Hans Meiser (Bishop)

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Hans Meiser (born February 16, 1881 in Nuremberg ; † June 8, 1956 in Munich ) was a German Protestant theologian , pastor and first regional bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria from 1933 to 1955 .

Today, Meiser's political stance between 1933 and 1945 is the subject of intense cultural and academic debates. In an effort to maintain the independence of his regional church, Meiser decided to make numerous compromises with the Nazi state. Meiser's attitude towards Judaism is also controversial in the light of current knowledge about the Shoah .

Meiser sat theologically in the tradition of William Loehe for a church with a clear Lutheran confessional one. In contrast to well-known Bavarian theology professors such as Werner Elert , Paul Althaus or Hermann Sasse , Meiser explicitly recognized the Barmer Theological Declaration and sought to connect with the Uniate and the Reformed. His confessional orientation separated him from Martin Niemöller .

Life

Childhood, School and University (1881–1904)

Meiser was the son of the merchant couple Georg and Betty Meiser. He attended the Melanchthon grammar school in his hometown and was the first in his family to acquire a humanistic education. After studying for a year at the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Munich, where Meiser mainly studied economics, he began studying Protestant theology in Erlangen , then moved to Berlin and finally to Halle.

Vicariate, military service and parish office (1904–1922)

In 1955 the new building of the Munich Matthäuskirche , the previous building of which was demolished in 1938 by order of Hitler

After the theological entrance examination in 1904, he served as a one-year- old in the 14th Infantry Regiment in Nuremberg, which he completed as a non-commissioned officer. On December 12, 1905, Meiser was ordained in Bayreuth . He began his service as a private vicar in Weiden , changed from 1908 as an exposed vicar to Haßfurt and was finally from 1909 city vicar in Würzburg . He took the second exam in 1909. In the spring of 1911 he became the clergyman of the State Association for Inner Mission . In the summer of the same year, on July 22, 1911, he married Elisabeth Killinger, with whom he had four children. In Nuremberg he experienced the clashes between the representatives of free Protestantism (Christian Geyer, Friedrich Rittelmeyer ) and the more confessional Lutherans of the city, but without being involved here himself. Meiser was the editor of the Blätter für Innere Mission , built the Evangelical Press Office in 1912 and organized meetings against the church leaving movement. At the beginning of the First World War , Meiser was called up as a medical sergeant, and from October 1914 he was a chaplain at the 1st field hospital of the III. Bavarian Army Corps on the Western Front in France. In January 1915 he was released from military service and took over the 3rd pastor at St. Matthäus in Munich. He founded the Evangelical Youth Welfare Service there and was also head of the Munich Diakonissenanstalt from 1917.

After the end of the monarchy in Bavaria, Meiser sought a discussion with the revolutionary government about the church situation. After the Soviet Republic was proclaimed in Munich shortly before Easter 1919 , arrests were soon made. On the Tuesday morning after Easter in 1919, Meiser was torn out of bed, arrested and taken hostage with others. Through the mediation of a deaconess and through the wife of the leader of the arrest troops, Meiser was released. The majority of the remaining prisoners were murdered eight days later in the Luitpoldgymnasium. In 1920 Meiser became a pastor in Munich-Sendling, at the same time a member of the Bavarian constitution-making general synod and a member of the regional synodal committee (1920–1922). Even then he called for the establishment of a bishopric in the church.

Seminar director and senior church councilor (1922–1933)

In 1922, Meiser returned to Nuremberg as co-founder and first director of the new seminary for preachers and founded the “collection point for regional church literature”. As the director of the seminary he was responsible for pastoral training in Bavaria. He campaigned for a denominational and social church. Every year Meiser visited one of the large factories in Nuremberg with the seminarians. In 1928 Meiser took over church leadership functions as senior church councilor in the regional church council. He was responsible for the school system, the theological exams as well as for contact with the Inner Mission and the state authorities. In 1929 he became chairman of the Church Social Association in Bavaria . In 1931 he added a regional church archive to the "collection point" (later the regional church archive of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria , LAELKB for short).

Regional Bishop (1933–1945)

On April 12, 1933, the synod appointed Meiser as deputy to church president Friedrich Veit . In the same month, at the age of 72, Veit resigned in view of the expected clashes with the National Socialists and due to demands for resignation. On May 4, 1933, Meiser was elected as the youngest member of the regional church council to succeed the 72-year-old church president Friedrich Veit. On June 11, 1933, the public inauguration took place in the Lorenz Church in Nuremberg with strong participation from representatives of the state and the NSDAP . The SA came on its own initiative to stand in line. He was the first to receive the official title of regional bishop and was given extensive powers by the regional synod.

