The Saar Plebiscite


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Following Germany’s defeat in World War I, the Saar territory was severed from the German Reich in 1920 and placed under the governance of the League of Nations. The provisions of the Treaty of Versailles stipulated that a plebiscite would decide the future status of the Saar territory after fifteen years. In the plebiscite on January 13, 1935, over 90 percent of the populace voted for unification with Hitler’s Germany.


In the run-up to the plebiscite, Protestant church officials from German Christians to the Confessing Church called for voting for a return of the Saar Region to the German Reich. An appeal from the Evangelical Confessional Synod in the Rhineland declared that there is no word of God, which permits us as Protestant Christians to go against our fellowship with our Volk and Fatherland on January 13; on the contrary, we are obeying God’s word when we love our Volk and Fatherland. It is therefore commanded to put an end to the Saarland’s forcible separation from the Reich, which was born of injustice.


The Provisional Church Government, the highest governing body of the Confessing Church, also adopted a similar tone. In a telegram of January 15, 1935 after the plebiscite, it congratulated Hitler in awe and loyalty as the Führer leading the nation to unity. It overlooked – as Wilhelm von Pechmann criticized in a letter of February 7, 1935 to Martin Niemöller – that among its most spirited and most loyal members are not a few who are entirely unable to accept the present status out of conviction and conscience.


The German Christians religiously exalted over the outcome of the plebiscite in their periodical Evangelium im Dritten Reich as God’s exercise of justice, who visibly is blessing our German nation today. Above all however, they attempted to capitalize on the plebiscite for themselves and to strengthen their position, which had been greatly weakened ecclesio-politically. In danger of being disempowered, Reich Bishop Ludwig Müller used nearly his entire statement on the Saar plebiscite from January 15, 1935 to invite his opponents to work together again in the German Evangelical Church under his leadership and following the example of their brethren from the Saar.


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