic hopes of salvation in Reformation Europe. The sociology of religion as developed by Max Weber introduced the concept of the prophet as a social critic and identified the central rhetorical act as the Jeremiad.Footnote 16 The rhetorical arsenal of the church was boundless in that respect. This is the reason that activists within the church eventually found their own voice, which, on closer inspection, proved to be an old and time-tested one.
The second religious motif that comes into play is that of the secular apocalypse. My thesis is that the specificity and peculiarity of nuclear technology itself engendered an impetuous rhetoric of protest within the church, which feared the technological reality of total annihilation.Footnote 17 Conflicts within the church over nuclear armaments were intense but inconclusive.Footnote 18 Yet the technological possibility of a secular apocalypse, devoid of any redemptive meaning, remained a challenge and would resurface with ever more intensity after the political unrest in the late 1960s. While no one in the church went so far as to justify the use of nuclear weapons, the issue at hand was whether it was acceptable even to own them. More importantly, though, by the end of the 1970s the protest against nuclear arms and against the civil use of nuclear technologies had merged. Images of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were projected onto the issue of nuclear energy at a time when the distinction between military and peaceful uses of nuclear technologies was called into question. In that sense, the “new social movements” joined forces and gained strength, as there was a significant overlap between groups against nuclear war and those against nuclear energy.Footnote 19 Although the proponents of the latter insisted that nuclear power plants were certainly not constructed to harm anyone, the technological connection, both in a concrete and in a historical sense, was obvious. The first nuclear reactors had been constructed to produce weapons-grade material.Footnote 20 While the Federal Republic of Germany was officially not pursuing ownership of nuclear weapons, the 1950s had seen avid proponents of this idea (e.g., the conservative politician Franz Josef Strauss and the physicist Pascual Jordan).Footnote 21 Thus the antinuclear movement had a truly monolithic agenda, ranting against all things nuclear, in spite of the diverse motives and plans of the industry. Among church activists, too, there was indeed a twofold opposition against both nuclear weapons and nuclear energy. In both cases, as suggested above, the peculiar nature of both technologies accounts for the vehemence of the protest. Just as nuclear warfare was interpreted as fundamentally different from so-called “conventional weapons,” nuclear radiation or pollution was seen as an “unconventional” environmental hazard. While environmental activists were equally opposed to war and to pollution as such, the nuclear dimension of these modern threats added a sense of desperation and urgency. Both nuclear wars and nuclear accidents brought with them an aspect of apocalyptic irreversibility and finality.Footnote 22 Quite different from complaints about polluted streams or mountains of industrial and household waste, the nuclear threat determined the fate of generations in an unforeseeable future. These were the deeper roots of fear and this was why some members of the church found the way back to its prophetic calling. The temporal dimension, where human technological agency seemed to reach into eternity, where contamination could not be cleaned up for a long time to come, was one of the main reasons that church members felt validated in arguing from the point of view of faith.Footnote 23 The temporal dimension, reflected in agitated discussions concerning the half-lives of radioactive substances and long-term genetic damage, revealed fears of a future that would ultimately be squandered and a planet that would be uninhabitable. No scientist was able to find the language to accommodate or dispel such consummate fears. As a matter of fact, the scientists and engineers themselves shied away from apodictic defense tactics, and not one of them dared to suggest that a nuclear accident was impossible. Still, the prevailing attitude among many experts that a modern society would have to live with a calculated risk was widely regarded as cynical.Footnote 24
A third religious motif, closely connected to the first two, is that of reversion.Footnote 25 This, too, belonged to the rhetorical arsenal of the Jeremiad. In the Book of Jonah, the God of the Old Testament reprieved the city of Nineveh after its inhabitants demonstrated the will to repent. The prophet as social critic not merely foresees the future, but he also acts as an agent of God and as a leader to the path to forgiveness. Should the prophet fail—this is another, more sinister, biblical motif—generations to come must pay for the sins of their fathers.Footnote 26 The motif of reversion then not only pertained to individual lifestyles but also to questions of societal responsibilities, just as prophecies addressed the entirety of God's people, who had lost their way and needed guidance on the path back to virtue and trust. In short, what connects ancient and modern forms of the Jeremiad is the assessment that “it can't go on like this.” The implication of church activists was, of course, that the experience of an ancient Middle Eastern civilization could be transferred to the problems of the modern world, which seems a bit of a stretch for an agnostic observer. One should not forget, however, that from the church's perspective the narratives of the Bible have always had and will always have immediate and concrete relevance beyond their historical bounds.
