Luther and antisemitism
Encyclopedia
Martin Luther
(1483—1546), a German Reformation
leader, had a significant influence on German antisemitism by his harsh anti-Jewish statements and writings.
through his evangelical reforms. In his later career, Luther denounced the Jewish people and urged for their harsh persecution. In a paragraph from his On the Jews and Their Lies he deplores Christendom's failure to expel them.
in 1514:
In 1519 Luther challenged the doctrine Servitus Judaeorum ("Servitude of the Jews"), established in Corpus Juris Civilis
by Justinian I
from 529–534 C.E. He wrote: "Absurd theologians defend hatred for the Jews. … What Jew would consent to enter our ranks when he sees the cruelty and enmity we wreak on them—that in our behavior towards them we less resemble Christians than beasts?"
In his 1523 essay That Jesus Christ Was Born a Jew, Luther condemned the inhuman treatment of the Jews and urged Christians to treat them kindly. Luther's fervent desire was that Jews would hear the Gospel proclaimed clearly and be moved to convert to Christianity. Thus he argued:
, issued a mandate that prohibited Jews from inhabiting, engaging in business in, or passing through his realm. An Alsatian
shtadlan
, Rabbi Josel of Rosheim
, asked a reformer Wolfgang Capito to approach Luther in order to obtain an audience with the prince, but Luther refused every intercession. In response to Josel, Luther referred to his unsuccessful attempts to convert the Jews: "... I would willingly do my best for your people but I will not contribute to your [Jewish] obstinacy by my own kind actions. You must find another intermediary with my good lord." Heiko Oberman
notes this event as significant in Luther’s attitude toward the Jews: "Even today this refusal is often judged to be the decisive turning point in Luther’s career from friendliness to hostility toward the Jews."
Josel of Rosheim, who tried to help the Jews of Saxony, wrote in his memoir that their situation was "due to that priest whose name was Martin Luther — may his body and soul be bound up in hell!! — who wrote and issued many heretical books in which he said that whoever would help the Jews was doomed to perdition
." Robert Ashley Michael, Professor Emeritus of European History at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth
writes that Josel asked the city of Strasbourg to forbid the sale of Luther's anti-Jewish works; they refused initially, but relented when a Lutheran pastor in Hochfelden
argued in a sermon that his parishioners should murder Jews.
Luther's main works on the Jews were his 65,000-word treatise Von den Juden und Ihren Lügen (On the Jews and Their Lies) and Vom Schem Hamphoras
und vom Geschlecht Christi (Of the Unknowable Name and the Generations of Christ) — reprinted five times within his lifetime — both written in 1543, three years before his death. It is believed that Luther was influenced by Anton Margaritha
's book Der gantze Jüdisch Glaub
(The Whole Jewish Belief). Margaritha, a convert to Christianity who had become a Lutheran, published his antisemitic book in 1530 which was read by Luther in 1539. Margaritha's book was decisively discredited by Josel of Rosheim
in a public debate in 1530 before Charles V
and his court, resulting in Margaritha's expulsion from the Empire.
be set on fire, their prayer book
s destroyed, rabbi
s forbidden to preach, homes razed, and property and money confiscated. They should be shown no mercy or kindness, afforded no legal protection, and these "poisonous envenomed worms" should be drafted into forced labor or expelled for all time. He also seems to advocate their murder, writing "[w]e are at fault in not slaying them."
Several months after publishing On the Jews and Their Lies, Luther wrote Vom Schem Hamphoras
und vom Geschlecht Christi (Of the Unknowable Name and the Generations of Christ)', in which he equated Jews with the Devil
:
The English translation of Vom Schem Hamphoras is contained in The Jew in Christian Theology, by Gerhard Falk (1992).
. Otherwise, Luther indicated, such authorities would make themselves "partners in another's sins."
Luther began by saying,
Luther followed this with accusations,
He then said,
, Margrave of Neumark
, repealed the safe conduct of Jews in his territories. Philip of Hesse
added restrictions to his Order Concerning the Jews. Paul Johnson writes that Luther's followers sacked Berlin
in 1572 and the following year the Jews were banned from the entire country. Throughout the 1580s riots saw the expulsion of Jews from several German Lutheran states.
Nevertheless, no ruler enacted all of Luther's anti-Jewish recommendations.
According to Michael, Luther's work acquired the status of Scripture within Germany, and he became the most widely read author of his generation, in part because of the coarse and passionate nature of the writing. In the 1570s Pastor Georg Nigrinus published Enemy Jew, which reiterated Luther's program in On the Jews and Their Lies, and Nikolaus Selnecker
, one of the authors of the Formula of Concord
, reprinted Luther's Against the Sabbatarians, On the Jews and Their Lies, and Vom Schem Hamphoras
.
Luther's treatises against the Jews were reprinted again early in the 17th century at Dortmund
, where they were seized by the Emperor. In 1613 and 1617 they were published in Frankfurt am Main
in support of the banishment of Jews from Frankfurt and Worms
. Vincent Fettmilch, a Calvinist, reprinted On the Jews and Their Lies in 1612 to stir up hatred against the Jews of Frankfurt. Two years later, riots in Frankfurt saw the deaths of 3,000 Jews and the expulsion of the rest. Fettmilch was executed by the Lutheran city authorities, but Michael writes that his execution was for attempting to overthrow the authorities, not for his offenses against the Jews.
These reprints were the last popular publication of these works until they were revived in the 20th century.
argues that Luther's 1543 pamphlet On the Jews and Their Lies was a "blueprint" for the Kristallnacht
. Shortly after the Kristallnacht, Bishop Martin Sasse, a leading Protestant
churchman, published a compendium of Martin Luther
's writings ; Sasse "applauded the burning of the synagogues" and the coincidence of the day, writing in the introduction, "On November 10, 1938, on Luther's birthday, the synagogues are burning in Germany." The German people, he urged, ought to heed these words "of the greatest anti-Semite of his time, the warner of his people against the Jews." In 1940, Heinrich Himmler
wrote admiringly of Luther's writings and sermons on the Jews. The city of Nuremberg presented a first edition of On the Jews and their Lies to Julius Streicher
, editor of the Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer
, on his birthday in 1937; the newspaper described it as the most radically antisemitic tract ever published. It was publicly exhibited in a glass case at the Nuremberg rallies and quoted in a 54-page explanation of the Aryan Law by Dr. E.H. Schulz and Dr. R. Frercks. On December 17, 1941, seven Lutheran regional church confederations issued a statement agreeing with the policy of forcing Jews to wear the yellow badge, "since after his bitter experience Luther had [strongly] suggested preventive measures against the Jews and their expulsion from German territory."
Michael states "Luther wrote of the Jews as if they were a race that could not truly convert to Christianity. Indeed, like so many Christian writers before him, Luther, by making the Jews the devil's people, put them beyond conversion". He notes that in a sermon of September 25, 1539, "Luther tried to demonstrate through several examples that individual Jews could not convert permanently, and in several passages of The Jews and Their Lies, Luther appeared to reject the possibility that the Jews would or could convert."
Franklin Sherman, editor of volume 47 of the American Edition of Luther's Works in which On the Jews and Their Lies appears, responds to the claim that "Luther's antipathy towards the Jews was religious rather than racial in nature," Luther's writings against the Jews, he explains, are not "merely a set of cool, calm and collected theological judgments. His writings are full of rage, and indeed hatred, against an identifiable human group, not just against a religious point of view; it is against that group that his action proposals are directed." Sherman argues that Luther "cannot be distanced completely from modern antisemites." Regarding Luther's treatise, On the Jews and Their Lies, the German philosopher Karl Jaspers
wrote: "There you already have the whole Nazi program".
Other scholars assert that Luther's antisemitism as expressed in On the Jews and Their Lies is based on religion. Bainton asserts that Luther's position was "entirely religious and in no respect racial. The supreme sin for him was the persistent rejection of God's revelation of himself in Christ. The centuries of Jewish suffering were themselves a mark of the divine displeasure. They should be compelled to leave and go to a land of their own. This was a program of enforced Zionism. But if it were not feasible, then Luther would recommend that the Jews be compelled to live from the soil. He was unwittingly proposing a return to the condition of the early Middle Ages, when the Jews had been in agriculture. Forced off the land, they had gone into commerce and, having been expelled from commerce, into money lending. Luther wished to reverse the process and thereby inadvertently would accord the Jews a more secure position than they enjoyed in his day."
Paul Halsall argues that Luther's views had a part in laying the groundwork for the racial European antisemitism of the nineteenth century. He writes that "although Luther's comments seem to be proto-Nazi, they are better seen as part of tradition [sic] of Medieval Christian anti-semitism. While there is little doubt that Christian anti-semitism laid the social and cultural basis for modern anti-semitism, modern anti-semitism does differ in being based on pseudo-scientific notions of race. The Nazis imprisoned and killed even those ethnic Jews who had converted to Christianity: Luther would have welcomed their conversions."
In his Lutheran Quarterly article, Wallmann argued that Luther's On the Jews and Their Lies, Against the Sabbabitarians, and Vom Schem Hamphoras were largely ignored by antisemites of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. He contended that Johann Andreas Eisenmenger
and his Judaism Unmasked, published posthumously in 1711, was "a major source of evidence for the anti-Semites of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries" and "cast Luther's anti-Jewish writings into obscurity." In this 2000 page tome Eisenmenger makes no mention of Luther at all.
The Lutheran court chaplain to Kaiser Wilhelm I, Adolf Stoecker
, founded in 1878 an antisemitic and antiliberal party called the Christian Social Party (Germany)
. However, this party did not enjoy the mass support which the Nazis received during the 1930s, when the Great Depression hit Germany especially hard.
to view his work as a precursor of the racial antisemitism of the National Socialists. Some scholars see Luther's influence as limited, and the Nazis' use of his work as opportunistic.
