Gerhard Kittel (23 September 1888, Breslau - 11 July 1948, Tübingen) was a German Protestant theologian, and lexicographer of biblical languages. He was an enthusiastic supporter of the Nazis. and an open anti-Semite. He is best known in the field of Biblical study for his Theologisches Wörterbuch zum Neuen Testament (Theological Dictionary of the New Testament).
Video Gerhard Kittel
Biography
The son of Old Testament scholar Rudolf Kittel, he married Hanna Untermeier in 1914, but there were no children from the union. In May 1933 he joined the National Socialist German Workers Party. He had had no previous involvement in politics but called the Party "a folkish renewal movement on a Christian, moral foundation".
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. In his own defense, Kittel maintained his work was "scientific in method" and motivated by Christianity, although it may have appeared anti-semitic to some. He attempted to distinguish his work from the "vulgar antisemitism of Nazi propaganda" like Der Stürmer and Alfred Rosenberg, who was known for his anti-Christian rhetoric, völkisch arguments and emphasis on Lebensraum. Even so, Kittel admitted that he had attempted to "grapple with the problem of Jewry and the Jewish question."
Professor Martin Dibelius a theologian at Heidelberg wrote that Kittel's works related to ancient Judaism "are of purely scientific character" and "do not serve the Party interpretation of Judaism." He said further that Kittel deserved "the thanks of all who are interested in the scientific study of Judaism."
Claus Schedl who attended Kittel's lectures on the Jewish Question in the winter of 1941-1942 in Vienna said that "one heard not a single word of malice" and that "Professor Kittel truly did not collaborate." Schedl says that Kittel was one of very few scholars who promoted an opinion on the Jewish Question other than the official one. Kittel himself said his goal was to combat the myths and distortions of extremist members of the Nazi Party.
Annemarie Tugendhat was a Christian Jew whose father had been taken to the concentration camp Welzheim in 1938. She testified that Kittel had strongly objected against the actions being taken against Jews. Kittel's work on the Jewish Question was not based on the racial theories of National Socialism but upon theology.
In 1946 Kittel was released pending his trial. He was forbidden to enter Tübingen until 1948, however. From 1946-48 he was a Seelsorger in Beuron. In 1948 he was allowed back into Tübingen, but died that year before the criminal proceedings against him could be resumed.
Maps Gerhard Kittel
Nazi Germany
For the Third Reich, he produced antisemitic propaganda posing as scholarship.
A Professor of Evangelical Theology and New Testament at the University of Tübingen, he published studies depicting the Jewish people as the historical enemy of Germany, Christianity, and European culture in general. In a lecture of June 1933 Die Judenfrage (The Jewish Question), that soon appeared in print, he spoke for the stripping of citizenship from German Jews, their removal from medicine, law, teaching, and journalism, and to forbid marriage or sexual relations with non-Jews - thus anticipating by two years the Nazi government, which introduced its Nuremberg Racial Laws and took away Jewish rights of German citizenship, in 1935. A close friend of Walter Frank, Kittel joined Frank's Reichsinstitut für Geschichte des neuen Deutschlands, a highly politicised organisation that claimed to be involved in scholarship, upon its foundation in 1935. Within this institute he was attached to the highly anti-Semitic Forschungsabteilung judenfrage.
William F. Albright wrote that, "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."
Literary works
- Die Oden Salomos überarbeitet oder einheitlich, 1914
- Jesus und die Rabbinen, 1914
- Die Probleme des palästinensischen Spätjudentums und das Urchristentum, 1926
- Urchristentum, Spätjudentum, Hellenismus, 1926
- Die Religionsgeschichte und das Urchristentum, 1932
- Founder and co-editor of the "Theologisches Wörterbuch zum Neuen Testament", 5 vols., 1933-1979
- Ein theologischer Briefwechsel mit Karl Barth, 1934
- Christus und Imperator, 1939
- Das Antike Weltjudentum - Forschungen zur Judenfrage (World Jewry of antiquity), 1943 with Eugen Fischer.
References
External links
- Christof Dahm (1992). "Kittel, Gerhard". In Bautz, Friedrich Wilhelm. Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL) (in German). 3. Herzberg: Bautz. cols. 1544-1546. ISBN 3-88309-035-2.
- Gerhard Kittel by Textus Receptus
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