us-005578-irn522539-irn522541
history: Friedrich Gustav Emil Martin Niemoeller was born on January 14, 1892, in Lippstadt, Germany, to Heinrich and Paula Muller Niemoeller. His father was a Lutheran pastor. In 1910, Martin became a cadet in the Imperial German Navy. During World War I (1914-1918), Niemoeller was assigned to a U-Boat, and eventually appointed commander. The November 1918 armistice required naval commanders to turn over their U-Boats to Great Britain. Niemoeller, like many others, refused to do so and was discharged from the Navy. He married Else Bruner on April 20, 1919. In 1920, Niemoeller began seminary training at the University of Muenster. He was politically active, pro-monarchist , and a fervent nationalist. He believed that the Treaty of Versailles that ended the war, and the government that signed it, had crippled Germany. Niemoeller supported the unsuccessful Kapp-Lüttwitz Putsch in 1920 that attempted to overthrow the government. In 1923, Niemoeller took a position with the Lutheran Home Mission of Westphalia, a social welfare organization. In 1924, he was ordained. In 1931, he became pastor of Saint Anne's Church, in a wealthy parish in the Berlin suburb of Dahlem. Niemoeller expressed his political activism in his sermons, espousing his strong nationalism, his belief that the Weimar government and the Versailles treaty had fragmented German society, and the need for a strong leader to unify Germany. His views aligned with those of the increasingly popular Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist Party which also denounced the treaty, called for a renewal of nationalism, and advocated the importance of Christianity in restoring national morality. Niemoeller voted for the Nazis in the 1924 Prussian state elections and in the March 1933 national parliamentary elections, the last elections held in prewar Germany, which consolidated the new Nazi government under Hitler. To protest the Nazi regime’s interference in church affairs and the attacks on Christians of Jewish origin, Niemoe…
results or resulted from: http://lod.ehri-project-test.eu/units/us-005578-irn522539-irn522541/acquisitions/1
has or had identifier: http://lod.ehri-project-test.eu/units/us-005578-irn522539-irn522541/alternateIDs/1
conditions of use: No restrictions on use
has beginning date: http://lod.ehri-project-test.eu/dates/1940-01-01
identifier: irn522541
conditions of access: No restrictions on access
has record set type: Item
title: All Our Yesterdays [Book]
history: The book was donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2004 by Sibylle Niemoeller, the wife of Martin Niemoeller.
has or had holder: us-005578
has beginning date: http://lod.ehri-project-test.eu/dates/1941-01-01
has or had some members with language: eng
has end date: http://lod.ehri-project-test.eu/dates/1940-12-31
is or was included in: us-005578-irn522539
has end date: http://lod.ehri-project-test.eu/dates/1945-12-31
scope and content: Book, All Our Yesterdays, read by Pastor Martin Niemoeller, and signed by him, while he was imprisoned in Dachau concentration camp from 1941-1945. When the Nazi Party came to power in 1933, Niemoeller was a Lutheran pastor in Berlin-Dahlem. In September 1933, Niemoeller helped found the Pastor's Emergency League to protest Nazi interference in church affairs and attacks on Christians of Jewish origin. In May 1934, he helped found a new protestant church in Germany, the Bekennende Kirche (the Confessing Church) and was barred from preaching by the government. Recognizing that the new government was a dictatorship, Niemoeller traveled around Germany preaching against the Nazis. He was arrested several times and in July 1937 was imprisoned in Berlin for nearly eight months. He was convicted of treason, but his sentence equalled time already served. In February 1938, Niemoeller rejected the terms of his release and was placed by the Gestapo in protective detention and sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where he was again kept in solitary confinement. In 1941, he was sent to Dachau concentration camp, where he was housed with Catholic dissenters and permitted access to books. In 1945, he was transferred to Tirol, Austria, where he was liberated by American troops on May 5. After the war, he became president of the Hesse-Nassau Lutheran Church. He also began a world tour where he preached of the collective guilt of all Germans for World War II.
type: RecordSet