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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 June 2011
During 1933 and 1934 the German Protestant church produced a “high tide” of confessions and ecclesiastical pronouncements. Among these the well-known Barmen Declaration is of prime importance. The first of these confessions, the Confession of Altona of January 1933, however, is hardly known at all, and no English translation has ever been published.
1 Schmidt, Kurt Dietrich, Die Bekenntnisse und grundsätzlichen Äusserungen zur Kirchenfrage des Jahres 1933 (Gütersloher Verlagshaus Gerd Mohn, 1934) 7.Google Scholar
2 Scholder, Klaus, “Kirchenkampf,” in Hermann, Kunst, Roman, Herzog, and Wilhelm, Schneemelcher, eds., Evangelisches Staatslexikon (2d ed.; Berlin: Kreuz Verlag Stuttgart, 1975) col. 1182.Google Scholar
3 Hans Asmussen, Thomas Breit, and Karl Barth agreed at the outset of their Frankfurt meeting on 15–16 May 1934, that the document that they were commissioned to draw up as a foundation for the Synod's deliberations on 29–30 May was to be a “declaration” and not a “confession.” This reason was advanced by Barth already at the Free Reformed Synod of Barmen of 4 January 1934 (this is not the ecumenical Barmen Synod at the end of May 1934). See Barth, Christoph, Bekenntnis im Werden: Neue Quellen zur Entstehung der Barmer Erklärung (Neukirchen: Neukirchener Verlag, 1979) 22 n. 63.Google Scholar Barth, Karl himself in his letter to Eberhard Bethke of 1967 (EvTh 28 [1968] 555)Google Scholar, states that “individual professors” can advance their own opinions concerning such theologicalmatters, but a “confession” must always be the product of the church. Cf. Niemöller, G., Die Erste Bekenntnissynode der Deutschen Evangelischen Kirche zu Barmen (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1959) 1. 34Google Scholar; Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, Gesammelte Werke (Munich: Kaiser, 1960) 2. 230Google Scholar; Scholder, Klaus, “Die Bedeutung des Barmer Bekenntnisses für die Evangelische Theologie und Kirche,” EvTh 27 (1967) 435–61, esp. 459.Google Scholar Not the least of reasons why the Barmen Synod could not formulate a “confession” is that the “synod” was composed of Lutherans, Reformed, and “United” denominations. Particularly the Lutherans, e.g., Althaus and Sasse, objected to a “confession” that would terminate a 400-year-long history of the Lutheran Confession (Niemöller, Die Erste Bekenntnissynode, 168–73).
4 See Scholder, Klaus, Die Kirchen und das Dritte Reich: Vorgeschichte, und die Zeit der lllusionen, 1918–1934 (Frankfurt/Berlin/Wein: Propyläen, 1977) 237–38.Google Scholar
5 Ibid., 234–35.
6 Ibid., 226–27.
7 Ibid., 226.
8 Ibid.
9 Schmidt, Die Bekenntnisse, 19 n. 1.
10 Reese, Hans-Jörg, Bekenntnis und Bekennen: Vom 19. Jahrhundert zum Kirchenkampf der Nationalsozialistischen Zeit (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1974) 141.Google Scholar
11 The original text can be found in Schmidt, Die Bekenntnisse, 19–25, No 1.
12 The KDP, the Communist Party of Germany.
13 At this time Hitler was actively wooing the Roman Catholic Church. The Concordat was signed on 20 July 1933 (Scholder, Die Kirchen, 184ff.). In the Protestant camp the situation was more complicated, for the Protestants did not have a Concordat-pushing Pacelli in Rome nor certain political mediators between the Weimar Republic and the Nazi Regime, like Kaas and von Papen. Hitler therefore had to use propagandistic means to attract the Protestant church. The German Christian church movement was the obvious vehicle. On 10 February 1933 Hitler gave his famous speech opening the campaign for the Nazi-supported German Christians to gain control over the Protestant church. The speech concluded with a quasi blessing and an “Amen” (Scholder, Die Kirchen, 282). The German Christians won a landslide victory in the voting on 23 July 1933.
14 The Nazis at this time frequently made use of the time honored practice of having a ceremonious church presence at political functions.
15 Communists in particular argued that Christianity diminishes realistic attempts to better human conditions with the doctrine of original sin and divine redemption.
16 The last liberal democratic chancellor of the Weimar Republic, von Schleicher, resigned on 28 January 1933. His was no more than a caretaker government. Von Schleicher was preceded by von Papen who after the fall of Brüning on 30 May 1932, inaugurated the six-months-long transition to the purely dictatorial government of Hitler. Von Papen in large part supported the Nazi political line. Consequently, he became one of the ministers of the new Hitler cabinet, thereby lending legitimacy to the new government.
17 The Nazi Party engaged in the tactic of public destabilization. The “Bloody Sunday” of 17 July 1932, is the best example. The tactic served to prove the ineffective nature of the established government.
