H. Strathmann - Author of many articles in The Theological Dictionary of the New Testament - Who is

I have been all around in google and in the Logos forums, but cannot seem to find ANY biographical information on the "H. Strathmann" who wrote a number of articles in The Theological Dictionary of the New Testament and, of course, its abridged version, "The Little Kittel." I was pretty horrified to find that Mr. Kittel was a registered Nazi who was scheduled to go on trial after WW II, but died too early to stand trial. That was info just found by coincidence in trying to get info on Mr. Strathmann, or, since the work was originally in German, I should be saying Herr Strathmann.

Does anyone out there know who this person is?

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Bruce Dunning

I have been all around in google and in the Logos forums, but cannot seem to find ANY biographical information on the "H. Strathmann" who wrote a number of articles in The Theological Dictionary of the New Testament and, of course, its abridged version, "The Little Kittel." I was pretty horrified to find that Mr. Kittel was a registered Nazi who was scheduled to go on trial after WW II, but died too early to stand trial. That was info just found by coincidence in trying to get info on Mr. Strathmann, or, since the work was originally in German, I should be saying Herr Strathmann.

Does anyone out there know who this person is?

Thanks for bringing this up Robert. I don't know the answer to your question about biographical information on Starthmann but I'd like to know as well.

Also, I didn't know that Kittel was a registered Nazi. Do you have a web reference for this information. I'd like to read more.

Cynthia B. Gooch

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/530226#Comment_530226

I will grant you that it's from Wikipedia, so should be taken with some skepticism, but here you are:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerhard_Kittel

Rosie Perera

I have been all around in google and in the Logos forums, but cannot seem to find ANY biographical information on the "H. Strathmann" who wrote a number of articles in The Theological Dictionary of the New Testament and, of course, its abridged version, "The Little Kittel."

He is listed with a brief bio in the Contributors and Co-Workers section of TDNT:

Strathmann, Hermann, Prof.; b.8.30.1882 Opherdicke (Westphalia); Lic. Theol. Bonn 1909; Instructor Bonn 1910; Assoc. Prof. Heidelberg 1915; Prof. Rostock 1916, Erlangen 1918; d.11.29.1966

Gerhard Kittel, Geoffrey W. Bromiley, and Gerhard Friedrich, eds., Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1964–), 610.

Knowing his first name provides better results from Google, and I found a German Wikipedia article on him, which you can likely get a fairly decent auto-translation done of in your browser (Chrome offers to translate it, anyway):

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Strathmann

Bruce Dunning

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/530231#Comment_530231

I will grant you that it's from Wikipedia, so should be taken with some skepticism, but here you are:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerhard_Kittel

For those interested in reading what this says here is an excerpt: "In 1945, after Hitler's Third Reich capitulated to the Allies, Kittel was arrested by the French occupying forces, removed from office and interned at Balingen. William F. Albright wrote the International War Crimes Tribunal in Nuremberg in early 1946, "In view of the terrible viciousness of his attacks on Judaism and the Jews, which continues at least until 1943, Gerhard Kittel must bear the guilt of having contributed more, perhaps, than any other Christian theologian to the mass murder of Jews by Nazis." Nonetheless, in 1946 Kittel was released pending his trial. He was forbidden to enter Tübingen until 1948, however. From 1946 to 1948 he was a Seelsorger (soul carer) in Beuron. In 1948 he was allowed back into Tübingen, but died that year before the criminal proceedings against him could be resumed."

Yes this is rather disturbing. I'm not sure what to make of this. [:S]

He is listed with a brief bio in the Contributors and Co-Workers section of TDNT:

I never thought to look in the actual resource Rosie. Thanks. It still would be nice to know a few more details.

Rosie Perera

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/530239#Comment_530239

It still would be nice to know a few more details.

Did you check that Wikipedia article I linked to? Here's the English translation of it provided by Google Translate (which happens automatically in Chrome if you accept its offer to translate a foreign page). Obviously it's not a perfect translation, but you can get the gist of it:

Hermann Strathmann

Hermann Strathmann (* August 30 1882 in Opherdicke , † November 19th 1966 in Erlangen ) was a German theologian and politician ( DNVP , CSVD , CSU ).