The prevailing scholarly view since the Second World War is that the treatise exercised a major and persistent influence on Germany's attitude toward its Jewish citizens in the centuries between the Reformation
and the Holocaust. Four hundred years after it was written, the National Socialists displayed On the Jews and Their Lies during Nuremberg rallies, and the city of Nuremberg presented a first edition to Julius Streicher
, editor of the Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer
, the newspaper describing it as the most radically antisemitic tract ever published. Against this view, theologian Johannes Wallmann writes that the treatise had no continuity of influence in Germany, and was in fact largely ignored during the 18th and 19th centuries. Hans Hillerbrand argues that to focus on Luther's role in the development of German antisemitism is to underestimate the "larger peculiarities of German history."
Martin Brecht
argues that there is a world of difference between Luther's belief in salvation, which depended on a faith in Jesus as the messiah — a belief Luther criticized the Jews for rejecting — and the Nazis' ideology of racial antisemitism. Johannes Wallmann
argues that Luther's writings against the Jews were largely ignored in the 18th and 19th centuries, and that there is no continuity between Luther's thought and Nazi ideology. Uwe Siemon-Netto
agrees, arguing that it was because the Nazis were already antisemites that they revived Luther's work. Hans J. Hillerbrand states that the view that "Luther significantly encouraged the development of German anti-Semitism... puts far too much emphasis on Luther and not enough on the larger peculiarities of German history". Other scholars argue that, even if his views were merely anti-Judaic
, their violence lent a new element to the standard Christian suspicion of Judaism. Ronald Berger writes that Luther is credited with "Germanizing the Christian critique of Judaism and establishing anti-Semitism as a key element of German culture and national identity." Paul Rose
argues that he caused a "hysterical and demonizing mentality" about Jews to enter German thought and discourse, a mentality that might otherwise have been absent.
The line of "anti-semitic descent" from Luther to Hitler is "easy to draw," according to American historian Lucy Dawidowicz
. In her The War Against the Jews, 1933-1945, she writes that both Luther and Hitler were obsessed by the "demonologized universe" inhabited by Jews, with Hitler asserting that the later Luther, the author of On the Jews and Their Lies was the real Luther.
Dawidowicz writes that the similarities between Luther's anti-Jewish writings and modern antisemitism are no coincidence, because they derived from a common history of Judenhass, which can be traced to Haman's
advice to Ahasuerus
. Although modern German antisemitism also has its roots in German nationalism and Christian
antisemitism, she argues that a foundation for this was laid by the Roman Catholic Church, "upon which Luther built."
Michael has argued that Luther scholars who try to tone down Luther's views on the Jews ignore the murderous implications of his antisemitism. Michael argues that there is a "strong parallel" between Luther's ideas and the antisemitism of most German Lutherans throughout the Holocaust. Like the Nazis, Luther mythologized the Jews as evil, he writes. They could be saved only if they converted to Christianity, but their hostility to the idea made it inconceivable.
Luther's sentiments were widely echoed in the Germany of the 1930s, particularly within the Nazi party. Hitler's Education Minister, Bernhard Rust
, was quoted by the Völkischer Beobachter
as saying that: "Since Martin Luther closed his eyes, no such son of our people has appeared again. It has been decided that we shall be the first to witness his reappearance ... I think the time is past when one may not say the names of Hitler and Luther in the same breath. They belong together; they are of the same old stamp [Schrot und Korn]".
Hans Hinkel
, leader of the Luther League
's magazine Deutsche Kultur-Wacht, and of the Berlin chapter of the Kampfbund
, paid tribute to Luther in his acceptance speech as head of both the Jewish section and the film department of Goebbel
's Chamber of Culture and Propaganda Ministry. "Through his acts and his spiritual attitude, he began the fight which we will wage today; with Luther, the revolution of German blood and feeling against alien elements of the Volk was begun. To continue and complete his Protestantism, nationalism must make the picture of Luther, of a German fighter, live as an example 'above the barriers of confession' for all German blood comrades."
According to Daniel Goldhagen
, Bishop Martin Sasse, a leading Protestant churchman, published a compendium of Luther's writings shortly after Kristallnacht
, for which Diarmaid MacCulloch
, Professor of the History of the Church in the University of Oxford
argued that Luther's writing was a "blueprint." Sasse "applauded the burning of the synagogues and the coincidence of the day, writing in the introduction, "On November 10, 1938, on Luther's birthday, the synagogues are burning in Germany." The German people, he urged, ought to heed these words "of the greatest antisemite of his time, the warner of his people against the Jews."
William Nichols, Professor of Religious Studies, recounts, "At his trial in Nuremberg after the Second World War, Julius Streicher
, the notorious Nazi propagandist, editor of the scurrilous antisemitic weekly Der Stürmer, argued that if he should be standing there arraigned on such charges, so should Martin Luther. Reading such passages, it is hard not to agree with him. Luther's proposals read like a program for the Nazis." It was Luther's expression "The Jews are our misfortune" that centuries later would be repeated by Heinrich von Treitschke and appear as motto on the front page of Julius Streicher's Der Stürmer.
Some scholars have attributed the Nazi "Final Solution" directly to Martin Luther. Others dispute this point of view, pointedly taking issue with the thesis advanced by William Shirer and others.
Richard Steigmann-Gall
writes in his 2003 book The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919-1945:
In his book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
, William L. Shirer
wrote:
Roland Bainton
, noted church historian and Luther biographer, wrote with reference to On the Jews and Their Lies: "One could wish that Luther had died before ever this tract was written. His position was entirely religious and in no respect racial." Richard Marius contends that in making this "declaration," "Roland Bainton's effort is directed towards trying 'to make the best of Luther,' and 'Luther's view of the Jews.'"
Bainton's view is later echoed by James M. Kittelson writing about Luther's correspondence with Jewish scholar Josel of Rosheim: "There was no anti-Semitism in this response. Moreover, Luther never became an anti-Semite in the modern, racial sense of the term."
Paul Halsall states, "In his Letters to Spalatin, we can already see that Luther's hatred of Jews, best seen in this 1543 letter On the Jews and Their Lies, was not some affectation of old age, but was present very early on. Luther expected Jews to convert to his purified Christianity. When they did not, he turned violently against them."
Gordon Rupp gives this evaluation of On the Jews and Their Lies: "I confess that I am ashamed as I am ashamed of some letters of St. Jerome, some paragraphs in Sir Thomas More, and some chapters in the Book of Revelation, and, must say, as of a deal else in Christian history, that their authors had not so learned Christ."
According to Heiko Oberman
, "[t]he basis of Luther's anti-Judaism was the conviction that ever since Christ's appearance on earth, the Jews have had no more future as Jews."
Richard Marius
views Luther's remarks as part of a pattern of similar statements about various groups Luther viewed as enemies of Christianity. He states:
Robert Waite, in his psychohistory
of Hitler and Nazi Germany, devoted an entire section to Luther's influence on Hitler and Nazi ideology
. He noted that in his Mein Kampf
, Hitler referred to Martin Luther as a great warrior, a true statesmen, and a great reformer, alongside Richard Wagner
and Frederick the Great. Waite cites Wilhelm Röpke
, writing after Hitler's Holocaust, who concluded that "without any question, Lutheranism influenced the political, spiritual and social history of Germany in a way that, after careful consideration of everything, can be described only as fateful."
Waite also compared his psychoanalysis with Erik Erikson
's own psychohistory of Luther, Young Man Luther, and concluded that, had Luther been alive during the 1930s, he most likely would have spoke out against Nazi persecution of Jews, even if this placed his life in danger, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer (a Lutheran pastor) did.
Martin Brecht
in his extensive three volume biography of Luther writes that "an evaluation of Luther's relationship with the Jews must be made." He observes,
Brecht ends his evaluation:
In 1988 theologian Stephen Westerholm argued that Luther's attacks on Jews were part and parcel of his attack on the Catholic Church — that Luther was applying a Paul
ine critique of Phariseism as legalistic and hypocritical to the Catholic Church. Westerholm rejects Luther's interpretation of Judaism and his apparent antisemitism but points out that whatever problems exist in Paul's and Luther's arguments against Jews, what Paul, and later, Luther, were arguing for was and continues to be an important vision of Christianity.
Michael Berenbaum
writes that Luther's reliance on the Bible
as the sole source of Christian authority fed his later fury toward Jews over their rejection of Jesus as the messiah. For Luther, salvation depended on the belief that Jesus was the son of God, a belief that adherents of Judaism do not share. Early in his life, Luther had argued that the Jews had been prevented from converting to Christianity by the proclamation of what he believed to be an impure gospel by the Catholic Church, and he believed they would respond favorably to the evangelical message if it were presented to them gently. He expressed concern for the poor conditions in which they were forced to live, and insisted that anyone denying that Jesus was born a Jew was committing heresy
.
Graham Noble writes that Luther wanted to save Jews, in his own terms, not exterminate them, but beneath his apparent reasonableness toward them, there was a "biting intolerance," which produced "ever more furious demands for their conversion to his own brand of Christianity" (Noble, 1-2). When they failed to convert, he turned on them.
In his commentary on the Magnificat
, Luther is critical of the emphasis Judaism places on the Torah
, the first five books of the Old Testament
. He states that they "undertook to keep the law by their own strength, and failed to learn from it their needy and cursed state." Yet, he concludes that God's grace will continue for Jews as Abraham's descendants for all time, since they may always become Christians. "We ought...not to treat the Jews in so unkindly a spirit, for there are future Christians among them."
Paul Johnson writes that "Luther was not content with verbal abuse. Even before he wrote his anti-Semitic pamphlet, he got Jews expelled from Saxony in 1537, and in the 1540s he drove them from many German towns; he tried unsuccessfully to get the elector to expel them from Brandenburg in 1543."
