Martin Niemöller
Encyclopedia
Friedrich Gustav Emil Martin Niemöller (14 January 1892 – 6 March 1984) was a German
anti-Nazi
theologian and Lutheran
pastor. He is best known as the author of the poem "First they came…".
Although he was a national conservative
and initially a supporter of Adolf Hitler
, he became one of the founders of the Confessional Church, which opposed the nazification of German Protestant churches. He vehemently opposed the Nazis' Aryan Paragraph
, but made remarks about Jews that some scholars have called antisemitic
. For his opposition to the Nazis' state control of the churches, Niemöller was imprisoned in Sachsenhausen
and Dachau concentration camps from 1937 to 1945. He narrowly escaped execution and survived imprisonment. After his imprisonment, he expressed his deep regret about not having done enough to help the victims of the Nazis. He turned away from his earlier nationalistic beliefs and was one of the initiators of the Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt
. From the 1950s on, he was a vocal pacifist
and anti-war
activist, and vice-chair of War Resisters' International
from 1966 to 1972. He met with Ho Chi Minh
during the Vietnam War
and was a committed campaigner for nuclear disarmament
.
, North Rhine-Westphalia
, on 14 January 1892 to the Lutheran
pastor Heinrich Niemöller and his wife Pauline née Müller, and grew up in a very conservative home. In 1900 the family moved to Elberfeld
where he finished school, taking his abitur
exam in 1910.
He began a career as an officer
of the Imperial Navy
of the German Empire
, and in 1915 was assigned to U-boat
s. His first ship was the SMS Thüringen
. In October of that year he joined the submarine mother ship SMS Vulkan
, followed by training on the submarine SM U-3
. In February 1916 he became second officer on SM U-73
, which was assigned to the Mediterranean in April 1916. There the submarine fought on the Saloniki front, patrolled in the Strait of Otranto
and from December 1916 onward planted mines in front of Port Said
and was involved in commerce raiding
. Flying a French flag as a ruse of war
, the SM U-73 sailed past British warships and torpedoed two Allied troopships and a British man-of-war.
In January 1917 Niemöller was coxswain
of SM U-39. Later he returned to Kiel
, and in August 1917 he became first officer on SM U-151, which attacked numerous ships at Gibraltar
, in the Bay of Biscay
, and other places. During this time the SM U-151 crew set a record by sinking 55,000 tons of Allied ships in 115 days at sea. In May 1918 he became commander of the SM UC-67
. Under his command, SM UC-67 achieved a temporary closing of the French port of Marseilles by sinking ships in the area, by torpedoes, and by the laying of mines.
For his achievements, Niemöller was awarded the Iron Cross
First Class. When the war drew to a close, he decided to become a preacher, a story he later recounted in his book Vom U-Boot zur Kanzel (From U-boat to Pulpit). At war's end, Niemöller resigned his commission, as he rejected the new democratic government of the German Empire that formed after the resignation of the German Emperor William II
.
but gave up becoming a farmer as he couldn't afford the money for his own farm. He subsequently pursued his earlier idea of becoming a Lutheran pastor, and studied Protestant theology
at the Westphalian William's-University in Münster
from 1919 to 1923. His motivation was his ambition to give a disordered society meaning and order through the Gospel
and church bodies.
During the Ruhraufstand in 1920 he was battalion
commander of the "III. Bataillon der Akademischen Wehr Münster" belonging to the paramilitary, with commandant was Tristan Bouan, a man of great courage and open-minded. Freikorps
.
Niemöller was ordained on June 29, 1924,. Subsequently, the united
Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union appointed him curate of Münster's Church of the Redeemer. After serving as the superintendent of the Inner Mission
in the old-Prussian ecclesiastical province of Westphalia, Niemöller in 1931 became pastor of the Jesus Christus Kirche (comprising a congregation together with St. Anne's Church) in Dahlem
, an affluent suburb of Berlin
.
. He even welcomed Hitler's accession to power in 1933, believing it would bring a national revival. However, he decidedly opposed the Nazis' Aryan Paragraph
. In 1936, he signed the petition of a group of Protestant churchmen that sharply criticized Nazi policies and declared the Aryan Paragraph incompatible with the Christian virtue of charity
.
The Nazi regime reacted with mass arrests and charges against almost 800 pastors and ecclesiastical lawyers. In 1933, Niemöller founded the Pfarrernotbund
, an organization of pastors to "combat rising discrimination against Christians of Jewish background." By the autumn of 1934, Niemöller joined other Lutheran and Protestant churchmen such as Karl Barth
and Dietrich Bonhoeffer
in founding the Confessional Church, a Protestant group that opposed the Nazification of the German Protestant churches
. The author and Nobel Prize
laureate Thomas Mann
published Niemöller's sermons in the United States and praised his bravery.
