Facs
Transcript
In this way it becomes an example from which you yourself, and perhaps I myself partly, can and will derive some more universal statements.
When in Germany 1919 – or 1918 first, and then further, 1919 – the First World War came to an end, through the revolutionary movement in which the German emperor and all the different German princes were thrown out and Germany was transferred into a republic under the leadership of the Social Democratic Party (which combined Marxist principles with democratic principles) – in this moment, two very opposite attitudes developed in this tense situation. The one came from the Lutheran tradition, which is all-decisive for the German situation. This Lutheran tradition is determined partly by Luther himself, but Luther himself and Lutheranism are largely determined by the structure of Germany in the age of the Reformation, in the 16th and already in the 15th century, by an innumerable mass of small princes with absolute authority over their subjects, and the beginning of a bureaucracy and a standing military force under the control of these princes. In this situation, Lutheranism developed a point of view which one can call negative-transcendental, namely the attempt to save the individaul [sic.] soul on the basis of the Christian message of justification by faith, but leaving history to the earthly powers without interfering from the side of the Church. This was quite different in the Calvinistic countries where, in the name of the law of God, which confirms the natural law, the Catholic princes were attacked by the Protestants, the revolution was preached and carried through, and the authorities were dispossessed. In Lutheranism this never happened. And during the Thirty Years' War