Pfarrernotbund

The Pastors, founded on September 21, 1933, to German Protestant theologians, pastors, and church officials joined forces against the introduction of the Aryan paragraph in the German Evangelical Church (DEK ). This was in response to the election Ludwig Müller as Reich bishop on 6 September 1933 and on the work it had begun in 1933 trials of the German Christians (DC), the German Evangelical Church (DEK ) in a company controlled by the Nazi ideology " Reich Church " without Christians of Jewish origin reshape. In order for the church struggle began in the era of National Socialism, in the course of the 1934 Pastors' emerged the Confessing Church.

The Aryan Paragraph

The so-called " Aryan clause " was incorporated on April 7, 1933 " Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service". He followed the boycott of Jewish businesses on April 1 and forbade people of Jewish descent - with few exceptions - the status of civil servants, in order to displace from public office. This was a first step towards state disenfranchisement of Jews on their way to the Holocaust.

The extent to which the paragraph and church officials of Jewish descent was concerned, was initially unclear. After the church elections of 13 July 1933 in which the DC reached a two-thirds majority, the General Synod of the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union was held on September 6. This decided the first directed by the DC part of a church canon law governing the legal status of the clergy and church officials that demanded their " Aryan descent ". The Synod exacerbated the state provision nor to the effect that the marriage was even with " non-Aryans " now a non appeal or grounds for dismissal of clergy and church officials.

Foundation and guidelines

On the following day met a circle of dissidents who had been prevented at the Synod on the debate of the law. On the initiative of Niederlausitzer Pastor Herbert Goltzen, Günter Jacob and Eugen Weschke they founded the Pastors. A few days later came to his other pastors, including Martin Niemoller and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, at. These two formulated a protest letter to the new church government, which called at the same time the conditions for receiving new members:

" 1 After the confession of our church is the Church's Magisterium is only bound to the proper vocation. Through the " Aryan paragraph " of the new church law on civil servants a law is created which is contrary to this fundamental commitment set in opposition. This is a condition that must be considered wrong according to the confession, proclaimed as church law and violated the confession. "

" 2 There can be no doubt that those affected by the civil law ordained minister ... continue to the full extent the law of the free proclamation of the Word and the free administration of the sacraments in the Protestant Church of the Old Prussian Union, which stands on the confessions of the Reformation hold. "

" 3 Who gives such a fragment of confession consent, thus closes off from the communion of the Church. We therefore demand that this law, which separates the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union of the Christian Church, will be lifted immediately. "

The fourth point was added a promise to help by law or other violent measures concerned in the church. These four points were the commitment of the members of the League, who officially constituted on 21 September.

Brethren and membership development

The first stewards meeting voted on October 20, 1933 a Reichsbruderrat as a board and external representation. These were:

In less than four months, the Emergency League developed into a mass movement of 7036 members in January 1934. This number but dropped to 1938 to 3933 active pastor, 374 retirees, 529 116 auxiliary preachers and candidates. After Wilhelm Niemöller so were a little over 20 percent of the then active Protestant clergy member of the Pastors.

Work

The Pastors' was created as a "system of mutual solidarity " ( Klaus Scholder ) to support 30-50 affected by the Aryan paragraph church pastors of Jewish origin of ideas and materials. However, a common protest against state discrimination against the Jews was a total of nearly all of its members completely away. These were characterized by the whole church anti-Judaism and saw the exclusion of Jews from public offices and leisure occupations as a necessary state action, in which the Church did not interfere.

So Niemöller offered in his sets for Aryan question in early November 1933 DC to a compromise: In order to be no " nuisance " pastor should receive " non-Aryan " descent no leadership roles in the church. This was in line with the recommended by the theologian Walter Künneth since Pentecost 1933 behavior. The church could make a contribution to the state " solution of the Jewish question " through increased mission to the Jews, because only Jews converted to Christ are exempt from the " world domination claim ".

