Schweizer Katholizismus, 1933–1945. Eine Konfessionskultur zwischen Abkapselung und Solidarität (review)

Abstract

Schweizer Katholizismus, 1933-1945. Eine Konfessionskultur zwischen Abkapselung and Solidaritat. Edited by Victor Conzemius. (Zurich: Verlag Neue Zurcher Zeitung. 2001. Pp. 696. Fr. 78.-; Euros 52.-.) In the late 1990's, the Swiss began to analyze how they and their institutions had reacted to the political assaults of Nazi Germany. Among other problems, they reflected on the issues surrounding the Jewish refugees who sought sanctuary in their country. Not surprisingly, questions arose concerning how antiSemitism had tarnished the responses of the Christian churches. This scholarly work is a comprehensive study designed to clarify the values, attitudes, and behaviors of Catholic leaders and laity during this dark era. A long and distinguished career examining how the Church reacted to totalitarianism in the twentieth century has made Conzemius the perfect editor for such a volume. In 1997 Conzemius was asked by the Romische-Katholische Zentralkonferenz of Switzerland to direct a research project, ultimately the source of this book, which was to focus on the Church's response to Nazism. The authors of the essays in this collection have examined the Spanish Civil War as an example of the Church under siege in a fascist state, Christian life in the varied Cantons, and, in particular, the relationships that emerged as Christians and Jews interacted during these stressful years, while Hitler advanced Nazi interests. Stephen Leingruber, Urs Alterman, Christoph Baumer, and Jonas Arnold have touched on the now familiar theme of the relationship between Christian anti-Judaism and modern socio-political, i.e., racial, anti-Semitism. Their analyses inevitably lead into the controversy surrounding the Christian roots of anti-Semitism, which by now is fairly well-trodden ground. Still, these authors bring a new perspective to the conversation, since they are particularly concerned with the attitudes of Catholics toward Jewish refugees and so focus on how bystanders in a neutral country reacted to Nazi barbarism. The book also includes personal recollections, which are provided by five witnesses to the tensions that erupted over Jewish refugee issues in St. Gallen-Rorschach. Up until now in the scholarly literature concerned with the Nazi era, the experiences of the Swiss have not contributed much to our ongoing attempts to understand the church struggle, the role of Pius XII and the institutional church during this era, and the Church's contribution to modern anti-Semitism. Several perspectives offered in this collection, however, seem to open up unique viewpoints that could be profitably pursued. Thomas Maissen, for example, suggests that the symbiotic relationship that seems to attract the Church to the totalitarian impulse probably should be revisited, since it goes to the root of the modem Church's response to modernity, even today. …