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  • The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany
  • Mark E. Ruff
The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany. By Susannah Heschel. (Princeton: Princeton University Press. 2008. Pp. xx, 339. ISBN 978-0-691-12531-2.)

Susannah Heschel's highly praised book uncovers a wealth of new archival sources in its focus on the Institute for the Study and Eradication of Jewish Influence on German Religious Life, a "scholarly" institute that existed from 1939 to 1945. Although the title refers more generally to Christian theologians, she makes it clear that this institute was overwhelmingly led, staffed, and sponsored by Protestants and in particular by theologians, pastors, and academics associated with the German Christian movement that sought to fuse Christianity with the ideals of National Socialism.

The key figure in her account is Walter Grundmann, a rather bookish New Testament scholar who became head of the institute while serving as a professor in the theology department at the University of Jena, which became the most Nazified theology department in Germany. Like others in this movement, Grundmann aspired to reshape German Protestantism. He sought a masculine church, in which Jesus was recast as a warrior out to destroy the morally rotten edifice of Judaism. Drawing on claims from the late-nineteenth century onward that underscored the settlement of non-Jews to the Galilean region in the wake of the Assyrian conquest, he insisted that Jesus was Aryan—and certainly not Jewish. He and his compatriots attempted to dejudaize liturgies, hymns, and even the New Testament.

Heschel's book is rich in astute insights. She points out that many of the pioneers of this movement suffered from religious doubts; in their search for a new basis for faith, racial doctrines and National Socialism provided ideal foundations. Many ambitious scholars saw in the institute the opportunity to further their careers, as it provided a nexus for publishing, networking, and conferences. Here they were not disappointed. In a particularly compelling chapter of the book, she describes how many of the institute's fellows and grantees continued to profit in the postwar era from these associations. With but a few exceptions, most were eventually exonerated by denazification panels, as they had successfully maintained the fiction that they had actively [End Page 859] resisted National Socialism. Most went on to assume positions as pastors or academics in both East and West Germany, making little reference to their most unsavory antisemitic proclamations of the past. Grundmann himself became the rector of the Thuringian seminary in Eisenach—and moonlighted as a Stasi informer, taking revenge on those members of the Confessing Church who had moved into high places after 1945. She leaves little doubt that these institute members did not ultimately renounce their prior beliefs. In his postwar New Testament scholarship, Grundmann continued to deplore the lack of morality and violence purportedly at the core of the Jewish tradition.

It is clear, however, that Heschel is seeking after more in this book. At various places, she hints at a more sweeping indictment of Christianity. She argues that the Confessing Church and the German Christians effectively competed against each other to see who could be more antisemitic. Citing the Confessing Church historian Hans von Soden, she argues that the use of racist ideas was so pervasive among theologians that "supporters and opponents of Nazism cannot easily be distinguished" (p. 161). More fundamentally, the Nazis could not reject Christianity, she claims, "not because it would offend the moral and social sensibilities of Germans but because the anti-Semitism of Christianity formed the basis on which the party could appeal to Germans" (p. 8).

To make this case, she would have to shift her methodology from intellectual to social history, showing that antisemitism not only permeated the thoughts of theologians in their church and ivory towers but also occupied a central role in the sermons, confirmation classes, and instructional materials of ordinary pastors—and that rank-and-file churchgoers were duly influenced by these materials. Here, a bit of caution might be in order. Protestant churchgoers were notoriously lax in their attendance; the socialization of young Protestants famously weak. As Jeff Zalar has shown...

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