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Giving
Thanks in Hitler's Reich
Monday, November 25, 2013
Timothy George, Beeson Divinity School of Stamford University
Paul
Robert Schneider (1897-1939) was the first Protestant pastor to die in a
concentration camp at the hands of the Nazis. His story is one of unmitigated
courage, self-sacrifice, and martyrdom. Only in recent years has he begun to
receive some of the recognition he deserves.
Schneider
was not a theologian of first rank like Karl Barth or Dietrich Bonhoeffer, nor a
hero like the Polish friar Maximillian Kolbe, who sheltered thousands of Jews
and eventually exchanged his own life for one of his Auschwitz cellmates. Nor
did Schneider live in a large urban center like Martin Niemöller, the
Confessing Church leader in Berlin or the Catholic bishop Clemens August Graf
von Galen, the “Lion of Münster.” Paul Schneider, rather, was an obscure
village pastor who could have escaped persecution completely had he simply been
willing to keep his mouth shut.
The
son of a German Reformed pastor, Schneider followed in his father’s footsteps,
succeeding him in 1926 as leader of the Protestant church in the small town of
Hochelheim. By that time, his early flirtation with liberal theology had given
way to a more vigorous biblical and Christocentric faith, influenced in part by
his teacher Adolf Schlatter. In 1933, the year of Hitler’s assumption of
power, Schneider ran afoul of local Nazi leaders in his community who forced his
transfer to the even more remote village of Dickenschied.
Schneider
had been there hardly a month when he was asked to preside at the funeral of a
seventeen-year-old member of the Hitler Youth named Karl Moog. Before the
benediction had been pronounced, the local Nazi district leader, Heinrich Nadig,
interrupted the service to declare that young Karl had now crossed over into the
heavenly storm troop of Horst Wessel, to which Schneider replied: “I do not
know if there is a storm of Horst Wessel in eternity, but may the Lord God bless
your departure from time and your entry into eternity.”
Sturmführer
Horst Wessel was a Nazi party activist and author of the popular Nazi hymn
“The Flag on High” (also called the Horst-Wessel-Lied). After his violent
death in 1930, he was elevated as a hero in the Nazi pantheon. The Wessel story
was incorporated into the pagan mythology the Nazis were seeking to revive.
Alfred Rosenberg, the master of Nazi ideology, claimed that Wessel had not
really died but now led a celestial storm troop. Those who died in the service
of the Nazis, like young Karl Moog, were summoned to join the Wessel storm troop
above. Just six months prior to the funeral incident, the Nazi bimonthly Der
Brunnen declared: “How high Horst Wessel towers over that Jesus of
Nazareth—that Jesus who pleaded that the bitter cup be taken from him. How
unattainably high all Horst Wessels stand above Jesus!”
Pastor
Schneider refused to subordinate the Christian Gospel to such a pagan myth. When
Nadig repeated his graveside claim about Horst Wessel, Schneider said: “I
protest. This is a church ceremony, and as a Protestant pastor, I am responsible
for the pure teaching of the Holy Scriptures.”
After
this confrontation, Schneider was placed in prison for five days, but he did not
back down. In a letter to the Nazi leader he explained his position:
In
a Protestant church ceremony God’s voice has to be clearly heard from the Holy
Scriptures. Our church people are liberalized enough, so it is no longer
appropriate to allow just any opinion to be expressed in the church. There can
no longer be any place for this because especially at a church funeral the
seriousness of eternity does not tolerate being measured by human standards.
Therefore, not everyone who does his duty in the Hitler Youth or the SA fairly
well can be beatified. I will certainly accept the earthly storm of Horst Wessel,
but that does not mean by a long shot that God will allow him to march straight
into eternal salvation. That is perhaps “German faith,” but it is not
biblically based Christian faith that takes seriously the full reality of sin
that is so deeply rooted in the heart and life of man.
Over
the next four years there were more conflicts and more imprisonments for Pastor
Schneider. His wife Margarete—he called her Gretel—supported him with her
love, prayers, and correspondence. On one occasion, he wrote back to her from
prison: “And now, today, the laundry arrived together with the Heidelberg
Catechism, your letter, butter, and chocolate.” To his six children, ages one
to ten, he wrote these words: “Keep on praying that God in his love and mercy
may bring your father back and that we may all remain in Dickenschied. Even if
God keeps us waiting awhile for the fulfilment of our prayers, we must not think
that he does not hear us, and we must not tire because it takes so long. Though
God helps not in every deed/He’s there in every hour of need.”