However, Niemöller only gradually abandoned his national conservative views and even made pejorative remarks about Jews of faith while protecting—in his own church—baptised Christians, persecuted as Jews by the Nazis, due to their or their forefathers' Jewish descent. In one sermon in 1935, he remarked: "What is the reason for [their] obvious punishment, which has lasted for thousands of years? Dear brethren, the reason is easily given: the Jews brought the Christ of God to the cross!"
This has led to controversy about his attitude toward the Jews and to accusations of anti-Judaism
. Holocaust scholar Robert Michael
notes that Niemöller's statements were a result of traditional antisemitism and that Niemöller agreed with the Nazis' position on the "Jewish question" at that time. Werner Cohn
, an American sociologist, who lived as a Jew in Nazi Germany
, also reports on antisemitic statements by Niemöller.
Thus, Niemöller's ambivalent and often contradictory behaviour during the Nazi period makes him one of the most controversial enemies of the Nazis. Even his motives are disputed. The historian Raimund Lammersdorf considers Niemöller "an opportunist who had no quarrel with Hitler politically and only began to oppose the Nazis when Hitler threatened to attack the churches." Others have disputed this view and emphasize the risks that Niemöller took while opposing the Nazis. Nonetheless, Niemöller's behaviour contrasts sharply with the much more broad-minded attitudes of other Confessing Church
activists such as Hermann Maas
. The pastor and liberal politician Maas — unlike Niemöller — belonged to those who unequivocally opposed every form of antisemitism and was later accorded the title Righteous Among the Nations
by Yad Vashem
.
on 2 March 1938 to be tried for activities against the State. He was fined 2,000 Reichmarks and received a prison term of seven months. As his detention period exceeded the jail term, he was released by the Court after the trial. However, immediately after leaving the Court, he was rearrested by Himmler
's Gestapo
—presumably because Rudolf Hess
found the sentence too lenient and decided to take "merciless action" against him. He was interned in Sachsenhausen
and Dachau concentration camps from 1938 to 1945.
After his former cell-mate Leo Stein was released from Sachsenhausen to go to America, he wrote an article about Niemöller for The National Jewish Monthly in 1941. Stein reports that having asked Niemöller why he ever supported the Nazi Party, Niemöller replied:
together with about 140 other prominent inmates, where the SS left the prisoners behind. He was liberated by the Fifth U.S. Army on May 5, 1945.
According to Lammersdorf, there had been some attempts to whitewash his past, which were, however, soon followed by harsh criticism because of his role as a NSDAP supporter and his attitude toward the Jews. Niemöller himself never denied his own guilt in the time of the Nazi regime. In 1959, he was asked about his former attitude toward the Jews by Alfred Wiener
, a Jewish researcher into racism and war crimes committed by the Nazi regime. In a letter to Wiener, Niemöller stated that his eight-year imprisonment by the Nazis became the turning point in his life, after which he viewed things differently.
Niemöller was president of the Protestant Church in Hesse and Nassau from 1947 to 1961. He was one of the initiators of the Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt
, signed by leading figures in the German Protestant churches
. The document acknowledged that the churches had not done enough to resist the Nazis.
Under the impact of a meeting with Otto Hahn
(who has been called the "father of nuclear chemistry
") in July 1954, Niemöller became an ardent pacifist
and campaigner for nuclear disarmament
. He was soon a leading figure in the post-war German peace movement
and was even brought to court in 1959 because he had spoken about the military in a very unflattering way. His visit to North Vietnam
's communist ruler Ho Chi Minh
at the height of the Vietnam War
caused an uproar. Niemöller also took active part in protests against the Vietnam War and the NATO Double-Track Decision
.
In 1961, he became president of the World Council of Churches
. He earned the Lenin Peace Prize
in 1966.
He died at Wiesbaden
in 1984.
Poet Bill Copeland
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
anti-Nazi
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
theologian and Lutheran
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...
pastor. He is best known as the author of the poem "First they came…".
Although he was a national conservative
National conservatism
National conservatism is a political term used primarily in Europe to describe a variant of conservatism which concentrates more on national interests than standard conservatism as well as upholding cultural and ethnic identity, while not being outspokenly nationalist or supporting a far-right...
and initially a supporter of Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
, he became one of the founders of the Confessional Church, which opposed the nazification of German Protestant churches. He vehemently opposed the Nazis' Aryan Paragraph
Aryan paragraph
An Aryan paragraph is a clause in the statutes of an organization, corporation, or real estate deed that reserves membership and/or right of residence solely for members of the Aryan race and excludes from such rights any non-Aryans, particularly Jews or those of Jewish descent, as well as to those...
