Report: German Studies Session Panel No. 105:  Theology as Ideology in Nazi
and Postwar Germany

Moderator: Michael Phayer, Marquette University

"The Text and Context of Nazi 'Theology'"
Richard Steigmann-Gall, Kent State University

"'Christian Charity' and 'Jewish Vengeance': Bishop Aloisius Muench's One
World in Charity, 1946-1947"
Suzanne Brown-Fleming, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

"Missionizing Jews in Postwar Germany: The German Evangelical Church's
Judenmission after the Holocaust"
Matthew Hockenos, Skidmore College

Commentator: Doris Bergen, Notre Dame University

This panel was held on Saturday afternoon, and was well attended, with an
audience of about 25.  It concerned the ideological and institutional
relationship between Nazism and Christianity, and the ways in which this
relationship was mediated both within the churches and within Nazism itself.
Popular memory in both churches made a sharp distinction between Nazi ideas
and their own Christian theology.  This panel questions the iron separation,
still widely presumed today, between the Christian Churches' theology and
Nazi ideology, _especially_ with regard to notions of Jews and Judaism.
This panel argued that there was symbiosis between Christian notions of
"race" and Nazi racism and specifically between Christian and Nazi
anti-Semitism, both during the Third Reich and after.

In his paper, titled "The Text and Context of Nazi 'Theology'," Richard
Steigmann-Gall explored the Nazi uses of Christian theology to legitimate
their ideological program.  While intellectual and church historians have
long commented on the Nazi "abuse" of certain traditions of Christianity to
articulate their message to the German public, Steigmann-Gall showed how
this was more than solely a political posture for the sake of winning votes.
Even behind closed doors, away from the demands of public posturing, the
Nazis "spoke" Christian to themselves and each other.  This paper also
explored whether this "theology" was simply a bricolage of dissociated
religious ideas, or whether it adhered to a certain logic, especially with
regard to the Nazis' conceptions of race and religion.

Like the KKK in the United States and the progenitors of Apartheid in South
Africa, certain Nazi leaders devoted considerable attention to laying out a
theology of race, one which maintained a continuity with prior theological
traditions and rejected Alfred Rosenberg's "neo-paganism."  The Nazis
subscribed to many of the precepts of _Schoepfungsglaube_, the "Theology of
the Orders of Creation," a departure from mainstream Lutheran theology that
predated the founding of the NSDAP.  This theology ordained the Volk as a
divine creation, and paved the way for a vision of the providential
racialism so heavily emphasized by the Nazis.  Steigmann-Gall also focused
on the "ecclesiology" of the Nazi leadership, which - among other things -
rejected the Old Testament and declared Jesus to have been an "Aryan."
These positions were both evident within certain varieties of bona fide
Christian theology before the arrival of the NSDAP.  Again, Protestantism
reveals surprising parallels here, particularly theologically liberal
_Kulturprotestantismus_.  This is most tellingly revealed in the works of
Alfred von Harnack, one of the most prominent Protestant theologians of the
20th Century, whose call for rejecting the Old Testament as "Jewish carnal
law" predated the Nazis.

In her paper "'Christian Charity' and 'Jewish Vengeance': Bishop Aloisius
Muench's One World in Charity, 1946-1947," Suzanne Brown-Fleming explored
the postwar antisemitism of the American Bishop Aloisius Muench.  In January
1946, the first installment of a pastoral letter entitled _One World in
Charity_ appeared in the United States.  It would surface in occupied
Germany one year later.  _One World_ called Allied authorities "other
Hitlers in disguise, who would make of [the German] nation a crawling
[Bergen-] Belsen."  Only a few criminals perpetrated the heinous crimes
carried out under the Nazi regime, argued _One World_.  Why, then, asked its
author, should women and children suffer, because "some policy makers in top
levels revived the Mosaic idea of an eye for an eye?"  The author of _One
World_ was German-American Aloisius Muench (1889-1962), Roman Catholic
bishop of the diocese of Fargo, North Dakota.

