Letter from Senator Helmut Schmidt to Bishop Hans-Otto Wölber, Hamburg, April 30, 1964

Source Description

This source consists of four machine typed letters of one or two pages dating from the period between April and August 1964. A fifth and last letter that contained selected press articles was sent in September 1964. Copies are kept in two locations: the Helmut Schmidt archive at the Archiv der sozialen Demokratie, Bonn and in the files of Bishop Hans-Otto Wölber at the Landeskirchliches Archiv der Evangelisch-Lutherischen Kirche in Norddeutschland (Nordkirche) at Kiel (signature 11.02 Bischof für Hamburg).

In the spring of 1964, Helmut Schmidt, Social Democrat and Senator for Interior Affairs in the city state of Hamburg, who also served as a board member to the Society of Christian-Jewish Cooperation  Gesellschaft für Christlich-Jüdische Zusammenarbeit in Hamburg, learned that the local Protestant church was engaged in missionary work among Jews. This was cause for concern for both Schmidt and the Jewish community. He contacted the Protestant-Lutheran Bishop of Hamburg, Dr. Hans-Otto Wölber, personally in order to gather information on the matter and expressed his criticism of missionary work of any kind among Jews.

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Recommended Citation

Letter from Senator Helmut Schmidt to Bishop Hans-Otto Wölber, Hamburg, April 30, 1964 (translated by Insa Kummer), edited in: Key Documents of German-Jewish History, <https://dx.doi.org/10.23691/jgo:source-111.en.v1> [April 16, 2024].