“An incessant army of demons”: Wolf Meyer-Erlach, Luther, and “the Jews” in Nazi Germany

The role of “academic” scholarship as a tool for the Gleichschaltung (coordination) of the populace during the Third Reich has attracted recent scholarly attention. Wolf Meyer-Erlach was one Protestant theologian who devoted his limited academic skills to the service of the Nazi regime. This article examines his use of Martin Luther’s “Judenschriften” to affirm Nazi anti-Jewish policy. Bringing to bear Gavin Langmuir’s approach to the study of antisemitism, the following addresses the question of whether Meyer-Erlach’s “theological” rhetoric represented anti-Judaism, antisemitism, or both. It explores in microcosm the place of continuity and discontinuity in the early modern and modern hatred of Jews.