Klaus Tanner
Protestant Revolt against Modernity
With the Weimar Constitution of 1919, the first parliamentary democracy on German soil was
established. The general perception of the Weimar years is dominated by the downfall of this
Republic in National Socialist terror. All research on the Weimar Republic more or less
constitutes an examination of the reasons for the failure of this democracy.The exact
weighting of the reasons for failure is controversial even today. Hagen Schulze listed the
factors which strained this parliamentary democracy. On three and a half printed pages, he
categorized his compilation in the following eight complexes: foreign policy conditions,
formal constitutional order, party system and parliamentarianism, instruments of exercising
state power (military, bureaucracy, judiciary), society, economy, political thinking,
institutionalized culture.1 Schulze’s framework reflects some of the complexity of the subject
“failure of the Weimar democracy.” It advises caution with respect to one-sided, monocausal
attempts at an explanation.
In the last point, Schulze pointed out the churches, in particular the internal bond of the
Evangelical church to the monarchical form of state.2 There is a consensus in the research that
the political mentalities subsisting in considerable parts of the Protestant milieu represented
severely burdening factors for the Republic. According to the recent extensive overview by
Heinrich August Winkler, the “confessional dividing line in the political life of Weimar
[played] a role that can hardly be overestimated… The right-wing parties, which most
strongly contested the new state, had considerably more followers in Protestant than in
Catholic Germany.”3 In a recapitulation of the research results on the National Socialist
German Workers’ Party (NSDAP) constituency from 1925 to 1933, Jürgen W. Falter and
Michael H. Kater reemphasized that “disproportionately more followers of National
Socialism came from mainly Protestant areas” and that is was mainly the younger generation
which supported the Nazis.4 In this respect, Weimar is also an important field of research for
the subject of the relationship between Protestantism and democracy.
The Fundamentalist Revolt against Modernity
Hagen Schulze, Das Scheitern der Weimarer Republik als Problem der Forschung, in: id.
and Karl Dietrich Erdmann (Ed.), Weimar Selbstpreisgabe einer Demokratie. Eine Bilanz
heute, Düsseldorf 1980, 23-41, 37f. The most thorough overview of the research, with
detailed bibliographical information, is offered by Eberhard Kolb, Die Weimarer Republik,
Munich 21988.
For the best complete overview of Protestantism in the Weimar era see: Kurt Nowak,
Evangelische Kirche und Weimarer Republik. Zum politischen Weg des deutschen
Protestantismus zwischen 1918 und 1932, Göttingen 1981; and Klaus Scholder, Die Kirchen
und das Dritte Reich, Bd. I.: Vorgeschichte und Zeit der Illusionen 1918-1934, Frankfurt a.M.
1977. See also the theological habilitation thesis by Manfred Jacobs, Vom Liberalismus zur
dialektischen Theologie, Hamburg 1966; id., Kirche Weltanschauung, Politik. Die
evangelischen Kirchen und die Option zwischen dem zweiten und dritten Reich, in:
Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte 31 (1983) 108-135.
Winkler, loc. cit., 295.
Jürgen W. Falter and Michael H. Kater, Wähler und Mitglieder der NSDAP. Neue
Forschungsergebnisse zur Soziographie des Nationalsozialisums 1925 bis 1933, in:
Geschichte und Gesellschaft 19 (1993) 155-177, 167f.
With regard to Weimar, Detlev J. K. Peukert spoke of the “crisis period of classical
modernity.”5 With the economic transformation to an industrial society at the end of the 19th
century behind it, the period after 1919 mainly saw a “sociocultural breakthrough of
modernity:” “What had been developed since the turn of the century in science and art, in
urban development, in technology and in medicine, in intellectual reflection as in daily life,
rehearsed our still current form of life, classically designed it… ‘Weimar’ demonstrated, at
rapid speed and within a short period of time, the fascinating and fatal possibilities of our
modern world.”6 This “socioculural breakthrough of modernity” led to the consolidation of a
critique of culture, whose pattern of argumentation also has a history of influence up to the
present day. A glance at Protestant theology confirms this supposition of continuity regarding
cultural patterns of perception. The basic ideas of the great classical concepts which affected
the debate after 1945 were formed for the most part in the Weimar era. Paul Althaus, Karl
Barth, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Rudolf Bultmann, Friedrich Gogarten, Emanuel Hirsch, Paul
Tillich – they all developed, in the context of the Weimar Republic, initial positions which
have remained influential for further thinking.
