Language:
English
Year of publication:
1994
Titel der Quelle:
Church History
Angaben zur Quelle:
63,4 (1994) 587-605
Keywords:
Grundmann, Walter,
;
Institut zur Erforschung und Beseitigung des Jüdischen Einflusses auf das Deutsche Kirchliche Leben
;
Protestant churches History 1933-1945
;
German-Christian movement
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
;
Christianity and antisemitism History 1933-1945
Abstract:
Surveys the history of the Institute, which was set up in 1939 in Eisenach by radical members of the Deutsche Christen movement, under the directorship of Walther Grundmann. The Deutsche Christen, a Protestant Church movement influenced by the racist ideas of H.S. Chamberlain, tried to create an "Aryan Christianity". Hence, two of the central goals of the Institute were to demonstrate the degeneracy of Judaism and to eradicate everything Jewish from Christianity. After the war Grundmann and other founders of the Institute alleged that they only wanted to defend Christianity against the Nazis' charge that "Christianity was Judaism for non-Jews"; however, in light of the Institute's wartime activities, this does not seem plausible. After the war, Grundmann and many other leaders of the Deutsche Christen emerged relatively lightly from the denazification process, and retained positions in the Church, both in East Germany and West Germany. The Confessing Church was opposed to the work of the Institute, not because of antisemitism but because of its distortions of Christian dogma and of the Gospels.
Note:
Appeared in German, with slightly different titles, in "Christlicher Antijudaismus und Antisemitismus" (1994) 125-170; in "Beseitigung des jüdischen Einflusses..." (1999) 147-167; and in "Das missbrauchte Evangelium" (2002).
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