The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany

by Professor Susannah Heschel

Was Jesus a Nazi? During the Third Reich, German Protestant theologians, motivated by racism and tapping into traditional Christian anti-Semitism, redefined Jesus as an Aryan and Christianity as a religion at war with Judaism. In 1939, these theologians established the Institute for the Study and Eradication of Jewish Influence on German Religious Life. In The Aryan Jesus, Susannah Heschel shows that during the Third Reich, the Institute became the most important propaganda organ of German Protestantism, exerting a widespread influence and producing a nazified Christianity that placed anti-Semitism at its theological center. Based on years of archival research, The Aryan Jesus examines the membership and activities of this controversial theological organization. With headquarters in Eisenach, the Institute sponsored propaganda conferences throughout the Nazi Reich and published books defaming Judaism, including a dejudaized version of the New Testament and a catechism proclaiming Jesus as the savior of the Aryans. Institute members--professors of theology, bishops, and pastors--viewed their efforts as a vital support for Hitler's war against the Jews. Heschel looks in particular at Walter Grundmann, the Institute's director and a professor of the New Testament at the University of Jena. Grundmann and his colleagues formed a community of like-minded Nazi Christians who remained active and continued to support each other in Germany's postwar years. The Aryan Jesus raises vital questions about Christianity's recent past and the ambivalent place of Judaism in Christian thought.

Genres: History, Religion, Church History, Theology, Christianity, Holocaust, Nonfiction

519 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 20, 2008

Reviews

[Kathryn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had always understood that during the time when the Nazis were in control of Germany the Christian Churches were lonely bastions of sanity, defending human rights against the evil Nazis and only accommodating to the Nazis insofar as was absolutely necessary for the survival of the Churches. This very scholarly book tells a very different story, and I am very glad I read it, although, since the book reads very much like a thesis, it is not at all a book for the popular press.

The Germans had lost the First World War, and there were many elements within Germany who blamed the Jews for the outcome. The Nazis came to power on a platform of saving Germany and making Germany great again by eliminating non-Aryans, especially those non-Aryans who were Jewish (and who thus were determined to destroy Germany). Meanwhile, the Christian Churches (almost entirely Lutheran) had a turf war, between those who felt that the Old Testament should be retained and those who felt that the Old Testament should be thrown out as being too Jewish. At this same time, theologians, working with the pervasive anti-Semitism within the church, worked to determine that Jesus was not Jewish, and that it was his opposition to the Jews that got him crucified. In 1939 theologians opened the Institut zur Erforschung und Beseitigung des J’udischen Einflusses auf das Deutsche Kirchliche Leben (Institute for the Study and Eradication of Jewish Influence on German Church Life), which worked closely with the government and the University of Jena in producing papers, conferences, and a New Testament that were shorn of Jewish content, in accordance with Nazi racism.

Essentially, the entire German people were subject to a pervasive anti-Semitism in favor of what was truly German. (We in America have no grounds to be smug; racism against people of color was simply accepted as the prevailing way of life until the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960′s.) The Nazis essentially took this anti-Semitism to a whole new level, pledging to make Germany great by removing all Jews and Jewish influence on German life, and the churches had no problem at all with this policy. As Jesus had fought valiantly against the Jews, so Hitler was fighting valiantly against the same Jews who wished to destroy Germany.

This is a very complex book, with a horrifying subject; I had no clue that organized religion worked so closely with the Nazis, although organized religion did not want to know the details of just how the Jews were being “removed” from German life. But I feel better for having learned about this subject (forewarned is forearmed), and I would recommend this book to anyone who is willing to wade through the forest of details contained in this book.

[Svenja · Rating 4 out of 5]

Had to read this book for one of my classes - found it highly recommendable for everyone who wants to know in more depths about the relation between (German Christian) theology and national socialism and anti-Judaism in particular. Some passages hit me quite hard I must say, but it is an absolute necessary contribution for dealing with this chapter of history!

[Tony Sunderland · Rating 5 out of 5]

An evil quest !

