THE STUTTGART DECLARATION OF GUILT (OCTOBER 19, 1945)

The Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt was a declaration issued on October 19, 1945 by the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany.

The lesson we can learn from here is that when the Justice System abolishes capital punishment and go easy on criminals, they should give repeated apologies to all the victims’ families who want justice. The Justice System must accept the guilt of failing the good people of the country by putting more innocent lives at risk. Those churches who work to abolish the death penalty should also apologize to the victims’ families.

Martin Niemöller

 

INTERNET SOURCE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuttgart_Declaration_of_Guilt

The Stuttgarter Schuldbekenntnis, known in English as the Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt, was a declaration issued on October 19, 1945 by the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany (Evangelischen Kirche in Deutschland or EKD), in which it confessed guilt for its inadequacies in opposition to the Nazis and the Third Reich.

Text

The Declaration states in part:

Through us infinite wrong was brought over many peoples and countries. That which we often testified to in our communities, we express now in the name of the whole church: We did fight for long years in the name of Jesus Christ against the mentality that found its awful expression in the National Socialist regime of violence; but we accuse ourselves for not standing to our beliefs more courageously, for not praying more faithfully, for not believing more joyously, and for not loving more ardently.

The Declaration makes no mention of any particular atrocities committed during the Third Reich or of the church's support for Hitler during the early years of the regime.

One of the initiators of the declaration was pastor Martin Niemöller.

History

After the EKD conference at Treysa achieved some administrative unity, critics still found a lack of contrition in the church. Niemoller stated, with some frustration, that "you should have seen this self-satisfied church at Treysa."

American representatives reporting from the Treysa conference voiced views similar to Niemoller. Robert Murphy, a career diplomat in the US State Department, commented:

There is little evidence that the German Protestant church repented German's war of aggression or the cruelties visited upon other peoples and countries.

Other Americans were perhaps more diplomatic in their statements but the meaning was no doubt the same:

It cannot be said that the attitude of the church toward its political responsibility is as yet satisfactory, let alone clear.

The Declaration was prepared in response to church representatives from the Netherlands, Switzerland, France, Britain and the US who came to Stuttgart to reestablish ties with the German Protestant Church, based on a "relationship of trust." The representatives believed that any relationship would fall apart in the absence of a statement by the German churchmen, due to the hatred felt in their home countries toward Germany in 1945.

But the eleven members of the Council had differing ideas on the moral responsibility of their churches for Nazi Germany. One prepared a draft laying blame on "our fellow citizens" in Germany, thus implicitly denying or diffusing the responsibility of the church. This language was stricken from the draft, and Niemoller insisted on the language "Through us infinite wrong was brought over many peoples and countries."

...Hans Asmussen, Martin Noemoller... and Wilhelm Niesel ... needed no prodding to express lament over their own and the church's failure to speak out loudly and clearly against Nazism. Nevertheless, the Stuttgart Declaration was not simply an act of conscience. Persistent pressure by foreign church leaders for ... recognition of the ... inadequate response to Nazism played a significant role.

Reactions

The Declaration was viewed by many Germans as a further capitulation to the Allies and a betrayal of German interests; one signatory asked the foreign churchmen to refrain from publishing the Declaration, entirely contrary to the purpose of obtaining it in the first place. Various interpretations and arguments were raised by some members the EKD Council to try to deflect the criticisms raised against them by irate parishioners:

·         that the Declaration was merely an internal church document that did not attempt to address political guilt for the war;

·         that only the German leadership had to be ashamed; or

·         that it was not traitorous to confess guilt.

Of the eleven signatories, only Niemoller chose to publicize it: "For the next two years", he claimed, "I did nothing but preach the Declaration to people." This bold approach, along with his internment at Dachau, helped create his controversial reputation.

Effects

Many Germans objected to the confession of guilt, on the ground that they had also suffered in the war, as a result of Allied wrongdoing (particularly Soviet).