, but made remarks about Jews that some scholars have called antisemitic
Anti-Semitism
Antisemitism is suspicion of, hatred toward, or discrimination against Jews for reasons connected to their Jewish heritage. According to a 2005 U.S...
. For his opposition to the Nazis' state control of the churches, Niemöller was imprisoned in Sachsenhausen
Sachsenhausen concentration camp
Sachsenhausen or Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg was a Nazi concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany, used primarily for political prisoners from 1936 to the end of the Third Reich in May, 1945. After World War II, when Oranienburg was in the Soviet Occupation Zone, the structure was used as an NKVD...
and Dachau concentration camps from 1937 to 1945. He narrowly escaped execution and survived imprisonment. After his imprisonment, he expressed his deep regret about not having done enough to help the victims of the Nazis. He turned away from his earlier nationalistic beliefs and was one of the initiators of the Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt
Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt
The Stuttgarter Schuldbekenntnis, known in English as the Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt, was a declaration issued on October 19, 1945 by the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany , in which it confessed guilt for its inadequacies in opposition to the Nazis and the Third Reich.-Text:The...
. From the 1950s on, he was a vocal pacifist
Pacifism
Pacifism is the opposition to war and violence. The term "pacifism" was coined by the French peace campaignerÉmile Arnaud and adopted by other peace activists at the tenth Universal Peace Congress inGlasgow in 1901.- Definition :...
and anti-war
Anti-war
An anti-war movement is a social movement, usually in opposition to a particular nation's decision to start or carry on an armed conflict, unconditional of a maybe-existing just cause. The term can also refer to pacifism, which is the opposition to all use of military force during conflicts. Many...
activist, and vice-chair of War Resisters' International
War Resisters' International
War Resisters' International is an international anti-war organization with members and affiliates in over thirty countries. Its headquarters are in London, UK.-History:...
from 1966 to 1972. He met with Ho Chi Minh
Ho Chi Minh
Hồ Chí Minh , born Nguyễn Sinh Cung and also known as Nguyễn Ái Quốc, was a Vietnamese Marxist-Leninist revolutionary leader who was prime minister and president of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam...
during the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
and was a committed campaigner for nuclear disarmament
Nuclear disarmament
Nuclear disarmament refers to both the act of reducing or eliminating nuclear weapons and to the end state of a nuclear-free world, in which nuclear weapons are completely eliminated....
.
Youth and World War I participation
Martin Niemöller was born in LippstadtLippstadt
Lippstadt is a town in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is the largest town within the district of Soest.-Geography:Lippstadt is situated in the Lippe valley, roughly 70 kilometres east of Dortmund and roughly 30 kilometres west of Paderborn...
, North Rhine-Westphalia
North Rhine-Westphalia
North Rhine-Westphalia is the most populous state of Germany, with four of the country's ten largest cities. The state was formed in 1946 as a merger of the northern Rhineland and Westphalia, both formerly part of Prussia. Its capital is Düsseldorf. The state is currently run by a coalition of the...
, on 14 January 1892 to the Lutheran
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...
pastor Heinrich Niemöller and his wife Pauline née Müller, and grew up in a very conservative home. In 1900 the family moved to Elberfeld
Elberfeld
Elberfeld is a municipal subdivision of the German city of Wuppertal; it was an independent town until 1929.-History:The first official mentioning of the geographic area on the banks of today's Wupper River as "elverfelde" was in a document of 1161...
where he finished school, taking his abitur
Abitur
Abitur is a designation used in Germany, Finland and Estonia for final exams that pupils take at the end of their secondary education, usually after 12 or 13 years of schooling, see also for Germany Abitur after twelve years.The Zeugnis der Allgemeinen Hochschulreife, often referred to as...
exam in 1910.
He began a career as an officer
Officer (armed forces)
An officer is a member of an armed force or uniformed service who holds a position of authority. Commissioned officers derive authority directly from a sovereign power and, as such, hold a commission charging them with the duties and responsibilities of a specific office or position...
of the Imperial Navy
Kaiserliche Marine
The Imperial German Navy was the German Navy created at the time of the formation of the German Empire. It existed between 1871 and 1919, growing out of the small Prussian Navy and Norddeutsche Bundesmarine, which primarily had the mission of coastal defense. Kaiser Wilhelm II greatly expanded...
of the German Empire
German Empire
The German Empire refers to Germany during the "Second Reich" period from the unification of Germany and proclamation of Wilhelm I as German Emperor on 18 January 1871, to 1918, when it became a federal republic after defeat in World War I and the abdication of the Emperor, Wilhelm II.The German...