During the Third Reich, propagandists attempted to create an historical vision of Jesus that would concur with Adolf Hitler’s political platform. What eventuated was a “morally bankrupt” portrait of a Germanic, Aryan Jesus as reflected and endorsed by the Nazi party and the majority of the German Christian movement. The Aryan Jesus as given to us by Susannah Heschel is a Frankenstein like creation that expresses both the darker aspects of human nature and the ability of propaganda devices to manipulate entire cultural traditions. The essential ‘Jewish Jesus’ was destroyed by Nazi theologians who preferred to invent a historical Jesus who was devoid of any tangible connection with the nation of Israel in God’s grand plan for The German race.
A new narrative was created that gave a more exotic story of Jesus and his genealogy. The Nazi’s redefined Jesus’ origins by establishing his place of birth as non-Semitic. Jesus is now aligned with an Indo-European background and Aryan descent. Once Jesus’ racial identity was purified of Semitism, he could be aligned with any number of religious faiths. This could include links to ancient Zoroastrianism or even Buddhism. From the book:

“Jesus’ message was not authentically Jewish because late Jewish apocalypticism was derived from Chaldean and Iranian traditions of a dualism of divine and evil forces, a notion that did not arise in Israel but originated in ancient Aryan sources and was expressed in texts such as…1 Enoch 105”

By the beginning of the 20th century, earlier German theologians had unwittingly destroyed any real hope in finding a Jesus of history that would stand against rational criticism. At best for Albert Schweitzer, any attempt to find the historical Jesus through the books of the New Testament is more like looking into a mirror rather than a window into the past. The Jesus that stands before the mirror of Nazi creation is a Teutonic German warrior king hell bent on German domination over all things. He is not the Jewish messiah foretold in the Hebrew bible. More than anything, this brilliant book stands as a dramatic warning to the fallibility of human nature in the face of constructed, communal evil.

[Aaron · Rating 5 out of 5]

(Note: to prevent accidental flagging of this review for certain reasons, any references to the exact name of the WW2 era German government will be “Nutcracker” and their leader, “Haman”)


In another book devoured some months back, an interesting concept was brought to life: the saeculum, a period of time more or less just under a century and the four turnings that comprise it. Looking at history from a macro level, sadly, it seems, we are forever doomed to repeat it. That golden era that Isaiah prophesied about so lovingly in the second chapter of a book bearing his name may in fact not be just round the corner. What is going on today far from being new, seems to be another rehash of events just under a saeculum ago thus putting us squarely in the tail end of a fourth turning.

Many a book—thousands if not more and that’s just in English—have been written about Nutcracker Germany (see above for word usage reasons) and their charismatic leader Haman (again, above). What can another add? One that talks about antisemitism in the events leading up to WW2? Covered and then some. One about the multitude of battles on both major fronts? Probably even more. But what about...religion? There is a mistaken belief that Nutcracker Germany like the Soviet Union was a mostly atheist entity where belief in a Higher Power was swapped with belief simply in the state and its infallible (though all too human) leader. This is partially true, but not entirely as millions in Germany remained staunchly Christian.

This—being a full-fledged Christian in a society that treats Jews as worth less than a three day old newspaper begins to have its problems when one starts reading Scripture. How can a Christian who also is a Nutcracker explain something like Zechariah 8:23? (“Thus said the LORD of Hosts: In those days, ten men from nations of every tongue will take hold—they will take hold of every Jew by a corner of his cloak and say, “Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you.”) And beyond the countless verses in the Old Testament/Tanakh, the New is for better or worse, attached to it by the hip. The Marcions tried and failed, but can the “Institute for the Study and Eradication of Jewish Influence on German Religious Life” do the impossible?

The Aryan Jesus shows how an attempt was made to not only turn Jesus from the peace-loving rabbi who did believe in the Law and was nailed to the cross for theological reasons that go beyond this review and turned him into a Jew-hating take-no-prisoners hyper-macho lover of the Vol...wait, this sounds awfully familiar to American Christian Nationalism, does it not?

For those looking for a book that focuses on the Jewish reaction to the endless antisemitism (because yes, in spite of some postwar historical revisionism, pretty much every German named in this book absolutely hated Jews), this one’s not for you. What we get is laser precision focus on how Christianity was made (and failed) to adapt to a society that put blind faith pride of an impossible cause helmed by a leader who got too high on his own stash over any sense of reason.


