Annette Göhres, Stephan Linck, Joachim Liß-Walther. Als Jesus "arisch" wurde: Kirche, Christen, Juden in Nordelbien 1933-1945. Die Ausstellung in Kiel. Bremen: Edition Temmen, 2003. 280 S. EUR 12.90 (broschiert), ISBN 978-3-86108-539-3.
Reviewed by Kyle Jantzen (Faculty of Arts and Science, Ambrose University College)
Published on H-German (December, 2006)
North Elbian Protestants Facing Their National Socialist Past
As interesting as this work of North Elbian local church history is, its greatest significance lies in the process by which it came into being. Als Jesus 'Arisch' Wurde, which translates as "When Jesus Became 'Aryan,'" is actually a companion volume based on a traveling exhibit sponsored by the North Elbian Evangelical-Lutheran Church and hosted by various parish churches throughout the region. The genesis of the exhibit, and later, the book, was a 1998 decision of the North Elbian regional church synod to produce a formal statement marking the sixtieth anniversary of the "Kristallnacht" of November 9-10, 1938. Behind this effort lay the question of the extent to which various antisemitic laws of the former Regional Churches of Eutin, Hamburg, Lübeck and Schleswig-Holstein, which were later incorporated into the North Elbian Evangelical-Lutheran Church, were still formally in effect. The resulting statement, included in Als Jesus 'Arisch' Wurde, not only denounced the actions of the "inhuman, racist regime of National Socialism" (p. 12), but also confessed the shame and co-responsibility of the former regional churches and their silence in the face of the exclusion, discrimination and murder of Jewish fellow citizens. The synod went on to repeal a series of old church laws that discriminated against Jewish-German Protestants, most of which were extensions of the April 1933 Reich Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service. Finally, as the synod confessed its responsibility for its past discrimination and its former anti-Jewish theological orientation, it committed itself to fostering better relations between Christians and Jews. Recognizing that critical self-assessment and meaningful remembrance of the past needed to include the collection and analysis of historical sources, the synod committed itself to promoting a new archival effort in the field of Christian-Jewish relations, to sponsoring an exhibit on the theme "Church, Christians, Jews in North Elbia during the time of National Socialism" and to holding a future synod, in 2001, devoted to the theme "Jews and Christians" (p. 14).
The resulting exhibit was strengthened by decisions to have it travel throughout the North Elbian region, to host it in a series of Protestant parish churches and to include local content at each site. The companion volume under review was based on the exhibit in Kiel, where city pastor Joachim Liß-Walther, the local chapter of the Society for Christian-Jewish cooperation and members of the theological faculty at the university cooperated in a series of public events to promote further discussion around the exhibit theme. As a result, the book contains a wide variety of material. The introductory section includes a word from the bishop of Holstein-Lübeck, a preface from the editors and the text of the two synodal declarations of guilt of 1998 and 2001.
The middle section of Als Jesus 'arisch' wurde contains the entire text of the traveling exhibit as it was presented in Kiel, which is also available online at www.kirche-christen-juden.org. Its organizing concept is the broad idea of the individual encounter with persecuted social minorities. Set in the context of short descriptions of the various church-political orientations during the Third Reich, excerpts from key primary texts and detailed timelines of national, regional and local political and ecclesiastical events, ten biographical stations form the heart of the exhibit and book, representing the wide range of responses to antisemitism in the North Elbian Protestant churches in the 1930s. To this end, the editors put forward an interesting three-fold spectrum, from Jew to "Aryan," from victim to perpetrator, and from persecuted to not persecuted, that defines sixteen different categories of response to the state-sponsored persecution of Jews. The ten biographical stations include a publicist, five pastors, a female teacher, a judge, a professor and an entire congregation.
