Niemöller believed that Germany needed a strong leader to promote national unity and honor. He felt that reparations, democracy, and foreign influence had led to damaging social fragmentation and an overemphasis on the individual in German society.
Niemöller's sermons reflected his strong nationalist sentiment. In 1931, he resigned from this position and became the junior pastor of Saint Anne's Church, located in a wealthy and much sought-after parish in the Berlin suburb of Dahlem. In 1923, Niemöller began working with the Lutheran Home Mission of Westphalia, an organization which oversaw the social welfare activities of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Westphalia. At this time Niemöller had been a member of an organization of right-wing students called the Academic Defense Corps ( Freikorps), which was disbanded and disarmed on April 23, 1920, after the failure of the Kapp putsch.Īs inflation and economic and political turmoil increased in Germany during 1922, Niemöller took a part-time job laying tracks for the railroads while continuing his seminary studies. Because he believed that the Republic, led by those who signed the Treaty of Versailles, had crippled Germany, he supported the unsuccessful Kapp-Lüttwitz Putsch that aimed to overthrow the government in 1920. Niemöller's pro-monarchist convictions and nationalism made him critical of the Weimar Republic, which he perceived to be weak and vulnerable to a Communist uprising. He married Else Bruner on April 20, 1919. In 1920, he decided to follow the path of his father and began seminary training at the University of Münster. Along with many others, Niemöller refused to obey this order, and was, as a consequence, discharged from the Navy.
Under the stipulations of the armistice of November 11, 1918, that ended hostilities in World War I, Niemöller and other commanders were ordered to turn over their U-Boats to England. With the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Niemöller was assigned to a U-Boat, of which he was eventually appointed the commander.
In 1910 he became a cadet in the Imperial German Navy. The son of Lutheran pastor Heinrich Niemöller, Martin Niemöller was born in the Westphalian town of Lippstadt, Germany, on January 14, 1892. Niemöller is perhaps best remembered for the quotation: “First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out.” Martin Niemöller Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) was a prominent Protestant pastor who emerged as an outspoken public foe of Adolf Hitler and spent the last seven years of Nazi rule in concentration camps, despite his ardent nationalism.
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