...the dreadful misery of 1945-1946 held the Germans back from all remorse. Because--most people believed this--the occupation troops were responsible for the misery. "They're just as inhuman as we were", was how it was put. And with that, everything was evened up.

Some Germans quickly drew comparisons to the "war guilt" clause of the Versailles Treaty, as the Declaration admitted that there was a "solidarity of guilt" among the German people for the endless suffering wrought by Germany. They feared that, once again, the victors would use such logic to impose punishment upon Germany, as Versailles had widely been viewed after the conclusion of World War I.

Furthermore, was "solidarity of guilt" a code word for "collective guilt"—the notion, advocated by some of the more hawkish Allied spokesmen, that all Germans (except the active resistance) bore all responsibility for the Nazi crimes, whether or not they had personally pulled triggers or ejected gas pellets on children? The Declaration did not expressly stipulate collective guilt, but neither did it expressly adopt the more moderate doctrine that guilt and responsibility, like all things human, were generally matters of degree.

Niesel, a former student of Karl Barth and one of the signatories of the Declaration, concluded that there was a general unwillingness by the German people to accept responsibility for the Nazi rule. As Hockenos puts it:

The righteous intermingling of self-justification and self-pity was as important a factor in creating a hostile environment for a public confession as were postwar fears of another Versailles or Allied charges of collective guilt.

One German churchman reflected on his contacts with his Swiss church comrades as those were renewed after the war; they had remained in contact even during the war, but there were boundaries still to overcome after the war's end. His reflections are revealing, both for the revelation and articulation of those boundaries and of his own post-war attitude of "helplessness" in the face of totalitarianism, his underlying premise that individual Germans could do nothing because the obstacles imposed by Nazi totalitarianism were simply too great, so the clergy had no choice but to collaborate:

The accusation [from the Swiss] was that we [the German churchmen] had survived.... for them that was treachery. They couldn't understand that, under a totalitarian system, one has to make compromises... one has to have a certain flexibility... they couldn't understand any of this.[Eventually there was mutual understanding and]... I was elected by the Swiss delegates to the governing council.... me, as a German!"... That moved me greatly... the bridge was truly there again.

Many Germans raised the practical objection that the Declaration would be interpreted by the Allies as an expression of collective guilt, which would in turn justify harsh treatment by the Allies in the postwar world. Most Protestants were willing to admit some degree of responsibility, provided that the Allies reciprocated and admitted their own wrongdoing.

In letter after letter [to the signatories] the same cry of resentment [against the Allies] is heard. To most Germans the suffering [of defeat and postwar conditions] itself was punishment enough for whatever share of guilt Germans bore....since the Allies also committed war crimes, this fact should somehow lessen the gravity of the crimes committed by Germany.

Others, who saw the Declaration more in theological than in practical or political terms, recognized that confession is made before God and not before men, and that such "conditional confessions" were theologically wrong-headed and misunderstood the meaning of Christian confession. As one Protestant rather wryly noted, neither the Allies nor the World Council of Churches "are our father confessor."

Hockenos identifies three basic reasons that Germans were reluctant to confess wrongdoing:

·         Many Germans had in fact supported the Nazis and were in fact unrepentant. Their racist and nationalist mentality was intact, perhaps even heightened by the defeat which triggered feelings of anger and resentment.

·         The nature and extent of the Nazi barbarities was difficult to comprehend, even for some of those who participated in them. Bystanders were reluctant to take responsibility for a campaign that was, in both quantitative and moral terms, nearly incomprehensible.

·         Germans were suffering also and they naturally gave priority to their own suffering.

INTERNET SOURCE: http://www.history.ucsb.edu/faculty/marcuse/projects/niem/StuttgartDeclaration.htm

The Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt

by the Council of the Protestant Church of Germany
October 19, 1945

Text from St. Mark's Church, Stuttgart, 

translation by Harold Marcuse, Professor of History at UC Santa Barbara,
March 2005

(part of my Martin Niemöller Quotation page)

I've taken the German text of this important document from the website of the church where it was formulated, adopted and proclaimed: www.markusgemeinde-stuttgart.de and made a rough translation. See below for that site's historical background about the document.

