Modern Germany before 1933 was not a Christian country

Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth (leads) unto life, and few there be that find it. (Matthew 7)

People with little or no knowledge either of Christianity, or of German history and culture, like to imagine that Germany before Hitler was a Christian nation, a strongly and a deeply Christian nation. This is especially true if they are hostile to Christianity and eager to find fault with it.

Yet, when we look at the lifeblood of German culture in the 19th and early 20th centuries; when we consider the poets, philosophers, novelists, scientists, and painters that made German culture renowned throughout the world, do we find that even one of them was a serious Bible-believing Christian? Beethoven, Schiller, Goethe, Schopenhauer — Christians?

Goethe laughed at Christianity. Schiller’s poem “Ode to Joy” (which provided lyrics to the choral movement in Beethoven’s 9th Symphony) is nothing but pagan romanticism devoid of any Christian content. Hegel considered himself a “Protestant” yet had no regard for the fundamentals of the faith and did not base his philosophy on the truth of the Bible. And what shall we say of Stefan George, Bert Brecht, Fritz Lang, Lotte Lenya, George Grosz and Marlene Dietrich—were they Christians? Then of course there are Thomas Mann, Oswald Spengler, the German expressionist painters and poets, Wagner, Nietzsche, Haeckel, physicists like Heisenberg and Planck—Christians? Is there one major figure in the 130-odd years of German cultural history from 1800 to 1933 that was a dedicated biblical Christian?

Looking at any general secular history of Weimar Germany, we do not get the impression of a deeply Christian culture in that brief period between the wars. No one who has studied the German socialist labor movement - the largest in Europe - will argue that its leaders were concerned about salvation from sin and eternal life in paradise through faith in Christ. Such teachings were scorned as escapist bourgeois fantasies used to oppress the people.

Neither was popular German culture of the 1920s preoccupied with biblical themes. Large numbers of people were not speaking out from a biblical perspective against Darwinism, Freudianism, positivism, or other forms of secularism that were rampant in Germany.

Peter Gay’s book Weimar Culture has more to say about Freud, psychoanalysis, and the Psychoanalytical Institute in Berlin than it does about the churches (Luther is briefly mentioned in passing). Significantly, Gay says:

By the turn of the century and the time of the First World War it was clear that, although Germany professed, in theory, to be a Christian state, secularization had spread to wide sections of the population . . .” [1]  

The Frankfurt School of Marxist anthropologists and theoreticians is one example of many that could be given to illustrate this trend.  

Historian Paul Johnson elaborates on the secular nature of the culture out of which Hitler emerged. He refers to Freud’s well-known influence, and states in the same context that

Stage and night-club shows in Berlin were the least inhibited of any major capital. Plays, novels, and even paintings touched on such themes as homosexuality, sado-masochism, transvestism and incest. [2]

Much more could be written about the vice and depravity that flourished in Weimar Germany.       

Students of the period know that Germany, in the brief period between the wars, was a world-center of modern culture, and that German art, cinema, and theater were on the cutting edge of the secular avant-garde. Johnson gives useful information about this. After referring to Klee, Kandinsky, Mies van der Rohe, Walter Gropius and the integration of modern art with the latest architectural techniques at the famed Bauhaus he writes, “Weimar was less hostile to modernism than any other society or political system.” [3]

That there were contrary forces on the extreme right which eventually triumphed does not alter the fact that calling Germany a strongly Christian country shows a lack of familiarity with Germany, or with Christianity, or with both.

Germany in 1933 was in fact a darkly pagan country in which Christian influence had been steadily declining for well over a century. The forces of secularism easily triumphed over the church in every significant field of cultural and intellectual endeavour. Traditional ecclesiastics like Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg (1802-1869) who fought in vain to stem the tide are now only a minor footnote, mentioned in passing if at all. Darwinism, “Enlightenment” and scientific rationalism, Marxism, racism, militarism, imperialism, the Folkish movement (that considered the Germans a new Chosen People destined to lead mankind), theological liberalism that considered the Bible to be full of mistakes, myths, and folk tales—these were the dominant forces in modern Germany, not biblical Christianity.

That such modernist trends contributed to the hunger for certainty, meaning, and purpose which made National Socialism seem more compelling is a common observation. Richard Evans, for example, writes of the “fear and disorientation” engendered by social and cultural (as well as by political and economic) change as part of the background to Hitler’s rise. ^[4]

Yet, one source uses a 1939 census to show that 95% of all Germans in the Nazi era were loyal to their Catholic or Protestant churches. Was this in fact the case? I doubt that this census asked if the participants believed that Jesus Christ was God come to earth in human form to die on the cross as a sacrifice for the sins of the world; that he rose from the dead; that only those who believe in him can be saved from sin; that the Bible is the divinely inspired word of God.

