“A revolution in the Church”— this is how Heinz Beckmann (1877–1939), the head pastor of Hamburg’s St. Nikolai Church and the leading representative of the politically liberal wing of the Protestant Church, characterized the changes in the Lutheran branch of the church in Hamburg at the beginning of the Third Reich.¹ The gravity of the Enabling Act compelled this dyed-in-the-wool democrat to use this stark description and to record in writing the events that followed. In 1933 the church’s constitution, with its collegial leadership group and a “Senior” as primus inter pares at its head, in place since the...