Related to reversion, and connected to it in manifold ways, lies a fourth motif, that of renunciation. Here, too, questions of individual lifestyle are linked with societal aberrations. Accordingly, the church was able to interpret the excesses of a consumerist society with older notions of Mammon, against which a more modest and careful way of living could be brought into the discussion.Footnote 27 The church never really argued in favor of new vows of poverty, nor would it argue for a culture of asceticism that involved complete renunciation of the amenities of modern technology. But even those within the church leadership who shied away from a condemnation of nuclear technology insisted on renewed reflection on individual lifestyles. Before one could call for political activism against a specific technology, so the argument went, one should certainly be able to find ways of modest consumption in a world of excesses.Footnote 28 Wherever the church was divided in terms of a concrete stance that favored or opposed nuclear technology, common ground was found when it came to rejecting the false gods of greed and profusion.
It is interesting in this context that the church was able to achieve this modest consensus due to its experience with the fight against global poverty.Footnote 29 Here, too, similarities with the perception of a technological culture in crisis appeared. As western societies increasingly found ways to ensure cheap energy and wealth for their populations, it also became clear that this was possible only through a ruthless appropriation of resources in other parts of the world. At least two decades before the catchphrase “globalization” caught on, the church, with its long tradition of caritative and missionary activities, had made the observation that there was a connection between poverty in one part of the world and affluence in another. As much as local activities and concrete regional problems carried the environmental movement in Germany, the perception of a crisis of growth was always seen from a global perspective, a dimension the church had within its scope for decades leading up to the 1970s. The limits to growth were a problem of all mankind, and these constraints were set in part by the limits of planetary resources.Footnote 30 Consequently, alongside a broad temporal perspective, a spatial dimension of prophecy was added to the church's self-understanding. On both levels, the church was able to formulate universal claims of validity. The discourse on responsibility was globalized and was perfectly compatible with the pathos for humanity as expressed in religion. With its knowledge of the “last things” and the temporal and spatial limits of human agency, the church was potentially able to claim societal relevance in a crisis of modernity; however, that depended on whether it wanted to become a truly political church after all.
I have so far shown the various motifs of prophecy, apocalypse, reversion, and renunciation in connection with the religious stance against nuclear technology. Yet another aspect must be considered, however. The church tended to refer to the environment as the “creation,” thus offering its particular view of the value of the animated world.Footnote 31 From a theological point of view, the dictum Dominium terrae, as stated in Genesis 1:28, was increasingly seen as a burden. As it establishes the legitimacy of mankind's rule over the earth derived from the idea of its creation in the image of God, it became controversial in a time of environmental destruction. Voices within the church denounced a vision of human dominance. This formula had to be changed, since it was made partially responsible—in an anthropocentric natural world—for the crisis of modern civilization.Footnote 32 Furthermore, the very notion of preserving nature for the benefit of mankind alone came under scrutiny. The dangers of nuclear technology affected not only humankind but all other living beings as well, to which people were now willing to ascribe value in their own right. The notion of humankind as a shepherd instead of a ruler thus became popular.Footnote 33 In connection with the biblical tradition and apart from Dominium terrae, other passages were cited, in the Psalms, for example, where nature was praised.Footnote 34 All these interpretations remained vague and imprecise. In any case, attempts to derive from Scripture any mandates that were more concrete in terms of their attitude toward technology eventually proved to be rather far-fetched.
