In October 1945, and after the war and others led by Martin Niemöller and Hans Asmussen took out the last act of the Bekennende Kirche in the name of all German Protestants made a statement Public guilt is known como la Confesión de Stuttgart.
En ella se afirma: “Con gran dolor decimos: mal infinito fue llevado por nosotros a muchos países y pueblos.”
Nunca ha sido la intención de estas notas el juicio moral o espiritual sobre las Iglesias Protestantes de Alemania en el período que corre entre 1933-1945 y que estuvo signado por el totalitarismo nazi fascista de Hitler. Pero sí que sirvieran para un acercamiento al tema que permita esbozar una reflexión despojada de todo apasionamiento.
Hitler contó con el apoyo de gran parte de los protestantes alemanes de todos los estamentos en 1933, y hubo muy pocos , como Bonhoeffer , que desde un comienzo discernieron claramente quién era Hitler and what their true intentions.
However, the developments served to begin promptly divide the waters between those who were willing to follow Hitler and accept its policies of assimilation of Christianity to Nazism and those who stand up to any distortion of the gospel and Christ's role as Lord of His Church.
In principle, this was evidenced in the clash between the Deutsche Christen, or the Church of the Reich (pun intended "Reich", not of Christ) and the Bekennende Kirche or Church Confessional.
But with the passage of time, also between the latter will be significant divisions between the majority fraction, moderate , Which sought to retain some margin as spiritual organism and those of the minority and radical that they were unwilling to make any concessions to Hitler and his regime. These exceeded the bounds of your institution to take in hand the responsibility that they could be as Christians and to give sufficient response to the Bekennende was not working.
Protestant churches may not have a monolithic response to National. However, the different nuances and levels of responses, not as individual entity, but often under (remember that the Church in the spiritual is made by each particular person who confesses Christ as his faith) was for the rule of Hitler a very tough nut to crack. The Bekennende Kirche
defeated in the field of theology to their grievances Deutscher Christen and pseudo-Christians and prevented by this that, once Hitler was erected, as the sole authority of the Protestant Churches, as intended. Demonstrating that there was only one cross and that this was not the swastika.
Even with all its limitations, failures, divisions and cowardice, was the Bekennende Kirche an area where many resistance to Hitler found a place of comfort and spiritual sustenance, where others were formed (Finkenwalde), many awakened to their responsibilities and those who planned the physical elimination of Furher, never isolated or condemned. It lacked
, inevitably, the decision to throw up dialog positions that involve some security. Had a complicit silence is not justified, as we tested, with the ignorance of the facts that were happening. Lacked the courage to expose the weakest (and cruelly fails here as Church of Christ). Interestingly
clearer who had the role of opposition and resistance exercised by the Protestant Churches (with real or potential power), were Hitler and his clique who sought always different ways for them, silence them or destroy them. They tried by peaceful means theological, doctrinal, political and violent also finally sending the concentration camps and death in many cases, the pastors who have held an active opposition.
How far had responsibility for the Protestant Churches in the barbarism of Hitler and why the majority of Protestant leaders strongly defended the cause of the Jews? "His silence was complicity, cowardice or own survival strategy?
These are complex questions to answer. There are historical questions that are rooted in theological training can not be ignored.
Churches had no political power, only spiritual ministry. Understood for theological reasons that his first responsibility was to their flocks, based on that sought to protect what they understood their priorities. They used to themselves but to others as stated in the Gospel.
were unsupportive of the absence of a clear and audible complaints of injustice suffered by the Jewish people, the oppression of the weak. And those were his responsibilities as a Church.
is clear that decades of anti-Semitic discourse between the lines, subliminal, popular, implicit and explicit within and outside the churches weak consciences prepared for persecution and genocide of the Jews. And this also
cross affected the churches and their leaders conditioned response. It is now widely accepted by most researchers and although lacking in the Declaration of Stuttgart recognition by guilty silence on the persecution of the Jews, today the German Protestant churches have recognized their shortcomings in this regard.
The silence of the churches are a complex of three factors that set out the question.
leave by the end a question many have asked.
Where was God in those days if his church had this attitude of passivity and fear?
God was working through those who did not double knee to Hitler. In those not turned a deaf ear to the cries of the victims. In those who did not think about their own security but in their duty as Christians.
God acted at the time by men and women like Dietrich Bonhoeffer ), Martin Neumöller, Karl Barth, Paul Schneider, Elisabeth Schmitz, Gertrud Staewen, Hans Gruber, Friedrich Weissler, Karl Stellbrink and others who paid with jail, deportation , exile and even death, the terrible challenge of fidelity.
The fact reflect the most terrible mistakes and errors of the German Protestant Church of that time, should run parallel to value life and the attitude of men and women who were to fall for the mistake, by the silent complicity or indifference. Men and women
the extent possible and in many cases beyond their forces were loyal to their Christian consciences.
We named a few, but go on these names to represent all German Protestants who remained in the anonymity of history, but had the same attitude and form part of, that great cloud of witnesses watching us from eternity. Daniel Pisoni
recommended reading on the subject, which provide different views, opinions and points of view: Arbeitsgemeinschaft
Kirchliche Zeitgeschichtler.John S. Conway, Editor. University of British Columbia Widerstand.Dr
Gedenkstätte Deutscher. Peter Steinbach.Dr. Johannes Tuchel.Ute Stiepani, MA
Lutheranism and Shoah: career and desafíos.Reinhard Boettcher. International Council of Christians and Jews.
The Trial of German Major War Criminals.2da.Sesion.Bormann. (Document)
The German Resistance against Koehn.Alianza Hitler.Barbara Editorial. Causes
Sagradas.Michael Burleigh.Taurus
Hitler.Daniel's Willing Executioners Goldhagen.Taurus
The Confessing Church and the Persecution of the Jews. Wolfgang Gerlach.University Nebraska Press.
The Role of the Churches.Victoria Burnett.Dimension.Vol 12.N # 2
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