Let us not
forget Friedrich Von Bodelschwingh, a German theologian and health advocate
during Third Reich. Let us learn about him to educate ourselves on what is good
overcoming evil. We will post information about him from Wikipedia.
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Friedrich von Bodelschwingh on a 1996 stamp.
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Friedrich von Bodelschwingh, Junior (14 August 1877, Bethel –
4 January 1946, Bethel, a locality of Bielefeld) was a German theologian and
public health advocate. His father was Friedrich von Bodelschwingh, Senior (6
March 1831, Tecklenburg – 2 April 1910, Bethel), founder of the v.
Bodelschwinghsche Anstalten Bethel charitable foundations.
Public
health activities
Friedrich was the son of Reverend
Friedrich von Bodelschwingh and his wife Frieda. He is sometimes known as
Friedrich von Bodelschwingh the Younger to distinguish him from his father.
Reverend Friedrich von Bodelschwingh began and operated the von Bodelschwingh Bethel Institution, which offers health care and
other advantages to the poor, for many years. Upon the death of his father in
1910, Bodelschwingh the younger took over their operation. Both he and his
father were close friends and colleagues of Ernst von Dobschütz. In 1921 he
expanded the services of the Institute to care for orphaned children; boys who
did not know their birthdate were given March 6, in honor of Reverend von
Bodelschwingh, and girls were given February 20 in honor of Frieda von
Bodelschwingh.
Both Bodelschwinghs were concerned
with inherited defects, and expressed distress at the increasing number of
handicapped persons in Germany. In a speech on 29 January 1929 he referred to
the "catastrophic development" of "the increasing number of weak
ones in body and spirit."
Reich
bishop in the commencing Struggle of the Churches
After its takeover of power the Nazi
Reich's government aimed at streamlining the Protestant
regional church bodies, recognising the Faith
Movement of the German Christians (German:
Glaubensbewegung Deutsche Christen, DC) as its means to do so (see Struggle of
the Churches, German: Kirchenkampf). On 4 and 5 April 1933
representatives of the German Christians convened in Berlin and demanded
the dismissal of all members of the executive bodies of the then 28 Protestant
regional church bodies in Germany, then rather loosely associated with each
other in the Deutscher Evangelischer
Kirchenbund (German Protestant Church Confederation). The German
Christians demanded their ultimate merger into a uniform Protestant Reich Church, to be named German Protestant Church (German:
Deutsche Evangelische Kirche), led according to the Nazi Führerprinzip
by a Reich's Bishop (German: Reichsbischof), abolishing all
democratic participation of parishioners in presbyteries and synods. The German
Christians announced the appointment of a Reich's Bishop for 31 October
1933, the highly symbolic Reformation Day public holiday.
In a mood of an emergency through an
impending Nazi takeover functionaries of the then officiating executive bodies
of the 28 Protestant regional church bodies stole a march on the German
Christians. Functionaries and activists worked hastily on negotiating
between the 28 Protestant regional church bodies a legally indoubtable
unification. On 25 April 1933 three men convened, Hermann Kapler, president of
the old-Prussian Evangelical Supreme Church Council – representing United Protestantism -, August
Marahrens, state bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran State
Church of Hanover (for the Lutherans),
and the Reformed Hermann-Albert Klugkist Hesse,
director of the preacher seminary in Wuppertal, to
prepare the constitution of a united church which they called the German
Protestant Church too. This caused the later confusion when the streamlined
Reich church and the Confessing Church alike identified as being the
legitimate church of that name. The Nazi government compelled the negotiators
to include its representative, the former army chaplain Ludwig Müller, a devout German Christian, betting on his
prevalence. The plans were to dissolve the German Evangelical Church
Confederation and the 28 church regional bodies and to replace them by a
uniform Protestant Reich church.
