Friedrich Eppelein, long-time penfriend with pastor Georg Weger, studies theology in Erlangen. In 1912 he starts to work in Bayreuth, the Upper Franconian city of Richard Wagner, first as assistant pastor, then as pastor of the Lutheran Altstadt parish.1
He teaches Protestant religious studies in the Altstadt school in Bayreuth. One of his closest colleagues for over a decade is chemistry teacher Hans Schemm who inspires and shapes him.2 Schemm rings the bell in the active unification of Protestantism and National Socialism in Bayreuth.
Friedrich Eppelein 
Hans Schemm
Just imagine the two men after a tiring day at school, joining for a cold beer at the local NSDAP party tavern, the “Lieb”.
Just a few days earlier, before he departed to Berlin in the evening, Hitler had given a speech for the party officials there. “Us Germans, we belong to the Aryan race”, Schemm emphatically tells Eppelein.
We are the heirs of a race aged thousands of years. We are the heirs of a millenniums-old racial power, whose rebirth our people have been privileged to experience anew in blessed eras, again and again. Let us comprehend our immense responsibility in this hour of our present revitalization!
Hans Schemm, In: Dr. Kahl-Furthmann, Hans Schemm spricht. Seine Reden und sein Werk, 1936, p. 203
Hans Schemm is so possessed by his vision of a “racially pure” German Reich, that he repeatedly expresses his desire to see a Jew dangling from every lamp post – mind you: in Bayreuth. In his view the state churches play a crucial part in this vision:
On the day when the churches of both denominations affirm the love of fatherland and people, and support racial ideology, and passionately stand for their religion and for Hitler and National Socialism, the churches will be packed with people.
Hans Schemm, In: Dr. Kahl-Furthmann, Hans Schemm spricht. Seine Reden und sein Werk, 1936, p. 384
Gauleiter Hans Schemm, a close confidant to Hitler from 1923 onward, joins the NSDAP in 1925. In the same year he establishes the NSDAP local group in Bayreuth. He becomes Gauleiter of the Bayerische Ostmark in 1928 and in 1929 founds the National Socialist Teachers’ Association (NSLB) in Bayreuth. The city’s political-spiritual entanglement becomes even more evident when the National Socialist Protestant Pastors’ Association (NSEP) is established under Schemm’s leadership and many of Bayreuth’s Lutheran pastors join the NSEP.
With this association, the connection between Protestantism and National Socialism that was postulated by Schemm became apparent on an organizational level for the first time. At the same time, the existence of this group proves that Protestant pastors in Bavaria were willing to contribute to National Socialism as early as two years before the National Socialist reign began.
Weber, Liesa: Handlungsspielräume und Handlungsoptionen von Pfarrern und Gemeindegliedern im Nationalsozialismus, 2019, p. 86
In the years that follow, Schemm effortlessly gathers pastor Friedrich Eppelein and Bayreuth’s Lutheran pastors for the NSDAP under his slogans. Schemm’s confession is also their confession:
I am a Protestant in the Lutheran sense and I am glad to be a Protestant, because the name of Luther so well accords with the nature of National Socialism.
Hans Schemm, In: Baier, Helmut/Henn, Ernst: Chronologie des bayerischen Kirchenkampfes 1933-1945. Nürnberg 1969, p. 15
1 see Rössler, Hans: Nationalsozialismus in der fränkischen Provinz: Neuendettelsau unterm Hakenkreuz, 2018, p. 33
2 see ibid. p. 41
3 see “Die politische Lage und ihre Auswirkungen auf die Neuendettelsauer Mission” described by Eppelein and Keyßer, 1945
4 see Weber, Liesa: Handlungsspielräume und Handlungsoptionen von Pfarrern und Gemeindegliedern im Nationalsozialismus, 2019, p. 129
Picture credits:
Cover picture: Bayreuth Festspielhaus around 1930, postcard
Friedrich Eppelein – Rössler, Hans: Nationalsozialismus in der fränkischen Provinz: Neuendettelsau unterm Hakenkreuz, 2018
Hans Schemm – Büro des Reichstags (ed.): Reichstags-Handbuch 1933, IX. legislative period, publisher of the Reichsdruckerei, Berlin 1934
Hans Schemm – To the leader of the National Socialist Teachers’ Association of Germany, the Gauleiter of the Bavarian Ostmark, Minister of State for Education and Culture in Bavaria, dedicated in adoration by Karl Seibold in December 1935
Hans Schemm-Platz and House of German Education in Bayreuth, picture postcard
