By Joyce Palmer Ralph

Adolf Sannwald--his name is there among the 697 Harvard students and faculty killed in World War II.  They are listed on the great marble wall at Memorial Church, Harvard University. But by his name alone are there the words "Enemy casualty". Those two words were arresting, thought-provoking. Was that designation simply descriptive, or was it indicting--and indicting of whom or what? My eye kept returning to that name as I sat in the reverberant quiet of a friend's funeral service in the Chapel.

The names are arranged under the names of the schools at Harvard from which they were graduated or taught; the Sannwald name was under "Divinity School". German, from the School of Theology--could he have been part of the Confessing Church, that movement within the Lutheran Church that opposed Hitler? Could he have known Dietrich Bonhoeffer?

Bonhoeffer, immeasurably significant in his role as Protestant theologian, pastor and bulwark of the Confessing Church, was imprisoned for opposition to Hitler. He was executed because of his connection with those who tried to assassinate Hitler. Could this Sannwald have been a German resister as well? But he died under fire, an "enemy casualty". Perhaps he was serving as a German chaplain. What was his story?

I began making phone calls to any office at Harvard that might have any related information. Staff members at the at the Alumni Records Office tirelessly gleaned their computer files and found that Adolf Sannwald had attended the University as a theology graduate student from 1924 to 1925, and that he was killed at Orel on the Russian front on June 6, 1943. The next clue came from the Executive Secretary at the Divinity School. She recalled that Sannwald's name had been used by Chaplain Peter Gomes in a sermon illustration on the occasion of a Memorial Day observance a few years ago. She found a copy of that sermon and mailed it to me and also noted that there was an edition of what might be Sannwald's doctoral thesis in the collection at Widener Library. This was a promising start, but for many months, it would provide my only glimpse of the man. But that glimpse was enough to sustain and encourage my search.

I read and re-read the two paragraphs from the sermon. In it, Chaplain Gomes called attention to the presence on the North Wall of the memorial plaque to the German dead of World War I who had been Harvard students. The translation of the elegant Latin inscription reads, translated: "Harvard University has not forgotten its other sons, who under opposing colors, also gave their lives in the Great War". ("Great" War: the very designation connotes something beyond size--a frightful, manly innocence.) The inclusion of those names, championed by then Chairman of the Board of Preachers, Willard Sperry, was controversial at the time, in 1931. But the graceful wording of the World War I plaque contrasted starkly with that one German name almost brusquely designated "Enemy casualty" on that marble wall across the room. Another war, another time--Hitler. I could well believe reports that there had been a huge controversy in 1951, when it was “revealed” at the unveiling that there was included the name of a German soldier.

Chaplain Gomes told in his sermon how Adolf Sannwald’s daughter Adelheid had written a letter to him after she at last had had the opportunity to visit the chapel. (A daughter…. in Germany now perhaps?) She told the chaplain of her gratification at seeing her father's name memorialized; she told also of her great distress at the designation next to it. Her father, she explained, had returned to Germany in the 1920's, become a Lutheran pastor and a member of the Confessing Church. As the full horror of National Socialism took shape in the 1930's, he had consistently spoken and preached against Hitler, so that he was "noticed" and in retribution, drafted into Hitler's Army where he was killed on the Russian Front. She felt her father had been "a patriot in the same Western liberal values" as the Allies, and that he had died for those values.

Microfilm records from the "Harvard Crimson" of 1950-51 revealed the controversy of nearly a half-century ago. World War II was over, and the question arose: How would Harvard best memorialize the sacrifice of the 697 students, alumni and faculty who had been killed around the world, from Europe to the Far East? Seventy-five thousand dollars had been allocated by 1946, enough to add a wing to an existing building or to endow a substantial number of scholarships, establish a fund---or to erect a "large plaque".

The debate was vigorous. The Crimson sided with those who wanted "something practical." Nonetheless, the committee of alumni, headed by Senator Leverett Saltonstall, determined on a plaque, so as to have an appropriate counterpart of the hauntingly lovely room that is a memorial to World War I dead. In that room, there is a statue of recumbent, fallen knight, at his head a grieving woman. The walls are emblazoned with the names of the Harvard men who died in that war.