, and in 1915 was assigned to U-boat
U-boat
U-boat is the anglicized version of the German word U-Boot , itself an abbreviation of Unterseeboot , and refers to military submarines operated by Germany, particularly in World War I and World War II...
s. His first ship was the SMS Thüringen
SMS Thüringen
SMS Thüringen "SMS" stands for "Seiner Majestät Schiff" was the third vessel of the of battleships of the German Imperial Navy. Thüringens keel was laid in November 1908 at the AG Weser dockyard in Bremen. She was launched on 27 November 1909 and was commissioned into the fleet on 1 July 1911...
. In October of that year he joined the submarine mother ship SMS Vulkan
SMS Vulkan
SMS Vulkan was a U-boat salvage tug in the Kaiserliche Marine laid down in 1907 and commissioned 1908. The ship displaced 1595 tons and had a top speed of 12 knots.The famous U-boat ace Max Valentiner served as salvage officer on Vulkan in early 1911...
, followed by training on the submarine SM U-3
SM U-3 (Germany)
SM U-3 Is the third German U-Boat created by the German Empire in their history, and is the first of two submarines in its class. The boat was built by Kaiserliche Werft Danzig and was launched on March 27, 1909. U-3 began its career in World War I as a training boat from August 1, 1914 to November...
. In February 1916 he became second officer on SM U-73
SM U-73
SM U-73 was one of 329 submarines serving in the Imperial German Navy in World War I. She engaged in the commerce war as part of the First Battle of the Atlantic....
, which was assigned to the Mediterranean in April 1916. There the submarine fought on the Saloniki front, patrolled in the Strait of Otranto
Strait of Otranto
The Strait of Otranto connects the Adriatic Sea with the Ionian Sea and separates Italy from Albania. Its width at Punta Palascìa, east of Salento is less than . The strait is named after the Italian city of Otranto.- History :...
and from December 1916 onward planted mines in front of Port Said
Port Said
Port Said is a city that lies in north east Egypt extending about 30 km along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, north of the Suez Canal, with an approximate population of 603,787...
and was involved in commerce raiding
Commerce raiding
Commerce raiding or guerre de course is a form of naval warfare used to destroy or disrupt the logistics of an enemy on the open sea by attacking its merchant shipping, rather than engaging the combatants themselves or enforcing a blockade against them.Commerce raiding was heavily criticised by...
. Flying a French flag as a ruse of war
Ruse of war
A ruse of war, or ruse de guerre, is an action taken by a belligerent in warfare to fool the enemy in order to gain intelligence or a military advantage against an enemy.-Modern history:* American Civil War General George Meade's General Order No...
, the SM U-73 sailed past British warships and torpedoed two Allied troopships and a British man-of-war.
In January 1917 Niemöller was coxswain
Coxswain
The coxswain is the person in charge of a boat, particularly its navigation and steering. The etymology of the word gives us a literal meaning of "boat servant" since it comes from cox, a coxboat or other small vessel kept aboard a ship, and swain, which can be rendered as boy, in authority. ...
of SM U-39. Later he returned to Kiel
Kiel
Kiel is the capital and most populous city in the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein, with a population of 238,049 .Kiel is approximately north of Hamburg. Due to its geographic location in the north of Germany, the southeast of the Jutland peninsula, and the southwestern shore of the...
, and in August 1917 he became first officer on SM U-151, which attacked numerous ships at Gibraltar
Gibraltar
Gibraltar is a British overseas territory located on the southern end of the Iberian Peninsula at the entrance of the Mediterranean. A peninsula with an area of , it has a northern border with Andalusia, Spain. The Rock of Gibraltar is the major landmark of the region...
, in the Bay of Biscay
Bay of Biscay
The Bay of Biscay is a gulf of the northeast Atlantic Ocean located south of the Celtic Sea. It lies along the western coast of France from Brest south to the Spanish border, and the northern coast of Spain west to Cape Ortegal, and is named in English after the province of Biscay, in the Spanish...
, and other places. During this time the SM U-151 crew set a record by sinking 55,000 tons of Allied ships in 115 days at sea. In May 1918 he became commander of the SM UC-67
SM UC-67
SM UC-67 was a German Type UC II minelaying submarine or U-boat in the German Imperial Navy during World War I. The U-boat was ordered on 12 January 1916 and was launched on 6 August 1916...
