Karl Steinbauer was the most important opponent of the National Socialists‘ anti-church and anti-Christianity ideology in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria. At the same time, he was a tireless critic of the compromising course of the Bavarian church leadership under Bishop Hans Meiser (1881-1956). Through his courageous and fearless behavior, he became known far beyond Bavaria.
Steinbauer was born into a pastor’s family in Windsbach, Middle Franconia, on September 2, 1906. His father Johann Steinbauer was rector at the Windsbach grammar school. From 1927 to 1931 he studied Protestant theology in Erlangen, Koenigsberg and Tuebingen. In 1931 he passed his 1st theological examination and became a vicar in Heiligenstadt near Bamberg. From April 1932 he completed a year as a candidate at the Nuremberg Seminary for Pastoral Training (Predigerseminar). In his childhood and youth he was still politically influenced by German nationalism, ethnicism and anti-Semitism, but in 1932 he decidedly turned away from Hitler and the NSDAP. On April 1, 1933, he became an exposed vicar in the communist-influenced Upper Bavarian mining town of Penzberg, where he was given his first independent parish. On November 1, 1934, he married Eugenie Beckh, with whom he had six children.
Steinbauer got into numerous serious conflicts with the Nazi state from 1933 on. Deeply influenced by Luther and the theology of Karl Barth (1886-1968), he uncompromisingly opposed any appropriation of the church by the National Socialists and their anti-Christian ideology. While the majority of Lutheran theologians subordinated and conformed to the Nazi state on the basis of the two-kingdom doctrine, Steinbauer, as an ordained pastor, saw himself obligated to admonish those politically responsible in the state and the party with the Christian testimony of truth and to resolutely contrast the Nazi claim to totality with the claim to totality of obedience to Christ.
Steinbauer’s advocacy of the unhindered validity of the testimony of Christ in public life was of such political explosiveness for the National Socialists that, as a declared enemy of the state, he was imprisoned several times for „subversive agitation“ after being banned from speaking and staying, and finally sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp for eight and a half months in 1939 (citations: B. Hamm, 469). His uncompromising confession, which took no account of external circumstances, clashed no less massively with the cautious tactics of the Bavarian church leadership under Bishop Meiser, which was directed toward the continued existence of the intact state church, the preservation of church leadership, and the protection of church employees. In February 1934, he publicly criticized the behavior of Bishop Meiser for the first time.
In his disputes with the state and church leadership, Steinbauer found courageous support from his wife Eugenie and the Penzberg church council (Kirchenvorstand). Despite the serious differences and repeated rebukes, however, the church leadership also made an effort to help him in his conflicts with the Nazi state. In 1938 he received a position as pastor administrator in Ay/Senden in the Neu-Ulm deanery. In order to be able to claim to state and party authorities that Steinbauer no longer had a pastorate, he was assigned the decay of the pastorate of Illenschwang in 1940, but this position was legally considered to be vacant. Steinbauer himself only became aware after the end of the Second World War that he was thus no longer the holder of a parish post, but in fact only a parsonage resident (K. Steinbauer, Zeugnis 4, 81).
After his release from the concentration camp in December 1939, Steinbauer was drafted into the Wehrmacht as early as January 1940. In 1941 he took part in the Russian campaign, was severely wounded in 1943 and could only be deployed on the „home front“ thereafter.
After preaching a Christmas sermon in Illenschwang and Sinnbronn, Steinbauer was charged with subversion of military strength in 1944. The court martial ended with acquittal. At the end of the war he was taken prisoner, from which he was released at the end of September 1945. In 1946 he took on a pastorate in Lehenguetingen near Dinkelsbuehl, and in 1947 he was also assigned to internment camps. In 1951 he became pastor in Wolfratshausen in Upper Bavaria, in 1962 in Pettendorf near Bayreuth and in 1967 in Amberg in the Upper Palatinate. Even after the end of Nazi rule, the relationship between Steinbauer and the church leadership remained tense. When he was awarded the honorary title of „church councilor“ in 1964, he gave it back soon after.
Steinbauer retired in 1971, which he used for extensive speaking and lecturing activities. In the 1980s, he documented his confrontations with the state and church leadership during the Nazi regime and beyond in the multi-volume work „Einander das Zeugnis goennen,“ the last volume of which was completed by his daughter Elisabeth Giesen and son-in-law Martin Giesen shortly before his death on February 6, 1988 (K. Steinbauer, Zeugnis 1-4). While the Bavarian church leadership marginalized Steinbauer’s courageous behavior during the Nazi regime long after the end of the war, today he is regarded as an indomitable and clear-sighted witness to Christ in blinded times (B. Hamm, 456).
Childhood and youth
Karl Steinbauer was born in Windsbach on September 2, 1906, the tenth of twelve children in a parish family. His father, Pastor Johann Steinbauer, was principal at the Windsbach grammar school. The figure of his Bible-reading grandfather made a great impression on the young Karl Steinbauer, who remained a spiritual role model for him throughout his life.
