Martin Niemöller

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Friedrich Gustav Emil Martin Niemöller (January 14, 1892 – March 6, 1984) was a prominent German anti-Nazi theologian^[1] and Lutheran pastor. He is best known as the author of the poem First they came....

Contents 1 Life 2 Allegations of Anti-Semitism 2.1 Alleged whitewashing 3 Quotation 4 Notes 5 External links

[edit] Life

Although he was a national conservative, and initially a sympathizer of Adolf Hitler^[2], he became one of the founders of the Confessing Church, which opposed the nazification of German Protestant churches. For his opposition to the Nazi's state control of the churches, Niemöller was imprisoned in Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps from 1937 to 1945.^[3] He narrowly escaped execution and survived imprisonment.^[4] Since the 1950s he was a vocal pacifist and anti-war activist.^[4] He met with Ho Chi Minh during the Vietnam War and was a committed campaigner for nuclear disarmament.^[4] His former attitude towards the Jews has raised controversy and has been called anti-Semitic by some.^[5]

He was born in Lippstadt and was a U-boat commander in World War I, winning the Iron Cross First Class. After the war, he spent some time in the Freikorps.^{[citation needed]} He studied theology and was ordained in 1931, becoming pastor of St. Anne's Church in Dahlem, an affluent suburb of Berlin.^[6]

In 1933, Niemöller founded the Pfarrernotbund, an organization of pastors to "combat rising discrimination against Christians of Jewish background."^[6] By the autumn of 1934, Niemöller joined other Lutheran and Protestant churchmen like Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer in founding the Confessing Church, a Protestant group that opposed the Nazification of the German Protestant churches.^[6]

Arrested on July 1, 1937, Niemöller was brought to a "Special Court" on March 2, 1938 to be tried for activities against the State. He was fined 2,000 Mark and received a prison terms of 7 months. As his detention period exceeded the jail term, he was released by the Court after the trial. However, immediately after leaving the Court, he was rearrested by Himmler's Gestapo.^[7] He was interned in Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps from 1938 to 1945. He was released by the allies in 1945. After his release in 1945, he was president of the Evangelical church in Hesse and Nassau from 1947 to 1961. He was one of the initiators in the Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt, signed by leading figures in the German church. The document acknowledged that the church had not done enough to resist the Nazis.^[8]In 1961, he became president of the World Council of Churches.^[9]

Niemöller who had become a ardent pacifist became also a leading figure of the post-war German peace movement. He took active part in protests against the Vietnam War and the NATO Double-Track Decision.^[10] He was even brought to court in 1959 because he had spoken about the military in a very unflattering way.^[11]

He died at Wiesbaden.

[edit] Allegations of Anti-Semitism

According to Holocaust scholar Robert Michael, beliefs such as those held by Niemöller made even Nazi victims into Holocaust collaborators: "Martin Niemoeller in his radically antisemitic August 1935 sermon noted that the Jews would not be released from their suffering until they converted, Jewish suffering being "proof" that Jesus was God. The essential reason the Jews were cursed was because they "brought the Christ of God to the Cross ... These kinds of statements are a result of traditional antisemitism, and beliefs such as these corrupted average people as well as the elite and made them all not just victims of Nazis but active or passive collaborators in the Holocaust." ^[12] According to Dr. Michael, Martin Niemoeller agreed with the Nazi's position on the Jewish question.^[13]

"Niemoller had exposed himself as an opportunist who had no quarrel with Hitler politically and only begun to oppose the Nazis when Hitler threatened to attack the churches." "Further evidence of his moral duplicity was found in his statement that anti-Semitism had come to an end in Germany and would not recur." ^[14]

Niemöller himself spoke out on the matter in 1959 in a letter to Alfred Wiener, a Jewish researcher into racism and war crimes committed by the Nazi regime. In this letter, Niemöller wrote that he had "never concealed the fact" he had come "from an anti-Semitic past and tradition"; he added that eight years of imprisonment had turned him into a completely different person.^[4]

[edit] Alleged whitewashing

According to a recent study, “Aspects of his biography had been played down when America had needed a clean German hero.” ^[14]

“In contrast to the leftist and communist resistance, his status as a Protestant minister fighting for freedom on a Christian platform and his principled disobedience to an unjust regime made him highly useful to governmental propaganda agencies, which turned him into a martyr for the cause of democracy.” “He was presented by the American press as the spokesman for a different Germany and the hope for a better future.” “Niemoller had become an ‘American hero.’” However, “his star began to sink rapidly when his other pronouncements and his past … caught up with him.”^[14]

Professor Werner Cohn, states: One of the most striking exemplars of the pervasive anti-Semitism of the non-Nazi right wing is a man whose record is nowadays often whitewashed. Pastor Martin Niemöller, later himself to be persecuted by the Nazis, never made a secret of his strong, racial anti-Semitism. In his Sätze zur Arierfrage in der Kirche ('Theses on the Aryan Question in the Church') of November 1933, he opposed the introduction of the "Aryan paragraph" in the Protestant church on doctrinal grounds, but takes care, nevertheless, to opine that Jews had done great harm to Germany; he also indicates that the baptized Christians of Jewish origins are personally distasteful to him. ^[15] As late as 1935, Niemöller goes out of his way to preach hatred against the Jews: "What is the reason for [their] obvious punishment, which has lasted for thousands of years? Dear brethren, the reason is easily given: the Jews brought the Christ of God to the cross!" ^[16]

