Skunks’s Weblog

1. Catholic social milieu and totalitarian ideology claim

The experience of the cultural struggle shaped the thinking and behavior of many Catholics to the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich into it. As of the community of nations and excluded minority if they were fought within the German Empire a largely closed society special. The Catholic Church was firmly fixed with their values and norms is the primary focus in life practice. The believers felt by a deep-rooted, everyday life span piety borne a dense network of Catholic schools, associations and press coined time experience and lifestyle of children and adolescents as well as adults.

The strong commitment of Catholics to their life and community forms an impact even in the Reichstag elections of the Weimar Republic. Based on the resident population reached 1933 Catholics accounted for 32.5%. On the political parties of the Catholics – the center and the BVP – represented in the Reichstag elections between 18% (1920) and 13.9% (1933) of the votes cast. The voting behavior of the Catholic population also shows for the Reichstag elections of March 1933, already under pressure from the new Nazi rulers held that the National Socialists in the predominantly Catholic areas of the German Empire, the political breakthrough has failed – in the Emsland, in Westphalia, in the Rhineland in Mainfranken the Rhön and Baden, in Bavaria, Upper Silesia, and in Eichsfeld Warmian. The insistent warnings before the Nazis, the German bishops pronounced variously since 1930 had worked here as a helpful support.

In the center of Nazi ideology was the battle for dominance of the “Aryan master race”, as propagated antibolschewistischer crusade conquest of “Lebensraum” in the East and the destruction of Judaism. These goals were only the “new” in the Nazi spirit to reach educated people who had to be free from the “Jewish compassion morality” of Christianity. For competing claims to interpretive and World Sinngebungskompetenz – be they religious in nature, such as Christians and Jews or ideological nature as with the Communists – had no place. After the “seizure of power on 30 January 1933 it became the state ideology doctrine. In spite of the National Socialist system of domination characterizing power dualism between party and state and regional differences in the Nazi reign practice Hitler and his followers never had a doubt as to the totalitarian ideology is also entitled to enforce policy.

2. “National Survey”, co-existence and Reich Concordat 1933

The appeal of Adolf Hitler in the Reich Chancellery meant constitutionally seen initially no incision, but the series began in 1930 with Heinrich Brüning began Präsidialkabinette continued. Initial development of the turbulent weeks and months before and after the March election in 1933, when the Nazi party nearly 44% of the votes reached 30 should January as crucial political turning point in German history prove. It took a breathtaking and confusing process of ordinary citizens of Nazi conquest of power: revolutionary actions against the bottom of the political, especially Communist opponents and seemingly legal, administrative measures Gleichschaltung attacked each other.

For the Catholics had the starting position against the Nazis, so far changed, as is also the new imperial government traditionally viewed as the civic owed obedience (Romans 13). Many Germans appeared, the new chancellor as Christian-national integration figure, for “peace and order” caused. Some Catholics may be on the “silent and fall off” (Rudolf Morsey) of the Center Party and the violent elimination of the Christian trade unions and the People’s Association for Catholic Germany came his doubts. They have been a wave of national renewal will be overtaken, which also covered a lot of Catholic believers, “in a mixture of conviction, opportunism and delusion” (Rudolf Lill). A Rest of the signals did church closer to the new state: the German bishops had under Hitler kirchenpolitischem comity (Government Statement of March 23, 1933) on 28 March 1933 its general prohibitions and warnings of the Nazi party had, however, but to the condemnation of Nazi ideology held. On 20 July 1933 saw the signing of the Reich Concordat between the imperial government and the Holy See. It nurtured, especially in the context of a merger just euphoric state of evangelical churches to a German Reich Church, even among Catholics hope when Rebuilding a national Christian-Germany not stand it.

