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Anti-Semitism in Germany? Xenophobia?

by nhklein 15 Min Reading

On December 11, 80 years ago, Jochen Klepper died. The day is little celebrated as a day of remembrance.

It was not a normal death: in the evening they sat down – Jochen Klepper, Hanni Stein, his wife, and their daughter Renate – at their kitchen table, turned on the tap to the gas stove, and went to their deaths together. An information from the German Protestant Church Community in Bangkok reminded me: “On the second Advent (December 11, 2022), we sang in the service the Advent hymn: ‘Die Nacht ist vorgedrungen’ (‘The night has advanced’) by Jochen Klepper. It was unknown.”

This is surprising, because there are 12 hymns by Klepper in the hymnl of the Evangelische Kirche in Germany; making him the third most common author in that hymnal after Martin Luther (1483-1546 – 28 hymns) and Paul Gerhardt (1607-1676 – 26 hymns).

Is Jochen Klepper only forgotten – or is it also a kind of suppression, in order not to include unpleasant things in the memories of one’s own history?

On November 30, 2022 the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported that a “National Strategy against Anti-Semitism and for Jewish Life” was published by the German Federal Ministry of the Interior.

The federal government wants to take stronger action against hatred of Jews and to promote Jewish life in Germany. Against the backdrop of steadily rising anti-Semitic crimes, the federal cabinet has adopted a “National Strategy against Anti-Semitism and for Jewish Life.” The aim of the strategy, it said, is to make the lives of Jews visible in all their facets and to counteract hatred of Jews.” – Last year, police recorded 3027 anti-Semitic crimes nationwide.

But how were Jochen Klepper and his family driven to their chosen death 80 years ago?

Briefly, some important stages of their lives:

The following are essentially excerpts from the portrait of Jochen Klepper drawn by Reihard Mawick in: zeitzeichen – Evangelische Kommentare zu Religion und Gesellschaft (Signs of the Times – Protestant Commentaries on Religion and Society)

  • Jochen Klepper was born as a pastor’s son on March 22, 1903.
  • Klepper’s paternal grandfather had left a handsome fortune that allowed the family to live on a much larger footing than the pastor’s salary of father Georg Klepper would have allowed, at least until the inflation in 1923.
  • Since 1917 Jochen was in high school, but from the end of 1917, he staid during the week together with a classmate, at their French teacher Erich Fromm, a strict patriot – and also an anti-Semite. He becomes one of his most important reference persons.
  • Young Jochen Klepper is a protégé, is a pupil, is dependent, and there are indications that the teacher and fatherly friend exploits this dependence: he sexually abuses him. “Emotional confusion and shame closed the young man’s mouth. Perhaps he is not the only one affected. Of the twelve students in his high school class, five will take their own lives by the time of their graduation.”
  • Kepper lives with Erich Fromm until he graduates from high school in 1922. After graduating from high school, Klepper started to study theology, following in his father’s footsteps.
  • The inflation of 1922/23 destroyed a large part of his father’s fortune; Klepper knows that he must now stand on his own feet financially. He sends small texts and poems to newspapers, which are sometimes published; this makes him very happy and brings much needed money.
  • His health is very fragile, and money worries constantly torment him. In 1926 he suffers a mental breakdown. In the course of this condition, which lasts several months, he destroys almost all his poems and literary sketches and ends his studies of theology, because he urgently needs to earn money, as the parents are dependent on Jochen’s support.
  • In the following period Klepper becomes more and more successful as a journalist and author, in 1927 he becomes editor of a press association, he soon also works as a writer for radio.
  • In 1928 he joins the Social Democratic Party – the motives for this are not entirely clear.
  • In 1929 Jochen Klepper gets to know Johanna Stein. He looks for a new room to rent, and he introduces himself to the wealthy widow, who is 13 years older than Klepper. “If I can’t marry this woman, I’ll never want anyone else in my life” he thought right away, as he later recounts. – Hanni Stein had two daughters: Brigitte (then 11 years old) and Renate (then 9). Klepper’s parents and siblings were not enthusiastic. Klepper’s family is not immune to the anti-Jewish resentment that grow dramatically during this time. In 1931, Jochen Klepper and Hanni Stein get married. Klepper’s family does not attend the wedding.
  • Jochen and Hanni Klepper make an interesting couple. He has just celebrated his 28th birthday, she has passed 40. Their common preferences are music and theater, but also literature and the joy of everything that is perfect and noble. – The two girls, Brigitte and Renate, take up a lot of space in Jochen Klepper’s life and reflections. He did not want to be called father by them, but he took on and accepted the role of father.
  • Soon after the wedding, the Kleppers started to feel the economic crisis. Klepper hardly got any more orders, and Hanni Stein’s fortune also got into turmoil. As a result, Jochen Klepper initially moved alone to Berlin at the end of September 1931 in order to find new work in the metropolis.
  • In the course of 1932, Klepper establishes himself there as an author and published more articles. Finally he finds a spacious and affordable apartment in Berlin, so that Hanni Stein and the daughters can join him in March 1932. Economically, things slowly improve for the family, but the political situation gets worse and worse in the course of 1932.
  • In spite of this, Klepper begins a new novel at the end of September 1932, a cheerful story from the milieu of the boatspeople on the Oder River: “Der Kahn der fröhlichen Leute” (The Barge of the Happy People). It remained uncertain whether a publisher would accept it. On the other hand, his contacts with the radio become closer and he got hired. In order to remove possible obstacles, Klepper resigned from the Social Democratic Party in October 1932 – because the radio station already had a strictly right-wing nationalist attitude.
  • On the day after Hitler’s “seizure of power,” on January 31, 1933, he writes in his diary: “Hitler is Reichs Chancellor. Once again the most disastrous alliance has come about, (…) the greatest German danger: the alliance between the nobility and the mob. At the radio station, we all have to reckon with our dismissal. On the radio building the swastika flag! What anti-Semitism we are now being subjected to is terrible.”
  • No sooner are the Nazis in power than the star of the young editor at Radio Berlin sinks, for now he is considered to be “Jewishly versippt” (closely related to the Jews): “I am held up in the radio station … I have to work anonymously. Audio sequences, entire cycles, which are my intellectual property from A to Z, run under the name of other – lazy and untalented – authors! I have to remain anonymous only because I have a Jewish wife.” (June 5, 1933)
  • On June 7, 1933, Klepper was fired from the radio. Briefly he considers emigrating, as many German writers, artists and intellectuals had already done. But Klepper is too attached to Germany, to the German language. Moreover, his cheerful novel “Der Kahn der fröhlichen Leute” finally becomes a great success, and the book royalties help him to hang on.
  • The entries in the diary make it clear what a treasure was his faith for Jochen Klepper. Although he had once consciously decided against becoming a pastor, Klepper is a thoroughly devout protestant Christian who cannot help but understand the whole world and its goings-on in the light of his faith.