The Political Church
The aforementioned motifs relate to the discursive spheres within the church, not necessarily to the internal political reality. The evocation of religious motifs in connection with a skeptical stance toward nuclear technology doesn't tell us anything about their popularity or indeed the attitude of all parishioners. As a matter of fact, the political divide within German society as such was more or less mirrored on the level of the church. Wherever pastors or parishioners argued that the church should come forth with a theological assessment of nuclear technology, others insisted that this might be altogether impossible.Footnote 35
Thus a great portion of the internal debate was actually about whether the church was competent or indeed authorized to make such a statement. And if so, what would be the appropriate way to proceed? Conflicts arose between the church leadership and the base, as well as between progressive and conservative members. It is notable, first, that the initiative for such a debate did not come from the top. The protest against nuclear technology was always local and emanated from sites at the focus of conflict, generally a good distance away from the metropolitan centers where the church leadership resided. The senior leadership of the church—a group of seasoned statesmen and administrators—was taken completely by surprise by the pitch of the protest. The reaction from the top made them appear unprepared and sometimes ill informed.Footnote 36 To complicate matters further, bishops and administrators soon saw themselves confronted by parishioners who rejected the competence of the church on the matter and who complained about their congregations being politicized.
What's more, there were also quite a few who simply favored nuclear technology and considered the protest within the church to be unfounded and reckless.Footnote 37 It is clearly evident from the correspondence among pastors, bishops, and parishioners that the church leadership was anxious to maintain unity and civility. Very soon it became apparent, however, that the leaders risked losing support from both sides of the divide if they insisted on remaining impartial. Opponents of nuclear technology, with their notions of immediacy and danger, would be just as reticent to accept the bishops' neutral evenhandedness as those who feared that the ecclesiastical dignitaries would idly stand by while the church was instrumentalized for political purposes. The debate took on ever more aggressive characteristics, to which the leadership reacted with hapless platitudes and sententious admonitions.Footnote 38 Above all, the bishops wanted unity and harmony and not further polarization, especially in an age of secularism and dwindling membership. It needs to be stated that within the time frame of this study, millions of Germans were still on church rolls.Footnote 39 Not all were active or in any meaningful way committed to communal work, but certainly concerned enough to fear the sight of the church veering off a mainstream course. It comes as no surprise then that the church never collected or kept any data concerning its members' political attitudes. Such activities would have been outside the church's purview, given its claim of universality and inclusiveness in its attitude toward the flock. After all, all humans were equal in the eyes of God, and it was the church's mandate to welcome every soul. The opponents of nuclear technology, on the other hand, maintained that the nuclear issue was not just a question of political positions or political day-to-day business, but also a rather urgent problem that concerned all humanity. Those who expressed their concerns with anxiety and desperation deemed compromises in the matter impossible if not altogether dangerous.Footnote 40
One is tempted to see in these protesters the stereotypical figure of a protestant agitator, prone to moralistic hyperbole. Indeed, the rhetorical habits were more often those of the megaphone. Some of the pamphlets circulated were sprinkled with several exclamation marks and double or triple underscores.Footnote 41 When activists dealt with political problems with Protestant rigor, the debate became noisy. That can be said for the other side as well, however. Confronted with outspoken progressive or even left-leaning church members and pastors, conservatives were infuriated. Some even mounted a weapon that the church leadership feared the most: secession from the church. A political church is not “my church” is the way many parishioners put it, and the diction and style of their letters suggest they belonged to an older generation. These writers felt excluded from an institution that had accompanied them from early childhood and that now seemed to be veering to the left. In truth, the church had actually only followed the general trends in German society in the 1970s and 1980s (i.e., it had become socially more liberal and tolerant).Footnote 42 The generational tension is evident in the words of a retired clerk, who in 1980 found the time to complain about “communist pastors,” when he wrote:
For a decade now I've observed with anguish that men and women of the church are engaged with matters directed against this state, foreign nations, and several public institutions: the program against racism of the World Council of Churches, the boycott of fruit from South Africa by the Council of Women [not a church organization], the participation of pastors in robes in clashes around the Brockdorf [sic] nuclear power plant, the participation of pastors in the occupation of the Petrikirche [Peter's Church] in Hamburg, and finally the presence of Prof. Gollwitzer [a famous liberal theologian] at the funeral of terrorists or, just recently, at the funeral of the former revolutionary Rudi Dutschke.Footnote 43
