Most German chancellors have been followers of a Christian church. German society has been affected by a Catholic-Protestant divide since the Protestant Reformation, and the same effect is visible in this list of German chancellors. It is largely dominated by Catholics and Protestants as these remain the main confessions in the country.
The current German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, is unaffiliated with any church or other religious body; he was raised Protestant.
Most of Germany's chancellors have been either Protestants or Catholics. A significant portion of Protestant chancellors belonged to the Prussian Union of Churches, which united the Reformed and Lutheran confessions throughout the Kingdom of Prussia and was in force since 1817. Some Catholic chancellors came from the Catholic Centre Party. The Christian Democratic Union, a party of both Catholics and Protestants, produced both kinds of chancellors. One chancellor, namely Philipp Scheidemann, was Reformed (Calvinist). [1]
Although there were some religious sceptic chancellors, most never officially renounced their faith and were given a Christian funeral. Hermann Müller, a Social Democrat heavily influenced by his father, an advocate of Ludwig Feuerbach's views, is the only one notable for not having been a member of any confession at all. Friedrich Ebert was baptised Catholic, but later officially left the denomination. [2] Gustav Bauer is on record as unaffiliated to any recognised religion at least from 1912 to 1924 (thus including his term of office), [3] but was buried in a Protestant cemetery. [4]
As some chancellors' views are uncertain or cause confusion among researchers, only their official affiliation to a church is mentioned. Due to the German church tax system, legal membership in a church that has the right to collect taxes is officially registered and certain information on this status is available. Actual worldviews are not known for some chancellors; for others, they may differ from the belief system of the church of which they were legal members, as is the case e.g. Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels. A further link to information on their worldviews is given where available, but the absence of such a mention does not mean that other chancellors’ views were necessarily in line with the teachings of their church. For issues about Nazi stance on religion, see Religion in Nazi Germany, Religious aspects of Nazism, and Religious views of Adolf Hitler.
Name | Term | Legal affiliation | |
---|---|---|---|
1 | Otto von Bismarck | 1867–1871 | Protestant [5] |
Name | Term | Legal affiliation | |
---|---|---|---|
German Empire (1871–1918) | |||
1 | Otto von Bismarck | 1871–1890 | Protestant [5] |
2 | Leo von Caprivi | 1890–1894 | Protestant [6] |
3 | Chlodwig zu Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst | 1894–1900 | Catholic [7] |
4 | Bernhard von Bülow | 1900–1909 | Protestant [8] |
5 | Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg | 1909–1917 | Protestant [9] |
6 | Georg Michaelis | 1917 | Protestant [10] |
7 | Georg von Hertling | 1917–1918 | Catholic [11] |
8 | Max von Baden | 1918 | Protestant [12] |
Weimar Republic (1918–1933) | |||
9 | Friedrich Ebert | 1918–1919 | None [2] |
10 | Philipp Scheidemann | 1919 | Protestant [13] |
11 | Gustav Bauer | 1919–1920 | None [3] |
12 | Hermann Müller | 1920 | None [14] |
13 | Constantin Fehrenbach | 1920–1921 | Catholic [15] |
14 | Joseph Wirth | 1921–1922 | Catholic [16] |
15 | Wilhelm Cuno | 1922–1923 | Catholic [17] |
16 | Gustav Stresemann | 1923 | Protestant [18] |
17 | Wilhelm Marx | 1923–1925 | Catholic [19] |
18 | Hans Luther | 1925–1926 | Protestant [20] |
19 (17) | Wilhelm Marx | 1926–1928 | Catholic [19] |
20 (12) | Hermann Müller | 1928–1930 | None [14] |
21 | Heinrich Brüning | 1930–1932 | Catholic [21] |
22 | Franz von Papen | 1932 | Catholic [22] |
23 | Kurt von Schleicher | 1932–1933 | Protestant [23] |
Nazi Germany (1933–1945) | |||
24 | Adolf Hitler | 1933–1945 | Catholic, [24] see more details |
25 | Joseph Goebbels | 1945 | Catholic [25] see more details |
26 | Lutz Graf Schwerin von Krosigk | 1945 | Protestant [26] |
Name | Term | Legal affiliation | |
---|---|---|---|
1 | Konrad Adenauer | 1949–1963 | Catholic [27] |
2 | Ludwig Erhard | 1963–1966 | Protestant [28] |
3 | Kurt Georg Kiesinger | 1966–1969 | Catholic [29] |
4 | Willy Brandt | 1969–1974 | Protestant [30] |
5 | Helmut Schmidt | 1974–1982 | Protestant [31] |
6 | Helmut Kohl | 1982–1998 | Catholic [32] |
7 | Gerhard Schröder | 1998–2005 | Protestant [33] |
8 | Angela Merkel | 2005–2021 | Protestant [34] |
9 | Olaf Scholz | 2021–present | None [35] |
Affiliation | |
---|---|
Protestant | 16 |
Catholic | 13 a |
None | 4 |
a. ^ Including two determined opponents of the Catholic faith, Hitler and Goebbels (see Nazi attitudes towards Christianity).