Steinbauer attended the grammar school in Windsbach. But because, like his grandfather, he initially wanted to become a farmer, he refused to perform the required schoolwork for about a year and engaged in youthful pranks. After a serious talk with his father, the 14-year-old Steinbauer made a turnaround: He now met the school requirements, decided to become a pastor and began an intensive study of the Bible. In the process, he came to the realization that man’s nature is activity and that the Bible is the sole source of strength.
During World War I, the family shared the general enthusiasm for war and was proud of its sons in the field, who joined the Freicorps Epp soon after the defeat. Like many Germans, Steinbauer blamed the Jews for the lost war. Anti-Semitism seemed to him a national duty. When the Windsbacher synagogue was smeared with swastikas in 1922, the then 15-year-old boy felt schadenfreude. During the Weimar Republic, but especially after the inflation and the Hitler-Ludendorff putsch of 1923, Karl Steinbauer then also sympathized with Hitler.
The pro-Nazi and anti-Semitic attitudes of his father Johann and his brothers were influenced at times by Siegfried Leffler (1900-1983), a young staff member of the student hostel at the Windsbach grammar school. Leffler later became a co-founder of the radical Thuringian German Christians. Because of his political stance, Johann Steinbauer was transferred to Nuremberg in 1924 after the Hitler-Ludendorff putsch. There Karl Steinbauer experienced firsthand, with increasing alienation, the euphoric enthusiasm for the person of Hitler. For theological reasons, his father Johann and his oldest brother Georg now also began to distance themselves from the National Socialists.
Study and Vicariate
From 1927 to 1931 Karl Steinbauer studied theology in Erlangen, Tuebingen and Koenigsberg. Already at the beginning of his studies he joined the beating Erlangen student fraternity Germania and remained loyal to it until the end of his life. He attended courses with Karl Heim (1874-1958), Karl Fezer (1891-1960), Julius Schniewind (1883-1948) and Hans Joachim Iwand (1899-1960). However, his theological teachers made little impression on him. In retrospect, Steinbauer judged that none of his professors had had a decisive influence on him.
Steinbauer’s theology was rather influenced by Karl Barth (1886-1968), whom, however, he did not meet personally during his studies. Decisive for his theology remained the traditional influence of Luther, which went back to Steinbauer’s childhood, and his intensive study of the Bible. Luther’s interpretation of the 82nd Psalm, in which Luther had called upon the duly appointed preachers of the church to publicly criticize the authorities if necessary, took on special significance for him. In 1931 Steinbauer passed his 1st theological examination and became vicar in Heiligenstadt near Bamberg.
In 1932 Steinbauer underwent a decisive political change of heart. After becoming a party candidate in 1931, he declared his resignation from the NSDAP the following year. This change of heart was triggered by the so-called Potempa murder, in which SA members had trampled a communist to death in front of his mother in Potempa near Bytom on August 10, 1932. When those involved had been sentenced to death for this murder, Hitler had shown solidarity with them, stylized them as freedom fighters and announced their liberation. Hitler’s behavior became an occasion for Steinbauer and other Protestant theologians to turn decisively away from the NSDAP.
A programmatic conflict
In January 1934, the Reich Church under Reich Bishop Ludwig Mueller (1883-1945), created only six months earlier, was crumbling. The church opposition, which included the Bavarian bishop Hans Meiser (1881-1956), planned to depose the Reich bishop, who espoused the heretical theology of the German Christians and was responsible for numerous violations of the law as well as the persecution of opposing clergy. In this situation, a reception of Protestant church leaders with Hitler took place on January 25, 1934. At this meeting, Hitler threatened to withdraw state subsidies to the church and put so much pressure on the church leaders that they once again submitted to the Reich bishop.
This seemed like a capitulation and drove a wedge between the leader of the Pastors‘ Emergency League (Pfarrernotbund), Martin Niemoeller (1892-1984), on the one hand, and the opposition bishops Hans Meiser, Theophil Wurm (1868-1953) and August Marahrens (1875-1950) on the other. Bishop Meiser repented of his behavior and placed his office at the disposal of the Bavarian synodal committee (Landessynodalausschuss) on January 31, 1934. The synodal committee, however, expressed its confidence in Meiser.
On February 1, 1934, a pastors‘ meeting was held in Nuremberg, where Meiser tried to justify his behavior before several hundred clergymen. When a demonstration of confidence in the bishop also emerged at this meeting, the young vicar of Penzberg, Karl Steinbauer, spoke up. He accused Meiser of having denied the confession by subordinating himself to the heretical Reich bishop, of having betrayed the church, and of having abandoned the Notbund pastors. The bishops had allowed themselves to be blackmailed and had not allowed the men of the state … the guilty testimony, but had refused it (quoted from C. Blendinger, Gott, 46).