We might speculate as to the mentality and political attitudes of this man. He was probably born around 1915 or earlier, and was some thirty years of age at the end of World War II, a soldier if not officer in Hitler's army, leaning toward Christian Democracy in the early days of the Federal Republic. He may have seen his contribution to the era of the economic miracle and reconstruction (Wirtschaftswunder und Wiederaufbau) being put into question as early as 1968, when a youth revolt shook the country. It is impossible to know these things with any certainty—yet the rasping voice sounds familiar. One can also sense disappointment and bitterness in his statements. It is unclear how many parishioners left the church precisely because of the conflict surrounding the nuclear issue. But it is unlikely that a large number of members unsettled by radical protesters would actually leave an institution that baptized their children, buried their parents, helped the elderly, and comforted the dying. As an institution, the church was still omnipresent to many Germans in the 1970s and 1980s. It was there at the turning points in almost everyone's life to offer guidance and consolation. Were the threats to leave the church altogether empty? The church leadership in any case took the concerns seriously and asked for patience and dispassion.Footnote 44
There was another group of skeptics who followed the antinuclear activities of church members with unease. While conservative church members feared a politicized church in general and a left-wing subversion in particular, church leaders had also come under attack from technical experts and scientists. This group happened to mingle in the debate time and again, some pointing to their own membership in the church.Footnote 45 First, there were those who felt the whole discussion was based on a lack of technological expertise. They thought that the more people knew about nuclear technology, the less frightening it would appear. According to this position, the things people needed to fear instead were economic stagnation, unemployment, and supply shortages.Footnote 46 This argument could backfire, of course, especially when it became clear that the individuals arguing along those lines were indeed employed by the nuclear industry; hence, it became easy to counter them ad personam.
As the political conflict over nuclear technology engaged church members with increasing intensity, the authority of political and scientific leaders waned. In general, functionaries and experts underestimated the public's willingness to be informed and educated about all things nuclear. In April 1986 in particular, when the Chernobyl accident terrified all of Europe, the general public could not avoid technical discussions even if they wanted to. In the pubs and schools, on the news, and in the newspapers, the public discussed the details of radiation protection and reactor types. The disaster demonstrated once more the problematic relationship between laypeople and experts that had loomed over the public sphere ever since the triumph of science-based industries. This particular crisis of trust created new public interest in the matter, so that even a popular German television program for children explained in simple terms why after the Chernobyl accident the kids were not allowed to play in their sandboxes for the time being.Footnote 47 Rising public skepticism may have been disappointing for those who had initially believed that an enhanced interest in and knowledge about nuclear technology would subsequently produce more support. Especially within the church it is easy to observe how the dialogue with experts and the quest for a deeper understanding of the nuclear issue actually exasperated the participants rather than reassured them.Footnote 48 In the years between 1976 (first violent clashes at Brokdorf) and 1986 (the Chernobyl disaster) the topic had at any rate been thoroughly politicized and had managed to hamper unity and peace within the Protestant church to a considerable degree.
Discipline, Violence, and the Shadows of History
The emerging forms of public protest were as polarizing as the issue itself. As the positions hardened and the adversaries tried to impose their respective points of view, paramilitary police units became more visible in the countryside. The first significant protest against a nuclear power plant proved to be an initial triumph for the young movement, as protesters successfully blocked construction near the village of Wyhl in Baden in 1977. This event reinforced the assumption that strong and unwavering civic unrest could actually achieve results. The case was widely celebrated as a test of stamina and proof of a healthy democracy. It was easily forgotten, however, that a court ruling had decided the outcome and that the protesters could succeed only when the law was on their side.Footnote 49 Discussions on legality and legitimacy later became more bitter. As was the case in 1968, some saw the only solution in the establishment of a political sphere of protest outside the boundaries of representative democracy.Footnote 50 Again, this is clearly connected to the very character of nuclear technology itself. To be sure, this can be to some degree understandable if one keeps in mind the resentment felt against the sister technology (i.e., nuclear weapons). But there's more to it than that. In point of fact, nuclear technology was identified by some as a threat to democracy itself.Footnote 51 Since an accident or even a terrorist attack could not be ruled out with absolute certainty, the amount of technical and social control required on the path to an “atomic state” was perceived as a threat to civil liberties.Footnote 52 It didn't matter then that the decision to build the facilities had been reached through a democratic process. The law was seen as a means to protect the interests of an industry in disregard for the well-being of the population it claimed to serve.Footnote 53 Whoever saw nuclear technology as a threat to democracy—as the state would inevitably become a police state to protect the facilities—acquired a rhetorical arsenal that made acrimonious confrontation unavoidable. This tendency also deeply affected the church.