According to Talcott Parsons7 and Fritz Stern,8 National Socialism was a fundamentalist
uprising against modern culture, against its control mechanisms and its basic principles. This
revolt against the modern experience received decisive impulses from the political system
established by the Weimar Constitution; a form of state in which the modern, pluralistic
culture was given a respective political order. In the Weimar democracy, the so-called
“conservative revolution” was formed, in which a fundamental critique of the technologicalindustrial society resulting from enlightenment and liberalism was articulated. The Protestant
milieu was an important breeding ground for this new “conservatism.” The criticism of
enlightenment and modernity articulated here was in no way backward-looking and
traditionalist. It was full of “idealized models and hopes.”9 It was shaped by a “utopian form
of dealing with social conflicts.”10 The critique of parliamentarianism and the party state was
commonly legitimized by the claim to actually stand for a better democracy. The lesson can
be learned from Weimar that an affirmation of democracy is not enough. Particularly in the
minds of Weimar intellectuals there were very different notions about how – in which
political form – a better representation of the will of the people should be achieved.
Due to this syndrome of modernization crises and political mobilization, of critique of the
existing system and utopian hopes, or the resulting fundamental critique of parliamentary
democracy, Weimar continues to play a role as a point of reference for the interpretation of
our present. The question of whether we have “Weimar circumstances” or should fear them
has become a fixed motif of political rhetoric.
The Antiquated Constitution of the Opposition
Detlev J.K. Peukert, Die Weimarer Republik. Krisenjahre der klassischen Moderne,
Frankfurt am Main 1987. Heinrich August Winkler (loc. cit., 11) called the Weimar years “the
great laboratory of classical modernity.”
Peuert, loc. cit., 11/12.
Talcott Parsons, Demokratie und Sozialstruktur in Deutschland vor der Zeit des
Nationalsozialismus (1941), in: id. Beiträge zur soziologischen Theorie, ed. and introduced by
Dietrich Rüschemeyer, Neuwied/Berlin 1968, 256-281.
See especially the introduction in: Fritz Stern, Kulturpessimismus als politische Gefahr.
Eine Analyse nationaler Ideologie in Deutschland (1961), Munich 1986.
Parsons, loc. cit., 276.
Ralf Dahrendorf, Demokratie und Sozialstruktur in Deutschland, in: id., Gesellschaft und
Freiheit. Zur soziologischen Analyse der Gegenwart, Munich 1961, 260-299, 278f.
The majority of Protestants considered the new constitution of 1919 a document of “westernliberal” thinking, a dictation in the spirit of the victors at Versailles. With its extensive section
on basic rights and the protection of individual civil liberties, basic demands of political
liberalism and the revolution of 1848 became reality. In the 1920s, this liberal, bourgeoisrationalist thinking was increasingly seen as an antiquated relic of the 19th century, which
could no longer meet the demands of modern mass society. Especially a modern pluralistic
society needed a strong state, independent of group and party interests, to generate unity and
integration. From the Protestant perspective, the new Republic was also difficult to accept
because old domestic political rivals, Catholicism and social democracy, also shared power
after 1919.
The Weimar Constitution brought for Protestantism – for which no organizational or
personnel changes at the church level had taken place without state authorization since the
Reformation – the separation of church and state, the legal and political end of the alliance
between “throne and altar.”11 This separation was experienced as an enormous loss of
influence; accordingly, “crisis” became a fashionable word in the analysis (Deutung) of the
time. As opposed to Catholicism, which had a centralistic, strong church organization and
reliable, parliamentary experienced political representation in the Center Party, Protestantism
was fragmented in established regional churches and had no party to represent its interests in
the political arena.
The disintegration of an ideologically homogeneous society and the fact that the existence of
different basic convictions and value systems in society was now also reflected in the political
system by means of parliamentarianism contributed to the insecurity. Protestantism after 1919
did not accept the democratic constitutional state as an adequate means of politically dealing
with a pluralistic culture.
The phrase “state without God,” which continuously remained in the vocabulary of the church
from the November revolution in 1918 until the end of the young Republic, shows the inner
reservations of Protestantism against the political-societal change that was taking place.