The negotiations on the kingdom Concordat was based on older designs since April 1933 the Vice-Chancellor Franz von Papen with Pacelli, Cardinal Secretary of State, former nuncio in Munich and Berlin and later Pope Pius XII. And which is resident in Rome center politician Prelate Ludwig Kaas led. Between the approval of the Reichstag faction of the center to the “Enabling Act” and the prospect of a Reich Concordat was no connection. The negotiations were repeated before the demolition. “Inside the Curia is taken into account was that the Nazis by the Hitler government urgently required contract – their 3rd Intl Agreements, which gave them prestige gain – would not comply. The conclusion was, finally, the decisive consideration, Reich Concordat with the Church feared a fight not to be able to prevent, but after the beginning of one of the Church and the German Catholics effective line of defense under international law to possess. “(Rudolf Morsey)” With the explicit recognition concordats of countries and the tacit assumption of legal positions, which the Church in the Weimar constitution had received, stood a piece of liberal constitutional tradition … in the right of the “Third Reich” into … Even with these legal facts, the Reich Concordat was a disruptive factor in the political regime … The state was not only to certain benefits and to grant freedom rated obliged, but he was generally in his freedom of action is limited, his self-inhibited in the Nazi sense. “(Heinz Hürter)

3. Clarification of the fronts (1934-1939)

For a relatively rapid cooling of the Concordat of euphoria, however, soon caused the numerous vexatious measures the State party and against the pillars of the Catholic milieu launched and were accompanied by a daily, often socially motivated or sectarian overlays “small war on the ground”. Especially the large youth and workers’ clubs, with their hundreds of thousands of members have been increasingly afflicted 1934/35, not any purely religious activity was forbidden them. The Catholic newspapers were subject to rapid editorial and economic control, the church press was an exclusively ecclesiastical and religious coverage is limited. Especially the elimination of the clergy served the 1935 and 1937 with great propaganda effort by foreign exchange and morality processes in which bishops, priests and nuns as a corrupt, money-grubbing and morally unprecedented pieces were made out.

Were superimposed on the sharp ideological conflicts of the 1930 conflict over published ‘myth of the 20th Century ‘. Alfred Rosenberg, Hitler’s Representative since 1934 for the entire training and ideological education of the NSDAP, proclaimed this to be a nationalist-racial blood and ground-religion. In Cologne was in this context under the leadership of the late Vicar General Joseph Teusch a “defensive position against the Nazi anti-Christian propaganda” has been introduced. In October and December 1934 in Cologne and printed under the responsibility of the bishop of Münster, Clemens August Graf von Galen, published “Studies on the myth of the 20th Century “refute Rosenberg sentence for sentence. The “studies” were many believers have an important orientation. Nevertheless meant “progressive sacralization of Nazism” an unstoppable growing “Christian displacement levels of the public” (Heinz Hürter); in the summer of 1935 called for the Reich Interior Minister Frick already complete “Entkonfessionalisierung of public life.”

Regional gestaffelt pushed the Nazis and the Church’s influence in the school education sector, the religious education has been reduced or completely abolished, the confessional school in the so-called German school community transformed, private high schools have been dismantled. Since 1938/39, the Catholic Church on their effect innerkirchlichen space is limited. In the last two years before the war were the action is less than spectacular action of silent SS and Gestapo actions characterized.

When church people and the clergy led the assault to a clarification of fronts: The perception grew that the Nazi state, with its activities to the total Entkirchlichung and Entchristlichung the company sought.

Large parts of Catholics since 1934 responded with a more intensive participation in church life to the restrictions and the threat to their faith and brought this faith in public rallies, processions and pilgrimages to the demonstrative expression. About Regional announced in 1936 the “Oldenburg Cross fight”: An impressive mass mobilization forced the Nazi leaders who had decrease in the crosses from the classrooms to reverse. And yet, in February 1939, at the height of Hitler’s popularity, voted in internal church Votes 85% of adult West German visitors to the church Nazi church policy.

The clergy came within the Catholic milieu, the role of an “opinion leader” too. This social position and their own identity as a chaplain led many clergy, mainly from the pulpit more or less openly about the limitations of the religious sphere to comment. The radicalization of the Nazi government increased rapidly measure the risk, therefore, also to be prosecuted. World More than 12,000 priests, or 36% of the total German clergy, ran from 1933 to 1945 with the Nazi regime in the conflict, 407 of them were spent in a concentration camp, 107 were there to death. 63 Other priests were executed or murdered.