On 27 May 1933 representatives of the
28 church bodies gathered in Berlin and against a minority, voting for Ludwig
Müller, Friedrich von Bodelschwingh, Jr., a member of the Evangelical Church of the
old-Prussian Union, was elected Reich's Bishop, a newly created title. The German
Christians strictly opposed that election, because Bodelschwingh was not
their partisan. Thus the Nazis, who were permanently breaking the law, stepped
in, using the competent streamlined Prussian government led by Hermann Göring, and declared the functionaries had
exceeded their authority.
Once the Nazi government had figured
out that the Protestant church bodies would not be streamlined from within
using the German Christians, they abolished the constitutional freedom
of religion and religious organisation, declaring the election of Bodelschwingh
had created a situation contravening the constitutions of the Protestant
regional churches, and on these grounds, on 24 June the Nazi Minister of
Cultural Affairs, Bernhard Rust appointed August
Jäger as Prussian State Commissioner
for the Prussian ecclesiastical affairs (German: Staatskommissar
für die preußischen kirchlichen Angelegenheiten).
This act clearly violated the status
of the Protestant regional churches as statutory bodies (German: Körperschaften
des öffentlichen Rechts),
subjecting them to Jäger's orders. Bodelschwingh resigned as Reich's Bishop the
same day. On 28 June Jäger appointed Müller as new Reich's Bishop and on 6 July
as leader of the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union.
Opposition
to Nazi other policies
Bodelschwingh discussed both
euthanasia and enforced sterilisation as possible solutions to the problem but
concluded by firmly rejecting euthanasia as a viable option which put him at
odds with the Nazi regime. Although he took the oath of loyalty to Hitler in 1938, as
was common for Protestant pastors in the Third Reich, he made no secret of his
vigorous opposition to the Nazi's sterilisation and euthanasia policies. The Gestapo
closed the Bethel Theological School in March 1939 and in April 1940 ordered
institutions and homes to begin relocation of their patients in collective
shipments without notification of next-of-kin.
In May 1940 Pastor Paul Braune, Vice
President of the Central Board for Inner Missions of the German Protestant
churches and head of the Hoffnungstal Institutions, met with Bodelschwingh at
Bethel to discuss the Nazi "green forms" which he had been instructed
to fill out, authorising the transfer of "feebleminded" girls from
the Hoffnungstal Institutions. The two men were deeply alarmed over disturbing
reports of deaths of former patients who were shipped off and strange
obituaries which had appeared. In February 1941 when a physician's commission
arrived at Bethel to force Bodelschwingh to fill out the green forms, he
refused. Staff members expressed their willingness to forcibly resist any
attempted transportation of sick persons by force and the commission eventually
departed. A month later the Nazi regime banned the institute press.
According to the noted psychiatrist
Karl Stern's memoir, The Pillar of Fire (page 119), "There was a famous
Lutheran pastor, Bodelschwingh, who built up a huge colony of feeble-minded,
idiots and epileptics in Bethel in Western Germany. During the war, when the
Nazis carried out the slaughter of all mental patients, Pastor Bodelschwingh
insisted that he would be killed together with his inmates. It was only on the
basis of his international fame that the politicians let him get away with it,
and let him and the inmates of his colony live. This was a kind of last-ditch
stand of Christianity."
Death and
posthumous recognitions
After the war, Bodelschwingh and the
Bethel Institute set up the Bethel Search Service to help locate missing family
members. Bodelschwingh died in January 1946.
Friedrich von Bodelschwingh appeared
four times on German postage stamps: in 1952 when the Federal Republic of
Germany included him in a semi-postal issue entitled "Helfer der
Menschheit, in 1967 when the German Federal post office commemorated the 100th
anniversary of the Bethel hospitals, in 1977 to commemorate Bodelschwingh's
100th birthday, and in 1996 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of his death.
Von
Bodelschwingh Foundations today
The von Bodelschwingh Foundations of
Bethel are still in operation, helping more than 14,000 persons in clinics,
homes, schools, kindergartens, live-in groups, work therapy facilities and
shops for the disabled.
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