The final section of the book contains a series of speeches, sermons and papers that accompanied the exhibit in Kiel. Among them are broad reflections on the roots of anti-Judaism, Martin Luther and the Jews, the Catholic Church in the Third Reich, the tedious process by which Protestant churches have come to recognize their complicity in the persecution of the Jews and the difficult relationship between Christians and Jews, the Church and Israel. The book also includes closer investigations that build on themes evident in the exhibit itself: antisemitism in the Schleswig-Holstein Regional Church, Flensburg Pastor Wilhelm Halfmann's work "The Church and the Jews" (1936), the influence of the Eisenach Institute in the Schleswig-Holstein Regional Church and the fate of Jewish children in Schleswig-Holstein during the Nazi era.
It is difficult to survey the entire contents of such a variegated work. There are, however, highlights throughout the work. Without doubt, the inclusion in the introduction of the two formal statements of the North Elbian synod adds significant weight to the project. These confessions of past sins demonstrate the earnestness with which the entire project was carried out and the depth to which the North Elbian Church has worked as an institution to confront and overcome its past.
Among the biographical stations is the account of Friedrich Anderson of Flensburg, publicist, pastor and politician. Anderson called for the liberation of Christianity from the "Jewish spirit," blamed the German defeat in the First World War on a Jewish world conspiracy and eventually founded the Bund für Deutschkirche, which worked from within the Protestant Church to fashion an "Aryanized," Germanic church. He rejected the Old Testament and argued that Jesus was an Aryan Galilean martyred in the battle against Jewry. To illustrate the extremism of Anderson's position, the editors include a lengthy passage from Anderson's revisionist history of Jesus "as it actually was" in which Jesus' father Joseph disabuses his young son of the notion that their family is Jewish.
On the other end of the spectrum were Arthur and Kitty Goldschmidt, converted Jews. Arthur, who twice turned down calls to sit on the Federal Court, was a member of the German People's Party. Nonetheless, he was released from the judiciary in 1933, under the effect of the Aryan Paragraph. In 1938, the Goldschmidts sent their son abroad to avoid Nazi persecution and never saw him again. In 1942, the couple was expelled from the Schleswig-Holstein Regional Church, along with other "non-Aryans." When Kitty died, the parish pastor in Reinbek refused her a proper burial. One month later, Arthur was deported to Theresienstadt, where he soon founded a Christian congregation that grew to include 800 formal members, with church services of up to several hundred on church holidays. Freed in 1945, Arthur Goldschmidt was elected to the deputy mayorship of Reinbek that same year, but died in 1947.
A third biographical station recounts the history of the Jerusalem-Gemeinde, an Irish Presbyterian congregation in Hamburg devoted to Jewish mission. The church managed to foster a "non-Aryan" congregation that held church services, excursions and "non-Aryan" evening teas attended by several hundred people. A key meeting point for persecuted people in Hamburg, the congregation remained open until 1939, less than a year after its 106-year-old founder returned to Great Britain.
The stories of Anderson, the Goldschmidts, the Jerusalem-Gemeinde and the subjects of the seven other biographical stations are the focal points of the book, and the strength of the "Church, Christians, Jews" exhibit. The accompanying speeches, sermons and academic papers only deepen the effect of the book, which is a powerful exercise in reflection and self-criticism illustrating the depth to which the antisemitism of the Third Reich infiltrated the Christian churches of the North Elbian region, and the extent to which this antisemitism decisively altered the lives of many Protestant clergy and parishioners. This is local church history at its best, when it uses the particulars of parish life to illuminate, nuance and above all humanize the larger subject of Christian-Jewish relations in the Third Reich. Its editors, along with the leadership of the North Elbian Evangelical-Lutheran Church, are to be applauded for the production of this insightful book.
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Citation:
Kyle Jantzen. Review of Göhres, Annette; Linck, Stephan; Liß-Walther, Joachim, Als Jesus "arisch" wurde: Kirche, Christen, Juden in Nordelbien 1933-1945. Die Ausstellung in Kiel.
H-German, H-Net Reviews.
December, 2006.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=12650
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