Believing in God

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Faithfulness in God was used to designate a "religious affiliation" in the time of National Socialism . This was introduced by decree of the Reich Ministry of the Interior of November 26, 1936 on the registration and personal forms of the residents' registration offices as well as in personal papers for people who left a church instead of the designations "dissident" and "non-denominational". Those who had turned away from the recognized religious communities but were not devoid of faith were considered to be believers in God . The introduction of the term was the "attempt to create a religious identification formula for National Socialists beyond the churches and other religious communities". The epithet was regarded as "evidence of particular ideological proximity to National Socialism ".

On the history of the term in National Socialism

On the positive German belief in God (1939)

After the " seizure of power " there were numerous church entries in Germany, the tide turned in 1936 due to the hardening of the fronts in the church struggle. At the spiritual center of this movement to leave the church were the writings of the party ideologist Alfred Rosenberg and those of Erich and Mathilde Ludendorff that were critical of the church . The word “believing in God” described a person with great ideological proximity to National Socialism.

The epithet “believers in God” was used alongside “members of a religious community or ideological community” and “godless” instead of the terms “dissident” or “non-denominational” and was defined according to the Philosophical Dictionary of 1943 as the “official designation for those who adopt a piety appropriate to their species and to profess morality without being bound by denomination and church, but on the other hand rejecting religious and godlessness ”.

Since membership of a religious community as well as “free-thinking” was not considered to promote a career under National Socialism, the official designation “believing in God” offered a way out for non-denominational National Socialists in order to document that one did not automatically become “unbeliever” when leaving the church. Freethinking was fiercely fought. The freethinkers' associations were banned, their assets were confiscated and high officials were thrown in prison.

Forms and spread of belief in God

Denominations in Germany at the census May 17, 1939 .
  • Protestant or Catholic church members (94.5%)
  • Believer in God (3.5%)
  • Jews (0.4%)
  • Other religions (0.1%)
  • Non-religious ( unbelieving ) (1.5%)

    • The National Socialist rulers were mostly critical and hostile to Christian beliefs. However, only Rosenberg - as the only Nazi politician in the first guard - left the church on November 15, 1933, after taking power .

    However, the power of the church through the firm anchoring of the Christian faith in large sections of the population could not be ignored. In relation to the number of members, the Christian churches during the Nazi era were at the beginning and the end at almost 95 percent. At the 1939 census , around 3.5 percent of the remaining 5 percent said they believed in God and around 1.5 percent said they were not believing. The remaining group of around 0.1 percent (86,423 people) included people who were “members of a church, religious society or religious and ideological community”. This again included the " German-Believing Movement ".

    Numerous National Socialists left the church and described themselves as believers in God. For example, three quarters of the members of the Greater German Reichstag from 1943 no longer belonged to any Christian church. In the SS and also in certain parts of Berlin, where many ministerial officials lived, the non-ecclesiastical rate was above average. More precise figures, in some cases down to the community level, can be found in the analysis of the 1939 census, in which the attribute “believing in God” could be expressly stated. The party increasingly fulfilled ideological - religious functions and developed ritual forms that were borrowed from an allegedly reconstructed "Germanic" religion. The party calendar was designed with neo-pagan quasi-religious rituals.

    Hitler himself consciously avoided exposing himself publicly as an opponent of Christianity so as not to offend the Christian majority society. He remained a member of the Catholic Church until his death and also banned other well-known party leaders such as Joseph Goebbels from leaving the church. "Simple minds could therefore get the impression that the fight against the churches was only the concern of a few radicals and that Hitler did not approve of it."

    Criticism from a Catholic point of view

    The Catholic Church criticized the term. So in the encyclical With Burning Concern by Pope Pius XI. from 1937 criticized the use of language in National Socialist Germany. In the first main part of the encyclical Pius XI turns. against the use of the term “believing in God”. Who, in pantheistic vagueness, equates God with the universe, who puts gloomy fate in the place of personal God or who makes race or the people or the state or the form of government, the bearers of state authority or other basic values ​​of human community formation, does not belong to the highest norm to the believers in God. The Pope expresses appreciative admiration for those who fulfilled their Christian duty against an aggressive neo-paganism that was often favored by influential parties .

    “Anyone who, according to the allegedly old Germanic pre-Christian notions, puts gloomy, impersonal fate in the place of personal God, denies God's wisdom and providence, which rules powerfully and kindly from one end of the world to the other and guides everything to a good end. Such a person cannot claim to be counted among the believers in God "

    He turns against the National Socialist racial doctrine:

    “This God gave His commandments in a sovereign manner. They apply regardless of time and space, country and race. Just as God's sun shines over everything that bears a human face, so His law also knows no privileges and exceptions. Rulers and ruled, crowned and uncrowned, high and low, rich and poor are equally under His Word [...] "

    Curiosity after 1945

    In the 1946 census , too, at least in the French occupation zone, citizens could still describe themselves as “believers in God”.