1 Life and work
2 fonts <-- ha ha! this is supposed to be "Writings" as it got translated further down where this actual section begins --rp
3 Literature
4 links
5 Notes and references

Life and work

Empire (1882-1919)

Hermann Strathmann was born the son of a clergyman in the county Opherdicke Horde. The elementary school he attended until his twelfth year. After grammar school he learned early education through private lessons. From 1895 to 1901 he attended the Diet According to manual the Royal Prussian State School in Naumburg an der Saale in order to Schulpforta meant. ^[1] He then studied theology at Tübingen , Halle and Bonn . His theological examinations put Strathmann at Easter in 1905 and 1907 in Münster from. After two years of work at the Institute of Bodelschwingschen in Bethel near Bielefeld Strathmann doctorate in 1908 in Bonn. Equipped with the theological teaching license (lic theology) was Strathmann 1910 lecturer at the University of Bonn and inspector at the local theological royal pen. In 1915 he became an associate professor at Heidelberg, 1916 Associate Professor in Rostock. In 1918 he finally moved to Erlangen , where he was Professor of New Testament took over. Another focus of his research was the original Christianity .

From 1915 to 1918 Strathmann took a break of eight months as a chaplain in Russia and France on First World War in part.

Weimar Republic (1919-1933)

After the war, Strathmann participated in December 1918 on the establishment of the Bavarian middle party , which merged in 1920 in the German National People's Party (DNVP). Politically, he longed for the return to the old authoritarian state. Special admiration he brought the idea of a particular Protestant Holy Empire of the German nation of his great model Adolf Stoecker contrary. ^[2]

Strathmann 1919 was a member of the Bavarian Landtag , which he up to his first election to the Reichstag of the Weimar Republic in June 1920 belonged. After Strathmann in the elections of May 1924 , December 1924 and May 1928 was re-elected, he belonged to the German Parliament at first almost ten years as a representative of the constituency 29 and 26 (Franc), before he provisionally from the September 1930 Reichstag retired. Already in July 1930 was Strathmann for People Service (Protestant movement) came about, the Reichstag, he also joined. Occasion for Strathmann break with the DNVP was particularly its skepticism about the person and the policy of its chairman Alfred Hugenberg . ^[3] With the idea to separate from the DNVP, Strathmann had previously played for a while, but was it despite the " [intolerable] atmosphere of distrust "in the DNVP Group shied away because he feared a splintering of political rights and doubted the success of new parties. ^[3] After a four-month absence from parliament between September 1930 and January 1931, succeeded Strathmann at 30 . January 1931 in the waiting list for the 16 January excreted Hermann Kling return to the Reichstag, ^[4] which he now until the election of July 1932 belonged. Finally, after a new phase as a non-parliamentarians in the period from July to November, he was at the Reichstag election of November 1932 return to Empire nomination of national service in the Reichstag. This his last mandate ended after the elections of March 1933 .

Period of National Socialism (1933-1945)

In 1931 published Strathmann the time of his widespread brochure National Socialist worldview? , in which he expressed the view expressed that the racial beliefs of Nazism was incompatible with the Christian faith. Notwithstanding Strathmann was National Socialism after 1933 mainly positive about. ^[5] Only at the churches and religious policy of the regime, he still took some offense. Accordingly, he brought the Confessing Church opposed sympathy, without this to belong to themselves.

During the Nazi era Strathmann began his teaching career in Erlangen, despite some hostility in the period of change 1933/34, continued without hindrance. He also now intensified his journalistic activity: In July of 1935 Strathmann was responsible editor of the Theological leaves ., in which he took particular the content and editorial design of the heading "From Science and Life" ^[6] Furthermore, Strathmann was in the editorship of the Frankish messenger work, from which he after conflicts with the publisher, Julius Streicher retired in 1939. ^[7] Strathmann 1940 finally joined theNSDAP in.

Post-war period (1945 to 1966)

After the war, Strathmann its first activity in Erlangen continue unhindered. On 31 January 1947 he was released by the American military government as a university professor as gourmet "but not because he was a member of the Nazi party or any other Nazi organization" notes. ^[8] A year later came his rehabilitation. Political activists Strathmann in the first post-war years in the Christian Social Union (CSU), for which he 1946-1950 in the Bavarian parliament in which he sat at the piano Josef Müller belonged. The CSU Board, he represented the evangelical Christians in the CSU. ^[9]

