Barmer Theological Declaration

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50 years of the Barmer Theological Declaration: special postage stamp of the German Federal Post Office from 1984

The Barmer Theological Declaration (abbreviated BTE ; also Barmer Confession , Barmer Declaration , Barmer Theses or Barmen for short ; original long title: "Theological Declaration on the Current Situation of the German Evangelical Church (DEK)") was the theological foundation of the Confessing Church (BK) in the time of National Socialism . The name refers to the place of the declaration, the Wuppertal district of Barmen . Its main author was the Reformed theologian Karl Barth , co-authors were the Lutheran theologians Thomas Breit and Hans Asmussen . The first Barmer Confession Synod adopted the text, which had been revised several times, on May 31, 1934 as a binding confession of all Lutheran, Reformed and United member churches of the DEK.

The decisive core sentence is the statement: Jesus Christ alone is the one word of God , that is why Christians have to trust and obey him alone and no other powers of their presence. In the church struggle, this exclusive opposition led to the separation of the BK from some Protestant regional churches that were ruled alone or with the church party German Christians (DC) , which was closely related to National Socialism . For some BK members it justified an evangelical resistance against National Socialism and for a democratic constitutional state . However, its political interpretation was controversial from the start.

Nevertheless, the BTE had effects beyond the Nazi era. After 1945 the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) included it in the Evangelical Hymnbook as a groundbreaking and permanently valid testimony to doctrine and faith . In some member churches of the EKD, the former EKU and the Protestant churches in Austria, the pastors are obliged to adhere to this commitment during their ordination . For some Reformed churches it is an official confession.

Emergence

The place of the Confession Synod: The Gemarker Church

Church struggle

The German Protestant Church was traditionally closely linked to the German Empire . Most of their pastors were nationalistic , anti-democratic and anti-communist , rejected the Weimar Republic and enthusiastically welcomed Adolf Hitler's takeover in January 1933, believing that it had prevented an impending communist revolution . They wanted to contribute to a “national rebirth” on the side of the Nazi regime and hoped that this would strengthen the national church and Protestantism (around the day of Potsdam , March 21, 1933). Accordingly, all Protestant church leaders remained silent in 1933 about the elimination of the left-wing parties and trade unions, the street terror of the SA and the persecution of Jews . Instead, they protested against the alleged “atrocity propaganda” from abroad against these measures.

In April 1933 Hitler appointed the unknown military district pastor Ludwig Müller as his church commissioner, on July 13, 1933, he openly supported the DC and thus helped it to a landslide victory in the general church elections the following day. In order to meet their striving for a centrally governed imperial church , the Protestant regional churches had passed a new church constitution on July 11, 1933 with an imperial bishop at the head, while at the same time maintaining their autonomy as confessional churches with equal federal status. It was only when the DC opposed these statutes to the exclusion of Jewish Christians that some Protestant pastors protested against these attacks on church teaching and independence. The protests increased when the "brown synod" of the DC elected Ludwig Müller as Reich Bishop on September 27, 1933, striving for a "Jew-free" DEK with an Aryan paragraph , and Reinhold Krause at a large DC rally on November 13, 1933, a "de-Judgment" propagated the Bible and at the end of the year Müller had the Protestant youth integrated into the Hitler Youth .

Since the founding of the Pastors' Emergency League (September 1933), “confessing” congregations have formed all over Germany. When Reich Bishop Müller forbade these public declarations on January 4, 1934, “Confession Synods” were formed, which made decisions to reorganize the DEK in accordance with the Gospel . Müller's attempts to legally subordinate the independent regional churches to the Reich Church and thus to his authority led to some "intact", not yet harmonized regional churches allied with the Pastors' Emergency Association and the free confessional synods to form a "denominational community of the DEK" . In the Ulm Declaration of April 22, 1934, the latter claimed against Müller, the DC and the church administration under August Jäger , which was ordered by the Nazi regime , to be the only legitimate DEK. A “fraternal council” set up there was supposed to prepare an empire-wide confessional synod and, in turn, set up a theological triple body that was to draft a theological declaration of principle for this synod. On May 7th, the Brothers' Council decided to convene the first DEK Confession Synod for May 29th to 31st in Barmen-Gemarke. The BTE was decided there. So it emerged from the growing protests against the " conformity " of the DEK with the Nazi state .

Precursors and preliminary drafts

Public creeds had become rare in German Protestantism before 1933 because the Christian faith was largely understood only as a private and individual sentiment. In the first year of the church struggle, around 75 “Confessions” appeared in the DEK. The DC linked Christian beliefs directly with confessions to the German people, to the German race , its authoritarian state and its leader . The Young Reformation movement, on the other hand, confessed that Jesus Christ alone founded the church, but at the same time God shows himself in the current “national renewal of our fatherland” so that one is ready to live and die entirely for one's own nation. The Lutheran and German national church “center” combined the yes to Jesus Christ in the church with the unconditional yes to Hitler and the Nazi state in politics. On the other hand, the confession of the Free Reformed Synod in Barmen of January 4, 1934, written by Karl Barth alone, categorically excluded any such combination. This made it the forerunner of BTE. These then also recognized the Hitler supporters in the DEK because the DC could use their combinations for their racist church politics. So the clear alternative appeared more and more plausible: Either the church confesses to Jesus Christ alone or it loses its message and thus its reason for existence to a heresy .

On May 2, 1934, the Brothers' Council appointed the Bonn theology professor Karl Barth, the Hamburg pastor Hans Asmussen and the Munich church councilor Thomas Breit as authors of the BTE, and on May 7, the Erlangen church historian Hermann Sasse . This said the first authors meeting on 15./16. May in Frankfurt am Main due to illness. Barth arrived late at noon and wrote the first draft of the BTE while Asmussen and Breit slept. Asmussen then added the following sentence to thesis II: "Through him (Christ) we experience joyful liberation from the ungodly ties of this world to free, grateful service to his creatures." Barth added thesis VI, which the others accepted. Barth praised this cooperation in a letter to Asmussen dated May 23, 1934 as the “Frankfurt Agreement”, giving it the same status as the unification formulas between Lutherans and Reformed people during the Reformation .

On May 22nd in Leipzig, out of concern about the consequences of canonical law, the fraternal council deleted the sentence "... through their union they confess to the coming divine gift of the one, holy, general and apostolic church". Before he decided to make this change, he received a letter of protest from Sasse against the “unionist” tendencies of the Frankfurt draft: The confessional synod should under no circumstances claim a non-denominational teaching post. Asmussen then reduced the title to a “statement on the ecclesiastical situation”, visited Sasse and wrote the “Erlangen draft” with him. This formulated the six theses “more popularly” and explicitly excluded a Union Church. The southern German bishops Theophil Wurm and Hans Meiser approved this version. Barth, on the other hand, refused it and was only prepared to incorporate a few changes to the Leipzig draft in the first version in Frankfurt. This is how the "Bonn design" came about. Asmussen only wanted to present this to the Confessional Synod together with an explanatory speech and then leave it to the respective denominational convention to deal with it. The BTE should, if necessary, initiate the joint development towards the Confessional Church, not conclude it.

