Young Reformation Movement

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The Young Reformation Movement was a group of Protestant pastors and theologians who came together in May 1933 against the German Christians (DC) and their church political goals. This started the church struggle within the German Evangelical Church (DEK) during the Nazi era . Along with the established in September 1933 Pastors' the group of young reformers formed a root which was established in May 1934 Confessing Church . The organ of the Young Reformation movement was the magazine Junge Kirche since 1933 .

Emergence

After Adolf Hitler had promised the German churches in his government declaration of March 23, 1933 that they would maintain the status quo and not interfere in their affairs, the DC received an enormous number of Protestant Christians and announced their demand that the German Evangelical Church Federation of 28 denominational regional churches be granted to unify a "Reichskirche" run according to the Führer principle .

In order to anticipate this development, Hermann Kapler , President of the Evangelical Upper Church Council of the Old Prussian Union , August Marahrens , Lutheran State Bishop of Hanover, and Hermann Albert Hesse , Director of the Reformed Preachers' Seminary in Wuppertal - Elberfeld , formed a committee in Loccum that was supposed to work out a new church constitution . They wanted to keep the Lutheran, Reformed and Uniate Confessions as the basis of their faith, but also to put a Reich Bishop at the top.

After a conversation with Hitler, Kapler appointed the parish pastor Ludwig Müller on April 25th as his “personal representative in church matters”. The DC then made him their "patron" and demanded the office of Reich Bishop for him. The constitutional committee had to consult Müller. The DC presented 10 guidelines on May 4th to influence the committee of four in their own way and called for a “primary election” with the participation of all evangelically baptized. The radical wing around Joachim Hossenfelder wanted to be admitted to all governing bodies of the regional churches.

Müller now sought a balance and on May 14th published 10 theses for which he had obtained Hitler's approval. These foresaw the "complete preservation of the confessional status of the Reformation" without the exclusion of Jewish Christians and the election of the Reich Bishop by the church representatives who were already in office. So Müller wanted to give himself a free hand to gradually disempower the regional church leaderships and to strive for the office of Reich Bishop for himself. This enabled him to involve Hossenfelder and the regional church representatives initially.

But there was now resistance to the DC's claim to leadership. A group of young pastors in Berlin made a countercall to the public on May 9th: they too affirmed the new German state, saw the church as bound in “indissoluble service to the German people” and called for a generation change in the leadership offices of the churches. But the first sentences already made a fundamental contradiction to the DC clear:

We demand that the decisions to be made come solely from the nature of the Church.
We demand that the church fulfills the task given to it by God in full freedom from all political influence. [...]
In our belief in the Holy Spirit, we fundamentally reject the exclusion of non-Aryans from the Church.
The appointment of a Reich Bishop must be made immediately, by the existing Directory.

The respected Bethel pastor Friedrich Bodelschwingh (1877-1946) was proposed as a candidate for this office . The group's speakers were:

The response to this advance was enormous. Approval came from all over the empire; and Martin Niemoller joined a few days later the new movement. This prevented the DC from marching through for the time being and an alternative to their content and approach became open to public discussion.

Power struggle

Even before the Loccum draft constitution was finalized, the committee convened the church leaders on May 26th for the early election of the Reich Bishop. These felt overrun and were divided; some Lutheran regional churches took the view that an "unconditional yes" to National Socialism was the order of the day and suggested Müller. He appeared at the meeting, recommended himself with an election speech and threatened a fight if one did not come to an understanding with the DC. Only the Brandenburg superintendent Otto Dibelius dared to propose Bodelschwingh as an opponent. Neither of them received a majority in the first ballot. But in the final ballot on the following day Bodelschwingh received a majority of 24 votes with only three votes against. Although he was reluctant to run against Müller, he now accepted the office with determination.

As a result, Hitler immediately canceled a planned meeting with Kapler. In addition, the Chancellery made the entire NSDAP propaganda apparatus available to the DC for their fight against Bodelschwingh. The Protestant members of the SA , SS and all sub-organizations were instructed to send protest telegrams to the Loccum Committee, the Reich President and to Hitler himself.

Kapler, and a little later Bodelschwingh, resigned from their offices. The bishops who elected him also withdrew their support for him. The Ministry of Culture evaluated the appointment of a successor for Kapler without consulting the state authorities as a breach of the still valid church treaty of 1931 and appointed August Jäger as state commissioner for the Prussian regional churches. This dismissed the previous senior church councilor, including Dibelius, and filled him with representatives of the DC. Ludwig Müller made himself its head.

On July 11th, the new draft constitution was completed with the participation of Marahrens and Hesse. It was promulgated as an imperial law and church elections were scheduled for July 23rd. The deadline was deliberately chosen to be short in order not to give the internal church opposition time to organize.

The church election

On the eve of the election, Hitler declared on the radio that the DC were the only group that could guarantee the "inner freedom of religious life" and at the same time wanted to work for the freedom of the nation. Thereupon they won a landslide victory on July 23, 1933 and won a majority of around two thirds of all votes cast in almost all regional churches. Afterwards they took over the leadership positions in some regional churches and many empire-wide DEK committees.

At the DEK Synod on September 6, 1933, the delegates of all church groups, including those of the defeated young reformers, unanimously voted Ludwig Müller as the new Reich Bishop. He took office on September 29th. This strengthened the influence of the DC also in the regional churches, which were still led by their opponents. From now on, the DC-led state churches introduced Aryan paragraphs for clergy and officials.

After Müller's election, the Pastors ' Emergency League was formed to protect Jewish Christians from marginalization.

literature

  • Karl Herbert : The church struggle. History or permanent legacy? Evangelisches Verlagswerk, Frankfurt am Main 1985, ISBN 3-7715-0216-0 .
  • Silvia Wagner: “We fight for a professing church”. Junge Kirche 1933–1941 , in: Junge Kirche 2003, issue 1: 70 years of the Junge Kirche , pp. 5–14.

Web links

  • The Young Reformation Movement in the online exhibition Resistance !? Evangelical Christians under National Socialism