The Grey Book | Page 7

its struggle for existence. Finally, Christianity was opposed because of its Jewish origins which deteriorate the whole human race by elevating spirit over body, rational thought over the wisdom of the senses, abstract ideas over direct and spontaneous experience, and the discursive intellect over the vital emotions. In the course of this debate the antisemitic movement displayed a readiness to reconcile itself to the continued existence of Christianity on condition that it subsitute the biological values of the Aryan race for its Jewish origins, as was recommended by the idealogues who made Jesus a member of the Aryan race - Julius Langbehn, Max Bewer, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Leopold Werner, and the German Christians in the days of the Third Reich. [25] We find the same line of thought pursued by the followers of Duehring, such as Prof. Paul Foerster, as well as in those circles connected with the antisemitic journals, such as Heimdall, Freideutschland, Staatsburger Zeitung, also some of the functionaries connected with the imperialist Der Alldeutscher Verband, such as Friedrich Lange, the author of the anti-Christian Reines Deutschtum (1893), and numerous writers, historians, orientalists, scientists and students influenced by anthropology, materialism and Darwinism. A popular exposition that reveals the national and Romantic roots of this ideology appeared in the Hammer (Oct. 1908), and reads in part as follows:
"What shall we do with a Christ whose kingdom is not of this world? A Bluecher, a Gneisenau, a Koerner, an Arndt can always be useful for Germany, but not a Christ. The God who was called upon at Leuthen, Leipzig and Sedan was not the God of love, nor the God of Abraham. Christ comforts the lowly, the weak and the sick. We too are sorry for these poor folk and try to alleviate their condition; but they are of no use to us and to our future. They only degrade that which we deem to be the highest good - the German character. Strength, health, the joy of life are what we need. The kingdom of Heaven can be left to the lowly and the wretched, as long as we possess the earth. Give the Bible to the sick and the lonely, the shut-ins and the scholars who wear their faces on their backs!..." [26]
Similarly, the antisemitic propagandist, Dr. Ernst Wachler, writes in the same journal (Jan. 1911):
"Away with the stones and tales, the doctrines and precepts of Jews as well as of Christians!... Not only the free-thinkers, but our basic Aryan instincts demand: the Church with all its trappings must be done away with..." [27]

The available historical sources, including the documents collected in this volume, clearly indicate that the protests of the Church against the persecution of the Jews, with its human and ethical concern for their fate, were an inseparable part of a more comprehensive opposition directed against the pseudo-messianic and hence anti-Christian character of Nazism. Seen in this context, the protest of the Church gives rise to a number of historical and theological questions that require further study. The questions that arise fall into three groups.
A. To what extent did the secularizing tendencies of the last century, the rationalistic attacks on religion, the Romantic philosophies, pagan mythology, Darwinism and the anthropological critique of religion, contribute to the anti-Christian character of modern anti-semitism? How did the process of secularization influence the teachings and art of Richard Wagner, the Christian mythology of Houston St. Chamberlain, Julius Langbehn, Ernst Bergmann and the movement of the "German Christians", or the "Mythus" of Alfred Rosenberg? Can modem historiography support the psychoanalytical Freudian explanation of anti-Christian anti-Semitism in terms of a revival of vestigial pagan elements which were latent in Christianity itself, and which consequently revolted against the ethical Judaic basis of Christianity and against the Jews who were now made responsible for all that disturbed the Christian conscience?
From the vast literature that has grown up around these problems [28] we see that side by side with the all-pervasive secularization of life there were also historical and theological factors embedded in Christianity which later turned against Christianity itself. Through further study, we might find in the history of Christianity traditions that originated in the barbarism of the pagan world, turned anti-Christian by that very paganism, then continued as anti-Jewish attitudes and policies on the part of the Christian world - and finally culminating dialectically into a destructive force that was directed not only against Judaism, but through Judaism against Humanity and hence also against Christianity. One of these powerful anti-Jewish elements which rooted in Christianity, and after having been secularized became an effective means used by totalitarianism against the Jews as well as against the Jews as the symbol of non-conformism, as the embodiment of the human quest for a free existence, for the right