The girl that could not be named Esther. Winfried Seibert

threats to themselves, will power, personal courage to stand in opposition, hope for salvation from an apparently omnipotent evil. Haman, the biblical enemy of the Jews, was equivalent to Hitler – that fit in with the spirit of the times. And they weren’t alone in their parish house in Leithe. Pastor Luncke was part of the Bekennende Kirche (Confessing Church) subgroup within the dominant Protestant grouping in Germany that early on began to oppose the Nazis. As early as 1934 the Confessing Church had suggested sermons to its pastors on the book of Esther to show that every enemy of the Jews, like Haman, would come to a bad end.

      In a less belligerent manner, even rather meekly, the Carmelite nun Teresia Benedicta a Cruce, better known as Edith Stein, at that time viewed herself as a very poor and defenseless Esther, who like the Biblical Esther was taken from her people so that she could represent them before the king. ¹³› Reference

      The registry official in Gelsenkirchen had refused to register the name Esther. The birth certificate of August 13, 1938, identifies the child as a girl without a given name. There is no trace of this conflict on the birth announcements sent to friends and acquaintances. The birth of the daughter Esther is expressed simply there. On August 15, Pastor Luncke reported the birth of his daughter Esther to the Protestant Church Consistory in Muenster and from then on received an extra child allowance of 10 Reichsmarks. His monthly salary thus rose to 330.89 Reichsmarks.

      The legal battle for the correct given name went through three levels of courts, and finally ended with the decision of the Prussian Supreme Court for Civil Matters in Berlin on October 28, 1938. It was only on December 3 that the little girl received an official name – Elisabeth, not Esther. Esther was inadmissible. The registry office could close its records. The state had won out. But that was not the end of the story, not by a long shot!

      Esther was the first child of the pastor and his wife, who had gotten married on April 29, 1937, and shortly thereafter had moved to the big parish house in Leithe, a neighborhood in Wattenscheid, a working-class town in the Ruhr Valley. Luise Luncke, maiden name Peuckmann, two years older than her husband, had studied German and theology at the university. In order to be able to devote herself to working alongside her husband in the community, she gave up on her goals for an independent career. She worked hard, with no regard for her own health. She died at the early age of 60.

      Friedrich Luncke had studied theology with Rudolf K. Bultmann, said to be one of the most influential theologians of the 20th century, one who wished to remove myth from Christianity while staying true to his faith. Luncke knew Greek and Hebrew.

      Pastor Luncke was no ivory tower scholar; he was a fighter and a great preacher before the Lord. He studied the Bible in the original; and he worked on his sermons, in which he did not shy away from confrontation with the state. In general he was very conscious of what he was doing, and he was determined to live that way in times that were hard for an engaged Christian. He set about working with all his might for his congregation. That brought him negative publicity and quickly got him in trouble. On January 6, 1938, he was arrested by the Bochum branch of the Gestapo, though he was released three days later. The affair concerned the Investigation of the League of Women in Leithe¹⁴› Reference , but no further details are available. He had been warned.

      Luncke did not let himself be scared off. True to his nature, he remained uncompromising, a most obstinate gentleman. In the matter of stubbornness bordering on pig-headedness, he was a true son of Westphalia.

      In 1934 Luncke had become assistant pastor in Spenge, a working-class district with major social problems.

      In only seven months — the church authorities did not leave him in Spenge any longer than that — he had won over the workers, the socially weaker portion of the church congregation. He did not keep his distance from them, but rather he approached the workers in the cigar industry. He had an understanding of their needs and visited them in their meager living quarters. As the son of a manual worker, he found the right tone to address them in. When he preached on a Sunday, the church was jammed to the eaves.¹⁵› Reference

      He may have been too socially conscious, to the point where the church elders did not go along with him. Here is what he was like: An older woman was crossing the street with a wheelbarrow. Luncke went up to her and said, ‘I’m going the same way as you. I’ll push the wheelbarrow.’ That caused a sensation in Spenge. Someone like that couldn’t be allowed to stay.¹⁶› Reference

      He didn’t stay. When word got out that he would not receive the position of pastor in Spenge, his supporters assembled in protest, something unprecedented at that location. Two- to threehundred Protestants blocked the parish house and railed against the church authorities who had ordered the transfer of Assistant Pastor Luncke. The police had to be called to break up the meeting.¹⁷› Reference

      His ordination as pastor, which finally took place on August 18, 1935, in Gelsenkirchen-Bulmke, met with unusual difficulties, which Luncke — and not Luncke alone — attributed to the Nazi-sympathizing German Christians (G.C.). In this vein, the congregation of Bulmke questioned the Confessional Synod of the Province of Westphalia on June 28, 1935 about the possible intervention of the German Christians:

      Your refusal of ordination must certainly have been done with blinders on. Or might the refusal have been the fruit of meetings with three G.C. [German Christian] men last Monday at the consistory office?

      Luncke belonged to the Confessing Church, which fought against National Socialist church policy and its puppets, the German Christians. He spoke out quite frankly, even though the Confessing Church had its cautious and lukewarm members as well. Belonging to the Confessing Church did not mean unambiguous opposition to the Third Reich. Traditional Lutheran ideas on obedience to authority, which appeared in the circles of the Confessing Church as well, could accommodate the brown shirts who held power. Besides them, there were of course the German Christians, who were faithful to the Nazis.

      In Gelsenkirchen, in the immediate vicinity of Friedrich Luncke, the Superintendent in charge was Theobald Lehbrink, whom we recently met in our search for Pastor L. from G. At Christmastime 1935, Lehbrink authored a nasty tract entitled On God and Authority, which was nothing more than National Socialist propaganda expressed in theological vocabulary. The style shows what was going on in the heads even of theologians. The Swiss theologian Karl Barth, the Father of the Confessing Church, had been a professor at the University of Bonn until the end of 1934. Since he had refused to take the oath of service to the Fuehrer, prescribed as of August 1934, he had been discharged. Lehbrink wrote the following about him:

      A theologian like him seems a noxious weed to every National Socialist who understands the Fuehrer and his inexpressible deeds for Germany’s welfare...

      A holy rage should come over us when we use our yardstick of Luther against the unbiblical and anti-German thought of Karl Barth, the chief inspiration of the Barmen Confessional Synod, the Swiss foreigner, the one-time Social Democrat...¹⁸› Reference

      Lehbrink gets worse, as he merges the Crusaders’ cry of Deus Vult! — God wills it! with the triumphant model of the Protestant Reformer to create a hymn to Adolf Hitler. Even the party-faithful comrades might have thought that he had gone too far, had they received this sorry work to read:

      “Since our heart belongs to God, it also belongs to this genuine revolutionary, who is leading the God-created people of our ancestors and of our posterity into the promised land of the future. We will be faithful to him to our last breath, for: ‘God wills it!’...

      The Fuehrer Adolf Hitler, by the good and gracious will of God, has overcome the deadly rule of liberalism for the good of the widest possible living space for the German people. He rules and guides the existence of the entire nation according to ‘natural’ laws of life as set down by God, which are inspired by a single Will, all to insure the existence of the People for all eternity. Since the Third Reich is being led according to God’s laws of creation and preservation, we must cast off the theologian Karl Barth, the effect of whose teachings can be identified with the spread of liberalism...

      Martin Luther overcame mortal sin against the belief