Decided in 1950 at the request of the Bavarian state parliament election audit committee with a majority of the deputies and the choice Strathmann August Haußleiters to void. Both men were not under the Law for Liberation from National Socialism and Militarism , yet believed members of the Audit Committee, in some writings written before 1945 and Strathmann Haußleiters to find militaristic and nazi ideology. Explosiveness gained the decision Strathmann withdraw his mandate, he was one of the most prominent representatives of the Protestant-dominated regions of Franconia in the CSU and downright was considered a symbol of the evangelical Christians in the Bavarian Union Party, so that a vote of no confidence against him as a vote of no confidence against the Frankish Protestant parts of the CSU had to appear. Strathmann opposed the decision by appeal to the Bavarian Constitutional Court lodged. Also protested his national association, the National Association of Erlangen, against the decision. After a drawn-out dispute Strathmann left the CSU in 1954 to unsuccessfully to establish service with the German people a Protestant party. ^[10] In 1956, he was co-founder of Sheets for German and international politics . ^[11]

Strathmann discount stores today in the Church Archive (LKA) in Nuremberg. It includes eight boxes of lecture notes, files and correspondence.

Writings

Asceticism in the area of nascent Christianity. Leipzig 1914.
History of early Christian asceticism to the emergence of monasticism in religionsgeschichtlichem context. sa
Order and work. , 1919.
The community-determination as a weapon against alcoholism. , 1924.
Saladin Ludendorff in the fight against the Bible.
If the legal oath nor tenable? Leipzig in 1928.
Gospel and politics. Nuremberg 1930.
National Socialist worldview?. Nuremberg [1931].
Church and politics. Berlin 1931.
Away with the tributes! Berlin [1932].
The emergence of the New Testament. Göttingen 1936.
How did the New Testament? What is it to us? A first installment of Saladin Ludendorff in the fight against the Bible. camps-Verlag, Velbert, 1937.
What does this tell us the Book of Revelation. Gütersloh 1939.
Luther's German Bible. Essen 1940.
Sample of the sample Testament. Leipzig 1940.
The hubris of the Church.
Spirit and form of the Fourth Gospel. Göttingen 1946.
Wass is the "Revelation" of John in the New Testament? Gütersloh 1934.
Luther as a warning voice in public life. Bielefeld 1947.
Adam, where are you? Bielefeld 1947.

Literature

Otto Hass: Hermann Strathmann. . Christian thought and practice in turbulent times WVB Scientific Publishing, Bamberg, 1993, ISBN 3-927392-41-3 (Also:. Erlangen, Nuremberg, Univ, Diss, 1993).

External links

References

Alf Mintzel: The CSU. Anatomy of a Conservative Party 1945-1972 , 1975, p 588
Olaf Blaschke: confessions in the conflict. Germany 1800-1970 , 2002, p 279
Manfred Kittel: Province between Empire and Republic , 2000, S, 577
http://www.reichstagsprotokolle.de/Blatt2_wv_bsb00000137_00865.html
C. Garc Fouse: Erlangen. An American's history of a German Town , 2005, p 192
Andreas Mühlin: Karl Ludwig Schmidt. "And science is life" , 1997, p 182
Michael Klein: West German Protestantism and political parties , 2005, p 174
Thomas Schlemmer: awakening, Crisis and Renewal , p 201
Heinz Boberach: Contributions to the Rhine country's history and the Holocaust , 2001, pp. 162
Heinz Boberach: Contributions to the Rhine country's history and the Holocaust , 2001, pp. 175
Sheets for German and international politics 12/2006, pp. 1462

Cynthia B. Gooch

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/530245#Comment_530245

Wow! Thank you so much! How great to get information and how nice to get it so quickly! THANKS!

Graham Owen

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/530316#Comment_530316

But at the same time, of course, Christianity needed to define itself in relation to Judaism; and that has, down the years, produced a crop of disasters. From the Greek church father John Chrysostom in the early period to the sixteenth-century reformer Martin Luther, and on to the renowned New Testament scholar Gerhard Kittel in Nazi Germany, there have been great thinkers and teachers within the Christian tradition who have denounced the Jews in ways which make our blood run cold today. And our blood runs cold, of course, not least because of the Holocaust.

Wright, T. (1997). For All God’s Worth (pp. 117–118). London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.

A parallel for me to this would be the number of Christian scholars. an example being John Broadus, who were slave owners but whose works remain classics in their field. There is, and I guess always has been, a tension between the quality of some Christian's scholarship and their specific personal practices and the way that we perceive them.

Like others I did not know this about Kittel until I saw this post.