. Under his command, SM UC-67 achieved a temporary closing of the French port of Marseilles by sinking ships in the area, by torpedoes, and by the laying of mines.
For his achievements, Niemöller was awarded the Iron Cross
Iron Cross
The Iron Cross is a cross symbol typically in black with a white or silver outline that originated after 1219 when the Kingdom of Jerusalem granted the Teutonic Order the right to combine the Teutonic Black Cross placed above a silver Cross of Jerusalem....
First Class. When the war drew to a close, he decided to become a preacher, a story he later recounted in his book Vom U-Boot zur Kanzel (From U-boat to Pulpit). At war's end, Niemöller resigned his commission, as he rejected the new democratic government of the German Empire that formed after the resignation of the German Emperor William II
William II, German Emperor
Wilhelm II was the last German Emperor and King of Prussia, ruling the German Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia from 15 June 1888 to 9 November 1918. He was a grandson of the British Queen Victoria and related to many monarchs and princes of Europe...
.
Weimar Republic and education as pastor
On July 20, 1919 he married Else née Bremer (born July 20, 1890 – died August 7, 1961). The same year he began working at a farm in Wersen near OsnabrückOsnabrück
Osnabrück is a city in Lower Saxony, Germany, some 80 km NNE of Dortmund, 45 km NE of Münster, and some 100 km due west of Hanover. It lies in a valley penned between the Wiehen Hills and the northern tip of the Teutoburg Forest...
but gave up becoming a farmer as he couldn't afford the money for his own farm. He subsequently pursued his earlier idea of becoming a Lutheran pastor, and studied Protestant theology
Theology
Theology is the systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university or school of divinity or seminary.-Definition:Augustine of Hippo...
at the Westphalian William's-University in Münster
Münster
Münster is an independent city in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is located in the northern part of the state and is considered to be the cultural centre of the Westphalia region. It is also capital of the local government region Münsterland...
from 1919 to 1923. His motivation was his ambition to give a disordered society meaning and order through the Gospel
Gospel
A gospel is an account, often written, that describes the life of Jesus of Nazareth. In a more general sense the term "gospel" may refer to the good news message of the New Testament. It is primarily used in reference to the four canonical gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John...
and church bodies.
During the Ruhraufstand in 1920 he was battalion
Battalion
A battalion is a military unit of around 300–1,200 soldiers usually consisting of between two and seven companies and typically commanded by either a Lieutenant Colonel or a Colonel...
commander of the "III. Bataillon der Akademischen Wehr Münster" belonging to the paramilitary, with commandant was Tristan Bouan, a man of great courage and open-minded. Freikorps
Freikorps
Freikorps are German volunteer military or paramilitary units. The term was originally applied to voluntary armies formed in German lands from the middle of the 18th century onwards. Between World War I and World War II the term was also used for the paramilitary organizations that arose during...
.
Niemöller was ordained on June 29, 1924,. Subsequently, the united
United and uniting churches
United and uniting churches are churches formed from the merger or other form of union of two or more different Protestant denominations.Perhaps the oldest example of a united church is found in Germany, where the Evangelical Church in Germany is a federation of Lutheran, United and Reformed...
Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union appointed him curate of Münster's Church of the Redeemer. After serving as the superintendent of the Inner Mission
Inner mission
The Inner Mission was a movement of German evangelists, set up by Johann Hinrich Wichern in Wittenberg in 1848 based on a model of Theodor Fliedner...
in the old-Prussian ecclesiastical province of Westphalia, Niemöller in 1931 became pastor of the Jesus Christus Kirche (comprising a congregation together with St. Anne's Church) in Dahlem
Dahlem (Berlin)
Dahlem is a locality of the Steglitz-Zehlendorf borough in southwestern Berlin. Until Berlin's 2001 administrative reform it was a part of the former borough of Zehlendorf. Dahlem is one of the most affluent parts of the city and home to the main campus of the Free University of Berlin with the...
, an affluent suburb of 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...
.
Role in Nazi Germany
Like most Protestant pastors, Niemöller was a national conservative, and openly supported the right-wing opponents of the Weimar RepublicWeimar Republic
The Weimar Republic is the name given by historians to the parliamentary republic established in 1919 in Germany to replace the imperial form of government...
. He even welcomed Hitler's accession to power in 1933, believing it would bring a national revival. However, he decidedly opposed the Nazis' Aryan Paragraph
Aryan paragraph
An Aryan paragraph is a clause in the statutes of an organization, corporation, or real estate deed that reserves membership and/or right of residence solely for members of the Aryan race and excludes from such rights any non-Aryans, particularly Jews or those of Jewish descent, as well as to those...