In the first months of the Nazi regime, Meiser saw the possibility of combining National Socialism's commitment to positive Christianity with Christian renewal. However, the forcible enforcement of an imperial church under Bishop Müller brought Meiser to the realization that he, as Bavarian bishop, had to oppose this development. At the end of May 1934, Meiser took part in the Barmen Confession Synod and supported its theological declaration . He was neither impressed by the anti-Jewish German Christians nor by the ethnic considerations of the Erlangen theologians Paul Althaus and Werner Elert ( Ansbach advice ). When the incorporation of the Bavarian regional church into the imperial church was decreed on September 3, 1934, Meiser opposed this. He was arrested at his home on October 11th. The constant protests of Protestant parishioners and Adolf Hitler's internal political calculations made it possible for Meiser to resume his episcopate after 14 days. Meiser was soon looking to join forces with the other two Lutheran churches in Germany, the Evangelical Church in Württemberg and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Hanover . A working group was formed with the bishops Theophil Wurm and August Marahrens .

In July 1943, the Württemberg regional bishop Theophil Wurm protested to the government against the murder of the Jews. This letter was drawn up after consulting Meiser and Marahrens several times. Wurm writes in his memoirs: “At a meeting of the church leaders' conference in Berlin in July [1943], in view of the increasingly intensifying campaign against the Jews, it was decided to make another powerful push at the Reich government. I was entrusted with the execution. Marahrens could not make up his mind to co-sign. Meiser would have been ready, but we found it more correct to just let the document go with a signature. "

During this time, Meiser increasingly hoped that the generals would intervene politically against Hitler.

Post-war period (1945–1955)

The Augustana University (here: the chapel)

After the war, Meiser made his office as regional bishop available, but was unanimously re-elected. Meiser's main focus was now on integrating the expellees and refugees from the former German eastern regions as well as integrating the pastors who were expelled from there into the Bavarian regional church and supporting the needy population. Because almost all of the newcomers came from the Uniate Prussian regional church , whose confession was different from the Lutheran, according to the Lutheran view, the expelled pastors had to change their denominations in order to be able to remain active in the Protestant church after fleeing and expelled. Meiser was also instrumental in founding numerous institutions that are still important for the regional church today. In 1946, for example, he founded a pastoral college in Neuendettelsau for pastors returning from military service or imprisonment and supported the founding of the mother house for church social welfare in Munich . In 1947, a church theological college, the Augustana University Neuendettelsau , was also founded in Neuendettelsau . In Tutzing, Meiser had a castle on Lake Starnberg bought. It was there that the Evangelical Academy Tutzing came into being , which has held events on topics from politics, science, business, art and other areas of society ever since. An adult education center was created on the Hesselberg for the population of Middle Franconia , from which similar institutions later emerged in Bad Alexandersbad and Pappenheim. The catechetical office was established in Heilsbronn , the church music school and the seminary in Bayreuth. The establishment of an industrial pastoral office and a workers' seminar also went back to Meiser. In the Stuttgart confession of guilt of October 19, 1945, the leading figures of the Confessing Church, in addition to Hans Meiser a. a. and Hans Asmussen , Otto Dibelius , Gustav Heinemann , Hanns Lilje , Martin Niemoller and Theophil Wurm their complicity in the suffering that had been caused by the Germans. A publication of the declaration was not planned. Daily newspapers reported and indignantly claimed that the confession of guilt also included the admission of German war guilt. The Stuttgart declaration of guilt was largely rejected by the German public. It was not until March 1946 that the Bavarian pastors were informed of the declaration, along with an explanation in which Meiser made it clear that the confession “does not take a position on the question of political war guilt as such” and “does not separate the church from the people, but takes church and People together in solidarity ”.

On July 26, 1946, Meiser addressed the Executive Committee of the Lutheran World Convention in Uppsala, Sweden . Present were Archbishop Erling Eidem (Sweden), the representative of the Lutheran churches in Geneva, Sylvester C. Michelfelder (USA), Church President Franklin Clark Fry (USA) and several Scandinavian church representatives. There Meiser admitted guilt: “We accept all of this as God's judgment because our people treated the Jews as we did. When our own churches burned and were destroyed, we remembered that the German people had previously set the Jewish synagogues on fire. … In our country, forces had become free that could not be controlled, not even by those who unleashed them. Demonic were the forces that ruled, and we seemed powerless to them. We just couldn't offer effective political resistance. You have to believe us that what we expressed in the Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt was sincere. "

At a supraregional level, Meiser was instrumental in founding the United Evangelical Lutheran Church of Germany (VELKD) in his office as regional bishop . On January 27, 1949, he was elected as the leading bishop at their first ordinary general synod. The rivalries between the VELKD and the newly founded EKD , whose ecclesiastical character was questioned by Lutheran confessionalists (they saw it as a “church federation”, as they had no common denomination with Reformed and Uniate Christians), led to considerable delays and conflicts in the process the EKD.

The accusation by Eberhard Bethge that Meiser did not take part in the unveiling of a memorial plaque for Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Flossenbürg on April 6, 1953 , because the martyr was not a Christian but a political martyr, is questionable. Investigations have shown that Hans Meiser held a church service in the local evangelical community in Naples on this day . As early as 1983, Regional Bishop Hermann Dietzfelbinger approached Bethge with a request for clarification. Bethge was unable to substantiate his claim.