At the Synod of Barmen, many Lutherans demanded more than just a protest against state attacks. A pastor commented with applause: A "professing church" that could not bring about a common confession would be laughable in the eyes of the DC. Contrary to the plans of the brother council, Barth and Asmussen insisted on proposing the unchanged Bonn draft to the entire synod. The Lutherans demanded that the denominational convents should check its compatibility with their own confessions immediately after its introduction. At the beginning of his presentation, Asmussen had two sentences added to the draft: Lutherans, Reformed and Uniate should and should speak together today, but wanted to be and remain true to their own confessions. Despite the great applause for his presentation, an eight-member interdenominational committee had to be formed because of the Lutheran concerns. This consulted on May 30th for seven hours and decided on a final version in which all references to a “union of the confessional churches” were missing and no longer the “unity” but the “common ground” of the confession was formulated. The committee unanimously accepted Karl Barth's newly formulated thesis V. This final version was unanimously adopted by the 138 delegates of the Synod after a brief plenary discussion on May 31. In view of the 400 years of confessional conflicts in German Protestantism and the short preparation time for the BTE, the agreement was widely praised as a kind of miracle.

Framework texts and structure

“According to the opening words of its constitution of July 11, 1933, the German Evangelical Church is a federation of denominational churches that have grown out of the Reformation and stand side by side with equal rights. […] Art. 1: The inviolable basis of the German Evangelical Church is the Gospel of Jesus Christ, as it is testified to us in the Holy Scriptures and as it came to light anew in the confessions of the Reformation. "

The representatives of all regional churches had unanimously decided on a federal federation of denominational churches with equal rights and thus rejected the national church without confessional affiliation aimed at by the DC. The government recognized this resolution on July 14, 1933. Thus, the Synod of Barmer could rightly refer to the current DEK constitution, which already stated the exclusive bond with Jesus Christ according to the testimony of the Bible and the Reformation interpretation. This bond validly connects all the particular churches of the DEK with one another.

Then the preamble described the current situation at the time: The unity of the DEK was “seriously endangered” by the teaching and action of the DC and its church regiment (Ludwig Müller).

“This threat consists in the fact that the theological prerequisite, in which the German Evangelical Church is united, is permanently and fundamentally thwarted and rendered ineffective by the leaders and spokesmen of the German Christians as well as by the church government. If they are valid, the church ceases to be church according to all the creeds in force with us. "

That is why a joint declaration by the Lutheran, Reformed and United Churches is now necessary:

“Precisely because we want to be and remain true to our various creeds, we must not remain silent, since we believe that in a time of common need and contestation we have a common word in our mouths. We command God what this may mean for the relationship between the confessional churches. In view of the devastating errors of the German Christians and the current Reich Church Government, we acknowledge the following evangelical truths: "

The following six Barmer theses began according to Art. 1 of the DEK constitution with the confession of Jesus Christ. As the one word of God (I) and the one lord of all areas of life (II), this justifies the form and the witness mission of the church (III), its offices and their purpose (IV), the task of the state (V) and the message of the free grace as the task of the church towards the state (VI). Each thesis is preceded by a biblical justification and then a positive doctrinal statement against a negative rejection, which marks it as false doctrine (heresy). This structure already makes clear the unconditional priority of Jesus Christ according to biblical testimony as the basis, source and criterion of truth for all theses.

The epilogue emphasized that the recognition of these theses and the rejection of the false doctrines named therein was "the inevitable theological basis of the German Evangelical Church as a federation of denominational churches", i.e. identical to their constitution and binding for church policy. Finally, the synod invited the DC opponents:

“She asks all who may be concerned to return to the oneness of faith, love and hope.
Verbum dei manet in aeternum "

This Latin sentence - translated “God's word remains forever” - is the only echo of an Old Testament Bible passage ( Isa 40.8 EU ; cf. Ps 119.89 LUT ; 1 Petr 1.25 EU ) in the BTE.

Memorial plaque with the first thesis on the Gemarker church


The theses

I.

Jesus Christ says: I am the way and the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father except through me. ( Jn 14 : 6  LUT )
Truly, truly, I say to you: Anyone who does not go into the door into the sheepfold, but goes into another place, is a thief and a robber. I am the door; if anyone enters through me, he will be saved. ( Joh 10.1.9  LUT )
“Jesus Christ, as he is testified to us in the Holy Scriptures, is the one word of God that we hear, that we have to trust and obey in life and in death.
We reject the false doctrine that the church can and must recognize other events and powers, figures and truths as God's revelation as the source of its proclamation in addition to and alongside this one word of God. "

Two I-am-words are prefixed because thesis I is not intended to be human self-empowerment, but rather testifies to and answers Jesus Christ's own word. He alone is the way to God, because God came to people in him as a human being ( Jn 1:14  EU ): Anyone who asserts otherwise is robbing people of truth and life. This included the murderous consequences of the DC ideology. That is why Thesis I, Article 1 of the DEK Constitution comes to a head: Jesus Christ is the one word of God that “we”, all Christians, have to trust and obey in life and death.

According to Karl Barth's lecture after the synod (June 9, 1934), this sharpness was necessary for the church to accept the first of the Ten Commandments : "I am the Lord your God ..." ( Ex 20.2  EU ). Recognizing Jesus Christ as the only revelation of God means recognizing YHWH , the God of Israel , as the only Lord of the church. Other powers of this world are thus undisputed, but their claim to validity for the church must be rejected. Barth had set this out as a theological axiom in his essay The First Commandment , which he wrote shortly after the Enabling Act in March 1933 against the enthusiasm for Hitler of most Protestants and the idolization of greats such as nationality , race, nation and state.

The reference to the “Holy Scriptures” made the whole Bible as a revelation testimony binding for the church in order to subject any distorted images of Jesus to its norm. This meant their inseparable unity as Old (OT) and New Testament (NT), which mutually condition and interpret each other, as Barth's first Barmer declaration of January 1934 explained. The expression “in life and in death” was reminiscent of Rom 14.8  EU and the first question in the Heidelberg Catechism . The three verbs “hear”, “trust”, “obey” translate what Christian faith contains, namely active following of Jesus , and strictly rejected a faith without corresponding action.

The " natural theology " that made the DC heresy possible is rejected . In June 1934, Barth explained: The no to other sources of revelation does not exclude truths outside of the Church and Christianity, but that Christians recognize, trust and obey other powers besides Jesus Christ as God's revelation. In doing so, they would effectively make these powers a second god. But by choosing certain people (the people of Israel), God differentiated himself from all gods and ruled out that the chosen people would choose their gods themselves. Jesus Christ as the one word of God makes it impossible for Christians to look for their God outside of the special history of God with his chosen people. Confessing to him includes the election of Israel, but excludes the arbitrary choice of other gods: the church can only follow this self-distinction of God if it wants to be and remain the church of Jesus Christ. First and foremost, it was a penance to the völkisch (racist) theologians in the DEK.

