Panel: CRITICAL PRESENTISM: WORKING ON CHURCHES/THEOLOGY/RELIGION AND THE HOLOCAUST IN 2025



323.9 - THE "ARYAN" JESUS PUT IN PRAXIS: RELIGIOUS EVERYDAY LIFE IN GERMAN CHRISTIANS PARISHES DURING THE THIRD REICH

AUTHORS:
Schuster D. (University of Vienna ~ Vienna ~ Austria)
Text:
Over the last 25 years, fundamental work has been done on the inner-Protestant church organization German Christians, which sought to combine Protestantism and National Socialism. In addition to the supposed scientific evidence that Jesus was not Jewish, and that Judaism had always been the greatest enemy of the German volk, Protestant doctrine was also "de-Judaized". The German volk was understood as the chosen people of God and Adolf Hitler as the divinely sent Führer. For their main goal, the implementation of a "de-Judaized" Christianity the German Christians published, among other things, a "Jew-free" Bible and a "de-Judaized" hymnal. Today, however, little is known about everyday church life in Protestant parishes in which this "Aryan" Christianity was implemented. Using concrete examples from Germany and Austria, the paper attempts to provide an insight into how this "Aryan" Christianity has looked like in everyday congregational life.