Coda: A ‘what if?’ like no other is briefly and almost inadvertently touched upon in the book’s penultimate chapter: what if the Dead Sea Scrolls were already discovered? And what if they were not only discovered, but years—or even decades ago—and thus were considered valid and established beyond any reasonable doubt? Surely this would have had little to no effect in the German government’s priorities at the time, but it may have vastly neutered any real attempt at modifying the Christian faith using the History of Religions form of study (Religionsgeschichtliche Schule). It may have made the lives of some of the biggest sycophants and religious hucksters in history more challenging when it came to aligning Jesus with Haman.


---Notable Highlights---

‘The actual truth’ is ‘my heart goes out to you’:
“...the most useful and consistent aspect of Christianity for the Nutcracker movement was its anti-Judaism, just as the single most consistent and persistent feature of Nutcrackerism was its antisemitism.”

Mainstream church attendance may be dropping, but people still...uh, have the faith:
“Meanwhile, Christianity was not to be banned nor the churches outlawed; rather, as the historian Ernst Piper writes, Nutcracker strategy was to control the churches and lead to “a steadily advancing process of delegitimization and disassociation, of undermining and repression” that would undercut the church’s moral authority and position of respect.”

“Do as we say, not as we do”:
“Instead, they (leaders of the German Christian movement, who are super patriotic and super antisemitic, not to be confused with the Confessing Church which was only very patriotic and super antisemitic) redoubled their devotion to Haman by speaking, for example, of the “Führer Jesus” and describing Haman as “God’s agent [beauftragter] in our day.”

Do ‘inflection points’ really matter?
“Once Nutrackerism’s function as a political legitimator of antisemitism was accomplished with the elimination of the Jews, Institute members became involved in whatever political movement was in the ascendancy.”

[Lara Simone Bhasin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a painful book for me to read as a Lutheran pastor. As the author writes in her conclusion, the Holocaust is indeed a wound in the heart of Christian theology.

I do think that Heschel does not give the Confessing Church (counterpart to the German Christian movement) enough credit. But overall her scholarship is a warning about the effects of culture on theological conviction. The antisemitic German Christians were, on the whole, the “avant garde” of theology. They were “progressive” in their own eyes. They were interested in modernizing Christian faith to make it more relevant to their own situation. By even the most generous standards, they were barely Christian, in that they rejected just about every major dogma of historic Christian faith. For instance, most rejected the divinity of Jesus and believed that even the New Testament, even the Sermon on the Mount itself, were “corrupted” by Jewish influences. They were willing and eager to rewrite the Bible and reject doctrine in order to follow their own agenda. Let this be a warning to all Christians today.

A book like this forces all Christians to reckon with the antisemitism at the heart of Christian culture and theology. I would like to see the same honest self-examination from other world religions about their own history of antisemitism.

[Jack Townsend · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book is a very good read. I think it is intended for the scholar of the period, for it gets into a lot of detail about persons and events that a general reader of the period and traumatic time might want. The basis argument is that Christian theologians sympathetic to the Nazi goal of first discriminating against and then exterminating Jews in Germany and then Europe began to re-interpret Jesus in a way that presented him as an Aryan (certainly Aryan-like) who was against the Jews. Jesus is thus presented as not a Jew but an Aryan in opposition to the Jew. With that re-orientation of Jesus, the Nazi anti-Jewish agenda could be made more palatable to Germans (and others) who did not like Jews. I was disappointed that there was not more discussion of the role of the Confessing Church and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Still, the overall theme of the book is well-researched and -presented. It presents a history lesson about Nazism and a warning as to how religion, particularly Christianity can be bent in service to evil.

[Greg Schloesser · Rating 4 out of 5]

An in-depth examination and report on how German Protestant leadership -- including theologians and professors -- attempted to separate Jesus from his Jewish heritage and ban all Jewish influence in the Christian faith. Led by the Institute for the Study and Eradication of Jesus Influence on Church life organization, the movement was just as antisemitic as the Nazi hierarchy and, while technically independent of the political regime, virtually marched hand-in-hand in their efforts to eradicate Jewish influence on Christian theology and German society.

