Friedrich von Bodelschwingh

The German Christians announced the appointment of a Reich's Bishop for 31 October 1933, the highly symbolic Reformation Day public holiday.

The Nazi government compelled the negotiators to include its representative, the former army chaplain Ludwig Müller, a devout German Christian, betting on his prevalence.

Thus the Nazis, who were permanently breaking the law, stepped in, using the competent streamlined Prussian government led by Hermann Göring, and declared the functionaries had exceeded their authority.

Once the Nazi government had figured out that the Protestant church bodies would not be streamlined from within using the German Christians, they abolished the constitutional freedom of religion and religious organisation, declaring the election of Bodelschwingh had created a situation contravening the constitutions of the Protestant regional churches, and on these grounds, on 24 June the Nazi Minister of Cultural Affairs, Bernhard Rust appointed August Jäger as Prussian State Commissioner for the Prussian ecclesiastical affairs (German: Staatskommissar für die preußischen kirchlichen Angelegenheiten).

This act clearly violated the status of the Protestant regional churches as statutory bodies (German: Körperschaften des öffentlichen Rechts), subjecting them to Jäger's orders.

Although he took the oath of loyalty to Hitler in 1938, as was common for Protestant pastors in the Third Reich, he made no secret of his vigorous opposition to the Nazi's sterilisation and euthanasia policies.

The Gestapo closed the Bethel Theological School in March 1939 and in April 1940 ordered institutions and homes to begin relocation of their patients in collective shipments without notification of next-of-kin.

Staff members expressed their willingness to forcibly resist any attempted transportation of sick persons by force and the commission eventually departed.

According to the noted psychiatrist Karl Stern's memoir, The Pillar of Fire (p. 119), "There was a famous Lutheran pastor, Bodelschwingh, who built up a huge colony of feeble-minded, idiots and epileptics in Bethel in Western Germany.

The von Bodelschwingh Foundations of Bethel are still in operation, helping more than 14,000 persons in clinics, homes, schools, kindergartens, live-in groups, work therapy facilities and shops for the disabled.