Despite partial cooperation with the new democratic government and the financial security of
the church guaranteed by the regime, an inextinguishable mistrust persisted that left-wing
parties could enforce the anti-church sentiments that were perceived at the beginning of the
revolution. A symbol for this antagonism towards the church was seen by both Catholics and
Protestants in USPD (Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany) representative Adolf
Hoffmann, who repeatedly held a lecture attempting to uncover the Ten Commandments as an
instrument of the ruling power and aimed to cancel state benefits given to the church until that
time, to facilitate withdrawal from church membership, and to do away with both religious
instruction as a regular subject and the Christian nature of schools.
Broad Consensus in the Critique of Democracy
There was a broad consensus in the ‘20s regarding the rejection of the new political order. It
stretched from Paul Tillich, a theologian leaning towards religious socialism, to theologians
involved in the DNVP (German National People’s Party), such as Friedrich Brunstäd. Only a
small group of liberal theologians, such as Adolf v. Harnack, Ernst Troeltsch, Martin Rade,
Hermann Mulert and Otto Baumgarten, sympathized with or were actively involved in the
bourgeois German Democratic Party (DDP) founded by Friedrich Naumann. For the majority,
however, it was common in German Protestantism to take an independent stance, which
normally meant voting German National (DNVP).
See the study by Jochen Jacke, Kirche zwischen Monarchie und Republik. Der preußische
Protestantismus nach dem Zusammenbruch von 1918, Hamburg 1976.
Protestant pastors were largely opposed to the new republican order.12 In an announcement in
the magazine “Christliche Welt” on the founding of a “Republican Pastoral Association,” it
was stated: “It is an unbearable state of affairs that the German Republic cannot rely on the
constitutional faithfulness of incumbent pastors in German states, but rather must assume that
in many cases the present people’s government is viewed only as a temporary institution.” In
a harsh criticism of this appeal, one pastor protested “very determinedly” against the “attitude
harassment heralded by the Republican Pastoral Association. Other than Jesus Christ, nobody
and nothing, even the Republican Pastoral Association, has the right to demand a pro or
contra decision from us.” As Jesus considered everything transient, pastors could not be
denied the right to regard even the Weimar state as a “temporary institution.” The author of
the reply did in fact adhere to “constitutional faithfulness,” as “faithful to the constitution” is
not identical with “republican.” In Art. 76, the constitution foresaw the possibility to change
the form of state.13 Church leaders who officially behaved neutrally, but by all means took a
position when it came to general national issues regarded as independent, made no open
resistance against the Republic. They knew that churches had never been better off
financially.14 However, towards the end of the Weimar Republic they gladly welcomed the
gradual rise of the authoritative-nationalist state, which at first seemed to respect Christianity
more than the “state without God.”
Critique of Parliamentarianism
The Protestant rejection of the Weimar democracy came to a climax – in concurrence with the
critique in the teachings of constitutional law at the time – in a critique of parliamentarianism.
For instance, the critique of parliamentarianism by expert on constitutional law, Carl Schmitt,
found widespread agreement: “Closer and closest-knit committees of parties and party
coalitions make decisions behind closed doors, and that which is decided by the
representatives of large capitalist interest groups in the closest committee may be even more
important for the lives and destinies of millions of people than those political decisions. In the
fight against the secret politics of supreme princes, the idea of modern parliamentarianism,
the demand for control and the belief in the public and publicity was born… but how
harmless and idyllic are the objects of such cabinet politics of the 17th and 18th centuries
compared to the destinies that are at stake today and that today are the object of all sorts of
secrets.”15 For Schmitt, the public and debate as basic principles of political interest
aggregation had become obsolete; parliamentarianism had consequently lost “intellectual
foundation and meaning.” Certain party and big business interests determined the process of
political interest aggregation behind closed doors. Even here, the conviction is reflected that
in light of the integration problems of an inhomogeneous mass society, parliamentarianism
was an incompetent instrument for overcoming crises, because it weakened the state by
making it susceptible to a pluralism of divergent group interests.
Conservative Anti-Capitalism
Karl Wilhelm Dahm, Pfarrer und Politik. Soziale Position und politische Mentalität des
deutschen evangelischen Pfarrerstandes zwischen 1918 und 1933, Opladen 1965.