. In 1936, he signed the petition of a group of Protestant churchmen that sharply criticized Nazi policies and declared the Aryan Paragraph incompatible with the Christian virtue of charity
Charity (virtue)
In Christian theology charity, or love , means an unlimited loving-kindness toward all others.The term should not be confused with the more restricted modern use of the word charity to mean benevolent giving.- Caritas: altruistic love :...
.
The Nazi regime reacted with mass arrests and charges against almost 800 pastors and ecclesiastical lawyers. In 1933, Niemöller founded the Pfarrernotbund
Pfarrernotbund
The Pfarrernotbund was an organisation founded on 11 September 1933 to unite German evangelical theologians, pastors and church office-holders against the introduction of the Aryan paragraph into the 28 Protestant regional church bodies and the Deutsche Evangelische Kirche and against the...
, an organization of pastors to "combat rising discrimination against Christians of Jewish background." By the autumn of 1934, Niemöller joined other Lutheran and Protestant churchmen such as Karl Barth
Karl Barth
Karl Barth was a Swiss Reformed theologian whom critics hold to be among the most important Christian thinkers of the 20th century; Pope Pius XII described him as the most important theologian since Thomas Aquinas...
and Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German Lutheran pastor, theologian and martyr. He was a participant in the German resistance movement against Nazism and a founding member of the Confessing Church. He was involved in plans by members of the Abwehr to assassinate Adolf Hitler...
in founding the Confessional Church, a Protestant group that opposed the Nazification of the German Protestant churches
Landeskirche
In Germany and Switzerland, a Landeskirche is the church of a region. They originated as the national churches of the independent states, States of Germany or Cantons of Switzerland , that later unified to form modern Germany or modern Switzerland , respectively.-Origins in the Holy Roman...
. The author and Nobel Prize
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...
laureate Thomas Mann
Thomas Mann
Thomas Mann was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate, known for his series of highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas, noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual...
published Niemöller's sermons in the United States and praised his bravery.
However, Niemöller only gradually abandoned his national conservative views and even made pejorative remarks about Jews of faith while protecting—in his own church—baptised Christians, persecuted as Jews by the Nazis, due to their or their forefathers' Jewish descent. In one sermon in 1935, he remarked: "What is the reason for [their] obvious punishment, which has lasted for thousands of years? Dear brethren, the reason is easily given: the Jews brought the Christ of God to the cross!"
This has led to controversy about his attitude toward the Jews and to accusations of anti-Judaism
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...
. Holocaust scholar Robert Michael
Robert Michael
Robert Michael or similar names can refer to:* Robert Michels , German sociologist* Robert Michel , Austrian writer* Robert H. Michel Robert Michael or similar names can refer to:* Robert Michels (1876–1936), German sociologist* Robert Michel (writer) (1876–1957), Austrian writer*...
notes that Niemöller's statements were a result of traditional antisemitism and that Niemöller agreed with the Nazis' position on the "Jewish question" at that time. Werner Cohn
Werner Cohn
Werner Cohn is a sociologist who has written on the sociology of Jews and of Gypsies, and political sociology. He is a Professor Emeritus at the University of British Columbia.He is the author of The Gypsies .-External links:****...
, an American sociologist, who lived as a Jew in Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
, also reports on antisemitic statements by Niemöller.
Thus, Niemöller's ambivalent and often contradictory behaviour during the Nazi period makes him one of the most controversial enemies of the Nazis. Even his motives are disputed. The historian Raimund Lammersdorf considers Niemöller "an opportunist who had no quarrel with Hitler politically and only began to oppose the Nazis when Hitler threatened to attack the churches." Others have disputed this view and emphasize the risks that Niemöller took while opposing the Nazis. Nonetheless, Niemöller's behaviour contrasts sharply with the much more broad-minded attitudes of other Confessing Church
Confessing Church
The Confessing Church was a Protestant schismatic church in Nazi Germany that arose in opposition to government-sponsored efforts to nazify the German Protestant church.-Demographics:...
activists such as Hermann Maas
Hermann Maas
Hermann Maas was a Protestant minister, a doctor of theology and named one of the Righteous Among the Nations, a title given by the Israeli organization for study and remembrance of the Holocaust - Yad Vashem, for people who helped save the lives of Jews during the Holocaust without seeking to...
