Protestant Church in Baden

Its headquarter, the Evangelical Superior Church Council (German: Evangelischer Oberkirchenrat, EOK) is located in Karlsruhe.

After the Nazi takeover the synodals standing for the nominating group of the Ecclesiastical Liberal Union (Kirchlich-Liberale Vereinigung, KLV) jumped ship and joined the German Christians' faction.

Instead the new office of the Landesbischof (i.e. regional bishop) was formed bundling the spiritual, legislative and executive church leadership (before the first was with the prelate, the second with the Landessynode, and the third with the EOK) in the hands of one single man, as typical for the concept of the Führerprinzip, in harsh contradiction to the Protestant tradition of synodal legislation and collegiality in the consistorial executive.

On 24 June 1933 the Landessynode elected the incumbent Prelate Julius Kühlewein the new powerful Landesbischof regnant, being ex officio the head of the EOK, downsized in members.

[4] On 23 July 1933, the day of the unconstitutional premature reelection of synodals and presbyters imposed by Hitler, the Nazi-submissive German Christians then gained a majority of 32 seats against the only remaining opposition of 25 members of the conservative Ecclesiastical Positive Association (Kirchlich-Positive Vereinigung, KPV, another nominating group not to be confused with the proponents of the so-called Positive Christianity) in the widely self-disenfranchised Landessynode.

Representatives of the Baden Covenant of Confessors participated in the first Reich's Synod of Confession (Reichsbekenntnissynode) and voted in, with others, the Barmen Declaration.

[14] So any offertory, to-be-collected, all budgets, remittances and payments by any entity of the church, were subject to approval by government-appointed comptrollers.

In January 1940, urged by the Wehrmacht, Hitler repeated that no wide-ranging actions against the Confessing Church are to be taken, so that the Gestapo returned to selective forms of repression.