_One World in Charity_ became a sensation in Germany by 1947, illegal copy
of which was distributed in all four zones of occupied Germany as well as in
France, Great Britain, Holland, and the United States.  In 1947, excerpts
from Muench's "letter" appeared in the _Aachner Nachrichten_, _Berliner
Tagesspiegel_, _Rhein-Ruhr Zeitung_, _Koelnische Rundschau_, and other
newsprint.  Many German Catholics viewed _One World_ as "bread for the
hungry soul," as one Nuremberg lay Catholic, Barbara Muschweck, described
it.  By way of close textual analysis of Muench's pastoral letter, this
paper demonstrated the manner in which positive descriptions of "Christian"
love and charity can imply "Jewish" hate and contempt for God and the
teachings of the central figure of Christianity, Jesus Christ.
Brown-Fleming further argued that in the case of Aloisius Muench, such
linkage between "Christian" love and "Jewish" vengeance was deliberate.
A mixture of fate, some prodding from Samuel Cardinal Stritch of Chicago,
and a decision by Pope Pius XII placed Aloisius Muench in five key positions
in Germany between the years 1946 and 1959. He was the Catholic liaison
representative to the U.S. Army in occupied Germany (1946-49), Pope Pius
XII's apostolic visitor to Germany (1946-47), Vatican relief officer in
Kronberg, near Frankfurt/Main (1947-49), Vatican regent in Kronberg
(1949-51), and Vatican nuncio to Germany from its new seat in Bad Godesberg,
outside Bonn (1951-59).  In these capacities, Aloisius Muench earned a
widespread and popular reputation among German Catholics as a sympathetic,
pro-German figure, beginning with the grass-roots dissemination of _One
World in Charity_ and subsequently confirmed by his active participation in
the Catholic clemency campaign on behalf of German war criminals.  This
reputation made him the central American Catholic figure in internal German
Catholic discussion and reflection about Jews, anti-Semitism, and the
Holocaust between 1946 and 1959.

In "Missionizing Jews in Postwar Germany: The German Evangelical Church's
Judenmission after the Holocaust," Matthew Hockenos analyzed the theology
and practice of German Lutheran missionaries who sought to convert Jews to
Christianity in Germany after the Holocaust.  The Evangelical-Lutheran
Central Federation for the Mission to Israel, which was reconstituted in
October 1945, acknowledged that in consideration of all that had happened to
Jews during the last twelve years that it would be inappropriate to begin
immediately with traditional missionary work, defined as actively seeking
out Jews with the intent to convince them to convert to Protestantism.  The
Central Federation concentrated on studying the present situation of Jews
and baptized Jews in Germany and combating negative stereotypes of Jews.
The director, Karl Heinrich Rengstorf, did not renounce the missionary
enterprise, he simply wanted to curtail the conversion efforts for the time
being.  Although the local branches of the Central Federation also declared
their intention to study the history of Jews and Judaism and to combat
antisemitism, the large influx of eastern European Jews into Germany in 1946
and 1947 brought about a return of traditional missionary efforts.  There
was no better way, missionaries contended, for the church to express its
aversion to the racial hatred of the Nazis and the continuation of
antisemitism in postwar Germany than to open their arms to Jews, especially
the demoralized and uprooted _Ostjuden_, by preaching the gospel to them.
If anyone needed to hear the good news that Christ had suffered and died to
take away the sins of the world, Hockenos's Evangelical Lutherans
maintained, it was Jews.

