Dirk Palm. "Wir sind doch Brüder!": Der evangelische Kirchentag und die deutsche Frage 1949-1961. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2002. 360 S. (gebunden), ISBN 978-3-525-55736-5.
Reviewed by Robert F. Goeckel (Department of Political Science, State University of New York, College at Geneseo)
Published on H-German (November, 2004)
Anyone who has experienced a German Kirchentag (church gathering) is aware that there is really no analogy in religiously heterogeneous American society; even an English translation of the term is difficult. At the Dresden Kirchentag held under the big-tent theme of "Dare to Trust" in July 1983, this reviewer witnessed how East German Protestant laity posed explosive political issues such as peace and militarization, ecology and human rights, pressing church leaders and the SED regime to respond even as both church and state preferred to shield the Luther-year celebration from the rising tide of social dissent. Until the candlelight marches in the final days of the GDR, such massive gatherings of several hundred thousand people were impossible in any other context than a Kirchentag closing service. This carnival of Kirchentag--Bible studies and political discussion, grassroots organizing and event management, high level negotiations between church and state juxtaposed with spontaneous demonstrations and surveillance by the Stasi--is the object of Dirk Palm's in-depth and well-researched study. Even though Palm focuses on the early postwar years, the mix of motives among leaders and laity, the partisan interest and politicization by the media, the changing international context characterized the institution Kirchentag in its formative years as well.
Palm's main goal is to describe and interpret the founding of the Kirchentag in its heyday as an all-German movement after World War II. His chronology ends in 1961, when the Berlin Wall and GDR policy precluded the possibility of such mass meetings. The author provides rich biographical description of the individuals who were instrumental in this movement, in particular Reinold Thadden-Trieglaff, long-time chair of the German Evangelical Kirchentag organization. In the process, the author develops a three-fold typology of conceptions which informed the motives of the various actors and provide the basis for the political tension and compromises which proved necessary to mount such large public events in the context of the widening division of Germany. Thadden-Trieglaff's vision of "popular mission" and rechristianization after the Nazi era clashed with that of those, such as the founder of the Evangelical Academy, Eberhard Mueller, and Bishop Hans Lilje of Hannover, who conceived of its function in terms of an "academic-problem oriented conception," a forum for dialogue among elites (p. 304). Still others, such as Berlin Bishop Otto Dibelius and Hessen-Nassau Church President Martin Niemoeller, emphasized a "political-symbolic function" in their conception of the Kirchentag. The study reflects extensive use of archival sources, including not only GDR sources (SED, state, and CDU-East), but also church archives of the EKD/Kirchentag and important regional churches and official West German sources found in the Federal Archives in Koblenz. Palm augments this with extensive analysis of media coverage of the Kirchentage in order to determine their public resonance. Finally, he uses personal papers and interviews on a limited basis. Palm is thereby able to develop greater insight into the motives and interactions of the multiplicity of actors involved.
Palm investigates the process whereby the fundamentally religious goal of the Kirchentag was altered as a result of the founders' efforts to institutionalize this new organization, requiring political, logistical and financial support from a host of actors who were largely pursuing their own non-religious interests. For example, to mount all-German Kirchentage the leaders had to navigate the shifting sands of the two German states which were seeking to use the Kirchentag to delay FRG rearmament and integration into the West (in the case of the GDR, CDU-East, and Niemoeller) and to delegitimize the GDR by giving vent to popular dissent (in the case of the FRG, CDU-West and Dibelius). By exploring the agenda and debate at the Kirchentage, Palm demonstrates the effect of the widening political division on the substance of the Kirchentage. Issues such as rearmament and educational discrimination in the East gave way to more focus on issues relevant to the respective parts of Germany, such as Mitbestimmung in the West and political activity in the East. Palm demonstrates clearly how shifts in the general East-West climate directly affected the Kirchentage: holding them in Berlin and Leipzig in 1951 and 1954 represented GDR forebearance in the face of Soviet initiatives, whereas rejection of plans for Thuringia and Berlin in 1957 and 1961 reflected the new-found self-assurance of the GDR, in particular Ulbricht's hard-line wing of the SED.
Other fronts that Palm explores and documents include that between the FRG government under Adenauer and the Kirchentag. Adenauer supported the Kirchentag as a means of developing greater support for the CDU among Protestants and of putting the GDR on the defensive. The Catholic competition with the Protestants also factored into the Kirchentag's efforts. For its part, the Kirchentag leaders needed the financial support and participation of FRG leaders to make the institution viable as well as gain visibility in German society.
On the internal church side, this study reveals fault lines not obvious to the outsider, but crucial to an understanding of this institution. For example, the split between conservatives and leftists among Protestants manifested itself in the diplomacy involved in planning the Kirchentage and in the debates themselves. In scheduling speakers, Heinemann had to be balanced by Gerstenmaier, Niemoeller by Dibelius.
In addition, Palm nicely plumbs the nuances of church support for the Kirchentag. On the one hand, it represented a means of outreach to laity and social relevance. On the other hand, it engendered suspicion in the institutional/clerical church, which often contended that it alone embodied ecclesiastical authority. The largely successful efforts of the Kirchentag to gain financial support from the FRG and the United States, and from business sponsors provided greater autonomy from the institutional church, even at the expense of increased political dependence.
Ultimately, however, Palm's purpose in exploring these internal factions is to explain how the Kirchentag sought to establish itself as an element of civil society in an increasingly asymmetrical East-West context. After its hopes to deter West German integration into the West were dashed, the GDR's efforts to limit the church to the cultic sphere would necessarily target the all-German public forum, Kirchentag (pp. 254-255). Not surprisingly the proposals for parallel Kirchentage in East and West in the late 1950s presaged the split in the Kirchentage movement itself and foreshadowed the 1969 split in the EKD. Dresden 1983 showed that despite the rupture in all-German institutions, the element of civil society did not die out: the reopening of the German question in the 1980s would lend new "political-symbolic significance" to the Kirchentage in both East and West.
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Citation:
Robert F. Goeckel. Review of Palm, Dirk, "Wir sind doch Brüder!": Der evangelische Kirchentag und die deutsche Frage 1949-1961.
H-German, H-Net Reviews.
November, 2004.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=9938
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