Steinbauer was immediately called upon by the Superior Church Council (Landeskirchenrat) to explain his accusations. Thereupon, in a letter dated February 4, 1934, he detailed his charges against the current Bishop D. Meiser and stated that he could no longer recognize a bishop who affirmed heresy, who did not freely protest against it. On February 5, Steinbauer also appeared in person at the Munich Church Office (Landeskirchenamt). This included a conversation with Meiser in which the differing viewpoints of the young vicar and the bishop became clear in a programmatic way. Steinbauer’s memoirs state:
„With the bishop I once again discussed all the questions openly and honestly and explained what I had already said in Nuremberg. His answer is unforgettable to me, he said: ‘What you say here is theologically all very fine, but we must reckon with given facts’. The given facts were clearly Adolf Hitler, his power, his threats, his state subsidies, etc. I replied: ‚The only question is whether the Lord Christ, to whom is given all authority in heaven and on earth, is also still a given fact that we may reckon with in the church.'“ (K. Steinbauer, Zeugnis 1, 120f.)
A few days later, the Superior Church Council removed Steinbauer from office because he had violated “the dignity of the Reich Chancellor” … (C. Blendinger, Gott, 55). After protests by the church councils of Penzberg, Kochel and Seeshaupt, however, this measure was reversed at Easter 1934. At the same time, Steinbauer was admonished to exercise restraint in church-political matters in the future. However, the fundamental conflict between Steinbauer and Meiser – on the one hand, the vicar uncompromisingly committed to Christ and his conscience, on the other, the bishop willing to make adjustments for the sake of the existence of the church and the protection of its employees – reignited again and again during the National Socialist rule and remained even after the end of World War II.
Disputes with the state and church leadership
On April 1, 1933, Karl Steinbauer became an exposed vicar in Penzberg and thus received an independent parish. There, already in July 1933, disputes arose with the district leader of the NSDAP, because Steinbauer ensured during the church elections that the Penzberg church council (Kirchenvorstand) remained in its old composition and did not fall into the hands of party-affiliated church leaders.
A serious conflict ignited in 1935 on the occasion of the Nazi „resurrection ceremony“ for the „fallen“ of the Hitler-Ludendorff putsch of November 9, 1923, in which the dead of the failed putsch attempt, venerated as heroes by the National Socialists, were exhumed and transferred to the newly erected „temples of honor“ at Munich’s Koenigsplatz on the night of November 8-9, 1935. On the occasion of this celebration, the flagging of all churches was ordered. Because Steinbauer refused the flagging, he was charged and sentenced to two weeks in prison. The church leadership showed no understanding for his behavior. Bishop Hans Meiser (1881-1956) said that he did not understand Steinbauer’s infuriation, that the staging of the National Socialists had been a worthy celebration (K. Steinbauer, Zeugnis 1, 257).
The next conflict arose when flagging and bell ringing were again ordered for the Reichstag elections on March 29, 1936. Steinbauer basically held the view that the church was not a subaltern state enterprise (K. Steinbauer, Zeugnis 2, 3). Therefore, he had instructed his sacristans to flag or ring on state occasions only with his consent. On March 29, a sacristan rang the bell anyway. Steinbauer, who had become aware of the election fraud and had voted no in the election, forbade the sacristan to ring the bell and was reported. During the police interrogation he stated that he could not let God say „yes“ to this fraud by ringing the bell and pretend to the congregation that the election was an occasion to fall on his knees and thank God (K. Steinbauer, Zeugnis 2, 4).
Because of this complaint, the church leadership summoned Steinbauer to Munich. The bishop pointed out to him what the consequences would have been for the regional church if all the pastors had not rung the bell. Steinbauer replied: „You obviously do not consider that the ringing also had consequences, namely that the men of state and party no longer take a piece of bread from the church … These people must think that the church is quite capable of salving obvious fraud at a hint from the state by ringing bells.“ When Steinbauer was admonished that the church leadership alone bore responsibility and that he had to obey episcopal directives, he replied, „We are not Roman Catholic, but Evangelical Lutheran. Bishop of the Protestant community in Penzberg is me and not you … I cannot and must not let anyone take this responsibility from me“ (K. Steinbauer, Zeugnis 2, 5f). Steinbauer referred to his ordination and the investiture (Installation) in his congregation in Penzberg.
At the May Day celebrations in 1936, Steinbauer again refused to ring the bells and fly the flag because of an anti-church and anti-Christian appeal by Robert Leys (1890-1945). In doing so, Steinbauer risked arrest despite the pregnancy of his wife Eugenie. When the local gendarme on behalf of the Gestapo noticed the absence of the flagging, Steinbauer was denounced.
For the interrogation before the Penzberg gendarmerie station, Steinbauer prepared a statement on May 2, 1936, two days before the birth of his first daughter Elisabeth, in which he explained his behavior in detail. This statement made a great impression not only on the local gendarmerie, but became known throughout the Confessing Church of Germany. The Munich church leadership, on the other hand, recognized his fidelity to his convictions, but disapproved of his refusal and issued an admonition because, by not flagging, he had refused to obey his superior authority.