For example, Barth's former comrade Friedrich Gogarten wrote like Wilhelm Stapel in the summer of 1933: “For us, God's law is identical to the nomos of the Third Reich .” For Barth this was the “betrayal of the Gospel”, so that he turned away from Gogarten and the magazine separated between the times . In October 1934, Barth affirmed his unconditional contradiction to Emil Brunner's attempt to balance “nature and grace” (the supposedly natural order in politics as a framework for understanding the grace of Jesus Christ) with his abrupt “No!” .

The DC's defeated heresies were so well known that they were not specifically quoted. Since 1932, the DC asserted that “race, ethnicity and nation” were orders of life given by God, to be preserved as “God's law”, which were also to be protected from the “inefficient and inferior”. The Protestant Church must fight in the “decisive battle over whether our people are at the top or not”. It must be rooted in the people and reject "the spirit of a Christian cosmopolitanism". From 1933 it was said: “The Eternal God” had “created a law of its own” for the German people, which had taken shape in the Führer Adolf Hitler and the Nazi state he formed. "This law speaks to us in the history of our people, which has grown out of blood and soil ." The OT is inferior to the NT and only documents the "overcome" Jewish folk religion. The crucifixion of Jesus made the apostasy of the Jews from God evident to the whole world: "Hence the curse of God weighs on this people to this day." In Hitler, "Christ, God the Helper and Redeemer, has become mighty among us". Hitler or National Socialism is "now the path of the spirit and will of God to the Christ Church of the German nation". The DC-led Volkskirche of Saxony confessed in December 1933: “Because the German Volkskirche respects the race as God's creation, it recognizes the demand to keep the race pure and healthy as God's commandment” and “in the totality claim of the National Socialist state the call of God to family, people and state. "

II

Through God you are in Christ Jesus, who was made for us by God for wisdom and righteousness and for sanctification and redemption. ( 1 Cor 1,30  LUT )
“Just as Jesus Christ is God's promise of the forgiveness of all our sins, so and with the same seriousness he is also God's powerful claim to our whole life; through him we experience joyful liberation from the godless bonds of this world to free, grateful service to his creatures.
We reject false doctrine, as if there were areas of our life in which we were not ours to Jesus Christ but to other masters, areas in which we do not need justification and sanctification through him. "

The opening quotation confirms that Jesus Christ is God's “wisdom” for people, namely according to 1 Cor 1: 1ff. EU the “word of the cross”, which thwarts the wisdom of the mighty and noble and reveals it as folly. The gospel was not defined by human desires, demands and achievements, but rather the gift of life of Jesus Christ crucified for us. This contains everything else: righteousness, sanctification and redemption.

Thesis II translates these terms: God's righteousness is his promise of forgiveness, that is, his right to grace. Precisely because this applies to all, this God lays claim to our whole life, confiscates it completely in order to follow Jesus. That is why redemption means current liberation from all godless ties (to people, race, state, leader ...) for free, grateful service to all creatures, to the life of all. In this way, the thesis concretizes the traditional Lutheran distinction between law and gospel theologically on the cross: Because the gift of life of Jesus Christ fulfilled God's law on behalf of everyone, this gospel takes precedence over the law and qualifies it as a concrete, current, all areas of life command.

The thesis thus contradicted the then common form of the doctrine of the two kingdoms of splitting God's word into two opposing words, giving priority to the killing, judging law, identifying it with existing order structures and identifying them (in the sense of Max Weber ) with a non-standardizable one Attributing autonomy. Especially during the Nazi era, this led to Christian ethics being restricted to smooth submission to state laws and civil, inconsequential private morality, and to denying the church any right to criticize politics. Many Lutheran Christians welcomed the authoritarian, merciless, racist Nazi state as the alleged figure of God's law at work in history and absolved themselves from the outset of responsibility for state injustice.

III

But let us be truthful in love and grow in every part towards Him who is the head, Christ, from whom the whole body is put together. ( Eph 4,15.16  LUT )
“The Christian Church is the community of brothers in which Jesus Christ acts in word and sacrament through the Holy Spirit as the Lord present. With her faith as with her obedience, with her message as with her order in the midst of the world of sin, as the Church of the pardoned sinners, she has to testify that she is only his property, only from his consolation and from his instruction in expectation of him Appearance lives and wants to live.
We reject the wrong doctrine, as if the church were allowed to leave the form of its message and its order to its discretion or to the change of prevailing ideological and political convictions. "

Thesis III follows from thesis I and II: If Jesus Christ is recognized as the one word of God that excludes other masters in the church, then this can only be a community of siblings with equal rights. The phrase “congregation of brothers” included the sisters as was customary at the time. She alluded to Mk 3,32.34  EU and Mt 23,8.10  EU : Those who obey God's will, be brothers, sisters and mother of Jesus; one is their master, they are all "brothers". Eph 4.15f. makes it clear: Because this one head rules all the members of the body, it brings them together precisely in their diversity. According to thesis II, this unifying movement “from above” corresponds to love for one another and growth “from below”. Barth later called this ecclesiology “fraternal Christocracy”.

Thesis III reminded everyone involved in the power struggles in the DEK: The church belongs only to Jesus Christ. A viable agreement is only possible and to be hoped for from him. The phrase "in the middle of the world of sin as the church of pardoned sinners" excluded two astray: the church could withdraw from this world into a supposedly protected sacred space (according to the young reformers) or its shape and message had to meet the demands of this world deliver and adapt (according to the DC).

Especially the external, legal church form is not arbitrary, but has to correspond visibly to Jesus Christ: This was directed against the view, which has become common since Rudolph Sohm , that the true church is invisible and “free from any right”. Its visible form is purely worldly and does not affect its invisible truth. From this, the DC theologian Emanuel Hirsch concluded in 1934: The DEK must "be adapted in its constitution to the state". The centralized Reich Church, ruled by a state-loyal Reich Bishop, is a "political necessity". On the other hand, thesis III did not put forward a formal democracy without contours, but the community of pardoned sinners called to follow suit.

In doing so, she implicitly rejected the exclusion of threatened Jewish Christians that the DC pursued, but also their exclusion from church leadership positions, which the head of the Pastors' Emergency League, Martin Niemöller, had suggested to them as "necessary restraint". For example, the thesis of the Saxon national church that the national community , defined racially by the Nazi state, was decisive for the church: "A member of the national church ... can only be someone who is a national under the law of the state."