Introduction and text by St. Mark's Church: Nach dem Zusammenbruch der nationalsozialistischen Herrschaft und der Nullpunktsituation des Kriegsendes wurde als Neuanfang im August 1945 bei der Kirchenversammlung in Treysa (Hessen) der Zusammenschluß der "Evangelischen Kirche in Deutschland" beschlossen. Die Stuttgarter Schulderklärung vom Oktober 1945 ermöglichte weitere Schritte des Aufbaus. Sie suchte ungelöste Fragen der unmittelbaren Vergangenheit anzusprechen und den Zugang zur weltweiten Ökumene zu öffnen. "Der Rat der Evangelischen Kirche in Deutschland begrüßt bei seiner Sitzung am 18./19. Oktober 1945 in Stuttgart Vertreter des Ökumenischen Rates der Kirchen. Wir sind für diesen Besuch umso dankbarer, als wir uns mit unserem Volk nicht nur in einer großen Gemeinschaft der Leiden wissen, sondern auch in einer Solidarität der Schuld. Mit großem Schmerz sagen wir: Durch uns ist unendliches Leid über viele Völker und Länder gebracht worden. Was wir unseren Gemeinden oft bezeugt haben, das sprechen wir jetzt im Namen der ganzen Kirche aus: Wohl haben wir lange Jahre hindurch im Namen Jesu Christi gegen den Geist gekämpft, der im nationalsozialistischen Gewaltregiment seinen furchtbaren Ausdruck gefunden hat; aber wir klagen uns an, daß wir nicht mutiger bekannt, nicht treuer gebetet, nicht fröhlicher geglaubt und nicht brennender geliebt haben. Nun soll in unseren Kirchen ein neuer Anfang gemacht werden. Gegründet auf die Heilige Schrift, mit ganzem Ernst ausgerichtet auf den alleinigen Herrn der Kirche, gehen sie daran, sich von glaubensfremden Einflüssen zu reinigen und sich selber zu ordnen. Wir hoffen zu dem Gott der Gnade und Barmherzigkeit, daß er unsere Kirchen als sein Werkzeug brauchen und ihnen Vollmacht geben wird, sein Wort zu verkündigen und seinem Willen Gehorsam zu schaffen bei uns selbst und bei unserem ganzen Volk. Daß wir uns bei diesem neuen Anfang mit den anderen Kirchen der ökumenischen Gemeinschaft herzlich verbunden wissen dürfen, erfüllt uns mit tiefer Freude. Wir hoffen zu Gott, daß durch den gemeinsa-men Dienst der Kirchen dem Geist der Gewalt und der Vergeltung, der heute von neuem mächtig werden will, in aller Welt gesteuert werde und der Geist des Friedens und der Liebe zur Herrschaft komme, in dem allein die gequälte Menschheit Genesung finden kann. So bitten wir in einer Stunde, in der die ganze Welt einen neuen Anfang braucht: Veni creator Spiritus! (Komm, Schöpfer Geist!)" Unterschriften : D. Wurm (Württ. Landesbischof) Asmussen DD (Präsident der Kirchenkanzlei der EKD) H. Meiser (Landesbischof Bayern) Held (Pfarrer in Essen, später Präses der Rhein. Kirche) Dr. Lilje (Generalsekretär des Lutherischen Weltkonvents, später Landesbischof in Hannover) Hahn (Pfarrer, später sächs. Landesbischof) Lic. Niesel (Pfarrer, Theologieprofessor) Smend D.Dr. (Theologieprofessor) Dr. G. Heinemann (Rechtsanwalt, später Bundespolitiker und Bundespräsident) Dibelius (Bischof von Berlin-Brandenburg) Martin Niemöller D.D. (Pfarrer, später Kirchenpräsident von Hessen-Nassau)

