Cross fight
The Kreuzkampf took place in 1936 in the Oldenburger Münsterland and was a public protest against a measure taken by National Socialism in the Third Reich . Similar actions took place in Bavaria in 1941 .
Events
End of 1936, the Oldenburg Minister of churches and schools, Julius Pauly ( NSDAP ), which also cross Decree -called transfer out which said that from all government buildings and thus also from the Catholic religious schools to religious signs such as statues, pictures, and especially crosses be removed. Religious symbols should no longer be used in new buildings either.
This aroused the population of the Catholic Oldenburger Münsterland very much. So on November 18, 1936 , around 2000 former soldiers from the front and around 1000 other pilgrims gathered in the church of St. Maria, Mother of the Seven Sorrows at Bethen , a place of pilgrimage at the gates of Cloppenburg , despite the pouring rain. There were mainly pilgrims from the Oldenburger Münsterland, but also from the Emsland , Wilhelmshaven , Bremen and Oldenburg . The mood was highly explosive.
Kaplan Franz Uptmoor , an excellent front-line fighter in World War I , gave a combative sermon . He called for the fight for the cross in schools. Those present reacted with stormy applause and drove back to their communities with determination. Here they were further encouraged by combative sermons from a group of priests.
A resistance group was formed that sent its texts to the individual parishes by courier. Letters of protest were written to the government and three days after a warrior pilgrimage, the first delegation went to Oldenburg to complain personally to Minister Pauly. More delegations followed, and on November 25th they stood in front of the ministry with 75 cars.
In the end, Carl Röver , the Oldenburg Gauleiter, was forced to partially withdraw the decree on November 25, 1936 at a meeting in the Münsterlandhalle in Cloppenburg, which was accompanied by stormy protests, and to allow the cross to continue to be used in schools.
But the partial victory was not enough for the Oldenburger Münsterlanders: They demanded that the National Socialist upbringing and race theory be removed from school lessons. At first, the National Socialist rulers did not dare to take action against the protests and sermons of the Catholic Church. There were further protests, a Nazi block warden was beaten up in the Münsterlandhalle, SA storm leaders and troop leaders were insulted and pelted with stones.
The Bishop of Münster , Clemens August Graf von Galen , thanked the Oldenburg Catholics with a pastoral letter and declared: “... may their attitude for all Christians, far beyond the borders of our homeland, may they be a role model and example for our youth in particular! "
On June 30, 1937, six men who had participated in the cross combat were arrested by the police, one of whom was taken to the Oranienburg concentration camp . A little later, five other people were arrested and detained.
memory
On November 25, 1961, a sandstone monument with a high cross was erected on the market square in Cloppenburg to commemorate the protest meeting against the “Kreuzerlass”. Every two years a "Confession Day" takes place in the pilgrimage site of Bethen to commemorate the cross fight.
Historical classification
The cross fight is one of the " great stories " of the Oldenburger Münsterland. It is often cited as an example of the thesis that there is traditionally a particularly resilient loyalty between the Catholics living here and the Catholic Church, which led to the Oldenburger Münsterland being a stronghold of the Center Party before 1933 and still today lead that it is a stronghold of the CDU .
In June 2010, Christian Wulff , then Lower Saxony's Prime Minister and candidate for the office of Federal President , apologized in an interview for a statement by Lower Saxony's Minister of Social Affairs, Aygül Özkan , that she was against crosses in classrooms, arguing that one could not expect the one who grew up in Hamburg Woman of Turkish origin "knows every peculiarity of Lower Saxony's history, for example the" cross fight "in the Catholic Oldenburger Münsterland."
Joachim Kuropka , professor emeritus for history at the University of Vechta , emphasizes that the cross-fight was not primarily about protecting Christian symbols, but about living Christian values. He points out that parents in Goldenstedt went on strike in 1938 against the closure of a Catholic denominational school and that in 1942 citizens of Cloppenburg successfully fought against the deportation of Sinti and Roma .
literature
- Johannes Göken: The fight for the cross in school. A. Fromm, Osnabrück 1947.
- Jeremy Noakes: The Oldenburg Crucifix Struggle of November 1936: A Case Study of Opposition in the Third Reich , in: Peter D. Stachura (ed.): The Shaping of the Nazi State , London 1978, pp. 210-233.
- Johannes Pohlschneider : The National Socialist Church Struggle in Oldenburg. Butzon and Bercker, Kevelaer 1978, ISBN 3-7666-9006-X .
- Joachim Kuropka (Ed.): To the point - the cross! Studies on the history of the conflict over the cross and the image of Luther in the schools of Oldenburg, the history of the impact of a mass protest and the problem of National Socialist rule in an agrarian-Catholic region. Vechta 1986, ISBN 3-88-441036-9 .
- Joachim Kuropka: Totalitarian regime and Catholic clergy in Oldenburg. In: Oldenburg Yearbook. Vol. 104 (2004), pp. 187-202 ( online ).
- Joachim Kuropka: Just a “dead picture” - just a “wooden cross”? 80 years ago Kreuzkampf in Oldenburg and the difficulties of remembering . In: Yearbook for the Oldenburger Münsterland 2017 (Ed .: Heimatbund für das Oldenburger Münsterland), Vechta 2016, pp. 26–40.
- Maria Anna Zumholz (ed.): Catholic milieu and resistance - The cross fight in the Oldenburger Land. LIT-Verlag, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-643-11937-7 .
Web links
- dialogverlag Presse- + Medienservice GmbH: Pastoral letter on the "Oldenburger Kreuzkampf". November 27, 1936
Individual evidence
- ↑ wissenmedia in inmediaONE GmbH: Day notes for April 23, 1941 . chroniknet
- ^ Recreation area Thülsfelder Talsperre eV: Cloppenburg - memorial cross fight
- ↑ Peter Löffler (Ed.): Bishop Clemens August Graf von Galen - files, letters and sermons 1933-1946. Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn / Munich / Vienna / Zurich, 2nd edition 1996, ISBN 3-506-79840-5 , p. 465.
- ↑ With anger and full of bitterness - 75 years ago: Oldenburger Kreuzkampf . Church site November 18, 2011.
- ↑ Can you do that, Herr Wulff? . The time . Edition 24/2010.
- ↑ Thomas Schwierzi: Nazi dictatorship: Resistance in Südoldenburg - Vechta University's office presents new results ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Northwest Radio . November 28, 2012.