Michael writes that Luther was concerned with the Jewish question all his life, despite devoting only a small proportion of his work to it. As a Christian pastor and theologian Luther was concerned that people have faith in Jesus as the messiah for salvation. In rejecting that view of Jesus, the Jews became the "quintessential other," a model of the opposition to the Christian view of God. In an early work, That Jesus Christ was born a Jew, Luther advocated kindness toward the Jews, but only with the aim of converting them to Christianity: what was called Judenmission. When his efforts at conversion failed, he became increasingly bitter toward them.
Since the 1980s, some Lutheran church
bodies have formally denounced and dissociated themselves from Luther's writings on the Jews.
In 1982 the Lutheran World Federation issued a consultation stating that "we Christians must purge ourselves of any hatred of the Jews and any sort of teaching of contempt for Judaism."
In 1983 The Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod
denounced Luther's "hostile attitude" toward the Jews.
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
, in an essay on Lutheran-Jewish relations, observed that "Over the years, Luther’s anti-Jewish writings have continued to be reproduced in pamphlets and other works by neo-Nazi and antisemitic groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan
."
Writing in Lutheran Quarterly in 1987, Dr. Johannes Wallmann
stated:
In 1994 the Church Council of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America publicly rejected Luther's antisemitic writings, saying "We who bear his name and heritage must acknowledge with pain the anti-Judaic diatribes contained in Luther's later writings. We reject this violent invective as did many of his companions in the sixteenth century, and we are moved to deep and abiding sorrow at its tragic effects on later generations of Jews."
In 1995 the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada
made similar statements, as did the Austrian Evangelical Church in 1998. In the same year, the Land Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria
, on the 60th anniversary of Kristallnacht
, issued a declaration saying: "It is imperative for the Lutheran Church, which knows itself to be indebted to the work and tradition of Martin Luther, to take seriously also his anti-Jewish utterances, to acknowledge their theological function, and to reflect on their consequences. It has to distance itself from every [expression of] anti-Judaism in Lutheran theology."
A strong Position Statement was issued by The Lutheran Evangelical Protestant Church
(LEPC) (GCEPC) saying, "The Jewish people are God's chosen people. Believers should bless them as scripture says that God will bless those who bless Israel and curse those who curse Israel. The LEPC/EPC/GCEPC recant and renounce the works and words of Martin Luther concerning the Jewish people. Prayer is offered for the healing of the Jewish people, their peace and their prosperity. Prayer is offered for the peace of Jerusalem. With deep sorrow and regret repentance is offered to the Jewish People for the harm that Martin Luther caused and any contribution to their harm. Forgiveness is requested of the Jewish People for these actions. The Gospel is to the Jew first and then the Gentile. Gentiles (believers in Christ other than Jews) have been grafted into the vine. In Christ there is neither Jew nor Gentile but the Lord's desire is that there be one new man from the two for Christ broke down the wall of separation with His own body (Ephesians 2:14-15). The LEPC/EPC/GCEPC blesses Israel and the Jewish people."
The European Lutheran Commission on the Church and the Jewish People (Lutherische Europäische Kommission Kirche und Judentum, LEKKJ), an umbrella organization
representing twenty-five Lutheran church bodies in Europe, issued on May 12, 2003 A Response to Dabru Emet:
On January 6, 2004, the Consultative Panel on Lutheran-Jewish Relations of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
issued a statement urging any Lutheran church presenting a Passion Play to adhere to their Guidelines for Lutheran-Jewish Relations, stating that "the New Testament . . . must not be used as justification for hostility towards present-day Jews," and that "blame for the death of Jesus should not be attributed to Judaism or the Jewish people."
Martin Luther
Martin Luther was a German priest, professor of theology and iconic figure of the Protestant Reformation. He strongly disputed the claim that freedom from God's punishment for sin could be purchased with money. He confronted indulgence salesman Johann Tetzel with his Ninety-Five Theses in 1517...
(1483—1546), a German Reformation
Protestant Reformation
The Protestant Reformation was a 16th-century split within Western Christianity initiated by Martin Luther, John Calvin and other early Protestants. The efforts of the self-described "reformers", who objected to the doctrines, rituals and ecclesiastical structure of the Roman Catholic Church, led...
leader, had a significant influence on German antisemitism by his harsh anti-Jewish statements and writings.
Evolution of his views
Luther's attitude toward the Jews changed over the course of his life. In the early phase of his career—until around 1536—he expressed concern for their plight in Europe and was enthusiastic at the prospect of converting them to ChristianityChristianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
through his evangelical reforms. In his later career, Luther denounced the Jewish people and urged for their harsh persecution. In a paragraph from his On the Jews and Their Lies he deplores Christendom's failure to expel them.
Early years
Luther's first known comment on the Jews is in a letter written to Reverend SpalatinGeorge Spalatin
Georg Spalatin was the pseudonym taken by Georg Burkhardt , an important German figure in the history of the Reformation....
in 1514:
Conversion of the Jews will be the work of God alone operating from within, and not of man working — or rather playing — from without. If these offences be taken away, worse will follow. For they are thus given over by the wrath of God to reprobation, that they may become incorrigible, as EcclesiastesEcclesiastesThe Book of Ecclesiastes, called , is a book of the Hebrew Bible. The English name derives from the Greek translation of the Hebrew title.The main speaker in the book, identified by the name or title Qoheleth , introduces himself as "son of David, king in Jerusalem." The work consists of personal...
says, for every one who is incorrigible is rendered worse rather than better by correction.
In 1519 Luther challenged the doctrine Servitus Judaeorum ("Servitude of the Jews"), established in Corpus Juris Civilis
Corpus Juris Civilis
The Corpus Juris Civilis is the modern name for a collection of fundamental works in jurisprudence, issued from 529 to 534 by order of Justinian I, Eastern Roman Emperor...
by Justinian I
Justinian I
Justinian I ; , ; 483– 13 or 14 November 565), commonly known as Justinian the Great, was Byzantine Emperor from 527 to 565. During his reign, Justinian sought to revive the Empire's greatness and reconquer the lost western half of the classical Roman Empire.One of the most important figures of...
from 529–534 C.E. He wrote: "Absurd theologians defend hatred for the Jews. … What Jew would consent to enter our ranks when he sees the cruelty and enmity we wreak on them—that in our behavior towards them we less resemble Christians than beasts?"
In his 1523 essay That Jesus Christ Was Born a Jew, Luther condemned the inhuman treatment of the Jews and urged Christians to treat them kindly. Luther's fervent desire was that Jews would hear the Gospel proclaimed clearly and be moved to convert to Christianity. Thus he argued:
If I had been a Jew and had seen such dolts and blockheads govern and teach the Christian faith, I would sooner have become a hog than a Christian. They have dealt with the Jews as if they were dogs rather than human beings; they have done little else than deride them and seize their property. When they baptize them they show them nothing of Christian doctrine or life, but only subject them to popishness and mockery...If the apostles, who also were Jews, had dealt with us Gentiles as we Gentiles deal with the Jews, there would never have been a Christian among the Gentiles ... When we are inclined to boast of our position [as Christians] we should remember that we are but Gentiles, while the Jews are of the lineage of Christ. We are aliens and in-laws; they are blood relatives, cousins, and brothers of our Lord. Therefore, if one is to boast of flesh and blood the Jews are actually nearer to Christ than we are...If we really want to help them, we must be guided in our dealings with them not by papal law but by the law of Christian love. We must receive them cordially, and permit them to trade and work with us, that they may have occasion and opportunity to associate with us, hear our Christian teaching, and witness our Christian life. If some of them should prove stiff-necked, what of it? After all, we ourselves are not all good Christians either.
Anti-Jewish agitation
Luther successfully campaigned against the Jews in Saxony, Brandenburg, and Silesia. In August 1536 Luther's prince, Elector of Saxony John FrederickJohn Frederick, Elector of Saxony
John Frederick I of Saxony , called John the Magnanimous, was Elector of Saxony and Head of the Protestant Confederation of Germany , "Champion of the Reformation".-Early years:...
, issued a mandate that prohibited Jews from inhabiting, engaging in business in, or passing through his realm. An Alsatian
Alsace
Alsace is the fifth-smallest of the 27 regions of France in land area , and the smallest in metropolitan France. It is also the seventh-most densely populated region in France and third most densely populated region in metropolitan France, with ca. 220 inhabitants per km²...
shtadlan
Shtadlan
A Shtadlan was an intercessor figure starting in Medieval Europe, who represented interests of the local Jewish community, especially those of a town's ghetto, and worked as a "lobbyist" negotiating for the safety and benefit of Jews with the authorities holding power...
, Rabbi Josel of Rosheim
Josel of Rosheim
Josel of Rosheim Josel of Rosheim Josel of Rosheim (alternatively: Joselin, Joselmann, Yoselmann, , Joseph ben Gershon mi-Rosheim, or Joseph ben Gershon Loanz; c...
, asked a reformer Wolfgang Capito to approach Luther in order to obtain an audience with the prince, but Luther refused every intercession. In response to Josel, Luther referred to his unsuccessful attempts to convert the Jews: "... I would willingly do my best for your people but I will not contribute to your [Jewish] obstinacy by my own kind actions. You must find another intermediary with my good lord." Heiko Oberman
Heiko Oberman
Heiko Augustinus Oberman was a historian and theologian who specialized in the study of the Reformation.-Life:...
notes this event as significant in Luther’s attitude toward the Jews: "Even today this refusal is often judged to be the decisive turning point in Luther’s career from friendliness to hostility toward the Jews."
Josel of Rosheim, who tried to help the Jews of Saxony, wrote in his memoir that their situation was "due to that priest whose name was Martin Luther — may his body and soul be bound up in hell!! — who wrote and issued many heretical books in which he said that whoever would help the Jews was doomed to perdition
Hell in Christian beliefs
Christian views on Hell vary, but in general traditionally agree that hell is a place or a state in which the souls of the unsaved suffer the consequences of sin....
