When it comes to the relationship between Luther and the Jews, there is always something left or just obliterated. The next year, 500 years of Reformation will be celebrated across Germany, an opportunity to reconsider and outline his not-so friendly opinions regarding the Jews. During his life, he was in favour of a strong missionarism among Jews, hoping that the lights of Reformation are exactly the ingredient for a mass conversion. For instance, he writes that he was disappointed that Jewd did not convert in big numbers during his life, but he still nurtures the hope they will do it,.
Many of his writing are openly hostile, and were intensively used by the Nazis to get more support among the population and as propaganda materials as such. As the city of Lutherstadt was part of the communist Germany, a serious coming at terms with the anti-Semitic texts of the founder of Reformation was not done, and religious reasons prevail in not doing so completely nowadays. However, among academics and some theologians, critical approaches were done, especially in the last decades - more about that in a next post, I hope.
Nowadays, there is a 'Jüdenstrasse' written in Gottish, situated close to the old city, but not a significant number of Jews left. The Jewish presence was officially recognized here in 1814, after the Napoleonic wars, when Friedrich Wilhelm the IInd allowed 120 Jewish families to establish here.
From 2008, Initiative Stolpersteine succeeded to install a couple of memory marks in the city, commemorating the Jews murdered during Shoah.
No comments:
Post a Comment