Retired (1955–1956)

Meiser retired on May 1, 1955. He could no longer carry out his plan to write memories. He died on June 8, 1956.

Meiser's role in relation to the persecution of Jews by the National Socialist state

Meiser's attitude towards Jewish Germans and Judaism

As early as 1926, a three-part essay by Meiser, who was the director of the Nuremberg Preachers' Seminar at the time, appeared in the Nuremberg Evangelical Community Gazette, in order to - in the opinion of the editors - "from the point of view of the Protestant community in the sense of clarification and direction in principle" on the " Jewish question " to take. The reason for this request for clarification was the constant agitation of the National Socialists for the "Nürnberger Wochenblatt zum Kampf für die Truth", which was called Der Stürmer in the main title and was published by Julius Streicher (then regionally limited effect, circulation approx. 2000). In addition to Jews and Catholics, the striker also fought Protestants of Jewish origin, called for their exclusion from the church, the abolition of the Old Testament and the ban on baptizing Jews.

In his essay, Meiser also gave a detailed expression to a Jewish view of the “race question”. He resorted to a book by the Jewish German Friedrich Blach on Die Juden in Deutschland , which critically emphasized the peculiarities of the German-Jewish population and educated the Jewish fellow citizens about strict Germanization, conscious racial mixing and, if necessary, also Baptism called for in order to escape the fate of the " eternal Jew ". Many of the statements that must be understood as racist and anti-Jewish today, Meiser had taken from Blach's writing, in which questions about Germanness, Judaism and the race question are debated. Meiser came to the conclusion that one could ultimately only overcome the gap between Germanness and Judaism through baptism. Baptism is also able to "ennoble racially". He took a clear position for the Protestants of Jewish origin in the church, who were generally defamed and marginalized by the Stürmer and the National Socialists. Before 2009, the sources of the Meiser essay were just as neglected as the described conditions of origin.

The following formulation in Meiser's text is considered particularly anti-Semitic: “The cultural and scientific achievements that we owe to the Jews should be fully recognized ... But that does not change the fact that the Jewish spirit has something foreign to us and that it is Reaching out would be to the greatest detriment to our people. It has often been emphasized that there is something corrosive, corrosive, and dissolving about the Jewish mind. It is critically corrosive, non-contemplative, constructive, productive. This is recognized by the Jews themselves when the Jew Abraham Geiger writes with regard to Börne and Heine: 'It is the Jewish spirit that is alive in them, the bubbling, corrosive, witty, less positively constructive, but fermenting in the stick-philistine 'tough, dry, German spirit'. "

On the other hand, in clear contrast to the anti-Semitic currents of the time and the Nuremberg Nazi racial anti-Semites around Julius Streicher, Meiser did not demand any measures aimed at legally, economically and socially disadvantaging Jews in Germany: “Above all, we cannot do any to them To obey the Jews from the outset and without exception, simply for the sake of their race, to regard them as inferior people ... God did not create us for mutual annihilation, but for mutual service and mutual advancement ... The struggle against Judaism has assumed such forms among us, that all serious Christians are formally compelled to protect themselves in front of the Jews. ... We want to meet him [the 'eternal Jew'] in such a way that when God one day takes his curse from him and he is allowed to enter into peace, he will look for his home where he will find those who greet him with kindness in his earthly days , borne with self-denial, strengthened through hoping patience, refreshed with true love, saved through persistent intercession. "

These inner contradictions in Meiser's text lead to diverging interpretations to this day. Further here is the consideration of the conditions of origin in 1926, the evaluation of Meiser's sources, the classification in his other writings and the historical reception of the text between 1926 and 1945. It becomes clear that Meiser's text before 1945 was understood as a criticism of Nazi racial anti-Semitism and was not seen as support for Nazi racial policy. Bahners comes to the conclusion: "In this rejection of the propaganda of the" Striker "..., the political significance of the essay for the audience to which it was addressed lay."

Because of this recommendation to the Christians, Meiser was violently insulted and persecuted by the National Socialists. The striker, who meanwhile had a Germany-wide circulation of approx. 800,000, criticized the “Jew friend” Meiser in 1935 and wrote: “And we are just as sorry that the regional bishop Meiser went to hell with the Jews after Luther's judgment is coming. ”Articles in the magazines SA-Mann and Schwarzes Korps have a similar tone . In 1937 he was banned from speaking and entering Saxony by the Saxon Gauleiter Mutschmann because he had "sided with the public enemies" with these "five commandments".

