Читать книгу The girl that could not be named Esther - Winfried Seibert - Страница 10

It happened in 1938, in a critical year for German history, a fateful year for lots of people.⁴› Reference In its Esther decree of October 28, 1983, the Prussian Supreme Court for Civil Matters wrote of a great and meaningful year, great and meaningful for Germany. The Watchword of the Week, a colorful Nazi Party wall poster, celebrated 1938 as a God-blessed year of struggle, which even after a thousand years Germans will speak of with pride and reverence. ⁵› Reference Great times, great words.

In October 1938 the Prussian Supreme Court for Civil Matters issued the last word in the Esther case, or at least for all those involved it was the last word: A non-Jewish German girl, daughter of a pastor, whose parents wanted to name her Esther, could not be named after the biblical Queen Esther because the Supreme Court considered the name to be typically Jewish. Such a name was out of the question for a German child.

The Supreme Court did not have an easy time explaining the grounds behind its decision. The very extensive legal reasoning allows us a view into the mental world of the three judges, on whom the God-blessed year of struggle had left its mark.

Such decisions are easy to criticize. From today’s point of view, everything appears clear and readily understandable; Good and Evil can be cleanly separated. People are often smarter in hindsight. Still, a person may ask himself despairingly, how did they come to such decisions, how could they have arrived at such gross and spiteful legal grounds? How did it happen that the presumably quite sharp minds of the judges were so befuddled? In the attempt to understand the decision and those responsible for it, you have to get closer to the spirit of the times, no matter how much you believe that the spirit was evil, embodying the demonic character of those years. You have to consider this spirit of the times because otherwise you won’t understand anything.

Even though the Berlin proceedings concerned only the given name of a Christian girl, the controversy over Esther’s name revolved completely around the Jewish Question. Almost everything at that time revolved around this phenomenon, whose meaning for the party comrades of the year 1938 cannot be grasped from today’s point of view by rational consideration alone.

The Jews in Germany formed a minority of less than 1% of the population. At the last census in 1933, 502,799 persons of Jewish faith were counted, including 94,717 foreigners, mainly Poles.⁶› Reference 160,000 of these people, a good third of all the Jews in Germany, lived in Berlin, making up 5.33% of its population. At the beginning of 1938, before the annexation of Austria, the German Reich had 68 million inhabitants, including some 300,000 so-called persons of the Jewish faith. That came to 0.44% of the total population.

It was well known that Jews were heavily represented in several economic sectors and professions. This was based on historical grounds, which were connected with the restricted rights of the Jews in Germany over the centuries. German Jews also contributed to Germany’s scientific fame. Of the fourteen German Nobel Prize winners in chemistry, four were of Jewish origin.⁷› Reference Of the Nobel Prize winners in physics, three of the twelve German laureates were Jewish,⁸› Reference and in medicine, three out of seven.⁹› Reference These were numbers to be proud of, but they didn’t help at all.

By the beginning of 1938 — a good 200,000 Jewish Germans had meanwhile left the increasingly dangerous country — the concentration in Berlin had become even greater.

128,000 Jews still lived in the capital, some 43% of all Jews remaining in Germany. Their proportion of the Berlin population had sunk to barely 3%.¹⁰› Reference Propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels exerted deliberate pressure on them, as he noted in his diary on June 11, 1938:

Lectured to over 300 police officers in Berlin about the Jewish question. I really stirred them up. Oppose all sentimentality. Don’t worry about the law; harass them. The Jews must be driven out of Berlin. The police will help me in doing that.

The Germany of 1938 had grown larger. With the annexation of the so-called Eastern Marches (Ostmark – a centuriesold term for Austria), the population of Greater Germany had grown to 76 million. Bringing in Austria had brought in another 180,000 Jews, now totaling 0.63% of the German population.¹¹› Reference

And yet this tiny minority stood at the very center of the thinking and aspirations of the National Socialist government. The judiciary was also fixated on this minority in the way it persecuted them, excluded them, and deprived them of their rights. These judicial activities cannot be explained away or excused with reference to loyalty to a positivistic reading of the law, in which the judges were bound to follow the letter of the law literally. The wording of many, many decisions makes it clear that nothing here can be excused.

