Betrayal
Page 12
The purging of everything Jewish from Christianity that was proposed by Institute members was perceived by many as radical and illegitimate. Grundmann defended his proposals by arguing that "[j]ust as people couldn't imagine Christianity without the Pope during the time of Luther, so, too, they can't imagine salvation without the Old Testament."" Dejudaizing Christianity was simply a continuation of the Reformation.
The problem of removing "Judaism" from Christianity was theologically complex. According to Grundmann, the very concept of God is radically different in Judaism and Christianity: "The Jewish concept of God is fundamentally determined through the Vergeltungsgedanken: God is the Judge who repays men. But Jesus sees God as One who forgives, in order to generate community."" The distinction is not an accident; Jesus undertook a fight against Yahweh as a tribal God and against Judaism.' In the Sermon on the Mount, Grundmann argued, Jesus expresses a sense of community between God and human beings, and elsewhere Jesus addresses God in intimate terms, as Abba, father, rather than the Hebrew term, Yahweh. Grundmann devoted a book to discussing the ethical implications of the divine relationship with humanity in Christ." He concluded that Jesus introduced a new understanding of God and of divine expectations of human beings, a new situational ethic that overrode commandments such as the prohibition against murder. Jesus' authority was rooted in himself, rather than in the Bible, and it was insignificant that Jesus cited the prophets and psalms of the Old Testament, because "so much more that is in the Old Testament was not cited by Jesus.""' Rather than being bound by the Old Testament's laws and commandments, which represent a Jewish outlook, Christians are to follow Jesus' example and make moral decisions by listening to the religiosity of their own hearts, which transcends commandments, even those prohibiting murder. Grundmann wrote: "With the proclamation of the kingdom of God as present, a new experience of God and a new understanding of God were linked. Internally, it had nothing to do with Judaism, but meant the dissolution of the Jewish religious world. That should be recognizable from the fact alone that the Jews brought Jesus Christ to the cross.""
Jesus as Aryan
The German Christians liked to claim that their mission was not to create a new Christianity, but to provide a Christianity appropriate to the German people. Christian missionaries in other parts of the world had not hesitated to synthesize elements intrinsic to the native culture with Christian beliefs and liturgies, and native Germanic expressions should be similarly included in a German Christianity, they argued. What is striking, however, is how they defined those native Germanic expressions: "German" was equated with the elimination of everything "Jewish." While purging Hebrew words from the liturgy or Scriptures was a fairly easy task, the greater problem was what to do with Gospel accounts describing Jesus as a Jew. What role could there be for a Jewish savior in a religion of German Christianity? Opening his address to the Institute's conference in March 1941, Grundmann, who served as academic director of the Institute, declared, "Our Volk, which stands above all else in a struggle against the satanic powers of world Jewry for the order and life of this world, dismisses Jesus, because it cannot struggle against the Jews and open its heart to the king of the Jews.""
That assumption was false, Grundmann argued; Jesus was not a Jew at all, but the great enemy of the Jews. Of Galilean, not Judean, origin, Jesus was "with the greatest probability" a member of one of the foreign peoples living in northern Palestine since the Assyrian conquest in the eighth century B.C.ti., most likely an Aryan.12 That Jesus was an Aryan was not a new idea; it had already been proposed during the nineteenth century by some German philosophers and scholars. Johann Fichte, in his Addresses to the German Nation, suggested that Jesus may not have been of Jewish origin, given that his genealogy is omitted in the Gospel of John." The rise of racial theory in the nineteenth century provided a new vocabulary, allowing scholars such as Ernest Renan to distinguish between a Semitic Old Testament and an Aryan New Testament." Renan sought to prove that Christianity was not Semitic in origin, because Jesus came from the northern Galilee, rather than Judea;` Jesus' Galilean origins provided a popular motif for German scholars writing on the life of Jesus in the 1860s and 1870s
Friedrich Delitzsch added the further suggestion that after the Assyrian conquest, the Galilee had been resettled with Babylonians of mixed Aryan descent.'- Paul de Lagarde, one of Germany's great Semitic scholars, rejected Christianity's traditional understanding of Jesus as Jew as an "intolerable distortion."" Jesus was no Jew, but a rebel against Judaism who deliberately called himself a Son of man to escape any association with the Jews. In another kind of approach, Edmond Picard argued in 1899 that Jesus must have been an Aryan because of his antipathy to capitalism, the tool of the Jews." Houston Stewart Chamberlain gave widespread popularity to the idea that Jesus was racially Aryan, and German professors of Protestant theology in the 1910s and 1920s found themselves debating the issue, granting the claim even greater legitimacy."" Ernst Lohmeyer developed the theory of a two-site origin of early Christianity: Galilee, where a universalistic, son-of-man eschatology prevailed, and Jerusalem, dominated by nationalistic, Jewish eschatology." Rudolf Otto had made a similar claim, based on his phenomenological observations of Jewish and Christian religiosity.''