Kurt Georg Kiesinger was a German politician who served as the chancellor of West Germany from 1 December 1966 to 21 October 1969. Before he became Chancellor he served as Minister–President of Baden-Württemberg from 1958 to 1966 and as President of the Federal Council from 1962 to 1963. He was Chairman of the Christian Democratic Union from 1967 to 1971.
The Centre Party, officially the German Centre Party and also known in English as the Catholic Centre Party, is a Christian democratic political party in Germany. Influential in the German Empire and Weimar Republic, it is the oldest German political party in existence. Formed in 1870, it successfully battled the Kulturkampf waged by Chancellor Otto von Bismarck against the Catholic Church. It soon won a quarter of the seats in the Reichstag, and its middle position on most issues allowed it to play a decisive role in the formation of majorities. The party name Zentrum (Centre) originally came from the fact that Catholic representatives would take up the middle section of seats in parliament between the social democrats and the conservatives.
Hans Josef Maria Globke was a German administrative lawyer, who worked in the Prussian and Reich Ministry of the Interior in the Reich, during the Weimar Republic and the time of National Socialism and was later the Under-Secretary of State and Chief of Staff of the German Chancellery in West Germany from 28 October 1953 to 15 October 1963 under Chancellor Konrad Adenauer. He is the most prominent example of the continuity of the administrative elites between Nazi Germany and the early West Germany.
Johann Ludwig "Lutz" Graf Schwerin von Krosigk was a German senior government official who served as the minister of finance of Germany from 1932 to 1945 and de facto chancellor of Germany during May 1945.
The Myth of the Twentieth Century is a 1930 book by Alfred Rosenberg, a Nazi theorist and official who was convicted of crimes against humanity and other crimes at the Nuremberg trials and executed in 1946. Rosenberg was one of the principal ideologues of the Nazi Party and editor of the Nazi newspaper Völkischer Beobachter. In 1941, history professor Peter Viereck wrote: "In molding Germany's 'psychology of frightfulness' Rosenberg wields an influence as powerful as that of the much publicized Goebbels and the much feared Himmler and his secret police."
Nazi Germany was an overwhelmingly Christian nation. A census in May 1939, six years into the Nazi era after the annexation of Austria and Czechoslovakia into Germany, indicates that 54% of the population considered itself Protestant, 41% considered itself Catholic, 3.5% self-identified as Gottgläubig, and 1.5% as "atheist". Protestants were over-represented in the Nazi Party's membership and electorate, and Catholics were under-represented.
Positive Christianity was a religious movement within Nazi Germany which promoted the belief that the racial purity of the German people should be maintained by mixing racialistic Nazi ideology with either fundamental or significant elements of Nicene Christianity. Adolf Hitler used the term in point 24 of the 1920 Nazi Party Platform, stating: "the Party as such represents the viewpoint of Positive Christianity without binding itself to any particular denomination". The Nazi movement had been hostile to Germany's established churches. The new Nazi idea of Positive Christianity allayed the fears of Germany's Christian majority by implying that the Nazi movement was not anti-Christian. That said, in 1937, Hans Kerrl, the Reich Minister for Church Affairs, explained that "Positive Christianity" was not "dependent upon the Apostle's Creed", nor was it dependent on "faith in Christ as the son of God", upon which Christianity relied, rather, it was represented by the Nazi Party: "The Führer is the herald of a new revelation", he said. Hitler's public presentation of Positive Christianity as a traditional Christian faith differed. Despite Hitler's insistence on a unified peace with the Christian churches, to accord with Nazi antisemitism, Positive Christianity advocates also sought to distance themselves from the Jewish origins of Christ and the Christian Bible. Based on such elements, most of Positive Christianity separated itself from traditional Nicene Christianity and as a result, it is in general considered apostate by all mainstream Trinitarian Christian churches, regardless of whether they are Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, or Protestant.
The religious beliefs of Adolf Hitler, dictator of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945, have been a matter of debate. His opinions regarding religious matters changed considerably over time. During the beginning of his political career, Hitler publicly expressed favorable opinions towards traditional Christian ideals, but later abandoned them. Most historians describe his later posture as adversarial to organized Christianity and established Christian denominations. He also criticized atheism.
