(Pre-)history to the correspondence

Protes­tant re­form­ers had at­tempted to con­vince Jews to con­vert to Protes­tantism as early as the 16th cen­tury. How­ever, the Protes­tant mis­sion to the Jews of­fi­cially began in the 18th cen­tury with the work of Jo­hann Christoph Wa­gen­seil; 1728 saw the found­ing of the In­sti­tu­tum Ju­daicum in Halle, whose mis­sion was to study Ju­daism and con­vert Jews to the Gospel. The Re­vival­ist Move­ment of the 19th cen­tury fur­ther boosted mis­sion­ary work among Jews, es­pe­cially in Eng­land.

After the end of Sec­ond World War and fol­low­ing the Holo­caust, the mis­sion to the Jews un­der­went a re­align­ment. Among Protes­tants the basic le­git­i­macy of pros­e­ly­tiz­ing Jews had been in­creas­ingly chal­lenged since the 1960s. How­ever, it was only in 1980 that the synod As­sem­bly of Chris­t­ian clergy where de­ci­sions are reached about ques­tions of faith. of the Protes­tant Church of the Rhineland be­came the first re­gional church in Ger­many to re­ject mis­sion­ary work among Jews on prin­ci­ple. Within the Roman-​Catholic Church there had been a dis­cus­sion on mis­sion­ary work among Jews since the Sec­ond Vat­i­can Coun­cil Catholic Church as­sem­bly in the Vat­i­can from Oc­to­ber 1962 to De­cem­ber 1965, at which it was re­solved that the Roman-​Catholic Church should open up to the out­side world and un­dergo re­newal. is­sued the de­c­la­ra­tion Nos­tra ae­tate “De­c­la­ra­tion on the Re­la­tion of the Church with Non-​Christian Re­li­gions“ adopted at the Sec­ond Vat­i­can Coun­cil, in which other re­li­gions were rec­og­nized. (1965). In 2009, the Cen­tral Com­mit­tee of Ger­man Catholics Zen­tralkomi­tee der deutschen Katho­liken re­jected any form of mis­sion­ary work among Jews, em­pha­siz­ing in­stead the di­a­log be­tween Chris­tians and Jews.

The cor­re­spon­dence be­tween Sen­a­tor Schmidt and Bishop Wölber il­lus­trates the two dif­fer­ing basic po­si­tions in this na­tion­wide de­bate. It is re­mark­able that a politi­cian showed such a strong in­ter­est in this issue and ex­pressed un­equiv­o­cal op­po­si­tion to any kind of mis­sion­ary work among Jews at this early date. At the time his po­si­tion was a mi­nor­ity view among Protes­tants, how­ever, it was to be­come the ma­jor­ity view some decades later.

In his let­ter Hel­mut Schmidt takes an ad­verse stance against Hans-​Otto Wölber, a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the church whom he oth­er­wise greatly re­spected, for his con­tin­ued sup­port of the mis­sion to the Jews, which rep­re­sented the ma­jor­ity view among Protes­tants at the time. Schmidt de­voted a lot of time to this de­bate and – de­spite his fun­da­men­tal dis­tance from the­o­log­i­cal schol­ar­ship – he ed­u­cated him­self thor­oughly on the issue by read­ing gen­eral the­o­log­i­cal jour­nals. Not only did he de­mand tol­er­ance in re­li­gious and ide­o­log­i­cal mat­ters, but he also showed a par­tic­u­lar sen­si­tiv­ity to­wards Is­rael and Ju­daism which was in­formed by his ex­pe­ri­ence of the “Third Reich”.

Course of the discussion and lines of argumentation

The de­bate was prompted by a board meet­ing of the So­ci­ety for Christian-​Jewish Co­op­er­a­tion Gesellschaft für Christlich-​Jüdische Zusam­me­nar­beit founded in 1952, dur­ing which this topic had been dis­cussed. Schmidt had been sur­prised to hear that the re­gional church was en­gaged in mis­sion­ary work among Jews and made an in­quiry re­gard­ing the mat­ter to the bishop on April 30, 1964: “There are no more than 2000 or 3000 Jews liv­ing in Ham­burg at this time; I would con­sider pros­e­ly­tiz­ing among them – re­gard­less of any pos­si­ble the­o­log­i­cal jus­ti­fi­ca­tion – mis­guided church pol­icy. I have al­ready heard a very bit­ter re­mark made by a Jew­ish per­son about this kind of work.” While Schmidt did not out­right dis­miss the pos­si­bil­ity that the church might have a the­o­log­i­cal ar­gu­ment for their mis­sion to the Jews, given the his­tor­i­cal ex­pe­ri­ence of the Holo­caust, he con­sid­ered it far less im­por­tant than good re­la­tions be­tween Chris­tians and Jews.

Yet the Bishop of Ham­burg in his let­ter of May 13, 1964 in­sisted on pros­e­ly­tiz­ing Jews ex­plic­itly for the­o­log­i­cal rea­sons with­out con­sid­er­ing the Jew­ish per­spec­tive at all. Ac­cord­ing to Wölber mis­sion­ary work meant “es­tab­lish­ing con­tact be­tween groups which God di­rected to­wards each other by his acts through­out his­tory. [...] This has noth­ing to do with over­bear­ance on the part of Chris­tian­ity, with racial prej­u­dice, with a lack of re­pen­tance among Chris­tians in Ger­many or what­ever else one might as­sume.” Schmidt was not en­tirely con­vinced by this cler­i­cal rea­son­ing, how­ever, as he wrote on July 13, 1964: “While I can agree with the term “ser­vice to Is­rael”, I still con­sider the term “mis­sion to the Jews” in­ap­pro­pri­ate, just as I con­sider any kind of mis­sion­ary work among Ger­man Jews in­ap­pro­pri­ate.”