First imprisonment, ban on speech and residence
During the Reichstag elections on March 29, 1936, Karl Steinbauer refused the state-ordered flagging of church buildings and the ringing of bells because of electoral fraud. On June 20, 1936, he was arrested in the Penzberg parsonage and imprisoned in the Weilheim prison. After a protest by his Penzberg church council (Kirchenvorstand), he was released a few days later, but on July 1, 1936, the Weilheim district office, acting on instructions from the Reich Ministry of Churches, imposed a ban on Steinbauer speaking throughout the German Reich and a ban on staying in Upper Bavaria because of his constant anti-state agitation. He was not willing to obey this ban.
The clergy of the Ebenhausen district church congress showed solidarity with Steinbauer and stated in a declaration of July 5, 1936:
„We all must and will obey God more than men; we all cannot submit to a preaching ban pronounced against us by a governmental authority, nor can we allow ourselves to be hindered in preaching the Word of God within the congregation to which we have been directed in the investiture. For this reason, we unanimously declare that the cause of Vicar Steinbauer is our own. At the same time, the signers of the declaration asked the Superior Church Council to take all steps to ensure that the freedom of preaching the Gospel is preserved.“
The church leadership sought to have the ban on speech and residence lifted at the Weilheim district office. Fearing his immediate arrest if he returned to Penzberg, the church leadership agreed with Steinbauer that he should take leave and not return to his office until the ban was lifted. However, the church leadership’s efforts failed. The Superior Church Council then decided that Steinbauer should recognize the residence ban.
For Steinbauer, however, the ban on residence was opposed by his ties to the Penzberg congregation. He regarded the ban on speaking as a contradiction to Jesus‘ Great Commission. When the decision of the Superior Church Council was opened to him, Steinbauer replied that under no circumstances could he take it on his conscience to set the precedent in such a matter. By doing so, he would only open the way for the Gestapo to introduce a new method of making transfers and deporting and muzzling disagreeable pastors (K. Steinbauer, Zeugnis 2, 52, 56).
Against his convictions, however, Steinbauer was persuaded by the Superior Church Council to take on a preaching assignment in Augsburg for the time being. In order not to leave his Penzberg congregation in the lurch, he asked Christoph Simon, the Augsburg parish administrator, to swap jobs with him and take over the care of the Penzberg congregation. Steinbauer himself had to submit his sermons to the dean in Augsburg. He asked the Superior Church Council to lift this „sermon censorship,“ but bishop Hans Meiser (1881-1956) refused in view of the circumstances.
The Penzberg church council (Kirchenvorstand) did not agree with the action of the Superior Church Council. In a letter dated July 30, 1936, it demanded that the Superior Church Council recall Mr. Steinbauer to his official residence in Penzberg, even in violation of the residence ban (K. Steinbauer, Zeugnis 2, 61). When the serious differences of opinion with the Superior Church Council could not be resolved, the Penzberg church council (Kirchenvorstand) announced on August 24, 1936, that it would recall Steinbauer to Penzberg on its own authority, because it could not in conscience bring itself to leave the ultimate responsibility in Steinbauer’s matter to the Superior Church Council (K. Steinbauer, Zeugnis 2, 77). At the same time, the church council asked the signers of the statement of the Ebenhausen District Church Meeting for their support.
Because of his preaching activities in Augsburg, Steinbauer was cited before the Gestapo on August 3, 1936, where he referred to his ordination vow and Jesus‘ command to preach. On August 10, the Gestapo informed him that the ban on preaching had been lifted, but threatened him with further measures because of the content of his sermons. Steinbauer replied: „They threatened me with the concentration camp Dachau But look, I am threatened with a much more terrible thing than Dachau. I am threatened with the Last Judgment … The day is coming when all people will be on their knees before the returning Christ, Adolf Hitler and you and me“ (K. Steinbauer, Zeugnis 2, 70f).
After further efforts by the Superior Church Council, the residence ban was finally lifted on September 26, 1936, and Steinbauer was able to return to Penzberg.
Second detention
In February 1937, Karl Steinbauer removed a notice in the display case of the Penzberg Hitler Youth in which Bible reading was disparaged. In a letter of February 12, he accused the press and propaganda department of the Hitler Youth area Hochland that their position on the Bible and Bible reading was no different from that in the Soviet Union. At the same time, he announced that commissioned preachers of the biblical message … would not stand idly by and watch such criminal activity to make our youth despise the Holy Scriptures and the searching and reading therein (K. Steinbauer, Zeugnis 2, 115f.). He also sent the letter to Hitler, Reich Governor Franz Ritter von Epp (1868-1946) and Reich Youth Leader Baldur von Schirach (1907-1974).
Von Schirach prohibited the posting, but shortly thereafter a new poster hostile to the Bible hung in the Hitler Youth showcase. Steinbauer protested again and informed the Press and Propaganda Department on March 5 that as long as he was on duty in Penzberg, such youth showcase services would not be posted here. His confirmands had learned that there is only one Bible and that only bottomless folly and sad delusion or freventlicher blasphemous spirit can claim otherwise. In state and party a fanatical, anti-Christian troop is at work, more or less hidden; but as long as this troop does not completely dominate state and party, he will call attention to this hidden fight and … call for resistance (K. Steinbauer, Zeugnis 2, 121f.).