The author, Professor Werner Cohn, states: "I lived as a Jew under the Nazis in the very years that he [Martin Niemöller] told his Dahlem congregation that we Jews were race aliens, and also that we deserved what we got, having murdered Christ. I lived not too far from his church, and his name was mentioned in my home.”^[17]

[edit] Quotation

Main article: First they came...

He is best known for a single poem – "First they came..." – a warning about the consequences of not resisting tyranny at the first instances of its rising. The exact order of groups and wording are subject to dispute, and many versions exist.

The best known version, but historically inaccurate and not the original version is as follows:

"First They Came for the Jews..."
First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.
-Attributed to Pastor Martin Niemoller

One commonly accepted variant is as follows:

Original	Translation
Als die Nazis die Kommunisten holten, habe ich geschwiegen; ich war ja kein Kommunist. Als sie die Sozialdemokraten einsperrten, habe ich geschwiegen; ich war ja kein Sozialdemokrat. Als sie die Gewerkschafter holten, habe ich nicht protestiert; ich war ja kein Gewerkschafter. Als sie mich holten, gab es keinen mehr, der protestieren konnte.	When the Nazis came for the communists, I remained silent; I was not a communist. When they locked up the social democrats, I did not speak out; I was not a social democrat. When they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak out; I was not a trade unionist. When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out.

[edit] Notes

1. ^ "Niemöller, (Friedrich Gustav Emil) Martin" The New Encyclopaedia Britannica (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1993), 8:698.
2. ^ "I really believed," Niemöller continued, "given the widespread anti-Semitism in Germany, at that time--that Jews should avoid aspiring to Government positions or seats in the Reichstag. There were many Jews, especially among the Zionists, who took a similar stand. Hitler's assurance satisfied me at the time. On the other hand, I hated the growing atheistic movement, which was fostered and promoted by the Social Democrats and the Communists. Their hostility toward the Church made me pin my hopes on Hitler for a while. (THE NATIONAL JEWISH MONTHLY, May 1941, pages 284-5, 301-2, NIEMOELLER speaks!, An Exclusive Report By One Who Lived 22 Months In Prison With The Famous German Pastor Who Defied Adolf Hitler, By LEO STEIN)
3. ^ F.L. Cross and E.A. Livingstone, The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), 975 sub loco and [1].
4. ^ ^{a b c d} Spartacus Educational website by John Simkin
5. ^ Robert Michael, Theological Myth, German Antisemitism, and the Holocaust: The Case of Martin Niemoeller, Holocaust Genocide Studies.1987; 2: 105-122.
6. ^ ^{a b c} "Niemöller," 8:698.
7. ^ The rise and fall of the Third Reich - A history of Nazi Germany by William L. Shirer
8. ^ The Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt Harold Marcuse (Professor of History at UC Santa Barbara), introduction to and translation of the Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt, accessed July 30, 2006.
9. ^ "Niemöller," 8:698
10. ^ Chronological timeline of Niemöller's life [2]
11. ^ WDR online:"Soldaten sind Mörder!"
12. ^ Robert Michael, "Christian Theological Antisemitism", H-Antisemitism, May 6, 1997.
13. ^ Robert Michael, Theological Myth, German Antisemitism, and the Holocaust: The Case of Martin Niemoeller, Holocaust Genocide Studies.1987; 2: 105-122.
14. ^ ^{a b c} Raimund Lammersdorf, "The Question of Guilt", 1945-47: German and American Answers, Conference at the German Historical Institute, Washington, D.C., March 25-27, 1999.
15. ^ text in Günther van Norden, Der Deutsche Protestantismus im Jahr der nationalsozialistischen Machtergreifung, Gütersloh, 1979, pp. 361-363.
16. ^ The text of this sermon, in English, is found in Martin Niemöller, First Commandment, London, 1937, pp. 243-250. .... On the attitude of the Bekennende Kirche to the Jews see also the revealing essay by Uriel Tal, 'On Modern Lutheranism and the Jews,' in LBI Yearbook XXX (1985), pp. 203-213. [3]
17. ^ http://www.history.ucsb.edu/faculty/marcuse/projects/niem/NiemAntisemCohnHMCorresp034.htm#cohnbiog

[edit] External links

• Who Was Martin Niemoller?
• Martin Niemöller's famous quotation: "First they came for the Communists" What did Niemoeller really say? Which groups did he name? In what order? Harold Marcuse, UC Santa Barbara (2005)
• Niemöller's famous quotation as posted by Holocaust Survivors' Network
• A biography of Niemöller
• The text (and an English translation) of the Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt
• [4]