Schmidt re­mained in­ter­ested in the sub­ject: from an ar­ti­cle in the jour­nal Lutherische Monat­shefte writ­ten by Paul Rein­hardt he learned that a the­o­log­i­cal ar­gu­ment could be made against the mis­sion to the Jews as well. Schmidt writes that he strongly agreed with the view of Günther Harder out­lined in the ar­ti­cle – Harder was a pro­fes­sor of New Tes­ta­ment Stud­ies at Berlin’s Kirch­liche Hochschule and an ac­tive mem­ber of the Ger­man Protes­tant Church Com­mit­tee on Jewish-​Christian di­a­log Ar­beits­ge­mein­schaft Juden-​Christen beim Deutschen Evan­ge­lis­chen Kirchen­tag, who dis­ap­proved of cam­paign­ing for Chris­tian­ity in con­ver­sa­tion with Jews. Thus Schmidt con­tin­ued his cor­re­spon­dence with Wölber re­gard­ing this mat­ter on Au­gust 26, 1964. To claim that the goal of the mis­sion to the Jews was “sav­ing Is­rael” was “in­fi­nitely over­bear­ing”, as Schmidt very aptly phrased it. As cit­i­zens we were called upon to “show tol­er­ance to­wards other faiths” – “tol­er­ance born from re­spect for the re­li­gious be­liefs of our neigh­bors”. His let­ter il­lus­trates that Schmidt con­sid­ers Jews Ger­man cit­i­zens of a dif­fer­ent faith – thus putting Ju­daism on a par with Chris­tian­ity. Con­se­quently, cit­i­zen­ship – and im­plic­itly the state – is neu­tral, grant­ing equal rights to all faiths.

Schmidt states his par­tic­u­lar in­ter­est in the issue of pros­e­ly­tiz­ing Jews re­sulted “from re­mem­ber­ing the par­tic­u­lar role some Lutheran Chris­tians of ear­lier gen­er­a­tions un­for­tu­nately played in the treat­ment of Jews”. This might be an ac­tual ref­er­ence to Mar­tin Luther and his prob­lem­atic late writ­ings on the Jews; more likely, though, Schmidt was mainly think­ing of the Lutheran Ger­man Chris­tians Deutsche Chris­ten of the Nazi pe­riod since his per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence dur­ing this time strongly shaped his ac­tions as a politi­cian. This view and this kind of sen­si­tive con­sid­er­a­tion of the Na­tional So­cial­ist past were quite rare in church cir­cles in the 1960s.

Wölber stuck to his view, how­ever, and on Sep­tem­ber 22, 1964 he sent Schmidt some re­cent ar­ti­cles on the mis­sion to the Jews taken from the jour­nal Lutherische Rund­schau. The bishop then ended their de­bate with a vague phrase, avoid­ing any fur­ther dis­cus­sion of their dif­fer­ences on this issue: “When we in­quire about re­demp­tion within the whole breadth of re­li­gious thought, the Chris­tians still be­lieve they have to counter the views of their Jew­ish broth­ers. But you are right in say­ing these are all ques­tions which are an­swered in very dif­fer­ent ways among the ranks of us Chris­tians as well.”

Schmidt and Wölber ar­gued on dif­fer­ent lev­els. While the bishop fo­cused on the­o­log­i­cal ar­gu­ments, Schmidt was pri­mar­ily con­cerned with the po­lit­i­cal ram­i­fi­ca­tions of the mis­sion to the Jews con­sid­er­ing Ger­many’s re­spon­si­bil­ity for the Holo­caust. In his mind, these out­weighed any the­o­log­i­cal jus­ti­fi­ca­tions since he sought peace­ful co­ex­is­tence of both re­li­gions.

Further course of discussion and late agreement

Three decades later, in 1995, the So­ci­ety for Christian-​Jewish Co­op­er­a­tion Gesellschaft für Christlich-​Jüdische Zusam­me­nar­beit pub­lished a “Re­jec­tion of the Mis­sion to the Jews”, which trig­gered a fierce de­bate, par­tic­u­larly in church cir­cles. The pub­li­ca­tion was prompted by in­creased im­mi­gra­tion of Jews from the for­mer So­viet Union who were tar­geted for con­ver­sion by Evan­gel­i­cals.

Hel­mut Schmidt con­tin­ued to op­pose the mis­sion, re­ject­ing pros­e­ly­tiz­ing of any kind in a lec­ture de­liv­ered in De­cem­ber 1997 at the Bavar­ian Churches’ Au­gus­tana Col­lege in Neuen­det­tel­sau: “It is not at all con­ducive to peace be­tween faiths, be­tween re­li­gious com­mu­ni­ties, and churches if one of them tries to woo away mem­bers from an­other one – no mat­ter how good their in­ten­tions may be.” In his book “Außer Di­enst,” a self-​described “stock­tak­ing” pub­lished in 2008, Schmidt states he had al­ways re­spected the faith­ful, “re­gard­less of which faith they ad­here to.” Re­li­gious tol­er­ance was es­sen­tial: “Every human being must allow every other human being their faith and their re­li­gion. He must also allow them their skep­ti­cism. Hu­man­ity needs re­li­gious tol­er­ance, and there­fore each in­di­vid­ual needs re­li­gious tol­er­ance. [...] For this rea­son I have al­ways con­sid­ered Chris­t­ian pros­e­ly­tiz­ing an of­fense against hu­man­ity.” Hel­mut Schmidt, Außer Di­enst. Eine Bi­lanz, Mu­nich 2008, pp. 288f.

Select Bibliography