The “Dejudaization Institute” Memorial

Last updated
Memorial ceremony and unveiling of the "Dejudaization Institute" memorial on May 6, 2019 Enthullung Mahnmal zum 'Entjudungsinstitut'.jpg
Memorial ceremony and unveiling of the "Dejudaization Institute" memorial on May 6, 2019

The 'Dejudaization Institute' Memorial is a memorial installation erected in Eisenach at the behest of eight Protestant regional churches. The memorial remembers the Protestant regional churches' culpability for the antisemitic Institute for the Study and Eradication of Jewish Influence on German Church Life they founded, which was active between 1939 and 1945 in the Nazi era. The memorial installation is intended to be understood as the Protestant churches' confession of guilt and as a memorial to the victims of the church's anti-Judaism and antisemitism. It was unveiled on May 6, 2019, eighty years after the founding of the "Dejudaization Institute". [1]

Contents

Background

On May 6, 1939, eleven Protestant regional churches founded the "Institute for the Study and Eradication of Jewish Influence on German Church Life", called the "Dejudaization Institute" for short, in Eisenach. The institute's stated mission was to obliterate the Jewish roots of Christianity, to delete every positive reference to the people of Israel and Judaism from Holy Scripture, and to bring the Protestant Church's teachings and liturgical practice into conformity with Nazi ideology. The institute was disbanded at the end of July 1945. [2]

The Memorial's Origins

There had been efforts since the early 1990s to remember the "Dejudaization Institute" and its aftermath publicly with a memorial in Eisenach. Repeated attempts to put up a memorial plaque on the building of the institute's former offices at Bornstrasse 11, the Church of Thuringia's former seminary, never got beyond the planning stage, though. In the run-up to the preparations for the special exhibition Study and Eradication: The Church's 'Dejudaization Institute', 1939–1945, Scholarly Director and Curator of the Stiftung Lutherhaus Eisenach Jochen Birkenmeier proposed undertaking a renewed attempt to put up a memorial plaque or stele in a letter of March 27, 2018, to Eisenach-Gerstungen Church District Superintendent Ralf-Peter Fuchs and Eisenach Mayor Katja Wolf. His proposal met with support from both addressees. Fuchs, however, recommended organizing the memorial on the regional church level. Birkenmeier therefore approached Bishop Ilse Junkermann of the Evangelical Church in Central Germany (EKM) on April 16, 2018, who supported the initiative immediately and asked the successors to the regional churches involved in founding the "Dejudaization Institute" for their collaboration.

Representatives of the Stiftung Lutherhaus Eisenach, the Eisenach municipal government and Eisenach-Gerstungen Church District inspected sites together on June 18, 2018. After consulting together, they declared the site at the beginning of Bornstrasse to be particularly suitable. The location at a fork in the road additionally made it possible to incorporate the words "We went astray" from the "Darmstadt Statement" in the memorial's design.

Following lengthy planning and finalization, the EKM and Stiftung Lutherhaus Eisenach were ultimately able to implement their collaborative project on schedule. Birkenmeier managed the memorial installation project. Funding and coordination with the regional churches were in the hands of Bishop Ilse Junkermann. Eisenach municipal government assisted the project with guidance during the building and permit process. Six representatives of regional Protestant churches solemnly unveiled the memorial on May 6, 2019. [3]

The Institutions that Commissioned the Memorial

The memorial was commissioned by the legal successors to the regional churches involved in founding the "Dejudaization Institute" in 1939: the Evangelical Church in Central Germany, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Northern Germany, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Saxony, the Evangelical Church of Anhalt, the Evangelical Church in Hesse-Nassau, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Oldenburg, the Evangelical Church of the Palatinate (Protestant Regional Church), and the Evangelical Church of the Augsburg and Helvetic Confessions in Austria. The Union of Evangelical Churches is represented by individual member churches. [4]

Site

Installation situation of the memorial Eisenach Entjudungsinstitut Gedenktafel Ecke.jpg
Installation situation of the memorial

The memorial in Eisenach is located at the beginning of Bornstrasse (corner of Johann-Sebastian-Bach-Strasse and Am Ofenstein), approximately 240 meters away from the "Dejudaization Institute's" former first offices at Bornstrasse 11. The site was selected because it is more visible and more readily accessible from the downtown than the actual building located on a steep incline. The conditions at the selected site were significantly better for the erection of a memorial too.

Design

The memorial, measuring approximately 200 x 148 x 42 cm, was designed by Marc Pethran from KOCMOC.NET design agency in Leipzig following suggestions for its composition from the Stiftung Lutherhaus Eisenach in conjunction with the EKM and its Advisory Council for Christian-Jewish Dialogue and built by Obornik Werbetechnik KG in Hildesheim. The body of the memorial consists of Cor-Ten steel plates, individual segments of which have been cut out. Among other things, this is to be understood as a reference to the 'dejudaization' of the texts of the New Testament and the Protestant hymnal as well as the destruction of the common foundations of Judeo-Christian belief by the "Dejudaization Institute".