The book has been well researched and documented by author Susannah Heschel, but is not a difficult or heavily-laden read. It is eye-opening at how learned scholars, professors and clergy used hatred of the Jewish people to alter and change Scripture to suit their racist views and align with those of the ruling Nazi party. Most of those involved were able to continue in their professions after the fall of the Third Reich. Sad and scary.

[Charlie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overview: The Aryan Jesus is a study of the Institut zur Erforschung und Beseitigung des jüdischen Einflusses auf das deutsche kirchliche Leben (The Institute for the Study and Eradication of Jewish Influence on German Church Life), a quasi-academic, anti-semitic research institute. This organization, founded in 1939 by Walter Grundmann, united academics in pursuing a synthesis of German Christian theology and Nazi ideology that would justify the spiritual and later physical eradication of all Jewishness from German life. Attached to the University of Jena and benefitting from Nazi underwriting, it widely disseminated its ideas both in lectures and print. Though the Institute was closed in 1945 following the collapse of the Nazi party, its influence persisted for decades.

Scholarly Context: Heschel is writing within the context of a shift in scholarship that occurred during the 1980s. Before then, it was common to distance the churches and Christianity from Nazism by portraying Nazism as uniformly anti-Christian. This was the line taken by the churches in the post-war era and accepted by Allies who wanted to use the churches as instruments of social reconstruction. However, more recent works have highlighted broad ideological similarities between Nazis, German Christians, and even the Confessing Church. In particular, anti-semitism was quite common, though not expressed the same way. Heschel’s study of the Institute, which has received little attention, underscores both the support of many Christians qua Christians for Nazi aims and the way that association with churches and “legitimate” academic institutions shielded many active Nazi supporters from denazification initiatives.

Survey: I would divide the book into four major sections: ideology, activity, biography, legacy. Ideology, comprising the introduction and first two chapters, situates the Institute within the broader context of the German Christian movement, a wing of the state church that sought to purify Christianity from Jewish influences in order to recover a pure Teutonic Jesus and Christianity appropriate for the German Volk. This section explores the way both churches and academic institutions increasingly operated within a set of racialized assumptions; eventually race became the distinguishing feature of their mentalities. Central to their efforts was reconstructing Jesus as an Aryan figure who transcended and combatted Judaism.

Activity, comprising parts of chapter two and the long third chapter, details concrete activities. The Institute established working groups of scholars, conferences uniting scholars and pastors, and publications aimed at a range of audiences. Among the more ambitious of the Institute’s print projects were a fully dejudaized Bible, hymnal, and catechism. With the Old Testament mostly eliminated, Paul safely excised, and the Gospels reconfigured along a Johannine-Markan axis, Christians could read and worship with texts that reassuringly confirmed their Germanic superiority. Institute members also published scholarly books, journal articles, and other occasional writings.

Biography, covering the fourth and fifth chapters, gets to the question of who these Nazi theologians were. It turns out that there is no standard profile of a Nazi theologian. The Institute contributors represented a spectrum of age, demographic, and scholarly backgrounds. To all of them it offered career enhancement and the tools to racialize their work. The Institute benefited particularly from its close relationship with the University of Jena, where three Institute members were on the faculty of theology. They instituted a curriculum overhaul to bring Jena’s theology instruction in line with the Institute’s goals. They also had Institute members submit doctoral dissertations through Jena to heighten the Institute’s academic credentials.

Legacy, comprising the final chapter and conclusion, makes a grave claim. Because of the Institute’s connections to the church and the university, Institute members were largely shielded from the post-war denazification process. In fact, Institute membership was a considerable asset to many contributors in the following decades. They would publish together and, if necessary, write letters for each other vouching for their scholarly status and downplaying Nazi sympathies. Institute members claimed that they were merely studying Judaism academically. Some represented their actions as trying to protect the church from Nazis or as attempting to assert a salutary Christian influence over the Nazis. Most remarkably, Grundmann himself was reinstated as a seminary rector in the 1950s and died in 1976 as the church councillor of Thuringia.