The Gestapo then imposed another residence ban on Steinbauer, which it justified with „constant agitation detrimental to the state. However, he did not comply with this ban either, reported the matter to the Superior Church Council and lodged a complaint with the Gestapo. In his protest letter of April 9, he stated that due to his ordination and installation as the responsible shepherd of the Penzberg congregation, it was impossible for him to comply with the order. In addition, he appealed to the rule of law, in which even the political police were bound by legal norms and the charges against him had to be proven in due legal process.
Initially, the church leadership backed Steinbauer and lodged a protest against the residence ban with the Bavarian Political Police. The clear stance of the Superior Church Council and the bishop was softened, however, when the Berlin Gestapo announced that it would arrest Steinbauer. The church leadership considered transferring Steinbauer, but ultimately left him in his congregation. On June 16, 1937, he was arrested for tearing down publicly posted notices, for which he faced a prison sentence of up to six months. Although the Penzberg church council (Kirchenvorstand) immediately protested the arrest and the church leadership lobbied for his release, he was not released until after five months in Weilheim prison on November 11, 1937.
New arrest, refusal of the Aryan certificate
In May 1938 Karl Steinbauer was appointed permanent parish administrator of the parish in Ay-Senden. At this time he was again in custody. In a private conversation, he had accused the Nazi state of hostility toward the church, attacked party leaders, and echoed the opinion of a friend that Hitler was no longer spiritually normal (K. Steinbauer, Zeugnis 3, 46). A teacher had denounced him for this. As a result, Steinbauer was arrested on April 7, 1938, during a lecture to the Kulmbach pastors‘ conference and taken to Bamberg for protective custody. The charge was violation of the Treachery Act. However, the proceedings were discontinued at the end of May 1938 on the basis of an amnesty and Steinbauer was released from prison.
In Ay-Senden he found that his sermons and mail were being monitored by the political police. The mayor, the NS local group leader and a teacher immediately noticed Steinbauer because he refused to give the German salute („Heil Hitler“). In the fall, the NSDAP district leadership requested that Steinbauer’s license to teach religion be revoked because he was an incorrigible, spiteful opponent of the present state and the party (K. Steinbauer, Zeugnis 3, 190).
When he was asked to provide the proof of Aryan origin required by the religious teachers of the Nazi state, he refused. In a letter dated December 3, 1938, he informed the responsible district office in Neu-Ulm that as a Christian and pastor he was not in a position to present the Aryan certificate because he was prevented from doing so by the binding of his conscience to God’s Word.
Steinbauer stated unequivocally that „according to the Nazi race laws, the Lord Christ and his apostles would have to stand outside the school doors, just as my brothers of non-Aryan descent would have to stand outside them; I would rather stand outside the school doors with my Lord and his apostles and my brothers in Christ than without them inside“ (quoted from: Ich glaube, darum rede ich, 31). As a result, he was forbidden to teach religion at the elementary schools in Ay-Senden, Weißenhorn and Pfaffenhofen an der Roth.
Refusal of the oath of allegiance
In August 1934, the synod of the Reich Church, dominated by the German Christians, demanded for the first time that pastors and church officials take an oath of allegiance to Hitler. This was intended to demonstrate the church’s commitment to the Nazi state. However, the Confessing Church rejected such an oath. Like the other representatives of the Confessing Church, the Bavarian synod members voted against the corresponding law at the Reich Church Synod.
The Bavarian church leadership under Bishop Hans Meiser (1881-1956) also spoke out against the oath. In an announcement of August 21, 1934, it described the oath as un-Lutheran and un-evangelical. Because of opposition from the Confessing Church, the German-Christian Reich Church leadership finally had to quietly drop the oath requirement.
In the national euphoria following the „Anschluss“ of Austria, the German Christians again demanded the oath of allegiance to Hitler in the spring of 1938 and passed laws to that effect in the Reich Church and the regional churches they governed.
The Confessing Church thus found itself in a difficult position, since it did not want to expose itself to the accusation of national unreliability. In addition, it assumed that the oath would be expected from the state itself; an oath demanded by the state, however, seemed to be legitimate according to church confession: Thus, it had already been stated in the announcement of the Bavarian church leadership of August 1934 that the state could rightfully demand an oath from its subjects in its area. This also applied to pastors, insofar as they were holders of general or special state-recognized or conferred public functions in the service of the people’s church (Amtsblatt fuer die Ev.-Luth. Kirche in Bayern 1934, 119).
The small group of Bavarian German Christians rushed ahead of the Bavarian church leadership and took the oath from the radical Thuringian German Christians. By church law of May 18, 1938, the church leadership then obliged all Bavarian pastors to take the oath. The oath formula read: I swear by God the Almighty and Omniscient: I will be faithful and obedient to the Fuehrer of the German Reich and people, Adolf Hitler, observe the laws and fulfill my official duties conscientiously, so help me God (Official Gazette for the Lutheran Church in Bavaria 1938, 95).