The fates of Karl Leisner and Bernhard Lichtenberg stand for many: Leisner, charismatic leader of the student youth in the diocese of Munster, and on 25 March 1939 by Bishop Galen of a deacon (priest candidates) consecrated, has been convicted for a speech to the failed assassination of Hitler ( “It is a shame that the leader was not there.”) Denounced and already next day, on 9 November 1939, arrested. According prison stay in Freiburg and Mannheim, he was on 16 March 1940 initially in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp (near Berlin), since 14 Then in December 1940 in Dachau concentration camp (near Munich) interned. The pulmonary tuberculosis in which the prisoner has already suffered more, broke a result of the detention strapaziösen life anew on. The terminally ill already fulfilled his suffering comrades in the so-called “priest block” his greatest desire, Leisner was on 17 December 1944 secretly ordained priest. Shortly after the liberation of the Dachau camp by the Americans died on 12 new priests August 1945 to the consequences of long-term detention in the sanatorium Planegg near Munich.

The Berlin minister and Domkapitular Bernhard Lichtenberg, 1938 at Dompropst and thus to the highest-ranking representatives from the Bishop of Berlin Preysing elected, was before his arrest in 1941 the Gestapo record: His political involvement in the Center Party before 1933 and his open criticism of the konkordatswidrigen and anticlerical measures of the Nazi state had numerous interrogations by state police after the draw.

In a summer 1996 survey will be released over 38,000 operations (interrogation, warning, monetary and prison sentences, deportation, detention camp, for example) against priests and religious clergy and more than 26,000 “offenses” documented. The mass of the conflict was taken from the pastoral clergy motivated insistence on the unrestricted preaching and service to the community, sometimes also from the assistance to foreign workers and Jews. More than 40% of “cases” had its origin in the regular exercise of priestly activity: the Liturgy, in the pastoral care, at school or in the club and youth work.

The German bishops, which, to the self-dissolution of the Center Party a special leadership zukam were in the summer of 1933 for the first time a pan-German conference in Fulda met. In sharp contrast to today, the Fulda Episcopal Conference, however, not formally organized institution, collectively, the body only, so far all the bishops have the same thought and wanted to do.

Exceptions such as the first archbishop of Freiburg optimistic Gröber apart, were the bishops in the critical assessment of the Nazi church policy quickly agreed. Allen was ahead of Munich, Cardinal Michael Faulhaber already in his Advent sermons of December 1933 for the religious, moral and social values of the Old Testament to have occurred.

Different ideas exist, however, about the way of reasonable opposition. The Wroclaw conference chairman, Cardinal Adolf Bertram was personally by the memory of the pastoral crisis of culture war years shaped and represented in his theological and ecclesiastical political beliefs a “command politics”, the public furore advisable to avoid looking. In countless diplomatic ground inputs to the imperial government Bertram tirelessly protested against government interference in church matters.

The Berlin Upper pastor Konrad von Preysing advocated another course. The legally and diplomatically trained Bishop wanted the Nazi church policy through a rigorous combination of internal episcopal claims and protests with an appeal to the public fight. Assisted by his cousin, the münsterischen Bishop Clemens August Graf von Galen, urged by Preysing to a more aggressive course of the German Episcopate. Preysing was backed by Pope Pius XI in. The Nazi war against the German churches had led episcopacy 1936, the pope is a frank word of protest to ask. The German-speaking (!) Encyclical “With burning concern” secretly spread, was on 21 March 1937 throughout the German Reich from the pulpit out. The pope is expected not only with the church policy of the Nazi state, but also with its ideological foundations, “Who the race or the nation or the state or the state (…) idolizes, the upside and the forge god created (. ..) order of things. “

The encyclical is the culmination of the ideological confrontation between the Nazi regime and the Catholic Church. Since the word pope is not only Catholic, but Christian formulated basic positions, which for many evangelical Christians as well as for immovable were Catholics, it was suddenly an ecumenical event. The text of the encyclical was far beyond the boundaries of religion have been disseminated and also encouraged ecumenical initiatives such as the “Una Sancta Brotherhood,” the Freiburger Diocesan priests and founders of the German Federal Catholics peace, Max Josef Metzger, 1938 launched. The shared experience of ideological and violent oppression was to bridge the deep sectarian rifts helped overcome.

