Klaus-Michael Kodalle: 1933 – Die Versuchung der Theologie

With his monograph on select Protestant theologians in the time immediately before, and in the early period of National Socialist Germany, Klaus-Michael Kodalle has provided a very helpful contribution to the development of our knowledge of the religious thought about, engagement with and response to the cultural, social and political dynamics of the “Third Reich”. In personspecific chapters, addressing both well-known names in theology and some equally important (although less popular) figures, Kodalle draws our attention to Paul Tillich, Emmanuel Hirsch, Karl Heim, Hans Michael Müller, Gerhardt Kuhlmann and Erik Peterson. He lays his emphasis clearly on the religiousphilosophical analysis of their thought rather than on the historical-critical contextualization. One of the central questions he addresses, and returns to regularly, is the reception of Kierkegaard in these years among the Protestant theologians.