German Pentecost

1914 brought unity to a previously divided Germany. One pastor in Hanover wrote, “When the day of mobilisation had fully come, there were Germans all together in unity – villagers and city dwellers, conservatives and freethinkers, Social Democrats and Alsatians, [Hanoverian] Guelphs and Poles, Protestants and Catholics. Then suddenly there occurred a rushing from heaven. LIke a powerful wind it swept away all party strife and fraternal bickering . . . and the Kaiser gave this unanimity the most appropriate expression: ‘I see no more parties; I see only Germans.’”

Ernst Troeltsch was less evocative, but expressed the same faith: “Our faith is not just that we can and must defend our state and homeland but that our national essence contains an inexhaustible richness and value that are inexpressibly important for mankind, a value that the Lord and God of history has entrusted to our protection and development. The German faith is a faith in the inner moral and spiritual content of Germanness, the faith of the Germans in themselves, in their future, in their world mission.”