Maier, Joachim: Schulkampf in Baden 1933–1945. Die Reaktion der katholischen Kirche auf die nationalsozialistische Schulpolitik, dargestellt am Beispiel des Religionsunterrichts in den badischen Volksschulen, Mainz 1983

Joachim Maier: Schulkampf in Baden 1933–1945. Die Reaktion der katholischen Kirche auf die nationalsozialistische Schulpolitik, dargestellt am Beispiel des Religionsunterrichts in den badischen Volksschulen.

Soon after the National Socialist seizure of power, the Catholic Church and the educational efforts it supported represented the only serious opposing forces in Germany who could still be expected to critically observe the regime’s school policy and ideological foundations. Within the framework of the Simultanschule that had existed in Baden since 1876, the Catholic Church could not be wholly eliminated as a traditional force in education. But the Nazis’ deconfessionalization policies, which they implemented soon after taking power, demonstrated that the regime would no longer honor the »coexistence« policy of Freiburg’s archbishop Conrad Gröber. From 1938, the Church strengthened its efforts to prepare clergy for religious instruction for a substantive confrontation with National Socialism and its ideological foundations. Emblematic of this development is the Christ-centered reorientation of religious education in the war years, described as the »turn toward Christ«.