Dahlem church emergency law

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The declaration of the Dahlem Confession Synod (October 19-20, 1934), which stated that the constitution of the German Evangelical Church had been "smashed", is known as Dahlem emergency law . Since the Nazi- influenced German Christians who, for example, in the person of Ludwig Müller, were at the head of the national church and the various regional churches , had left the soil of the ecclesiastical creed, their rule was illegitimate. Any acceptance of instructions from their side and any cooperation should be refused. The new head of the Evangelical Church in Germany lies now at the chosen by the Synod Reichsbruderrat . The state initially ignored the use of canon law competence by the emergency organs and in fact tolerated it until the new Reich Church Minister Hanns Kerrl forbade the Confessing Church to exercise church governmental powers in 1936 .

The proclamation of the emergency law had been controversial within the Confessing Church from the start. The representatives of the so-called intact churches in particular hoped that Reich Bishop Müller would resign and that their position would be recognized by the state. The Dahlem resolutions were only partially implemented. On November 22, 1934, the Reichsbruderrat was supported by a “Provisional Church Administration” (VKL) of the German Evangelical Church, which was chaired by the Hanoverian Bishop August Friedrich Karl Marahrens . The various wings of the Confessing Church remained together until 1936, although the radical advocates of emergency law (known as "Dahlemites") such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer , Martin Niemöller and Karl Barth found the course of the VKL increasingly difficult. Unlike the BK at the Reich level at the fourth confessional synod of the DEK in Bad Oeynhausen from February 17th to 22nd, 1936, a split occurred when the VKL resigned and a 2nd VKL was formed, consisting only of Dahlemites.

After the founding of the Evangelical Church in Germany in Eisenach in July 1948, it was recognized as the legal church leadership by the Brother Council of the EKD , and the Brother Council ceded its right to leadership to the Council of the EKD and thus ended the church emergency law.

literature

  • Wilhelm Niemöller: The Second Confession Synod of the German Evangelical Church in Dahlem . Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1958.
  • Christian Luther: The church emergency law, its theory and its application in the church struggle 1933-1937 . Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1969.
  • Andreas Kersting: Church order and resistance. The struggle to build up the Confessing Church of the Old Prussian Union based on the Dahlem emergency law from 1934 to 1937 . Chr. Kaiser Gütersloh 1988