IV

Jesus Christ says: You know that the rulers hold down their people and the mighty do them violence. It should not be so among you; but whoever wants to be great among you, let him be your servant. ( Mt 20,25.26  LUT )
“The various offices in the Church do not establish the rule of one over the other, but the exercise of the ministry entrusted and commanded to the whole community.
We reject the false teaching that apart from this service the church can and may be given and allowed to be given special leaders with authority. "

The word of Jesus made the listeners aware of their reality: to rule means to exercise violence, to do violence to the peoples. Rule, which claims to be a service to the people, is a lie. To deny this reality (which was particularly brutal and total in the former Nazi state) is pointless. Precisely for this reason, they cannot and should not determine the fraternal successor community. In doing so, Jesus addresses the desire of his followers to be as “mighty” as the rulers of tyranny, pointing them to their true power: the ability to serve others, to indulge in their need. That is precisely what the rulers cannot do, understanding power as unlimited freedom of action. So Jesus' word also exposes their enslavement. His own example, the self-giving of the Son of Man to slave service, seeks to liberate people towards a coexistence free of domination, which paves the way for the coming liberation from the general slavery of unlimited violence.

In order to make it easier for the synod to accept the BTE, Asmussen emphasized in the accompanying lecture: Jesus did not oppose the right of princes to rule, to possess and exercise violence. In doing so, he justified the elimination of the rule of law carried out by the Nazi regime and ruled out that the church's freedom of rule could be a model for the state. Thus the confession exposed that the confessors themselves did not listen to Jesus Christ.

The reference to "different offices" allowed several forms of church leadership, but no central Reich bishop's office. Leaders endowed with authority are not only inexpedient, but a reprehensible contradiction to biblical testimony. The thesis thus indirectly rejects the leader principle itself, which deprived the led of any responsibility for the actions of their leader (“Leader commands, we follow!”). Because Jesus Christ ruled alone in the church, each church member was equally responsible for the whole community. Only those positions of leadership were in accordance with him, which grant others the "exercise of the service entrusted and commanded to the whole community". This equal rights of “lay people” and “clergy” for the diakonia of the church, their practical charity , became vital in the Nazi state.

V

Fear God, honor the king. ( 1 Petr 2,17  LUT )
“Scripture tells us that the state, according to divine ordinance, has the task of ensuring justice and peace in the not yet redeemed world, in which the church also stands, according to the measure of human understanding and human ability under the threat and exercise of force . The Church, in thanks and in awe of God, recognizes the benefits of this arrangement of his. It reminds of God's kingdom, of God's commandment and justice and thus of the responsibility of those who rule and govern. She trusts and obeys the power of the Word by which God sustains all things.
We reject the false doctrine that the state should and can, beyond its special mandate, become the only and total order of human life and thus also fulfill the purpose of the church. We reject the wrong doctrine that the church should and could, in addition to its special mandate, acquire the state, state tasks and state dignity and thus become an organ of the state itself. "

With the entry "The Scriptures tell us ...", Thesis V claims to justify the following definition of the state task as a whole, and therefore permanently binding. The quote from 1 Petr 2 : 11-17  EU , which here is based on the traditional reference to Rom . 13 : 1ff. EU is preferred, sums up this justification apodictically. The text appeals to a persecuted community to silence the persecutors by living righteously and doing good deeds, in order to remind the respective state officials of their task to punish evil and to honor good. Christians should act towards them as free “servants of God”: “Honor all people, love brothers and sisters, fear God and honor the emperor!” Because God alone is to be feared, the emperor is no different from honoring all people . The fear of God (the first commandment) forbids placing the emperor above other people. The early Christians rejected the imperial cult : one must obey God more than people ( Acts 5:29  EU ).

That is why thesis V speaks of the “divine arrangement” and “task” of the state, by which it is to be measured permanently. It subjects him to Jesus Christ's comprehensive rule, on which he depends, on whom he has to serve, on which he is to be tested. The phrase “in the not yet redeemed world” limits the state as provisional, in need of redemption, that is, not capable of redemption, but limited and overtaken by the coming kingdom of God . This rejects any metaphysical theory of the state that equates the mere existence of “authorities” with God's order, declares state laws as God's command, and even legitimizes the total, unbounded state as divine law, free of any democratic control. Thesis V, on the other hand, makes it clear: Only the rule of law corresponds to the biblical state task that the total state is wrong from the start.

The phrase "according to the measure of human understanding and human ability" affirms that even the best government is always only human, provisional, fallible and must therefore be correctable. The state's monopoly on the use of force is recognized, but the exercise of state power is marked as an exception, not a rule. It has to serve the purpose of the state, namely "law and peace". The reformers had already coined this formula for the task of the state. In doing so, Huldrych Zwingli measured “right” by whether the laws “grant the oppressed legal protection, even if he has no voice”. This biblically anchored protective right of the threatened was meant here. “Peace” also meant more than just non-war, namely a just peace that eliminates the causes of war. For this and only for this the state should have the necessary means of power. Thesis V only emphasized the elementary basic requirements for every state. Because the Nazi state not only broke law and peace, but also tried to destroy them permanently, the thesis indirectly posed the question of how to limit a lawless, disenfranchised state power, to restore law and peace, and what the church could contribute to it.

VI

Jesus Christ says: Behold, I am with you every day until the end of the world. ( Mt 28,20  LUT )
God's word is not bound. ( 2 Tim 2,9  LUT )
“The mission of the church, on which her freedom is based, consists in directing the message of the free grace of God to all people in the stead of Christ and therefore in the service of his own word and work through preaching and sacrament.
We reject the false doctrine that the Church can, in human self-glory, put the word and work of the Lord at the service of any arbitrarily chosen wishes, purposes and plans. "

Effects in the Nazi era

Memorial for the Barmer Declaration

Church politics

The BTE made it clear that the gospel of Jesus Christ itself contradicted the DC teachings so that every evangelical Christian must reject them or part with the DEK. The ecclesiastical consequences of this, however, were already controversial at the Barmen Synod. Hermann Sasse rejected joint confession with the Reformed and Uniate. The Erlangen dogmatics teachers Werner Elert and Paul Althaus , together with other Lutheran theologians, wrote the Ansbach advice on June 11, 1934 , which, like the DC, asserted: God's law obliges Christians “to the natural orders to which we are subject, such as family, people, race (ie blood connection) ”.

The DC used this to proceed against the BK. On August 9, 1934, church commissioner August Jäger deposed the bishops of three intact regional churches with police force. On September 23, 1934, a DC Synod installed Ludwig Müller, who had been elected the previous year, as the new Reich Bishop. That is why the second Synod of Confessions passed on 19/20. October 1934 in Berlin-Dahlem the ecclesiastical emergency law provided for in the DEK constitution and set up the Reichsbruderrat to lead the BK. The synod stated that the church leaders appointed by the state had separated from the only legitimate DEK. No Protestant congregation should work with them any more, everyone should agree on the BTE. Thus the BK completed the legal and organizational separation from the DC church leadership. The BTE thus acted as a basis for resistance against state-appointed organs and their actions.

Thereupon Hitler lifted Jäger's measures, induced him to resign and invited the reinstated bishops to a meeting on October 30, 1934. In doing so, they agreed a provisional church leadership (VKL) under Bishop August Marahrens with the Nazi regime . The latter did not support the BTE and saw the BK as a mere "confessional movement", not as a true DEK. Therefore, Asmussen, Barth, Niemöller and two representatives of the Reformed Church resigned from the fraternal council in November 1934. Its other members agreed with the VKL to repeal the resolutions of the Dahlem Synod. The “Bruderrats” -BK saw this as a departure from the BTE. From then on, the BK remained divided.

