In the Service of the Reich: Aspects of Copernicus and Galileo in Nazi Germany’s Historiographical and Political Discourse

2001 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 333-359 ◽  
Author(s):  
Volker R. Remmert
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
The Third ◽  
Racial Theory ◽  
Time Expansion ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Scientific Results ◽  
Galileo Affair ◽  
Nicholas Copernicus ◽  
The Catholic Church

ArgumentFocus of this paper is on the historiographical fate of Nicholas Copernicus and Galileo Galilei in Nazi Germany. Both played interesting roles in Nazi propaganda and the legitimization of Nazi political goals. In the “Third Reich,” efforts to claim Copernicus as a German astronomer were closely linked to revisionist policies in Eastern Europe culminating in the war-time expansion. The example of Galileo’s condemnation by the Catholic Church in 1633 became a symbol of its unjustified opposition to new “scientific” results, namely Nazi racial theory. After Catholic opposition against Nazi racial theory had reached a peak in 1937, the Galileo affair was turned into an instrument of Nazi propaganda against the Catholic Church.Auch der Historiker steht in der Zeit, nicht über ihr.Das Ewigkeitspostament hat er verloren.Siegfried Giedion

OBLIGATORYJNY SYSTEM NAUCZANIA RELIGII W SZKOŁACH PUBLICZNYCH W ŚWIETLE WYBRANYCH KONKORDATÓW

2015 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 59-69
Author(s):  
Jacek Janusz Mrozek
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Time Dimension ◽  
Lower Saxony ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Catholic Church

The subject of this article is an attempt to analyse the religion teaching in the mandatory formguaranteed by concordats from the Third Reich (1933), Bavaria (1924) − amended in 1968 and 1974,Lower Saxony (1965), Sarah (1985), Austria (1962 ) and Portugal (1940). Concordat guaranteesprotecting the right of the Catholic Church to teach religion in public schools in these countries areexpressed primarily in the field of religion education, its time dimension, in preparing their owneducational programs, providing religion teachers a rightful position like those teachers of othersubjects, and finally in the supervision on the teaching of religion in schools.

The Persecution of the Catholic Church in the Third Reich

Thought ◽  
1941 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 773-774
Author(s):  
Peter Leo Johnson ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
The Catholic Church

scholarly journals Mit Brennender Sorge: An Exegesis on the Encyclical to the Third Reich

Elements ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandra Valdez
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Nazi Regime ◽  
Political Movement ◽  
Holy See ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
German People ◽  
Or Organization

Throughout the 1930s, the ascendance of the Nazi regime not only diminished the authority of the Roman Catholic Church in Germany, but alos directly countered fundamental Catholic doctrines. In face of the mounting atrocities of the German government, Pope Pius XI, with the help of Eugenio Pacelli, nuncio to Germany, and German Bishop Michael Faulhaber, in an unprecedented outreach to the entire German faithful, issued the encyclical <em>Mit Brennender Sorge</em>. Appealing particularly to the youth and the laity, the encyclical challenged Germans to use conscience as a final resort in assessing the validity of a religious institution or political movement. In its address to the German people, Mit Brennender Sorge reflected the delicacy of the relationship between the Holy See and the Nazi regime by not referencing any person, party, or organization specifically. Nevertheless, the purpose and the timeliness of the encyclical was lost on few, partially dispelling the widespread belief that the Catholic Church turned a blind eye to the Third Reich.

Between Rome and the Godless: Martin Niemöller’s Apologetic Moves, 1930–50

2021 ◽  
pp. 74-94
Author(s):  
Benjamin Ziemann
Keyword(s):  
Federal Republic ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Front Line ◽  
Weimar Germany ◽  
The Third ◽  
Protestant Churches ◽  
The Third Reich

Martin Niemöller’s apologetic interventions from the late 1920s to the early 1950s reveal a complicated trajectory. He stood at the front line of the Protestant struggle against aggressive secularism in Weimar Germany. After the Nazis seized power in 1933, Niemöller quickly emerged as the figurehead of attempts to defend the dogmatic integrity of the Protestant churches, yet also maintained the conversation with the German Christians in a common front against the ‘godless’ Bolsheviks and Freethinkers. After he had seriously contemplated converting to the Roman Catholic Church from 1939 to early 1941, he returned to a combative assertion of his Protestant identity vis-à-vis the Catholics in the early Federal Republic. Overall, the chapter argues that the dynamics of the religious field during the Third Reich are best understood as an intensification.

How “Catholic” Was the Early Nazi Movement? Religion, Race, and Culture in Munich, 1919–1924

2003 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 383-433 ◽  
Author(s):  
Derek Hastings
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Opinion Leaders ◽  
Nazi Regime ◽  
Critical Studies ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Race And Culture ◽  
Basic Level

Amongthe more durable tenets of postwar West German historiography was the widespread conviction that Catholicism and Nazism were, at some most basic level, mutually exclusive entities. While a flood of critical studies in the 1960s began to erode this conviction at least around the edges — as scholars subjected to greater scrutiny the actual responses of Catholic opinion leaders, the German episcopate, and the Vatican to the Nazi regime — the image of a fundamental, albeit not quite perfect, incompatibility between Catholicism and Nazism has remained essentially intact to the present day. The durability of this image has been due to some degree to the steady stream of primarily apologetic monographs produced by a large and energetic Catholic scholarly community in Germany, whose works have stressed the heroic oppositional stance and victimhood of the Catholic Church during the Third Reich.

Resisting the Third Reich: The Catholic Clergy in Hitler's Berlin

2006 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 155-158
Author(s):  
John Connelly
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Catholic Clergy ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Nazi Era ◽  
The Church

This absorbing and well-researched book presents the story of Berlin's Catholic Church during the Nazi era from the perspective of a deeply committed believer. Professor Kevin Spicer is also Father Kevin Spicer. As such, it offers critics a chance to test their arguments against a serious voice from within the Church. But it also affords more neutral observers a chance to ponder the assumptions behind debates on the churches in the Third Reich, in particular, what acts can be considered oppositional and what drove certain religious believers into resistance.

The Attitude of the Catholic Church toward the Jews: An Outline of a Turbulent History

Numen ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 64 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 209-228
Author(s):  
Konrad Szocik ◽  
Philip L. Walden
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Revolutionary Change ◽  
The Third ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Papal States ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Church

The practice of imprisoning Jews in ghettos and marking them out with special signs (as was introduced by Pius vi in the Papal States, inter alia, in 1775) is associated more with the Nazism of the Third Reich than with the Roman Catholic Church. Nevertheless, the Church maintained its policy of perfidis Judaeis until the beginning of the 1960s, when it was stopped by Vatican ii, probably because of the pressure of social and political factors. This topic is, however, difficult to explain, often very controversial, and subject to many different interpretations. Here we show that anti-Semitic ideas were present in the Church before Vatican ii, and that they have a religious, theological, and philosophical background. We discuss those interpretations which, in an ideological sense, connect anti-Semitism in the Church with the genocidal anti-Semitism of the Third Reich. This article underlines the revolutionary change in the Church’s attitude toward Jews in Vatican ii, a change caused primarily by the Holocaust.

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