18 During the night of 9 August, five uniformed SA troopers entered the house of a Communist laborer in the little Upper-Silesian village of Potema and trampled him to death before the eyes of his mother. The conservative government of von Papen on the 9th of August passed a law mandating capital punishment for such political acts of terror. The “Potema Five” were the first to be found guilty under the new law on 22 August. Although this event was particularly extreme, abuses of personal life and liberty were quite common. The “Potema Five” gained particular notoriety when Hitler sent a telegram to the condemned men: “In view of this most incredible blood-judgment I feel solidarity with you in infinite loyalty. Your freedom is from this moment on a question of our honor. The struggle against a government that could allow this is our duty.” The Völkische Beobachter, the official Nazi paper, reported that one of the prisoners hung up Hitler's telegram in his prison cell and wrote beneath it: “This telegram and his picture: It will be the small altar before which I pray daily” (Scholder, Die Kirchen, 227).
19 The so-called Aryan Paragraph of the NSDAP party program labels German Aryans as superior and fully human, and people of other races, particularly blacks and Jews, as inferior and subhuman. It is significant that the Altona Confession condemns antisemitism, as does the first Barmen Declaration of 4 January 1934. But Barmen of May 1934 does not. Barth writes (to Bethke, Eberhard, EvTh 28 [1968] 555)Google Scholar, in reply to Bethke's Bonhoeffer biography: “It was news to me that Bonhoeffer grappled in 1933ff as the first, indeed almost as the only one, so centrally with antisemitism Since then I have found myself guilty for not similarly raising the issue as of crucial importance, e.g., in the two Barmen Declarations of 1934, drafted by me.”
Barth is mistaken that both Barmen Declarations neglect to oppose Nazi antisemitism: “Therewith is repudiated the view that the limitation of membership and the qualification for service in her (the church) to members of a certain race is compatible with the unity and message of the church” (Barmen 1; chap. 5, 3b). See my essay, “The First Barmen Declaration of January 4, 1934,” CH 1984Google Scholar; idem, The Barmen Declaration and the Churches under Hitler (Toronto/New York: Mellen, 1984).Google Scholar
20 It must be observed that during the Kulturkampf, primarily the years 1870–86, under Bismarck, the government attempted to curb the influence of the Catholic church in the Prussian dominated empire by introducing civil marriage (1874–75). It was strongly opposed by both the Catholic and Protestant church.
21 This was widely practiced by the Nazi and Communist parties. The Nazi defamation of the theologian Günter Dehn is a good example (Scholder, Die Kirchen, 216–24).
22 A universal outrage at the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917–18 swept European consciousness and was kept alive by Communist agitation during the 1920s up to 1933.
23 The Nazis ridiculed Weimar Republic law and lawyers as “western,” “decadent,” “self-centered,” “Jewish,” “private and not public,” and as “oriented toward private and not public gain.”
24 Schmidt, Die Bekenntnisse, 7.
25 G. Christiansen provided a review of the articles printed in the dailies, Niederdeutsche Kirchenzeitung, 3. 52–54. See also Scholder, Die Kirchen, 237–38, 288–89; Reese, Bekenntnis und Bekennen, esp. 146ff.
26 In Christiansen, Kirchenzeitung, quoted from Scholder, Die Kirchen, 237. After the November revolution of 1918 the Social Democrat Weimar Republic came to power. It was not particularly friendly toward the church. In Adolf Hoffmann, who was responsible for church affairs in the new government, the church found a formidable foe. Although Hoffmann occupied his post only a short time, he agitated the masses to leave the church, and destroyed much of its institutional and economic foundation. See Scholder, Die Kirchen, 19–23.
27 In the essay “Die Aufgabe der Kirche, wie 21 Pastoren sie sahen,” Zeitschrift für Religion und Sozialismus 5 (1932) 124–30.Google Scholar The essay is reprinted in Norden, Günter van, Der Deutsche Protestantismus im Jahr der Nationalsozialistischen Machtergriefung (Gütersloher Verlagshaus Gerd Mohn, 1979) 34–36.Google Scholar
28 Christiansen, Kirchenzeitung, quoted by Scholder, Die Kirchen, 237.
29 Christliche Welt, 47 (1933) col. 239Google Scholar, quoted by Scholder, Die Kirchen, 237.
30 Reese, Bekenntnis, 146. Scholder, Die Kirchen, 237.
31 Schmidt, Die Bekenntnisse, 26–27.
32 Ibid., 27. Emphasis in original.
33 Ibid., 26; Scholder, Die Kirchen, 288.
34 Ibid. Emphasis in original.
35 Ibid.
36 Ibid., 33–35, 47–66. See Reese, Bekenntnis, 156–57.
37 Reese, 157.
38 Both Barmen Declarations strictly adhere to the model of doctrinal pronouncements followed by “repudiations.” See above, n. 19, on the repudiation of antisemitism in the First Barmen Declaration.
39 Schmidt, Die Bekenntnisse, 35.
40 Ibid.
41 Ibid., 47–66.
42 Ibid., 49.
43 Ibid., 51, point 22.
44 Ibid., 12.
45 Ibid.