." Robert Ashley Michael, Professor Emeritus of European History at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth
University of Massachusetts Dartmouth
The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth is one of five campuses and operating subdivisions of the University of Massachusetts . It is located in North Dartmouth, Massachusetts, United States, in the center of the South Coast region, between the cities of New Bedford to the east and Fall River...
writes that Josel asked the city of Strasbourg to forbid the sale of Luther's anti-Jewish works; they refused initially, but relented when a Lutheran pastor in Hochfelden
Hochfelden, Bas-Rhin
Hochfelden is a commune in the Bas-Rhin department in Alsace in north-eastern France.-History:Until their deportation to the south in 1940, Hochfelden had a significant Jewish community....
argued in a sermon that his parishioners should murder Jews.
Anti-Jewish works
Vom Schem Hamphoras
Vom Schem Hamphoras, full title: Vom Schem Hamphoras und vom Geschlecht Christi , was a book written by German Reformation leader Martin Luther in 1543, in which he equated Jews with the Devil and described them in vile language.Schem Hamphoras is the Hebrew rabbinic name for the ineffable name of...
und vom Geschlecht Christi (Of the Unknowable Name and the Generations of Christ) — reprinted five times within his lifetime — both written in 1543, three years before his death. It is believed that Luther was influenced by Anton Margaritha
Anton Margaritha
Anton Margaritha was a sixteenth century Jewish Hebraist and convert to Christianity. He was a possible source for some of Martin Luther's conception of Judaism.-Biography:Margaritha's father Jacob Margolioth was a rabbi in Ratisbon...
's book Der gantze Jüdisch Glaub
Anton Margaritha
Anton Margaritha was a sixteenth century Jewish Hebraist and convert to Christianity. He was a possible source for some of Martin Luther's conception of Judaism.-Biography:Margaritha's father Jacob Margolioth was a rabbi in Ratisbon...
(The Whole Jewish Belief). Margaritha, a convert to Christianity who had become a Lutheran, published his antisemitic book in 1530 which was read by Luther in 1539. Margaritha's book was decisively discredited by Josel of Rosheim
Josel of Rosheim
Josel of Rosheim Josel of Rosheim Josel of Rosheim (alternatively: Joselin, Joselmann, Yoselmann, , Joseph ben Gershon mi-Rosheim, or Joseph ben Gershon Loanz; c...
in a public debate in 1530 before Charles V
Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor
Charles V was ruler of the Holy Roman Empire from 1519 and, as Charles I, of the Spanish Empire from 1516 until his voluntary retirement and abdication in favor of his younger brother Ferdinand I and his son Philip II in 1556.As...
and his court, resulting in Margaritha's expulsion from the Empire.
On the Jews and Their Lies
In 1543 Luther published On the Jews and Their Lies in which he says that the Jews are a "base, whoring people, that is, no people of God, and their boast of lineage, circumcision, and law must be accounted as filth." They are full of the "devil's feces ... which they wallow in like swine." The synagogue was a "defiled bride, yes, an incorrigible whore and an evil slut ..." He argues that their synagogues and schoolsYeshiva
Yeshiva is a Jewish educational institution that focuses on the study of traditional religious texts, primarily the Talmud and Torah study. Study is usually done through daily shiurim and in study pairs called chavrutas...
be set on fire, their prayer book
Siddur
A siddur is a Jewish prayer book, containing a set order of daily prayers. This article discusses how some of these prayers evolved, and how the siddur, as it is known today has developed...
s destroyed, rabbi
Rabbi
In Judaism, a rabbi is a teacher of Torah. This title derives from the Hebrew word רבי , meaning "My Master" , which is the way a student would address a master of Torah...
s forbidden to preach, homes razed, and property and money confiscated. They should be shown no mercy or kindness, afforded no legal protection, and these "poisonous envenomed worms" should be drafted into forced labor or expelled for all time. He also seems to advocate their murder, writing "[w]e are at fault in not slaying them."
Vom Schem Hamphoras
Several months after publishing On the Jews and Their Lies, Luther wrote Vom Schem Hamphoras
Vom Schem Hamphoras
Vom Schem Hamphoras, full title: Vom Schem Hamphoras und vom Geschlecht Christi , was a book written by German Reformation leader Martin Luther in 1543, in which he equated Jews with the Devil and described them in vile language.Schem Hamphoras is the Hebrew rabbinic name for the ineffable name of...
und vom Geschlecht Christi (Of the Unknowable Name and the Generations of Christ)', in which he equated Jews with the Devil
Devil
The Devil is believed in many religions and cultures to be a powerful, supernatural entity that is the personification of evil and the enemy of God and humankind. The nature of the role varies greatly...
:
"Here in Wittenburg, in our parish church, there is a sow carved into the stone under which lie young pigs and Jews who are sucking; behind the sow stands a rabbi who is lifting up the right leg of the sow, raises behind the sow, bows down and looks with great effort into the Talmud under the sow, as if he wanted to read and see something most difficult and exceptional; no doubt they gained their Shem Hamphoras from that place."
The English translation of Vom Schem Hamphoras is contained in The Jew in Christian Theology, by Gerhard Falk (1992).
Warning against the Jews
Shortly before his death on February 18, 1546 Luther preached four sermons in Eisleben. To his second last sermon he appended what he called his "final warning" against the Jews. The main point of this short work is that authorities who could expel the Jews from their lands should do so if they would not convert to ChristianityChristianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
. Otherwise, Luther indicated, such authorities would make themselves "partners in another's sins."
Luther began by saying,
We want to deal with them in a Christian manner now. Offer them the Christian faith that they would accept the Messiah, who is even their cousin and has been born of their flesh and blood; and is rightly Abraham’s Seed, of which they boast. Even so, I am concerned [that] Jewish blood may no longer become watery and wild. First of all, you should propose to them that they be converted to the Messiah and allow themselves to be baptized, that one may see that this is a serious matter to them. If not, then we would not permit them [to live among us], for Christ commands us to be baptized and believe in Him, even though we cannot now believe so strongly as we should, God is still patient with us.Luther continued, "However, if they are converted, abandon their usury, and receive Christ, then we will willingly regard them our brothers. Otherwise, nothing will come out of it, for they do it to excess."
Luther followed this with accusations,
They are our public enemies. They do not stop blaspheming our Lord Christ, calling the Virgin Mary a whore, Christ, a bastard, and us changelings or “meal calves” (Mahlkälber). If they could kill us all, they would gladly do it. They do it often, especially those who pose as physcians—though sometimes they help—for the devil helps to finish it in the end. They can also practice medicine as in French Switzerland. They administer poison to someone from which he could die in an hour, a month, a year, ten or twenty years. They are able to practice this art.
He then said,
Yet, we will show them Christian love and pray for them that they may be converted to receive the Lord, whom they should honor properly before us. Whoever will not do this is no doubt a malicious Jew, who will not stop blaspheming Christ, draining you dry, and, if he can, killing [you].
The influence of Luther's views
In 1543 Luther's Prince, John Frederick I, Elector of Saxony, revoked some of the concessions he gave to Josel of Rosheim in 1539. Luther's influence persisted after his death. Johann of KüstrinKüstrin
Before 1945 Küstrin was a town in the former Prussian province of Brandenburg in Germany, situated on both sides of the Oder river...
, Margrave of Neumark
Neumark
Neumark comprised a region of the Prussian province of Brandenburg, Germany.Neumark may also refer to:* Neumark, Thuringia* Neumark, Saxony* Neumark * Nowe Miasto Lubawskie or Neumark, a town in Poland, situated at river Drwęca...
, repealed the safe conduct of Jews in his territories. Philip of Hesse
Philip I, Landgrave of Hesse
Philip I of Hesse, , nicknamed der Großmütige was a leading champion of the Protestant Reformation and one of the most important of the early Protestant rulers in Germany....
added restrictions to his Order Concerning the Jews. Paul Johnson writes that Luther's followers sacked Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
in 1572 and the following year the Jews were banned from the entire country. Throughout the 1580s riots saw the expulsion of Jews from several German Lutheran states.
Nevertheless, no ruler enacted all of Luther's anti-Jewish recommendations.
According to Michael, Luther's work acquired the status of Scripture within Germany, and he became the most widely read author of his generation, in part because of the coarse and passionate nature of the writing. In the 1570s Pastor Georg Nigrinus published Enemy Jew, which reiterated Luther's program in On the Jews and Their Lies, and Nikolaus Selnecker
Nikolaus Selnecker
Nikolaus Selnecker was a German musician and theologian. He is now known mainly as a hymn writer. He is also known as one of the principal authors of the Formula of Concord along with Jakob Andreä and Martin Chemnitz.At a young age he was an organist in Nuremberg...
, one of the authors of the Formula of Concord
Formula of Concord
Formula of Concord is an authoritative Lutheran statement of faith that, in its two parts , makes up the final section of the Lutheran Corpus Doctrinae or Body of Doctrine, known as...
, reprinted Luther's Against the Sabbatarians, On the Jews and Their Lies, and Vom Schem Hamphoras
Vom Schem Hamphoras
Vom Schem Hamphoras, full title: Vom Schem Hamphoras und vom Geschlecht Christi , was a book written by German Reformation leader Martin Luther in 1543, in which he equated Jews with the Devil and described them in vile language.Schem Hamphoras is the Hebrew rabbinic name for the ineffable name of...
.
Luther's treatises against the Jews were reprinted again early in the 17th century at Dortmund
Dortmund
Dortmund is a city in Germany. It is located in the Bundesland of North Rhine-Westphalia, in the Ruhr area. Its population of 585,045 makes it the 7th largest city in Germany and the 34th largest in the European Union....
