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Remembering Pastor Martin Niemöller [1]
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Date: 2025-01-05
Since 2015, a lot of us have found ourselves thinking a lot about Pastor Martin Niemöller, and paraphrasing his most famous words. First they came for the Mexicans, but I kept quiet, because I am no Mexican.
Though German is more similar to English than, say, Japanese, there are still subtleties that can get lost in translation.
Take for example mathematician Leopold Kronecker’s famous quote “Die ganzen Zahlen hat der liebe Gott gemacht, alles andere ist Menschenwerk,” generally translated as “God made the integers, all else is the work of man.” Trying to hew closer to the original word order, we might translate Kronecker’s quote as “The integers were made by dear God, all else is man’s work.”
So I was curious to find Niemöller’s words in the original German. This is how I found the quote on a page in German on the website of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum:
Als die Nazis die Kommunisten holten, habe ich geschwiegen; ich war ja kein Kommunist. Als sie die Gewerkschaftler holten, habe ich geschwiegen, ich war ja kein Gewerkschaftler. Als sie die Juden holten, habe ich geschwiegen, ich war ja kein Jude. Als sie mich holten, gab es keinen mehr, der protestieren konnte.
The museum has the same page in English, and this is how Niemöller is quoted on that page:
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
This quote “is sometimes mistakenly referred to as a poem,” according to the museum staff. For what it’s worth, Wikipedia insists that this is “a poetic form.” It’s my understanding that this quote is extracted from a “confession,” or what most Catholics might call a sermon.
Niemöller’s life story is a powerful story of pride, hubris, repentance and redemption, which is only hinted at in his most famous words.
Although he was the son of a Lutheran pastor, Martin Niemöller did not at first follow in his father’s footsteps. As a young man, he was junior naval officer in the Kaiserlichen Marine (imperial German navy). As World War I raged on, he rose in rank and earned an Eisernen Kreuz (Iron Cross, similar in meaning back then to a Bronze Star but now a hate symbol).
After the war, Niemöller resigned his commission and studied theology at the Universität Münster and was ordained in 1924. Being a Lutheran pastor was not entirely incongruous with his antisemitism. Not at first, anyway. So Niemöller wholeheartedly supported the Nazi Party and Adolf Hitler.
Until Hitler started messing with church business.
In 1933, Hitler threw his support behind a radical faction within the Protestant churches known as the Deutsche Christen (in English, the German Christians). The German Christians portrayed Jesus as an Aryan and denied that he was Jewish. They rejected the authority of the Old Testament and sought to alter parts of the New Testament. Their goal was to remove what they called “Jewish elements” from Christianity. This included prohibiting pastors with Jewish ancestry from serving in the Protestant church. Niemöller led the opposition to the German Christians and Hitler’s church policy.
Hitler ordered the Gestapo to wiretap Niemöller. Maybe Hitler thought he could get Niemöller to play ball. That was probably in 1933. But by 1937, it was clear he would not. Niemöller was arrested and imprisoned, and he was not freed until Germany was defeated.
After the war, Niemöller atoned, but he also continued to speak his mind, criticizing world leaders and questioning what others thought was the best way for East and West Germany to move forward. Niemöller died in 1984, just a few years before the reunification of Germany.
Niemöller is remembered as one of the more prominent Germans to publicly acknowledge his moral failures committed during the Nazi era, as well as the moral failures of his nation and church. And he continued to speak publicly about the relationship between inaction and Germans’ responsibility for the persecution and murder of Jews in the Holocaust.
Alan Austin’s article for the Christian Messenger, republished here on Daily Kos last March, is worth rereading.
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