Strange Glory
Page 28
For when Müller finally understood what was happening in November 1933, he unleashed a pack of ecclesial watchdogs to England. Their mission was to make a quick assessment, contain the damage, and bring Bonhoeffer to heel. They also had ambitions to persuade the leaders in the Church of England, in particular the college of bishops, of their responsibility to attend Müller’s installation as the first Reich bishop, the ceremony scheduled for December 3, 1933, at the Berlin Cathedral. (In fact, turbulence in the church was such that it would not take place until September 23 of the following year.)60
Leading the pack was the thirty-four-year-old Joachim Hossenfelder, the “brisk, slick, pomaded” bishop of Berlin-Brandenburg.61 A member of the Nazi Party and a spirited ambassador of the German Christians, Hossenfelder liked to describe the salvation of the German people through Hitler as proof of God’s reality in the modern world. In fact, he had been the one who proudly called the German Christian Faith to “the storm troopers of the church,” declaring that both forces struggled in the spirit of National Socialism “for the manly external and internal realization of the Third Reich.”62 Trailing just behind Hossenfelder was Karl Fezer, a scholar of solid mediocrity who in addition to serving on the editorial board of Deutsche Theologie had, in the wake of his endorsement of Hitler, been promoted to full professor at Tübingen and then to rector of the university.63 As a result of the national “coordination” of civil society—the “bringing into line” with Nazi ideals—venerable theological faculties such as Tübingen and Berlin were now staffed, with a few notable exceptions, largely by second-rate talents. But these Nazi clerical grandees would persuade no one of the rightness of their cause, and their mission to win British sympathies proved a complete failure.
There was no meeting of the minds at Lambeth Palace. The mid-level church administrators to whom the Germans were allowed perfunctory access refused any part of the German Christian movement—indeed, they were offended by the presumption that they might feel otherwise. The presiding archbishop of Canterbury had been briefed by George Bell, but he needed no warning that the Reich Church would exploit even the most informal acknowledgment. And so no official meeting with leaders of the church hierarchy was granted, and the gates of Lambeth Palace remained closed to the delegation. At a gathering hosted by the German ambassador, Hossenfelder rambled incoherently about the German genius to the few Britons in attendance. So obtuse was the man that he couldn’t comprehend the repeated refusal of his offer to make a speech in a German parish hall where the trustees included “a number of prominent Jews.” The mission’s sole bit of good luck was that the English press took almost no notice of it.64
On the eve of their return to Berlin, the Germans were feted by members of the Oxford Group. Its founder, an eccentric American evangelist named Frank Buchman, was driven by the dual mission of persuading young men to abstain from masturbation and leading Hitler to Jesus. Believing he could turn Hitler into a born-again Christian if only he could meet him, Buchman was desperate for an introduction to the Führer—hence the party for his emissaries.65 The German leader, it may be said, appealed to the American’s ideal of rugged individualism: Hitler seemed to Buchman a man’s man, who by sheer will had concentrated epochal powers at his command. He was missing only one thing: a personal relationship with Christ. Buchman was awed at the potential of “a twice-born Führer”: if it could only be made to happen, “every last, bewildering problem” would be solved overnight.66
Such a notion was ideal fodder for Reinhold Niebuhr’s brand of moral realism. Upon reading in the New York World-Telegram of Buchman’s campaign to convert Hitler, he called it the “most unbelievably naïve” thing he had ever heard. Bonhoeffer also thought it perverse to imagine that one could change Hitler by praying for his soul.67 In any case, the Berlin delegation’s evening with Buchman left both parties frustrated: Hossenfelder would not promise Buchman a hearing with the Führer, and the Germans learned to their dismay that the Oxford Group had not a shred of influence over the Church of England.68 Hossenfelder and Fezer returned to Berlin anticipating Bishop Müller’s certain fury.