The unanimously elected in September to the Reich Bishop Ludwig Müller took Niemöller to offer and continued on 16 November 1933, the laws of the Church with the Church Aryan paragraph, first off. On 8 December it adopted a new law on " legal relations of the clergy and officials of the country's churches," containing no more Aryan paragraph. This law was expressly approved by the Reich Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick: He recognized the protests of the Pastors as " serious doctrinal concerns " to. Adolf Hitler himself had decreed on December 2 that the state governments should not intervene in the purely intra-church dispute over the church Aryan paragraph. The proportion of Jewish priest was considered too insignificant to it to put the unity of the Protestant Church in jeopardy.

After the parliamentary elections of 12 November, the Emergency League saw nevertheless increased attacks by the now fragmented DC exposed who tried to present him as a subversive organization. In his defense, he then gave out one authored by the Berlin pastor Friedrich Müller leaflet which was distributed throughout the empire. It stated:

" The German nation has faced closed in a wonderful unity behind the leader. What was visible here to the outside, is only the result of the actual grant All the leader and National Socialism. We strictly refuse to doubt, as far as we are concerned. "

"With the lie that every National Socialist German was also a Christian, and that anyone who was not German Christian who was an enemy of Nazism and its leader, the German Christians gained the masses of their constituents. This lie has long since collapsed ... "

" The leader himself has clearly stated that the struggles within the church without interference from the state authority must be played. What in the evangelical church is going on, has nothing to do with loyalty to the state of each of its members. The still stands unshaken. "

Importance

With its four recording conditions of the Emergency League presented after all, the first time since Hitler came to power out clearly: who agree with the exclusion of Jews from the Christian church, close yourself from it. The church - not the government - Aryan clause was therefore seen as incompatible with the Christian faith and church creed, so not the overwhelming majority, but the small minority of initially a dozen pastors the true Protestant Church was.

This worsening was due to Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Hardly any church leader shared his opinion. Due to the failure of the DC and the following disengagement of the Emergency League this but found quickly agreeing with pastors and congregations throughout the empire. He thus became a precursor of the Confessing Church, which was founded on 31 May 1934, and understood as true evangelical church against the " Reich Church ". Their resistance was almost exclusively within the church against the behavior of the steered from DC or custom church leaders church authorities.

On November 10, 1933, the President of the Prussian Evangelical Supreme Ecclesiastical Council in Berlin, Friedrich Werner dismissed, the first pastor of Jewish origin, Serious Flatow. The reason given was:

" Flatow has in his appearance and his character so much jumping into the eyes of those characteristics in themselves that are considered intrinsically by the people as the Jewish race that employment in a community is impossible. "

By 1941, more particular Churches of DEK took over the Aryan paragraph and dismissed pastors of Jewish descent. This could prevent neither the Emergency League nor the subsequent Confessing Church. According to point 4 of the founding declaration, however, the "Office Gruber " the pastor Heinrich Gruber in 1937 established the baptized as non-baptized Jews helped to its closure in 1940 the state illegally hiding places or to leave.

Only individual members of the Notbunds disagreed with the anti-Semitic policies of the Nazis. The theologian Karl Barth said on November 15, 1933 in a lecture before the Pastors:

" The protests against the heresy of the German Christians can not start with the Aryan paragraph, in the rejection of the Old Testament, in the Arianism of the German -Christian Christology, in which naturalism and Pelagianism of the German -Christian justification and sanctification, in the Staatsvergötterung the German use -Christian ethics. He must, in principle, on the other hand (...) judge that the German Christians survive alongside the Scriptures as the only source of revelation, the German folklore, its history and its political present as a second source of revelation and thus as the faithful one ' another God ' to recognize give. "

For Barth ie the state and the church Aryan Paragraph was equally an expression of Christian heresy. The exclusion of Jews from the Church was for him a consequence and part of the problem of worship of a false god, even in politics. He expressed the same thought in a sermon of 10 December 1933 which he sent to Adolf Hitler. This view was formulated by him in the Barmen Declaration in January 1934, as the proclaimed the founding document of the Confessing Church that Jesus Christ a word of God over all areas of life and rejected the heresy of a second source of revelation.

Bonhoeffer took part in since 1937 conspiratorial plans to assassinate Hitler and overthrow the Nazi regime and was executed for it after the failure of the assassination attempt of July 20, 1944 Hitler on 9 April 1945.

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