Under a good deal of pressure to issue a statement that would address the
church's relationship to Jews, official representatives of the Evangelical
Church in Germany (Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland, EKD) convened a synod
in April 1950 in Berlin-Weissensee, and issued the church's first official
statement on the "Jewish question."  The primary purpose of the
eight-sentence statement was to put the church on record as opposing
antisemitism in postwar Germany and to acknowledge the church's silence
during the Third Reich.  But the statement also briefly addressed the
church's theological anti-Judaism.  By declaring in the third sentence that
God's promise to the Jews remained in force even after the crucifixion of
Christ, the Berlin-Weissensee statement rejected the centuries-old theory of
supersessionism whereby the church superseded the Jews as God's chosen
people.  The notion that God had rejected the Jewish people in favor of the
church was fundamental to the philosophy under girding the missionary
enterprise.  Consequently the repudiation of supersessionism _undermined_
the theological foundation of the Protestant mission to the Jews.  However,
Hockenos pointed out, the Berlin-Weissensee statement did not explicitly
_reject_ missionizing Jews.  In fact, it concluded in traditional Christian
triumphalist language: "We pray to the Lord of mercy that he may bring about
the Day of Fulfillment (Tag der Vollendung) when we will be praising the
triumph of Jesus Christ together with the saved Israel."  Missionaries in
general did not read the statement as a call for them to stop their work
among Jews.  In addition to the ambiguity of the statement, the autonomy
enjoyed by the regional churches in Germany meant that in some churches,
such as the Evangelical-Lutheran Church in Bavaria, clergymen continued to
actively seek to convert Jews while other churches transformed their
missions into organizations that sought a dialogue between church and
synagogue.
Hockenos argued that the philosophy underpinning the mission to the Jews was
accepted in theory by most parishioners, pastors, and church leaders.
Certainly there were Christian theologians in Germany in the 1950s and
1960s, including Helmut Gollwitzer, Guenther Harder, and Heinrich Vogel, who
whole heartedly agreed with the critiques of the church's mission to the
Jews, supersessionism, and Christian triumphalism.  In fact, debate raged in
the church in the 1960s and 1970s whether the church's mission to the Jews
in all forms should be unequivocally repudiated.  But it was not until 1980
that the regional Synod of the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland
explicitly repudiated the church's mission to Israel.  In the two decades
since 1980 a number of regional churches have published similar documents
repudiating the mission to Israel.  Significantly the Bavarian Lutheran
Church issued a statement in 1998 that did not reject missionizing Jews but
did call for Bavarian Lutherans to "think through anew" the church's mission
to the Jews.

Why did it take four decades and in some regional churches even longer for
German Protestants to reject the church's mission to the Jews?  First,
argues Hockenos, it is relatively easy in retrospect to see how Christian
anti-Judaism played a role in fostering and legitimizing an antisemitic
milieu that made the Holocaust possible.  But in Germany and elsewhere in
Europe, this was not immediately apparent in the late 1940s and 1950s.  An
extended period of intense reflection was necessary before recognizing
Christian teaching, especially Christian triumphalism, as a primary culprit.
Second, the theological foundation of anti-Judaism was so deeply rooted in
the church's doctrine and traditions that a repudiation of this theology was
no small endeavor.  It meant overturning some of the most basic tenets of
Protestant Christianity, and this revision naturally met with stiff
resistance.  Third, the founding of Israel in May 1948 had less of an impact
on the church's attitude toward Jews and Judaism than is often argued.
Although some Protestant theologians viewed the founding of the state of
Israel as a sign of the continued choseness of the Jewish people, others
recognized the secular nature of the state and argued convincingly that Jews
living in Germany would now be easier to reach with the gospel than Jews in
Israel.  Fourth, Christian guilt over the persecution of Jews during the
Third Reich led some pastors to conclude that the church must never abandon
Jews again and viewed a repudiation of the mission to Israel as a
continuation of antisemitism and an abandonment of the Jews.  And finally,
the temptation to missionize the large numbers of Jewish refugees in the
immediate postwar years and again in the 1990s with the emigration of tens
of thousands of Russian Jews to Germany proved too strong for many
Protestant pastors and church leaders to resist.

Taken as a whole, the three papers called for a deeper interrogation of the
ideological relationship between Nazism and certain forms of Christianity.
The need of the post-war generation to set itself apart from the crimes of
Nazism, as exemplified in the _Stunde Null_ myth generated immediately after
the war, helped foster the notion that the evil of Nazism bore no
relationship to the beauty and humility of the Christian faith, in whatever
form.  However, with the passing of time, it is incumbent upon historians to
delve more deeply into uncomfortable truths, and explore the very real
possibility that Nazi antisemitism was not simply resonant with Christian
antisemitism, but perhaps _based_ on Christian antisemitism.  Another
possibility that must be explored further is that, for the Nazis no less
than for the Christians of the day who supported them, the Nazi movement
represented not the "death of God" in secularized society but a singularly
horrific and brutal attempt to preserve God _against_ secularized society.

Richard Steigmann-Gall, Kent State University

For a complete listing of all sessions at the 2002 German Studies
Association Conference, please visit <http://www.g-s-a.org>.

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