PEER-REVIEWED ARTICLE “Shalom, Shalom, Shalom Israel!” Jews and Judaism in Helmut Gollwitzer's Life and Theology W. Trav

PEER-REVIEWED ARTICLE “Shalom, Shalom, Shalom Israel!” Jews and Judaism in Helmut Gollwitzer’s Life and Theology W. Travis McMaken, Lindenwood University Helmut Gollwitzer was one of Karl Barth’s most signif- icant students for a number of reasons, and not least among these was his deep-seated commitment to establishing a posi- tive relationship between Christianity and Judaism.1 This A version of this essay was presented on June 16, 2014 at the annual Karl Barth Conference at Princeton Theological Seminary. I am indebted to Dr. Ellen Charry (Princeton Theological Seminary) for providing valuable comments on an early draft of the essay. Thanks are also due for the help rendered by J. T. Young, my teaching assistant at Lindenwood University. 1 Gollwitzer is perhaps best known for his political theology insofar as he engaged in extensive critical interaction with Marxism while himself advo- cating a form of democratic socialism. See, for example, Helmut Gollwitzer, The Christian faith and the Marxist Criticism of Religion (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1970); “Muß ein Christ Sozialist sein?,” in Forderungen der Umkehr: Beiträge zur Theologie der Gesellschaft (Mu- nich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1976), 162–78. For an overview of Gollwitzer’s political activism, see Claudia Lepp, “Helmut Gollwitzer als Dialogpartner der sozialen Bewegungen,” Umbrüche: Der deutsche Protestantismus und die sozialen Bewegungen in den 1960er und 70er Jahren, Siegfried Hermle, Claudia Lepp, Harry Oelke, eds. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007), 226–46. But Gollwitzer’s interest in Jewish-Christian dialogue and his commitment to rethinking Christian treatments of Jews and Judaism were also central aspects of his post-war thought. This is some- times missed in English-language scholarship, perhaps in part because the three essays on “Antisemitismus” in his Forderungen der Freiheit were not included in the English translation. Helmut Gollwitzer, Forderungen der Freiheit: Aufsätze und Reden zur politischen Ethik (Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1964), 247–74; cf. The Demands of Freedom: Papers by a Chris- tian in West Germany, translated by Robert W. Fenn (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1965). However, few studies of Gollwitzer’s life and thought in general—and especially his work in Jewish-Christian dialogue— exist even in German. This essay thus intends to advance scholarship in SCJR 10 (2015) 1 relationship had been poisoned in Gollwitzer’s lifetime by the horrible actions of Germany’s National Socialist regime lead- ing up to and during the Second World War. But Gollwitzer also recognized that the seed of antisemitism, which all too easily flowers and has flowered into devastating forms of op- pression, had long been planted in and nourished by established patterns of Christian discourse. Gollwitzer relied heavily on what Andreas Pangrtiz refers to as Gollwitzer’s “ge- nius of friendship”2 in his efforts to repair this relationship. In his ability to be with others in true solidarity, Gollwitzer em- bodied in his life the sort of rapprochement necessary between what he preferred to think of not as two different reli- gions but as two “confessions” or “denominations” (Konfessionen) of a single faith.3 A consideration of Gollwitz- er’s biography reveals the complimentary point that Gollwitzer came to these convictions through his propensity for friendship. What follows brings Gollwitzer’s biography together with key intellectual moments in his engagement with the question of Jewish-Christian relations to indicate how important rela- tionships and experiences impacted his thought on the topic. I. Gollwitzer was born “the son of an evangelical- Lutheran pastor in Bavaria” on December 29, 1908.4 His fa- this area of neglect, and especially to bring more balance to treatments of Gollwitzer in English-language circles. 2 Andreas Pangritz, “Helmut Gollwitzer Als Theologe Des Dialogs” (Public lecture at Rheinischen Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität, Bonn, December 3, 2008), 1. 3 Helmut Gollwitzer, “Martin Bubers Bedeutung Für Die Protestantische Theologie,” in Leben Als Begegnung: Ein Jahrhundert Martin Buber (1878–1978), Vorträge Und Aufsätze, Peter von der Osten-Sacken, ed. (Berlin: Institut Kirche und Judentum, 1982), 64. 