This law caused many pastors distress of conscience, so that the pastoral brotherhood asked the state bishop to withdraw the law. However, when Meiser pointed out the expectation of the state and possible consequences of refusal, almost all Bavarian pastors took the oath.
Karl Steinbauer was one of the minority of Bavarian pastors who refused to take the oath. In a letter dated May 17, 1938, he urgently warned Bishop Meiser against settling the oath issue by legal means. In doing so, he referred to the clear rejection that the Bavarian church leadership had already given to the oath of allegiance to Hitler in August 1934, and pointed out to Meiser that an oath in the National Socialist state was a very very serious matter that could not be settled as if we were writing, say, the year 1913 or 1800 so-and-so. He asked the bishop to let the parish pastors first discuss the oath question before it was settled by the church leadership.
One day later, however, the Superior Church Council and Bishop passed the church law on the pastors‘ oath of allegiance. Shortly thereafter, at a meeting of the Bavarian pastoral brotherhood in Nuremberg, Steinbauer challenged State Bishop Meiser to show the document requiring us pastors to take an oath of allegiance to the state and the Fuehrer. In accordance with the facts, Meiser could only answer that the church leadership „had the impression“ that an oath to the Fuehrer was desired; the pastors, however, could be assured that … nothing unpsychological would be demanded of them in the matter of the oath (K. Steinbauer, Zeugnis 3, 123). Steinbauer reacted to this with indignation and protested in writing to the Superior Church Council on June 12, 1938:
„It is unheard of to maltreat us with psychology after detailed fundamental theological considerations …. I … do not allow myself to be maltreated with psychology where theology is concerned. He accused the church leadership of retiring the living Lord of the church with its compromising behavior toward the Nazi state, instead of giving everything into the hands of the Lord and not becoming foolishly and presumptuously irresponsible in human responsibility and wanting to mess up God’s business.“ (K. Steinbauer, Zeugnis 3, 125-132).
Steinbauer protested several more times to Bishop Meiser, but was unable to achieve anything. When he was ordered by his superior to take the oath at the end of June 1938, he ignored this order.
A few weeks later, a circular letter from Martin Bormann (1900-1945), chief of staff in the office of Hitler’s deputy, to the Gauleiters revealed that the Nazi state actually had no interest at all in the swearing-in of pastors. This exposed the Bavarian church leadership as well as the entire Confessing Church of Germany, which had finally exempted its pastors from taking the oath after grueling disputes.
„Court speech“ to Meiser
In September 1938, the outbreak of war was imminent because of the so-called Sudeten crisis. The highest governing body of the Brotherhood wing of the Confessing Church, the 2nd Provisional Church Leadership (VKL II), issued a prayer liturgy on the occasion of the imminent danger of war, in the creation of which Karl Steinbauer was involved and which was to be held in the services on September 30, 1938.
In this liturgy, one’s own failure was expressed, God’s assistance was expected and the hope for peace was formulated. However, because the war was averted at the last moment by the Munich Agreement, the liturgy was not read in the services. The Nazi state nevertheless reacted with a massive attack on the Confessing Church, accusing it of treason and sabotage.
On October 29, 1938, the Reich Church Ministry decreed a salary freeze on the members of VKL II. On the same day, Reich Church Minister Hanns Kerrl (1887-1941) summoned the bishops of the Bavarian, Hanoverian, Wuerttemberg and Baden regional churches to a meeting and called on them to distance themselves from the members of VKL II as traitors to the state. The Bavarian bishop Hans Meiser (1881-1956) demanded to talk to the accused first. However, Kerrl forbade this and announced that the members of VKL II would be transferred to a concentration camp. Under pressure from the minister, the bishops finally signed a slightly weakened statement:
We state that the circular issued by the „Provisional Leadership“ on September 27, 1938, concerning the holding of prayer services on the occasion of the imminent danger of war, has been disapproved of by us on religious and patriotic grounds and rejected for our churches. We condemn the attitude expressed therein in the strongest terms and separate ourselves from the personalities responsible for this rally (quoted from K. Meier, Kirchenkampf 3, 57). The Reich Minister of Churches wanted to make church-political capital out of the declaration and had it published so that it became widely known.
The declaration permanently deepened the already existing split between the Lutheran bishops of the intact national churches and the brother councils in the destroyed national churches. The brother councils considered it a betrayal of the Confessing Church. The bishops came under great pressure to justify themselves. Their credibility could not be restored even by the governing body of the Episcopal wing of the Confessing Church, the Luther Council, which in November 1938 expressly expressed its gratitude to them for the manly conduct adopted in the most difficult situation (quoted from K. Meier, Kirchenkampf 3, 60).