Further positioning of Meiser towards German Jews

On March 21, 1934, Hans Meiser protested in writing to the Bavarian Prime Minister Ludwig Siebert against the harm to the Jews of Ansbach: “We want to refrain from elaborating in what blatant manner the call to socially and economically harm the laws of Christian action runs counter to ... We ask with all seriousness to work towards the fact that the dissemination of the request is stopped immediately so that unforeseeable damage does not arise. "

After 1935 he remained silent about the persecution of the Jews , even though individual members of the Church asked him to comment on the Jewish question and to condemn the persecution of Jews. For example, the former Synod President Wilhelm Freiherr von Pechmann turned to Meiser several times to take a stand, most recently after the pogroms in November 1938 . Meiser was of the opinion that public protest would cause considerable damage to Jews and his own church alike, and that a silent protest addressed directly to the leadership was more effective. At the core of the Nazi system, in the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), Meiser is judged to be a “Jew friend”. At the conference of the Judenreferat of the Security Service of the Reichsführer SS , Amt II (Weltanschauung), 112 (Judaism), SS-U'Stuf. Theo Gahrmann gave a lecture on November 1, 1937 in the presence of Adolf Eichmann with the title “Spiritual support of assimilatory Judaism in Germany through Catholicism and the confessional front.” There Gahrmann explains: “The Jewish-friendly attitude of Protestantism is best characterized by the five commandments , which Regional Bishop Meiser expects from his confessional Christians in the Lutheran Yearbook 1935: 'As Christians we should first greet the Jews with kindness, second bear with self-denial, third strengthen them with hoping patience, fourth refresh them with true love, fifth save them with persistent intercession.' "

The Bavarian State Church under Meiser's leadership was the only one of the regional churches to support the Grüber office and set up an aid center for Christian non-Aryans in Munich and Nuremberg, which helped those affected by the Nuremberg Laws financially, prepared their escape and provided pastoral support. The work of Büro Grüber was supported with 10,000 RM annually. Not only Jewish Christians but also Jews were cared for. When the Gestapo closed the Grüber office in Berlin in 1940 and the pastors Heinrich Grüber and Werner Sylten were sent to a concentration camp, the Bavarian State Church did not stop its work, but continued to help under the umbrella of the Inner Mission. Evidently 61 people in Nuremberg and 65 people in Munich were helped to escape during this time. In total, at least 126 people were brought to safety from the National Socialists. The Grüber office, supported by Meiser, saved around 2000 people.

The Reichsfinanzhof (RFH) had decided and published in the Reichsgesetzblatt that the mission among "foreign-races" and the glorification of the Jewish people through the Old Testament were incompatible with the "National Socialist worldview of the German people". Meiser protested in a letter to the President of the RFH, Ludwig Mirre , against the jurisprudence of the Special Senate VIa, invoked freedom of religion, on "universal morality" and emphasized that the Evangelical Church was involved in mission among foreign peoples and in the Old Testament will hold on. Meiser's letter of protest came at a time when the Nazi state had long since declared all Jews to be enemies of the state. Nevertheless, this letter also contains “starting points for a criticism of the National Socialist racial madness”, which, however, are also associated with “anti-Jewish statements”.

On August 12, 1944, the regional church council, mediated by Oberkirchenrat Thomas Breit and with Meiser's signature, sent a lecture on racial anthropology by theology professor Gerhard Kittel to the entire Bavarian pastorate. Kittel and Breit themselves regard this lecture as part of the denazification process of Kittel in 1946 as a protest against the devaluation of the Old Testament by broad circles of the Nazi system.

Meiser and the Jewish Community after 1945

After the war, Meiser was also recognized in the Jewish communities and was considered a morally inviolable personality there. The invitation to the opening of the Munich synagogue on May 20, 1947 and a letter of congratulations from the regional chief rabbi on February 16, 1950 have been received. It says: “May Almighty God keep you alive for a long time to come. In a time when the world is so poor in real personalities, it is very special to meet someone like you. I was lucky now and I am grateful to fate for this coincidence. "On February 21, 1950 Meiser replied:" I still see it as my task to bridge the gap between the followers of the Christian and the Jewish faith, who we have inherited from an evil past, to work together to the best of our ability, and I thank you that my efforts in this regard find such a strong echo ”.

In the official gazette (No. 11 of May 11, 1950) of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria, Hans Meiser publishes the declaration of the Berlin Synod of Weißensee, in which he himself participated. In it all Christians are called upon to renounce all anti-Semitism and protect Jewish cemeteries.

Meiser's church policy

Defense against bringing the Evangelical Church into line

After National Socialism had shown itself to be church-friendly by introducing school prayers, the NSDAP began to promote the " German Christians " and the candidate for the new office of " Reich Bishop ", Ludwig Müller , who was sponsored by Hitler . Meiser succeeded in saving the Bavarian regional church from being formally taken over by the German Christians by not determining the course of the church in a way that was too anti-government. In June 1933, for example, he withdrew his trust in Friedrich von Bodelschwingh , who was unloved by the Nazi government and had been designated as Reich Bishop by the representatives of the regional churches. He was also ready to unanimously vote for Müller in the National Synod in Wittenberg on September 27, 1933 when the Reich Church was founded. Although many Lutheran regional churches made similar compromises, only the Lutheran Württemberg and Hanoverian regional churches thereby achieved comparable autonomy. The cooperation between the confessional synods , which arose in other regional churches from the " Pastors ' Emergency League" founded by confessional pastors , and the Lutheran church leaderships of the three regional churches, which were already burdened by denominational suspicion, was made even more difficult by this policy.