Seen from a modern foreshortened perspective, the year 1938 was especially notable for the annexation of Austria, the crisis of the Sudeten area of Czechoslovakia which ended with the Munich Agreement, and, most significant for us today, the Night of Broken Glass (Kristallnacht) with all its fearsome consequences. The Germans of 1938 were unaffected by the persecution; they went about their daily lives. The propaganda machine of the ever-more-arrogant Greater German State churned out reports of successes. There were quite a few of these, serving to distract people from the difficulties of daily life. The economy of the Third Reich was, strictly speaking, heavily indebted, if not over its head in debt. Rearmament and the attempts at full employment had their price, though of course nothing of this appeared in the papers. Foreign policy successes might make people euphoric, but they did not fill the state treasury. From time to time the state needed to throw the dog a bone. The grass roots, the party faithful, demanded their due.

The press reported in much greater detail the August 1, 1938 introduction of the plan for the common people to save for a private automobile than it reported the burning synagogues of November 10. Isn’t this what people actually wanted to know about? All the same, we may still be curious to know what there was to fear, to see, to hear, and to suspect before November 10, 1938.

Life for the non-Jewish Volksgenossen, National Comrades — by definition, there could be no Jewish National Comrades — life for the National Comrades in 1938 went on as normal. To most Germans, conditions may have appeared better than in previous years. This came out in the birth rates. The number of births in 1938 in the country as a whole rose to 1,493,000, the largest number since 1922. That corresponded to 19 births per 1,000 inhabitants (compared to 8.7 in 2005). Still, the Journal of the Office for Racial Policy of the National Socialist Workers‘ Party (the Nazis) noted in a warning tone:

There were still lacking another 148,000 live births, some 9%, for the birth rate needed to maintain the strength of the people and its military power.¹²› Reference

The Olympic Games of 1936 had brought success, fame, and international prestige. The Nazi system had restrained itself for the sake of this international renown, and had even cut back on the harassment of the Jews in Germany, at least on the surface. What lay dormant in the heads and in the desk drawers of the Party comrades and the Party organizations was not visible. The situation was comparatively quiet; the Sturm und Drang (Storm and Stress) and the rowdyism of 1933-1935, the early years of Nazi rule, seemed to have subsided. Actually, it was only the lull before the storm.

The little girl who was to be named Esther was born on August 11, 1938, in Gelsenkirchen. The baby was healthy, 52 centimeters (20.5 inches) long, and weighed 3150 grams (6 pounds, 15 ounces).

ESTHER

We announce the birth of a healthy baby girl to FRIEDRICH LUNCKE AND WIFE Luise, nee Peuckmann.

Gelsenkirchen, August 11, 1938, the Protestant Hospital Wattenscheid-Leithe, Protestant Parish House

One month later, on September 11, 1938, the father, Pastor Friedrich Luncke, baptized the baby in Wattenscheid with the name Esther. To be sure, the child had no official given name because the State Registry Office had refused the name Esther. For the state, Esther had no name.

The baptism was not only somewhat late; it was now a conscious act of protest by the father. After the Registry Office had refused the child the name which he desired, he had gone ahead and baptized his daughter with the beautiful name of Esther. He and his wife stood firm with this name; let the Registry Office official decide whatever he wanted. To be sure, the Lunckes had thought about the choice of a name long and hard.

They were familiar with the biblical book of Esther and the wonderful story of the beautiful Jewish girl in the Persian diaspora who found favor in the eyes of the king and had been elevated to the position of Queen Esther. They were touched by the dilemma of Esther, torn between conflicting duties. She would have to disregard a command of her husband the king, something punishable by death, if she wanted to save her people from a threatened pogrom. She overcame her dilemma with the determined words, If I perish, so I perish.

