After Forty Generations

The question is asked again and again: “Why are so many German people still attached to Christianity? Does not the Creed count most of the German people to the various Christian denominations?” For many people this question also serves as an answer, since it supposedly proves what a strong binding force is still at work in Christianity today. We look at this question with different eyes and in the following remarks we will try to fathom the “why”.

When Christianity, more than a thousand years ago, was about to conquer power in the Germanic area, it was brought to the Germanic people, which is not insignificant at all, already in its Roman form, had already been decisively influenced by the Greco-Roman spirit. Only in this way, in the course of a few centuries, it has succeeded in becoming the dominant intellectual power with the help of brutal political violence on the one hand and a skillful adaptability to Germanic folk customs on the other. By reinterpreting, twisting and assimilating many folk customs and values, insofar as they could not be suppressed and eliminated, it was adapted to the development of the people from the very beginning of its intrusion into the Nordic region. In addition, it tried to put the Germanic people in its service and even baptized pagan priests later continued to work as preachers of Christianity. It is therefore easy to understand that everyone was now trying to fill Christianity, which was probably quite freely presented at the time, with their own life. The Arian Christians are a telling proof of this, as was German mysticism later, which was crowned by the “Christian heretic” Meister Eckehart; even Martin Luther worked from the same spirit and sought to give a “positive Christianity”.

We must bear this in mind if we want to understand why Christianity is still a determining power for our people today. The Best German People’s Power worked over a millennium into Christianity, so that today we can rightly say: “Christianity has recovered because of the German nature” and not the other way around. It was only here in Germany that a foreign theory of letters was filled with inner soulful life. Everything that Christianity is said to have created in terms of great values in Germany was shaped by German creativity. Even the towering cathedrals were born from this German depth of being, even if they followed Christian motives. In folk customs, however, the old pre-Christian tradition lived on, and today, after a thousand years of rule of foreign spirit, it is powerfully pushing for a breakthrough again. We stand here reverently before the power and the rule of the blood, which after forty generations contemplates itself of the old ancestral kind and searches for new forms in the elementary departure.

Through the conversion to Christianity, the Germanic man was uprooted, for everything that hitherto was considered sacred to him, blood and soil, kinship and nature, everything was declared a tool of the devil. Eternal bliss should lie in the hereafter and life in this world should only be a preparation for eternal life in heaven. And this attitude has been adhered to in a straight line by Christianity until today. But he who, detached from the blood and soil was torn out of the bloodstream of the people and stood so unfounded in life, how could he do otherwise than to join the “religion of love and redemption” and all the weak and oppressed might there seek comfort for their earthly suffering. The political turmoil and arbitrary rule of the Middle Ages finally did the rest to alienate the masses from their own thinking, which was not surprising given the then low standard of living.

And the breakthroughs in German mysticism, humanism and the Renaissance are already restricted to the German princes of the small states around the popular education, which was completely in the hands of the church over all the centuries. It was the Church alone that imparted all so-called education. So it happened that it enjoyed unrestricted rule in the German area, even the German emperors had bowed to the rule of the church, and it was in turn often used as a political power factor. The Reformation for the first time seized the broad strata and showed that the people are also full of inner readiness, as had already shown the flickering of the Waldensian movement, which was exterminated with the most brutal violence. The Thirty Years’ War destroyed this popular movement for good, forced it again also on the Protestant side into rigid ecclesiastical forms and so the people remained in bondage to the church. It, in turn made sure that no independent thinking came up. Whole generations were so completely dominated by Christianity that today one can only wonder how quickly the shells of this Christian sheath fell off. It is the power of the common blood that, suppressed for a thousand years, today asserts its rights in a powerful awakening.