Bishop Meiser was also sharply criticized. A parishioner from Munich, for example, accused him of having stabbed the brethren from the destroyed regional churches in the back. From the ranks of the Bavarian pastors, it was again Karl Steinbauer who attacked Meiser particularly strongly. His letter of December 19, 1938, was a veritable „judgment speech“ in which he accused Meiser of being deeply entangled in the yarns of unbelief. To this end, he held up to Meiser the individual stages of his misconduct: the election of Ludwig Mueller, the German Christian desired by Hitler, as Reich Bishop in 1933, the approval of the church committees installed by the Reich Minister of the Church in 1935, the demand for the pastors‘ oath of allegiance to Hitler in 1938, and finally the betrayal of the members of VKL II.
Concentration camp
On January 8, 1939, Steinbauer preached a sermon on the infanticide of Bethlehem, denouncing Nazi youth education that was hostile to Christianity and the eradication of Christianity announced by party officials. He announced the ban imposed on him to give religious instruction and justified his refusal of the Aryan certificate by stating that according to the National Socialist race law the Lord Christ would be incapable and unfit to preach his own message and would not be allowed to enter a school. As an ordained preacher, it would be impossible for him to place himself under a law of the state that wants to make the preaching of the gospel … depends on Aryan blood (K. Steinbauer, Zeugnis 3, 242f).
This sermon became known as Steinbauer’s „arrest sermon“. A week later, on January 15, 1939, at 3:00 a.m., 20 drunken SA people attacked the parsonage, smashed the front door, forced their way into the house and shouted: The priest must get out! (K. Steinbauer, Zeugnis 3, 245). Before the SA men could beat Steinbauer up, he was taken into custody by police officers and brought to Neu-Ulm prison. The church leadership immediately lobbied for his release, but could achieve nothing. Rather, the Nazis gave Steinbauer the alternative of either resigning from the pastorate immediately or being deported to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
Christoph Simon, Steinbauer’s representative in the Penzberg congregation, and the church council there went to Berlin to intervene with high political authorities. His wife Eugenie sought out the head of the Munich Gestapo, but the alternative remained resignation or concentration camp. To bishop Hans Meiser (1881-1956), who warned of the consequences for the family, she expressed: We can never accept the price demanded by the party, because otherwise one could do this to all pastors (K. Steinbauer, Zeugnis 3, 248). On March 2, 1939, the protective custody order was issued. It stated that Steinbauer had spoken in a disruptive manner about the party and the state. His behavior was likely to cause unrest among the population and to shake confidence in the state leadership (K. Steinbauer, Zeugnis 3, 290).
On March 27, 1939, Steinbauer’s transfer to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp began. He had informed the dean of Neu-Ulm about the transport route, who reported the stations to the pastors living there. Thus, among others, parish colleagues and friends met him at the stations in Ingolstadt, Nuremberg and Hof, and his wife visited him in Halle. In the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, he was held in solitary cell 297 not far from Martin Niemoller’s (18921984) cell. He remained in custody there until December 22, 1939.
Soldier, court martial, prisoner of war
On December 22, 1939, Karl Steinbauer was unexpectedly released from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. As early as January 1940 he was drafted into the Wehrmacht, where he joined the Pioneers. In May 1940, the special court proceedings still pending against him were discontinued due to a pardon decree issued by Hitler at the beginning of the war.
From 1941, Steinbauer took part in the Russian campaign. In Latvia he witnessed a mass shooting of Jews by members of the SS. During his war service, Steinbauer received several military awards, including the Iron Cross 1st and 2nd class. He regarded these awards as trinkets. In 1943 he was severely wounded in the leg. After lengthy stays in military hospitals, he only saw action on the „home front“.
During a Christmas and convalescent leave, Steinbauer preached a Christmas sermon in Illenschwang on December 25, 1943, and the following day in Sinnbronn, which, due to a denunciation, led to a charge of decomposition of military strength. This threatened him with the death penalty.
At the trial before the Central Army Court in Berlin on September 27, 1944, he was defended by the vice president of the Munich Church Office, Hans Meinzolt (1887-1967), who was a lieutenant colonel at the time. Steinbauer recited his Christmas sermon again in court. It left a deep impression on the judges and, together with Meinzolt’s defense speech, probably saved his life: The trial ended with an acquittal.
Steinbauer then made sure that he was assigned to his home garrison in Ansbach. When he made his way to a military hospital because of his re-opened leg wound, he became a prisoner of war near Enheim. After a stopover in Worms, Steinbauer was interned in the Marseille POW camp, where he became a camp pastor and built up a Protestant camp congregation.
An uncomfortable admonisher
At the end of September 1945 Karl Steinbauer was released from captivity in Marseille. In 1946 he received a pastorate in Lehenguetingen near Dinkelsbuehl. On the occasion of this appointment, the differences of opinion between church leadership and Steinbauer broke out again. The occasion was a letter from Senior Church Councilor (Oberkirchenrat) Georg Kern (1885-1947) dated January 31, 1946, in which Kern urged Steinbauer to devote himself with complete dedication to his new congregation and to use the quiet of the place … for diligent deepening in Scripture and confession. Above all, Kern admonished Steinbauer to recognize as such “the temptation to engage in far-reaching church politics, which will come upon you as a result of all your previous experience” (K. Steinbauer, Zeugnis 4, 194f).