Inscriptions

The memorial bears the German inscription "Wir sind in die Irre gegangen…" (We went astray...) on the outer plate, a quotation from the "Darmstadt Statement", a Protestant confession of guilt from the year 1947. The inner plate displays an explanatory inscription in German and English. The text follows a draft by Jochen Birkenmeier with minor additions by Bishop Ilse Junkermann. The English text reads:

The "Dejudaization Institute" in Eisenach On May 6, 1939, eleven regional Protestant churches established the "Institute for the Study and Eradication of Jewish Influence on German Church Life" in Eisenach. This institute's mission was to obliterate the Jewish roots of Christianity, to delete every positive reference to the people of Israel and Judaism from Holy Scripture, and to bring the Protestant Church's teachings and liturgical practice into conformity with Nazi ideology. The institute's staff perverted the word and spirit of the Gospel in the name of völkisch theological scholarship, stirred up hatred against Judaism, and strove for the exclusion of Christians with Jewish ancestry from the Protestant Church. They helped justify the persecution and millions of murders of fellow Jewish citizens with their work. The first offices of the "Dejudaization Institute" were located just a few meters from here at Bornstrasse 11. The successor churches to the complicit regional churches have therefore erected this memorial here in recognition of their guilt and in remembrance of the victims of anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism. Eisenach, May 6, 2019 Evangelical Church in Central Germany, Evangelical Lutheran Church in Northern Germany, Evangelical Lutheran Church of Saxony, Evangelical Church of Anhalt, Evangelical Church in Hesse-Nassau, Evangelical Lutheran Church in Oldenburg, Evangelical Church of the Palatinate (Protestant Regional Church), Evangelical Church of the Augsburg and Helvetic Confessions in Austria

This text was translated into English by Krister G.E. Johnson.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eisenach</span> Town in Thuringia, Germany

Eisenach is a town in Thuringia, Germany with 42,000 inhabitants, located 50 kilometres west of Erfurt, 70 km southeast of Kassel and 150 km northeast of Frankfurt. It is the main urban centre of western Thuringia and bordering northeastern Hessian regions, situated near the former Inner German border. A major attraction is Wartburg castle, which has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1999.

The Confessing Church was a movement within German Protestantism during Nazi Germany that arose in opposition to government-sponsored efforts to unify all Protestant churches into a single pro-Nazi German Evangelical Church.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Evangelical Church in Germany</span> Group of churches in Germany

The Evangelical Church in Germany is a federation of twenty one Lutheran, Reformed (Calvinist) and United Protestant regional churches and denominations in Germany, which collectively encompasses the vast majority of Protestants in that country. In 2020, the EKD had a membership of 20,236,000 members, or 24.3% of the German population. It constitutes one of the largest national Protestant bodies in the world. Church offices managing the federation are located in Hannover-Herrenhausen, Lower Saxony. Many of its members consider themselves Lutherans.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">German Christians (movement)</span> Movement within the German Evangelical Church

German Christians 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. 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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">German Evangelical Church</span> Protestant Reich church

The German Evangelical Church was a successor to the German Evangelical Church Confederation from 1933 until 1945.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ludwig Müller</span> German theologian

Johan Heinrich Ludwig Müller was a German theologian, a Lutheran pastor, and leading member of the pro-Nazi "German Christians" faith movement. In 1933 he was appointed by the Nazi government as Reichsbischof of the German Evangelical Church.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Prussian Union of Churches</span> German Protestant church body

The Prussian Union of Churches was a major Protestant church body which emerged in 1817 from a series of decrees by Frederick William III of Prussia that united both Lutheran and Reformed denominations in Prussia. Although not the first of its kind, the Prussian Union was the first to occur in a major German state.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Religion in Austria</span>

Religion in Austria is predominantly Christianity, adhered to by 68.2% of the country's population according to the 2021 national survey conducted by Statistics Austria. Among Christians, 80.9% were Catholics, 7.2% were Orthodox Christians, 5.6% were Protestants, while the remaining 6.2% were other Christians, belonging to other denominations of the religion or not affiliated to any denomination. In the same census, 8.3% of the Austrians declared that their religion was Islam, 1.2% declared to believe in other non-Christian religions, and 22.4% declared they did not belong to any religion, denomination or religious community.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Friedrich von Bodelschwingh</span> German theologian (1877–1946)

Friedrich "Fritz" von Bodelschwingh, also known as Friedrich von Bodelschwingh the Younger, was a German pastor, theologian and public health advocate. His father was Friedrich von Bodelschwingh the Elder, founder of the v. Bodelschwinghsche Anstalten Bethel charitable foundations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria</span>

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria is a Lutheran member church of the Evangelical Church in Germany in the German state of Bavaria.