rough translation (rather literal): After the collapse of National Socialist rule and the situation of starting completely anew at the end of war, in Treysa (Hessen) in August 1945 at a church meeting it was decided to make a new beginning by creating a union called the "Protestant Church in Germany". The Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt from October 1945 made further progress towards this goal possible. It sought to address unresolved questions of the immediate past and make admission to the world-wide Oekumene possible.  "The Council of the Protestant Church in Germany welcomes representatives of the Ecumenical Council of Churches at its meeting in Stuttgart on 18.-19. October 1945. We are all the more grateful for this visit, as we not only know that we are with our people in a large community of suffering, but also in a solidarity of guilt.  With great pain we say: By us infinite wrong was brought over many peoples and countries. That which we often testified to in our communities, we express now in the name of the whole Church: We did fight for long years in the name of Jesus Christ against the mentality that found its awful expression in the National Socialist regime of violence; but we accuse ourselves for not standing to our beliefs more courageously, for not praying more faithfully, for not believing more joyously, and for not not loving more ardently.  Now a new beginning is to be made in our churches. Based on the Holy Scripture, with complete seriousness directed to the Lord of the Church, they start to cleanse themselves of the influences of beliefs foreign to the faith and to reorganize themselves. We hope to the God of grace and mercy that He will use our churches as His tools and give them license to proclaim His word and to obtain obedience for His will, amongst ourselves and among our whole people.  The fact that we, in this new beginning, find ourselves sincerely connected with the other churches of the ecumenical community fills us with great joy.  We hope to God that by the common service of the churches the spirit of violence and revenge, which again today wants to become powerful, will be directed to the whole world, and that the spirit of peace and love will come to predominate, in which alone tortured humanity can find healing. Thus we ask at a time, in which the whole world needs a new beginning: Veni creator Spiritus! (Come, spiritof the creator!)"  Signatures: D Worm (Wuerttemburg state bishop) Asmussen of dd (president of the Church Chancellory of the EKD) H. Meiser (state bishop Bavaria) Held (minister in Essen, later Praeses of the Rhine. Church) Dr. Lilje (Secretary-General of the Lutheran world convention, later state bishop in Hanover) Hahn (minister, later Saxony state bishop) Lic. Drizzle (minister, theology professor) Smend D.Dr. (theology professor) Dr. G. Heinemann (attorney, later federal politician and Federal President) Dibelius (bishop of Berlin-Brandenburg) Martin Niemoeller D.D. (minister, later church president of Hessen Nassau)

Historical background (text from the Markusgemeinde), :

