A Visit in the German Reich
In the year 1934, Lutheran pastor Georg Weger travels to the “new Germany” with his wife Anna and his children Willy and Annemarie.1 His correspondence with Eppelein reveals his travel plans.
Dear Mr. Mission Director!
You may be slightly affrighted at the receipt of the news that even five Brazilian pastor families want to pay a “visitation” to the new Germany? The happy travellers are: P. Fugmann with family2, P. Mittelmeier with family, P.H. Müller with family, Mrs P. Kuhr with family and us, altogether 21.5 passages. – There will be happy equipping and preparing! And a happy reunion!
Letter by Georg Weger to mission director F. Eppelein, 1934
A Tour of the City
Under the bust of Wilhelm Löhe, Neuendettelsau’s Lutherans are ranting about removing Jews from Luther’s place of activity.
“Jews are off limits in this town!” – the unambiguous signs at the town’s entryways make it plain. They show the policy of the Protestant-Lutheran bastion of Neuendettelsau. Adolf Trauenfelder, leader of the local NSDAP group, close friend to Friedrich Eppelein and future mayor of Neuendettelsau, has set himself the target: Jews must be eliminated from social life in the town.3 The Lutheran mission institution actively supports him in this goal.
True to the words of Martin Luther, the ‘reformer’:
Fie on you here and fie on you there and where you are, you damned Jews […] You should only read the bible that is under the tail of the sow, and gorge and gulp the letters that fall out of there. […] The Jews are such a despaired, malicious, poisonous thing, that they have been our plague, pestilence, and all misfortune for 1,400 years and still are. Summa, we have true devils in them. […]; First, to set fire to their synagogues or schools, […] in honor of our Lord and of Christendom, so that God might see that we are Christians, […] to destroy and shatter their houses likewise. Therefore, wherever you see a genuine Jew, you may with a good conscience cross yourself and bluntly say: There goes a devil incarnate.
D. Martin Luthers Werke. Kritische Gesamtausg., Abteilung 1: Schriften, Weimar 1883ff., volume 53, 478 + 528 + 523 + 479
The “Stürmerkasten”
Mounted on the wall of the Friedmann guesthouse is the “Stürmerkasten”. With large, white letters it is written on its frame:
Without solution of the Jewish Question, no salvation of Germany.
The Jews – our misfortune. Whoever buys from the Jew is a traitor against the people.
Here, the citizens of Neuendettelsau can read with self-complacent satisfaction the current edition of the pornographic-antisemitic weekly “Der Stürmer”, published by the Franconian NSDAP Gauleiter, Julius Streicher.4
In Honor of the Fuehrer
Another one of the town’s landmarks is the Hitler Oak, which was planted in honor of the Reichskanzler on the property of the Deaconess Institution in a festive ceremony on the 7th of May, 1933.5
Many Volksgenossen (i.e. ethnic Germans) of the mission institution joined the NSDAP – with Georg Wegers good friends leading the way on May 1st, 1933: mission director Friedrich Eppelein and missionary inspector Christian Keyßer.
I have joined the NSDAP, as soon as my office as leader of the Neuendettelsau mission institution made it possible. With this confession I explicitly intended to prove to my fellow Germans and friends, amongst others, that membership in the NSDAP is well compatible with faithfulness to the Lutheran creed.
Letter by Dr. F. Eppelein to the Reich’s Minister for Clerical Matters, 1935
In the years that follow, Eppelein pushes his students to join the SA and establishes his own SA-missions-troop.
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.
Friedrich Eppelein in “Freimund”, September 21, 1933
1 Note: In 1950, Annemarie Weger marries Carlos Wunderlich, an aviation technician of German descent. From then on, she lives in São Paulo with her family. She is the mother of Carin Horst (née Wunderlich).
2 Note: Lutheran pastors Wilhelm and Magdalena Fugmann (parents of Christian Keyßer’s son-in-law, who served as treasurer in the NSDAP base in New Guinea) were strongly sympathetic to the German People’s Movement and placed “great hope in the regime concerning the resurrection of the people and nation of their origin”. With this burning expectation, they visited the Reich’s capital of Berlin during their journey. See: (s. Backhouse, Martin/Zeller, Hans (ed.): Aufbruch in Grenzen. Von der Migrationskirche zur lutherischen Kirche in Brasilien. 2016, p. 71)
3 see Rössler, Hans: Nationalsozialismus in der fränkischen Provinz: Neuendettelsau unterm Hakenkreuz. 2018, p. 97
4 ibid. p. 84
5 ibid. p. 88
Picture credits:
Cover photo: Central Archive of Diakonie Neuendettelsau
Weekly „Der Stürmer“, special edition 1934
SA-missions-troop – photo insert of the Freimund, 1935
