Sunday, June 12, 2011

Martin Niemöller speaking at Uni-Marburg, 1946

In 1946 Martin Niemöller spoke before Uni-Marburg students.
Harold Marcuse offers this citation:
Die politische Verantwortung des Christen im akademischen Stand : Vortrag gehalten auf Einladung der evangelischen Studentengemeinde vor Studierenden der Philipps-Universität zu Marburg an der Lahn am 4. Mai 1946 / Martin Niemöller. Giessen : W. Schmitz, 1946. 23 p. [RLIN: Yale, Harvard] Also in Reden 45-54, 87ff.
This was one occasion for his famous lament, which he preached, now repeated as verse which I choose to render as:
First they arrested the X, but I was not an X, so I did not speak up.
Then they crudely rounded up the Y, but I was not a Y, so I did nothing.
Then we heard they were murdering transported Z's, but we were not Z's, so we kept quiet.
It is my understanding that Niemöller was heckled by the students - but was it only when he spoke of collective guilt?

Sehe: Martin Niemoeller Stiftung as referenced by Harold Marcuse.

Frage: Who were these students of 1946?  How many had been SA?  How many had been in youth troops or knew of the slaughter of youth troops by Allied forces at various sites (or had survived the incidents where Allied forced failed to take prisoners - crimes soon to be repeated in Korea a few years after) ?  Were any from fire-bombed Wuerzburg or other fire-bombed cities north and south of Marburg?  It is essential to know who these students were and that informations should be in the Uni archives.

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