Am Abend des 17. Oktober 1945 gelangte die Markuskirche zu weltweit kirchlicher Bedeutung. Der Ende 1945 in Treysa gebildete Rat der Evangelischen Kirche in Deutschland (EKD), ein Gremium von zwölf einflußreichen Kirchenführern und Laien, war zu seiner ersten ordentlichen Sitzung nach Stuttgart einberufen worden. Vorsitzender dieses Rates der EKD war der 76-jährige Theophil Wurm, der wegen seines mutigen Eintretens für das Recht und den Auftrag der Kirche während des Dritten Reiches weithin hohes Ansehen genoß. Als Beginn der Sitzung war Donnerstag, der 18. Oktober 1945, 9 Uhr festgesetzt; Tagungsort war der kleine Sitzungssaal der Württ. Bibelanstalt in der Hauptstätterstraße 51 B. Aus Anlaß dieser ersten Sitzung des Rates der EKD wurden am Vorabend im Saal des Furtbachhauses und in der Markuskirche um 19.30 Uhr zwei Parallelversammlungen gottesdienstlicher Art anberaumt. Die Abendfeier in der Markuskirche wurde von Landesbischof Wurm geleitet, die Feier im Furtbachhaus von Prälat Dr. Hartenstein. Als Prediger bzw. Redner waren an diesen Feiern außerdem Dr. Otto Dibelius, der Bischof von Berlin, und der aus dem Konzentrationslager befreite Pastor Martin Niemöller beteiligt. Pastor Niemöller war erst gegen 18.30 Uhr in Stuttgart eingetroffen. Bei seiner Ankunft in der Wohnung des Stadtdekans Lempp wurde ihm mitgeteilt, daß er in der Markuskirche sprechen solle. Seine Frau suchte ihm den Predigttext aus. Die aus dem Stegreif gehaltene Predigt Niemöllers brachte Herz und Gewissen der großen Hörerschaft in Bewegung. Sie wirkte so tief, daß am Tage darauf in der Mitte des Rates der EKD das Stuttgarter Schuldbekenntnis entstehen konnte. In diesem Abendgottesdienst am 17. Oktober 1945 in der Markuskirche trafen zum ersten Mal nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg die Vertreter der Evangelischen Kirche in Deutschland mit Vertretern der Kirchen der Ökumene zusammen. Diese Begegnung war deutscherseits weder geplant noch vorbereitet gewesen. Der Anstoß kam von der Ökumene. Daß deren Schritt nun aber sogleich zu einem deutlichen Wort der Umkehr, zum Stuttgarter Schuldbekenntnis, führte--dies war eine Frucht jenes Abends in der Markuskirche. Kirchengeschichtlich gesehen war das die größte Stunde in unserer Markuskirche. Der Leiter der ökumenischen Delegation, Dr. Willem A. Visser’t Hooft schreibt in seiner Biographie: “Wie sollten wir die Wiederaufnahme voller ökumenischer Beziehungen erreichen? Die Hindernisse für eine neue Gemeinschaft ließen sich nur beseitigen, wenn die deutsche Seite ein klares Wort fand. Pierre Maury riet uns schließlich, den Deutschen zu sagen: ‚Wir sind gekommen, um Euch zu bitten, daß Ihr uns helft, Euch zu helfen.’ Als wir in dem großenteils zerstörten Stuttgart ankamen, hörten wir, daß am Abend in der Markuskirche ein besonderer Gottesdienst stattfinden würde, bei dem Bischof Wurm, Pastor Niemöller und Bischof Dibelius sprechen sollten. Niemöller predigte über Jeremia 14, 7-11: ,Ach Herr, unsere Missetaten haben es ja verdient; aber hilf doch um deines Namens willen!’ Es war eine machtvolle Predigt. Niemöller sagte, es genüge nicht, den Nazis die Schuld zu geben, auch die Kirche müsse ihre Schuld bekennen.” Wie tief jene Abendpredigt Pastor Niemöllers wirkte, geht auch aus einem Bericht der Stuttgarter Zeitung vom 20. Oktober 1945 hervor. Darin heißt es unter anderem: “Das Nichtstun, das Nichtreden, das Nicht-Verantwortlich-Fühlen, das ist die Schuld des Christentums.” Als Frucht dieses Abendgottesdienstes entstand das Stuttgarter Schuldbekenntnis, das am Vormittag des 19.Oktober 1945 vor den Vertretern der Ökumene abgelegt und ihnen übergeben wurde. Schauplatz der Übergabe war (wahrscheinlich) das Haus Eugenstraße 22, das damals der Stiftskirchengemeinde zur Verfügung stand. Die Behauptung, das Stuttgarter Schuldbekenntnis sei in der Markuskirche, vor den Augen und Ohren der Gemeinde, übergeben worden, ist eine Legende. Die Kirchenleitung hat es versäumt, das Schuldbekenntnis sofort in allen Gemeinden des Landes, von allen Kanzeln herab, bekannt zu machen. Erst allmählich und spät kam es ins Bewußtsein der Gemeinden. In der Markuskirche ist eine Gedenktafel mit dem vollen Wortlaut des Stuttgarter Schuldbekenntnisses vom 19. Oktober 1945 angebracht.