An old newspaper photo shows one of the crew of eight stonecutters painstakingly etching one more letter in one more name in the World War Memorial II which had been designed by architect, Henry Sheply, Class of 1910. Completion was scheduled for the fall of 1950, but, as the caption beneath explains, the difficulty of working the rough marble and the necessity of adding the names of those who, since 1946, had died from their wounds--this would lead to a year's delay.

Finally, on Sunday, November 13, 1951, the plaque was unveiled. Episcopal Presiding Bishop, Henry Knox Sherill preached a sermon condemning "a recent tendency to speak of the futility of sacrifices made in the Second World War and warning that, though we were now faced with a new [post-war] danger, we should not forget our deliverance from an earlier one." 

Then someone must have read all the names. A week and half later, a front page news article reads: "War Plaque Lists German Chaplain". The writer was evidently affronted by this "direct contradiction to the University's policy in the World War I memorial plaque." In 1931, the Crimson had championed the incorporation of the German names. A compromise had been worked out: a separate listing, discreetly put on another wall. This time there had been "neither discussion nor comment about as the inclusion of an Axis casualty." The Crimson had tracked down the biographical material on this alien name: member of the Class of 1926 at the Divinity School, a visiting fellow in 1924-25, a pastor of a Lutheran Church in Stuttgart, taken into the German Army in January 1942, killed on the Russian Front, June 3, 1943, leaving a wife and five children.

An editorial three weeks later, expands on the indignation. "If there is any justification for the present memorial at all, it is that those whose names it bears died in the cause of the ideals without which the University could not exist. But if that was the University's purpose, why did the Corporation approve the inclusion of the name of Adolf Sannwald, a chaplain killed in the service of the German Army? Whatever were Sannwald's motives for fighting in the Nazi cause, it is obvious that he was not defending in any way the principles of freedom that have so nourished Harvard."

The editorial writer notes that President Conant back in 1934, had refused the offer of a substantial gift of money by Ernst Hanfstaengl, a high Nazi Party official and a Harvard graduate of 1909. Conant rebuked Hanfstaengl as offering a gift "closely associated with the leadership of a political party which has inflicted damage on the universities of Germany through measures which have struck at principles we believe of be fundamental to universities throughout the world.

"Perhaps, instead, the University wished to honor them because they were victims of a worthless and terrible scourge called war. Even if this purpose justified a memorial, a gift of money to some organization or organizations specifically set up to combat this scourge? ...

[Perhaps] patriotism in itself is commendable, no matter for what philosophy it is used. Not only is this dubious rationale, but it brings the question of motives into the issue. There can be no answer to this question, for who can tell whether a soldier fought and died because he was patriotic or because he was drafted? Chaplain Sannwald may have been motivated by religious principles which demanded that he minister to all those in need, rather than by love of country. It is sentimentality to construct a memorial plaque on the mere assumption that all those whose names are listed, died out of patriotism.

The plaque, as it stands now, is not a fitting memorial for those it purports to honor, nor will it mean anything to the succeeding generations of students who will see it whenever they enter Memorial Chapel."

So the Crimson, and the student opinion it represented did not support the idea of the plaque, particularly if it were to include a German soldier. David L. Ratner, now of Larkspur California, who served in 1951 as Editorial Chairman of the Crimson that year wrote me that: "I probably presided at the meeting at which our policy was decided; I do not recall whether there was any dissent or prolonged discussion. I do recall that I was in general agreement with the position taken; my position was and is that the inclusion of someone who served with the Nazi forces trivialized the significance of World War II by implying that someone who sacrificed his life for the Axis cause was morally equivalent to, and equally entitled to be honored by the University as someone who sacrificed his life for the Allied cause. I do not recall that the University officials ever explained their initial decision to include Sannwald on the plaque, while excluding Admiral Yamamoto (Commander of the Japanese forces at Pearl Harbor) who also attended Harvard."

But the editorial was effective. On December 12 the headlines of the lead story in the Crimson, written by Frank Gilbert, were "University to Erase Name of German from Memorial", and underneath: "Honor Roll Only for Men Who Fought for united Nations, Says Statement by University" The article continues "The name of a German casualty listed on the World War II memorial plaque will be removed, the University announced yesterday. In a brief statement, the University said: "The President and Fellows of Harvard College in May 1944 'voted to establish a Roll for Harvard men who give their lives in the armed services of this country or of the united Nations during the present World War' This vote was a directive to those who prepared the list of names to be placed on the war memorial tablets. The inclusion of the name of one alumnus who served in the German army was an error and will be corrected."

