The German Genius

struggler against the Jews.”
    Despite all this, Hitler was not anxious for the fledgling Nazi movement to antagonize established religion. Dr. Artur Dinter, a former scientist and dramatist whose daughter died tragically in childhood, called for “a German national church” that would counter modernism, materialism, and the Jews, “much as Jesus had done” (his Richtrunen were intended to replace the Ten Commandments). Hitler dismissed him, writing to Dinter, who had joined the National Socialists before Hitler and held Party Card Number 5, that he would not waste time on a “religious reformation” he would steer clear of religious issues, “for all time to come.” 2
    T HE T HEOLOGICAL R ENAISSANCE
     
    As we shall see, he didn’t stick to his word. When the Nazis did achieve power, their relationship with religion would remain troublesome. In some ways their religious views were simplistic, in other ways cynical and manipulative. Hitler himself seems to have had a vague notion of a “sacred universe,” but above all, in purely intellectual terms, the Nazis largely ignored the fact that, just then, Germany was undergoing a renaissance in religious thought. 3 It is a fact largely overlooked that just as the Germans had produced a “golden generation” in physics, philosophy, history, and film as the 1920s turned into the 1930s, there was a similar cohort of very creative individuals in theology. According to Alistair McGrath, writing in 1986, modern German theology has an “inherent brilliance” but since World War I, “the equivalent of a theological iron curtain appears to have descended upon Europe, excluding ideas of German origin from the theological fora of the English-speaking world.” 4
    The renaissance in theological thought had been sparked by Ernst Troeltsch, and by Adolf von Harnack, professor of church history at Giessen, whose book Das Wesen des Christentums ( The Essence of Christianity ; 1900), tried to go beyond all the historical criticisms that had accreted during the nineteenth century.
    Ernst Troeltsch (1865–1923) was probably the first sociologist of religion. His main work, Die Soziallehren der christlichen Kirchen und Gruppen ( The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches ), was an attempt to bring a sociological understanding to the phenomenon of religion and to Christianity in particular. Troeltsch was affected by the same cultural pessimism as Werner Sombart, and he thought that the main source of alienation was the strong central state, which, however necessary, had helped to define modern social relations in economic terms, and was not what many people wanted, interfering as it did with their fulfillment and satisfaction. He hoped that a sociological understanding of religion might help form a state–church harmony through which many people could adjust their lives in the modern world.
    His main point, after a historical survey, espoused both Dilthey and Simmel, arguing that Christianity cannot be looked at only from the vantage point of the committed Christian, that there are other ways of looking at the church and that these other ways have to be considered, and argued with, if religion is to survive.
    He also noted that the social position of the church affected its attitude toward reform, that at some times church membership overlapped with the political classes more than at other times when, fairly naturally, it was less radical. He foresaw problems with Catholicism, with any church which claimed that Natural Law existed before the state, and therefore before any other forms of law. Troeltsch ended his survey in the eighteenth century, arguably selling himself short, because the nineteenth century saw some epic battles between Catholicism and Protestantism (not least in Germany), between Catholicism and secularism, Catholicism and science. But the specter of a theologian treating the church not as a solely theological entity but as a sociological one was new and was, until World War I, very influential. 5
    Harnack concentrated more on the Gospels, which were for him evangelistic rather than historical documents and, whatever historical details did or did not stand up, described the impression Jesus made upon his disciples, an impression they felt the need to transmit and this was the Gospels’ main essence and purpose. In this view, the entire “Life of Jesus” movement was to be seen as a blind alley, which proved an immensely popular interpretation. 6