In 1934 the Reichskirche tried to withdraw their autonomy from the regional churches. The regional church synod, which met in August 1934, countered this with the unanimous decision that subordination of the Bavarian regional church as the recipient of orders to the imperial church (which was not based on the Lutheran creed, but rather non-denominational, with a focus on united Prussia) was out of the question. In doing so, she supported Meiser's course on autonomy and expressed her full confidence in him. Adolf Hitler had previously met with Bishops Meiser and Wurm on March 13, 1934. Meiser had declared: "If the Führer wants to stick to his point of view, we have no choice but to become his most loyal opposition." Hitler became extremely excited and shouted: "What do you say? Most loyal opposition? You are enemies of the fatherland and traitors to the people. "

In September 1934 the headline of the Franconian daily read: “Away with Regional Bishop D. Meiser! He is faithless and breaking his word - He acts treacherously - He brings the Evangelical Church into disrepute ”. On October 11, 1934, the Reich Church dispatched the Reich Bishop's "lawyer", August Jäger , to Munich with the task of dismissing the entire Bavarian church leadership. Meiser, who lived in Rothenburg o. D. Some of the people who had gone to a denomination service did not return directly (otherwise he would have been arrested immediately at the train station), but via Augsburg to Munich, only to protest strongly against this approach shortly afterwards in a denial service in the overcrowded St.Matthew Church. In response to this, the Gestapo imprisoned Meiser in his official apartment the next day. As a result, Christians from all over Bavaria made a pilgrimage to Munich, some of them with special trains, to show their support to the appointed bishop. Prayer services were held in numerous churches in Bavaria; the altars were covered with black cloth. After 14 days, the Reich Church capitulated and allowed the previous church leadership to resume its official duties. Bishop Wurm, who also attempted to be deposed at about the same time, later described this as "Hitler's only domestic political defeat". In the full session of the Evangelical Lutheran State Church Council on 13/14 December 1938, Meiser said: “The church is not free in its decisions and in its actions: The church is in a defensive position against the political will of the state. The church is in defense. "

Tensions between the Luther Council and the Brother Council

From 1934 onwards, Meiser intensified his cooperation with the other Lutheran churches, especially in Hanover and Württemberg, which led to the establishment of the Council of Evangelical Lutheran Churches in Germany (Lutherrat) in 1936 , which was initially chaired by the Munich church councilor Thomas Breit , and then from late autumn 1938 by Meiser took over himself. One of his comrades-in-arms and delegation member in this body was Pastor Friedrich Wilhelm Hopf , who later fell out with Meiser.

However, the cooperation with the Uniate Churches led by the Brotherly Council crumbled soon after Meiser's release from prison. The installation of the “Provisional Church Administration” (VKL) in place of the Imperial Council of Brothers at the Synod of Augsburg strengthened the Lutheran influence in the Confessing Church, but was also a sign of the increasing readiness of the Lutherans to work with Hanns Kerrl's Imperial Church Committees . According to the ecclesiastical emergency law of the Synod of Dahlem , however, these committees were without ecclesiastical authority, and the Confessing Church in the "destroyed" churches refused to work on an equal basis with members of the German Christians in these bodies.

In 1937 he was one of those who signed the declaration of the 96 Protestant church leaders against Alfred Rosenberg because of his writing Protestant Rome Pilgrims .

After the new election of the Provisional Church Administration (VKL), it wrote a critical memorandum to Hitler in which the Jewish policy and the attacks on freedom of conscience by the National Socialist government were criticized. Meiser and other Lutheran regional bishops from the intact churches refused to read out this memorandum in their regional churches . When the VKL published a prayer liturgy critical of the war in 1938 before the Munich Conference , Meiser and his Lutheran colleagues signed a declaration according to which the prayer liturgy “has been disapproved by us for religious and patriotic reasons and rejected for our churches. We condemn the attitude expressed in it in the strongest possible way and separate ourselves from the personalities responsible for this rally. ”In 1938 he had the pastors take the oath on Hitler in order to avoid a conflict with the Nazi state.

Balancing act of secret protest

In order to save the independence of the regional church, Meiser made many compromises with the Nazi regime with his "With the enemy against the enemy" policy. When the Hitler salute had to be introduced in schools at the behest of the State Ministry for Education and Culture at the beginning of religious instruction, Meiser did not protest to prevent religious instruction from being abolished. On February 23, 1940, he also protested against the murder of the disabled : “in obvious excitement” he presented to Reich Governor Franz Ritter von Epp . Later, however, he was publicly silent on this subject, which is now negatively charged to him. In fact, however, he did not want to endanger the secret negotiations between Pastor von Friedrich von Bodelschwingh the Younger and von Epp. Bodelschwingh asked him at the time: “You are now doing nothing in the churches about this matter. You endanger our negotiations and you endanger the lives of our sick ”. There was no public protest by the Bavarian State Church. From 1938 to 1945 at least 126 people were saved from the National Socialists by the Bavarian “Aid Centers for the Care of Non-Aryan Christians” set up by Hans Meiser, 65 in Munich and 61 in Nuremberg according to the latest research.