, where they were seized by the Emperor. In 1613 and 1617 they were published in Frankfurt am Main
Frankfurt
Frankfurt am Main , commonly known simply as Frankfurt, is the largest city in the German state of Hesse and the fifth-largest city in Germany, with a 2010 population of 688,249. The urban area had an estimated population of 2,300,000 in 2010...
in support of the banishment of Jews from Frankfurt and Worms
Worms, Germany
Worms is a city in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, on the Rhine River. At the end of 2004, it had 85,829 inhabitants.Established by the Celts, who called it Borbetomagus, Worms today remains embattled with the cities Trier and Cologne over the title of "Oldest City in Germany." Worms is the only...
. Vincent Fettmilch, a Calvinist, reprinted On the Jews and Their Lies in 1612 to stir up hatred against the Jews of Frankfurt. Two years later, riots in Frankfurt saw the deaths of 3,000 Jews and the expulsion of the rest. Fettmilch was executed by the Lutheran city authorities, but Michael writes that his execution was for attempting to overthrow the authorities, not for his offenses against the Jews.
These reprints were the last popular publication of these works until they were revived in the 20th century.
Influence on modern antisemitism
The prevailing view among historians is that his anti-Jewish rhetoric contributed significantly to the development of antisemitism in Germany, and in the 1930s and 1940s provided an ideal foundation for the National Socialists' attacks on Jews. Reinhold Lewin writes that "whoever wrote against the Jews for whatever reason believed he had the right to justify himself by triumphantly referring to Luther." According to Michael, just about every anti-Jewish book printed in the Third Reich contained references to and quotations from Luther. Diarmaid MacCullochDiarmaid MacCulloch
Diarmaid Ninian John MacCulloch FBA, FSA, FR Hist S is Professor of the History of the Church at the University of Oxford and Fellow of St Cross College, Oxford...
argues that Luther's 1543 pamphlet On the Jews and Their Lies was a "blueprint" for the Kristallnacht
Kristallnacht
Kristallnacht, also referred to as the Night of Broken Glass, and also Reichskristallnacht, Pogromnacht, and Novemberpogrome, was a pogrom or series of attacks against Jews throughout Nazi Germany and parts of Austria on 9–10 November 1938.Jewish homes were ransacked, as were shops, towns and...
. Shortly after the Kristallnacht, Bishop Martin Sasse, a leading Protestant
Protestantism
Protestantism is one of the three major groupings within Christianity. It is a movement that began in Germany in the early 16th century as a reaction against medieval Roman Catholic doctrines and practices, especially in regards to salvation, justification, and ecclesiology.The doctrines of the...
churchman, published a compendium of Martin Luther
Martin Luther
Martin Luther was a German priest, professor of theology and iconic figure of the Protestant Reformation. He strongly disputed the claim that freedom from God's punishment for sin could be purchased with money. He confronted indulgence salesman Johann Tetzel with his Ninety-Five Theses in 1517...
's writings ; Sasse "applauded the burning of the synagogues" and the coincidence of the day, writing in the introduction, "On November 10, 1938, on Luther's birthday, the synagogues are burning in Germany." The German people, he urged, ought to heed these words "of the greatest anti-Semite of his time, the warner of his people against the Jews." In 1940, Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was Reichsführer of the SS, a military commander, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. As Chief of the German Police and the Minister of the Interior from 1943, Himmler oversaw all internal and external police and security forces, including the Gestapo...
wrote admiringly of Luther's writings and sermons on the Jews. The city of Nuremberg presented a first edition of On the Jews and their Lies to Julius Streicher
Julius Streicher
Julius Streicher was a prominent Nazi prior to World War II. He was the founder and publisher of Der Stürmer newspaper, which became a central element of the Nazi propaganda machine...
, editor of the Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer
Der Stürmer
Der Stürmer was a weekly tabloid-format Nazi newspaper published by Julius Streicher from 1923 to the end of World War II in 1945, with brief suspensions in publication due to legal difficulties. It was a significant part of the Nazi propaganda machinery and was vehemently anti-Semitic...
, on his birthday in 1937; the newspaper described it as the most radically antisemitic tract ever published. It was publicly exhibited in a glass case at the Nuremberg rallies and quoted in a 54-page explanation of the Aryan Law by Dr. E.H. Schulz and Dr. R. Frercks. On December 17, 1941, seven Lutheran regional church confederations issued a statement agreeing with the policy of forcing Jews to wear the yellow badge, "since after his bitter experience Luther had [strongly] suggested preventive measures against the Jews and their expulsion from German territory."
Michael states "Luther wrote of the Jews as if they were a race that could not truly convert to Christianity. Indeed, like so many Christian writers before him, Luther, by making the Jews the devil's people, put them beyond conversion". He notes that in a sermon of September 25, 1539, "Luther tried to demonstrate through several examples that individual Jews could not convert permanently, and in several passages of The Jews and Their Lies, Luther appeared to reject the possibility that the Jews would or could convert."
Franklin Sherman, editor of volume 47 of the American Edition of Luther's Works in which On the Jews and Their Lies appears, responds to the claim that "Luther's antipathy towards the Jews was religious rather than racial in nature," Luther's writings against the Jews, he explains, are not "merely a set of cool, calm and collected theological judgments. His writings are full of rage, and indeed hatred, against an identifiable human group, not just against a religious point of view; it is against that group that his action proposals are directed." Sherman argues that Luther "cannot be distanced completely from modern antisemites." Regarding Luther's treatise, On the Jews and Their Lies, the German philosopher Karl Jaspers
Karl Jaspers
Karl Theodor Jaspers was a German psychiatrist and philosopher who had a strong influence on modern theology, psychiatry and philosophy. After being trained in and practicing psychiatry, Jaspers turned to philosophical inquiry and attempted to discover an innovative philosophical system...
wrote: "There you already have the whole Nazi program".
Other scholars assert that Luther's antisemitism as expressed in On the Jews and Their Lies is based on religion. Bainton asserts that Luther's position was "entirely religious and in no respect racial. The supreme sin for him was the persistent rejection of God's revelation of himself in Christ. The centuries of Jewish suffering were themselves a mark of the divine displeasure. They should be compelled to leave and go to a land of their own. This was a program of enforced Zionism. But if it were not feasible, then Luther would recommend that the Jews be compelled to live from the soil. He was unwittingly proposing a return to the condition of the early Middle Ages, when the Jews had been in agriculture. Forced off the land, they had gone into commerce and, having been expelled from commerce, into money lending. Luther wished to reverse the process and thereby inadvertently would accord the Jews a more secure position than they enjoyed in his day."
Paul Halsall argues that Luther's views had a part in laying the groundwork for the racial European antisemitism of the nineteenth century. He writes that "although Luther's comments seem to be proto-Nazi, they are better seen as part of tradition [sic] of Medieval Christian anti-semitism. While there is little doubt that Christian anti-semitism laid the social and cultural basis for modern anti-semitism, modern anti-semitism does differ in being based on pseudo-scientific notions of race. The Nazis imprisoned and killed even those ethnic Jews who had converted to Christianity: Luther would have welcomed their conversions."
In his Lutheran Quarterly article, Wallmann argued that Luther's On the Jews and Their Lies, Against the Sabbabitarians, and Vom Schem Hamphoras were largely ignored by antisemites of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. He contended that Johann Andreas Eisenmenger
Johann Andreas Eisenmenger
Johann Andreas Eisenmenger was a German Orientalist, now best known as the author of the anti-Semitic polemic, Entdecktes Judenthum .-Studies rabbinical literature:...
and his Judaism Unmasked, published posthumously in 1711, was "a major source of evidence for the anti-Semites of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries" and "cast Luther's anti-Jewish writings into obscurity." In this 2000 page tome Eisenmenger makes no mention of Luther at all.
The Lutheran court chaplain to Kaiser Wilhelm I, Adolf Stoecker
Adolf Stoecker
Adolf Stoecker was the court chaplain to Kaiser Wilhelm II, a politician, and a German Lutheran theologian who founded one of the first Christian Social Gospel political parties in Germany, the Christian Social Party.-Life:Stoecker was born in Halberstadt, Province of Saxony.A staunch Protestant,...
, founded in 1878 an antisemitic and antiliberal party called the Christian Social Party (Germany)
Christian Social Party (Germany)
The Christian Social Party was a right-wing political party in the German Empire, founded in 1878 by Adolf Stoecker as the Christlichsoziale Arbeiterpartei . The party combined a strong Christian and conservative programme with progressive ideas on labour, and tried to provide an alternative for...
. However, this party did not enjoy the mass support which the Nazis received during the 1930s, when the Great Depression hit Germany especially hard.
Debate on influence on Nazis
At the heart of the debate about Luther's influence is whether it is anachronisticAnachronism
An anachronism—from the Greek ανά and χρόνος — is an inconsistency in some chronological arrangement, especially a chronological misplacing of persons, events, objects, or customs in regard to each other...
to view his work as a precursor of the racial antisemitism of the National Socialists. Some scholars see Luther's influence as limited, and the Nazis' use of his work as opportunistic.
The prevailing scholarly view since the Second World War is that the treatise exercised a major and persistent influence on Germany's attitude toward its Jewish citizens in the centuries between the Reformation
Protestant Reformation
The Protestant Reformation was a 16th-century split within Western Christianity initiated by Martin Luther, John Calvin and other early Protestants. The efforts of the self-described "reformers", who objected to the doctrines, rituals and ecclesiastical structure of the Roman Catholic Church, led...
and the Holocaust. Four hundred years after it was written, the National Socialists displayed On the Jews and Their Lies during Nuremberg rallies, and the city of Nuremberg presented a first edition to Julius Streicher
Julius Streicher
Julius Streicher was a prominent Nazi prior to World War II. He was the founder and publisher of Der Stürmer newspaper, which became a central element of the Nazi propaganda machine...
, editor of the Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer
Der Stürmer
Der Stürmer was a weekly tabloid-format Nazi newspaper published by Julius Streicher from 1923 to the end of World War II in 1945, with brief suspensions in publication due to legal difficulties. It was a significant part of the Nazi propaganda machinery and was vehemently anti-Semitic...