4 Helmut Gollwitzer, Skizzen Eines Lebens: Aus Verstreuten Selbstzeugnissen Gefunden Und Verbunden Von Friedrich-Wilhelm Marquardt, Wolfgang Brinkel Und Manfred Weber (Gütersloh: Christian Kaiser Verlagshaus, 1998), 11. This is currently the definitive source for Gollwitzer’s biography, and my discussion of his life relies on it unless oth- erwise indicated. It is perhaps worth noting that this work is not, strictly SCJR 10 (2015) 2 ther possessed conservative socio-political instincts that included a poor opinion of Jews. As Gollwitzer put it later when reflecting back on his childhood, “just as the average Protestant was middle class and ‘national,’ he was also anti- Semitic.”5 The theological conservatism of Gollwitzer’s father mitigated somewhat the effects of this antisemitism. He taught his children that the Jews of the Old Testament period were a noble people, but that God rejected them in response to their rejection of Jesus “and since that time they have been mer- chants, good for nothing, and they infiltrate everything, everywhere they go.” This concern for infiltration was the moral of the story, for “against that you had to defend your- self.”6 But Gollwitzer defends his parents, saying that “there was no malicious [bösartiger] antisemitism in my parent’s house” and that personal encounters with friendly Jewish people opened up different possibilities for thought. Furthermore, Gollwitzer makes it clear that “we were taught as children that the crucifixion of Jesus Christ was not the fault [Schuld] of Jews, but that it was a result of all our guilt [Schuld].”7 What we might call Gollwitzer’s “unreflective” antisemitism persisted into the 1920s.8 In an event known as the Beer Hall Putsch in early November, 1923, Adolf Hitler de- clared himself the chancellor of Bavaria and proclaimed the establishment of a new national government. But when he speaking, a work of autobiography. Rather, it is the editorial integration of various autobiographical comments made and reflections produced by Gollwitzer in diverse contexts and genres. These materials from Gollwitzer are ensconced in editorial comments that unite them as a single narrative, tie them to Gollwitzer’s bibliography, and provide other informative dis- cussions. That said, the task of composing a truly critical biography of Gollwitzer remains as yet unfulfilled. 5 Victoria Barnett, For the Soul of the People: Protestant Protest against Hitler (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 15. 6 Barnett, For the Soul of the People, 15. See also Gollwitzer, Skizzen Eines Lebens, 30. 7 Gollwitzer, Skizzen Eines Lebens, 31. 8 Later in life Gollwitzer noted that after the Shoah “you can hardly speak of ‘harmless’ anti-Semitism, but at that time we saw the antipathy toward the Jews as harmless.” Barnett, For the Soul of the People, 15. SCJR 10 (2015) 3 failed to immediately enlist police and military forces in sup- port of his cause, the large National Socialist rally was dispersed by machine-gun fire and Hitler was arrested shortly thereafter. It is in the context of such remembrances that Gollwitzer reflects on his opinions of Jews at that time: “A Jew is not a German, and cannot be a German, because there is a profound difference in nature between Jews and Germans.” These aspects of Gollwitzer’s early life—the events in Munich and his own early view of Jews—cohere in his mind because at that time he was a messenger boy for the SA in the Bavarian city of Lindau.9 The critical shift for Gollwitzer seems to have begun in 1925 when he entered the well-regarded St. Anna Gymnasium in Augsburg. He graduated in 1928. Gollwitzer recognized a change in perspective during this period, and it came not primarily through the course of study but through personal interaction. Through personal encounter he learned that “pacifists are not necessarily cowards, despicable socialists are not necessarily November-criminals, and Jews are not necessarily damned by God.”10 After leaving St. Anna’s Gollwitzer studied theology at Erlangen and Jena before arriving in Bonn for the summer semester in 1930. He was there to study with Karl Barth. This marked a decisive break in Gollwitzer’s life with a past that he intended to leave behind. Part of that past was active involve- ment during the previous decades in various aspects of the nationalist German youth movement. To symbolize this break, Gollwitzer burned his poetry and his correspondence.11 9 Gollwitzer, Skizzen Eines Lebens, 28. 10 Gollwitzer, Skizzen Eines Lebens, 40. The stereotypes here are all asso- ciated with the various “stab in the back” myths that circulated during the Weimar period, blaming Germany’s defeat in World War I on political sabotage by the sort of socially marginalized groups mentioned above. 11 Gollwitzer, Skizzen Eines Lebens, 55, 57. The unavailability of these materials makes it difficult to develop a critical understanding of Gollwitzer’s early socio-political outlook. Between his function as an SA messenger boy and his other youth movement connections, it is hard to resist the infer- ence that Gollwitzer had real sympathies with National Socialism in the 1920s that he only gradually but—in the end—decisively overcame. In this Helmut would have been ahead of his father. The elder Gollwitzer initially SCJR 10 (2015) 4 Now his commitment would be to dialectical theology. As Barth’s student, it was natural for Gollwitzer to be connected with the Confessing Church movement that developed in response to how National Socialist supporters within the church—the German Christians—sought to apply the government’s employment policies in the ecclesiastical context. Perhaps the most important of these applications was the so- called “Aryan paragraph” of 1933.

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