German Christians (movement)

This article is about a Christian pressure group in Nazi Germany. For Christianity in Germany, see Religion in Germany.
"Faith Movement of the German Christians" redirects here. For the Nazi pagan movement, see German Faith Movement.
Flag of the German Christians (1934)

German Christians (German: Deutsche Christen) were a pressure group and a movement within the German Evangelical Church that existed between 1932 and 1945, aligned towards the antisemitic, racist, and Führerprinzip ideological principles of Nazism with the goal to align German Protestantism as a whole towards those principles.[1] Their advocacy of these principles led to a schism within 23 of the initially 28 regional church bodies (Landeskirchen) in Germany and the attendant foundation of the opposing Confessing Church in 1934.[2] Siegfried Leffler was a co-founder of the German Christians. [3]

  1. ^ Bergen, Doris L. (2005). Levy, Richard S. (ed.). Antisemitism: A Historical Encyclopedia of Prejudice and Persecution, Volume 1. Oxford, England: ABC Clio. pp. 172–173. ISBN 1-85109-439-3. Retrieved 27 February 2018. The Deutsche Christen (German Christians) were a group of clergy and laypeople in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s who sought to synthesize National Socialism and Christianity. They aimed to purge Christianity of everything they deemed Jewish and to create a German church based on "blood". Most of the approximately 600,000 members were Protestant, although a few Catholics were involved. By mid-1933, Deutsche Christen had acquired key posts in the Protestant establishment - in national church governing bodies and university faculties of theology, as regional bishops, and on local church councils. Many kept those positions until 1945 and beyond.
  2. ^ Only in the regional church bodies of Bavaria (Lutheran), Hanover (Lutheran), Hanover (Reformed), Schaumburg-Lippe, and Württemberg had no majorities of German Christians in their synods, thus protagonists of the Confessing Church considered these church bodies as constitutionally unadulterated (so-called intact churches).
  3. ^ book: German Reich 1938–August 1939, author: Susanne Heim, page: 797, url: https://books.google.com/books?id=zXWcDwAAQBAJ&dq=Siegfried+Leffler+Protestant+theologian&pg=PA797