. The pastor and liberal politician Maas — unlike Niemöller — belonged to those who unequivocally opposed every form of antisemitism and was later accorded the title Righteous Among the Nations
Righteous Among the Nations
Righteous among the Nations of the world's nations"), also translated as Righteous Gentiles is an honorific used by the State of Israel to describe non-Jews who risked their lives during the Holocaust to save Jews from extermination by the Nazis....
by Yad Vashem
Yad Vashem
Yad Vashem is Israel's official memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, established in 1953 through the Yad Vashem Law passed by the Knesset, Israel's parliament....
.
Arrest and imprisonment
Arrested on 1 July 1937, Niemöller was brought to a "Special Court"Sondergerichte
A Sondergericht was a Nazi "special court." After taking power in 1933, the Nazis quickly moved to remove internal opposition to the Nazi regime in Germany. The legal system became one of many tools for this aim and the Nazis gradually supplanted the normal justice system with political courts...
on 2 March 1938 to be tried for activities against the State. He was fined 2,000 Reichmarks and received a prison term of seven months. As his detention period exceeded the jail term, he was released by the Court after the trial. However, immediately after leaving the Court, he was rearrested by 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...
's Gestapo
Gestapo
The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...
—presumably because Rudolf Hess
Rudolf Hess
Rudolf Walter Richard Hess was a prominent Nazi politician who was Adolf Hitler's deputy in the Nazi Party during the 1930s and early 1940s...
found the sentence too lenient and decided to take "merciless action" against him. He was interned in Sachsenhausen
Sachsenhausen concentration camp
Sachsenhausen or Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg was a Nazi concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany, used primarily for political prisoners from 1936 to the end of the Third Reich in May, 1945. After World War II, when Oranienburg was in the Soviet Occupation Zone, the structure was used as an NKVD...
and Dachau concentration camps from 1938 to 1945.
After his former cell-mate Leo Stein was released from Sachsenhausen to go to America, he wrote an article about Niemöller for The National Jewish Monthly in 1941. Stein reports that having asked Niemöller why he ever supported the Nazi Party, Niemöller replied:
Release and postwar activities
In late April 1945 Niemöller was transferred to TyrolTransport of concentration camp inmates to Tyrol
The Transport of Inmates of German Concentration Camps to Tyrol happened in late April 1945 and led to the only time such prisoners were liberated by German troops.- Transfer and liberation:...
together with about 140 other prominent inmates, where the SS left the prisoners behind. He was liberated by the Fifth U.S. Army on May 5, 1945.
According to Lammersdorf, there had been some attempts to whitewash his past, which were, however, soon followed by harsh criticism because of his role as a NSDAP supporter and his attitude toward the Jews. Niemöller himself never denied his own guilt in the time of the Nazi regime. In 1959, he was asked about his former attitude toward the Jews by Alfred Wiener
Alfred Wiener
Alfred Wiener was a German Jew, who dedicated much of his life to documenting antisemitism and racism in Germany and Europe, and uncovering crimes of Germany's Nazi government...
, a Jewish researcher into racism and war crimes committed by the Nazi regime. In a letter to Wiener, Niemöller stated that his eight-year imprisonment by the Nazis became the turning point in his life, after which he viewed things differently.
Niemöller was president of the Protestant Church in Hesse and Nassau from 1947 to 1961. He was one of the initiators of the Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt
Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt
The Stuttgarter Schuldbekenntnis, known in English as the Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt, was a declaration issued on October 19, 1945 by the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany , in which it confessed guilt for its inadequacies in opposition to the Nazis and the Third Reich.-Text:The...
, signed by leading figures in the German Protestant churches
Landeskirche
In Germany and Switzerland, a Landeskirche is the church of a region. They originated as the national churches of the independent states, States of Germany or Cantons of Switzerland , that later unified to form modern Germany or modern Switzerland , respectively.-Origins in the Holy Roman...
. The document acknowledged that the churches had not done enough to resist the Nazis.
Under the impact of a meeting with Otto Hahn
Otto Hahn
Otto Hahn FRS was a German chemist and Nobel laureate, a pioneer in the fields of radioactivity and radiochemistry. He is regarded as "the father of nuclear chemistry". Hahn was a courageous opposer of Jewish persecution by the Nazis and after World War II he became a passionate campaigner...
(who has been called the "father of nuclear chemistry
Nuclear chemistry
Nuclear chemistry is the subfield of chemistry dealing with radioactivity, nuclear processes and nuclear properties.It is the chemistry of radioactive elements such as the actinides, radium and radon together with the chemistry associated with equipment which are designed to perform nuclear...
