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How Shall the Nations Repent? The Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt, October 1945

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

John S. Conway
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Extract

The Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt, issued by the leaders of the German Evangelical (i.e. Protestant) churches in October 1945, was a unique document in the recent history of the Christian Churches. This public acknowledgement of responsibility and guilt for their inadequate response to the criminal actions of the nation's political leaders was, and remains, unprecedented. The solemn proclamation included the by-now well-known sentences:

With great pain do we say: through us endless sufferings have been brought to many peoples and nations. What we have often borne witness to before our congregations, we now declare in the name of the whole church. We have for many years struggled in the name of Jesus Christ against the spirit which found its terrible expression in the National Socialist regime of tyranny, but we accuse ourselves for not witnessing more courageously, for not praying more faithfully, for not believing more joyously and for not loving more ardently.

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Articles
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 38 , Issue 4 , October 1987 , pp. 596 - 622
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1987

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References

1 For the full text see the appendix, p. 621. For the German text see Kirchliches Jahrbuch Jur die Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland 1945-1948, Gütersloh 1950, 7–8Google Scholar ; for more recent commentaries, see Greschat, Martin (ed.), Im Feichen der Schuld. 40 Jahrc Sluttgarter Schuldbekcnntnis, Neukirchen-Vluyn 1985Google Scholar ; also Greschat, M., Die Schuld der Kirche. Dokumente und Reflexionen zum Stutlgarter Schulderklarung vom 18/19 Oklober 1945, Munich 1982Google Scholar ; Besier, Gerhard and Sauter, Gerhard, Wie Christen ihre Schuld bekennen. Die Slutlgarler Erklarung Göttingen 1985Google Scholar.

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42 LPL, Bell Papers, xliv. 125, quoted in , Besier and , Sauter, Wie Christen, 20.Google Scholar

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44 National Archives, Washington DC (hereinafter cited as NA), National Records Center, 260, Religious Affairs Administration, Box 338 — 2/5.

45 LPL, Fisher Papers, v. 1-24.

46 Ibid. vii. 162ft.

47 The archbishop was presumably unaware of Bishop Wurm's strongly anti-British sentiments during the war.

48 LPL, Fisher Papers, vii. 95.

49 Visser ‘t Hooft had wanted France's most prominent Protestant leader, Marc Boegner, president of the Protestant Church Federation of France, to attend. But the American authorities refused to grant him permission to visit Germany, on the grounds that he had been a supporter of the Petain regime, NA, NARS Suitland, Maryland, Record Group 84, Box 737, folder 3, quoted in , Besier and , Sauter, Wie Christen, 53.Google Scholar

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53 WCC, Germa n Church Struggle, Box 284, 43ff.: ‘Main points to be mad e by World Council delegation in Stuttgart discussions’, here point 13, quoted in , Glenthey, op. cit. 332–4Google Scholar . A German translation is given in , Besier and , Sauter, op. cit. 129–33Google Scholar.

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60 Cavert's reactions were strikingly parallel to those of the senior British military advisor on religious affairs, Col Sedgwick, who had attended the Treysa meeting. In his report, he noted: ‘For the past six years I had always viewed Niemoller with some suspicion. It was not easy to forget his U-Boat book, nor is it sufficient, I submit, for a man to have suffered physically to effect a real and lasting change of heart…In spite of these misgivings, I found myself “converted” by Niemoller's quite strong and intensely spiritual personality’, LPL, Bell Papers, ix. 414.

61 , Dibelius, Autobiography, 259–60.Google Scholar

62 Quoted in , Boyens, Kirchenkampf, 281.Google Scholar

63 LPL, Bell Papers, xv.

64 For example, the spectacular gesture of Chancellor Willy Brandt at the foot of the memorial to the Jewish ghetto's inhabitants in Warsaw in 1970. Also the dignified speech in May 1985 by West German President Richard von Weizsacker, commemorating the fortieth anniversary of the end of the war in Europe and of National Socialist tyranny, Statements and Speeches, vii. 16, 9 05 1985.Google Scholar