As early as the first protests against the power plant in Brokdorf in 1976, both sides had lost a sense of proportionality in choosing their means of confrontation. Both claimed to have justice on their side, and the protests quickly became violent. The most turbulent incidents occurred between 1976 and 1986. We have to remember that apart from a small minority, most protesters were peaceful and came from all walks of life, young and old, and most of them had never faced a heavily armed policeman. The sound of helicopters circling over small villages, sometimes during the night, was unnerving for many. And during bad weather, protesters drank hot tea to keep warm and ate pastries provided by local bakers, as they stood and watched in amazement while water cannons from nearby large cities sank deep into the mud, accompanied by much yelling and swearing.Footnote 54 The church leadership was shocked, and the local pastors were desperate. The consensus was, of course, that protests had to remain peaceful, but it was surprisingly unclear what that actually meant. Was the occupation of the construction site by protesters an act of violence? Breach of the peace—both in public and on private property—was certainly punishable by law, and thus the police were legally authorized to use force. And what about destruction of property? It was against the law to be sure, but was it indeed an act of violence that could be justified when no person was harmed?
Although the church always tried to mediate between violent protesters and the police, in 1976 a staggering forty pastors in Lower Saxony made a public appeal for the occupation of the construction site in Brokdorf. This infuriated the church leaders and a good number of parishioners.Footnote 55 The law left no room for interpretation here. In addition to this, some pastors held services on or near the construction site, ineptly deciding to call the meetings “field services” (i.e., open-air services), in disregard of the militant associations this might evoke. In Germany, the term Feldgottesdienst implies a clear connotation to trench warfare. Some pastors held these services, complete with sermons and Eucharist, in gown attire. This was too much even for the church administrators who had up to now observed the activities of their congregations with patience or sympathy. Disciplinary measures were discussed, and abuse of office was the charge.Footnote 56 In legal terms, pastors who held open-air services were not officially obliged to register the event with the police, as they were in the case of political demonstrations.Footnote 57 The police saw through this tactic immediately, to be sure, and a church official notably commented that the church's calling for propagation of the faith (Verkündigungsauftrag) was put into jeopardy.Footnote 58
The church leadership was puzzled by the blurring of lines between service and demonstration. An official consensus was reached whereby pastors as citizens also had every right to protest, but in civil attire. That much was clear. But as bearers of office, they had to consider the needs of all parishioners and shy away from political protest.Footnote 59 This approach was vindicated by the fact that, as was the case in Grohnde, Lower Saxony, not all parishioners were willing to offer shelter for protesters on church premises, provide them sandwiches and coffee, or even have them set up an organizational office in the parish hall.Footnote 60 All in all, there was a growing and discomforting impression that some environmental activists were trying to take advantage of the church's infrastructure without ever having been close to matters of faith. On the other hand, environmental activists among the pastors pointed toward the protest culture in the American civil rights movement or the stance of the Polish union Solidarność, whose activities were not always technically legal either.Footnote 61
Following these conflicts, the political language of protest changed. On the one hand, activists resorted to forms of emotionalism and cheap effects that even sympathizers found objectionable. Some of the songs and pamphlets, especially when children were involved, approached kitsch. On the whole, opposition to nuclear technology was mounted with an air of self-righteousness that made rational debate impossible. The ultimate rhetorical weapon was used when protest was referred to as resistance. Below are the lyrics of a song that was actually sung by parishioners during a Christmas celebration at the building site of the power plant in Brokdorf in 1977:
The term “resistance” would seem a bit overstated, with its obvious connotations of National Socialism. Then again, this was clearly the movement's intention. As with so many other debates in postwar Germany, especially within the church, the ultimate reference point was that of National Socialism and the Holocaust.Footnote 63 The proximity to, and indeed, partnership of the Protestant church with the state dates way back to the sixteenth century. It was only after 1945, however, when the church was found to have been complacent, even complicit, during the time of National Socialism, that this partnership was confronted with a substantial deficit of legitimacy. Prominent church leaders felt that the churches' stance toward worldly authority should be more skeptical and distanced. Time and again, in letters and articles, pastors and bishops were reminded of the ultimate moral failure and degree of complicity on the part of the church under the National Socialists. Moderate church leaders were accused of the very same sort of complicity and silence as their predecessors between 1933 and 1945. The heroism of the “confessing church” during National Socialism was evoked, and now the church was to side with the oppressed and desperate.Footnote 64
