German Evangelical Church

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The German Evangelical Church (DEK) was from 1933 to 1945 an association of the initially 30 German Protestant regional churches during the National Socialist era . As a corporation under public law , it replaced the German Evangelical Church Federation .

history

For centuries, the summepiskopat , the formula “throne and altar”, an overemphasis on obedience to the state, had shaped the political stance in German national Protestant circles. While the Catholic Church was able to maintain its inner unity through the Reich Concordat, the German Christians tended to convert the Evangelical Church into a propaganda department of the National Socialists.

Law to secure the German Evangelical Church of September 24, 1935

Although unification efforts had been going on for several years, the German Evangelical Church was not founded until July 1933. The German Evangelical Church Federation from 1922 was merged into the DEK at a time when the German Christians held many church leaderships in the regional churches. In the elections for the first Reich Synod, the National Socialists exerted great influence through their clear partisanship in favor of their candidate for the office of Reich Bishop , Ludwig Müller . He was a staunch National Socialist and an unconditional supporter of Hitler . A contemporary witness reports that when Müller was inaugurated in Wittenberg, around half of the pastors present wore SA uniform.

After he took office, on December 20, 1933, Müller incorporated the Protestant youth associations that had merged into the Evangelical Youth Office of Germany into the Hitler Youth without consulting their leaders and against their declared will . Müller's amalgamation with National Socialist ideas quickly met with resistance. He tried to stifle the discussion that flared up in the DEK with a " muzzle decree " and many disciplinary measures. But the complaints about him increased, so that on January 25, 1934, there was a meeting of the Protestant church leaders with Hitler. In doing so, they ultimately declared their loyalty to the state; Müller's fall did not materialize. Then he began to reorganize the other regional churches.

Resistance to the amalgamation of Christian doctrine with National Socialist ideas in the DEK remained low: the "professing communities" only formed in individual communities in the Reich; by Martin Niemoller , the formed Pastors , but included only about 7,000 members. The DEK ultimately split up into several groups that existed side by side in an unclear legal situation:

  • the already restructured "dioceses " led by "German Christians" who saw themselves as part of the unified church,
  • the "intact churches" (Hanover, Bavaria, Württemberg and Westphalia), which remained in the unity church but rejected Müller as a leader,
  • the "destroyed churches" , whose "professing congregations" refused to accept the unity church,
  • the “ Confessing Church ” (BK), which saw itself as a “true” Protestant church and acted on the basis of the Dahlem emergency law .

The influence of Reich Bishop Müller sank due to the ongoing disputes within the DEK, which led to the appointment of the Minister for Church Affairs, Hanns Kerrl, on July 16, 1935 by a " Führer Decree ". A law of September 24, 1935 was intended to "secure" the unity of the DEK and served to legitimize numerous ordinances over the next few years. A newly established "Reich Church Committee" (RKA) under Wilhelm Zoellner took over the management of the DEK instead of Müller and therefore received increasing support in the following year from the intact regional churches as well as some BK brother councils . When the RKA condemned “heresy” of the Thuringian German Christians in the summer of 1936, the Reich Ministry began to massively obstruct the committees because they allegedly preferred the Confessing Church. Any exercise of ecclesiastical authority by the Confessing Church was prohibited. With the resignation of the RKA in February 1937 and the arrest of leading representatives of the BK such as Martin Niemöller u. a. In 1937 the regime ultimately decided the dispute for itself. The head of the German Evangelical Church Chancellery took over the management of the German Evangelical Church; From now on the DEK no longer played an independent role in the church struggle. Kerrl's importance also quickly declined, at times he was no longer even allowed to see Hitler. After the beginning of World War II , Reich Bishop Müller sought personal support from Hitler in vain in order to regain more influence in the church. Kerrl's successor, who died in 1941, was his State Secretary Hermann Muhs , who held the post of ministerial post until the end of the war.

The German Christians pursued National Socialist propaganda with high-circulation combat magazines such as the Gospel in the Third Reich and the Christian Cross and Swastika . Before 1933, the Protestant press had worked largely independently of instructions from church official institutions. The Evangelical Press Association for Germany was an independent association and financially independent. On June 24, 1933, the EPD was occupied by the SA and its leadership was removed by activists of the German Christians. The freedom of the press was eliminated, and the end of the press associations was looming.

The publication organ of the regional churches, which were newly merged in 1922, was a journal founded in 1924 by the predecessor organization of the German Evangelical Church Federation. It was entitled The Evangelical Germany. Kirchliche Rundschau for the entire area of ​​the German Evangelical Church Federation and was published until March 1945.

The DEK was replaced in August 1945 by the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD).

Member churches

When it was founded in 1933, the German Evangelical Church consisted of the 30 regional churches taken over from the German Evangelical Church Federation. At the end of 1933 the three regional churches in South Hesse were merged to form the Evangelical Church of Nassau-Hessen , in 1934 the two North Hessian regional churches were also merged into the Evangelical Church of Kurhessen-Waldeck and the two regional churches in Mecklenburg became the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Mecklenburg . In addition, two smaller independent churches were attached to the respective regional church. At the end of 1934 the German Evangelical Church only consisted of 23 regional churches.