But Reinhard Mawick also cites criticism:

“Today one thinks: Of course he should have emigrated. Thomas Mann did it, Berthold Brecht did it, the theologian Paul Tillich did it – they all left Germany and – they survived. Jochen Klepper did not emigrate, he stayed in Berlin, he endured everything that came his way. And not only that: in his diary it becomes clear again and again: Klepper cannot, indeed, does not want to rebel.

“This patience, this endurance, this suffering was later accused against him. For example, by the Swiss writer Rudolf Jakob Humm, who in the 1950s was indignant about Klepper, especially about his military service, because he “would have shot at each of us without batting an eye (…) if he had been ordered to do so by his Nazi state, and on top of that thanked his God on his knees for this guidance and providence.” – “Every country has its animals, but sheep are really only in Germany. What a simpleton who takes up his rifle in the service of a state that tells him which woman he may marry. Jochen Klepper saw in the Nazi state the authorities appointed by God. We are seeing a surrender to fate far worse than that created by dialectical materialism! The case of Jochen Klepper is not an ornament for the Protestant Church!”

“One is tempted to come to the defense of Jochen Klepper, who wrote such wonderful spiritual hymns. But on the merits of his analysis, this merciless critic is not really off the mark: Yes, Klepper was resigned to fate. He was very busy interpreting the ever new, ever more severe afflictions profoundly and meaningfully, instead of doing everything he could to escape this threat. Klepper was just not (like the theologian) Dietrich Bonhoeffer, but rather appears as a dark, passive counter-image to Bonhoeffer, the light figure who actively resisted (and was finally executed in 1945). Jochen Klepper created beautiful spiritual poems, but politically he was certainly too patient, too passive.”

Is everything now completely different, everything not comparable? Who stands with the victims today before they see no way out? Who not only agrees with the “National Strategy against Anti-Semitism and for Jewish Life”, but also acts actively – and not only against anti-Semitic crimes, but against all racist words and deeds? The following figures show an overly clear tendency – anti-semitic criminal actions in Germany, as taken up by the police:

“Must one quarrel with Klepper’s political and civic behavior if one immerses oneself in his texts today? The separation of person and work seems rather appropriate here, because it would be a pity about the texts: Klepper’s lyrical language is old-fashioned, consciously old-fashioned. It is stylistically trained and contentwise fed by the Luther Bible, by the chorales of Paul Gerhardt and other great spiritual poets. And yet, for all its austerity and woven artificiality, Jochen Klepper’s language has a touching quality. Klepper understands artfully how to express the ‘already-and-not-yet’ of the Christian faith. Therein lies the power of his spiritual poetry to this day, which can be seen especially in the Christmas hymn ‘Die Nacht ist vorgedrungen.’”

The night has advanced,
the day is no longer far away.
So now praise be sung
to the bright morning star,
Even they who wept for the night
Let them join in the joy.
The morning star certifies
even your anguish and pain.

Whom all angels serve,
now becomes a child and a servant.
God himself has appeared
to atone for his right.
They who are guilty on earth
no longer cover their head.
They shall be saved
when they believe the child.

The night is already fading,
Go to the stable!
You shall find salvation there,
which the course of all times
proclaimed from the beginning,
since our guilt happened.
Now he allied himself to you,
whom God himself chose.

Many a night will fall
on human suffering and guilt.
But now wanders with all
The star of God’s grace.
Shone by his light,
no more darkness holds you.
From God’s face
came salvation for you.

God wants to dwell in darkness
and yet he has illuminated it.
As if he wanted to reward,
so he judges the world.
He who built the world for himself
he does not leave the sinner.
Those who trust the Son here
come out of the judgment there.

The translation from the previous published German version of this blog
was greatly assisted by the free version of www.DeepL.com/Translator.

All references to sources are in German – accessible in the German version of this blog, in the previous posting.

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