In his 1940 study of Jesus, Jesus der Galilaer and das Judentum, Grundmann was thus able to conclude that Jesus' rejection of the Jewish title of "messiah" in favor of the title 'Son of man' proved his Galilean, and thus his Aryan, origin. Although Grundmann declared Jesus to have been an Aryan, the troubling problem remained: to account for Jewish concepts and texts, attributed to Jesus, within the very body of the New Testament. But the explanation was simple: The image and message of Jesus had been falsified by the early Jewish Christians, who presented Jesus as "the fulfiller of the law and the new teacher of law, only sent to the house of Israel."" Furthermore, the Jews expected a messiah who would be their ruler, whereas Jesus' message was to be a server of God and the community.' Johannes Hempel, professor of Old Testament at the University of Berlin and one of the early organizers of the Institute, argued that Jesus' monotheism broke with the Old Testament's henotheism and that he similarly universalized the promise of salvation."
The Institute took the argument a step further as it sought recognition within the institutional church. Grundmann argued that Jewish motifs in the New Testament represent falsifications of the original text, introduced by early Jewish Christians to distort the tradition in order to make Christianity serve the purposes of Judaism. Correcting this error was a suitable task for the German New Testament scholars, who were considered the finest in the world, fully capable of emending the biblical text to remove Jewish elements. As Gerhard Kittel's students, Grundmann, Bertram, and other leaders of the Institute were considered experts on Judaism, though their work shows limited awareness of the Hebrew Jewish sources of antiquity and a very narrow reading of Greek Jewish sources.
The eradication of Jewish influences from Christianity was viewed, in other words, as a restoration of the original message of Jesus and a recovery of his historical personage. Not the Aryan Jesus, but the Jewish Jesus was the falsification; the sophistication of modern theology's historical-critical methods finally enabled this recognition and the reformation of church life it engendered. Far from being a threat to religious faith, National Socialism was viewed as a great opportunity for the revival of true Christianity."
The Theological Faculty at the University of Jena
Most of the theological faculties at German universities included professors who were supporters of the German Christian movement, or even members of the Institute, and they inevitably brought their anti-Jewish viewpoints to their scholarship and teaching. In some cases, such professors dominated and controlled the theological curricula. The faculty at the University of Jena, located just a short distance from the Institute's headquarters in Eisenach, was highly politicized, and the theologians were no exception. The theological faculty at Jena strove to create, in the words o
f one of its professors, Wolf Meyer-Erlach, "a stronghold of National Socialism."'- To that end, only Nazi supporters were appointed professors, student dissertations had to comply with Nazi racial theory, and "Jewish" topics such as Hebrew language were eliminated. Several other theological faculties had also abolished the study of Hebrew or made Old Testament studies optional. In 1938, Grundmann urged eliminating the study of Hebrew from the curriculum at the University of Jena because, he argued, the early Christians had read the Greek Bible and because the Greek text of the Old Testament is older than the extant Hebrew manuscripts; the decision to make Hebrew study optional was announced by the dean, Eisenhuth, on 1 April 1939.58
Both Grundmann and Eisenhuth were appointed to the faculty in 1936. According to the recommendation written by Meyer-Erlach, who was then serving as rector of the university, Eisenhuth was "unquestionably a reliable party member who, out of deepest convictions, stands true to the Fiihrer and to the Movement and with greatest earnestness works to bring a decisive recognition of National Socialism to his discipline.""' Similarly, Meyer-Erlach recommended Grundmann as a longtime member of the NSDAP who expressed his loyalty to National Socialism in his theological scholarship, which "will be path-breaking for a National Socialist perspective in the field of theology."'"' On 17 December 1937, Eisenhuth was appointed tenured professor, on orders signed by Hitler. Identical orders making Grundmann a tenured professor were signed by Hitler on 5 October 1938.
