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The 1933 German Protestant Church Elections: Machtpolitik or Accommodation?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Shelley Baranowski
Shelley Baranowski
Affiliation:
Received her Ph.D. in History of Christianity from Princeton University in June 1980.
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Extract

On 23 July 1933, the pro-Nazi German Christian movement won a stunning victory in the elections for representatives to local parish councils of the German Evangelical Church. In many areas, especially north and eastern Germany where the National Socialist party itself was strongest, the German Christians attracted as much as 75 percent of the vote. The Old Prussian Union church, which embraced most of the political unit of Prussia, felt the effects most profoundly. Upon filling the higher synods after the parish elections, the German Christians were the majority in seven of eight provincial representative bodies. Only the provincial synod in Westphalia retained a non-German Christian majority. Yet this resulted less from a lack of a strong German Christian following in the parishes than from an intentionally undemocratic filtering system that protected higher synods from the Nazi sympathizers.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 49 , Issue 3 , September 1980 , pp. 298 - 315
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1980

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References

1. Meier, Kurt, Die Deutschen Christen (Halle, 1964), p. 26.Google Scholar See Noakes, Jeremy and Pridham, Geoffrey, Documents on Nazism, 1919–1945 (New York, 1974), pp. 114–116Google Scholar for an analysis of Nazi voting statistics. For details on Westphalia, refer to Hey, Bernd, Die Kirchenprovinz Westfalen, 1933–1945 (Bielefeld, 1974), pp. 41–49.Google Scholar

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59. EKU Generalia folder III–51–III, 18 August 1933; KKA 70–24, Kirchenkampf in Fehrbellin (Brandenburg), 9 December 1933.

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66. New York Times, 25 July 1933.Google Scholar

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68. New York Times, 24 July 1933.Google Scholar

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71. EKU Generalia folder III–51–I, 20 July 1933.

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78. The Young Reformers' platform can be found in Junge Kirche 5 (20 July 1933):59–62.

79. New York Times, 23 07 1933.Google Scholar

80. KKA folder 7–40, “The Confessing Church in 1933,” includes Gerhard Jacobi's undated remarks.

81. “KKA folder 147–123. Though undated this report's clear reference to the meeting as that of the “Gospel and Church” faction places it during the campaign.

82. Hahn with Prater, , Kämpfer wider Willen, pp. 25–27.Google Scholar