, the newspaper describing it as the most radically antisemitic tract ever published. Against this view, theologian Johannes Wallmann writes that the treatise had no continuity of influence in Germany, and was in fact largely ignored during the 18th and 19th centuries. Hans Hillerbrand argues that to focus on Luther's role in the development of German antisemitism is to underestimate the "larger peculiarities of German history."
Martin Brecht
Martin Brecht
Martin Brecht Church historian, professor emeritus of the University of Münster, Westphalia, Germany. Until his retirement in 1997 at age 65, he served as head of the Department of Medieval and Modern Church History of the Evangelical Theological Faculty of the university.He is author of a three...
argues that there is a world of difference between Luther's belief in salvation, which depended on a faith in Jesus as the messiah — a belief Luther criticized the Jews for rejecting — and the Nazis' ideology of racial antisemitism. Johannes Wallmann
Johannes Wallmann (theologian)
Johannes Wallmann is a German theologian and emeritus professor of church history at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum.- Leben :...
argues that Luther's writings against the Jews were largely ignored in the 18th and 19th centuries, and that there is no continuity between Luther's thought and Nazi ideology. Uwe Siemon-Netto
Uwe Siemon-Netto
Uwe Siemon-Netto , the former religion editor of United Press International, is an international columnist and a Lutheran lay theologian...
agrees, arguing that it was because the Nazis were already antisemites that they revived Luther's work. Hans J. Hillerbrand states that the view that "Luther significantly encouraged the development of German anti-Semitism... puts far too much emphasis on Luther and not enough on the larger peculiarities of German history". Other scholars argue that, even if his views were merely anti-Judaic
Anti-Judaism
Religious antisemitism is a form of antisemitism, which is the prejudice against, or hostility toward, the Jewish people based on hostility to Judaism and to Jews as a religious group...
, their violence lent a new element to the standard Christian suspicion of Judaism. Ronald Berger writes that Luther is credited with "Germanizing the Christian critique of Judaism and establishing anti-Semitism as a key element of German culture and national identity." Paul Rose
Paul Lawrence Rose
Paul Lawrence Rose is the Professor of European History and Mitrani Professor of Jewish Studies at Pennsylvania State University.Rose specializes in the study of anti-Semitism, Germany history, European intellectual history, and Jewish history. -Notes:...
argues that he caused a "hysterical and demonizing mentality" about Jews to enter German thought and discourse, a mentality that might otherwise have been absent.
The line of "anti-semitic descent" from Luther to Hitler is "easy to draw," according to American historian Lucy Dawidowicz
Lucy Dawidowicz
Lucy Schildkret Dawidowicz was an American historian and an author of books on modern Jewish history, in particular books on the Holocaust.-Life:...
. In her The War Against the Jews, 1933-1945, she writes that both Luther and Hitler were obsessed by the "demonologized universe" inhabited by Jews, with Hitler asserting that the later Luther, the author of On the Jews and Their Lies was the real Luther.
Dawidowicz writes that the similarities between Luther's anti-Jewish writings and modern antisemitism are no coincidence, because they derived from a common history of Judenhass, which can be traced to Haman's
Haman (Bible)
Haman is the main antagonist in the Book of Esther, who, according to Old Testament tradition, was a 5th Century BC noble and vizier of the Persian empire under King Ahasuerus, traditionally identified as Artaxerxes II...
advice to Ahasuerus
Ahasuerus
Ahasuerus is a name used several times in the Hebrew Bible, as well as related legends and Apocrypha. This name is applied in the Hebrew Scriptures to three rulers...
. Although modern German antisemitism also has its roots in German nationalism and Christian
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
antisemitism, she argues that a foundation for this was laid by the Roman Catholic Church, "upon which Luther built."
Michael has argued that Luther scholars who try to tone down Luther's views on the Jews ignore the murderous implications of his antisemitism. Michael argues that there is a "strong parallel" between Luther's ideas and the antisemitism of most German Lutherans throughout the Holocaust. Like the Nazis, Luther mythologized the Jews as evil, he writes. They could be saved only if they converted to Christianity, but their hostility to the idea made it inconceivable.
Luther's sentiments were widely echoed in the Germany of the 1930s, particularly within the Nazi party. Hitler's Education Minister, Bernhard Rust
Bernhard Rust
Dr. Bernhard Rust was Minister of Science, Education and National Culture in Nazi Germany. A combination of school administrator and zealous Nazi, he issued decrees, often bizarre, at every level of the German educational system to immerse German youth in the National Socialist philosophy...
, was quoted by the Völkischer Beobachter
Völkischer Beobachter
The Völkischer Beobachter was the newspaper of the National Socialist German Workers' Party from 1920. It first appeared weekly, then daily from February 8, 1923...
as saying that: "Since Martin Luther closed his eyes, no such son of our people has appeared again. It has been decided that we shall be the first to witness his reappearance ... I think the time is past when one may not say the names of Hitler and Luther in the same breath. They belong together; they are of the same old stamp [Schrot und Korn]".
Hans Hinkel
Hans Hinkel
Hans Hinkel was a German journalist and ministerial official in Nazi Germany....
, leader of the Luther League
Luther League
The Luther League is a religious association for young people in the United States of America. It began with a local society founded by delegates of six Lutheran church societies in New York City in 1888. The first national convention was held at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on the 30th and 31 October...
's magazine Deutsche Kultur-Wacht, and of the Berlin chapter of the Kampfbund
Kampfbund
The Kampfbund was a league of patriotic fighting societies and the German National Socialist party in Bavaria, Germany, in the 1920s. It included Hitler's NSDAP party and their Sturmabteilung or SA for short, the Oberland League and the Reichskriegsflagge. Its military leader was Hermann Kriebel,...
, paid tribute to Luther in his acceptance speech as head of both the Jewish section and the film department of Goebbel
Joseph Goebbels
Paul Joseph Goebbels was a German politician and Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. As one of Adolf Hitler's closest associates and most devout followers, he was known for his zealous oratory and anti-Semitism...
's Chamber of Culture and Propaganda Ministry. "Through his acts and his spiritual attitude, he began the fight which we will wage today; with Luther, the revolution of German blood and feeling against alien elements of the Volk was begun. To continue and complete his Protestantism, nationalism must make the picture of Luther, of a German fighter, live as an example 'above the barriers of confession' for all German blood comrades."
According to Daniel Goldhagen
Daniel Goldhagen
Daniel Jonah Goldhagen is an American author and former Associate Professor of Political Science and Social Studies at Harvard University. Goldhagen reached international attention and broad criticism as the author of two controversial books about the Holocaust, Hitler's Willing Executioners and...
, Bishop Martin Sasse, a leading Protestant churchman, published a compendium of Luther's writings shortly after Kristallnacht
Kristallnacht
Kristallnacht, also referred to as the Night of Broken Glass, and also Reichskristallnacht, Pogromnacht, and Novemberpogrome, was a pogrom or series of attacks against Jews throughout Nazi Germany and parts of Austria on 9–10 November 1938.Jewish homes were ransacked, as were shops, towns and...
, for which Diarmaid MacCulloch
Diarmaid MacCulloch
Diarmaid Ninian John MacCulloch FBA, FSA, FR Hist S is Professor of the History of the Church at the University of Oxford and Fellow of St Cross College, Oxford...
, Professor of the History of the Church in the University of Oxford
University of Oxford
The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...
argued that Luther's writing was a "blueprint." Sasse "applauded the burning of the synagogues and the coincidence of the day, writing in the introduction, "On November 10, 1938, on Luther's birthday, the synagogues are burning in Germany." The German people, he urged, ought to heed these words "of the greatest antisemite of his time, the warner of his people against the Jews."
William Nichols, Professor of Religious Studies, recounts, "At his trial in Nuremberg after the Second World War, Julius Streicher
Julius Streicher
Julius Streicher was a prominent Nazi prior to World War II. He was the founder and publisher of Der Stürmer newspaper, which became a central element of the Nazi propaganda machine...
, the notorious Nazi propagandist, editor of the scurrilous antisemitic weekly Der Stürmer, argued that if he should be standing there arraigned on such charges, so should Martin Luther. Reading such passages, it is hard not to agree with him. Luther's proposals read like a program for the Nazis." It was Luther's expression "The Jews are our misfortune" that centuries later would be repeated by Heinrich von Treitschke and appear as motto on the front page of Julius Streicher's Der Stürmer.
Some scholars have attributed the Nazi "Final Solution" directly to Martin Luther. Others dispute this point of view, pointedly taking issue with the thesis advanced by William Shirer and others.
Luthertag
In the course of the Luthertag (Luther Day) festivities, the Nazis emphasized their connection to Luther as being both nationalist revolutionaries and the heirs of the German traditionalist past. An article in the Chemnitzer Tageblatt stated that "[t]he German Volk are united not only in loyalty and love for the Fatherland, but also once more in the old German beliefs of Luther [Lutherglauben]; a new epoch of strong, conscious religious life has dawned in Germany."Richard Steigmann-Gall
Richard Steigmann-Gall
Richard Steigmann-Gall is Associate Professor of History at Kent State University, and was the Director of the Jewish Studies Program from 2004 to 2010. He received his BA in 1989 and MA in 1992 from the University of Michigan, and his PhD in 1999 from the University of Toronto...
writes in his 2003 book The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919-1945:
The leadership of the Protestant League espoused a similar view. Fahrenhorst, who was on the planning committee of the Luthertag, called Luther "the first German spiritual FührerFührerFührer , alternatively spelled Fuehrer in both English and German when the umlaut is not available, is a German title meaning leader or guide now most associated with Adolf Hitler, who modelled it on Benito Mussolini's title il Duce, as well as with Georg von Schönerer, whose followers also...
