Possibly a rather silly question; but one which has from time to time slightly puzzled me. The city of Wittenberg in Germany – some fifty miles south-west of Berlin – has long been closely associated with Martin Luther, who had a professorial career at the university there; and who in 1517 nailed his famous 95 theses to the door of the city’s main church. The city’s official title nowadays, is Lutherstadt Wittenberg.
Post-World War II, Wittenberg was included in the Soviet zone of occupation, subsequently the German Democratic Republic (East Germany). I understand that it was during the GDR era, that “Lutherstadt” was appended to the city’s name; and that a choice was made to keep the prefix, after Germany’s reunification. A Communist government would presumably consider all and any religions to be wrong and false and altogether A Bad Thing; it therefore surprises me that such a government would allow any public commemoration of any – from their point of view – religious lunatic and / or villain. Would be grateful for any thoughts / explanations.
According to Wikipedia, Wittenberg petitioned to be recognized as “Lutherstadt Wittenberg” in 1922 and was finally granted this right in 1938, well into the Nazi era.
Other than that, the East German government tried to connect with Germany’s history in order to draw legitimacy for the GDR. They did allow celebrations for Luther’s 500th birthday in 1983 (which coincided with celebrations for the 100th death anniversary of Karl Marx). They reinterpreted Luther as a “revolutionary and theoretician of the working class”, quite a stretch, but there is nothing a communist can’t do.
Correction: They actually referred to Karl Marx when they said “revolutionary and theoretician of the working class”, not to Luther. :rolleyes: But they did commemorate Luther. The Christian Churches in the GDR in general were tolerated if they kept their head down.
It was important to the GDR to try to claim itself as the true heir to “good” German culture, by contrast with the other lot. Overlooking Luther’s embarrassingly vocal expression of the anti-semitism of his times, his translation of the Bible and his hymns make him hugely significant in the development of German literature. Then again, the GDR also contained Weimar (Schiller and Goethe), Leipzig (Bach), Potsdam/Sans Souci (Frederick the Great and Voltaire), and they played up all of them when it suited them.
Thanks, all. So the thing actually predated WWII and the GDR – I had no idea. As regards politics in general, I feel that the “Humpty-Dumpty syndrome” is prominent: things mean whatever those in power, choose that they should mean – tendency seen, for this to be more blatant with strongly-left-wing regimes; but they all do it.
Even a communist regime has to yield to the political realities to some extent. In this case, the reality was that a considerable part of the East German population was affiliated with the Lutheran faith and showed some allegiance to it, so it could not entirely be suppressed. The East German government tried to reinterpret some Christian traditions along its own lines (e.g. in most state-run companies, there were year-end celebrations intended to replace or at least overshadow Christmas celebrations), and it also tried to bring the church under official control (something which, incidentally, would appear to be easier with the Lutheran church than with the Catholic church, which is the other big denomination in Germany, since the Lutheran denominations is more decentralised, whereas the Catholic church is heavily controlled from Rome and thus more beyond the scope of the government’s reach, something which the Nazis realised - so there would actually be an incentive to favour the Lutheran over the Catholic church from a government perspective). But in spite of all the ideological differences with Christian theology, the East German government never quite took the step to openly ban or ostracise the Lutheran church, because of the social unrest that they feared this might cause. The more promising tactic was to attempt to dissociate the youth from the church, e.g. by offering ideologically aligned youth organisations that would provide an alternative to the social environment offered by the church, in order to undermine the standing of the church among the population over the long run.
Thanks – interesting. Chimes in with a book which I read long ago, in the course of a flirtation with evangelical Christianity, by a guy of that persuasion who saw himself as called to help Christians under Communist repression. The author struck me as fairly level-headed, as people of this sort go. He observed that different Soviet satellite states in Eastern Europe used different means of combating Christianity, and religion in general. Oddly, it kind of went along roughly geographical lines: further south, directly violent and ugly persecution was the tactic of choice – in Romania, Bulgaria, and doing-its-own-thing Albania. Further north in the Soviet bloc, gentler and / or more insidious methods were favoured. (Overwhelmingly-Catholic Poland was a special case, where things were different yet again.)
This author described the East German regime’s attempt to dissociate youth from the Lutheran church, as you mention; as setting up a secular “counterfeit church”, deliberately chiming in closely with the positive and attractive features of Protestant Christianity – hoping to “wean and woo” the young away from said Christianity. A more overtly lenient line vis-a-vis religious believers, than in some parts of the bloc; but I still found it surprising, until fighting-of-ignorance in this thread, that an atheist state would allow Herr Luther to be commemorated in the name of a town !
The Soviet educational system taught Dostoyevsky in schools and played him up as an example of Russian literary greatness (in spite of his ultraconservative politics and worldview), so I don’t think this is that surprising. Communist regimes aren’t above appealing to patriotism and religion when necessary. The GDR actually did have a Christian Democratic Party, that was allowed to exist as a tame ally of the SED. The one occasion in its 40-some years of existence that East Germany actually tolerated a free vote in its legislature was on the question of the legalization of abortion in (I think) 1972, and they allowed the Christian representatives to vote “No”.
Interestingly, the former East Germany and the Czech Republic are today possibly the least religious places in the Christian world (some measures put parts of Scandinavia at the top). Much less so than Russia and other former Soviet countries, for example.
Re the Czech Republic; I’ve gathered from various sources, that the Czechs have long (i.e well predating Communism) been something of a nation of sceptics. Supposedly a Catholic part of Europe; but in the religious-strife times of the 16th / 17th centuries, there was a big tendency there, toward more than one variety of Protestantism. Political power in those times – in the light of “who happened to win, where” – more or less enforced the Czechs’ falling into the Catholic-type line; after which, if I have things rightly, quite a big percentage of the Czech population outwardly conformed to Catholicism, to save themselves grief from authority; but privately, largely gave two fingers to what they’d come to regard as the whole stupid thing. From then till now, I gather (with the openly non-religious element having come to the fore, since the advent of Communism making that “take” on things not only highly acceptable, but approved): some Czechs have been sincere Catholics, some sincere Protestants – accepting the “flak” which they got for taking that position – and rather more, have basically said “to blazes with all this crap”, and acted accordingly.
A difference here, I gather, between the Czechs and their neighbours the Slovaks; who, very much like the Poles next door, have always on the whole tended as a nation, toward strong and fervent Catholicism. One of various factors in Czechs and Slovaks being rather far from “a marriage made in heaven” – witness the two countries separating, happily without bloodshed, in the early 1990s.