"Will be corrected …” The clear inference is that the name would be removed. The Crimson and its supporters had won. A couple of letters to the editor appear in succeeding issues: On December 15, Augustus Fabens, Class of '53 wrote: "The expunging of the name of Adolf Sannwald from the plaque in Memorial church is a strikingly ill-considered action. If the plaque is to be a nationalist memorial and so honor only those who happened to fight on our side in the war, it should still not dishonor those on the other. To attempt now to remove the name from the plaque besides being absurdly expensive and detrimental to the appearance of the plaque, would not merely cease to honor Adolf Sannwald, but would actively dishonor him. A very minor error has been committed. Why spend money merely to make the plaque look worse and perhaps hurt someone's feelings?"

In January, Robert Baldwin, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Connecticut, who had attended and been deeply moved by the services dedicating the plaque in Memorial Church, added his sentiments: “... The blunder did not lie in the addition of the name of the German soldier, but in the fact,.... that the German chaplain's name carried the totally irrelevant addition, 'German casualty' ... A memorial in a Christian church, dedicated to the spirit of a Christian philosophy of life, should be free of the spirit and connotations of the word, 'enemy'."

For whatever reason, logical or logistical, Harvard did not remove the German name. Diligent search by archivists through the minutes of the corporation at Harvard elicited not one line, not one vote on the matter of expunging or not. It just never happened.

The debate died. As now Judge Louis Kass of Newton said to me, "Personally, I thought the idea of a plaque listing all those names was a good one. It's really the same principle as the Viet Nam Memorial is today. But in 1951, it just wasn't an issue people were marching on. That editorial was just the editorial of the day at the Crimson."

Still, this was a news story that immediately spread to the national press. European dailies picked it up. The day after The Crimson announced the University's "decision to remove the name", this letter was sent to the Stuttgarter zeitung:

Gentlemen:

On page 7 of Issue #291, I found a notice under the heading "News From Around the World" that informs us about a "German on American Memorial". This German, by the name of Adolf Sannwald, was a theologian from Wurttemberg with a brilliant talent, particularly in philosophy. Sannwald was a minister from 1930- 1936 at St. Mark's Church in Stuttgart. In order to have more time for his writing and research, he asked to be transferred to the small hamlet of Dornhan. Most of the papers on philosophical questions in the Calwer Church Dictionary have come from his pen. His position in general, and in particular during the schism [Ed. note: The "schism" referred to was the conflict from the early 1930's on within the Lutheran and Evangelical Church. The Deutsch Christen, "German Christians", aligned with Hitler's National Socialism struggled to gain control of the Church.

They were opposed by the Confessing Church.] has always been such that it cannot be denied that he always lived and even gave his life for the ideals 'without which a university cannot exist'. Naturally, he could not ignore his draft into the army, considering the circumstances of the time.

There is no reason whatsoever why an American university would want to remove his name from their memorial. I would be grateful if you would notify the American paper, from which you took your note, of my opinion in this matter."

Sincerely, Bishop Wurm"

Theophil Wurm, Landesbischof of the Protestant Church in Wurtemberg from 1933 to 1949 was the acknowledged leader of the part of the Protestant church that had not been nazified. In 1941, he protested and preached against the Nazi policy of euthanasia. On July 16, 1943, he appealed to Hitler and the Reich government to cease their persecution of "non-Aryans". He condemned the measures taken by the Reich in both the occupied territories and at home, as being against the laws of God and contrary to Western thought and life. He deplored the disintegration of the rule of law in Germany and said that this disintegration imposed a heavier burden on the German people than those sacrifices required by the war. He maintained quiet contact with those secret groups planning for the end of Hitler and the re-making of Germany. Bishop Wurm was under house arrest for a time. He lost two sons in the German army; he was Adolf Sannwald's bishop.

A few days later, in mid-December 1951, Sannwald's widow, Anna wrote a letter addressed to Harvard University:

"Two days ago I read in our newspaper that Harvard University had decided to include my husband's name on the memorial for their alumni killed in action. It is my wish to thank you for this honor. My husband often spoke with gratitude of the time that he spent at Harvard, both privately and in public speeches. I am happy to know that you haven't forgotten him. In view of the protests voiced by your paper 'Harvard Crimson', you might be interested to know more of the last years of my husband's life, and his death as a soldier.