Graham Owen

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/530330#Comment_530330

The reaction to Judenfrage was swift, from Jewish writers and from German representatives of New Testament scholarship who disavowed his stance. It may be said that the National Socialist movement used Kittel’s work as an intellectual rationale for their policy regarding Jews. In May 1933, Kittel joined the National Socialist Labor Party (NSDAP) and beginning in 1936 became involved substantially in the concerns of the Forschungsabteilung Judenfrage of the Reichsinstitut für die Geschichte des neuen Deutschlands. Yet he expressed his horror over the events of the Crystal Night of November 8 and 9, 1938. Nevertheless, he was never able to extricate himself from this ideology until the end of the war, when he publicly and decisively recanted his stance and association with National Socialism. Apparently Kittel was blind to the contradiction between his ideological stance and the perspective he reflected in the conclusion of his 1939 publication of Christus und Imperator. In the context of a theocratic-hierarchical religion the state, among other things, “becomes an ‘order of wrath,’ in its most fundamental nature apparently a demonic power hostile to God. A weak, harmless state may be tolerated best of all; the more ‘state-like’ and authoritarian it becomes, the more diabolical it seems to evolve” (Kittel 1939a, 47).

Schatzmann, S. S. (2007). Kittel, Gerhard (1888–1948). In (D. K. McKim, Ed.)Dictionary of Major Biblical Interpreters. Downers Grove, IL; Nottingham, England: InterVarsity Press.

Bruce Dunning

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/530245#Comment_530245

It still would be nice to know a few more details.

Did you check that Wikipedia article I linked to?

Thanks for pointing this out again Rosie. I followed the top one but somehow I didn't see it at the bottom. [:$] There is lots of info there.

NB.Mick

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/530245#Comment_530245

Did you check that Wikipedia article I linked to?

Unfortunately the Wikipedia article concentrates a lot on Strathmann's political carreer and leaves much unsaid that might be more helpful about him as a theologian.

In addition to that, German wikipedians are notoriously bad in nuancing political or religious views right of what the 'vocal majority' of them hold as center. Rather it's "en vogue" to lump all these people together as nazis or sympathizers. The article cites as literature Otto Hass' 500+ pages biography of Strathmann (which is a published PhD dissertation), but references the claim that Strathmann was "mainly positive about" National Socialism (NS) with a history of the town of Erlangen, written not by a historian but an unknown ESL teacher who happened to serve in the US military in Erlangen for three years. Go figure.

His biographer Hass wrote a summary of Strathmann's view on NS as part of another book that is partly visible in google books. Basically he concludes that Strathmann judged the racial ideology of NS to be fully incompatible with Christianity, however, as a patriot he may have seen Hitler as god's tool to save Germany from destruction, especially after the quick and successful campaign in France. Strathmann's theological evaluation of NS ideology was published in 1931 and when the Nazis came to power in 1933 they dismissed Strathmann as head of the theological faculty of Erlangen university.

Historian Clemens Vollnhals, who specialises in NS history including church history in NS times, writes in his chapter on denacification at Erlangen university that Strathmann together with Hermann Sasse (who, together with Bonhoeffer, actively campained against the NS) belonged to the small group of theologians who clearly recognized the incompability of NS and christianity prior to 1933, but weren't listened to (p. 170 in this German text, use look into and search for Strathmann). An interesting sidenote is that the Erlangen faculty was decidedly Lutheran which led Strathmann and Sasse to be sceptical against Reformed theologian Barth's Barmen Declaration, which they feared might promote "unionism".

What the wikipedia article misses, beyond Strathmann's involvement in Kittel's TDNT:

Strathmann wrote the introductory chapter "Entstehung und Wortlaut des NT" about the NT text and how the NT came about plus the commentaries on the Gospel of John and the Letter to the Hebrews in the prestigious Neues Testament Deutsch series in 1936 (I have the NTD tenth edition from 1963, still printed in blackletter, other authors in the series were e.g. Joachim Jeremias and Paul Althaus). Of course, in his commentary of John he discusses the apostle's use of "the Jews" and clarifies that this has nothing to do with race, but only with a person's attitude towards the person of Jesus. Any idea to explain this with "antique antisemitism" - an idea hatched by the NS "German Christians" group - he dismisses as utterly out of bounds (page 11).

When searching for Strathmann in my Logos library, I didn'd expect to get over 200 hits in over 50 resources - his TDNT article on laos is cited often, but also the two NTD commentaries are referenced and often short-listed.

Cynthia B. Gooch

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/530379#Comment_530379

Thanks so much, Rosie. It helps to have someone researching who can understand German. Your mention of the fact that the Erlangen faculty was mostly Lutheran was interesting. I have German ancestors to emigrated to the US in the 1870s...In researching them, I ended up on some German genealogical sites. It appeared to me that if you were German and were not Roman Catholic, then you were Evangelische. I can't recall exactly, but I thought that Evangelische also included Lutherans - in other words, the Evangelische churches were our equivalent of "Protestant."

