St. Martin’s Parish’s Support of Dedeke

On Good Friday of 1941, St. Martin’s parish sent a letter to the Gestapo office in Berlin. The letter was based on a draft preserved in St. Martin’s parish records in Minden. This anonymous paper may have been drafted by the Council of Brethren. The paper contains even clearer formulations about the Minden pastor’s loyalty to the Nazi state than expressed in the letter sent. A comparison of both documents reveals that the congregation apparently deliberately formulated statements about its pastor’s loyalty to the regime more cautiously than originally planned.