After he earned his doctorate at the University of Tubingen in 1930, he became minister at St Mark's Church in Stuttgart. Since 1932, he had been an outspoken opponent of National Socialism. During the schism, which began in 1934, he became known as an active member of the recusant [dissenting] faction of the Church. Several times he was threatened to be arrested and questioned by the Gestapo. In 1938, when the persecution of Jews reached its peak, my husband went before the authorities several times to say that this persecution was a great injustice, and that the shed blood cried to heaven. He was severely reprimanded and threatened that he himself would be sent to the concentration camp. This did not happen, but he was carefully watched. After several other confrontations, he was drafted into the armed services. He was 41 years old at that time. He had to leave his parish and his five small children in a matter of two days and was transported to Russia within eight days. He was sent to the Front in the middle of an icy winter, not as an army chaplain, but as a common soldier. The following year he came home for a leave at Christmastime, had to go back to the Front and was killed in June of 1943, in Orel.

The fact that he was drafted at his age, and transported to Russia with such expedience was an unusual measure. I share the firm conviction with many of our friends that the National Socialist leadership chose to eliminate him unobtrusively by sending to the Russian Front instead of to the concentration camp.

The Lutheran Church in general, and the recusant faction of the church in particular, have told me repeatedly over the past years how he is missed and what a void he has left behind ...

After you know all this will you be able to appreciate just how deeply I am moved that my beloved husband is honored by you in America as well.

With my most serious appreciation, I am truly yours,

Mrs. Anna Sannwald"

Through Dr. Hermann Ehmer, Chief Archivist for the Evangelical Church in Wurtemberg, I made contact with Adolf Sannwald's daughter, Amrei, the only one who remains in Germany, her sisters, Marieluise, Karin and Adelheid all live in the United States. One daughter, Birgitte, has died. Adelheid, the youngest, was the daughter who had seen her father's name and written to Chaplain Gomes. She had also translated her father's wartime letters to her mother from Russia. The search for Adolf Sannwald and his family had both ended and just begun.

Adolf Sannwald was an only child, born January 8, 1901 in Eislingen a small town in the county of Wuerttemberg. His father, Karl, is identified as a "mechanic" at the large oil refinery Zeller and Gmelin. Actually, he had many talents, particularly in carpentry, a skill he would teach his son. When Adolf was born, his father undertook to build a house himself for his young family. He laid the brick himself and completed every detail.

Karl and Marie Sannwald focused affection and devotion on their one child. Both had come from large families and had not had the luxury of extensive education. They were determined that life would be different for their son.

They rented the upper story of their house to Gerhard Weitbrecht, a company manager at Zeller and Gmelin, and son of a Lutheran minister from Swabia. Weitbrecht was impressed with and fond of the young boy and was to be his mentor and life-long point of reference, almost like a third parent. He encouraged his reading, gave him books, stimulated his curiosity about science, and taught him to play the piano.

Adolf learned quickly and was studious. He loved books and school and earned gratifyingly good grades. Adolf particularly relished math and the orderliness of it all. He was frustrated when classmates got hung up on things like the multiplication tables.  His quick mind was coupled with the ability to make friends and keep them. Grammar school was followed by gymnasium (high school) in Goeppingen from which he graduated with honors in 1917.  Mr. Weitbrecht, with the enthusiastic concurrence of Adolf's parents, encouraged him to apply to the executive board of a the church to take the Landexamen. This examination would select those students who particularly excelled to attend seminary and begin the undergraduate study of theology. Tuition was waived for those who would later choose to enter the clergy. Marie Sannwald, being both Swabish thrifty and deeply devout, was doubly pleased when Adolf scored high and was selected. He attended two such seminaries from 1915 to 1919; he was first in Blaubeuren and then in Maulbronn. To have been selected to attend was an honor; to survive was a grind. Exacting masters led the boys through Greek, Latin, math and theology.

He was only eighteen when he then entered the "Evangelische Stift", an endowed Protestant school for theology in Tubingen.  Adolf gloried in being one of the "Stiftler", immersing himself in philosophy and theology, in the confines of the old buildings of the Stift, academy buildings that before the Reformation had housed an Augustinian monastery. Part of his time he could spend taking courses at the 500-year old University of Tuebingen. His fellow "Stiftler" were mostly sons of Lutheran clergy. He would recall in later years that his academic achievements could almost level, but could never entirely eradicate his perception of a class barrier between him and his classmates. He spent additional semesters in Berlin and Marburg. Then in 1923, he passed his final examinations and was ordained. His parents were delighted with the accomplishments of their only child and his calling to the clergy. His mother pronounced Adolf's ordination day the happiest day of her life. He began work as an assistant minister in Eislingen, Stuttgart-Ostheim, and finally in Blaubeuren.

