Bonhoeffer’s charge of apostasy seemed rather premature, if not careless.85 Barth believed that the church’s adoption of the Aryan paragraph should be condemned as bad policy, but Bonhoeffer had gone too far in saying that the church would live or die by its position on the anti-Jewish measures. The Aryan paragraph was simply not a theological matter. Barth proposed a more cautious path for dissenting Christians: they must remain faithful to the German Evangelical Church while being in statu confessionis. The most severe posture of protest short of breaking away, status confessionis typically excludes those deemed in error from the communion sacrament and the pulpit.
Barth had not acquiesced in the least to the German Christians. He regarded the movement with utter contempt. But a Christian theologian’s sole responsibility, he maintained, is to tend the church’s dogmatics. The necessity of this exclusive focus he would soon try to explain in his 1934 manifesto “Theological Existence Today,” written shortly before his move to Basel. Now more than ever, he wrote, theology must be done with single-minded respect, “as if nothing else were happening.” Bonhoeffer’s conviction that the Aryan paragraph was saturated with theological meaning betrayed a rather blinkered functional view of the theological enterprise.
Barth would later change his mind and come to regret the tepidness and legalism of his response. But in the summer of 1933, he preferred to wait and see, investing his energies in the writing of church dogmatics. In his grand scheme, it was theological liberalism that remained the archnemesis. National Socialism was but a sorry application of flawed doctrine. He had condemned the German Christians from the first, but his condemnation lacked teeth. “It will be worthwhile,” he told Bonhoeffer, “to resolve not to think in terms of tactics at this point, but in spiritual terms.” Barth said he was in “favor of waiting to see what comes.” Bonhoeffer and his fellow dissidents at Bethel would do better to let the “evil decision” run its course, Barth advised. “Let the factual situation it has created speak for itself.” More manifest opposition “should await something more doctrinally decisive than the Aryan Clause,” by itself not reason enough to abandon “the sinking ship.”86 If there were to be schism, Barth said, let it come from the other side.
Bonhoeffer, however, was of a mind not to be changed: he continued to think it unconscionable that any Christian theologian would sit still in the face of the Nazi idols and not do his utmost to smash them. As he’d learned in America, conscience must have its correlatives in conduct. In this case it demanded acting on the judgment that assents to the Aryan paragraph amounted to the renunciation of the faith. It meant precipitating the resignations of the Nazi clerics from office, “beginning immediately,” and thus the transfer of ecclesial authority to non-Nazi Protestants.87 Barth’s call to a status confessionis amounted to little more than evasion of responsibility. Now was no time for technical niceties. Neither was Bonhoeffer content to use the present crisis as an occasion to settle a theological score with the liberal tradition. Embrace of the Aryan paragraph meant that “even the apostles of Jesus Christ, and moreover the Lord himself, who in the flesh was a son of David,” had been expelled from the German church.
“I know there are many who await your opinion,” Bonhoeffer wrote to Barth in a letter dated September 9, 1933, “and I also know that most think you will counsel us to wait until we are thrown out. However, some of us have already been thrown out, namely, the Jewish Christians, and the same will soon happen to the others.” The paragraph, he still contended, had separated “the Prussian church from Christianity” and “committed blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, which cannot be forgiven in either this world or the next.”88
Barth did have one valid point as to the territory of theology. Prior Lutheran confessions had made no mention of race. That the Bethel Confession ventured into such territory bespeaks the force of Bonhoeffer’s dissent and also of his insight that Nazi ideology turned now more on ethnic identity than religion.89
Bonhoeffer left Bethel hoping that the declaration would be received gratefully by ministers of conscience and by the faithful. Indeed, by year’s end, six thousand ministers would pledge support for what came to be called the Pastors’ Emergency League. A consensus was emerging among the non-Nazi clergy that a formal institutional identity was needed, as the dissident Christian community came to be seen as the true Protestant church in Germany.
In the third week of September, Bonhoeffer traveled with his Berlin colleague Julius Richter to Sofia, Bulgaria, for a conference of the World Alliance for International Friendship Through the Churches.90 He was relieved to be out of Germany and in the company of fellow ecumenists. The conference was convening at the palatial Grand Hotel overlooking the city gardens, “with its marquee inscribed in girders on the steep, gabled roof,” and its spacious ballroom, ornate interiors, and vast art collection—a stark and doubtless pleasing contrast to the ominous matters at hand.
