The girl that could not be named Esther. Winfried Seibert
became the great reformer of the way of life of all men. Adolf Hitler overcame mortal sin against the life our people and thus gives Christians the God-given opportunity to proclaim themselves ready to undergo a test of the truth of God for the life of faith of all men.“19
› Reference
The Third Reich and God’s laws, Hitler as a God-given opportunity and as one who has overcome mortal sin, Karl Barth as a foreigner and former Social Democrat, as a noxious weed who must be driven out. Wasn’t Superintendent Lehbrink verging on sacrilege with such words? Wasn’t the idolatrous placing of Hitler on the level of the Messiah pure blasphemy? What need did the German Christians have of the Messiah from Nazareth when this one from the Austrian town of Braunau was active among them in the flesh? Where was the church protest, where was the lightning which should have struck against such profanity? We know nothing at all of any response to this tract.
Still, the language of the ecstatic Theobald Lehbrink was a language that was not out of the ordinary. The language had been long prepared; it was well entrenched even before 1933. Deeply entrenched.
In opposition, there stood the Confessing Church. Not that resistance was the rule in the Confessing Church, not through silent protest and not through word and deed. It was rather the exception. Protestantism, too, could show a significant anti-Semitic tradition, one which was not so easy to lay aside. In Bismarck’s day (chancellor, 18641888), the well-known royal court preacher Adolf Stoecker had not only preached anti-Semitism; he had also made it the center of his Christian party platform. Consider this – on December 11, 1935, the Confessing Church celebrated Stoecker’s 100th birthday. You could hardly hush up his struggle against the Jews.
The Temporary Leadership of the German Evangelical Church went even further. They sang the praises of Stoecker’s campaign against the spirit of unbridled egoism and unbounded arrogance; they lauded Stoecker with words applicable to their own times:
He saw this spirit of the age driven by a Jewry disengaged from its religious roots and by an irresponsible liberal press. He took up arms against both of them.20› Reference
The courage to resist the spirit of the times that now appeared was the exception. The brave ones included Pastor Luncke from Leithe, who laid into the German Christians in a controversy between the Evangelical Church Service Club for Men, maintained by the Confessing Church, and the German Evangelical Men’s Group, set up by the German Christians as a competing group. He accused the German Christians of deceit, and if something was fraudulent in his eyes, he let everyone know it.21› Reference He even got involved physically when some German Christians tried to take over his pulpit. He grabbed the intruders by the collar and singlehandedly threw them out of the church.22› Reference
Despite all its weaknesses, the Confessing Church provided the theological support that was indispensable even for men like Friedrich Luncke. In its theological declaration of May 1934, the denominational synod of Barmen had formulated six church truths23› Reference against the errors of the ‘German Christians’ and the present-day national church administration that are ravaging the churches and destroying the unity of the German Evangelical Protestant Church. In this cry for help, dramatically underscored with the Latin closing words, Verbum Dei manet in aeternum — The word of God remains for ever and ever — the Confessing Church spoke out clearly against the false teachings of National Socialism. Here is an example of what they said:
We reject the false teaching that the church, which is the source of the word of God and the source of its teaching, can and must recognize other events and powers, figures and truths as God’s revelation...
We reject the false teaching that there are areas of our lives in which not Jesus Christ but other lords are sovereign, areas in which we do not need Him for salvation and healing...
We reject the false teaching that the church should turn over the shape of its mission and its order to the discretion of others, or that it should turn over such definition to the currently ruling world view and political outlook of others...
We reject the false teaching that the church may with human arrogance place the word and the works of the Lord in the service of arbitrary wishes, goals, and plans chosen in some high-handed manner...24› Reference
The conflict was now an open one with the authority of the Hitler regime. The way led to the Memorandum of the Confessing Church to the Fuehrer and the German chancellor on May 28, 1936. The memorandum complained about the many forms of dechristianizing being carried on by the state. It criticized the idolatrous reverence for the Fuehrer. About the anti-Semitism in the National Socialist view of the world, the memo had this to say:
If blood, race, national traditions, and honor achieve the status of eternal values, the Evangelical Christian is forced by the First Commandment to reject this mode of thinking. While others glorify the Aryan human, the word of God testifies to the sinfulness of all men.
If Christians are required by the National Socialist world view to adopt anti-Semitism and are required to hate the Jews, this is opposed by the Christian commandment to ‘Love thy neighbor’.25› Reference
The closing words of the declaration betray an oppressive taste of the prevailing atmosphere. It was written and submitted to Hitler in 1936, two months before the beginning of the Summer Olympic Games on August 1, which would gather the youth of the world in Berlin and which were supposed to communicate and did communicate to them a spruced-up picture of the new German state. The memo ended with these words:
We ask for the freedom of our people to make their way into the future under the sign of the Cross of Jesus, so that our descendants will not curse their forefathers for having built and left behind a state on this earth while closing off to them the Kingdom of God.
The duty of our office requires us to say to the Fuehrer what we have said in this document.
The church stands in the hands of God.26› Reference
So that descendants will not curse their forefathers — Pastor Luncke could have preached that. That was his belief as well. Presumably, that is what determined the choice of a baptis-mal name for his daughter Esther. The external successes of the Third Reich, its widespread international recognition after the Olympics of 1936, the reunification with Austria in March 1938 and the practically unanimous approval of the union by the population — these did not change his negative attitude. The more the state accumulated power and external glory, the more strongly did Friedrich Luncke internalize his beliefs. When he chose his baptismal name for his daughter Esther, he consciously opposed the haughtiness of the state powers with the hymn to Christ from Paul’s letter to the Colossians:27› Reference
For in him all things were created,
in heaven and on earth,
visible and invisible,
whether thrones or dominions or
principalities or authorities —
all things were created through him and for him.
This confession of faith and the choice of the name Esther were one for the parents. They had decided on this name, which they found beautiful and appropriate. There was no family tradition to be sustained, either in the family of the pastor or in the family of his wife, of perpetuating the names of uncles or aunts, godparents or ancestors. In the choice of names, they were happily independent of such familiar constraints. They were free. Free to protest as well.
But were they really free?
Esther did not reveal her people or her kindred, for Mordecai had told her not to reveal it.
The Book of Esther, 2:10
Aert des Gelder, Esther and Mordecai, 1685
Chapter 3
There