Evaluation: Heschel’s work both raises vital questions about the complicity of the churches and the universities in Nazism and makes a powerful argument that Nazi influence remained in the churches long after the war. Her analysis of the Institute is rather a synthesis of inquiries into race theory, print culture, institutional dynamics, and biography. This eclectic approach keeps the book fresh. One significant contribution of this work may be making theologians and biblical scholars more aware of the aims and context of what might otherwise appear to be neutral academic scholarship. Nazi propagandists went to great length to pass their propaganda off as merely scientific study. I have only two mild criticisms of the work. First, positioning the biography section so late in the book is awkward. It disrupts the flow of the book as there is quite a bit of retracing one’s steps. Second, the title of the book does not accurately represent its contents, although it does capture a feature of the book and the context in which the Institute’s activity took place.

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

The depth of antisemitism in Nazi Germany had to have the backing of the German Church. The theological underpinnings of Jesus being "Galilean" (meaning Aryan, NOT Jewish) justified so much of the Nazi regime's goal of the extermination of the Jewish people.

The national church was not innocent. We let their leaders off the hook post WWII like the US let Confederate leaders off the hook post Civil War.

I can't help but draw parallels to nationalist movements in our time and especially in the U.S. where there is so much culturalized Christianity sprinkled in with blatant antisemitism and "Christian" nationalism.

[Patrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

An extensive study of the origins of the Institute for the Study and Eradication of Jewish Influence on German Church Life and the effort to "make" Jesus an Aryan divorced from his Jewishness and thus serve a national cause.

[M.J. Perry · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is one of several fairly recent studies into the culpability of Protestant Chrisitian churches in Nazi Germany's 'Final Solution'. Heschel's approach is unique in that she focuses on the work of German Christians in The Institute for the Study and Eradication of Jewish Influence on German Church Life and the academic work of Intitute members at the Univeristy of Jena. Her research is made possible because of the reunification of Germany and the release of certain documents that were held following WWII.

She demonstrates the symbiotic relationship of the the German Christian movement and the National Socialist rise and regime. Although mentioning the Confessing Church she quite rightly points out that its concern was not the anti-semitism of the German Christians, but rather the doctrinal changes and state involvement within the church that German Christians permitted, and even encouraged.

She also explores the post war careers of those involved in the The Institute. Although, the Confessing Church members had acquired most positions of ecclesial power immediately following he Nazi era, their focus on Christian forgiveness allowed Institute members and Jena faculty to continue working in quite pestigious postings upon affirmation of the Barmen Declaration. Very few leaders of the German Christian movement faced negative repercussions. It took approximately three decades before there was a scholarly critical examination of church-Nazi relationships, as shown in the writings and minutes of the Institute and Jena.

Her material is well researched and presentation of the events within the various strains of the Protestant Christian Church is well done. It is a very readable book. In some places knowledge of German would be an asset, but it is not essential.

I could recommend The Aryan Jesus to anyone who is interested in a wide variety of histories, holocaust or genocide studies. I would also recommend it to theologians and Biblical scholars, simply to be reminded of the ways in which these fields can be abused and twisted even within the academic world.

[C. Christopher Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

http://erb.kingdomnow.org/featured-th...

In a nutshell:
We need to have our eyes opened to the ways in which we are formed into ideologies of race, nation, political party, etc. and The Aryan Jesus is highly recommended as a thorough, historical account that reminds us that above all else, we are God’s people, and called to seek the shalom and reconciliation of all God’s creation – and that when we rebel against this mission or seek to reduce its scope, the fruits will likely be those of violence and death.

[Dave McNeely · Rating 4 out of 5]

An incredibly disturbing read about the direction in which the cultural winds of the day shaped biblical interpretation among German Christian leaders during the Third Reich. This book does an especially good job at indirectly forcing contemporary readers to ask the question, "How does my culture shape my interpretation of the Bible?" and exposing our arrogance and blind spots.

[David Hancock · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very technical read, but so informative to the complicity of theologians in Germany that fueled the anti-semitic actions of the Holocaust. Hard to swallow the truth that Ms. Heschel shares, but no doubt about the seeds that sprouted in the garden of the church. May this book provide us insight to not repeat the same mistakes again.