Article,
The Protestant Churches in Saxony-Anhalt in the Shadow of the German Christian Movement and National Socialism, 1945–1949
Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture, 82 (04): 877--903 (2013)
DOI: 10.1017/S0009640713001170
Abstract
The two major Protestant churches in Saxony-Anhalt, the Church Province of Saxony (Evangelische Kirche der Kirchenprovinz Sachsens KPS) and the State Church of Anhalt (Landeskirche Anhalts LKA), undertook denazification processes against “compromised” pastors and church hierarchs after 1945. Where the Church Province faced secular criticism about “lenient” denazification, the Anhalt Church enjoyed state support, largely because it admitted political representatives to its review commission. Hierarchs in the KPS explained their leniency with reference to the resistance of Christians in the Third Reich, a particular theology of church and state relations, and forgiveness. The verdicts handed down, nonetheless, were premised primarily on each clergyman's affiliation to the former German Christian movement and not on Nazi party membership; denazification was therefore “de-German-Christianization.” (The German Christian movement was a heterodox movement heavily influenced by Nazism.) However, quite apart from de-German-Christianization, there was also pragmatism within both (mutatis mutandis) the KPS and the LKA. Both desired a fully manned and unified pastorate in a time of acute need. Most churchmen withstood denazification as a result. One pastor in Anhalt exemplifies the process. Formerly a member, Erich Elster renounced the German Christian movement as a “false path” after 1945. He continued in his pastoral duties, albeit with an admonishment to preach orthodoxy. The general continuity of churchmen did not provide for unity in any case, and it even led to recrimination and in places a post-war perpetuation of the Third Reich “church struggle” (Kirchenkampf) that had pitted German Christians against members of the Confessing Church.