In August 1934, Barth wanted to take the leadership oath demanded by all state officials only with the addition "as far as I can answer for it as a Protestant Christian" and was therefore indicted under disciplinary law. The prosecution made it clear that the oath excludes any limitation, since the leader cannot violate God's commandments. The BK, whose pastors had already taken the oath, did not publicly support Barth; the VKL only defended him with internal petitions. When the Nazi regime threatened to crack down on “enemies of the state and traitors” in the BK, Marahrens appeased: The VKL does not tolerate any efforts in the BK that are directed against the Nazi state. One wishes nothing else than "in obedience to the word of God [...] to serve the German people and their leader and to help with the great work of building up". After Barth was banned from speaking, was unloaded by the following Augsburg Confessional Synod and was put into early retirement on June 22, 1935, he moved to Switzerland.

After Austria's annexation in March 1938, almost all DEK church leaderships demanded that their officials take an oath of allegiance to Hitler. Almost all around 18,000 Protestant pastors except about 270 supporters of the BTE took it off. The Old Prussian Union (APU) also recommended in July 1938 that the oath be taken in a slightly modified form. Shortly afterwards, the Nazi regime published an internal circular from Reichsleiter Martin Bormann , stating that the pastoral oath was a purely internal church matter and that the Führer had not asked for it. The BK was completely embarrassed. Barth had advised the BK several times to refuse the oath completely, since it was breaking the first commandment and serving a strange god. The APU left the BTE with its oath recommendation and fell into the trap of the state. After Bormann had exposed the BK, Barth asked the BK representative Heinrich Vogel : “When, oh when, […] God will give you German theologians a little bit of simple political reason in addition to your insufficiently valued profundity and acumen , so that on such occasions, instead of rolling around the Augustana etc., you want to smell [...] in good time, [...] what is going on ”.

On September 30, 1938, the VKL wanted to have a prayer read out at church services because of the Sudeten crisis , which indirectly accused the Nazi regime: "Your name has been slandered in them [the German people], your word has been fought, your truth has been suppressed. Much injustice has been done publicly and in secret… ”When the Western Powers approved the Munich Agreement with Hitler, the prayer was withdrawn. The NSDAP and the church government used this for a campaign against alleged "pests of the people" and "fanatical circles" of the BK who had committed treason. As a result, the “moderate” regional bishops again distanced themselves from the “radical” fraternal councils “for religious and patriotic reasons” and thus deepened the division of the BK.

Conduct to persecution of Jews

The BTE contained no statements about Judaism , no protest against the ongoing persecution of Jews in Germany, no no to anti-Semitism , no turning away from Christian anti-Judaism and no obligation to stand up for the human rights of threatened minorities. All of this was alien to the largely German national BK delegates. Although the threatened exclusion of Jewish Christians from the DEK had triggered the church struggle, the BTE did not deal with either internal church Aryan paragraphs or the state Jewish policy: on the one hand, because it was primarily a matter of fending off attempts to harmonize the DC, and on the other hand, because the vast majority of BK members belong to the NS Affirmed the state and rejected any church interference in its politics.

In June 1933, Barth had in his highly acclaimed essay Theological Existence Today ! the theological defense against false doctrines given priority over any direct political statement on the Nazi state and emphasized: Only Christian baptism decides on church membership, not “blood and race”. To make this a condition is heresy. Any discrimination or the exclusion of baptized Jews from the Church would be tantamount to their self-abandonment. Accordingly, his Barmer Declaration of January 1934 denied "restricting membership and qualifications for service in it [the Church] to members of a particular race."

The Bethel Confession of August 1933 devoted a chapter to the “ Jewish question ” and designated the anti-Semitic state as the new, enslaved Pharaoh . The pastors' emergency association was founded in September 1933 against the "Aryan paragraph" of the APU, declared it a status confessionis and obliged its members to show practical solidarity with "non-Aryans" (baptized and non-baptized Jews). Barth immediately affirmed these principles, but at the same time wrote to Dietrich Bonhoeffer (September 11, 1933): Perhaps the DC's heresy "should give way to other and worse deviations and falsifications", so that "the collision occurs at an even more central point ". Bonhoeffer's friend Franz Hildebrandt , who as the baptized son of a Jewish mother was affected by the APU exclusion, saw a different interest in this.

But Barth did not overlook the persecution of the Jews. In November 1933 he objected to German national theologians such as Siegfried Knak and Walter Künneth , who interpreted the “German Revolution” as a call from God ( Kairos ): They thereby demanded an affirmation of the Nazi state and its claim to totality. However, the current situation of the church also poses completely different questions: What does it say about the concentration camps , about the treatment of the Jews, about everything that is being done in the name of eugenics ? Precisely because God's command is currently valid, Christians should not confuse it with their positive judgment about the Nazi state. Barth believed, however, that by excluding other sources of revelation (thesis I), he hit the central point of the DC heresy and thus most likely to protect the Jewish Christians in the DEK. In his review of the Church Opposition in 1933 , he emphasized that the protest against the DC could not only begin with the Aryan paragraphs and other things, but had to be directed against the roots of all DC heresy: that they the German people, its history and present "as one claim the second source of revelation and thus reveal oneself as the believers of an 'other God' ”. Barth understood the Aryan paragraph as a consequence of this basic theological damage, which made the entire DEK helpless in the face of the DC attacks. Only the strict rejection of all other gods could free the DEK from any need to adapt and enable it to confidently testify to Jesus Christ against the DC and NS ideology.

In December 1933, Barth gave a four-part sermon on this, which he sent to Hitler:

  1. Jesus Christ was a Jew, so that non-Jews had no “appropriate”, natural access to this God.
  2. God chose the Jews and made a covenant with them, not because they were better people, but out of free grace. Anyone who stands up against the Jews therefore defends himself against God's free grace.
  3. According to Jn 4:22  EU, salvation comes from the Jews because they treated Jesus as all peoples had done, and yet God remained loyal to them. In this way, Jews would have given non-Jews access to the gracious God.
  4. That is why Jesus' command to Jews and non-Jews is inexorable: “Accept one another.” A Christian should therefore “ simply not go along with the disregard and abuse of the Jews that is the order of the day today ”.

The sermon, which many Barmer delegates were familiar with, unfolded the fundamental yes to Judaism that Thesis I contained without saying it.

Until May 1934, however, the defense against “Gleichschaltung” in the emerging BK took precedence over the defense against the Aryan paragraph. In the BK membership card, the pastors' emergency association's voluntary commitment to stand up for “non-Aryans” was omitted.