Christianity has ruled Germany for over a thousand years. An organization that is well-trained down to the smallest detail and an excellently developed system of thought have dominated German people from the cradle to the grave since that time. During this time nothing was conceivable outside of Christianity and even the beginnings of one’s own thinking were immediately bent back into the lap of the church. Baptism already marks the beginning of the work of a systematic, suggestive education that lasts throughout life, always hammering in the same principles to man until he finally recognizes them as valid. In this way, the children are being aligned towards these “Christian truths” by Church, school and the parents’ house together. In addition, there is a precisely established rite, which only increases the suggestive effect and is extremely firmly imprinted on people. From early childhood on, everyone is woven into a network of habits and formulas from which they can never free themselves on their own and, this we do not want to forget, hardly felt any need for it, since all doubts about the “eternal truths of Christianity” are immediately presented to him as the work of the devil and as sinful in the highest grave. So where should he, who has never heard anything else in his life, who has been convinced of the truth of this doctrine since early youth, where should he, as a simple person, get the courage to run against such a sophisticated system of thought? Isn’t it better to just be humble and to banish all doubts about this “divine revelation”? “Haven’t people in Christianity felt redeemed and happy for a thousand years? How many generations before me were Christians and all of them are supposed to be wrong all of a sudden?” This is how a large part of our people still thinks today and faces our struggle with doubt.

In all of this, we do not want to fail to recognize that there are still people today who need a personal God who is thought to be strongly human, or a God who has become human in Christ, in order to gain security for their lives. This is undoubtedly a rather comfortable religion, where one only needs to “believe”, that is to say in this case “hold to be true”, to gain a right to “eternal salvation”, there is also not a lot of independent thinking required for this, which is still missing from many fellow countrymen today, be it due to excessive work or desecration, because one is guided and cared for even by the powerful organization of the Church alone. Thus, for many people it is a feeling of inner security when they profess Christianity. And that is why they resist the aspirations of the new time, because they fear to suddenly stand alone on their own feet without support.

There is also another. Who of our contemporaries really knows about the foundations of Christianity? Almost all have concocted a kind of their own Christianity, which they now see as the real and therefore also defend. And it is not so easy to make a clear decision here, because there is still a confusing conflict in this area. Can one therefore blame them for saying: “Why should I make up my own mind, others have already argued about this”, and continue to entrust themselves to the seemingly safe and strong arm of the Church? And yet these questions directly concern us! In any case, it is by no means a matter of indifference whether a fellow countryman believes he will find his salvation in the hereafter or finds the meaning of life as work in the realm of this world and within his German people. Today we live amid the emergence of Folkish values, of which this war against the western plutocracies is only one phase. There, it is not at all irrelevant whether our gaze is directed towards the hereafter or turned to the circle of duties of this very world. We need a lively belief in reality and not imaginative enthusiasm. This is where the difference lies. Thereby we do not overlook the difficulties that stand in the way of such a decision. But if we know the causes, we hope to cope with them, too. Our struggle shall be the preparation for this upheaval, on which we want to work through our own thinking, strictest reality and the highest sense of responsibility.

Thereby we do not want to indulge in any illusion, for what has been effective in our people for a thousand years and forty generations has been preached as the only truth cannot be eliminated in a few years. We must therefore seek to understand the reasons why this is so and must then try to solve this web of spiritual domination with this understanding of the rule of eternal powers. We also know about the questionability in these things and do not want to approach these questions without inner sympathy. But here, too, the commandment is to do everything completely. In the long run, it is in any case intolerable to want to Germanize a foreign Middle Eastern-Semitic doctrine. This does not make Christianity become any more appropriate to our species, because this doctrine cannot be separated from Judaism, so that every such effort becomes a hopeless compromise. Over a thousand years there was time for this, and the result is shocking; not only is it that streams of German blood were shed around it, but the contrasts also stand more sharply than ever before us. We want to lead the way to the masses, who today already belong to us spiritually, but for traditional considerations and because they have crafted their own faith under the name “Christianity”, do not dare to step out of the firmly established dogmas of the church, these we want to show the way to a species-appropriate worldview and piety. This piety and this faith, this is our innermost conviction, can only be found in the German faith. So, let our confession be the selfless act.

-excerpted from Deutscher Glaube, May 1940, “In the Struggle of Time: Thoughts of a Young Aviator Comrade on the Spiritual Upheaval of the Presence.” From Rudolf Weber. Translated to English by @DerGiftpilz