Pius XI. died on 10 February 1939, his successor, was Secretary of State Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, the conditions in Germany from his time as Apostolic Nuncio to the German Empire and the Pope as a negotiator at the conclusion of Baden (1932) and Austrian (1933) and the Reich Concordat (1933) knew best.

4. The war years

On 1 September 1939 began with the German troops attack Poland at the Second World War. Although 1938/39 largely due to a “vestry Christianity” back, led the Catholic Church at the outbreak of war in the “national obligation” taken. The different accent calling the bishops are not lacking in solidarity, by the enthusiasm of the war year 1914, it was indeed far away. According to the official reading was the imperative of national unity in war subordinating everything. The Nazi leaders, especially the Gestapo and SS, but served as an alibi to the inward terror against opposition forces continued to increase. Under the pretext of “war-related requirements” were the countless restrictions until deep into the domestic sphere into the church (eg church ban after nocturnal flying alarm). Especially after the victory over France (summer 1940) is becoming increasingly clear that influential circles in the Party, the SS and Gestapo war for a political church “Land” wanted to use. The repression reached 1941 with the so-called “Monastery storm” their climax when alone in Altreich 123 monasteries and religious institutions have been lifted. This year, the monthly average 9 Catholic clergy in concentration camps.

A disproportionately lower than the break even the outbreak of war, namely the “total disinhibition of Hitler’s abuse of power” (Ludwig people) escaped the war, by persecution and the church reach the public eye largely: The Tarnnamen the “euthanasia” were 70,000 mentally ill and mentally murdered, countless Roma and Sinti, political opponents, prisoners of war and foreign workers were the political persecution or inhuman treatment to the victims and the escalation of crime culminated in the deportation and extermination of European Jews.

By the beginning of the war already 80 years, Cardinal Bertram continued its entry policy unchanged even now, despite the flagrant violations of the concordat provisions and especially the flagrant human rights violations so far pursued by the German episcopacy very defensive approach in question, without involvement of the public also threatened the identity of the Bishop’s Office as a “church teaching and Wächteramt,” ultimately the reputation of the Church as guardian of the divine order to suffer.

The bishops of Münster, Clemens August Graf von Galen, and Hildesheim, Godehard Machens, replied to their harrowing Gewissensnot in the summer of 1941 on their way with public pulpit protests against the destruction of supposedly “lebensunwerten life,” a process that the National Socialist dictatorship till its Mark shook. From Galen was already after Judenpogrom in November 1938 had been in favor of the beleaguered citizens of the pulpit to go. He was then but at the request of the local Jewry refrain to their situation – by their own assessment – not to deteriorate. His tough public accusations against the seizure of monasteries, against the expulsion of religious people and then against the organized murder of age and weak mentally ill were among the conditions of the year 1941 “the most effective form of self-contradiction and (Morsey). The sermons did not want to call an open resistance to the theological and pastoral motivated protest unfolded, but an enormous political impact.

One in November 1941 elaborated shepherds word that the issue of human rights to be desired in terms of him, was in December, together with the Protestant Confessing Church as a joint memorandum to the Chancellor of delivery. When she remained unanswered, numerous Western and Southern German dioceses in March 1942 to have an abbreviated version of the pulpits of churches to be read: “Everyone,” it said, “has the natural right to life and to the necessary goods of life, “and the bishops added:” We bishops are not to do so, against the killing of innocents custody thereof. Nobody is sure of his life, if not untouched off: Thou shalt not kill! “

At this point, had the German bishops and the papal Curia secure messages that the deportations of Jews in the East no resettlement, but the preparation for their physical extermination meant. The information came from the 1938 set “at the Episcopal Relief ordinariate Berlin”, where named Dr. Margaret Summer, Dompropst Bernhard Lichtenberg and Heinrich crown for the emigration of persecuted people, mainly Jews, Catholic, tried. In the same vein worked in Berlin, the Protestant “Christian relief agency for Jews under the leadership of Pastor Henry Grüber in Freiburg Dr. Gertrud Luckner and the St. Raphael’s Society for Catholic emigrants in the context of the Catholic German Caritas Association, in Wroclaw and Gabriele Gräfin Magnis in Vienna P. Ludger Born (SJ) and Cardinal Innitzer.