These references may appear somewhat paranoid and historically inappropriate, if not actually objectionable. Moderate participants in the discussion asked their colleagues not to equate two completely different political systems and to refrain from accusations that no one in his right mind would believe reflected the true intentions of the nuclear industry.Footnote 65 On a side note, during the same period the peace movement had already brought about the rhetorical conflation of genocide and what came to be termed “omnicide” (the killing of everything) in notions such as “atomic holocaust,” which was probably more than yet another flashy catchphrase. It dates back to 1961 and was coined by Erich Fromm, a German-American émigré psychoanalyst, who enjoyed enormous moral authority in Germany in the 1970s and 1980s.Footnote 66
The notion brought deeper issues of a traumatic past to the surface. And popular authors such as Robert Jungk added some respectability to these connotations by stating that the state's concern for the security of nuclear facilities would turn the states into concentration camps.Footnote 67 Others referred to their personal experience within National Socialism. Below is an excerpt from a letter by a woman to her bishop in Hannover, Lower Saxony, from June 1980:
When, in such a situation, the church denies support and the gospel to the powerless, the desperate, the helpless, it reminds me fatally of its stance during the last war, which I witnessed as a child. Back then, in our church people prayed for the Führer.Footnote 68
One pastor had gone even further three years earlier:
if we continue plundering our planet like this, the following generations will not remember Auschwitz anymore, they will remember what we have done to our Earth.Footnote 69
Following this rather dubious prediction, many activists argued that if the Atomstaat became reality, then it would be a moral duty to fight against it. The historical analogies were problematic for several reasons. The use of excessive force by the authorities was certainly not a systematic or persistent violation of human rights. The German states acted within the framework of the German constitution. And it is one thing to argue that the nuclear industry was overly optimistic, profit-oriented, or even negligent, but quite another to evoke parallels to an ideology that led to the murder of millions of people for the alleged “betterment” of a superior race.
As the rhetoric grew more extreme, ever more drastic forms of protest emerged: people began hunger strikes, church buildings were seized, and pastors had to call the police to have protesters removed.Footnote 70 Throughout all this, one could continue to hear references to prior moral failure and appeals to the conscience of upright citizens. As the state did not back down while protecting nuclear facilities, the locals close to the facilities in particular felt that things were being done against their will, and they saw this as a danger for the stability of West German democracy. On the other side of the spectrum, people maintained that the church had neither the authority nor the competence to get involved, and that the actions of some activists represented a disturbing level of moral rigidity and lack of compromise, and thus, lack of appropriate Christian humility. In any case, the conflict surrounding nuclear technology had become a debate over if and how the West German church saw itself as a political entity, evoking lessons from the past and the wish to be, for once, on the right side of history.
Conclusion
My central thesis is that nuclear technology brought about a time of fear in West Germany that evoked associations far beyond the actual problem. The biblical scale of the perceived threat, prophecies of doom and damnation, the loss of pastoral landscapes, the fear of complicity, and political guilt stemming from historical trauma: the church was challenged by this degree of existential fear, which was linked to the material aspects of nuclear technology as well as the German political culture. The church could not avoid becoming a stage for these conflicts. Environmental activists within the church wanted even more, based on the alleged lessons of history: they wanted the church to act. These fundamental differences were not resolved within the period under consideration here. There are, however, some tendencies within today's church that, I believe, originated in that period. The conservative members who viewed the political activities of environmentalists with discontent have lost ground. If one looks at official statements of the church today, one can find a moderate yet explicit skepticism concerning nuclear technology.Footnote 71 The church remains vigilant in a German landscape where the cooling tower still overshadows the tower of the village church.