Steinbauer reacted indignantly to this admonition. In his reply to the bishop Hans Meiser (1881-1956) he stated: It is a completely strange and absolutely inconceivable consequence for me to work theologically, but not to draw the consequences from it. It seems to me that this view of things must finally belong to the consistorial thinking of the last century, which meant that an ordinary parish priest cannot and must not deal with questions and decisions concerning the whole church, but that the consistory is there for this purpose, and whoever does not recognize this sins against the commandment of obedience to the „ecclesiastical authorities“.
Steinbauer then blamed the so-called „Lutheran“ concept of authority, which was common but completely distorted in the Bavarian state church, for the wrong decisions of the church leadership during the Nazi rule: „Therefore, in the past years after 1933, many decisions, which were obviously and demonstrably contrary to Scripture and confession, could be imposed on the congregations and pastors by the „church authorities“, without hardly any congregation or pastors even feeling this or resisting it And what impossible things – impossible because of the obedience of faith commanded to us – were then done not only once, but over and over again: year after year.
Steinbauer announced that he would not be bound to silence now any more than he had been when he was released from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in December 1939:
„You will be able to understand that I cannot promise you, id est Superior Church Council, anything other than this, that I will endeavor to conscientiously – i.e. bound by the conscience tied to the word, the office of shepherd and guardian – take care of the decisions that come my way in the area of the church. It is true that he has so far wanted to hold back, but it is precisely the admonition of the Superior Church Council that does not allow him to continue to regard as so harmless some observations that I have hitherto taken less seriously.“
For Steinbauer, these observations included above all personnel decisions at the church leadership level and the appointment policy of the church leadership for the state synod. Steinbauer’s younger, critical generation was deliberately excluded. For the future he announced: But if we are really not given the opportunity to want to hear our word in an orderly way, and prefer to let essentially only the old people of Anno 1933 and earlier have their say again and to make church decisions according to the old church method and to put them, as in former times, over the heads of pastors and congregations, then one should not be surprised if we then, if necessary, make ourselves heard in another way.
Throughout his life, Steinbauer remained true to his conscience, which was bound only to the Word of God and to his pastoral and guardian ministry. In accordance with his announcement to Bishop Meiser, he remained an uncomfortable admonisher of the church leadership, even as a camp pastor in Moosburg (1947/48), a parish pastor in Wolfratshausen (from 1951), in Pettendorf near Bayreuth (from 1962) and in Amberg (from 1967), and as a busy retired lecturer (from 1971). When the Superior Church Council awarded him the honorary title of „church councilor“ in 1964, he gave the title back again, since it was unbearable to him after the experiences of the last months (letter to the Superior Church Council of February 2, 1966: K. Steinbauer, Zeugnis 4, 298). Karl Steinbauer died on February 6, 1988 and was buried in Uttenreuth near Erlangen.
Honors
On the occasion of his 80th birthday in 1986, members of the Erlangen Protestant Theological Faculty honored Karl Steinbauer with a colloquium and published an anthology with contributions on Steinbauer’s life and theology (F. Mildenberger/M. Seitz, Gott mehr gehorchen). In recognition of his resolute stance against totalitarian Nazi ideology, the Evangelical Student Community (ESG) of Bamberg named its house after Steinbauer in 1996.
The Bavarian Pastors’ Brotherhood (Pfarrbruderschaft), co-founded by Karl Steinbauer, has been awarding the „Karl Steinbauer badge of honour“ since 2000. The purpose of this badge of honour is to remind people in today’s church and society of Karl Steinbauer’s testimony. It is awarded to those persons or groups who courageously strive for sincerity, truthfulness and humanity in public.
Since the 10th anniversary of his death in 1998, Karl Steinbauer has been commemorated by a traveling exhibition sponsored by the Evangelical Student Community of Bamberg and the congregation of Uttenreuth. On the occasion of his 100th birthday in 2006, Steinbauer’s grandson Erhard Giesen published the exhibition catalog „Ich glaube, darum rede ich!“ Karl Steinbauer received a special honor from the city of Penzberg: It named the street at his former place of work „Karl-Steinbauer-Weg“.
Sources: Karl Steinbauer, Einander das Zeugnis gönnen, Vol. 1, Erlangen 1983; Vol. 2, Erlangen 1983; Vol. 3, Erlangen 1985; Vol. 4, edited by Elisabeth and Martin Giesen, Erlangen 1987 – Christian Blendinger, Nur Gott und dem Gewissen verpflichtet. Karl Steinbauer, Zeuge in finsterer Zeit, München 2001 – Berndt Hamm, Die andere Seite des Luthertums. Der bayerische Pfarrer Karl Steinbauer im Widerstand gegen den Nationalsozialismus, Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche, Vol. 104, No. 4 (2007), pp. 455-481 – Kurt Meier, Der evangelische Kirchenkampf, Vol. 3: Im Zeichen des Zweiten Weltkrieges, Göttingen 1984.
Edited translation of the portrait of Karl Steinbauer on the web pages https://de.evangelischer-widerstand.de
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