In the spring of 1925, Adolf excitedly wrote to his parents his great news: he'd been awarded a one-year $800 scholarship for graduate studies at the Divinity school at Harvard University. Feverishly, he worked on his English. He landed in New York that fall and made his way to Boston and Cambridge where he unpacked his belongings, including a raft of books, in his small quarters at Divinity Hall. It wasn't long before he'd made a best friend, one who would be a life-long friend and who, forty years later, would propose his name for inclusion on the great wall in Harvard Memorial Church.

His friend Martin Grabau wasn't a theologian; he was a graduate student in physics from the Midwest. Martin felt a bond with Adolf because his own grandfather had been a German immigrant. Slight, be-spectacled, the same age as Adolf, Martin was working on his master's degree. He would go on in 1931 to earn a doctorate. If he did not speak much German, Martin understood it, and he helped the young theologian with his English. The two young men became inseparable. On one occasion, they picked up pocket-money by wearing sandwich boards around Harvard Square advertising a restaurant that was opening.

Classes at the Divinity School were small. Adolf would have surely known classmate Edgar Raymond Attebery, from Seattle. Attebery, a Methodist minister, would in 1940 become a U.S. Army chaplain, die in the South Pacific, and be the other name listed under the Divinity School on the great marble plaque.

When his year had ended, Harvard offered to extend Adolf's scholarship for another year. But his Wurttemberg Church Council did not allow him to continue because there was a shortage of young pastors. So, in 1926, Adolf returned to the Tubingen Stift as a repetent, a tutor. In effect, he was a teaching assistant, lecturing in philosophy and modern German literature. He was in charge of the Stift library and also gave instruction in organ.

By 1930, Adolf had decided to pursue a PhD. degree, and began work on his thesis, "The Meaning of Dialectics and Anthropology". ("Anthropology" here should be understood as referring literally to "the study of man") The thesis was published in Munich in 1931.

Looking back in later years, Adolf said that those years at Tubingen were the best years of his early career. He loved the academic freedom given the students, the cordiality of his colleagues, the orderliness, the very atmosphere that filled the old university town. He declared, "It was a solid foundation on which to build a man's life." He was just turning 30 and he was just where he wanted to be, pursuing the career he loved. He had also met and fallen in love with Anna von Sehrwald, a German Baltin from Estonia. Anna was pretty, vivacious, charming, and entirely supportive--the ideal wife for an academician-clergy. They were married in August of 1930.

His friends at Tubingen had nicknamed him "Saul". He was imposingly tal1, six feet-four, with thinning blond hair and spectacles, but powerfully built and muscular. He excelled in sports and liked the challenge of hard physical work.

The same year he was married, Adolf applied for and got a permanent position as one of three pastors at the Markuskirche, St. Mark's Church, in Stuttgart. The church had forty three hundred members; ministering to that number of parishioners required three clergy. He felt they worked well together, taking turns conducting the two Sunday morning services and the mid-week Bible studies. He prepared his sermons meticulously, wrote them out, practiced them, and memorized them. Roland Martin, the present Stadtpfarrer, Chief Pastor at Markuskirchhe, found that that there are still a number of elderly parishioners, who were children and teen-agers during the thirties and who recall Pastor Sannwald: "He was specially popular with the youth. One woman who was confirmed by Sannwald characterized him as "Pfarrer zum Anfassen" (a minister to approach--to touch). "He often invited his group of confirmands to meet at his home.  Sannwald made many visits to the members of his church."

Anna wrote about that in later years: "Adolf Sannwald felt strongly about his responsibility of preaching the Gospel and to personally carry it into the homes, particularly the old and the sick. Unemployment was beginning to run rampant at that time in Stuttgart, as everywhere. He visited with families in their homes and saw much suffering and many real needs, yet could rarely offer practical help. He often talked about how he had found young unemployed men lying in bed in unheated rooms and hungry."