People were assigned church membership at birth, according to custom, and retained on the membership roles unless they went through a procedure to have their names removed. Ernst Haeckel, 19th-century Germany’s leading exponent of Darwinism and an open denier of traditional religion, retained his church membership until the age of 80. It wasn’t even worth cancelling. [5]

There is another factor to be considered in the statement that 95% of the people in Hitler’s Germany retained their affiliation with the Catholic or Protestant churches they had been assigned to in infancy. If people were asked to state their religious affiliation in an official census, stating “None” would have been a dangerous thing to do at that time. If one could not point to membership in the Nazi Party, stating “none” might have led to certain questions, such as: “Were you ever affiliated with the Communist Party?”

In the presidential election of 1932 Ernst Thaelmann, the Communist candidate, received 13% of the vote. The Communist Party was the third largest party in the Reichstag in 1932. No doubt every single one of the Germans who voted for Thaelmann or the Communist Party later declared themselves “Lutherans” or “Catholics” when asked by government pollsters. Members of the smaller independent churches that had been simply banned by the government would also have been prudent to state “Lutheran” or “Catholic.” This would not have been to earn favor with the government, as someone has suggested. It would have been to avoid attracting attention to oneself. Since most had had some childhood experience with those churches, they could easily answer further questions if necessary.

People who say “Germany was a Christian country” need to consider the profound influence of Darwinism, Freudianism, positivism, Marxism, and other secular philosophies that flourished in Germany.

Many have wondered how the Nazis could have emerged out of German culture. It is too little considered that German culture was part of the problem, and in fact provided fertile soil for ideas that were later to prove integral and foundational to National Socialism.

Peter Watson‘s detailed survey of modern German culture, The German Genius, has little to say about traditional Christianity (except for a brief discussion of Pietism that emerged in the late seventeenth century). None of the greats of nineteenth-century German philosophy, science, music, literature that he describes are presented as devout Christians.

Watson goes so far as to state that even as early as the first half of the nineteenth  century, neohumanist  Bildung - a  secular  search  for  inner fulfillment through secular education - was the cultural philosophy of the Prussian state. [6] There was a common belief that spiritual emancipation through education in the humanities was the true path to (inner) freedom.

The belief in submission to divine authority as expressed in the Bible and interpreted by the church was a rapidly fading memory. That Christianity should be rejected as false and out of date, and then be blamed when things later go wrong, is more than a little ridiculous. Some people are incapable of recognizing or admitting that the modernist experiment was, in the case of Germany, a disastrous failure.

Gordon Craig‘s in-depth history of Germany from 1866 to the end of World War II also contains ample evidence of the secularization of German society [7]. Craig’s overview of the educational system emphasizes the humanistic content, especially the classics and the natural sciences. Philosophical trends in German universities did not reflect Christian values. Husserl’s phenomenology; the increasing importance of the behavioral and social sciences; Darwin, Comte, materialism and mechanism; revived and updated Kantianism; the study of German history and literature as a handmaid for the salvation of the nation – it would be possible I believe to write a detailed book about German universities in the second half of the nineteenth century without even using the name of Jesus once. No doubt such books have been written.

Craig’s history shows that even before 1900 Germans were concerned about the increasingly evident signs of moral decline and decay. Incidents of rape doubled in Berlin during the six years of 1872-1878, along with a significant increase in crime in general. Prostitution and public drunkenness increased, along with a relaxation in public morals and a massive preoccupation with sex in the theater. [8]

When it comes to the Weimar Republic, the premature experiment in democracy that was terminated by Hitler in 1933, its secular nature should not need to be explained. A chapter title for this period in Watson’s book German Genius (already referred to) reads “Weimar: The Golden Age of Twentieth-Century Physics, Philosophy, and History.” This chapter and the one preceding deal with Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, breakthroughs in modern cinema, Expressionist painting, Walter Gropius and the Bauhaus, Marx and Freud, Herbert Marcuse, the music of Schoenberg and the poetry of Brecht, Marlene Dietrich and The Blue Angel – I may have missed something but I did not see one word about Jesus, the Bible, Heaven, Hell, a day of judgment or forgiveness of sins in the two chapters.

There was a consistent decline in the idea of God from the end of the eighteenth century to the end of the nineteenth. From the transcendent, truly divine God of the Scriptures to the theoretical, inactive and profoundly worthless God of Kant and the many other deists; to Hegel‘s nebulous and impersonal World Spirit; to Schopenhauer‘s blindly striving cosmic Will; to the Creator of the Darwinist Ernst Haeckel - a vague cosmic something that worked according to scientific law and was understood by human reason alone (which was close if not identical to Hitler‘s conception); to the feverish pronouncement of the death of God by Nietzsche – the idea of God faded and finally died in the minds of many. The churches, Protestant and Catholic, had long since lost their dominant position and were incapable of significantly influencing the course of German history.