" who spoke to all Germans regardless of clan or confession. In a letter to Hitler, Fahrenhorst reminded him that his "Old Fighters" were mostly Protestants and that it was precisely in the Protestant regions of our Fatherland" in which Nazism found its greatest strength. Promising that the celebration of Luther's birthday would not turn into a confessional affair, Fahrenhorst invited Hitler to become the official patron of the Luthertag. In subsequent correspondence, Fahrenhorst again voiced the notion that reverence for Luther could somehow cross confessional boundaries: "Luther is truly not only the founder of a Christian confession; much more, his ideas had a fruitful impact on all Christianity in Germany." Precisely because of Luther's political as well as religious significance, the Luthertag would serve as a confession both "to church and Volk."
Luther's words and scholarship
Methodist Luther scholar Gordon Rupp wrote:
Luther's antagonism to the Jews was poles apart from the Nazi doctrine of "Race". It was based on medieval Catholic anti-semitism towards the people who crucified the Redeemer, turned their back on the way of Life, and whose very existence in the midst of a Christian society was considered a reproach and blasphemy. Luther is a small chapter in the large volume of Christian inhumanities toward the Jewish people.
...
"Needless to say, there is no trace of such a relation between Luther and Hitler. I suppose Hitler never once read a page by Luther. The fact that he and other Nazis claimed Luther on their side proves no more than the fact that they also numbered Almighty God among their supporters. Hitler mentions Luther once in Mein Kampf in a harmless context.
In his book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich is a 1960 non-fiction book by William L. Shirer chronicling the general history of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945...
, William L. Shirer
William L. Shirer
William Lawrence Shirer was an American journalist, war correspondent, and historian, who wrote The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, a history of Nazi Germany read and cited in scholarly works for more than 50 years...
wrote:
It is difficult to understand the behavior of most German Protestants in the first Nazi years unless one is aware of two things: their history and the influence of Martin Luther. The great founder of Protestantism was both a passionate anti-Semite and a ferocious believer in absolute obedience to political authority. He wanted Germany rid of the Jews. Luther's advice was literally followed four centuries later by Hitler, Goering and Himmler.
Roland Bainton
Roland Bainton
Roland Herbert Bainton was a British born American Protestant church historian.-Life:He was born in Ilkeston, Derbyshire, England and came to the United States in 1902. He received an A.B. degree from Whitman College, and B.D. and Ph.D.. degrees from Yale University. He also received a number of...
, noted church historian and Luther biographer, wrote with reference to On the Jews and Their Lies: "One could wish that Luther had died before ever this tract was written. His position was entirely religious and in no respect racial." Richard Marius contends that in making this "declaration," "Roland Bainton's effort is directed towards trying 'to make the best of Luther,' and 'Luther's view of the Jews.'"
Bainton's view is later echoed by James M. Kittelson writing about Luther's correspondence with Jewish scholar Josel of Rosheim: "There was no anti-Semitism in this response. Moreover, Luther never became an anti-Semite in the modern, racial sense of the term."
Paul Halsall states, "In his Letters to Spalatin, we can already see that Luther's hatred of Jews, best seen in this 1543 letter On the Jews and Their Lies, was not some affectation of old age, but was present very early on. Luther expected Jews to convert to his purified Christianity. When they did not, he turned violently against them."
Gordon Rupp gives this evaluation of On the Jews and Their Lies: "I confess that I am ashamed as I am ashamed of some letters of St. Jerome, some paragraphs in Sir Thomas More, and some chapters in the Book of Revelation, and, must say, as of a deal else in Christian history, that their authors had not so learned Christ."
According to Heiko Oberman
Heiko Oberman
Heiko Augustinus Oberman was a historian and theologian who specialized in the study of the Reformation.-Life:...
, "[t]he basis of Luther's anti-Judaism was the conviction that ever since Christ's appearance on earth, the Jews have had no more future as Jews."
Richard Marius
Richard Marius
Richard Curry Marius was an American academic and writer.He was a scholar of the Reformation, novelist of the American South, speechwriter, and teacher of writing and English literature at Harvard University...
views Luther's remarks as part of a pattern of similar statements about various groups Luther viewed as enemies of Christianity. He states:
Although the Jews for him were only one among many enemies he castigated with equal fervor, although he did not sink to the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition against Jews, and although he was certainly not to blame for Adolf Hitler, Luther's hatred of the Jews is a sad and dishonorable part of his legacy, and it is not a fringe issue. It lay at the center of his concept of religion. He saw in the Jews a continuing moral depravity he did not see in Catholics. He did not accuse papists of the crimes that he laid at the feet of Jews.
Robert Waite, in his psychohistory
Psychohistory
Psychohistory is the study of the psychological motivations of historical events. It attempts to combine the insights of psychotherapy with the research methodology of the social sciences to understand the emotional origin of the social and political behavior of groups and nations, past and present...
of Hitler and Nazi Germany, devoted an entire section to Luther's influence on Hitler and Nazi ideology
Ideology
An ideology is a set of ideas that constitutes one's goals, expectations, and actions. An ideology can be thought of as a comprehensive vision, as a way of looking at things , as in common sense and several philosophical tendencies , or a set of ideas proposed by the dominant class of a society to...
. He noted that in his Mein Kampf
Mein Kampf
Mein Kampf is a book written by Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. It combines elements of autobiography with an exposition of Hitler's political ideology. Volume 1 of Mein Kampf was published in 1925 and Volume 2 in 1926...
, Hitler referred to Martin Luther as a great warrior, a true statesmen, and a great reformer, alongside Richard Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
and Frederick the Great. Waite cites Wilhelm Röpke
Wilhelm Röpke
Wilhelm Röpke was Professor of Economics, first in Jena, then in Graz, Marburg, Istanbul and finally in Geneva, and the main spiritual father of the German social market economy, theorising and collaborating to organise the post-World War II economic re-awakening of the then destroyed German...
, writing after Hitler's Holocaust, who concluded that "without any question, Lutheranism influenced the political, spiritual and social history of Germany in a way that, after careful consideration of everything, can be described only as fateful."
Waite also compared his psychoanalysis with Erik Erikson
Erik Erikson
Erik Erikson was a Danish-German-American developmental psychologist and psychoanalyst known for his theory on social development of human beings. He may be most famous for coining the phrase identity crisis. His son, Kai T...
's own psychohistory of Luther, Young Man Luther, and concluded that, had Luther been alive during the 1930s, he most likely would have spoke out against Nazi persecution of Jews, even if this placed his life in danger, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer (a Lutheran pastor) did.
Martin Brecht
Martin Brecht
Martin Brecht Church historian, professor emeritus of the University of Münster, Westphalia, Germany. Until his retirement in 1997 at age 65, he served as head of the Department of Medieval and Modern Church History of the Evangelical Theological Faculty of the university.He is author of a three...
in his extensive three volume biography of Luther writes that "an evaluation of Luther's relationship with the Jews must be made." He observes,
[Luther's] opposition to the Jews, which ultimately was regarded as irreconcilable, was in its nucleus of a religious and theological nature that had to do with belief in Christ and justification, and it was associated with the understanding of the people of God and the interpretation of the Old Testament. Economic and social motives played only a subordinate role. Luther's animosity toward the Jews cannot be interpreted either in a psychological way as a pathological hatred or in a political way as an extension of the anti-Judaism of the territorial princes. But he certainly demanded that measures provided in the laws against heretics be employed to expel the Jews—similarly to their use against the Anabaptists—because, in view of the Jewish polemics against Christ, he saw no possibilities for religious coexistence. In advising the use of force, he advocated means that were essentially incompatible with his faith in Christ. In addition, his criticism of the rabbinic interpretation of the Scriptures in part violated his own exegetical principles. Therefore, his attitude toward the Jews can appropriately be criticized both for his methods and also from the center of his theology.
Brecht ends his evaluation:
Luther, however, was not involved with later racial anti-Semitism. There is a world of difference between his belief in salvation and a racial ideology. Nevertheless, his misguided agitation had the evil result that Luther fatefully became one of the "church fathers" of anti-Semitism and thus provided material for the modern hatred of the Jews, cloaking it with the authority of the Reformer.
In 1988 theologian Stephen Westerholm argued that Luther's attacks on Jews were part and parcel of his attack on the Catholic Church — that Luther was applying a Paul
Paul of Tarsus
Paul the Apostle , also known as Saul of Tarsus, is described in the Christian New Testament as one of the most influential early Christian missionaries, with the writings ascribed to him by the church forming a considerable portion of the New Testament...
ine critique of Phariseism as legalistic and hypocritical to the Catholic Church. Westerholm rejects Luther's interpretation of Judaism and his apparent antisemitism but points out that whatever problems exist in Paul's and Luther's arguments against Jews, what Paul, and later, Luther, were arguing for was and continues to be an important vision of Christianity.
Michael Berenbaum
Michael Berenbaum
Michael Berenbaum is an American scholar, professor, rabbi, writer, and film-maker, who specializes in the study of the memorialization of the Holocaust...
writes that Luther's reliance on the Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
as the sole source of Christian authority fed his later fury toward Jews over their rejection of Jesus as the messiah. For Luther, salvation depended on the belief that Jesus was the son of God, a belief that adherents of Judaism do not share. Early in his life, Luther had argued that the Jews had been prevented from converting to Christianity by the proclamation of what he believed to be an impure gospel by the Catholic Church, and he believed they would respond favorably to the evangelical message if it were presented to them gently. He expressed concern for the poor conditions in which they were forced to live, and insisted that anyone denying that Jesus was born a Jew was committing heresy
Heresy
Heresy is a controversial or novel change to a system of beliefs, especially a religion, that conflicts with established dogma. It is distinct from apostasy, which is the formal denunciation of one's religion, principles or cause, and blasphemy, which is irreverence toward religion...
.
Graham Noble writes that Luther wanted to save Jews, in his own terms, not exterminate them, but beneath his apparent reasonableness toward them, there was a "biting intolerance," which produced "ever more furious demands for their conversion to his own brand of Christianity" (Noble, 1-2). When they failed to convert, he turned on them.
