Ethelbert Stauffer

Stauffer was the son of a Mennonite preacher born and raised in Worms. After attending the local grammar school, he studied Protestant theology at the universities of Halle, Berlin and Tübingen from 1921 to 1925. He then entered the service of the Mennonite churches in Hamburg and Altona. He converted to the Evangelical Church in 1928, and became assistant pastor of the Provincial-Saxon church. The New Testament scholar Ernst von Dobschütz appointed him the faculty assistant in Halle, where he graduated in 1929. He became a lecturer there in 1930.

In the 1930s Stauffer was appointed professor of New Testament Studies and director of Ancient History Studies at the University of Bonn. Although he never joined the Nazi Party, he was a long-time and leading proponent of the "German Christian" movement, which attempted to align German Protestantism with the Party's antisemitic and Führerprinzip ideological principles,^[1] and he has frequently been accused of "Nazi activities."^[2] Stauffer argued that it was the duty of the theological faculty to promote a relationship of trust between the church and state and "called on the theological faculties not to engage in politics, but to strengthen, through their theological work, the politische Spannkraft (political vigor) of the German Volk; the unity of the German Volk cannot exist without Jesus Christ, he wrote." He also promoted physical education as part of a theological education.^[3] One of Stauffer's early contributions to the movement was his 1933 publication Unser Glaube und unsere Geschichte: Zur Begegnung zwischen Kreuz und Hakenkreuz ("Our Faith and Our History: Towards a Meeting of the Cross and the Swastika"). His relationship with the Nazi state became ambivalent, and he was removed from his post as vice-dean of the faculty of Bonn University in January 1943 for anti-fascist statements in a lecture on "Anthony and Cleopatra."^[1]

After the war Stauffer, like many academics with training in Jewish texts but with compromised war-time records, escaped close scrutiny by the Allied authorities on "the naive assumption among Allied authorities… that those who had expertise in rabbinical texts must have been sympathetic to Judaism, or at least uninvolved in Nazi activities."^[2] He was elected Dean of the Faculty of Protestant Theology at Bonn University but resigned at the first meeting of the faculty on June 5 1946, prompted by questions about his wartime activities. Although vindicated by a review of his writings, he advised the rector on 8 December 1947 that he would accept an offer from Erlangen University to take up the newly-created chair of New Testament Studies. In 1957 he admitted the anti-semitic ideas of the German Christians by stating: "The primary role of Jesus research is clear: De-Judaizing the Jesus tradition."^[4] Stauffer became professor emeritus in 1967.

Stauffer had two daughters and two sons. His third child followed him in his theological career. His son Dietrich became a Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Cologne.