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223 The Kirchenkampf had ended; a new church was emerging from the ruins and ashes left by the total collapse of the Nazi dictatorship. This examination of the postwar era focuses primarily on those who spoke out before 1945: both those whose words were heeded and those whose statements were ignored. As with every inheritance, there were fights about the legacy of the church struggle. The early postwar period was marked by the claims of different groups to church leadership. In their attempt to come to terms with the past, church leaders searched for new theological understandings, and the German Evangelical Church produced several important confessions of guilt. ∞Ω Confessions of Guilt On Ascension Day 1945, two days after the Nazi surrender on 8 May, Bishop Wurm concluded a sermon with ‘‘a word to our people . . . in the name of our Württemberg Protestant Church and as the spokesman of the entire Confessing Church in Germany.’’ Wurm directed his comments primarily to the state, which had not listened to the churches’ warnings: ‘‘How much distress and suffering could have been avoided if those who had held leadership in Germany had used their power conscientiously , justly, prudently. From the side of the two Christian churches, there was no shortage of attempts to remind the rulers of their responsibility to God and to human beings. But these admonitions either were not noted or were rejected as interference in state affairs.’’∞ In his weekly letter of 15 August 1945, Bishop Marahrens shared the burdens on his conscience with the congregations of the regional church of Hannover: ‘‘It weighs particularly heavily upon me—I have already said this several times—that the church did not find the redemptive word in the first storm that broke over the Jews of Germany. However divided from the Jews we may be in our beliefs and although a number of them may have brought severe harm upon our people, they ought not to have been attacked in an inhuman fashion.’’≤ Marahrens’s words were an ambivalent expression of regret, at best; his anti-Semitism did not allow for more. Still, he raised tentative ques- The Legacy of the Church Struggle 224 tions about the roots of the guilt that rested like a stumbling block ‘‘upon our path’’: ‘‘Were we struck dumb by our initial astonishment at the ominous impending conflict, or did we not see the true facts clearly enough? In any case, it becomes evident that guilt lies upon our path and that we cannot perform our work without living our lives on the basis of forgiveness.’’≥ With each month, the unimaginable scope of the murderous deeds done to the Jews became clearer. In August 1945, church leaders called their first conference, with the goal of regathering their members into a unified Evangelical Church in Germany. The Reich Council of Brethren met in Frankfurt from 21 to 24 August and drafted a ‘‘Word to the Pastors’’: Moral standards do not suffice to measure the magnitude of the guilt that our people has brought upon itself. Newer and newer deeds of inhumanity become known. Many people still cannot believe that all of this is supposed to be true. In this abyss of our guilt, the body and soul of our people are mortally threatened. We confess our guilt and submit ourselves to the burden of its consequences .∂ This statement was not ratified by the Church Conference of Treysa that met a few days later (27–30 August 1945). The first nationwide German Protestant meeting after the war, the Treysa conference was attended by representatives of most regional churches, the Committee for Church Unity (founded by Bishop Wurm during the war), and the Confessing Church Reich Council of Brethren. Martin Niemöller was probably involved in drafting the Council of Brethren’s statement, as his subsequent contribution to the Treysa meeting suggests. Speaking for the Reich Council of Brethren, he argued: I must strike a note here that undoubtedly has been neglected in all that we have heard up to now. Certainly, we stand before a state of chaos and, in many cases, we are already in the middle of it. But we must ask what has brought us to this. Our distress is not due to the fact that we have lost the war. . . . Nor is our situation today primarily the fault of our people and of the Nazis; how could they have followed a path that they did not know; they simply believed, after...

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