The plight of minorities around the world, both Christian and non-Christian, was taken up in Sofia at great length. Among the resolutions passed was an appeal on behalf of Iraq’s persecuted Assyrian Christian minority, mainly in the northern areas of Dohuk and Zakho.
By the end of the week, a consensus had emerged that racial discrimination, “whether because of color or on other grounds,” in any form and any place, constituted “a great danger to peace and the welfare of humanity.” While affirming the transnational and multiracial identity of their Christian faith, they gave equal attention to the broader matter of universal human rights. The resolution condemned all “discrimination or hierarchy among religions or nations” and specifically the “treatment that people of Jewish ancestry and association have suffered in Germany.” It also included a confession of guilt for “our many sins of transgression against our brothers of other races and colour.”91 In response to “the State measures against the Jews in Germany,” the British delegation, above all others, pressed for the use of the word “deplore” in the response to the Nazi view of the “Jewish race [as] a race of inferior status.”92
In a private report to Bishop George Bell, dated October 5, 1933, the Danish ecumenist Ove Ammundsen, professor at Copenhagen and bishop of Hadersleben, offered his thoughts on the proceedings in Sofia: “The German delegates were Prof. Richter [member of the German Protestant mission board and of the World Alliance for Promoting International Friendship]; and the young Privatdozent at Berlin, Dr. Bonhoeffer. He is a splendid fellow, sincere, utterly earnest, determined not to compromise with antibiblical measures. He is on the left wing of the opposition.” Both Bonhoeffer and Richter had voted for the resolution.93
Upon his return to Berlin on September 22, Bonhoeffer was handed a written reprimand from the Foreign Ministry—in the person of one bureaucrat named “Clodius”—charging him and Richter with international “incitement against the Fatherland.”94 The letter warned that any further criticism of the German Christians would be treated as high treason.95 For its part, the Bulgarian press—under control of the authoritarian monarchy that had been Germany’s ally in the Great War and would be again—echoed the sentiments of its national synod, emphasizing repeatedly “that the church should concern itself with things other than politics.”96 Bonhoeffer was undeterred. He defended the Sofia resolution as an expression of the pure and unadulterated gospel and would not retreat from any part of the wording—or, “disowning not a word of it.”97
One week later, on a clear morning in late September, emboldened by the week in Sofia, Bonhoeffer decided to take his fledgling band of anti-Nazi agitators to the heart of the Lutheran establishment. It would be his last effort to stem the rising tide of Aryan Christianity before accepting a pastorate in London, although this autumnal journey to Luther-Stadt Wittenberg more nearly resembled a road trip of theological pranksters than an organized protest, including street theater, knavery, heckling, and preaching in public places. No less eccentric was the means of conveyance. The elder Dr. Bonhoeffer’s black Mercedes and his personal chauffeur wer
e enlisted for the ride south along the Berliner Chaussee and through the vast pine forests near Beelitz to the national Lutheran Synod. Besides Bonhoeffer’s friends Gertrud Staewen and Franz Hildebrandt, the back seat of the limousine was occupied by boxes upon boxes of a pamphlet entitled “To the National Synod of the German Evangelical Church.”
Attending as unofficial representatives of the dissenting church, the three friends couched their protest against the “false church,” in the authority of none less than Martin Luther, who, 450 years earlier, from the pulpit of the Castle Church at Wittenberg, had denounced the “Babylonian Captivity” of the German nation.98 At stake in this “grave hour” was not just the church’s freedom from political oppression but also the very truth of the gospel. Of course, the official church had likewise invoked its own Lutheran authority and lineage.