Müller came to understand that muting Bonhoeffer’s dissident voice was vital to his own survival at the head of the Nazi church. For this purpose he now turned to Theodor Heckel, the dour, conniving head of the Church Foreign Office of the German Evangelical Church, the man in charge of maintaining “unity” between the church authorities at home and German congregations abroad. Heckel had collaborated with Müller in drafting the muzzling decree of January 4, 1934, which made criticism of the Nazi state and church a violation of ecclesial law, subject to prosecution in the civil courts.69
Heckel had once felt kindly toward Bonhoeffer. In fact, he had supported the Young Reformation Movement, another seedling of the Confessing Church, when it was founded in 1933. But as would happen with other Bavarian churchmen promoted to Berlin, Heckel’s admiration for Bonhoeffer’s intellect and skill eventually gave way to envy. And the young pastor’s blithe disregard of the muzzling decree did not help matters, inflaming Heckel’s natural resentment of Berlin elitism. Proceeding under his new policing powers—and a fantasy of greater powers still—Heckel declared Bonhoeffer a Staatsfeind, an enemy of the state. He would now act against the young dissident with the full resources of his office.70
Upon his arrival in London, Heckel summoned Bonhoeffer to a meeting at the Savoy Hotel, where the bishop was to be found flanked by two brownshirts. Deploying pedantic legalism, thinly veiled threats, and outright lies, Heckel laid down the law, repeating the stern warnings he’d issued in his letter of the month before: all German pastors serving abroad must affirm their “unconditional loyalty to the Third Reich and its Führer.” He noted Bonhoeffer’s failure to comply with the decree and accused him of “intrigue involving criticism of state, Volk, or movement.” Any further criticism, he warned, would be considered an attack on the authority of the Third Reich and treated as criminal, as treason. Then, somewhat more paternally, he allowed that it was not for the younger man to reason why, but “to carry out his duties in a forthright manner,” like a good soldier.71
The worst of it from Bonhoeffer’s point of view was Heckel’s utter failure even to acknowledge the theological tension at the heart of the church struggle. Realizing he had been summoned for nothing more than a bureaucratic dressing down, with an ultimatum attached, Bonhoeffer walked out of the Savoy, vowing never to waste any more time with this “fine pack of scoundrels.”72
Like Hossenfelder before him, Heckel would return to Berlin empty-handed. Not only were the gates of Lambeth Palace shut in his face, but a minister of his own confession had defied the bishop’s effort at correction.73 Having stormed the shores of England to strong-arm an oath of allegiance from the German pastors abroad, he left with a vote of no confidence from Reich Bishop Müller and a six-point repudiation of his failed mission.74
The gates at Lambeth would eventually admit one German pastor, but not one Müller would approve. The next month, the archbishop of Canterbury invited Bonhoeffer to join him for tea. Cosmo Gordon Lang, born in 1864, could hardly be counted among the most dynamic or inspirational primates in the history of the Anglican Communion. His enthronement, it was said, had “pleased everybody, and alarmed nobody.” Lang had spent two decades as the archbishop of York, showing himself an efficient and amiable member of the House of Lords with a generously Anglo-Catholic sensibility. “But by the time he succeeded Randall Davidson at Canterbury in 1928, he appeared tired and slow of movement, and he was often incapacitated by illness. He had not, however, lost his vigorous commitment to ecumenical unity.”75 Lang was proud to be numbered among the architects of the 1920 “Appeal to All Christian People,” issued by the Lambeth Conference.76
The archbishop’s interview with Bonhoeffer lasted forty-five minutes. Bonhoeffer gave Lang an account of recent developments in Germany, whereupon Lang assured him that the Church of England would never recognize the authority of the Reich Church. N
or would he be receiving Heckel or any Nazi official. Lang was appalled at what he heard and expressed the hope that he and Bonhoeffer would meet again soon. In the coming months—in letters to the London Times, in speeches, and in communiqués with German ambassadors—the archbishop would reiterate his profound “disgust at the treatment of Christians and Jews in Nazi Germany.”77
The sympathetic exchange with a global Christian leader came as much-needed encouragement. These were difficult days, overhung with uncertainty. To be sure, Bonhoeffer felt little anxiety in disobeying the Reich bishop’s gag order or in being branded a disgrace to his Holy Order. He had always found church bureaucrats an annoying lot. And he was truly indignant that men of such colossal mediocrity had risen to positions of leadership. Still, though now become a ship of fools, the German church had always been his religious home. Christian worship was necessarily communal from its inception. Despite Anglican support and ecumenical solidarities, this break must have felt like something of a step into the abyss. But he’d been left no choice.
