For Luther’s 450th Birthday
Our Fuehrer Adolf Hitler allows no rotten compromise! The entire German people shall stand behind the Fuehrer Adolf Hitler, the entire German Protestant church shall stand behind Martin Luther! In politics, completely backing Hitler, in the church, completely backing Luther.
Freimund, September 21, 1933
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: Dr. Kahl-Furthmann, Hans Schemm spricht. Seine Reden und sein Werk, 1936, p. 384
The German Reich celebrates Martin Luther’s 450th birthday on the 10th of November, 1933. The ‘great reformer’ is duly celebrated on the “German Day of Luther” following Luther’s slogan: “For my Germans I was born, them I will serve.”
The festivities in the Luther-bastion Neuendettelsau are particularly intense. Already on the day before, on 9th of November, a lengthy article by Dr. Hans Preuß, professor of the University of Erlangen, is published in honor of the ‘reformer’.
I believe that the times are over when Luther and Hitler were not to be mentioned in the same breath. They belong together, they are of the same, true German mettle!
Hans Preuss, Prussian Minister of Education and Cultural Affairs, in “Freimund”, November 9, 1933
Picture credits:
Cover picture: From the cover of “Weltgeschichte für alle”, published in 1933
German Day of Luther post card, November 10, 1933, Portrait of the reformer Martin Luther