  1. Evangelical Church of Anhalt (uniert)
  2. United Evangelical Protestant Church in Baden
  3. Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria on the right of the Rhine
  4. Evangelical Reformed Church in Bavaria
  5. Evangelical regional church in the Oldenburg region of Birkenfeld (uniert), was merged into the Evangelical Church of the Old Prussian Union in 1934
  6. Braunschweig Evangelical Lutheran regional church
  7. Bremen Evangelical Church (united)
  8. Evangelical Church in Frankfurt am Main (uniert), from the end of 1933 part of the new Evangelical Church in Nassau-Hessen
  9. Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Hamburg state
  10. Evangelical Lutheran Regional Church of Hanover
  11. Evangelical Reformed Church of the Province of Hanover
  12. Evangelical Church in Hesse (uniert), from the end of 1933 part of the new Evangelical Church in Nassau-Hessen
  13. Evangelical Church in Hessen-Kassel (uniert), from 1934 part of the new Evangelical Church of Kurhessen-Waldeck
  14. Lippe regional church (reformed)
  15. Evangelical Lutheran Church in Lübeck State , from 1937: Evangelical Lutheran Church in Lübeck
  16. Evangelical Lutheran regional church of the Oldenburg part of Lübeck
  17. Evangelical Lutheran Church of Mecklenburg-Schwerin , part of the new Evangelical Lutheran Regional Church of Mecklenburg from 1934
  18. Evangelical Lutheran Church of Mecklenburg-Strelitz , part of the new Evangelical Lutheran Regional Church of Mecklenburg from 1934
  19. Evangelical Church in Nassau (uniert), from the end of 1933 part of the new Evangelical Church in Nassau-Hessen
  20. Lower Saxony Confederation (reformed)
  21. Evangelical Lutheran Church in Oldenburg
  22. United Protestant-Evangelical-Christian Church of the Palatinate (Palatinate State Church) (uniert)
  23. Evangelical Church of the Old Prussian Union
  24. Evangelical Lutheran Church in Reuss older line , was incorporated into the Thuringian Evangelical Church in 1934
  25. Evangelical Lutheran regional church of the Free State of Saxony
  26. Evangelical Lutheran Regional Church Schaumburg-Lippe
  27. Evangelical Lutheran Regional Church of Schleswig-Holstein
  28. Thuringian Evangelical Church (Lutheran)
  29. Evangelical Church in Waldeck (uniert), from 1934 part of the new Evangelical Church of Kurhessen-Waldeck
  30. Evangelical Church in Württemberg (Lutheran)

The individual churches are marked as Lutheran, Reformed or Union, as far as the name at the time is not evident.

Imperial Bishops

  • Friedrich von Bodelschwingh , Reich Bishop-designate until June 24, 1933, did not take up office because of the church political disputes in the spring and summer of 1933.
  • Ludwig Müller , Reich Bishop from September 27, 1933, in office until 1945

literature

  • Heinz Boberach , Siegfried Hermle, Carsten Nicolaisen , Ruth Pabst: Handbook of the German Protestant Churches, 1918 to 1949, Volume 1: Supraregional institutions. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2010, ISBN 978-3-525-55784-6 .
  • Karl-Heinrich Melzer: The Spiritual Trust Council - Spiritual Leadership for the German Evangelical Church in World War II? Göttingen 1991, ISBN 3-525-55717-5 .
  • Holger Weitenhagen: Evangelical and German. Heinz Dungs and the press policy of the German Christians (= series of publications of the Association for Rhenish Church History, 146). 2001, ISBN 3-7927-1837-5 .
  • Wolfgang Gerlach: When the witnesses were silent. Confessing Church and the Jews (= Studies on Church and Israel, Volume 10). 2nd Edition. Inst. Church and Judaism, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-923095-69-4 .
  • Olaf Blaschke: The churches and National Socialism. Reclams Universal Library, Stuttgart 2014, ISBN 978-3-15-019211-5 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Walter Conrad: Church fight. Berlin 1947, p. 10.
  2. ^ Walter Conrad: Church fight. Berlin 1947, pp. 16, 17.
  3. ^ Walter Conrad: Church fight. Berlin 1947, pp. 34,35
  4. ^ German Historical Museum - Confessing Church. Retrieved November 20, 2013 .
  5. ^ Roland Rosenstock: Evangelical press in the 20th century. Stuttgart / Zurich 2002, ISBN 3-7831-2052-7 , p. 87.
  6. ^ Roland Rosenstock: Evangelical press in the 20th century. Stuttgart / Zurich 2002, ISBN 3-7831-2052-7 , p. 96.
  7. ^ Roland Rosenstock: Evangelical press in the 20th century. Stuttgart / Zurich 2002, ISBN 3-7831-2052-7 , p. 73.
  8. ^ Karl-Heinz Fix: The Protocols of the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany, Volume 3: 1949. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2006, ISBN 3-525-55762-0 , p. 280.
  9. ↑ Karl-Heinrich Melzer: The Spiritual Trust Council - Spiritual Leadership for the German Evangelical Church in World War II? Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1991, ISBN 3-525-55717-5 , p. 228.

Web links

See also