Eugen Gerstenmaier , member of the Kreisau Circle resistance group and arrested for complicity in the Hitler assassination attempt on July 20, 1944, reports in his memoirs Streit und Frieden has its time : “I agree with Otto Dibelius that it cannot be a matter for the church and is allowed to carry out the coup or to make a revolution. But he was wrong when he said that no man of the church had advised us ... At least the bishops Theophil Wurm and Hans Meiser strongly encouraged us to dare to do the inevitable act. "

Meiser's remarks in times of denazification

During the denazification ordered by the American military government in Bavaria, Hesse and Württemberg , Meiser, Niemöller and Wurm sharply criticized the schematism of the American approach . Above all, they resisted blanket convictions. The classifications and dismissal criteria applicable to authorities in the context of denazification were not adopted by Meiser, Niemöller or Wurm for their regional churches despite a request from the military government. For the leading men of the Evangelical Church, the focus was on the existence and self-sufficiency of the churches. There was also a great shortage of pastors in Bavaria (118 pastors had died in the war, 59 were missing). In spite of all criticism of the attitude of the churches, one should also note: “The church leaders had the political insight ahead of the military government, however, that many NSDAP members were no longer convinced National Socialists, at the latest by the end of the war, and in the interests of social peace - earlier or later - had to be reintegrated. ”From today's point of view, the work of the“ Committee for Church Prisoner Aid ”jointly founded by the Catholic and Evangelical Churches is viewed critically. The chairman of the Catholic Bavarian Bishops' Conference, Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber , the EKD chairman Wurm, then the Munich Auxiliary Bishop Neuhäussler and Meiser, in whose area the Landsberg penal institution , which is central to the American zone , stood up for the mitigation of sentences against war criminals, for the release of internees, against the surrender of incriminated persons to the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries. They also organized the financing of the defense and the support of the needy relatives of the accused. Before the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany, the churches' commitment was on behalf of German society, whose leading representatives Theodor Heuss , Thomas Dehler and Carlo Schmid also advocated these goals.

Honors

In 1956, four days after Meiser's death, the Mayor of Munich, Thomas Wimmer , announced that a street in Munich would be named after Meiser. On March 27, 1957, the Nuremberg city council decided with 56 to 8 votes to rename part of the Spitalgasse to Bischof-Meiser-Straße. The towns of Ansbach and Pfaffenhofen an der Ilm , the municipality of Pullach (Bischof-Meiser-Straße) and the towns of Bayreuth , Schwabach (both Hans-Meiser-Straße) and Weiden in the Upper Palatinate (Meiserstraße) have named streets after Meiser. In many Bavarian parishes, meetinghouses and other buildings were named after the bishop's name, and a building at the Augustana University in Neuendettelsau, which he had established as regional bishop, was named Meiser-Haus. In January 2008 the parish council of the Munich Carolinenkirche decided to name its parish hall as the "Bishop-Meiser-Saal". The Evangelical Church in Mark Berolzheim had previously taken the same step.

Withdrawals and acknowledgments of honors

Street sign with the controversial name in Ansbach 2012
Street sign in Munich after the renaming

The Augustana University in Neuendettelsau renamed the building, which was named after Meiser, in July 2006. A new name was temporarily omitted. In Ansbach, the application to rename the Bischof-Meiser-Strasse there was rejected in December 2006 with a majority of 40 to 8 votes. The Nuremberg city council, on the other hand, decided on January 24, 2007, with four votes against, to abolish Bischof-Meiser-Strasse in Nuremberg and to include the area in question in Spitalgasse. In Munich, the city council decided on July 18, 2007 (against the resistance of the Protestant Church and against the votes of the CSU, FDP, ÖDP and Free Voters) to give Meiserstrasse a new name. The renaming of the street to Katharina-von-Bora- Strasse was not carried out until May 2010 due to a lawsuit, after the Bavarian Administrative Court ruled on March 2, 2010 that the renaming of Meiserstrasse in Munich to Katharina-von-Bora-Strasse was permissible be. The plaintiff, Hans-Christian Meiser, had asserted the legal institute of post-mortem protection of honor and claimed that the renaming represented a degradation of his grandfather. The court could not follow this and found that the naming of streets in the Bavarian Road and Road Act was purely of a regulatory nature and did not serve to protect the honor of namesake people. On May 12, 2009 the city of Weiden decided not to rename the Meiserstrasse there. On December 14, 2010, the city council of Bayreuth rejected the renaming of the local Hans-Meiser-Strasse by a large majority. In Ansbach, the city council rejected the renaming of Bischof-Meiser-Strasse on January 29, 2013 with a two-thirds majority.

