Heinrich Grüber (German: [ˈhaɪnʁɪç ˈɡʁyːbɐ] ⓘ; 24 June 1891 – 29 November 1975) was a Reformed theologian, pacifist and opponent of Nazism.

Heinrich Grüber was born on 24 June 1891 in Stolberg in the Prussian Rhine Province (today part of North Rhine-Westphalia).

[1] In early 1918 he started an education as a military chaplain and in mid-1918 he passed the second state examination in theology and was accepted into the preacher seminary (Domkandidatenstift) at Berlin's Supreme Parish and Collegiate Church.

[1] Exiled in Berlin, Grüber engaged for the Rhine-Ruhr Relief (Rhein-Ruhr-Hilfe) collecting donations for the poor impoverished by the Occupation of the Rhineland and the Ruhr area.

[1] After his return in November 1923 he resumed his pastorate in Brackel, changing in 1925 to the Düsselthaler Anstalten, a diaconal youth welfare charity of the Inner Mission.

As the officially appointed pastor Grüber held the regular services in Jesus Church, preaching against the Cult of personality for Hitler, the severing armament of Germany and anti-Semitism.

In August 1935 his colleague Pastor Neumann from Köpenick preached instead of him, criticising the anti-Semitic policy of the German government, which earned him a denunciation by the Kaulsdorf presbytery.

[6] On the occasion of the Remilitarisation of the Rhineland in 1936 Adolf Hitler unconstitutionally and arbitrarily decreed a reëlection of the Nazi puppet Reichstag for 29 March, which was Palm Sunday the traditional day Protestant congregations would celebrate the confirmations of the confirmands, who had grown to ecclesiastical adulthood.

The compromising Wilhelm Zoellner [de], leading the Protestant regional church bodies in Germany (1935–1937), regarded this an unfriendly act against Protestantism, but nevertheless obeyed and tried to delay the confirmations, asking a furlough for confirmands from the compulsory agricultural season labour of the Deutsche Arbeitsfront (DAF), starting right next Monday.

Thus only few pastors did not compromise in the end, but Grüber was one of the few (one out of 13 in Berlin, e.g.), who held the confirmation services as usual, even though the Nazi government had announced this would not be without consequences.

[11] German Christian presbyters denounced Grüber again for his opposing attitudes at the March of Brandenburg provincial Consistory [de] and the Gestapo.

[1][13][14] The mainstream Nazi anti-Semitism considered the Jewry being a group of people bound by close, so-called blood (genetic) ties, to form a unit, which one could not join or secede from.

[15] So Bishop George Bell gained his sister-in-law Laura Livingstone to run an office for the international relief commission in Berlin.

They forced the Confessing Church's hand, which in 1938 supported the new organisation, named by the Gestapo Bureau Grüber [de], but after its official recognition Relief Centre for Protestant Non-Aryans.

Since emigration opportunities for Jews were severely limited, even free nations forming traditional immigration destinations had shut their gates, pastoral care was a priority.

The bureau also provided illegal aid to persecuted people, including false passports and medicine and food for concentration camp inmates.

Grüber was allowed to travel several times to the Netherlands and Great Britain in order to persuade the authorities there to grant visa for the persecuted from Germany.

Grüber learned about it by the Wehrmacht commander of Lublin and then protested at every higher ranking superior up to the then Prussian Minister-President Hermann Göring, who forbade further deportations from Prussia for the time being.

Now Grüber got himself a passport, with the help of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's brother-in-law Hans von Dohnanyi from the Abwehr, to visit the deported in the Gurs (concentration camp).

He was eventually released due to international efforts and multiple interventions by Vits to his family in Kaulsdorf on 23 June 1943,[28] after signing not to help the persecuted any more.

Otto Dibelius, who had assumed the post-war leadership of the old-Prussian March of Brandenburg ecclesiastical province for the time being, appointed Grüber as one of the Nazi opposing pastors for the new leading bodies to be established.

On 18 May 1945 Berlin's provisional city council, newly installed by the Soviet occupational power, had appointed Grüber as advisor for ecclesiastical affairs.