Announcement in: Christliche Welt 36 (1922) Column 120; die Replik loc. cit., Column
212.
Jonathan R.C. Wright, “Über die Parteien.” Die politische Haltung der evangelischen
Kirchenführer 1918-1933, Göttingen 1977.
Carl Schmitt, Die geistesgeschichtliche Lage des heutigen Parlamentarismus (1923), Berlin
2
1926, 62.
Another important element in the rejection of parliamentary democracy in the ‘20s was the
widespread critique of capitalism. The capitalism of “western” influence, allegedly only
motivated by selfishness, was rejected. For “critical” theologians within the radius of the
“conservative revolution,” parliamentary democracy was nothing other than a poorly
concealed leadership of particular economic interest groups. Lutheran theologian Emanuel
Hirsch wrote in 1919: “the more democratic a state is today, the more dependent it tends to
become on large economic monetary powers, and the less social justice can be expected from
it. Christian love, which sees a brother even in the most humble person, will resist a
democratic regime for precisely this reason. The freedom that the state should grant each of
its citizens consists of things much more real than particularly large ballots.”16 In this kind of
anti-capitalist critique of democracy, the experiences of the 19th century continued to have
their effect: People wanted to be national-social; those who held on to the new movement
wanted to prevent the church from failing again on the social issue. Those who supported the
national-socialist critique of parliamentary democracy often understood themselves as
“progressive” – not bourgeois-liberally assimilated. A strong independent state was
demanded, which could also be a “true social state,” in which even the weak could benefit
from their rights.
This fundamental political attitude is exemplified in the lecture by Heinz Dietrich Wendland,
“Socialism and Nationalism,” published in 1931. The author aims to conduct a “meta-political
observation,” which penetrates the “actual,” i.e. idealistic and religious reasons behind the
current political movements. In doing this, he repeatedly falls back on writings by Hermann
Hellers, but also cites Wilhelm Stapel. For Wendland, it was no longer a question in 1931 that
the “current state, built on the ideas of 1789, must be radically overcome.” In words
reminiscent of Carl Schmitt’s diction, he explains: “The rational belief through reason
(Vernunftglaube) in finding the truth through parliamentary discussion, in political decisionmaking through the act of voting – these are dead. The debasement of the state to a
functionary of society has made it into a slave of the parties and economic powers.”17 It was
essential “to create a new economic form beyond liberal capitalism.” 18 In this new form of
cohabitation, the proletariat must finally be freed from the yoke of industrial production. All
this could only emerge from a new synthesis of national and socialistic powers. Wendland
emphatically explains: “If socialism is nothing other than the fight for the dignity and
freedom of working people and the creation of an economic order which maintains these…
then we will and must become socialists.”19 The connection to German nationalism is easy to
make, according to Wendland, because it was influenced by “fierce anti-capitalism,” which
meant a “fight against the hegemony of economic powers in and beyond the state and the will
to limit boundless business interests.” It also meant a critique of the “individualistic, liberal
understanding of property” and the demand for the “binding of property to the community, to
the whole.”20 If this were to succeed, all this could only really signify the creation of a state
represented by a “chief decision-maker superior to political parties and the economy.”21
The Protestant Preference for a “Surrogate Empire”
Emanuel Hirsch, Demokratie und Christentum, in: Der Geisteskampf der Gegenwart, 54
(1918) 57-60, 59.
Heinz-Dietrich Wendland, Sozialismus und Nationalismus, in: Neue kirchliche Zeitschrift,
XLII. (1931) 408-437, 424.
Wendland, loc. cit., 412/13.
ibid., 416
ibid., 434.
ibid.