") in July 1954, Niemöller became an ardent pacifist
Pacifism
Pacifism is the opposition to war and violence. The term "pacifism" was coined by the French peace campaignerÉmile Arnaud and adopted by other peace activists at the tenth Universal Peace Congress inGlasgow in 1901.- Definition :...
and campaigner for nuclear disarmament
Nuclear disarmament
Nuclear disarmament refers to both the act of reducing or eliminating nuclear weapons and to the end state of a nuclear-free world, in which nuclear weapons are completely eliminated....
. He was soon a leading figure in the post-war German peace movement
Peace movement
A peace movement is a social movement that seeks to achieve ideals such as the ending of a particular war , minimize inter-human violence in a particular place or type of situation, often linked to the goal of achieving world peace...
and was even brought to court in 1959 because he had spoken about the military in a very unflattering way. His visit to North Vietnam
North Vietnam
The Democratic Republic of Vietnam , was a communist state that ruled the northern half of Vietnam from 1954 until 1976 following the Geneva Conference and laid claim to all of Vietnam from 1945 to 1954 during the First Indochina War, during which they controlled pockets of territory throughout...
's communist ruler Ho Chi Minh
Ho Chi Minh
Hồ Chí Minh , born Nguyễn Sinh Cung and also known as Nguyễn Ái Quốc, was a Vietnamese Marxist-Leninist revolutionary leader who was prime minister and president of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam...
at the height of the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
caused an uproar. Niemöller also took active part in protests against the Vietnam War and the NATO Double-Track Decision
NATO Double-Track Decision
The NATO Double-Track Decision is the decision of NATO from December 12, 1979 to offer the Warsaw Pact a mutual limitation of Medium-range ballistic missiles and Intermediate-range ballistic missiles combined with the threat that in case of disagreement NATO would deploy more middle range nuclear...
.
In 1961, he became president of the World Council of Churches
World Council of Churches
The World Council of Churches is a worldwide fellowship of 349 global, regional and sub-regional, national and local churches seeking unity, a common witness and Christian service. It is a Christian ecumenical organization that is based in the Ecumenical Centre in Geneva, Switzerland...
. He earned the Lenin Peace Prize
Lenin Peace Prize
The International Lenin Peace Prize was the Soviet Union's equivalent to the Nobel Peace Prize, named in honor of Vladimir Lenin. It was awarded by a panel appointed by the Soviet government, to notable individuals whom the panel indicated had "strengthened peace among peoples"...
in 1966.
He died at Wiesbaden
Wiesbaden
Wiesbaden is a city in southwest Germany and the capital of the federal state of Hesse. It has about 275,400 inhabitants, plus approximately 10,000 United States citizens...
in 1984.
See also
- Franz HildebrandtFranz HildebrandtFranz Hildebrandt was a German-born Lutheran, and later Methodist, pastor and theologian, forced into exile during World War II, and subsequently active in the United Kingdom and the USA.- Life :...
- First they came...First they came..."First they came…" is a famous statement attributed to pastor Martin Niemöller about the inactivity of German intellectuals following the Nazi rise to power and the purging of their chosen targets, group after group...
— article about Niemoller's famous dictum - "Martin Niemoeller" James Bentley (The Free Press, New York, 1984) ISBN 0-02-902730-6
Poet Bill Copeland
Selected Writings
- From U-boat to Pulpit, including an Appendix From Pulpit to Prison by Henry Smith Leiper (Chicago, New York: Willett, Clark, 1937).
- Here Stand I! with foreword by James Moffatt, translated by Jane Lymburn (Chicago, New York: Willett, Clark, 1937).
- The Gestapo Defied, Being the Last Twenty-eight Sermons by Martin Niemöller (London [etc.]: W. Hodge and Company, Limited, 1941).
- Of Guilt and Hope, translated by Renee Spodheim (New York: Philosophical Library, [1947]).
- “What is the Church?” Princeton Seminary Bulletin, vol. 40, no. 4 (1947): 10–16.
- “The Word of God is Not Bound,” Princeton Seminary Bulletin, vol. 41, no. 1 (1947): 18–23.
- Exile in the Fatherland: Martin Niemöller’s Letters from Moabit Prison, translated by Ernst Kaemke, Kathy Elias, and Jacklyn Wilfred; edited by Hubert G. Locke (Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., c1986).
External links
- Who Was Martin Niemoller?
- Martin Niemöller's famous quotation: "First they came for the Communists" What did Niemoeller really say? Which groups did he name? In what order? Harold Marcuse, UC Santa Barbara (2005)
- Niemöller's famous quotation as posted by Holocaust Survivors' Network
- Corruptions of "First They Came"
- A biography of Niemöller
- The text (and an English translation) of the Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt
- Pastor Martin Niemöller, Sonal Panse