The protest of the Gesamtepiskopats, the Munich, Cardinal Michael Faulhaber to the Conference Chairman Bertram called, was on 12 September 1943 in a shepherd’s word about the Christian Ten Commandments as the law lives of the people “read from the pulpit. It stated with powerful clarity: “killing is bad in itself, even if they are supposedly in the public interest would be perpetrated: To blame defenseless and weak of mind and sick in Siech incurable and fatal injuries to congenital lebensuntüchtigen and newborns exposed to disarmed innocent hostages and war prisoners, or to people of foreign races and origins. Also, the government can not and should really only death worthy crimes punished with death. “

Under the conditions of totalitarian dictatorship and reign of terror of the war years it remained the decision of the individual subject, the impact of these warnings to be drawn. Bernhard Lichtenberg, who because of his “the State” commitment to the Jews had been arrested there on 25 October 1941 compared to the Gestapo officials openly on the record: “My attitude to the Nazi state current depends on the attitude of the apostle Paul, as stated in Romans chapter 13 is expressed. (…) What I have said, the state that I recognize as such. But I can not as a Catholic priest from the outset and at every available measure, the Government will say yes and amen. (…) If the tendency of such government decisions and measures against the revealed teachings of Christianity and so against my pastoral conscience directed, I will follow my conscience and with all the consequences to accept the consequent result for me personally. It also follows from the fact that I am the evacuation [of the 'non-Aryans'], with all its accompanying phenomena inwardly reject, because it violates the main commandment of Christianity are addressed:’ Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself ‘, and I also recognize the Jews My neighbor, an immortal, in the image and likeness of God has created soul. “

On 22 Lichtenberg was in May 1942 to two years in prison after his release again arrested by the Gestapo and the concentration camp Dachau “transferred”. On the transportation there died of the Berlin Dompropst on 5 November 1943 in the yard. His bad health has long had the physical and mental rigors of prison and transportation is no longer stood.

With his courageous confession against the injustice of the Hitler regime Lichtenberg was not alone. As he met many other Catholics in the personal conscience decision to active resistance against Nazism to afford. Faster than the institutional church then secured within the diverse personal contacts among themselves and with other opposition groups, their cohesion. Thus formed the Jesuitenpatres Augustin Rösch Lothar and King, together with the Legal Committee of the Order of the Fulda Bishops’ Conference, Georg Anger Maier, since 1941 a group of priests, the bishops to a stronger condemnation of the Nazi policy sought to move. Their biggest success was the presentation of the pastoral letter on the Ten Commandments in September 1943, at the conclusion they had made a significant contribution. Rösch it was, to the overthrow and reorganization plans of the Kreisau Circle from the beginning was involved and both the king and the Jesuit Father Alfred Delp resistance in the circuit introduced. The significant influence that the Catholic social teaching to the ideas of the Kreisau of the reorganization of Germany and Europe after the war, exercised, went to a considerable extent on Delp back. Delp was to turn the group around the Cologne “Ketteler House,” the association’s headquarters of the Catholic Workers Movement, in conjunction. Its General Chairman Otto Mueller and other Catholic leaders such as worker Jacob Kaiser, Bernhard lettershop Nicholas big house and had since 1933 against the destruction of the Christian trade unions and the Catholic Workers’ Associations and Gesellen defended and equally in social and political reorganization plans worked. About Delp and the Berlin lawyer Josef Wirmer gave the Cologne District Finally, contact with the resistance group led by Carl Goerdeler, in close cooperation with the conspirators of the 20th July 1944 the lists of members of a future government which had to Wirmer as Minister of Justice and lettershop House as Minister for Reconstruction should include. The failure of the assassination on Hitler disbanded then, however, a wave of persecution that comes with most leading figures in the resistance movement and their representatives to the Catholic victims.

The active political opposition to National Socialism, the individual faith and conscience decision required was ultimately the cause of a minority of Catholics. It is, however, the widespread resistance of the Catholics against the Nazi ideology and its claim totality. The defending values and standards system was one of the key prerequisites for the development of democratic postwar order in the Federal Republic of Germany.