Also contributing to the rejection of the constitution was the fact that the constitution itself
was a compromise between various forms of representation of the “people’s will.” On one
side, the constitution accepted societal pluralism and the end of a homogeneous culture; on
the other side, the fiction of the old authoritative state – that there is a position above the
interests of parties, i.e. the possibility to directly assume responsibility for the “whole” – was
maintained. The Reich President, as a type of ‘surrogate emperor,’ a counterweight to
parliament and independent of the political parties, was meant to represent the unity of the
people. The president’s strong position in the constitution (Art. 25 §1 Law on the
Disbandment of the Reichstag; Art 47 Supreme Command of Armed Forces; Art. 53
Appointment and Dismissal of the Reich Chancellor; Art. 73 Enactment of a Referendum
against Decisions of the Reichstag; Art. 48 §2 Emergency Decree Law) and a fairly monistic
interpretation – rooted in the tradition of the old authoritative state – of the significantly
dualistic system of Weimar were indeed able to calm (Protestant) sentiments, which were
apprehensive of a political understanding oriented around parties and pluralism. Protestant
voters placed their hopes on the Reich President. They greeted the election of Hindenburg22 in
1925, a representative of the old authoritative governmental thinking, and supported politics
which aimed at limiting parliamentary power and instead strengthening the power of the
“surrogate emperor,” the Reich President. The existence in modern society of numerous,
competing basic political concepts that relativize each other was refused recognition, as was
the rationality of parliamentary democracy which assumes that there is no “provable and
indisputable rightfulness” (G. Radbruch)23 in the political sphere, but that the only way to
form an overall political will is through a continuous, painstaking process of compromise.
Moralizing State Ideal
The critique of parliamentary democracy shared a common foundation on the left and the
right, consisting in an exaggerated definition of the objective of the state. From a moralizing
perspective, the state was understood as a “Kulturstaat.” High homogeneity expectations were
formulated: Citizens should make up a “community,” not only a “society” consisting of
atomistic, single individuals. Along with this idealized notion of community, a rejection of
societal pluralism, the principle of majority and the party system came hand in hand. The
supposition of a close connection between religion and higher culture formed the backdrop
for this attitude. From this perspective, an idealistic neutral state will destroy the moral basis
of a community in the long term, since a culture without religion is unthinkable. Such a state
is devoid of religion and thus immoral. Here, the church is called upon as a “sentinel” of the
state, e.g. for regulation of the school issue. The belief in a political power that can be “above
the parties” and represent the “true will” of the people can be seen in the standpoint on the
position of the Reich President.
See Karl Holl, Konfessionalität, Konfessionalismus und demokratische Republik. Zu
einigen Aspekten der Reichspräsidentenwahl von 1925, in: Vierteljahreshefte für
Zeitgeschichte 17 (1969) 254-275; Winkler, loc. cit., 278f.
Gustav Radbruch, Die politischen Parteien im System des deutschen Verfassungsrechts, in:
Gerhard Anschütz und Richard Thoma (Ed.), Handbuch des deutschen Staatsrechts, Tübingen
1930, Bd. I, 285-294. “The authoritative state, whose government is not based on the party
political majority in the parliament, necessarily held on to the ideological belief in the
possibility of a position independent of the parties: ‘the fatherland before the party.’ The
political independence of the government was a downright legend, the grand delusion of the
authoritative state. …This notion of an authoritative state comes up against the democratic
notion that there is no provable and indisputable rightness among basic political concepts”
(289).
The underlying political explosiveness in this attitude is discernible in the speech held by the
senior consistorial councilor J. Kaftan from Berlin at the second Church Day in Stuttgart in
1921. In light of the supposed hazard posed by the state “devoid of religion” for all moral
cultural values, he demanded that the church become a “combating church.” For Kaftan, this
charge also expressly included the political sermon: “He whom the spirit moves, and he who
can, should also hold a political sermon.” Furthermore, in view of the damage exuded by the
new state, he saw another duty of the church in the function of “sentinel,” to save Christian,
German culture from destruction: “We, the sentinel ordered by God, are here to ring the bells
and wake the sleeping.”24 Likewise convinced of the immorality of the democratic state
devoid of religion, Emanuel Hirsch called on Christians to “walk the long, difficult path of the
suffering opposition, courageous and willing to make sacrifices”25 and to take up the
“struggle in the spirit of the whole.”26
The position represented by Kaftan and Hirsch is an example of the fact that the oft-cited socalled “Doctrine of the Two Kingdoms,” in the sense of an arbitrative, peaceful theory of
separation between religious convictions and political options, did not play a role in Lutheran
milieus of the ‘20s. In fact, Lutherans were eminently political – had they only been obedient
to authority and blindly assimilated, they would have had to accept the new “authority.” But
especially in Lutheranism, the legitimacy of the revolution against the Weimar Republic was
exclaimed, e.g. by Hirsch: “The unconditional faithful relationship to authority could no
longer be recognized after 1918 by any true German as the last and definitive ethical word on
his integration in community life. Thus, the young national Lutheranism restricted the
doctrine of obedience towards authority, with growing terminological clarity, through the
exclusively worldly, unconditionally obligatory faith in service to the German people and
their mission. It obtained legitimacy for the national struggle despite its spoken or unspoken
revolutionary aims.”27
In the Name of “High Morality” against Formal Law
A crucial characteristic of the often-moralizing state thinking on the part of theologians and
church leaders was the formulation of political positions largely without reference to the
constitution and written legal order. Although much was written about “the state” and its
duties, this was done without reference to the specific modern legal regulations of the political
process of interest aggregation and the mechanism of creating “laws.” An appreciation for the
political importance of positive laws and the constitution was almost completely absent in
Protestantism in the ‘20s. Both were perceived as merely formal regulatory mechanisms, to
which no further attention need be paid. Critics of the Weimar democracy always argued as
Julius Kaftan, Die neue Aufgabe, die der evangelischen Kirche aus der von der Revolution
proklamierten Religionslosigkeit des Staates erwächst, in: Verhandlungen des 2. Deutschen
Evangelischen Kirchentages 1921, ed. Deutschen evangelischen Kirchenausschuß, Berlin
Steglitz o.J., 133.