In his commentary on the Magnificat
Magnificat
The Magnificat — also known as the Song of Mary or the Canticle of Mary — is a canticle frequently sung liturgically in Christian church services. It is one of the eight most ancient Christian hymns and perhaps the earliest Marian hymn...
, Luther is critical of the emphasis Judaism places on the Torah
Torah
Torah- A scroll containing the first five books of the BibleThe Torah , is name given by Jews to the first five books of the bible—Genesis , Exodus , Leviticus , Numbers and Deuteronomy Torah- A scroll containing the first five books of the BibleThe Torah , is name given by Jews to the first five...
, the first five books of the Old Testament
Old Testament
The Old Testament, of which Christians hold different views, is a Christian term for the religious writings of ancient Israel held sacred and inspired by Christians which overlaps with the 24-book canon of the Masoretic Text of Judaism...
. He states that they "undertook to keep the law by their own strength, and failed to learn from it their needy and cursed state." Yet, he concludes that God's grace will continue for Jews as Abraham's descendants for all time, since they may always become Christians. "We ought...not to treat the Jews in so unkindly a spirit, for there are future Christians among them."
Paul Johnson writes that "Luther was not content with verbal abuse. Even before he wrote his anti-Semitic pamphlet, he got Jews expelled from Saxony in 1537, and in the 1540s he drove them from many German towns; he tried unsuccessfully to get the elector to expel them from Brandenburg in 1543."
Michael writes that Luther was concerned with the Jewish question all his life, despite devoting only a small proportion of his work to it. As a Christian pastor and theologian Luther was concerned that people have faith in Jesus as the messiah for salvation. In rejecting that view of Jesus, the Jews became the "quintessential other," a model of the opposition to the Christian view of God. In an early work, That Jesus Christ was born a Jew, Luther advocated kindness toward the Jews, but only with the aim of converting them to Christianity: what was called Judenmission. When his efforts at conversion failed, he became increasingly bitter toward them.
Recent Lutheran Church responses
Along with Antisemitism itself Luther's harsh anti-Jewish statements in his On the Jews and Their Lies and other writings have been repudiated by various Lutheran churches throughout the world.Since the 1980s, some Lutheran church
Lutheranism
Lutheranism is a major branch of Western Christianity that identifies with the theology of Martin Luther, a German reformer. Luther's efforts to reform the theology and practice of the church launched the Protestant Reformation...
bodies have formally denounced and dissociated themselves from Luther's writings on the Jews.
In 1982 the Lutheran World Federation issued a consultation stating that "we Christians must purge ourselves of any hatred of the Jews and any sort of teaching of contempt for Judaism."
In 1983 The Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod
Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod
The Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod is a traditional, confessional Lutheran denomination in the United States. With 2.3 million members, it is both the eighth largest Protestant denomination and the second-largest Lutheran body in the U.S. after the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. The Synod...
denounced Luther's "hostile attitude" toward the Jews.
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is a mainline Protestant denomination headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. The ELCA officially came into existence on January 1, 1988, by the merging of three churches. As of December 31, 2009, it had 4,543,037 baptized members, with 2,527,941 of them...
, in an essay on Lutheran-Jewish relations, observed that "Over the years, Luther’s anti-Jewish writings have continued to be reproduced in pamphlets and other works by neo-Nazi and antisemitic groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan, often abbreviated KKK and informally known as the Klan, is the name of three distinct past and present far-right organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically...
."
Writing in Lutheran Quarterly in 1987, Dr. Johannes Wallmann
Johannes Wallmann (theologian)
Johannes Wallmann is a German theologian and emeritus professor of church history at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum.- Leben :...
stated:
The assertion that Luther's expressions of anti-Jewish sentiment have been of major and persistent influence in the centuries after the Reformation, and that there exists a continuity between Protestant anti-Judaism and modern racially oriented anti-Semitism, is at present wide-spread in the literature; since the Second World War it has understandably become the prevailing opinion.
In 1994 the Church Council of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America publicly rejected Luther's antisemitic writings, saying "We who bear his name and heritage must acknowledge with pain the anti-Judaic diatribes contained in Luther's later writings. We reject this violent invective as did many of his companions in the sixteenth century, and we are moved to deep and abiding sorrow at its tragic effects on later generations of Jews."
In 1995 the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada
Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada is Canada's largest Lutheran denomination, with 152,788 baptized members in 624 congregations, with the second largest, the Lutheran Church–Canada, having 72,116 baptized members...
made similar statements, as did the Austrian Evangelical Church in 1998. In the same year, the Land Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria
Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria is a Protestant church in the German state of Bavaria. The seat of the church is in Munich....
, on the 60th anniversary of Kristallnacht
Kristallnacht
Kristallnacht, also referred to as the Night of Broken Glass, and also Reichskristallnacht, Pogromnacht, and Novemberpogrome, was a pogrom or series of attacks against Jews throughout Nazi Germany and parts of Austria on 9–10 November 1938.Jewish homes were ransacked, as were shops, towns and...
, issued a declaration saying: "It is imperative for the Lutheran Church, which knows itself to be indebted to the work and tradition of Martin Luther, to take seriously also his anti-Jewish utterances, to acknowledge their theological function, and to reflect on their consequences. It has to distance itself from every [expression of] anti-Judaism in Lutheran theology."
A strong Position Statement was issued by The Lutheran Evangelical Protestant Church
The Lutheran Evangelical Protestant Church
The Lutheran Evangelical Protestant Church is a mainline Protestant denomination also known by its non profit corporation name the Evangelical Protestant Church .The earliest Lutherans in America came from Dutch, Swedish and German stock...
(LEPC) (GCEPC) saying, "The Jewish people are God's chosen people. Believers should bless them as scripture says that God will bless those who bless Israel and curse those who curse Israel. The LEPC/EPC/GCEPC recant and renounce the works and words of Martin Luther concerning the Jewish people. Prayer is offered for the healing of the Jewish people, their peace and their prosperity. Prayer is offered for the peace of Jerusalem. With deep sorrow and regret repentance is offered to the Jewish People for the harm that Martin Luther caused and any contribution to their harm. Forgiveness is requested of the Jewish People for these actions. The Gospel is to the Jew first and then the Gentile. Gentiles (believers in Christ other than Jews) have been grafted into the vine. In Christ there is neither Jew nor Gentile but the Lord's desire is that there be one new man from the two for Christ broke down the wall of separation with His own body (Ephesians 2:14-15). The LEPC/EPC/GCEPC blesses Israel and the Jewish people."
The European Lutheran Commission on the Church and the Jewish People (Lutherische Europäische Kommission Kirche und Judentum, LEKKJ), an umbrella organization
Umbrella organization
An umbrella organization is an association of institutions, who work together formally to coordinate activities or pool resources. In business, political, or other environments, one group, the umbrella organization, provides resources and often an identity to the smaller organizations...
representing twenty-five Lutheran church bodies in Europe, issued on May 12, 2003 A Response to Dabru Emet:
- In its Driebergen Declaration (1991), the European Lutheran Commission on the Church and the Jewish People...rejected the traditional Christian “teaching of contempt” towards Jews and Judaism, and in particular, the anti-Jewish writings of Martin LutherMartin LutherMartin Luther was a German priest, professor of theology and iconic figure of the Protestant Reformation. He strongly disputed the claim that freedom from God's punishment for sin could be purchased with money. He confronted indulgence salesman Johann Tetzel with his Ninety-Five Theses in 1517...
, and it called for the reformation of church practice in the light of these insights. Against this background, LEKKJ welcomes the issuance of Dabru Emet: A Jewish Statement on Christians and ChristianityDabru EmetThe Dabru Emet is a document concerning the relationship between Christianity and Judaism. It was signed by over 220 rabbis and intellectuals from all branches of Judaism, as individuals and not as representing any organisation or stream of Judaism.The Dabru Emet was first published on September...
. We see in this statement a confirmation of our own work of these past years....We know that we must reexamine themes in Lutheran theology that in the past have repeatedly given rise to enmity towards Jews....Fully aware that Dabru Emet is in the first instance an intra-Jewish invitation to conversation, we see in this statement also an aid to us in expressing and living out our faith in such a way that we do not denigrate Jews, but rather respect them in their otherness, and are enabled to give an account of our own identity more clearly as we scrutinize it in the light of how others see us.
On January 6, 2004, the Consultative Panel on Lutheran-Jewish Relations of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is a mainline Protestant denomination headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. The ELCA officially came into existence on January 1, 1988, by the merging of three churches. As of December 31, 2009, it had 4,543,037 baptized members, with 2,527,941 of them...
issued a statement urging any Lutheran church presenting a Passion Play to adhere to their Guidelines for Lutheran-Jewish Relations, stating that "the New Testament . . . must not be used as justification for hostility towards present-day Jews," and that "blame for the death of Jesus should not be attributed to Judaism or the Jewish people."
External links
- Antisemitism - Reformation from the Florida Holocaust Museum.
- Luther and the Jews (PDF) by Siemon-Netto, Uwe. Lutheran Witness 123 (2004) No. 4:16-19.
- Martin Luther article in Jewish EncyclopediaJewish EncyclopediaThe Jewish Encyclopedia is an encyclopedia originally published in New York between 1901 and 1906 by Funk and Wagnalls. It contained over 15,000 articles in 12 volumes on the history and then-current state of Judaism and the Jews as of 1901...
(1906 ed.) by Gotthard DeutschGotthard DeutschGotthard Deutsch , also spelled Gottard Deutsch, was a scholar of Jewish history.- Education :... - Martin Luther’s Attitude Toward The Jews by James Swan
- Martin Luther And The Jews by Mark Albrecht
- Luther's Letter to Bernhard, a Converted Jew (1523)
- The Jews and Their Lies (abridged English version published by CPA Book Publisher, Boring, Oregon at archive.org)