Catechism Of The Germanic Religion: Introduction

There can be no doubt that Professor Bergmann deliberately chose the above title [The 25 Theses of the German Religion] for the little book of his which first appeared in the middle of 1933. He wished, in the first place, to support a parallel with the 25-point program which forms the theoretical basis of the Political Nazi Revolution of 1933. And he wished, in the second place, by this identity of form to indicate that what happened politically in 1933 requires a religious revolution for its fulfillment—indeed, that the political revolution is but the forerunner of which the religious revolution is the immanent and real thing and that, without this fulfillment of a religious revolution, all political foundations must remain insecure and without a soul.

Professor Bergmann is one of those many religious pioneers in Nazi Germany who believe that it is the essential duty of the Revolution to bring Christendom to an end. The 2,000 years in which Christianity has played its part in shaping the history of Europe, and in particular the history of Germany, are but an aspect of decadence. They are the period of compulsory masking and overshadowing of the German Religion and culture which preceded it and which it is the good fortune of the Nazi Revolution to release again for the new flights in freedom of creative achievement. 

The creation of a new religion, frankly opposed to Christianity, a specifically German religion—made in Germany for Germans only—is for Bergmann the heart of the revolutionary movement, which assumed formal political expression in 1933. 

No further words are necessary to emphasize the importance or the proud ambition attached to this religious revolutionary enterprise.

In presenting Professor Bergmann’s thought to readers of the English-speaking world, we have stated in full the 25 Theses as Professor Bergmann has recorded them. We have, at the same time, following each Thesis, reproduced in Professor Bergmann’s own thought, the more important of the comment he has made in order to illustrate, justify, and develop his theses. In this way it is to be hoped a faithful reflection is provided of what Bergmann has written for his fellow-Germans—a set of ideas whose influence on the younger generation of Germans is hardly possible to exaggerate. 

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Foreword

The Forward reads:

“There are two things which the Germans of today require: Truth and Iron.”

In this case again Professor Bergmann sets a parallel with a similar historic saying of Chancellor Bismarck, whose requirement for his generation of Germans was “Blood and Iron.”

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First Section

The Character of the German Religion

This first section is introduced by a quotation from Schleiermacher:

“He who believes in the Holy Scriptures does not possess a religion, but rather he who has no need of them and knows how to make his own.”

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Thesis I

“The German has his own religion, which flows like the living water of his own perception, feeling and thought, and is rooted in his species. We call it the German religion, or the religion of the German people and understand thereby a German faith expressing the peculiarity and integrity of our race.”

Comments: What is a Religion rooted in the Race?

Such a religion is one which grows out of the blood and soil, the ancestral inheritance of a people, untouched by alien additions and influences and which reflects pure and unfalsified the style of soul of a people. For the Germans a type of alien religion: “is Christianity, which was introduced by the Saxon warrior Karl 1,200 years ago with fire and sword into Germany and is still today the recognized State religion of Germany. This religion is especially alien to the German nature because it is the creation of a pre-eminently Oriental mind and rests on the sacred writing of the Jews. It contradicts at almost every point the German sense of custom and morality.”

“By this alien religion the still young German’s German soul has been diverted in development from its purity, uniqueness, greatness and integrity (Geschlossenheit). In the endeavor to assimilate this never completely accepted alien religion its best energies have been dissipated and the solution of the great duties for the Fatherland have been delayed for centuries. This lack of inner unity is a tragic consequence of the suppression and repression of the native German religion, which in the pre-Christian era had spiritually unified the various German tribes. If at the end of 10,000 years of division within and weakness without we inherit but a heap of ruins in the ancient German territory; if we have to look back on ways of sorrow and catastrophe without parallel, we owe it to the destruction of the German liberty of Faith by the Frankish murderer Karl, who destroyed what was most sacred of the German and was for this called, until recently, by a blinded nation ‘the Great.’”

-excerpted from “The 25 Theses of the German Religion: A Catechism” by Ernst Bergmann (1936)