Intriguingly, these declining concepts of God have been summed up in a remarkable passage in Goethe‘s Faust. Suggesting that the well-known Bible verse “In the beginning was the Word” was inadequate, Goethe proposed replacing “Word” (traditional, revealed religion) , with “Mind” (human wisdom, whether religious or secular). This didn‘t seem adequate, so he then suggested replacing “Mind” with “Power.” Finally he suggests “Deed,” ending with “In the beginning was the Deed” [9].

From divine revelation, to human wisdom alone, and thence to power and action unrestrained by any concept of divine law – this follows a spiritual law of descent just as real as any law of Newton‘s. Without God, we decline, and this descent ended, after many unpredictable windings and turnings, in National Socialism. This does not mean a general cultural awareness of God and earlier strong religious cultural influences were sufficient to create paradise on earth, they were not – but they did exercise some real and badly needed restraint. It took modern ideology based on human wisdom to set up the signposts and pave the way to Auschwitz- and it is the advance of secularism that is leading to the destruction of the United States.

These changes were accompanied by an increasing hostility to Christianity. Nietzsche is the most well-known example of this, but – while more extreme in his hatred than others (some might even say fanatical) – he was by no means alone. That traditional, orthodox Christianity was contrary to reason, as determined by philosophy; that it was contrary to science, and especially to the supposed truth of Darwinism; that Christianity was un-Germanic, unhealthy, an alien Semitic import not suited to the pagan and warlike German spirit; that Christianity had originated in India but was later corrupted by Semitic influences; that Paul had distorted, falsified and Judaized the teachings of an Aryan Christ; that Christian ethics were contrary to the realities of life – these and other ideas were increasingly current in influential circles among the German intelligentsia for a hundred years and more before 1933.

Thus, Hitler‘s hostility to Christianity was not an aberration, but consistent with a long tradition of first rejection of Christianity, and then contempt for it. Historian Robert Wistrich’s summary of Hitler‘s views of Christianity could also be applied (in varying degrees) to Wagner, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Lagarde, Langbehn, Haeckel, and numerous German thinkers, writers, educators, scientists and other influential intellectuals.

Wistrich writes that Hitler blamed the Jews “for having invented the very notion of a moral conscience, in defiance of all healthy, natural instincts.” This Jewish influence in turn led to Christianity and to Communism, with their dreams of peace, equality, and justice. Wistrich later states that Naziism was a rebellion “against the entire civilization that had been built on Judaeo-Christian ethics.” It was the Jews, Hitler believed, that were ultimately responsible for “contemporary teachings of pacifism, equality before God and the law, human brotherhood and compassion for the weak, which Naziism had to uproot.” Hitler’s ideal required the elimination of those values, and of the people who spread them [10].

This led Hitler to adopt policies aimed at first limiting and then over time eliminating the influence of the churches in Germany – but if Hitler was really so opposed to Christianity, why then didn‘t the Christians resist him? It is very commonly reasoned nowadays that the churches did not mount any serious opposition to Hitler because they shared significant common ground – an argument bolstered by the many Christians who not merely failed to oppose Hitler, but actively supported him. But the story of the churches in Nazi Germany and their collapse (with rare exceptions) before Hitler is another question.

Briefly, many of the Protestant Churches had had their hearts eaten out by theological liberalism and did not even believe in the basic doctrines of Christianity. Others who were more outwardly orthodox succumbed to terror, and wanted only to avoid being sent to a labor camp.

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[1] Peter Gay, Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider (New York 1968), p. 242.

[2] Paul Johnson, Modern Times: The World from the Twenties to the Nineties (New York 1991), p. 114.

[3] Ibid., p. 114.

[4] Richard Evans, The Coming of the Third Reich (New York 2005), p. 445.

[5] Daniel Gasman, The Scientific Origins of National Socialism (London 2004), p. 59.

[6] Peter Watson, The German Genius: Europe’s Third Renaissance, The Second Scientific Revolution, and the Twentieth Century (New York: Harper Perennial, 2011), p. 109.

[7] Gordon Craig, Germany 1866-1945 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), pp. 190, 194-197.

[8] Ibid., p. 82.

[9] Gene Edward Veith, Jr. Modern Fascism: Liquidating the Judeo-Christian Worldview (St. Louis: Concordia, 1993), pp. 143-144.

[10]  Robert S. Wistrich, Hitler and the Holocaust: How and Why the Holocaust Happened (London 2002), pp. 15, 138, 141 (all quotes in this paragraph).

This was mostly taken from two previously published books, one of them being Hitler, the Holocaust, and the Bible: A Scriptural Analysis of Anti-Semitism, National Socialism, and the Churches in Nazi Germany, the other being a different book that needs to be withdrawn and revised.