Fonts

  • The Evangelical Community and the Jewish Question . In: Evangelisches Gemeindeblatt Nürnberg , 33, 1926, pp. 394–397, 406–407, 418–419.
  • Fritz u. Gertrude Meiser (ed.): Church, battle and faith in Christ. Disputes u. Answers from a Lutheran . Claudius-Verlag Munich :, 1982; ISBN 3-532-62008-1
  • But we are not of those who give way! Confessing Church, 22, Munich: Kaiser, 1934
  • Speech by the regional bishop D.Meiser at the extraordinary meeting of the Bavarian regional synod on August 23, 1934 ; Munich: Oldenbourg, 1934
  • The miracle of the church . In: Training sheets of the Protestant young team , volume 5, Eberhard, Hannover 1935 (lecture), 11 pp.
  • In the footsteps of the Apostle Paul , HC 111–115, slide series; Munich: Calig; Munich: Haugg film and picture publisher, 1965

editor

  • The Lutheran World Federation, Lund 1947: Reports and Documents . Edited for the German National Committee of the Lutheran World Federation by Bishop Meiser; Stuttgart

Shorthand records

  • Responsibility for the church. Stenographic notes and transcripts from Regional Bishop Hans Meiser 1933–1955 ; Evangelical Working Group for Contemporary Church History, Vol. 1 (1933–35): Göttingen 1985; ISBN 3-525-55751-5 ; Vol. 2 (1935-37): Göttingen 1993; ISBN 3-525-55755-8 .

literature

  • Patrick Bahners : An accident that affects us all. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung No. 45 of February 23, 2010, p. 35.
  • Lukas Bormann: The "Striker" and Protestant Nuremberg (1924–1927). On the origin of Hans Meiser's article from 1926 "The Evangelical Community and the Jewish Question" . In: Journal for Bavarian Church History 78 (2009), pp. 187–212.
  • Hannelore Braun: Hans Meiser . In: Wolf-Dieter Hauschild (Ed.): Profiles of Lutheranism. 20th Century Biographies . Gütersloh 1998, pp. 529-539.
  • Hannelore Braun:  Meiser, Hans. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 5, Bautz, Herzberg 1993, ISBN 3-88309-043-3 , Sp. 1163-1172.  ( Article / beginning of article in Internet archive )
  • Hannelore Braun:  Meiser, Hans. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 16, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-428-00197-4 , pp. 687 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Ceremony presented to Regional Bishop D. Hans Meiser on his 70th birthday , publications from the Regional Church Archives in Nuremberg, Vol. 2, Nuremberg: Regional Church Archives Nuremberg, 1951.
  • Johanna Haberer (Ed.): He loved his church. Bishop Hans Meiser and the Bavarian State Church under National Socialism. Evangelischer Presseverband, Munich 1996. ISBN 3-532-62203-3
  • Berndt Hamm et al. (Hrsg.): Scope of action and memory. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria and National Socialism , Göttingen 2010.
  • Gerhart Herold, Carsten Nicolaisen (ed.): Hans Meiser (1881–1956). A Lutheran bishop in the change of the political system. Claudius, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-583-33113-3
  • Tanja Hetzer: Meiser, Hans. In: Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.): Handbuch des Antisemitismus. Hostility to Jews in the past and present . Vol. 2/2: People L – Z. De Gruyter Saur, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-598-24072-0 , pp. 538-540
  • Hans Christian Meiser : The crucified bishop - Church, Third Reich and the present: A search for traces. MünchenVerlag, Munich 2008. ISBN 978-3-937090-36-8
  • Annemarie B. Müller: Hans Meiser in the post-war period. In: Journal for Bavarian Church History 75 (2006).
  • Matthias Simon : Hans Meiser. Bavarian State Bishop, 1881-1956 . In: Sigmund von Pölnitz (ed.), CVs from Franconia , Würzburg 1960 (publications of the Society for Franconian History 6), pp. 404–417.
  • Axel Töllner: A question of race? The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria, the Aryan Paragraph and the Bavarian parish families with Jewish ancestors in the 'Third Reich' (= denomination and society. Contributions to contemporary history. Vol. 36). Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3-17-019692-6