Rosie Perera

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/530569#Comment_530569

Thanks so much, Rosie. It helps to have someone researching who can understand German. Your mention of the fact that the Erlangen faculty was mostly Lutheran was interesting.

I do not understand German, and wasn't researching this. I just found his full name in Logos for you and then Googled it and found that Wikipedia article and accepted Google's automatic machine translation of the page. I confess I didn't even read the page (except I did happen to notice and chuckle at the use of the word "font" which I knew couldn't be right).

So Mick's critiques of it and your praise of what *I* supposedly mentioned about him went right over my head. I couldn't care less about this guy, I'm just a good googler. Sorry if you misunderstood my post. It was just a copy/paste, nothing more. And that's the end of my involvement in this conversation.

NB.Mick

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/530569#Comment_530569

It appeared to me that if you were German and were not Roman Catholic, then you were Evangelische. I can't recall exactly, but I thought that Evangelische also included Lutherans - in other words, the Evangelische churches were our equivalent of "Protestant."

Robert,

this somehow describes the current situation in Germany's mainline church EKD - but there's more to it. The German reformation was mainly Lutheran, whereas the Swiss reformation was "reformed" i.e. based on the ideas of Calvin and Zwingli. The outcome of the religious wars was that the prince of a region determined the local religion. There were mostly Lutherans in Germany, but also some Reformed guys (e.g. in the Palatinate, which lead to the Heidelberg Catechism). Some princes wanted to push an amalgamation of both, called unionism. However, not everyone was willing to compromise on this (one well-known case in point is Germany's premier hymn-writer, Lutheran Paul Gerhardt, who lost his tenure as a pastor because he was unwilling to accept unionism).

The EKD itself is not really a church, but just an organizational body of regional member churches of different confessional stance (e.g. the Lutheran regional churches belong to LWF), some of them allowing different protestant traditions to co-exist on their regional territory. I remember from my teenage years in the 1980s that the pastor of a neighbour parish objected to a picture of Martin Luther in our village church, which ought to be historically reformed rather than Lutheran. There was no eucharistic communion within the German protestant mainline churches until the Leuenberg agreement in 1973!

Back in NS times, this situation was relevant since the Lutheran pastors were less prone to rebel against the hierarchy, given the influence of Luthers "two-kingdoms" approach (e.g. he had told Christian soldiers not to question whether their princes were conducting a "just war", but just to trust them and fight). The Confessing Church sometimes was regarded with suspicion since its protagonists were influenced by this new-fangled neo-orthodox thinking of reformed Karl Barth.

Hope this helps.

Cynthia B. Gooch

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/530634#Comment_530634

That does help with my understanding of family tree information. Thank you!

NB.Mick

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/530379#Comment_530379

An interesting sidenote is that the Erlangen faculty was decidedly Lutheran which led Strathmann and Sasse to be sceptical against Reformed theologian Barth's Barmen Declaration, which they feared might promote "unionism".

I need to retract what I wrote about Strathmann above. While there were many in the Lutheran churches in Germany and surely in the Erlangen faculty as well who for this reason had their reservations against Barmen Declaration and the Confessing Church, Strathmann was not among them.

In 1936, while this discussion still was held within the German protestant churches, Strathmann together with Adolf Schlatter and Wilhelm Luetgert - all three of them sympathisants of the Confessing Church - published a booklet directed at this issue: "Müssen wir heute lutherisch oder reformiert sein?" ("Do we need to be Lutheran or Reformed Today?"). Strathmann's essay "Schrift und Bekenntnis" ("Scripture and Confession") is the most readable and outspoken of the four essays and a glaring defence of the Barmen Declaration, granting it the status of a real confession and the Barmen Synod a legitimate protestant confessional body of representatives of the protestant churches in Germany. His essay fights Lutheran confessionalism - towards the end he uses the triage approach recently popularized again by Al Mohler and regards the inter-protestant divisions as secondary matter.

In course of this essay (although not the focus of it) he criticizes nazi ideology as "in irreconcilable antagonism" to Christian thinking and praises the men of the Confessing Church as those who raise their voices against the destruction brought about by nazi ideology, even though some of these nearly were made "confessors in ancient church sense", i.e. martyrs for the faith, by the nazi force. He invokes Mt 10:32f in this context. 'Mainly positive' about NS ideology? By no means.