    See also

    literature

    • Cornelia Schmitz-Berning: Vocabulary of National Socialism. Edition 2, Verlag Walter de Gruyter, 2007, ISBN 978-3-11-092864-8 . P. 281 ff. ( Google Books ).
    • Heinz Boberach (ed.): Reports of the SD and the Gestapo on churches and church people in Germany 1934–1944. Mathias-Gründewald, Mainz 1971.
    • Wolfgang Dierker : Himmler's religious warrior . The SS Security Service and its Religious Policy 1933–1941. Diss .; Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2002.
    • Herbert Rätz: The religion of purity - reform movement, occultism and nationalism. History and structure of an everyday religion. Conte-Verlag, Saarbrücken 2006.
    • Harald Iber: Christian Faith or Racial Myth. The engagement of the Confessing Church with Alfred Rosenberg's "The Myth of the 20th Century" ; Peter Lang, Frankfurt / Main 1987.
    • Pius XI., 1937: Encyclical “With burning concern” to the Archbishops and Bishops of Germany and the other pastors who live in peace and communion with the Apostolic See on the situation of the Catholic Church in the German Empire of March 14, 1937 ( German-speaking Original text on the Vatican website ).
    • Michael Prinz , Rainer Zitelmann (Ed.): National Socialism and Modernization. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1991.
    • Frank Schnoor: Mathilde Ludendorff and Christianity: a radical nationalist position in the time of the Weimar Republic and the Nazi state. German university publications , Kiel 1998, ISBN 3-8267-1192-0 .
    • Friedrich Zipfel : Church struggle in Germany 1933–1945. Persecution of religion and self-assertion by the churches in the National Socialist period. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 1965.

    Individual evidence

    1. ↑ Cornelia Schmitz-Berning: Vocabulary of National Socialism. Edition 2, Verlag Walter de Gruyter, 2007, ISBN 978-3-11-092864-8 . P. 281 ff.
    2. ^ Gerhard Krause, Horst Robert Balz: Theologische Realenzyklopädie. Volume 8 Eds. Gerhard Krause, Gerhard Müller. Verlag Walter de Gruyter, ISBN 3110085631 , p. 558 ( Google Books ).
    3. ↑ a b Eckart Conze , Norbert Frei , Peter Hayes , Moshe Zimmermann : The office and the past. German diplomats in the Third Reich and in the Federal Republic. Karl Blessing Verlag, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-89667-430-2 , p. 157.
    4. ↑ Harald Iber: Christian Faith or Racial Myth. 1987.
    5. ^ Philosophical dictionary. Kröner's pocket edition. Vol. 12, 1943 p. 206. Quoted in Cornelia Schmitz-Berning, 2007, p. 281 ff.
    6. ↑ Maren Seliger: Sham parliamentarism in the Führer state: “Community representation” in Austrofascism and National Socialism. Functions and political profiles Vienna councilors and councilors 1934–1945 in comparison. Volume 6 of Politics and Contemporary History. LIT Verlag Münster, 2010, ISBN 978-3-643-50233-9 , p. 234 ( Google Books )
    7. ↑ Manfred Gailus & Armin Nolzen : Quarreled "Volksgemeinschaft": Faith, denomination and religion in National Socialism . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2011, ISBN 9783647300290 , p. 196 (accessed December 30, 2018).
    8. ↑ Ernst Piper : "National Socialism stands above all creeds". Alfred Rosenberg and the ethnic-religious renewal efforts. In Uwe Puschner , Clemens Vollnhals (Hrsg.): The ethnic-religious movement in National Socialism. A relationship and conflict story. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2012, ISBN 978-3-525-36996-8 , p. 350 ( Google Books ).
    9. ↑ " Faith is harder to shake than knowledge [...] Whoever wants to win over the masses must know the key that opens the door to their hearts. " (Adolf Hitler: Mein Kampf. A critical edition . Volume I, ed . Christian Hartmann et al on behalf of the Institute of Contemporary history Munich -.. Berlin, Munich 2018, p 879, ISBN 978-3-9814052-3-1 ).
    10. ↑ Horst Junginger : "The German Faith Movement as the ideological center of the ethnic-religious movement" . In: Uwe Puschner & Clemens Vollnhals (eds.): The ethnic-religious movement in National Socialism: A history of relationships and conflicts . 47 (Writings of the Hannah Arendt Institute for Research on Totalitarianism). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2012, ISBN 978-3-525-36996-8 , p. 97 ( Google Books ).
    11. ↑ Nadja Cornelius: Genesis and change of festive customs and rituals in Germany from 1933 to 1945. In: Kölner ethnol. Articles, Issue 8, Cologne 2003, ISSN  1611-4531 , p. 21 f.
    12. ^ Michael Grüttner : Arsonists and honest men. Germany 1933–1939. Stuttgart 2015, p. 392.
    13. ^ Albert Zink: The Palatinate on the Rhine. Speyer 1952, part D, table 19 p. 263 f, denomination distribution in the later administrative district of Palatinate in the census of January 26, 1946: in the city and rural districts mostly three-digit numbers of "believers in God", together 8,300 of the 931,640 inhabitants (total number see Table 6, p. 259 f) of the Palatinate; see. Also text from the Vulkaneifel homeland yearbook (fourth from last paragraph) about the 1946 census in Jünkerath , French zone of occupation. Even for 1950 denominational statistics with "believers in God" appear sporadically, for example for Kamen, see on wiki-de.genealogy.net or for Hameln, in: Erich Keyser, Deutsches Städtebuch, Volume Niedersächsisches Städtebuch, Stuttgart 1952, p. 168.
    14. ↑ See also: Heribert Schwan : The woman at his side: Life and suffering of Hannelore Kohl . Heyne, Munich 2011, ISBN 9783453181755 , where it says: “Even after they moved to the Palatinate, the Renners stuck to their claim to be 'believers in God'. The handwritten abbreviation 'gg' can be found in the registration register for all three family members. Father Renner didn't seem to want to recognize the signs of the times. At the registration office of the mother city, he underscored his attitude as an incorrigible, inconsiderate representative of the old regime and the collapsed Nazi dictatorship. "