After his expulsion from Germany (June 1935), Barth wrote repeatedly that the BK had “indeed fought fairly seriously for the freedom and purity of its preaching, but it has, for example, to the action against the Jews, to the astonishing treatment of political opponents the oppression in the press of the new Germany and so much else, to which the Old Testament prophets would certainly have spoken, remained silent ”; This also applies to the power methods of the Nazi regime, the “almost total suppression of the law” and the concentration camps. The reason for this is the belief of most of the BK members in Hitler and a lack of objective information about Nazi injustice. They therefore needed time to break away from the Nazi ideology. The BK first had to be clear about its own identity and task. This should not be neglected: in doing so, she opposed the Nazi state on one point. This is the only opposition he has encountered in Germany so far. However, the BK should at least have commented on the concentration camps and the murders of June 30, 1934 (the " Röhm Putsch "). Their danger does not consist in “perishing in politics, but in the fear of drawing the necessary political consequences”.

Since the Jewish boycott in 1933, the Jewish Christian Elisabeth Schmitz had urged leading representatives of the future BK to stand up for persecuted Jews and to make this a confessional duty of Protestant communities. In February 1934 she proposed to Karl Barth an "immediate program" for the BK: Pastors had to publicly protect persecuted community members, Catholic, Protestant and Jewish Christians had to establish contact with one another, the church had to take care of the concentration camp prisoners and humanity in general remind. She repeatedly called on the BK to take a public word against racist exclusion, which she experienced daily among her own circle of friends; but in vain. As one of the few BK members, she criticized the widespread anti-Judaist escape theory, which accused all Jews of collective guilt for Jesus' death on the cross, and denied the Christians any right to serve the Jews in view of their failure towards the persecuted Jews . In the summer of 1935 she wrote the memorandum “On the Situation of German Non-Aryans”, which described the National Socialist propaganda , the persecution of Jews since 1933 and the BK's silence on this with many everyday examples and warned of the coming extermination of the Jews. In September 1935, shortly before the Nuremberg Laws were passed , it forwarded the memorandum to the third BK Synod in Berlin-Steglitz . However, this did not deal with the explosive topic.

After the confessional synod in Bad Oeynhausen (February 1936), the new BK leadership sent a memorandum to Hitler, thanking him for the victory over " Bolshevism " through the "revolution" of 1933, complaining about attacks by high NSDAP representatives and parts of the NS -Ideology contradicted: There "blood, ethnicity, race and honor were given the rank of eternal values". The evangelical Christian must refuse because of the first commandment. Against the glorification of “ Aryan man ”, God's word testifies to the sinfulness of all men. Against the anti-Semitism of the NS worldview, "which obliges to hate Jews", stands the commandment to love one's neighbor. Violation of the law, concentration camps and Gestapo arbitrariness continued. An anti-Christian spirit threatens to rule, the people make themselves the standard of all things, the leader is increasingly deified. The swearing in of children in the Hitler Youth on the Fiihrer's birthday is "unbearable". The Reichstag election in March 1936 had been manipulated.

After foreign newspapers published the memorandum against the wishes of the BK management, Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick had hundreds of BK pastors arrested. The BK management then had a pulpit notice printed in the millions and read out on 23 August 1936. This mentioned anti-Semitism, persecution of the Jews, concentration camps, Gestapo and Führer cult no longer, but admonished all Christians to "obey the authorities, unless they ask what is against God's command"; Christians must "resist when it is asked of them what is contrary to the gospel". Since the vast majority of Germans supported the dictatorship of the Fiihrer at the time and this threatened the life and limb of the BK pastors, the warning is considered a relatively courageous consequence of the BTE, despite the lack of specificity. The Nazi regime therefore accused the Jewish Christian Friedrich Weißler of having launched the memorandum abroad. Although there was no evidence, Weissler was imprisoned in Sachsenhausen concentration camp and murdered there on February 19, 1937.

The BK never publicly addressed anti-Semitism during the Nazi era. No Protestant church leadership protested against the November pogroms in 1938 . Only individual bishops wrote (mostly tactical and submissive) letters of warning and protest to government agencies, around 1940 against the “planned extermination of the mentally ill” ( Action T4 ) and in 1943 against the “systematic murder of Jews and Poles” (the Holocaust ). With reference to the BTE, the “Munich lay letter” of Lutheran Christians at Easter 1943 demanded that the BK must “resist the state to the utmost” in its attempt to “destroy Judaism”. It must remind the state of its task of “fair justice” and “the respect of certain 'fundamental rights' of its subjects”. In October 1943, the Prussian Confessional Synod warned the Nazi regime that its God-given office did not allow the extermination of people just because they were related to criminals, old, mentally ill or of another race. Words like “eradicate”, “liquidate” and “worthless life” are unknown to the biblical state mandate.

In 1967 Barth confessed to the Bonhoeffer biographer Eberhard Bethge that he had long felt it was personal guilt that he had not fought publicly in 1934 for a text on the subject of Israel Judaism, although it would not have been accepted in Barmen at the time. According to Bethge, the formulation The Jew Jesus and Christ of the Gentiles is the one word of God ... could have brought about a stronger advocacy of the BK for the persecuted Jews.

Political Resistance

The Barmer Synod did not understand the BTE as a contradiction or even a call to resistance against National Socialism. Most of their delegates were supporters of Hitler and the co-ruling DNVP or other nationalist parties, some of them the NSDAP. Like the later so-called Conservative Revolution, they affirmed authoritarian state models, venerated the still incumbent Reich President Paul von Hindenburg and expected the Reichswehr , who was obedient to him, to curb the SA's potential for violence and Hitler would protect the Protestant Church in accordance with his promises in spring 1933. The Nazi regime was still dependent on the support of the bourgeois-conservative elite. Accordingly, Asmussen emphasized in the accompanying lecture that the BTE was only intended within the church, not as a protest against the Nazi state: “When we protest, we are not protesting as members of the people against the recent history of the people, not as citizens against the new state, not as Subjects against the authorities, but we protest against the same phenomenon that has been slowly preparing the devastation of the Church for more than 200 years. "

The fact that the BTE was silent about the previous breaches of law, mass murders and mistreatment of communists, social democrats and Jews reflected the approval of the Protestant churches. Thesis V contained only a general warning from the state to “law and peace” in accordance with the anti-democratic mentality of the delegates. Nonetheless, theses I and II proclaimed the universal rule of Jesus Christ, who confiscated the whole life of Christians, also in the political field, and thus contradicted the ideology and the claim to totality of the Nazi regime. From this, individual BK Christians deduced a Christian right of resistance against the Hitler dictatorship. Above all, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Friedrich Justus Perels took part in conspiratorial activities from 1936 onwards. The BTE did not necessarily lead to this, and not collectively, but it did facilitate and legitimize this step in political resistance for individuals.

Reception from 1945

Germany

Martin Niemöller later described his guilt and that of the church with the words: "We have not yet felt obliged to say anything for people outside the church ... we were not yet so far that we knew we were responsible for our people."