According to Jewish tradition, Esther is numbered among the four most beautiful women in the history of the world. That doesn’t have to be taken literally, but one can certainly see from the story that the biblical Esther combined beauty with courage. As parents are wont to do, you could read a lot into this name, a name resounding with wishes and hopes.

As thoughtful readers of the Bible, the Lunckes must have been aware that the Book of Esther also presents problems. No matter whether this was a pious tale or not, they would have had their doubts about the fact that Esther’s courage in saving the Jews in Persia was sullied by the alleged death of 75,000 Persians – a thoroughgoing counter-pogrom going beyond pure defensive measures. This was no simple story with simple answers. It was vigorously debated among theologians.

But it was just that circumstance that made the name so much more endearing to the Lunckes. They had set their hearts on this name. It involved threats to themselves, will power, personal courage to stand in opposition, hope for salvation from an apparently omnipotent evil. Haman, the biblical enemy of the Jews, was equivalent to Hitler – that fit in with the spirit of the times. And they weren’t alone in their parish house in Leithe. Pastor Luncke was part of the Bekennende Kirche (Confessing Church) subgroup within the dominant Protestant grouping in Germany that early on began to oppose the Nazis. As early as 1934 the Confessing Church had suggested sermons to its pastors on the book of Esther to show that every enemy of the Jews, like Haman, would come to a bad end.

In a less belligerent manner, even rather meekly, the Carmelite nun Teresia Benedicta a Cruce, better known as Edith Stein, at that time viewed herself as a very poor and defenseless Esther, who like the Biblical Esther was taken from her people so that she could represent them before the king. ¹³› Reference

The registry official in Gelsenkirchen had refused to register the name Esther. The birth certificate of August 13, 1938, identifies the child as a girl without a given name. There is no trace of this conflict on the birth announcements sent to friends and acquaintances. The birth of the daughter Esther is expressed simply there. On August 15, Pastor Luncke reported the birth of his daughter Esther to the Protestant Church Consistory in Muenster and from then on received an extra child allowance of 10 Reichsmarks. His monthly salary thus rose to 330.89 Reichsmarks.

The legal battle for the correct given name went through three levels of courts, and finally ended with the decision of the Prussian Supreme Court for Civil Matters in Berlin on October 28, 1938. It was only on December 3 that the little girl received an official name – Elisabeth, not Esther. Esther was inadmissible. The registry office could close its records. The state had won out. But that was not the end of the story, not by a long shot!

Esther was the first child of the pastor and his wife, who had gotten married on April 29, 1937, and shortly thereafter had moved to the big parish house in Leithe, a neighborhood in Wattenscheid, a working-class town in the Ruhr Valley. Luise Luncke, maiden name Peuckmann, two years older than her husband, had studied German and theology at the university. In order to be able to devote herself to working alongside her husband in the community, she gave up on her goals for an independent career. She worked hard, with no regard for her own health. She died at the early age of 60.

Friedrich Luncke had studied theology with Rudolf K. Bultmann, said to be one of the most influential theologians of the 20th century, one who wished to remove myth from Christianity while staying true to his faith. Luncke knew Greek and Hebrew.

Pastor Luncke was no ivory tower scholar; he was a fighter and a great preacher before the Lord. He studied the Bible in the original; and he worked on his sermons, in which he did not shy away from confrontation with the state. In general he was very conscious of what he was doing, and he was determined to live that way in times that were hard for an engaged Christian. He set about working with all his might for his congregation. That brought him negative publicity and quickly got him in trouble. On January 6, 1938, he was arrested by the Bochum branch of the Gestapo, though he was released three days later. The affair concerned the Investigation of the League of Women in Leithe¹⁴› Reference , but no further details are available. He had been warned.

Luncke did not let himself be scared off. True to his nature, he remained uncompromising, a most obstinate gentleman. In the matter of stubbornness bordering on pig-headedness, he was a true son of Westphalia.

In 1934 Luncke had become assistant pastor in Spenge, a working-class district with major social problems.

