The “Freimund” is first published in 1855 and reaches large numbers of readers both home and abroad every week until 1941. The weekly, published by the Neuendettelsauer “Associacion for Inner and Outer Mission in the Spirit of the Lutheran Church” which was founded by Wilhelm Löhe, exerts great influence on the ecclesiastic and political opinion-making of its readers – especially through the editions of the early 20s until the paper’s cessation in 1941.
Already during the era of the Weimar Republic, the magazine’s anti-semitism is “extensive and aggressive. Pamphlet-style accusations against Jews that reach the level of vulgarity are common [in the weekly]”1 The voice of anti-semitism, the desire for the intervention of national forces to intervene2 and a “fatherland-minded man”3 to arise are loudly expressed in the weekly paper. In 1923, the year of Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch, the paper writes:
It would be possible in no other country that traitors of the fatherland occupy minister’s seats and patriots [referring to A. Hitler] languish in prison, […], but on the other hand all doors are open to Russian Jews and other bloodsuckers.
Freimund, January 1, 1923
From 1926 onward, Lutheran pastor Dr. Friedrich Eppelein is in charge of the “political newsreel” of the paper. A year later, he – as Mission Director of the “Association for Inner and Outer Mission” – takes over complete editorship. The missionary work of the Freimund was aimed to mainly have an inward effect, targeting its own people:
[…] as confession-driven vigor of the reformation in the battle against unbelief […] against Roman attempts of counter-reformation, against dead churchliness and cult-like character, against un-Lutheran lukewarmness, for the sake of the [Lutheran] church and for the creation of a German-protestant people’s community in the likeness of the German nature.
Sommer, Wolfgang: Freimund – Kirchlich-politisches Wochenblatt für Stadt und Land. Eine regionale Zeitschrift in Franken zur Zeit der Weimarer Republik und des Nationalsozialismus. In: Zeitschrift für bayerische Landesgeschichte 2013, volume 76 [issue 3], p. 823
Under Eppelein’s direction, the weekly consistently represents a “firmly anti-republican, anti-democratic, anti-liberal, and anti-semitic line.”4 Eppelein regularly quotes from Hitler’s speeches and “Mein Kampf”. Following the example of his fellow teacher from Bayreuth, Gauleiter Hans Schemm, he stirs up hatred against the Jews:
[…] Therefore it is the duty of the German nation to be on guard against the dangers threatening us from the Jewish nation. Thus, in the spirit of Luther, if necessary, legal measures and regulations must not be refrained from.
Mission Director, Friedrich Eppelein, in the Freimund, March 5, 1931
Jewish Bolshevism would have brought a similar, perhaps even greater misery upon the German people as well, had not the Lord of History sent to the German people the savior of the fatherland in Adolf Hitler. This irrefutable truth must never be forgotten.
Mission Director, Friedrich Eppelein in the Freimund, June 20, 1935
The Freimund in Brazil
The mission institution puts a lot of effort into the distribution of the pamphlet. Pastor Georg Weger also receives the Nazi pamphlet regularly in Canoinhas, Brazil. Its delivery is personally coordinated by mission director Friedrich Eppelein.
I hope that the “Freimund” also reaches you always regularly and on time. From it you can learn many things about the life of our people, in our church, and not least, in our Mission Society of Neuendettelsau. Should you not receive it, I ask for your instant notification.
Excerpt from a letter by F. Eppelein to Georg Weger in Canoinhas, 1931
Dear Adam! Thank you very much for your kind lines. – We are glad that you are doing well again. – I now receive the Freimund again on a regular basis […]
Letter by Georg Weger to Adam Schuster in Neuendettelsau, 1936
1 Sommer, Wolfgang: Freimund – Kirchlich-politisches Wochenblatt für Stadt und Land. Eine regionale Zeitschrift in Franken zur Zeit der Weimarer Republik und des Nationalsozialismus. In: Zeitschrift für bayerische Landesgeschichte 2013, volume 76 [issue 3], p. 877
2 ibid. p. 812
3 ibid.
4 Rössler, Hans: Nationalsozialismus in der fränkischen Provinz: Neuendettelsau unterm Hakenkreuz, 2018, p. 37
Picture credits:
Cover picture: Freimund
Freimund, Kirchl. Polit. Wochenblatt, No. 10, March 5, 1931