In Nazi Germany, Gottgläubig was a Nazi religious term for a form of non-denominationalism and deism practised by those German citizens who had officially left Christian churches but professed faith in some higher power or divine creator. Such people were called Gottgläubige, and the term for the overall movement was Gottgläubigkeit ; the term denotes someone who still believes in a God, although without having any institutional religious affiliation. These Nazis were not favourable towards religious institutions of their time, nor did they tolerate atheism of any type within their ranks. The 1943 Philosophical Dictionary defined Gottgläubig as: "official designation for those who profess a specific kind of piety and morality, without being bound to a church denomination, whilst however also rejecting irreligion and godlessness." The Gottgläubigkeit was a form of deism, and was "predominantly based on creationist and deistic views". In the 1939 census, 3.5% of the German population identified as Gottgläubig.
The Roman Catholic fraternity Askania-Burgundia is the founding fraternity of the Kartellverband katholischer deutscher Studentenvereine (KV). It is a Catholic Studentenverbindung. The headquarters of Askania-Burgundia are located in Berlin, Germany. Based on the Roman Catholic faith, Askania-Burgundia strictly refuses academic fencing. Its members do not wear couleur. Askania-Burgundia's principles are religio (religion), scientia (science) and amicitia (friendship).
Kirchenkampf is a German term which pertains to the situation of the Christian churches in Germany during the Nazi period (1933–1945). Sometimes used ambiguously, the term may refer to one or more of the following different "church struggles":
Historians, political scientists and philosophers have studied Nazism with a specific focus on its religious and pseudo-religious aspects. It has been debated whether Nazism would constitute a political religion, and there has also been research on the millenarian, messianic, and occult or esoteric aspects of Nazism.
The chancellor of Germany, officially the federal chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, is the head of the federal government of Germany, and the commander-in-chief of the German Armed Forces during wartime. The chancellor is the chief executive of the Federal Cabinet and heads the executive branch. The chancellor is elected by the Bundestag on the proposal of the federal president and without debate.
Catholic bishops in Nazi Germany differed in their responses to the rise of Nazi Germany, World War II, and the Holocaust during the years 1933–1945. In the 1930s, the Episcopate of the Catholic Church of Germany comprised 6 Archbishops and 19 bishops while German Catholics comprised around one third of the population of Germany served by 20,000 priests. In the lead up to the 1933 Nazi takeover, German Catholic leaders were outspoken in their criticism of Nazism. Following the Nazi takeover, the Catholic Church sought an accord with the Government, was pressured to conform, and faced persecution. The regime had flagrant disregard for the Reich concordat with the Holy See, and the episcopate had various disagreements with the Nazi government, but it never declared an official sanction of the various attempts to overthrow the Hitler regime. Ian Kershaw wrote that the churches "engaged in a bitter war of attrition with the regime, receiving the demonstrative backing of millions of churchgoers. Applause for Church leaders whenever they appeared in public, swollen attendances at events such as Corpus Christi Day processions, and packed church services were outward signs of the struggle of ... especially of the Catholic Church - against Nazi oppression". While the Church ultimately failed to protect its youth organisations and schools, it did have some successes in mobilizing public opinion to alter government policies.
Waldemar Kraft was a German politician. A member of the SS in Nazi Germany, he served as Managing Director of the Reich Association for Land Management in the Annexed Territories from 1940 to 1945, administering parts of occupied Poland. After the war, he became a West German politician, sitting in the Landtag of Schleswig-Holstein from 1950 to 1953 and serving as Minister of Finance. He entered the Bundestag in 1953 and served as Federal Minister for Special Affairs in the Cabinet of Chancellor Konrad Adenauer from 1953 to 1956. He retired from the Bundestag in 1961.
Popes Pius XI (1922–1939) and Pius XII (1939–1958) led the Catholic Church during the rise and fall of Nazi Germany. Around a third of Germans were Catholic in the 1930s, most of them lived in Southern Germany; Protestants dominated the north. The Catholic Church in Germany opposed the Nazi Party, and in the 1933 elections, the proportion of Catholics who voted for the Nazi Party was lower than the national average. Nevertheless, the Catholic-aligned Centre Party voted for the Enabling Act of 1933, which gave Adolf Hitler additional domestic powers to suppress political opponents as Chancellor of Germany. President Paul Von Hindenburg continued to serve as Commander and Chief and he also continued to be responsible for the negotiation of international treaties until his death on 2 August 1934.
Events in the year 1919 in Germany.
Potsdam Day, also known as the Tag von Potsdam or Potsdam Celebration, was a ceremony for the re-opening of the Reichstag following the Reichstag fire, held on 21 March 1933, shortly after that month's German federal election.
Events in the year 1950 in West Germany and East Germany.