What Did the Germans Believe, 1933–1945?
Conference on the relationship between National Socialism and individual faith
A conference of the Cluster of Excellence will examine new research perspectives on the relationship between religion and politics in National Socialism. “Although National Socialism in Germany established itself in a society dominantly characterised by Christianity, the conventional measuring of the relationship between the Nazi movement and the two Christian churches is based on a ‘church struggle’ or at least on an opposition of the two factors: National Socialism on the one hand and potentially resistant Christianity on the other,” explain the organisers, the historians Prof. Dr. Olaf Blaschke and Prof. Dr. Thomas Großbölting. “More obvious than a clear distinction between National Socialism and Christianity are the complex ties between the two as well as repercussions, in particular on the individual ‘faith’ and on the Germans’ creation of meaning in the 1930s and 1940s,” the organisers say.
The conference “Was glaubten die Deutschen 1933–1945? Eine neue Perspektive auf das Verhältnis von Religion und Politik im Nationalsozialismus” (What did the Germans believe, 1933–1945? A new perspective on the relationship between religion and politics in National Socialism) will take place in Münster on Thursday, 6 December and Friday, 7 December. In a public evening lecture in lecture hall F 5 in the Fürstenberghaus on Thursday evening at 6.30 pm, contemporary historian Prof. Dr. Hans-Ulrich Thamer will talk about the contradictory relationship between the National Socialist “Volksgemeinschaft” and Christian faith communities.
With this change of perspective, the conference aims to analyse religion during the Nazi era, not as a factor of tradition and resistance from the outset, but rather as a running fact, possibly even as a partial factor of the regime. “We will ask, for example: did National Socialism unfold despite or because of the basic Christian attitudes of the majority society? A greater part of the population was possibly neither a National Socialist nor a Christian, but a melange of both.” This “hybrid” faith of ordinary Germans, as members of the church and part of the “master race”, as faithful Christians and faithful nationalists, will be discussed at the conference in social, motivational and discourse-historical terms. (exc/sca)