This politicization involved students as well as faculty. Several students were active members of the Institute and used the Jena faculty to promote their antisemitism. During the Nazi era, approximately thirty-six students submitted doctoral dissertations in theology at Jena; of these, twelve were written under Grundmann's direction. Ten of the thirty-six were rejected, all on grounds that they had not paid sufficient attention to issues of race. Doctoral dissertations in theology frequently treated topics concerning Christianity's relationship to National Socialism, and the faculty evaluated student work on political grounds.
For example, although one student had been an active member of the NSDAP since 1931, his dissertation, "Notwendiger Christ," claimed that Jesus' ideas must be understood within an Old Testament context. It was rejected. Meyer-Erlach explained, "The theologian lacks the understanding of National Socialism that the racial question is the fundamental question for every thing."" On the other hand, the 1941 dissertation by another student, on "Praexistenz and Unsterblichkeit," received a mixed review from Grundmann: "The author observes correctly that Judaism took over its ideas about the preexistence and immortality of the human soul from other perspectives and religions. This, however, did not lead him to the fundamental observation of the spiritual unproductivity of Judaism.... Judaism represents a level of human spirituality that has been left and which has degenerate effects on higher perspectives.""' A third student, although himself a member of the Institute as well as of the NSDAP, had to make revisions in his 1942 dissertation, "Die Wandlung der katholischen Kirche in ihrer Stellung zur Judenfrage seit der franzosischen Revolution," ("Transformation of the Catholic Church in Its Position Regarding the Jewish Question since the French Revolution") because he gave too much credit to the Roman Catholics for developing antisemitism, thereby unfairly denying adequate credit to the Protestants."'
The theological faculty at Jena was small, and the dominance of leading figures from the Institute fulfilled Meyer-Erlach's goal of creating a "stronghold of National Socialism." Through their academic work, Institute members were able to transform their antisemitic ideas into respectable teachings of Christian theology. Through theological faculties, the antisemitic Christian theology of the Nazi era was transmitted to the next generation of ministers and theologians.
The Final Years
The distinguished church historian Kurt Meier has argued that the Institute was established to defend Christianity against Nazism.''' There is, however, no evidence that the churches were in any danger of being dissolved by the regime, nor does Meier's claim explain the enormous enthusiasm with which Institute members set about their tasks of dejudaizing Christianity. On the contrary, Institute members seem to have been sincerely committed to the work they were undertaking, even when it failed to achieve the anticipated goals. An exchange of letters between Grundmann and Institute member H. J. Thilo, written in November 1942, makes clear that Grundmann's commitment to Aryan Christianity overrode his commitment to Christianity: "I cannot go back to the old thus there remains nothing else but to go humbly into the corner and take up other work as a German literature scholar or historian."'' Disappointed by the failure of the German Christian Movement to achieve its hoped-for recognition by the regime, Grundmann expressed his confidence that the Institute at least had broad popular support among German soldiers in a letter to another Institute member, Gerhard Delling, who was serving in 1942 as a military chaplain." In this correspon dence, Grundmann appears aware that his Christian support for National Socialism was an unrequited affection.