Upon arrival, the three Berliners wasted no time plastering the town with their pamphlet, affixing it to trees, telephone poles, buildings, and kiosks. They even sneaked into official church headquarters and scattered copies on the desks and seminar tables. On the town square they handed them out to passersby. “Appeals without any printer’s name, minutes, communiqués, details, etc., are being circulated,” wrote a concerned minister in the hastily dispatched reply appearing in the church paper Evangelium im Dritten Reich (The Gospel in the Third Reich). “But with unerring certainty and calm, our leaders will take steps.”99
Indeed they would, as the Berliners watched in astonishment the scene unfolding on the cobblestone streets around Wittenberg’s town center. There the first “teaching platoon” of the Augustusburg Leadership College in Saxony—the “theological storm troopers,” as they called themselves—had assembled to stand guard for the future Reich bishop as he entered the Castle Church. Bearing their rucksacks like infantrymen, uniformed in field gray, with the purple cross and runes of the Schutzstaffel (SS) emblazoned on their arms, they might have been comical but for their deadly earnestness. Stationed in the choir loft, they would present an impressive martial discipline throughout the services.
REICH BISHOP LUDWIG MÜLLER, GERMAN PROTESTANT NATIONAL SYNOD IN WITTENBERG
Standing over Luther’s tomb inside the sanctuary, Karl Fezer, once a respectable theologian at Tübingen, now a German Christian, proclaimed that Müller had been unanimously elected as the first Reich bishop by the representatives of the regional churches.100 The bishop seized the reins with the confidence of a man in tune with providence. “The old has come to an end,” he thundered into the candle-lit recesses of the church. “The new world has begun.”101
All of Wittenberg had risen to its feet in celebration, one of the young Nazi clerics recalled. “A splendid sun again smiles from the cloudless sky, and the bells ring festively. [The] flags of the SA storm groups from Wittenberg, the flags of the Protestant youth organizations, of the craft guilds, of the associations; the theological faculties in festive robes, the clergy of Luther’s city in gowns, the members of the Synod, the Lutherans in brown shirts, the bishops of the German Landeskirchen with the golden pectoral crosses of their office, and the man whom all eyes seek in awe: the future Reich Bishop Ludwig Müller.”
When Müller declared that the time had now come for redeeming the soul of the people, Bonhoeffer, seated in the balcony, is said to have let out a “short sharp laugh.”102
But it was like the voice of one crying in the desert. Bonhoeffer hardly doubted the German Christian’s ultimate victory. The question was not how to save the German Protestant establishment but “whether Christians of conscience would be able to carry through on the promise and support the new church as the one true Lutheran church in Germany.”103 Even about that smaller goal, he was in doubt. He feared that already the fellowship of dissent was “crumbling gradually but steadily,” and that soon the opposition would “no longer have the strength to act together.” What, then, remained but the catacombs, or some version of those subterranean passages where the ancient Christians buried their dead and worshipped in secret under pagan rule. So much for the Kirchenkampf.
Müller won the bishopric in a landslide. The opposition’s case, which Bonhoeffer had been prepared to deliver, was tabled without debate. The synod would not, however, vote on the Aryan paragraph, and thus the race laws were never officially adopted by the unified Reich Church. While this no doubt dismayed the zealots who wanted immediate application of the Aryan paragraph to all congregations, it was in fact the Reich Church’s Foreign Office that quietly lobbied against official adoption, arguing that such an action would only create an unnecessary distraction. And, in a surprising but shrewd maneuver, Hitler entered, which is to say ended, the debate, by forbidding ecclesial leaders from endorsing the Aryan paragraph as church policy. There was no good reason to put the compliant bishops in the embarrassing position of answering to an angry minority, since most regional synods had adopted the Aryan laws anyway, and thus victory went decisively to the German Christians.104 Inside the Castle Church, the clergy raised their right hands to solemnly swear in unison their loyalty to their new Reichsbischof and the Nazi state.
The testimonial of one German Christian pastor in attendance captures the tremendous optimism of the national church reborn: “27 September 1933! A splendid sun again smiles from the cloudless sky, and the bells ring festively and ceremonially. All of Wittenberg is on its feet. Shortly after eleven o’clock the huge procession starts to move to the Stadtkirche: the flags of the SA storm groups from Wittenberg, the flags of the Protestant youth organizations, of the craft guilds, of the associations; the theological faculties in festive robbers, the clergy of Luther’s city in gowns, the members of the Synod, the Lutherans in brown shirts, the bishops of the German Landeskirchen with the golden pectoral crosses of their office, and—the man whom all eyes seek in awe, inquiringly and full of hope: the future Reich Bishop Ludwig Müller.”
