- Martin
Niemöller. Hero of the German underground resistance
Martin Niemöller
is, probably, the most emblematic figure of the German
underground to the Third Reich. He was born in Lippstadt,
Westphalia, on January 14th, 1892. He was a lieutenant
of a submarine during the First World War and due to his
services he was awarded with the Pour le Mérite
condecoration.
When the war was over he dedicated
his time to the study of Theology.
In 1924 he was named reverend. Between 1931 and 1937 he
was in charge of the Berlin-Dahlem Church, and like many
other German Protestants, he welcomed Nazism when it took
the government in 1933. He thought, as most thought at
the beginning, that Hitler was the personification of
the German nationalism revival, a mythology devalued by
the defeat and the Versailles agreement.
His early autobiography, 'From the
submarine to the pulpit´ ('Vom U-Boot zur Kanzel'),
in 1933, was profusely praised by the press due to its
ideas and patriotic prose.
Niemöller shared with the Nazi
regime the dislike for communists and the Republic of
Weimar about which he said that it had given Germany ´fourteen
years of darkness'.
Disenchantment and disobedience
However, very soon, at the beginning
of 1934, Niemöller's illusion disappeared when Hitler
subordinated the German Evangelic Church with the collaboration
of Ludwig Müller, bishop of the Reich. Some kind
of neopaganism was established. The Old Testament was
abandoned. All pastors were forced to swear loyalty to
the Reich under the saying 'One People, One Reich, One
Faith'. Those who opposed the aberration were arrested
and many died in the gas chambers. 'National Socialism
and Christianity are irreconcilable', repeated Martin
Bormann, Hitler's shadow.
With the aim of maintaining the independence
of the Lutheran church from the advances of the totalitarian
power, Niemöller founded in 1934 the Emergency Pastoral
League (Pfarrernotbund) and assumed the direction of the
Confessional Church (Bekennende Kirche), an opposition
movement that clearly differentiated from Christians who
supported Nazism.
Within the general Sinod of May 1934,
the Confessional Church declared itself as the legitimate
representative of Protestantism in Germany and attracted
more than seven thousand pastors. Being aware of the plans
that the authority had for him, Niemöller said in
one of his last sermons in the Reich: 'We must use our
powers to free from the oppressive hand of the authority
like the Apostholes of old did. We are not willing to
remain silent by decision of man when God commands us
to speak.'
Hitler, furious by the attitude of
open uprising of the once praised pastor, ordered his
arrest on July 1st 1937. Tried in March 1938, Niemöller
was found guilty of subversive actions against the State
and was condemned to seven months of imprisonment and
to pay a fine of two thousand Marks.
After serving his term, Niemöller
continued practicing his tenacious disobedience and was
arrested again. This time the sentence resulted more severe
and he had to spend seven years at the Sachsenhausen
concentration camp under the legal figure of 'protective
custody' and, on Hitler's command, as 'personal prisoner
of the Führer'. The allied troops liberated him in
1945. The same year and during one of his classes, back
in the academic life, a student, astonished by Niemöller's
narration about what had happened in Germany, asked him
how all of that had been possible. After thinking for
a few seconds, he answered him with the famous poem that
starts this article.
In 1947 he was chosen president of
the Protestant Church in Hessen and Nassau, a charge he
took until his retirement in 1964, at the at age of seventy-two.
A consummated pacifist, he dedicated
the last years of his life to preach about the danger
of nuclear weapons, an activity which drove him to many
meetings with politicians and organizations of the Soviet
bloc. He died in Wiesbaden, on March 6th., 1984.
Buenos Aires and Berlin, sister cities
The International Raoul Wallenberg
Foundation reminds us of Niemöller and his life example.
In addition to the internationally renowned figures of the German underground
there were many other people who, in one way or another,
flagrantly disobeyed the command of the Third Reich. Together
with the Center of Studies about Anti-Semitism of the
Berlin University of Technology, directed by Professor
Wolfgang Benz and Dr. Beate Kosmala, we promote
the results of a research that until now has collected
real facts about more than three thousand people, mostly
from Berlin, who helped Jews and others persecuted during
the rule of the National Socialism.
For its part, the Evangelic Church
of Germany, in an unprecedented decision, has decided
to place in the Church of Our Father in the German capital
(Vaterunser Kirche) a replica of the Commemorative
Mural to the Victims of the Holocaust. This symbol
of reconciliation was installed in 1997 at the Chapel
of the Luján Virgin at the Metropolitan Cathedral
by Cardinal Antonio Quarracino, following a request by
our organization. Thus, Berlin will be the second metropolis
in the world to place a reminder of the murders of the
Shoah within a Christian temple, a privilege until now
only kept by the city of Buenos Aires.
New York, March 2002
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