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Niebuhr's Complex Relationship with Germany: How Did His Experiences Influence His Image of the State?

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Religion and the Liberal State in Niebuhr's Christian Realism

Part of the book series: Staat – Souveränität – Nation ((SSN))

Abstract

Reinhold Niebuhr cultivated an ambivalent relationship towards the land of his ancestors. As a young man he took pains in order to be accepted as an American. He dismissed the German patriotism and was a fervent supporter of the American commitment in the First World War against Germany. Nevertheless, he admired German cultural achievements and was strongly influenced by liberal German theology. His love-hate-relationship with Germany motivated him to support the German anti-Nazi underground that was active in the United States while harshly criticizing the reactionary heritage of German Romanticism. This article reconstructs how Niebuhr's anti-totalitarian commitment was one important experience that influenced the development of his political realism.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Niebuhr's friendship with Dietrich Bonhoeffer is an exception in this respect.

  2. 2.

    In a more recent study, John Bew has defined a specific German form of Realpolitik that makes some similar arguments. See Bew 2016.

  3. 3.

    Niebuhr criticized Schleiermacher's cultural nationalism and pride that was susceptible for a kind of antisemitism. Niebuhr 1965, pp. 88–89.

  4. 4.

    Helmut Plessner. 1959. Die verspätete Nation. Über die politische Verführbarkeit bürgerlichen Geistes. Stuttgart. First Zurich 1935 (under the title Das Schicksal deutschen Geistes im Ausgang seiner bürgerlichen Epoche).

  5. 5.

    Later American Friends of German Freedom (AFGF).

  6. 6.

    Press information of December 7, 1939 “Friends of German Freedom hear Thomas Mann and others at first public gathering”, p. 1. GP 1/16.

  7. 7.

    R. N. The German Problem as the American Friends of German Freedom See it (internal draft), undated (probably 1940) Goldbloom Papers 2/7, pp. 1–2.

  8. 8.

    Ibid., pp. 3–4.

  9. 9.

    Minutes of the Meeting of the Executive Committee” (Protocol of 18.5.1944 by Anna Caples). GP 139 8/11.

  10. 10.

    Quoted in Peterson, Die Vereinigten Staaten und die deutschen Emigranten, in: Langkau-Alex, Was soll aus Deutschland werden? p. 71.

  11. 11.

    Letter R. N. for the AADG, April 1946. NP Box 1.

  12. 12.

    https://www.oikoumene.org/en/about-us/wcc-history

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  1. München, Germany

    Christoph Rohde

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    Christoph Rohde

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Rohde, C. (2021). Niebuhr's Complex Relationship with Germany: How Did His Experiences Influence His Image of the State?. In: Rohde, C. (eds) Religion and the Liberal State in Niebuhr's Christian Realism. Staat – Souveränität – Nation. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-34464-1_6

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