Bonhoeffer’s high hopes for the Bethel Confession had by now been chastened not only by the crush of events but also by the negative response of pastors and theologians to whom the “August version” had been presented. After the gathering at Bethel, Bodelschwingh had reached out to an extended circle of more than twenty dissenting pastors and theologians with the urgent request “to review it, make suggestions, return their changes by September 15,” after which their work on the final version would begin with an eye toward presenting at the October meeting. This wider circle of churchmen happened to include the scholar Paul Althaus, who had expressed an interest in attending the next dissident synod, this one at Barmen the following May, but was in fact only months away from joining the Nazi Party. From his distinguished chair in Göttingen, Althaus broke abruptly with the dissenting church; in his lectures and writings he would begin promoting a vision of the Reich Church as “a unity constituted by blood relations,” lending an influential voice to the Nazi Protestant majority.105
In October 1933, Bonhoeffer and Hans Fischer, a Lutheran pastor in Bochum, returned to Bethel for a second editorial consultation; they would spend several long days sequestered in the seminary, working through a revised version. Fischer would later recall the “authority with which [Bonhoeffer] examined and worked through the criticisms contained in those opinions he had solicited.”106 One would have hardly guessed that, in a letter written earlier that month, even before having seen the respondents’ copious suggestions, he had lamented to Barth that “the Bethel confession, into which I truly had poured heart and soul, has met with almost no understanding.” Bonhoeffer would not attend the third editorial meeting in Bethel. He had rather abruptly decided to leave Germany, accepting an offer to serve as pastor of two German congregations in London. (He had already left when he wrote that downcast letter to Barth.) When he finally read the heavily redacted final version, his worst suspicions would be confirmed. On November 6, Merz told Bodelschwingh that the work had been completed, but he felt it “urgently necessary” that the final version be sent to Bonhoeffer in London and to Professor Sasse in Erlangen, another memb
er of the original group. Both had been involved with the declaration since the beginning, explained Merz, so “we really can’t send this out into the world without considering their opinions once more.”107
Bonhoeffer’s response to the “November version” has been lost, but George Merz’s summary of Bonhoeffer’s disapprobation has not. “No mere trifle, but rather a catastrophe,” Bonhoeffer is reported to have said. He found the revisions deplorable, and on December 5, Merz would tell Martin Niemöller that “Bonhoeffer has resolutely rejected the reworked version and opposes its being published in the present form.”108 Niemöller was a celebrated World War I submarine commander and recipient of the Iron Cross who now shepherded the affluent St. Anne’s Church in the leafy suburb of Dahlem; he opposed the state’s intrusions into church affairs, though he had voted for the Nazi Party in the 1933 elections. Exploiting his power over the younger churchmen at Bethel as well as Bonhoeffer’s departure for London, Althaus, the forty-five-year-old Göttingen professor, had taken a red pen to Bonhoeffer’s forthright and reverential defense of Judaism; all criticisms of the Aryan paragraph were deleted. And the most important points of the confession had, Bonhoeffer felt, been eviscerated. “To the section on the State, sycophantic riders had been added concerning ‘joyful collaboration’ in its aims, and likewise, a paragraph on sharing responsibility for the country’s guilt had been changed into participation by the Church ‘in her country’s glory and guilt.’ ”109
More an opportunist than a quisling, Althaus, in less than a year, had come to the conclusion that National Socialism was not simply another political party, but a spiritually virile movement that transcended politics. In this manner, the Third Reich would revivify the moral values and discipline undermined by Weimar’s culture of license and experimentation. Althaus’s interpretation of revelation no doubt inspired his nationalist pieties; the Word of God, he argued, is understood more effectively through the lens of “general revelation” than “specific,” preferring to emphasize God’s self-revelation in history, nation, race, and culture rather than the primacy of Jesus Christ. God’s word to humanity, he said, “equals the situation at any given moment.… Obedience toward God consists of accepting one’s allotted position in life as handed down by years of tradition.”110 Although Althaus imagined himself a mediating theologian—striking a balance between the Deutsche Christen and the dissenting congregations—his conviction that Germany’s political renewal depended on Christian principles made such a rule finally impossible.
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