Memorandum to Hitler and end of Finkenwalde

In December 1935 a new law called "Fifth Decree for the Implementation of the Law for the Protection of the German Evangelical Church" was introduced which made it illegal for any "raising of funds" outside the official German church. It explicitly made training and examinations for pastors illegal. So now, Finkenwalde was confirmed illegal by the state and the future graduates were to go on and hold offices without being able to raise any funds to fulfill those offices.

However, for a little while longer, they continued as they had. Bonhoeffer's thoughts on why this was allowed were: "(1) because of the Winter Olympics and (2) because it [the state] does not wish to disturb the Confessing church's self-disintegration."

The second statement was not without personal feeling. While most of the Finkenwalde students stayed on even with their future being uncertain, there were those who quietly left the cause for an easier path with the official German church. This pained Bonhoeffer greatly.

In February, 1936, Bonhoeffer celebrated his thirtieth birthday. I always marvel at how young he was through this tumultuous time.  Soon afterward, in June, a paper and lecture that Bonhoeffer gave "On the Question of Church Community" was published in a theological journal. In it was the line "Whoever knowingly separates himself from the Confessing church in Germany separates himself from salvation." It was part of a larger statement around the questions that faced the Confessing church with the further attacks from the state. However, this line "spread like wildfire throughout the German churches.  Bonhoeffer became vilified as a "highly gifted but now altogether fanatical teacher."

Bonhoeffer himself was surprised by this reaction as he felt he had already said as much before. He wrote to Barth: "They are getting terribly excited about it. And really I thought I was simply writing something obvious." The height of the criticism came from Hermann Sasse who had been Bonhoeffer's "staunch ally in 1933" in Bethel:

This Confessing church shaped according to the wishes of Barth and Asmussen, as distinct from the confessional movement upheld by the Lutheran churches, is a sect, the worst sect in fact ever to have set foot on the soil of German Protestantism. Anyone who doubts this should read the papers by Bonhoeffer and Gollwitzer in the June issue of Evangelisch Theologie. Founded on the miracle of Barmen, held together by Barth's Theologumenon on the worthlessness of the remnents of natural theology to which Calvin and Luther adhered, beaten down by the harsh experience of the church struggle, there stands the alleged church.

What horrible irony for someone on the side of the Nazi state to claim that the resistance movement is "the worst sect."

In March 1936 the Confessing Church wrote a bold memorandum to Hitler. Here is an example of some of the charges and questions (1) Was the de-Christianization of the people official government policy? (2) The new ideology was imposing an anti-Semitism that necessarily committed people to a hatred of the Jews, which parents had to combat in the education of their children. (3) other comments on "the popular materialistic morality, the exalting of the loyalty oath, manipulation of the Reichstag elections, the activities of the Gestapo, and spying and eavesdropping.

Hitler ignored it. However, after six weeks, it leaked out and the London Morning Post published a report about it. And soon after that the entire memo was published in the papers. However, with the summer Olympics in Germany of 1936, nothing happened at first. There was a sign in a Berlin bookshop that Bonhoeffer came across:

After the end of the Olympiade                                                                                              We'll beat the CC [Confessing Church] to marmalade,                                                       Then we'll chuck out the Jew,                                                                                               The CC will end too.

There were more troubles and Bethge tells of a young pastor who was beaten badly by the SS and recovered in Finkenwalde. In February 1937, Zoellner resigned from his position as leader of the official church (German Christians). Hitler made a surprise announcement ordering church elections. Many took this as a good sign that there could be positive change. Bonhoeffer "was still among the unpersuaded skeptics; and, in fact, the election never took place. It was formally canceled in November 1937. In March Dr. Friedrich Werner was appointed and became the next big leader within the German Church. "There was no longer a bishop, general superintendent, spiritual council, or synod who had control of the church. All these functions had effectively been assumed by Dr. Werner, a lawyer with no interest in theology." It was then that a great wave of arrests took place. By the end of 1937, 804 members of the Confessing Church had been imprisoned briefly or longer.

On September 28, 1937 the Gestapo arrived at Finkenwalde and sealed the doors.