When Grundmann was drafted in the fall of 1943, he was replaced as director of the Institute by Bertram. Even as growing numbers of Germans came to believe that they would not win the war, and as Goebbels' total war propaganda became less and less convincing, Carl Schneider, a member of the Institute and professor at the University of Konigsberg, called for an even more radical dejudaization of Christian theology, redefining early Christianity as itself an antisemitic movement. Bertram supported this in his report to Institute members in March 1944, where he described his goals as director: "'This war is the fight of the Jews against Europe."' This sentence contains a truth, which is over and over confirmed by the research work of the Institute. However this work serves not only as a head-on attack, but also as a strengthening of the inner front to attack and defend against all clandestine Judaism and Jewish essence which has seeped into occidental culture during the course of the centuries.",
In the summer of 1944, church superintendent Pich, whose 1938 report had served as the basis for establishing the Institute, sent a proposal to church officials for a more thorough dejudaization of the Scriptures, titled "The Jew Saul and his Proclamation of Christ." Pich called for a thorough overhaul of the Pauline epistles, arguing they were infected with Jewish notions that had contaminated Christianity. But by this time both church and Institute officials were unsympathetic, given the war conditions."" Moreover, one German Christian church official argued, Pich's proposal would imply that for many centuries the church had been held hostage by a Jew: "I consider Pich's statements totally misguided and moreover an insult to our Volk, whom one indirectly insults by saying that in its miserable narrowness and lack of instinct for fifteen hundred years it was duped into servility by some stinking Jew."""
It is noteworthy that even at the end of the war, Institute members did not give up their efforts. In May of 1945, as Thuringia fell under Allied occupation, Bertram petitioned the Thuringian church, now run by former members of the Confessing Church, to retain the Institute on the grounds that its work was "neither politically determined, nor expressed politically." Rather, its goal was to demonstrate scientifically that "Jesus had taken up a fight against Judaism in all sharpness and had fallen as victim to [his fight]." The Church Council of Thuringia met with Bertram on 24 May 1945 to decide whether the Institute should be retained as a research center. According to the minutes of the meeting, Pastor von Nitzsch thanked Bertram for his work but stated that such a worldwide project could not be supported by the small church of Thuringia. Church counsel Buchner stated the importance of retaining the Institute, especially since the theological library at the University of Jena had been damaged by the bombings. Moritz Mitzenheim, soon to become bishop of Thuringia, urged dissolution of the Institute but retention of its property. Church counsel Phieler wanted the Institute retained but its goals changed to a historical study of the Luther Bible and its effects on German culture and the Protestant people. On 31 May 1945, Phieler wrote to Bertram with the decision that
the Institute would not be reopened. Bertram was thanked for his service but rejected for future work within the Thuringian church.-' He returned to Giessen .72
In the fall of 1945, Grundmann returned from a Russian prisoner-of-war camp and appealed to church officials to maintain the Institute, arguing that since non-German scholars had arrived at the same conclusions, the work of the Institute could not be seen as merely reflecting "tendencies of the era" ("Zeittendenzen") but was the result of serious scholarship that should be continued.` He explained that the Institute's research had concluded that Jesus was independent of the Old Testament and stood in opposition to the Judaism of his day. Moreover, he wrote, the Institute's goal had been to defend Christianity against National Socialism: "The National Socialist system led the fight against Christianity with all legal means at its disposal.' In the eyes of the Nazis, he continued, "Christianity is of Jewish origin, is Judaism for Aryans and must therefore be rooted out. As spiritual Judaism it poisons the German soul."7' The Institute, Grundmann concluded, was a defense of the church.
But Grundmann's argument produced no effect, and his proposal to maintain the Institute was rejected in January of 1946. One church official, who shortly thereafter was appointed to the professorship in practical theology at the University of Jena once held by Meyer-Erlach, wrote that he regretted the curtailment of Grundmann's scholarship, which he respected, but that the church could not retain the Institute.' The Institute was closed, its extensive library was incorporated into the Thuringian ministerial training seminar (Predigerseminar), and the liturgical materials it had published were no longer used. Readings from the Old Testament were reintroduced into church services after the war, but no official condemnation of the Institute's antisemitism was ever issued by the Thuringian church.