In only seven months — the church authorities did not leave him in Spenge any longer than that — he had won over the workers, the socially weaker portion of the church congregation. He did not keep his distance from them, but rather he approached the workers in the cigar industry. He had an understanding of their needs and visited them in their meager living quarters. As the son of a manual worker, he found the right tone to address them in. When he preached on a Sunday, the church was jammed to the eaves.¹⁵› Reference

He may have been too socially conscious, to the point where the church elders did not go along with him. Here is what he was like: An older woman was crossing the street with a wheelbarrow. Luncke went up to her and said, ‘I’m going the same way as you. I’ll push the wheelbarrow.’ That caused a sensation in Spenge. Someone like that couldn’t be allowed to stay.¹⁶› Reference

He didn’t stay. When word got out that he would not receive the position of pastor in Spenge, his supporters assembled in protest, something unprecedented at that location. Two- to threehundred Protestants blocked the parish house and railed against the church authorities who had ordered the transfer of Assistant Pastor Luncke. The police had to be called to break up the meeting.¹⁷› Reference

His ordination as pastor, which finally took place on August 18, 1935, in Gelsenkirchen-Bulmke, met with unusual difficulties, which Luncke — and not Luncke alone — attributed to the Nazi-sympathizing German Christians (G.C.). In this vein, the congregation of Bulmke questioned the Confessional Synod of the Province of Westphalia on June 28, 1935 about the possible intervention of the German Christians:

Your refusal of ordination must certainly have been done with blinders on. Or might the refusal have been the fruit of meetings with three G.C. [German Christian] men last Monday at the consistory office?

Luncke belonged to the Confessing Church, which fought against National Socialist church policy and its puppets, the German Christians. He spoke out quite frankly, even though the Confessing Church had its cautious and lukewarm members as well. Belonging to the Confessing Church did not mean unambiguous opposition to the Third Reich. Traditional Lutheran ideas on obedience to authority, which appeared in the circles of the Confessing Church as well, could accommodate the brown shirts who held power. Besides them, there were of course the German Christians, who were faithful to the Nazis.

In Gelsenkirchen, in the immediate vicinity of Friedrich Luncke, the Superintendent in charge was Theobald Lehbrink, whom we recently met in our search for Pastor L. from G. At Christmastime 1935, Lehbrink authored a nasty tract entitled On God and Authority, which was nothing more than National Socialist propaganda expressed in theological vocabulary. The style shows what was going on in the heads even of theologians. The Swiss theologian Karl Barth, the Father of the Confessing Church, had been a professor at the University of Bonn until the end of 1934. Since he had refused to take the oath of service to the Fuehrer, prescribed as of August 1934, he had been discharged. Lehbrink wrote the following about him:

A theologian like him seems a noxious weed to every National Socialist who understands the Fuehrer and his inexpressible deeds for Germany’s welfare...

A holy rage should come over us when we use our yardstick of Luther against the unbiblical and anti-German thought of Karl Barth, the chief inspiration of the Barmen Confessional Synod, the Swiss foreigner, the one-time Social Democrat...¹⁸› Reference

Lehbrink gets worse, as he merges the Crusaders’ cry of Deus Vult! — God wills it! with the triumphant model of the Protestant Reformer to create a hymn to Adolf Hitler. Even the party-faithful comrades might have thought that he had gone too far, had they received this sorry work to read:

“Since our heart belongs to God, it also belongs to this genuine revolutionary, who is leading the God-created people of our ancestors and of our posterity into the promised land of the future. We will be faithful to him to our last breath, for: ‘God wills it!’...

The Fuehrer Adolf Hitler, by the good and gracious will of God, has overcome the deadly rule of liberalism for the good of the widest possible living space for the German people. He rules and guides the existence of the entire nation according to ‘natural’ laws of life as set down by God, which are inspired by a single Will, all to insure the existence of the People for all eternity. Since the Third Reich is being led according to God’s laws of creation and preservation, we must cast off the theologian Karl Barth, the effect of whose teachings can be identified with the spread of liberalism...

Martin Luther overcame mortal sin against the belief of our people and by the truth of God 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?