In 1976 he summarized what happened during the National Socialism as follows:

“When the Nazis brought the Communists in, I was silent; I wasn't a communist.
When they locked up the Social Democrats, I was silent; I wasn't a social democrat.
When they called the unionists, I was silent; I wasn't a trade unionist.
When they got me, there was no one left to protest. "

Additional information

See also

swell

  • Günther van Norden (ed.): We reject the wrong doctrine. Working and reading book for the Barmer Theological Declaration. Jugenddienst-Verlag, Wuppertal-Barmen 1984, ISBN 3-7795-7388-1 .
  • Karl Immer (Ed.): Confession Synod of the German Evangelical Church Barmen 1934. Lectures and resolutions. Commission publisher Emil Müller, Wuppertal-Barmen 1934.

literature

  • Magdalene L. Frettlöh, Frank Mathwig, Matthias Zeindler (eds.): 'God's powerful claim': The Barmer Theological Declaration as a reformed key text. Theological Publishing House, Zurich 2018, ISBN 3290177882
  • Thomas Martin Schneider: Who Owns Barmen? The founding document of the Confessing Church and its effects. Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, Leipzig 2017, ISBN 978-3-374-05034-5 .
  • Hanna Reichel: Theology as Confession: Karl Barth's contextual reading of the Heidelberg Catechism. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2015, ISBN 9783525564462
  • Günther van Norden: The Barmer Theological Declaration and its historical place in the history of the resistance. In: Peter Steinbach, Johannes Tuchel, Ute Stiepani, Petra Behrens: Resistance against National Socialism. German Resistance Memorial Center Foundation, Berlin 2014, ISBN 3926082607 , pp. 170–181
  • Petra Bahr , Martin Dutzmann , Heino Falcke , Johanna Haberer , Wolfgang Huber , Margot Käßmann , Michael Welker : Justified freedom. The topicality of the Barmen Theological Declaration. Neukirchener Verlag, Neukirchen-Vluyn 2009, ISBN 978-3-7887-2388-0 .
  • Martin Heimbucher, Rudolf Weth (Ed.): The Barmer Theological Declaration: Introduction and Documentation. Seventh expanded edition, Neukirchener Verlag, Neukirchen-Vluyn 2009, ISBN 3788723696
  • Hermann-Peter Eberlein: Wi (e) the "Barmen". A settlement on the occasion of the seventieth anniversary of the adoption of the Barmer Theological Declaration. In: Monthly Issues for Evangelical Church History of the Rhineland, Volume 54, 2005, pp. 315–329.
  • Eberhard Busch : The Barmer Theses. 1934-2004. Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, Göttingen 2004, ISBN 3-525-56332-9 .
  • Wolf-Dieter Hauschild: To research the Barmer Theological Declaration of 1934. In: Wolf-Dieter Hauschild (Hrsg.): Conflict Community Church. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2004, ISBN 352555740X , pp. 141–179
  • Martin Honecker: The Barmer Theological Declaration and its history of effects. Springer VS, Wiesbaden 1995, ISBN 978-3-663-01792-9 .
  • Wilhelm Hüffmeier (Ed.): The one word of God - message for all. Barmen I and VI, Volume 2. Vote of the Theological Committee of the Evangelical Church of the Union. Gütersloher Verlagshaus, Gütersloh 1993, ISBN 3579019678
  • Hans-Ulrich Stephan (Ed.): The one word for everyone. Barmen 1934-1984. A documentation. Neukirchener Verlag, Neukirchen-Vluyn 1986, ISBN 3-7887-0784-4 .
  • Rolf Ahlers: The Barmen Theological Declaration of 1934: The Archeology of a Confessional Text. Edwin Mellen Press, Toronto 1986, ISBN 088946975X
  • Wolf Krötke: Confess, proclaim, live: Barmer Theological Declaration and Congregational Practice . Calwer, 1986, ISBN 3766807390
  • Carsten Nicolaisen : The way to Barmen. The history of the development of the Theological Declaration from 1934. Neukirchener Verlag, Neukirchen-Vluyn 1985, ISBN 3-7887-0743-7 .
  • Wilhelm Hüffmeier , Martin Stöhr (Ed.): Barmer Theological Declaration 1934–1984: History - Effect - Deficits. Lectures at the Barmen Symposium in Arnoldshain, April 9-11, 1983. Luther-Verlag, Bielefeld 1984, ISBN 3-7858-0287-0 .
  • Martin Rohkrämer (Ed.): Karl Barth: Texts for the Barmer Theological Declaration. Theological Publishing House, Zurich 1984/1992 , ISBN 3290115496
  • Ernst Wolf : Barmen. Church between temptation and grace. 3rd unchanged edition, Christian Kaiser, Munich 1984, ISBN 3-459-01559-4 .
  • Manfred Karnetzki (ed.): A call forwards. An interpretation of Barmen's Theological Declaration 30 years later. In: Theological Existence Today, New Series No. 115, Christian Kaiser, Munich 1964.