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Simon, Meiser , p. 404f; Braun, Meiser , p. 529.
  2. ↑ Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv IV , 19927. War ranking list.
  3. ↑ Simon, Meiser , pp. 406-408; Braun, Meiser , p. 529.
  4. ↑ Simon, Meiser , pp. 406-408; Braun, Meiser , pp. 529-531.
  5. ↑ Theophil Wurm: Memories from my life . 2nd Edition. Stuttgart 1953, p. 168.
  6. ↑ Jens Holger Schjørring: Hans Meiser as a church leader after 1945. Observations from an ecumenical perspective . In: Hamm: Spielräume , pp. 273f.
  7. ↑ so Eberhard Bethge in his book Ohnmacht und Mündigkeit , Munich 1969, p. 143
  8. ^ Correspondence in the regional church archive, clubs III, 4, no. 12, file "Bavarian Parish Brotherhood"
  9. ↑ Simon, Meiser , pp. 409-417; Braun, Meiser , pp. 531-538.
  10. ↑ The Protestant Community and the Jewish Question , in: Evangelisches Gemeindeblatt Nürnberg 33, 1926;  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.augustana.de
  11. ↑ Bormann: Der "Stürmer" , p. 211f.
  12. ↑ Blach and Cahn . ( Memento from November 5, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) In: Ev. Sunday paper for Bavaria , 33, 2009
  13. ↑ The Jews in Germany
  14. ↑ Blach: Juden , p. 30
  15. ↑ Blach: Jews , p. 35
  16. ↑ Blach: Juden , p. 26 u. 45
  17. ↑ Meiser: Gemeinde , p. 396
  18. ↑ Meiser: Gemeinde , p. 406f
  19. ↑ Bormann: Der "Stürmer" , p. 187ff.
  20. ↑ Patrick Bahners: An accident that affects us all . In: FAZ , February 23, 2010
  21. ↑ Der Stürmer , August 1935, No. 32.
  22. ^ Letter to Siebert (PDF) Copy of the original letter
  23. ↑ In connection with the activities of the Nazi state against the church, Meiser viewed with concern a possible treatment of the Jewish question at the planned third Prussian synod of the “Confessing Church” in Berlin from 23 September to 26 September 1935. Although Meiser, as a Bavarian, was not a member of the Old Prussian Synod at all, he had expressed concerns about the subject at an information meeting of the first provisional church government on September 13, 1935. Meiser literally: “Of course you can talk for hours about whether you can come to a happy ending with this state or not. But in any case it shouldn't be up to us if it comes to a complete and final break. If that doesn't work, then we'll accept it as God's will. But we should try to prevent it to the utmost. It shouldn't come from our carelessness, rash and stubbornness. Only then will there be a blessing on the season of suffering. I would like to raise my voice against a self-inflicted martyrdom. I look to the coming Prussian Synod with some concern if it wants to touch on things like B. the Jewish question. What happens in Königsberg (the originally planned meeting place) is not limited to the Prussian Synod. "
  24. ↑ Printed in: Michael Wildt (Ed.): Die Judenpolitik des SD 1935-1938 . Oldenbourg, 1995, pp. 150-153.
  25. ^ Report from Pastor Johannes Zwanzger , who headed the Munich aid agency
  26. ↑ as reported by Pastor Grübers son Hans-Rolf.
  27. ↑ a b Courageous, but not breakneck . ( Memento from September 10, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) In: Ev. Sunday paper for Bavaria , 50, 2009
  28. ^ Töllner: Rasse , p. 163
  29. ↑ G. Kittel: My defense [with attachments], masch. 1946
  30. ↑ Friedrich Siegmund-Schultze (Ed.): Ecumenical Yearbook 1936–1937 . Max Niehans, Zurich 1939, pp. 240–247.
  31. ↑ Dirk Schönlebe: Forgotten by their churches? On the fate of Christians of Jewish origin in Munich during the Nazi era . Edited by the district committee Maxvorstadt, Munich 2006
  32. ↑ Matthias Seiler: Stand up for the weak! In: Journal for Bavarian Church History , 74th year, Nuremberg 2005
  33. ↑ Eugen Gerstenmaier: There is a time for conflict and peace. A life story . Frankfurt / M. 1981, p. 604, note 2; Similar statements can also be found in Gerstenmaier's estate (Archive for Christian Democratic Politics, ACDP 01-210-035 / 2, Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, Sankt Augustin).
  34. ↑ Clemens Vollnhals (ed.): Denazification and self-purification in the judgment of the evangelical church. Documents and reflections 1945–1949 . Munich 1989 (Study books on contemporary church history 8), p. 50f.
  35. ↑ Thomas Raithel: The Landsberg am Lech prison and the Spöttinger cemetery (1944–1958) . A documentation on behalf of the Institute for Contemporary History Munich-Berlin, Munich 2009, p. 66f.
  36. ↑ Meiserstraße - Arguments for and against renaming ( Memento from September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) (Evangelischer Pressedienst Bayern)
  37. ↑ Rathaus Umschau issue 098 (PDF) May 27, 2010
  38. ↑ vgh.bayern.de (Bavarian Administrative Court, judgment of March 2, 2009 Az. 8 BV 08.3320)
predecessor Office successor
Friedrich Veit Regional Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria
1933–1955 		Hermann Dietzfelbinger
personal data
SURNAME Meiser, Hans
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Lutheran regional bishop of Bavaria
DATE OF BIRTH February 16, 1881
PLACE OF BIRTH Nuremberg
DATE OF DEATH June 8, 1956
Place of death Munich