By the beginning of the 1930's, the National Socialist influence was beginning to be felt in Stuttgart. Anna did not initially see the Nazis as entirely bad. Adolf did. Pastor Martin writes: "In the first Nazi years, most people did not realize how dangerous Nazism was. They did not feel the tenseness in the society between Nazis and anti-Nazis. Only later the problems of wartime came to the fore. I think that most people here were not Nazis--they were just unpolitical."

Reality, particularly within the governing parish council may have been slightly different. Chief Archivist, Dr. Hermann Ehmer , writes that , "In 1931, Sannwald had problems with a small group of National Socialists." There was a dispute arising from a 'misunderstanding' of one of Sannwald's sermons. There were angry letters about him in the local paper. "From the beginning, of the Third Reich, Sannwald seems to be opposed to the National Socialist influence in church and theology. Early in 1933, he was in contact with Pastor Niemoller in Berlin and in 1934, he was a member of the Kirchliche Sozietat, a group of young ministers and laymen--notably students of Karl Barth--that stood against the German Christians (Deutsche Christen) who tried to replace biblical theology with National Socialist ideology. In 1934, Sannwald published a pamphlet 'Warum nicht deutscher Christ?' 'Why Not a German Christian?' In it he showed the congregations why they should reject the ideas of the German Christians."

At that time, the average German Lutheran churchman thought automatically in terms of a strong bond, an administrative connection between Church and state. There were a few small "Free Church" denominations, supported by freewill offerings, but _historically, the German state had provided support for the Lutheran Church. Under Hitler, this could come at a cost. Lutherans reiterated their belief that the state' s pre-eminent God-given role was to maintain public order, order that many Germans saw breaking down  perilously during the Weimar Republic.  German law prescribed when Church elections would be held. There were at the time 28 different regional churches, Landeskirchen. What better time to "streamline", synchronize the Protestant Church with the new national spirit--and in reality, Hitler schemed, to put it under the control of the Third Reich? He had already succeeded, he thought, in doing this to the Catholic Church with the Concordat with the Pope in 1933.

So, in 1933, with Church elections scheduled, it was the perfect opportunity for Hitler to move in and consolidate his domination of this institution, just as he was doing in the labor movement, the press, the universities. He personally sent Rudolf Hess to show support of the Third Reich for the agitation of these increasingly vocal "German Christians", who demanded "a new Church of Christ in the new state of Adolf Hitler."

This push to create a controlling Nazi bloc within the Church certainly found supporters who wanted to be in tune with the national awakening, to be the "Volk" undergirding the Third Reich. The summer of 1933 was full of turmoil as the Church elections loomed. Hitler pulled out all the stops in putting his resources to use on behalf of the German Christians. The S.A., the Nazi Party Brownshirts, ferreted out thousands of previously non-attending members and had them registered; they confiscated tens of thousands of pamphlets and closed the printing presses of the opposition; they packed German Christian rallies. They made direct threats, as in one flyer circulated in Breslau before the July elections: "He who does not vote for the 'German Christian' list is our enemy. He who is our enemy is the enemy of the state. The enemy of the state will be put on the black list and find himself in a concentration camp."

On July 23, 1933, the German Christians won overwhelmingly. In a move to streamline and “unify” the Church, the old title of “superintendent” was done away with and power was consolidated and to be held by a much smaller number of bishops. Heading it all was Hitler’s crony from World War I, a former Prussian army chaplain, Ludwig Muller, to be called “Reich Bishop”. A new church constitution provided for a three-member “spiritual advisors” panel to restrain the power of the Reich Bishop, but it was soon evident that Muller intended, and was intended to be a deputy Fuehrer. His first directive from Hitler was to see to it that the so-called “Aryan Act” was implemented.

As the Jews had just been disallowed from holding any civil service position in the country by the Reich civil Service Law, so the "Aryan Act" would have disallowed any Jews or "those married to non-Aryans" from holding any Church office. Those who were clergy were to be immediately retired and removed from their parishes. There were only 37 Jewish Christian ministers in the Church, eight of whom were retired. But this demand of the German Christians stung the conscience of pastors like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Niemuller and Adolf Sannwald. It was absurd and unjust. These Jewish Christians were colleagues, parishioners, friends, co-religionists. In Stuttgart, Adolf Sannwald had been meeting monthly for the previous year with a group of rabbis to study the Old Testament. Reports of these meetings must have been circulated because the words: "Jew Lover" were found painted on the pavement in front of the Sannwald home one morning during this time.