Web links

Commons : Barmer Theological Declaration  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ger van Roon: Contemporary and church-historical context of the Barmer Theological Declaration. In: Wilhelm Hüffmeier, Martin Stöhr (ed.): Barmer Theological Declaration 1934–1984: History - Effect - Deficits. Bielefeld 1984, p. 33f.
  2. ↑ Joachim Beckmann: The way to the confessional synod of the German Evangelical Church in Barmen 1934. In: Martin Heimbucher, Rudolf Weth (ed.): The Barmer Theological Declaration , Neukirchen-Vluyn 2009, pp. 12-22.
  3. ↑ Georg Plasger, Matthias Freudenberg (ed.): Reformed confessional writings: a selection from the beginnings to the present. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2004, ISBN 3525567022 , pp. 230-238
  4. ↑ Eberhard Busch: The Barmer Theses. 1934-2004. Göttingen 2004, p. 8
  5. ^ Carsten Nicolaisen: On the history of the origin of the Barmer Theological Declaration. In: Martin Heimbucher, Rudolf Weth (eds.): The Barmer Theological Declaration , Neukirchen-Vluyn 2009, pp. 23-29.
  6. ↑ Martin Heimbucher, Rudolf Weth: The resolution on the Theological Declaration of Barmen. In: Martin Heimbucher, Rudolf Weth (Hrsg.): The Barmer Theological Declaration , Neukirchen-Vluyn 2009, pp. 30–36.
  7. ↑ Eberhard Busch: Die Barmer Thesen 1934-2004 , Göttingen 2004, p. 27.
  8. ^ Karl Barth: Brief explanation of the Barmer Theological Declaration. In: Martin Rohkrämer (Ed.): Karl Barth: Texts on the Barmer Theological Declaration. Zurich 1984, pp. 9-24, here pp. 18f.
  9. ↑ Eberhard Busch (Ed.): Karl Barth: Briefe des Jahres 1933. Theologischer Verlag, Zurich 2004, ISBN 3290173186 , S. 608.
    Christiane Tietz: Karl Barth: A life in contradiction. Beck, Munich 2018, p. 221f.
  10. ↑ Eberhard Busch: Die Barmer Thesen 1934-2004 , Göttingen 2004, pp. 29–31.
  11. ↑ Eberhard Busch: Die Barmer Thesen 1934-2004 , Göttingen 2004, pp. 31–34.
  12. ^ Daniel Cornu: Karl Barth and politics. Aussaat Verlag, Wuppertal 1969, p. 29f.
  13. ↑ Frank Jehle: Barth and Brunner , in: Michael Beintker: Barth-Handbuch , Tübingen 2016, p. 93.
  14. ↑ Martin Heimbucher, Rudolf Weth: The resolution on the Theological Declaration of Barmen. In: Heimbucher / Weth (Hrsg.): The Barmer Theological Declaration , Neukirchen-Vluyn 2009, pp. 37–39.
  15. ^ Christiane Tietz: Karl Barth: A life in contradiction. Munich 2018, p. 280.
  16. ↑ Eberhard Busch: The Barmer Theses. 1934-2004. Göttingen 2004, pp. 39–43.
  17. ↑ Eberhard Busch: The Barmer Theses. 1934-2004. Göttingen 2004, pp. 50-55.
  18. ↑ Wolf-Dieter Hauschild: The Confession Synod of Barmen. In: Wolf-Dieter Hauschild (Ed.): Conflict Community Church. Göttingen 2004, pp. 180–198, here p. 197
  19. ↑ Eberhard Busch: Die Barmer Thesen 1934-2004 , Göttingen 2004, pp. 60–62.
  20. ↑ Eberhard Busch: The Barmer Theses. 1934-2004. Göttingen 2004, pp. 62-68.
  21. ↑ Eberhard Busch: The Barmer Theses. 1934-2004. Göttingen 2004, p. 72f.
  22. ↑ Eberhard Busch: Die Barmer Thesen 1934-2004 , Göttingen 2004, pp. 70–76.
  23. ^ Christiane Tietz: Karl Barth: A life in contradiction. Beck, Munich 2018, pp. 252–256.
  24. ↑ Heinrich Rusterholz: "... as if our neighbour's house was not on fire": Paul Vogt, Karl Barth and the Swiss Evangelical Aid for the Confessing Church in Germany 1937-1947. Theologischer Verlag, Zurich 2015, ISBN 3290177122 , pp. 670–677 ; Daniel Cornu: Karl Barth and politics. Wuppertal 1969, p. 39.
  25. ^ Christiane Tietz: Karl Barth: A life in contradiction. Beck, Munich 2018, pp. 257-259.
  26. ^ Christiane Tietz: Karl Barth: A life in contradiction. Munich 2018, pp. 259–271.
  27. ^ Günther van Norden: The Barmer Theological Declaration and its historical place in the history of the resistance. In: Steinbach / Tuchel, Resistance , Bonn 1994, p. 176.
  28. ^ Christiane Tietz: Karl Barth: A life in contradiction. Munich 2018, pp. 283–285.
  29. ^ Günther van Norden: The Barmer Theological Declaration and its historical place in the history of the resistance. In: Steinbach / Tuchel, Resistance , Bonn 1994, p. 177.
  30. ↑ Eberhard Bethge: Christological Confession and Anti-Judaism - on the deficit of Barmen I. In: Wilhelm Hüffmeier, Martin Stöhr (Ed.): Barmer Theological Declaration 1934–1984 , Bielefeld 1984, pp. 51–55.
  31. ↑ Wolf-Dieter Hauschild: The Confession Synod of Barmen. In: Wolf-Dieter Hauschild (Ed.): Conflict Community Church. Göttingen 2004, p. 197
  32. ↑ Eberhard Bethge: Christological Confession and Anti-Judaism - on the deficit of Barmen I. In: Wilhelm Hüffmeier, Martin Stöhr (Ed.): Barmer Theological Declaration 1934–1984 , Bielefeld 1984, pp. 48–51.
  33. ↑ Hans Prolingheuter: The case of Karl Barth. Chronograph of an expulsion 1934–1935. Neukirchener Verlag, Neukirchen-Vluyn 1984, p. 239.
  34. ↑ Eberhard Busch: The Barmer Theses. 1934-2004. Göttingen 2004, p. 34f.
  35. ↑ Eberhard Bethge: Christological Confession and Anti-Judaism - on the deficit of Barmen I. In: Wilhelm Hüffmeier, Martin Stöhr (ed.): Barmer Theological Declaration 1934–1984 , Bielefeld 1984, p. 51.
  36. ^ Daniel Cornu: Karl Barth and politics. Wuppertal 1969, pp. 52-54.
  37. ↑ Manfred Gailus, Clemens Vollnhals: With heart and mind - Protestant women in the resistance against the Nazi racial policy. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2013, ISBN 3847101730 , pp. 84–90
  38. ↑ Manfred Gailus: Friedrich Weißler: 'A lawyer and confessing Christian in the resistance against Hitler. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2017, ISBN 352530109X , pp. 138-140
  39. ↑ Martin Greschat: Between contradiction and resistance. Texts on the memorandum of the Confessing Church to Hitler (1936). Christian Kaiser, Munich 1987, ISBN 3459017082 , p. 194 and fn. 20.
  40. ^ Daniel Cornu: Karl Barth and politics. Wuppertal 1969, p. 46.
  41. ↑ Eberhard Bethge: Christological Confession and Anti-Judaism - on the deficit of Barmen I. In: Wilhelm Hüffmeier, Martin Stöhr (ed.): Barmer Theological Declaration 1934–1984 , Bielefeld 1984, p. 52.
  42. ^ Günther van Norden: The Barmer Theological Declaration and its historical place in the history of the resistance. In: Steinbach / Tuchel, Resistance , Bonn 1994, pp. 175–179.
  43. ↑ Eberhard Bethge: Christological Confession and Anti-Judaism - on the deficit of Barmen I. In: Wilhelm Hüffmeier, Martin Stöhr (ed.): Barmer Theological Declaration 1934–1984 , Bielefeld 1984, pp. 47 and 60.
  44. ↑ Wolf-Dieter Hauschild: The Barmer Theological Declaration. In: Wolf-Dieter Hauschild (Ed.): Conflict Community Church. Göttingen 2004, pp. 141–296, here p. 155
  45. ^ Günther van Norden: The Barmer Theological Declaration and its historical place in the history of the resistance. In: Steinbach / Tuchel, Resistance , Bonn 1994, p. 172.
  46. ^ Günther van Norden: Between Confession and Adaptation: Essays on the Church Struggle in Rhenish Parishes, in Church and Society. Rheinland-Verlag, 1985, ISBN 3792708833 , p. 108.
  47. ^ Günther van Norden: The Barmer Theological Declaration and its historical place in the history of the resistance. In: Steinbach / Tuchel, Resistance , Bonn 1994, pp. 174 and 180f.
  48. ↑ a b Quoted from: Martin Stöhr: “… I kept silent” - On the question of anti-Semitism in Martin Niemöller . In: martin-niemoeller-stiftung.de , October 10, 2011. Retrieved July 18, 2017.