Martin Luther (1483–1546) was a German professor of theology, priest and seminal leader of the Reformation. His positions on Judaism continue to be controversial. These changed dramatically from his early career, where he showed concern for the plight of European Jews, to his later years, when embittered by his failure to convert them to Christianity, he became outspokenly antisemitic in his statements and writings.

The Pfarrernotbund was an organisation founded on 21 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 (DEK) and against the efforts by Reich-bishop Ludwig Müller and the German Christians (DC) since April 1933 to merge the German Protestant churches into one Reich Church that would be Nazi in ideology and entirely lacking any Jewish or Christian origins. As a Christian resistance to National Socialism it was the forerunner of the Confessing Church, founded the following year.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Institute for the Study and Elimination of Jewish Influence on German Church Life</span> Former organization in Eisenach, Nazi Germany

The Institute for the Study and Elimination of Jewish Influence on German Church Life was a cross-church establishment by eleven German Protestant churches in Nazi Germany, founded at the instigation of the German Christian movement. It was set up in Eisenach under Siegfried Leffler and Walter Grundmann. Georg Bertram, professor of New Testament at the University of Giessen, who led the Institute from 1943 until the Institute's dissolution in May 1945, wrote about its goals in March 1944: "'This war is Jewry's war against Europe.' This sentence contains a truth which is again and again confirmed by the research of the Institute. This research work is not only adjusted to the frontal attack, but also to the strengthening of the inner front for attack and defence against all the covert Jewry and Jewish being, which has oozed into the Occidental Culture in the course of centuries, ... thus the Institute, in addition to the study and elimination of the Jewish influence, also has the positive task of understanding the own Christian German being and the organisation of a pious German life based on this knowledge."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Evangelical Church in Central Germany</span> United church body covering several German states

The Evangelical Church in Central Germany is a United church body covering most of the German states of Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia and some adjacent areas in Brandenburg and Saxony.

A Landesbischof is the head of some Protestant regional churches in Germany. Based on the principle of summus episcopus, after the Reformation each Lutheran prince assumed the position of supreme governor of the state church in his territory. After the First World War, all the German monarchies were abolished and in some regional churches a member of the clergy was elected as Landesbischof.

The German Evangelical Church Confederation was a formal federation of 28 regional Protestant churches (Landeskirchen) of Lutheran, Reformed or United Protestant administration or confession. It existed during the Weimar Republic from 1922 until being replaced by the German Evangelical Church in 1933. It was a predecessor body to the Evangelical Church in Germany.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Protestant Reformed Church of Alsace and Lorraine</span>

The Protestant Reformed Church of Alsace and Lorraine is a Calvinist denomination in Alsace and northeastern Lorraine, France. As a church body, it enjoys the status as an établissement public du culte.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Protestant Church of the Augsburg Confession of Alsace and Lorraine</span>

The Protestant Church of the Augsburg Confession of Alsace and Lorraine is a Lutheran church of public-law corporation status in France. The ambit of the EPCAAL comprises congregations in Alsace and the Lorrain Moselle department.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Protestant Church in Baden</span> United Protestant member church of the Evangelical Church in Germany

The Protestant Church in Baden is a United Protestant member church of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD), and member of the Conference of Churches on the Rhine, which now functions as a regional group of the Community of Protestant Churches in Europe (CPCE). The Evangelical Church in Baden is a united Protestant church. Its headquarter, the Evangelical Superior Church Council is located in Karlsruhe.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lutherhaus Eisenach</span>

Lutherhaus Eisenach is one of the oldest surviving half-timbered houses in Thuringia. Tradition holds that Martin Luther lived there with the Cotta family during his schooldays in Eisenach from 1498 to 1501. The Lutherhaus has been one of the most important historic Reformation sites since the 19th century and, as such, was designated a "European cultural heritage site" in 2011. The Lutherhaus has been run as a cultural history museum since 1956.

References

  1. Gründung des „Entjudungsinstituts“ vor 80 Jahren in Eisenach, Website of the Evangelical Church in Central Germany (in German). Retrieved June 23, 2020.
  2. Susannah Heschel: The Aryan Jesus. Christian theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany, Princeton, NJ, 2008, p. 67ff., 242ff.
  3. Jochen Birkenmeier, Michael Weise: Study and Eradication. The Church’s „Dejudaization Institute“, 1939–1945. Companion Volume to the Exhibition, Eisenach 2020, p. 111.
  4. Jochen Birkenmeier, Michael Weise: Study and Eradication. The Church’s „Dejudaization Institute“, 1939–1945. Companion Volume to the Exhibition, Eisenach 2020, p. 110.

Coordinates: 50°34′54″N10°11′39″E / 50.58175°N 10.19423°E / 50.58175; 10.19423