By May 1934, the official crest of the Reich Church hierarchy had been transformed: in addition to a new cross, the Luther rose—the sacred heart enfolded into a white rose—was now entwined with the swastika. In June, Müller announced that charges of high treason would be brought against any minister who discussed German church matters with non-German churchmen. Effectively an intensification of the muzzling decree, this move directly targeted members of the Confessing Church, making their ecumenical efforts a crime punishable by death.
Bonhoeffer had not at first planned to attend the Ecumenical Youth Conference on the Danish island of Fanö. But his recent encounters with the “scoundrels” from Berlin had convinced him that the German Evangelical Church could no longer claim legitimate ecclesial authority. And so he secured a place on the program. After then sparring with the conference planners over their decision to seat the German Christians as well, he was granted a second time slot, whereupon he decided to attend despite the presence of the Nazi delegation. He had for some time looked forward to a three-week holiday in Friedrichsbrunn; now he would also make his first trip to Denmark. At Fanö he would declare that the time had come for the international churches to “state openly which of the two ‘churches’ in Germany” they were prepared to recognize. Neutrality was no longer a tenable option.78
The loathsome presence of the Reich Church delegation would prove a blessing in disguise; the appearance of Heckel and his stammering band would do more for the cause of the dissenting church than even Bonhoeffer’s eloquent pronouncements. The delegation’s performance was a study in absurdist stagecraft. Heckel got the show started with a presentation that ran for an hour and a half; piling one sentence fragment upon another, his paper naturally omitted to mention the German church conflict. Two days later, he took to the stage again with a talk on “church and state,” which the Times would describe as “a brilliant ascent into the stratosphere of pure ecclesiastical dogma.”79 It was not meant as a compliment.
When word reached church headquarters in Berlin that Heckel had fallen flat, Müller hurriedly deputized an untested colleague and church scrivener named Birnbaum, putting him on the next plane to Copenhagen. Unfortunately, in their rushed attempt at damage control Müller’s crew did not think through the logistics. Copenhagen lies some three hundred kilometers east of Fanö; arriving in the capital late in the day, Birnbaum missed the last scheduled flight to the island. Phone calls back to Berlin produced a flood of recriminations, telegrams, and more phone calls, before, finally, a seaplane was chartered to convey Birnbaum to the meeting.
Coming in as the conference was winding down, the delegate from Berlin discovered that he had been allotted just fifteen minutes to speak. In his diary, Rieger describes Birnbaum’s speech, delivered in halting, percussive exhalations, as “an absurd rigmarole about his personal experiences with people who became Christians because they were National Socialists.”80 As a novice, Birnbaum may have felt relieved not to have been granted more time to embarrass himself, but the fifteen-minute slot was clearly another affront to Müller—further proof that the ecumenical churches did not appreciate the complexities of the German situation.
In fact, they understood only too well. On August 30, 1934, the conference repudiated the assertions of the German Christians, resolving that autocratic church rule, coercion, and the suppression of free discussion “were incompatible with the true nature of the Christian Faith.” It was with “grave anxiety” that they remarked the German Christian assault on the basic principles of Christian freedom. The delegates further pledged “to maintain close fellowship” only with the dissident church and to offer its ministers prayers and heartfelt support.81
However, the statement stopped short of recognizing the Confessing Church as the true German Protestant communion. For the time being, they would affirm the Confessing Church as a courageous and prophetic movement, though not as a legitimate church body. This demurral came about despite one of the most stirring—indeed, prophetic—addresses of Bonhoeffer’s ministry, which he delivered with perfect confidence, as though he were the official spokesman of the movement.
