First Entry

One of our major assignment for this class (The German Church Struggle) is to keep a journal. I find it easier to type thoughts sometimes as my hands don't write as fast as my brain works. I'm a much faster typer so this seemed the best way to keep this journal. Plus it's always accessible by keeping it on a blog no matter where I am, whether at home or the library, or wherever. Note that the purpose of this journal is to make personal notes on the reading and other materials given in class. So it may be disorganized, jumpy and inarticulate, but the idea is to work out what I'm learning on paper (or screen in this case) instead of letting it build up in my mind.

The first reading I did was "Religion, Denomination and Nationalism in Nineteenth-century Germany" by Wolfgang Algeld (Translated by Mike Bohn).

I find it helpful already to be starting in 19th Century Germany. It makes obvious sense I suppose seeing as how the context for anyone's worldview begins before they even exist. But YIKES there was a lot in this article. I hate to pass judgement so liberally but I have to say the rise of German Nationalism is kind of creepy. I understand the idea of wanting a community to be unified. It makes perfect sense in fact. I think people thrive in a nurturing united community. And I think people like to have an identity in something that seems bigger than themselves, but is party of themselves. So the idea behind German Nationalism seems natural. According to Altgeld's article though, it seems that the concept of "German" became sort of an obsession. German religion, German government, German people...German, German, German. Yet they didn't even know what German was, so they had to start to define it. Essentially once they decided that German meant protestant and not Catholic or Jewish, then anyone other than Protestant couldn't possibly be German. Perhaps this is a foreign concept to me since I'm an American. The whole idea behind Americanism in some ways is the whole idea of a melting pot (although some would say American means Christian). There's no declared state religion. I know people from all sorts of religions, colors, ethnicities, etc. that are definitely American.

What I found striking is that the Nationalists were slightly tolerant of Catholics, but Jews would not be able to have full citizenship. They could not be considered German at all, even though they may have been living in German land for centuries. Their nation was the nation of Israel. Which, although was boundaryless, was nonetheless a nation, and since Jews allegiances were to the nation of Israel it couldn't be to Germany as well. I suppose this makes sense. It's certainly logical..but it doesn't seem to be rational.

Further, what I find incredibly exasperating, is that the protestant theologians denounced Judaism as the origin of Christian orthodoxy. I'm sorry but I fail to see neither the logic or rationality behind that. It doesn't even make sense. The Hebrew Bible makes up the first part of the Christian Bible. Jesus, Christ himself, was Jewish. All he taught was based on Judaism. I would love for this concept to be explained to me because I really just don't get it.

This article was certainly enlightening. The importance I took from this is that mainstreamed anti-Semitism didn't originate with Hitler in Germany. This is something I really didn't know. So Hitler seems to come from a context of Anti-semitism. At least so it seems...we're not really talking about Hitler yet. But it's helpful to know.