Dagmar Pöpping’s Nachtrichten aus der Politik. Die Lageberichte Hermann Kunsts für den Rat der Evagelischen Kirche in Deutchland 1951–1977 makes an important contribution to German religious history by providing access to invaluable primary sources produced by Hermann Kunst and including a scholarly reflection on the importance of his service as Plenipotentiary of the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) from 1949 to 1977 and as Protestant Bishop of the Bundeswehr from 1956 to 1972. She places his regular reports to the Council of the Evangelical Church, accessible to a wider audience here for the first time, in a historical context. Pöpping argues convincingly that these reports have broad relevance to the “history of mentalities” because “the subjective perception of politics through Hermann Kunst was representative for most of the leading officials of the EKD” (10). In addition, his long-term position as the Protestant conduit between institutional churches and government means that the reports to the council engaged a variety of major political events, including the start of the Cold War, the emergence of Ostpolitik under the chancellorship of Willy Brandt, the Eichmann Trial, and the rise of left-wing protests movements in the 1960s and 1970s. In addition to her introductory analysis, Pöpping publishes seventy-five of the 160 reports in this volume. The primary sources are organized into three sections based on their chronology. The first one includes seventeen of Kunst’s fifty-one reports during the early Cold War from 1951 to 1961. Next, Pöpping shares twenty-three of forty-nine reports written during the era of “peaceful co-existence” from 1962 to 1969. She titles her final sections “Turning Points” and shares twenty-three of the sixty reports from 1970 to 1977.

This volume is essential to those interested in the state of German religious identity during the 1950s. Pöpping’s introduction and many of the sources from the first section of reports from the early Cold War overlap with Kristian Buchna’s Ein klerikales Jahrzehnt? Kirche, Konfession und Politik in der Bundesrepublik während der 1950er Jahre (2014), in which Kunst is closely analyzed. Bunchna emphasizes how conflicts between Catholics and Protestants threatened the broader appeal of Christian Democracy to all denominations and argues the Adenauer era represented an age re-confessionalization. Other books, such as Maria Mitchell’s The Origins of Christian Democracy: Politics and Confession in Modern Germany (2012), place greater emphasis on the ultimate success of the interconfessional project of the Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) despite active combat, especially over the role of the Churches in schools. On the one hand, this volume demonstrates how Kunst participated in confessional warfare with Catholics. In the early 1950s, he scrupulously tracked how many Protestants were represented in the CDU/CSU, including an accounting of which Protestant deputies had a Catholic spouse because he feared “a Catholic-dominated republic” during the Adenauer era (20). As late as the 1970s, Kunst criticized the Catholic Church for weakening the country through its polarizing attacks on the SPD in 1972 and its aggressive opposition to the reform of abortion law in 1974. On the other hand, these sources also demonstrate a relaxation in confessional conflict by the 1960s. For example, Kunst’s reports document how the Churches worked together to provide humanitarian relief for Vietnam in the late 1960s and oppose the liberation of family law. He also adjusted to the increasing power of the SPD, a party dominated by fellow Protestants who seemed to care little about confessional identity. In sum, these sources illustrate the uneven development of inter-confessional cooperation during the Bonn Republic.

This book also sheds light on how German Protestantism negotiated its relationship with nationalism. Although a member of the Confessing Church during the Third Reich, Kunst was a forthright nationalist who served as a priest in Poland and in the Soviet Union during the war. He advocated for a course of compromise with National Socialism and after 1945 argued that priests who had joined the German Christian movement should be rehabilitated. During the Cold War, German unity remained central to how Kunst interpreted foreign policy. While he supported the re-armament of West Germany in the 1950s, he feared that integration into the West would deepen the division between the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and the German Democratic Republic (GDR). For similar reasons, he articulated reservations about recognizing the state of Israel for fear that diverging foreign policy would make the divisions between East and West Germany more permanent. Although Kunst sought engagement with the Brandt government and its quest for Ostpolitik, he expressed consistent distrust for the GDR and skepticism about the Helsinki Accords. However, Kunst tempered his nationalism somewhat with a growing interest in providing aid for the developing world and a view of foreign policy driven as much by religious morality as the traditional deference to national interest. For example, he became willing to break with the FRG’s support of the United States due to the discovery of American war crimes in Vietnam. Kunst took a more moderate course than Protestants who more vocally opposed both the war and West German re-armament. Pöpping argues that he chose “a purely moral standpoint especially when it was no longer possible to avoid worldwide criticism, as in the final phase of the Vietnam War, or when moral condemnation and national interest coincided for it, as in the case of Israel” (57).

This volume will be useful to specialists and graduate students seeking primary sources that engage scholarly debates about the development of German Protestantism after World War II. The reports by Kunst to the EKD reveal the outlook of Protestant elites transitioning to postwar realities. Kunst’s adaptability as a confessional warrior and nationalist confronting the rapidly changing landscape of the Cold War helps historians better analyze an array of similar clergy, bishops, and politicians in the early years of the FRG.