babelfish mostly raw from the translation engine [corrected July 2014]:: On the evening of 17 October 1945 St. Mark's Church became important in the world-wide church. The Council of the Protestant Church in Germany (EKD), formed at the end of of 1945 in Treysa, a committee of twelve influential church leaders and laymen was officially convened for the first time in Stuttgart. Chairman of the Council of the EKD was 76-year-old Theophil Worm, who enjoyed a high reputation abroad because of his courageous activism for justice and the duties of the Church during the Third Reich. The meeting was set to start on Thursday, 18 October 1945, at 9 o'clock; meeting place was the small meeting room of the Wuerttemberg Institute for the Bible at Hauptstaetter Street 51 B. On the previous evening, to prepare for this first meeting of the Council of the EKD, in the hall of Furtbach house and in St. Mark's Church two parallel services were held at 9:30pm. The evening celebration of mass in St. Mark's Church was led by national bishop Wurm, the celebration in the Furtbach house by Prelate Dr. Hartenstein. Additional sermons and/or speaches at these celebrations were held in addition by Dr. Otto Dibelius, Bishop of Berlin, and pastor Martin Niemoeller freed from a concentration camp. Pastor Niemoeller only arrived in Stuttgart at about 6pm. When he arrived at the apartment of City Dean Lempp he was informed that he was to speak in St. Mark's Church. His wife selected the sermon text [Bible passage] for him. Niemoeller held the sermon extemporaneously, moving hearts and consciences in the large audience. His sermon affected them so deeply that on the next day the Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt could emerge in the center of the Council of the EKD. At the evening service on 17 October 1945 in St. Mark's Church the representatives of the Protestant Church in Germany met for the first time after the Second World War with representatives of the churches of the Oekumene. On the German side this meeting had neither been planned nor prepared. The impulse came from the Oekumene. That their step now, however, led immediately to a clear word of the reversal, to the Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt--this was a fruit of that evening in St. Mark's Church. That was, church-historically seen, the greatest hour in our St. Mark's Church. The director of the ecumenical delegation, Dr. Willem A. Visser't Hooft writes in his autobiography: "How should we achieve the resumption of full oekumenischer relations? The obstacles for a new community could only be eliminated if the German side found a clear word. Pierre Maury finally advised us to say to the Germans: 'we came to to ask you that you help us to help you.' When we arrived in heavily destroyed Stuttgart, we heard that in the evening a special service would take place in St. Mark's, in which Bishop Wurm, Pastor Niemoeller and Bishop Dibelius would speak. Niemoeller preached about Jeremiah 14, 7-11: 'Although our sins testify against us o Lord, do something for the sake of your name!' It was a powerful sermon. Niemoeller said, it is not enough to give the Nazis responsibility, it is also necessary for the Church to admit its responsibility."   How effective that evening sermon by pastor Niemoeller was, is also evident in a report of the Stuttgart Newspaper on 20 October 1945. Therein it says among other things: "doing nothing, saying nothing, not feeling responsible, that is the guilt/fault of the Christianity."   As a result of this evening service the Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt emerged. It was given to the representatives of the Oekumene on the morning of the 19.Oktober 1945. Scene of the delivery was (probably) the house Eugen Street 22, which at that time served as the Stift Church community. The claim that the Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt was handed over to the comunity in the Markuskirche, before the eyes and ears of the pastorage, is a legend. The church leadership did not immediately disseminate the Declaration of Guilt to all communities in the country, to read it from all pulpits. Only gradually and late did it enter into the consciousness of the communities. In St. Mark's Church there is a memorial plaque with the full wording of Stuttgart Confession of Guilt of 19 October 1945.

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Prepared for the web March 14, 2005 by H. Marcuse, updated 10/2/06, 7/12/14
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