Later,
he was officially deported from the Rhineland by the Gestapo and warned never to
preach again in his church. Schneider ripped up the deportation order in the
presence of the Gestapo official and wrote a personal letter to Hitler declaring
that he could not in good conscience obey it. The consequences of such defiance
were not hard to guess, nor long in coming. One friend warned him that he should
at least “let some more water flow down the Rhine” before he tried to return
to his church. Even his dear Gretel said, “Do not push yourself to be a
martyr!”
Yet
on October 3, 1937, the Sunday of Harvest Thanksgiving (Erntedankfest in
German), Paul Schneider was once again—and for the last time—preaching in
his pulpit at Dickenschied. His text was Psalm 145:15-21, which says:
The
eyes of all wait upon thee; and thou givest them their meat in due season. Thou
openest thine hand, and satisfiest the desire of every living thing. The Lord is
righteous in all his ways, and holy in all his works. The Lord is nigh unto all
them that call upon him, to all that call upon him in truth. He will fulfil the
desire of them that fear him: he also will hear their cry, and will save them.
The Lord preserveth all them that love him: but all the wicked will he destroy.
My mouth shall speak the praise of the Lord: and let all flesh bless his holy
name for ever and ever.
He
began the sermon by acknowledging how incongruous it might seem to be giving
thanks “in this year of our church’s hardship.” Yet this is precisely what
the psalmist calls us to do—to give thanks for the material blessings of
harvest and home and also for the generous gifts of God in Word, sacrament, and
worship. Yet God’s Word does not come cheap, Schneider said. “Confessing
Jesus will carry a price. For his sake we will come into much distress and
danger, much shame and persecution. Happy the man who does not turn aside from
these consequences.”
He
ended the sermon by quoting from a poem by Heinrich Heine, the popular
nineteenth-century Jewish writer whose books had been burned by the Nazis. This
poem depicted the judgment visited on Belshazzar (read Hitler) who spurned the
call to repentance.
There
was both gratitude and warning in Schneider’s sermon, for, as he said, God’s
Word is one of both grace and judgment. This Word was to be declared not only in
the cozy comfort of the congregation but also “outside in the world too and in
public, to those who want to hear it and to those who do not want to hear this,
before this nation and state and all earthly authorities.” Quoting from the
prophet Jeremiah, Schneider appealed: “Therefore, O Land, O Land, O
Land—hear the word of the Lord” (Jer. 22:29).
Word
about the sermon spread quickly. That evening, while en route to preach in
another church, Schneider’s way was blocked by the flashing lights of the
police. He was arrested and soon found himself as inmate #2491 in the
concentration camp at Buchenwald.
Gretel’s
1953 biography of her husband was titled The Preacher of Buchenwald, and
this is how Schneider is best remembered by those who know him at all. He never
ceased to preach God’s love and grace in Christ to his fellow prisoners. While
in solitary confinement he called out to them every day at the morning roll
call, even though such utterances brought vicious reprisals from his captors.
When asked by a fellow inmate why he continually subjected himself to such
brutality, Schneider replied, “Somebody has to preach in this hell.”
Another
inmate, Alfred Leikam, summarized Schneider’s ministry at Buchenwald this way:
“Wholly without fear, he bore witness of his Christian faith to the SS. In
this frankness, he was probably unique in Germany. He called the devil by his
name: murderer, adulterer, unrighteous, monster. Throughout this witness, in
which he presented the grace of Christ together with a call to repentance,
Schneider was exposed alternately to severe bodily tortures, humiliations, and
agonies.”
On
July 18, 1939, he was killed by the camp doctor who administered a lethal
injection of strophanthin. Gretel drove to Buchenwald and retrieved the body of
Paul Schneider and returned it to Dickenschied for burial. Hundreds of people
swarmed the village for Schneider’s funeral. Many pastors, including the
priest of the local Catholic Church, joined the procession to the cemetery. One
of the Gestapo officers sent to observe the proceedings remarked to one of the
pastors, “This is the way kings are buried!” to which the pastor replied:
“Hardly! What is happening here is that a blood witness of Jesus Christ is
borne to the grave.”
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