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Ericksen, Robert P : THEOLOGIANS UNDER HITLER: GERHARD KITTEL, PAUL ALTHAUS, AND EMANUEL HIRSCH

New Haven; Yale University Press, 1985

Softbound. 8vo. 245 pages. 25 cm. First edition. “Robert Ericksen here presents his interpretation of the work and thought of three of Germany's great Protestant theological thinkers who supported Adolf Hitler. It is a most revealing study. He attempts throughout the work to understand how these three could have lent support to Hitler. He reviews the social setting of the Weimar Republic, deals with what he calls the crisis of modernity, and offers an interpretation of Protestant theological developments prior to and during Hitler's rise. Then he proceeds to study the three in turn. … Gerhard Kittel, perhaps the best known of the three because of his editorship of the massive Theologisches Wörterbuch zum Neuen Testament, now available in English translation, knew ancient Judaism very well and spent much of his life polemicizing against Jewish thought and in support of a Christianity freed of Jewish elements. He always claimed not to be anti-Semitic, but simply to be doing scholarly work that revealed the sharp contrasts between Judaism and Christianity. Many scholars in Germany have also drawn the contrast too sharply, but Kittel cannot be freed of the charge of having found support in his scholarship for his Nazi position with regard to the Jews. Emmanuel Hirsch, immensely learned in Protestant theology and a thoroughgoing apologist for Nazism, accomplished feats of scholarly work, especially in the history of Protestant thought. It is easy enough to spot the points where his Nazi views appear, but much of his work continues to be of great value. Paul Althaus is perhaps the most tragic of the three figures. Long associated with the Erlangen approach to theology and a great interpreter of Martin Luther, his constructive theological work aimed at showing how important the community was for an understanding of Christianity, and how central this notion of peoplehood had been for ancient Israel and was for the early Christian community-points well recognized and underscored today. But he was able to wring from this understanding a contemporary viewpoint in support of Hitler's call for peoplehood, racial purity, and land. A fine and discerning theological emphasis was perverted into a position that accommodated the Hitler movement. After the late 1930s, it appears, Althaus wrote nothing further that could easily be used for political-propagandistic purposes by the Nazis. One reads such a study with a sense of deep sadness as well as with frequent outbursts of anger. One need not share the view of the author that any one of the three theologians under review actually made Nazism intellectually respectable. One can hardly escape the author's conclusion, however: we all have much to learn from a careful review of the life and work of the three, for such aberrations, alongside Nazism's unspeakable accompanying deeds, could occur again. ” (Theology Today, Volume 43, April 1986, book review by Walter Harrelson of Vanderbilt Divinity School) . Subjects: Theologians - Germany - Biography. Church and state - Germany - History - 1933-1945. Theologie. Protestantisme. Nationaal-socialisme. Kittel, Gerhard, 1888-1948. Althaus, Paul, 1888-1966. Hirsch, Emanuel, 1888-1972. Germany - Biography. Germany - Social conditions - 1933-1945. Germany; Social conditions; Attitudes of Protestant theologians, 1933-1945. Light shelf wear. Very good + condition. (HOLO2-100-25)

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