In his room, the windows open to the brisk North Sea air, he poured his heart and soul into the speeches. The address, titled “The Church and the Peoples of the World,” was delivered on August 28, 1934. It was more sermon than lecture, based on a verse in Psalm 85, “I will hear what God the Lord will speak: for he will speak peace unto his people, and to his saints.” Bonhoeffer expounded on the community of Christ beyond nation, race, and tribe—an “ecumenical Christendom.” He spoke of a day when the church would resolve to become an agent of the promised peace rather than another force of violence. He spoke of communities that had been formed by the ethic of Christ, times when Christians obeyed Christ’s commandments “without question.” And he imagined a day when the church would again be, as in apostolic times, “at one and the same time in all peoples, yet beyond all boundaries, whether national, political, social, or racial.” He was speaking not so much to the tragedy unfolding in Germany as to the larger problem of the church’s loss of the primal spiritual unity upon which it was founded. Ecumenism was in this sense not so much a progressive notion as a pervasive orthodox one, an acknowledgment that all who profess Christ are bound together “through the commandment of the one Lord Christ, whose Word they hear, more inseparably than men are bound by all the ties of common history, of blood, of class and of language.” For such a church, “peace is more holy, more inviolable than the most revered words and works of the natural world.” Such people are unashamed to call for eternal peace, indeed see no “escape from the commandment of Christ [that they] be instruments of peace.”
“The hour is late. The world is choked with weapons, and dreadful is the mistrust peering from all men’s eyes. The trumpets of war may blow tomorrow,” he pleaded. “Who knows if we shall see each other again in another year? What are we waiting for?
“Peace must be dared,” he said. “Peace is the great venture.”82
Christ is peace.
The address was answered with a standing ovation, but there was no official endorsement of any of its recommendations.
The week in Denmark was a strange blend of languor and intensity. The climate and landscape beckoned one to idleness, but sessions ran into the late hours, the days beginning with morning prayers an hour before breakfast. Bonhoeffer found very little time to write letters, but a small collection of black-and-white photographs survive, attesting to the ambience. In one, Bonhoeffer, looking vigorous and tanned, sits atop a dune in a linen jacket and narrow dark tie, rehearsing his talk, as two men sit attentively on either side, and two women lean comfortably against the warm sand to his right.83 He would still be revising that address minutes before taking the podium.84 One Swedish student is reported to have asked him what he would do if Germany declared war on the Allies. Bonhoeffer let a handful of sand run through his fingers and then turned directly to the st
udent. “I pray that God will give me the strength not to take up arms,” Bonhoeffer said.85
Together with his meditations on eternal peace Bonhoeffer offered concrete proposals for the churches in western Europe. The villainy of the Reich Church would not be obscured in the vapors of an eschatological dreamscape. He proposed the formation of church groups that would, he hoped, create legally acceptable alternatives to military service; others to study the factors leading to war and to work to neutralize them; groups to propagate the language of peace through teaching, preaching, and prayer, making such language a more routine feature of the church’s distinctive voice; and groups to promote Bible study in full awareness of the commandments of Christ. In what would prove his first major pacifist pronouncement, Bonhoeffer, refusing the Christian tradition of just war first expounded by Augustine, would declare that “[f]or Christians, any military service except in the ambulance corps, and any preparation for war, is forbidden.”86
DIETRICH BONHOEFFER WITH THEOLOGICAL STUDENTS ON THE SAND DUNES NEAR FANÖ, DENMARK, IN 1934
A cadre of German students that would come to be known as the Deutsches Fanö carried this message from Denmark to Berlin, Tübingen, and Heidelberg, circulating and discussing the speeches and addresses of that summer. It was heartening to Bonhoeffer to see young men and women so eager “to take seriously the Christian message of peace,” particularly considering “the steadily growing martial spirit” that prevailed in the university faculties and the churches. The Fanö group might well prove the seeds of a renewed church, he thought. During a visit to Berlin after the Danish meeting, Bonhoeffer was introduced to “students of various nationalities” meeting “under the auspices of the youth commission” in the house of a Swedish minister named Forell. Only a “clear and uncompromising stand,” Bonhoeffer told them, could expose the heresy of “the conservative Christianity” serving not Jesus Christ but the “present Reichswehr (imperial defenses) and its industrial regime.” He would be delighted to discover in Berlin “that a group of young Christians are seriously considering the possibility of starting a small Christian community, some kind of settlement inspired by the Sermon on the Mount.” The same group, he added, “would also make a definite stand for peace by conscientious objection.” The question then remains to only answer whether, in case of war, service [even] in a sanitary unit would be justifiable in Christian terms.”87