Martin Niemöller

File:Timbre Allemagne 1992 Martin Niemoller obl.jpg

Martin Niemoller on a post stamp, painted by Gerd Aretz in 1992

Friedrich Gustav Emil Martin Niemöller (January 14, 1892 – March 6, 1984) was a prominent German anti-Nazi theologian and Lutheran pastor. He is best known as the author of the poem First they came....

Although he was a national conservative, an antisemite, and initially a sympathizer of Adolf Hitler, he became one of the founders of the Confessing Church, which opposed the nazification of German Protestant churches. For his opposition to the Nazi's state control of the churches, Niemöller was imprisoned in Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps from 1937 to 1945. He narrowly escaped execution and survived imprisonment. He claimed these events purged him of his anti-Semitic beliefs. Since the 1950s he was a vocal pacifist and anti-war activist. He met with Ho Chi Minh during the Vietnam War and was a committed campaigner for nuclear disarmament.

Early Life

He was born in Lippstadt and was a U-boat commander in World War I, winning the Iron Cross First Class. After the war, he spent some time in the Freikorps.^{[citation needed]} He studied theology and was ordained in 1931, becoming pastor of St. Anne's Church in Dahlem, an affluent suburb of Berlin.

Role in Nazi Germany

According to Holocaust scholar Robert Michael, beliefs such as those held by Niemöller made even Nazi victims into Holocaust collaborators: "Martin Niemoeller in his radically antisemitic August 1935 sermon noted that the Jews would not be released from their suffering until they converted, Jewish suffering being 'proof' that Jesus was God. The essential reason the Jews were cursed was because they 'brought the Christ of God to the Cross ... These kinds of statements are a result of traditional antisemitism, and beliefs such as these corrupted average people as well as the elite and made them all not just victims of Nazis but active or passive collaborators in the Holocaust.' According to Dr. Michael, Martin Niemoeller agreed with the Nazi's position on the Jewish question.

The author, Professor Werner Cohn, states: "I lived as a Jew under the Nazis in the very years that he [Martin Niemöller] told his Dahlem congregation that we Jews were race aliens, and also that we deserved what we got, having murdered Christ. I lived not too far from his church, and his name was mentioned in my home.”

Professor Werner Cohn, states: "One of the most striking exemplars of the pervasive anti-Semitism of the non-Nazi right wing is a man whose record is nowadays often whitewashed. Pastor Martin Niemöller, later himself to be persecuted by the Nazis, never made a secret of his strong, racial anti-Semitism. In his Sätze zur Arierfrage in der Kirche ('Theses on the Aryan Question in the Church') of November 1933, he opposed the introduction of the "Aryan paragraph" in the Protestant church on doctrinal grounds, but takes care, nevertheless, to opine that Jews had done great harm to Germany; he also indicates that the baptized Christians of Jewish origins are personally distasteful to him.

In 1933, Niemöller founded the Pfarrernotbund, an organization of pastors to "combat rising discrimination against Christians of Jewish background." By the autumn of 1934, Niemöller joined other Lutheran and Protestant churchmen like Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer in founding the Confessing Church, a Protestant group that opposed the Nazification of the German Protestant churches.

"Niemoller had exposed himself as an opportunist who had no quarrel with Hitler politically and only begun to oppose the Nazis when Hitler threatened to attack the churches."

As late as 1935, Niemöller goes out of his way to preach hatred against the Jews: "What is the reason for [their] obvious punishment, which has lasted for thousands of years? Dear brethren, the reason is easily given: the Jews brought the Christ of God to the cross!"

Arrest and Imprisonment

Arrested on July 1, 1937, Niemöller was brought to a "Special Court" on March 2, 1938 to be tried for activities against the State. He was fined 2,000 Mark and received a prison terms of 7 months. As his detention period exceeded the jail term, he was released by the Court after the trial. However, immediately after leaving the Court, he was rearrested by Himmler's Gestapo. He was interned in Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps from 1938 to 1945.

After his former cell mate was released from Sachsenhausen to go to America, he wrote an article about Niemöller for The National Jewish Monthly. The author reports that having asked Niemöller why he ever joined the Nazi Party, Niemöller replied:

"I find myself wondering about that too," he answered. "I wonder about it is much as I regret it. Still, it is true that Hitler betrayed me. I had an audience with him, as a representative of the Protestant Church, shortly before he became Chancellor, in 1932. Hitler promised me on his word of honor, to protect the Church, and not to issue any anti-Church laws. He also agreed not to allow pogroms against the Jews, assuring me as follows: 'There will be restrictions against the Jews, but there will be no ghettos, no pogroms, in Germany'."

"I really believed," Niemoeller continued, "given the widespread anti-Semitism in Germany, at that time—that Jews should avoid aspiring to Government positions or seats in the Reichstag. There were many Jews, especially among the Zionists, who took a similar stand. Hitler's assurance satisfied me at the time. On the other hand, I hated the growing atheistic movement, which was fostered and promoted by the Social Democrats and the Communists. Their hostility toward the Church made me pin my hopes on Hitler for a while.

"I am paying for that mistake now; and not me alone, but thousands of other persons like me."

Release and post-War activities

He was released by the allies in 1945. After his release in 1945, he was president of the Evangelical church in Hesse and Nassau from 1947 to 1961. He was one of the initiators in the Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt, signed by leading figures in the German church. The document acknowledged that the church had not done enough to resist the Nazis.

Aspects of his biography had been played down when America had needed a clean German hero.

“In contrast to the leftist and communist resistance, his status as a Protestant minister fighting for freedom on a Christian platform and his principled disobedience to an unjust regime made him highly useful to governmental propaganda agencies, which turned him into a martyr for the cause of democracy.”

“He was presented by the American press as the spokesman for a different Germany and the hope for a better future.”

“Niemoller had become an ‘American hero.’”

However, “his star began to sink rapidly when his other pronouncements and his past … caught up with him.”

"Further evidence of his moral duplicity was found in his statement that anti-Semitism had come to an end in Germany and would not recur." Niemöller himself spoke out on the matter in 1959 in a letter to Alfred Wiener, a Jewish researcher into racism and war crimes committed by the Nazi regime. In this letter, Niemöller wrote that he had "never concealed the fact" he had come "from an anti-Semitic past and tradition"; he added that eight years of imprisonment had turned him into a completely different person.

Especially under the impact of a meeting with "the father of nuclear chemistry", Otto Hahn, in July 1954, Niemöller became an ardent pacifist and campaigner for nuclear disarmament. He was soon a leading figure of the post-war German peace movement. He was even brought to court in 1959 because he had spoken about the military in a very unflattering way.

In 1961, he became president of the World Council of Churches. He took active part in protests against the Vietnam War and the NATO Double-Track Decision.

He died at Wiesbaden.

See also

• First they came...
• Franz Hildebrandt

External links

• Who Was Martin Niemoller?
• Martin Niemöller's famous quotation: "First they came for the Communists" What did Niemoeller really say? Which groups did he name? In what order? Harold Marcuse, UC Santa Barbara (2005)
• Niemöller's famous quotation as posted by Holocaust Survivors' Network
• A biography of Niemöller
• The text (and an English translation) of the Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt
• [4]

cs:Martin Niemöller da:Martin Niemöller de:Martin Niemöller es:Martin Niemöller fr:Martin Niemöller it:Martin Niemöller he:מרטין נימלר nl:Martin Niemöller ja:マルティン・ニーメラー pl:Martin Niemöller pt:Martin Niemöller ru:Нимёллер, Мартин sv:Martin Niemöller

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