Emanuel Hirsch, Deutschlands Schicksal. Staat, Volk und Menschheit im Lichte einer
ethischen Geschichtsansicht, Second Edition with Afterword, 1922, 166.
Emanuel Hirsch, Staat und Kirche im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, Göttingen 1929, 53.
Emanuel Hirsch, Die gegenwärtige geistige Lage im Spiegel philosophischer und
theologischer Besinnung. Akademische Vorlesungen zum Verständnis des deutschen Jahres
1933, Göttingen 1934, 117. On the approval of the “right and duty to struggle and revolution”
on the part of the “National-Socialist movement” loc. cit., 61. id., Vom verborgenen
Souverän, in: Glaube und Volk 1 (1932) 4-13: “We… refused to reiterate the Christian
reformatory teachings that any revolution is condemnable.” There is, in “the most extreme
cases, an emergency law, to destroy a given form of state if there is no other way to help the
people reach fulfillment for their lives and missions” (loc. cit., 7).
lawyers of true morality and high ethical ideals. When positive laws countered this morality, a
“higher” law was called upon, which allegedly allowed – even demanded – overrunning the
existing law. So-called conservative Lutherans argued expressly in this way. Legitimacy was
thus permanently played off against legality; in other words, constant reference to basic
values of the national community (which were, however, not written anywhere) was used by
Lutherans to set themselves apart from the given constitutional order.
Particular attention should be given to the fact that in the years after 1918, the argumentation
used by Protestant theologians found increasing acceptance on the part of historians28 and
experts on constitutional law.29 In the renunciation of the legal positivism of the GerberLaband school and the turn to the meta-legal, even metaphysical content of law, intensive
discussions were led regarding the ideological foundations and value determinateness of law,
as well as the meaning of basic rights as a codification of national values. In this context, a
Protestant transformation of some degree occurred regarding the model of constitutional law.
These discussions, led after 1918 by experts on constitutional law, historians, theologians and
philosophers, must also be read as an exemplary debate on basic values. They are of interest,
because in them the questions of legitimization of the political system were advanced to the
so-called “ultimate” religious questions. The connection between religion, political culture
and ethics became the prominent issue of Weimar times. In 1931, Karl Larenz ended an
overview on “contemporary philosophy of law and state” with the words: “The ultimate
significance of law and the state, and thus also the ultimate justification of philosophy of law
and state, cannot be determined by philosophy itself, but by metaphysics or religion. Idealism
and Christianity are the most profound answers the German Geist has found for the ultimate
questions.”30 In 1930, the jurist Hans Gerber published his own study on the subject: “The
Concept of the State in the New Evangelical Theological Ethics.”31 His programmatic,
opening lecture in Tübingen was devoted to the subject: “The Ideological Foundations of the
State.” His central thesis was: “The legal order of each individual state is based on the value
system of a specific ideal and finds therein meaning for its binding force.”32 The intellectual
strife in the community and the state’s political incapacity to act could only be overcome
through an “ideological commitment.” Gerber sought the material content of this ideological
commitment in the tradition of national Protestant thinking.
