The fifth commandment from the Decalogue leaves little to be desired in terms of conciseness: “You shall not kill”, as Luther said, while other translations speak of “murder”. That no one should take the life of another was at the core of Jewish ethics and was even exacerbated by the Jewish prophet Jesus. Nevertheless, rules for situations in which killing was not prohibited also developed over the centuries. The war was a notable exception. And so in February 1915 the educator Heinrich Spanuth was able to think of the fifth commandment in terms of its reversal in his handbook "The World War in Lessons": "The commanded killing of the enemy in war, humanity in war, the sacrifice of life in the fight for the fatherland; War Aid, Wounded Aid, Red Cross”.
A whole series of considerations surrounded the fact that, now that Germany had declared war, killing was no longer forbidden but required.
Spanuth went even further and turned the entire Decalogue to fit: "Almost all commandments are to be related to war in some way." The sixth commandment, often called chastity, now spoke "of the sacrifice of women who give up their spouses".
The eighth commandment was related to the "campaign of lies of the enemy" and to the "cunning in war", although Spanuth insisted on "justice in the judgment of the enemy".
Above all, God stood as “Lord over life and death” and as the ruler of fate.
Not worked according to template
Heinrich Spanuth's handbook is one of many testimonies that Friedrich Erich Dobberahn called upon in his study "German Theology in the Service of War Propaganda". According to the subtitle, it deals with the “reinterpretation of the Bible, hymn book and liturgy” in the period from 1914 to 1918 and presents everyday theological life in Germany during the First World War in enormous detail. For him, Spanuth, for example, stands in a tradition of popular Darwinism, as he proves with other passages. Dobberahn certifies him a "biomythical pattern of interpretation". The God of this theology speaks not only in the Bible, but also in the thunder of battle, that those commanded by God must ensure that they are in the hands of God, a hammer or an ax and not an anvil or a tree.
Dobberahn is also interested in Spanuth because he can use it to accentuate the core of his book. His main source is the notes about a pastor and a confirmand in Potsdam in the first year of the war: At that time, Theodor Krummacher was preparing young women for their confirmation, of course he could not avoid the current situation, so he carried the Christian faith under the impression of an intense "Theology of War". Dobberahn uses this term to summarize what his book is all about.
One young woman who wrote carefully and reflectively for Krummacher was Ellen Richter.
Your log book came to Friedrich Erich Dobberahn as a family property, because he is married to a granddaughter of the confirmand at the time.
So his investigation is biased in a certain way, but he tries to expand this personal reference by providing maximum context.
Between “business cycle poetry” and “peace knowledge”
"German Theology in the Service of War Propaganda" is a historiographical book, but also, according to the author's self-image, an outsider's work, "not worked according to templates", but pulses with a comprehensive interest in understanding German Protestantism and its nationalistic aberrations.
Dobberahn has an exciting intellectual biography, he did his doctorate on “Five Ethiopian Magic Scrolls”, taught biblical studies and Semitic languages in Brazil for eight years, dealt with liberation theology there and has worked as a religious scholar and language teacher since his return to Germany.