An analysis of this fundamental debate on constitutional law in the ‘20s shows: It was not the
suppression of religious and metaphysical questions which led to the demise of the Weimar
Republic. In fact, the opposite is true: The models of legitimization based on religion and
metaphysics had a de facto delegitimizing effect for the parliamentary democracy of Weimar.
Substantive morality was once again played against the so-called formal procedure of
parliamentary interest aggregation.
See Bernd Faulenbach, Die Ideologie des deutschen Weges. Die deutsche Geschichte in der
Historiographie zwischen Kaiserreich und Nationalsozialismus, Munich 1980, especially
122f.
The following remain important for the debate on constitutional law: the classic by Kurt
Sontheimer, Antidemokratisches Denken in der Weimarer Republik. Die politischen Ideen
des deutschen Nationalismus zwischen 1918 und 1933, (1962) Munich 1978 – Jürgen
Meinck, Weimarer Staatslehre und Nationalsozialismus. Eine Studie zum Problem der
Kontinuität im staatsrechtlichen Denken in Deutschland 1928 bis 1936, Frankfurt/New York
1978 – Christoph Müller and Ilse Staff (Ed.), Staatslehre in der Weimarer Republik. In honor
of Hermann Heller, Frankfurt a.M. 1985.
Karl Larenz, Rechts- und Staatsphilosophie der Gegenwart, Berlin 1931, 107.
Berlin 1930.
Hans Gerber, Die weltanschaulichen Grundlagen des Staates, Stuttgart 1930, 4.
Theology as a Medium of an Extensive Critique of Culture
In1928, the liberal theologian M. Rade described the critique of parliamentary democracy
used again and again by Protestant theologians and the church as “groundless” and compared
it to the “way in which communists denounce our economic system or free thinkers our
church system… The amount of printed material that the parliamentarian has to read, the
presentations and drafts he has to work on, the missions and commissions to complete, how
he is approached by and has to approach anyone and everyone; of all this, the bitter critic of
the state has no idea, or does not make the effort to understand.” 33 Rade names a basic
characteristic of the critique formulated by theologians. It was brought forth in the gesture of
an extensive critique of culture. The enlightenment, liberalism, rationalism, the German
people, social justice, the state – all these terms imply that unified, actually existing
magnitudes are at hand, which are named here. The differentiated social world and the
problem of control in a modern society were reduced by means of religious-ideological
interpretation. This can be seen most clearly in the largely absent relationship to positive law
and in a moralizing political understanding, in which the highest ideals were affirmed, while
the concrete institutions of a representative democracy – parliament, parties, and the existence
of interest groups – were morally discredited through appeal to these ideals. While this
extensive critique of culture may have been able to partially satisfy the need for clarity, such a
perception was ruinous for the political system. The danger of such a moralizing relationship
to the state, which keeps a polite distance to the concrete steps of the implementation of
political ideals, was identified by the liberal theologian Hermann Mulert in 1928: In light of
the “current constitution, which allows people to determine their own destinies and thus
requires that all citizens have an informed attitude towards the state,” he fears that the support
of an “attitude towards the state” without “a considerable amount of political knowledge”
could turn the democratic constitution into an “empty form.”34
The ideal alternative concepts were as wide-ranging as the critique. Social utopias were
centered around two poles; on one side around the idea of a strong state, and on the other side
around the conception of an individual who should be enabled to voluntarily fulfill his duties
towards the whole, based on a religiously founded morality. All of these alternative concepts
had a widely identical structural core. They were binding ideologies. There was indeed
constant talk of freedom, conscience and personality, but only in a certain sense. Precisely the
unavailable inwardness (unverfügbare Innerlichkeit) was supposed to be engaged. Freedom
was for the most part understood as the ability to bind and sacrifice oneself. In defining these
binding ideologies – this pious nationalization of conscience – theological conceptions played
a central role. The Lutheran doctrine of justification became a decisive argumentative
potential for the definition and legitimization of such binding ideologies.
Martin Rade, Nach den Wahlen, in: Die Christliche Welt 42 (1928) Column 538-541, 539.
Hermann Mulert, Staatsgesinnung und Staatskunde, in: Die Christliche Welt 42 (1928)
Column1004-1008, 1005.